Jesus: a ‘new and improved’ Moses?

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Should we regard the Old Testament and the New Testament as continuous, or discontinuous, with one another?  The standard evangelical approach is to regard the relationship between the two as that between bud and flower, source and stream, promise and fulfilment.

But many are troubled by the moral teaching and actions recorded in the Old Testament, and ask how this can be reconciled with the teaching and actions of Jesus.

Taking the difficult matter of the destruction of the Canaanites as his starting point, Peter Enns looks at Matthew’s Gospel, asking, ‘What would Jesus do?’…

PYO gender, kids?

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As noted recently by Sam Hailes on the Premier Christianity blog, issues relating to transgenderism have been hitting the news with considerable frequency:-

Transport for London recently announced they’d no longer use the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” when making public announcements. TFL said the phrase was “outdated” and “belonging to yesterday”.

Last month a Canadian transsexual refused to give their baby a gender. Kori Doty complained the baby had not been issued a birth certificate because officials say a gender of either male or female must be registered.…

‘The Sin of Certainty’ – 8

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In chapter 8 (‘Cultivating a habit of trust’), Peter Enns bares his heart.  We learn that in his forties, he went through a bad time.  His daughter had developed an anxiety disorder so severe that she had to be sent away to a boarding school far from home.  A seemingly co-incidental and almost trivial incident struck him as a ‘God-moment’ that helped him to see that we do not have to know and understand before we commit to God in faith.…

Is religious belief just a matter of cultural conditioning?

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‘If you were born in Saudi Arabia,’ the argument goes, ‘you would probably be a Muslim.  If you were born in the Bible Belt of the US, you would probably be a Christian.’  Conclusion: religious belief and commitment are conditioned by one’s culture and environment.  Truth, evidence, reason and personal decision have nothing to do with it.

But the argument cuts both ways.  A person born in France, for example, would probably be a secularist rather than either a Muslim or a Christian.  …

The good shepherd

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‘The good pastor…models his ministry on the good shepherd,’ writes John Stott in The Contemporary Christian (pp 280-290).  As such, he has the following characteristics:-

  1. The good shepherd knows his sheep, Jn 10:3, 14f.  He will know them by name, and he will know them personally and intimately.
  2. The good shepherd serves his sheep, Jn 10:11.  This is in contrast to false shepherds, who serve themselves, Eze 34:2; June 12.  It may be unrewarding, sacrificial work, but he is following Jesus’ example in doing it.
…

To what are we called?

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We are called to

  1. fellowship with Jesus Christ, Mk 3:14; Jn 17:3; 1 Cor 1:9;
  2. freedom, Gal 5:13;
  3. peace, Col 3:15;
  4. holiness, 1 Cor 1:2; Rom 1:7; 1 Pet 1:5; 1 Thess 4:7; 2 Tim 1:9;
  5. witness, 1 Pet 2:9;
  6. suffering, 1 Pet 2:20f; Jn 15:18,20;
  7. glory, Heb 3:1; 1 Pet 5:10; Rom 8:17.

(Stott, The Contemporary Christian, 133f)…

Prescriptions for depression drugs double in decade

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It is a well-known fact that prescriptions for antidepressants have double over the past ten years.

I’ve been reading a short article in the Daily Mail (June 30, 2017).

Various reasons have been put forward to explain this, and there’s probably truth in many of them: many women, for example, are struggling with the pressures of trying to raise a family, hold down a job, and look after ageing relatives.

Another factor may be that mental health conditions are more frequently recognised these days, and there is less of a stigma attached to seeking help.…

Mystery

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In everyday usage, the word ‘mystery’ suggests ‘something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain’ (COD).

Unfortunately, this usage is too readily imported into discussions about what the word means in its biblical context.

So let’s take a look.

In the OT, the word ‘mystery’ only occurs in the Aramaic part of the book of Daniel (Dan 2:18–19, 27–30, 47; 4:9), where the word rāz is rendered mystērion in the LXX.  In that context, the word refers to God’s hidden plan which revelation and the unfolding of events are in the process of making known.…

‘The Sin of Certainty’ – 7

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‘God Wants You Dead’, exclaims the title of chapter 7 of Peter Enns’ latest book.

Many of us, says Enns, feel doubt creeping up on us, and then start to feel guilty about it.  So we fight it.  And then, when we find that the doubt won’t go away, we end up living lives of ‘quiet and wretched desperation’.

But doubt is not the enemy of faith, but only the enemy of certainty.  In fact, doubt is the friend of faith, because it takes us away from the security ‘knowing what we believe’ and towards trust.  …

‘The Sin of Certainty’ – 6

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If we limit faith to correct thinking, we find ourselves unprepared and ill-equipped for what life throws at us.  But faith-as-trust enables us to listen to our ‘uh-oh’ moments, and even to grow and mature in our walk with God.

What do we do, for example, with the God of the Bible, with his impatience (Gen 6-9) and violence (Deut 20:10-18; Rev 14:14-16)?  How is this any better than today’s ideologically- and religiously-motivated violence?

What do we make of the world-view of the Bible, so completely different from what we now know from modern science?  …