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Posts tagged ‘sin’
Oct 22
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‘Truth’ is not apologetics
The 2012 Global Atheist Convention is coming up in about a fortnight here in Melbourne. It’s got me thinking about apologetics. Here’s my assertion: ‘truth’ is not the same as apologetics. It’s an old saying that there’s nothing apologetic about apologetics: it’s confidently defending Christianity. But I’m not so sure that ‘truth’ is always the best way to do that. This seemed particularly relevant to me recently as I considered the objection that the church has been responsible for so much injustice around the world and throughout history. No doubt you’ve heard this kind of line before – when our congregation was asked to come up with examples, we named more than 10 in about a minute. Read more
Animistic Creation Stories
A component of the Missiology part of our intercultural studies is ‘Living Faiths’, where we look at current religions to gain a better understanding of them and how Christians can interact with people from these sorts of backgrounds.
We looked at animism and African Traditional Religions (ATR) this week. The whole worldview is incredibly different to a western worldview but one thing I found particularly fascinating was hearing about ATR creation myths. The contrast with the biblical creation myth was especially intriguing. Read more
Cross-cultural servanthood prayers
As preparation for St Andrew’s Hall, where we will spend five months preparing with CMS for our move to Tanzania, I’m reading Duane Elmer’s Cross Cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in Christlike Humility. It’s a challenging read, not because it’s stuff I don’t know but because there are so many layers to mine in my own life. Read more
Dying to sin: John Owen
John Owen was a 17th century Puritan. He wrote a whole treatise on The Mortification of Sin in Believers. He identified deceitfulness as the chief characteristic of sin such that you can think you have so understood grace that you tolerate and even love sin. Thus in order to mortify it, “diligent attention” must be given to the evil of sin if it is to be rooted out. He gives eleven steps; nine of which are preparatory and the last two being where the work is contained: Read more
Jan 20
The Pharisee and the tax collector (Summer Encounter 2011)
These are my notes from the talks at Summer Encounter, the annual conference of CMS in South Australia.
Dr David Williams is the head of development and training in CMS. His talks covered the three parables in Luke 18:1-30. Read more
