Today is my good lady's birthday and I wondered what blogpost to write. The solution came this evening at the family worship with the family and our grandchildren. As usual, we read the Bible and sang a Psalm in course – reaching Ps 131, which appropriately spoke about well-behaved children. The Bible always has something …
Category: Personal development
Superficial Christianity
Superficial Christianity can be measured in various ways. One measure is at the personal level and another is at the collective level. Personal Bible reading and prayer How many Christians read their Bible regularly, far less study it? Do they pray for the Holy Spirit in order to understand it? Can they manage to get …
The success and failure of Gentile Christianity
I wrote a blogpost on The failure of Gentile Christianity. This has been misread by some people as 'Gentile Christianity has failed'. The wish may be the father of the thought because there are some Christians who misread the Bible and conclude that things will simply get worse and worse. Misreading and misunderstanding is common …
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The abuse of good words
There are many good words that are put to a bad use. To such an extent, that over the years I have had to find better terms for the point being made. Liberalism I have no blogposts on liberalism because the use of 'liberal' and 'liberalism' is too often the abuse of a good word. …
Responding and replying, but not answering
Modern discussion and debate is full of unanswered questions. Prime Minister's Questions, First Minister's Question and BBC Question Time produce many examples of questions that are ignored and not answered. People respond, but they do not answer; they reply, but they do not answer. An answer addresses the question, but the person responding may reframe …
Reviving the Christian Church
How do we revive the Christian church? Many people can see the decline in the Christian church, although there are not so many that are able to diagnose the problem. There are two things that are urgently needed for the revival of the Christian church. The first need is exegetical preaching, with emphasis on both …
Evangelical errors
Evangelical Christians pride themselves in believing the Bible and in preaching the Gospel. However, this self-assessment does not completely stand up to scrutiny. I have heard many an evangelical preacher who is rather niggardly with the Gospel and sometimes I wonder if they know how to preach it. As for their biblical teaching, I have …
Experts and professionals
What is the difference between an expert and a professional? A professional may not be an expert. An expert may not be a professional. A professional has professional standards and an external professional body maintaining these standards. An expert may not behave professionally. They may have no external standards to live up to and their …
Christian care is not the same as secular care
Just as Christian morality is not the same as secular morality, neither is secular care the same as Christian care. Secular care is very choosey; it picks and chooses. On a recent walk I met two runners who identified themselves as atheists. Having established that they were open to discussion, it was immediately apparent that …
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What is your morality?
People make the mistake of thinking that there is only one morality. There are multiple moralities and people choose the one that they want. Christian morality is different from secular morality, which is different from Jewish and muslim morality, etc. People choose the morality they want to follow, and they are responsible for their morality …