I certainly won’t be telling you how to vote here.
But as a complement to Geoff Robson’s series on Christians and voting, here I assess various ‘voting guides’ produced by Christian groups in the lead up to Australia’s federal election in September 2013. (more…)
Today, August 28 is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s famous, “I have a dream speech”.
And I take this occasion to give an Australian perspective and to say that racism has no future. (more…)
Geoff Robson has been writing a series on voting as a Christian—a topic particularly relevant for Australians at the moment, but for many of us around the world. He’s concluded the five parts with four ways to vote, and a broader reflection on the role and limitations of government:
Where governments can pass laws to protect people and restrain evil, they can never change the heart. But Jesus can. Jesus changes his people from the inside. He doesn’t just give us an example to follow: by dying to make us his people and pouring out his Spirit, he gives us new hearts so we actually can consider others better than ourselves. We can begin to love God and live for him. We can love our neighbour as ourselves, even using the privilege of our vote for the sake of others.
The whole series is well worth reading. If you missed it, the first post is on how God thinks about government, and is an excellent place to start.
Jean Williams, with 5 reasons she’s identified that leave her feeling about her role as a homemaker, and 6 practical suggestions:
Last week I shared my friend’s question with you:
I was wondering if any of you have any advice, or could recommend a talk or book, that could encourage me in my role as homemaker.
I have been becoming increasingly irritated and resentful about doing all the housework lately (as well as finances, admin, handy man stuff etc). I’m also the one who is training the children to do it. Maybe I need to share it with my husband more, I don’t know.
(My friend has several young children, and every week she has 2 child-free days that theoretically free her up to do housework. She says, “I am hesitant to add more to my husband’s workload when I have ‘extra time’.”) Here’s my response, with a few suggestions from mutual friends scattered through.
I’m single. I live in Sydney’s east with my two flatmates and my cat. (The crazy-cat-lady litmus test is that you know you’ve become one and you don’t care.) I’m in my late thirties. Many of the struggles that surround singleness are my struggles too: tossing up between living on my own (and being lonely and possibly broke) or living with flatmates (and regularly having to find and get used to new ones); turning up to things on my own all the time; feeling the unvoiced wonderings of friends, who think I’m too fussy, or gay, or weird; feeling surprised and disappointed that I’m not married by now, and wondering what’s wrong with me. I tire of all of those things. (more…)
Sorry this post has taken a while. Sometimes you’re too close to something to be able to write about it. By God’s grace, here it is. (You can read my previous posts here: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.)
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7)
flickr: mark sebastian
I’ve been listening to my fears. I’ve been imagining dire possibilities. Every medical article, every story of hardship, every description of suffering, seems a pointer to our future, a list of what-might-be. There are times when I lie face down on the carpet, sick to the gut, held down by a blank, black dread. I knew that I would cry, but fear? It seems a strange accompaniment to sorrow.
Geoff Robson is continuing his series on thinking politically as a Christian, following up his original post with part 2 of “The gospel and who to vote for“, and “Don’t waste your vote“.
[Prayer] is probably the most distinctive Christian contribution to the political process. We can vote, act, speak out and protest in much the same way as our non-Christian neighbours. But we can do something they can never do: Pray to the God of the universe. Your most important contribution to the political process happens not when you step into the ballot box, or when you write a letter to your MP, or when you take part in a peaceful protest march. It happens on your knees.
Both posts are a good read, especially the suggestions in the second of how not to vote. The final two parts should be up in a few days’ time.
I’ve written plenty of letters to our parliamentarians regarding particular policy issues, sometimes quite critical of positions they’ve taken. But have I taken time to thank them. Here’s my attempt at the end of the current term of our federal Parliament… (more…)
Australians are going to the polls soon to elect their national representatives. In light of this, Geoff Robson is posting up a series on how Christians ought to think about politics. For readers outside of Australia, read on too, and squirrel it away for May 2015, or November 2016, or whenever you’re next called on to vote.
My goal over these five posts is simply to provide an overview of how Christians should think about politics. I hope to cover:
1) An introduction to Christians and government
2) Christians and interacting with our government
3) How not to vote
4) How to vote (NOT who to vote for!)
5) The limitations of government
As well as addressing the specific topic, I have another goal in mind. Too often, Christians segregate their faith from other parts of their life – including their views of politics. We can completely divorce our faith in Jesus from our voting patterns. Or we can connect the two – but in a superficial way. In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul says that Christians are to “take every though captive to obey Christ”. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, in the Great Commission, Jesus says that ALL authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him – meaning he has total authority over every single part of our lives. We may confess these things to be true and important, but the reality of sin means none of us acts or thinks as though they are really true. While these posts will only scratch the surface on one area of thought, I hope that thinking about these issues goes some way towards helping us all see that the Lordship of Jesus has to impact and transform every single aspect of our lives, without exception.
Prayer always brings glory to God, as we express our confidence in his willingness and ability to help us as well as his interest in the details of our life. To think the creator and sovereign ruler of the universe would pay attention to our requests—about the trivialities of our lives—is humbling and exciting. That we can call the Almighty, “Father” is wonderful beyond description.
This week the Anglican diocese of Sydney comes to electing a new Archbishop. Synod will be meeting for a few nights to try to come to agreement about who it should be. It is not the most important decision we ever make, but it is a decision we have to make, and it does affect many aspects of church life.
So this week is an important time for prayer. We want God to bless our decision, and that overriding our desires, he will appoint the man he thinks best suits his plans for the diocese. (more…)
Organizational unity instead of gospel unity is death. The failure of Christian ministries, be they church or para-church, commences when they lose their direction and become organizations that demand organizational unity over theological unity in the service of the gospel.
We look at the great churches of the past and lament their decline in congregations or worse in gospel ministry, theological faithfulness or moral integrity. However, the same can be said for many para-church ministries set up in previous generations by Christians that today are hardly recognizable as Christian at all. Some even go out of their way to hide their Christian foundations. (more…)
Over at the Gospel Coalition blog, Matt Smethurst has a summary of a recent lecture by Don Carson’s on suffering, and the 6 pillars of a Christian view. As Carson says:
Christian worldview rests on huge, biblically established, theological frameworks—all of which have to be accepted all of the time […] And this massive structure is stable and comprehensive enough to give you a great deal of stablility when you go through your darkest hours.
The post is a good read for the general outlines, and has a link to the video too. Also worth checking out on the topic is Carson’s book, How Long O Lord? As Matt says, this is preparatory work to do before suffering overtakes you:
Every believer, Carson concludes, would do well to ponder these six pillars prophylactically—before the evil days come. Only then will we be best positioned to face the complexities of suffering with stability, humility, compassion, and joy.
The arrival of a first-born child into a family is one of the greatest moments in all human experience. It rates with marriage as one of the big milestones in a person’s life. As such, it is particularly important that the Christian believer should understand it from a spiritual viewpoint, setting it in the context of his or her faith, and therefore relating it to God through Jesus.
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As I write this article I am preparing to give what will most likely be my last Mid Year Conference Talk. It is a sad moment for me.
This has been a week of retirements. On Thursday my brother Peter officially retired as the Archbishop of Sydney. With him the Chancellor of the Diocese Acting Judge Peter Johns has also retired. There comes in life a time for the changing of the guard, of letting go of our responsibilities that others may take up their opportunities to serve, bringing fresh energy and fresh ideas to the tasks.
This is more than people retiring because they are getting too old to do the job. This is the intentional outcome of the training up of the next generation to take over. Christianity will be here till the Lord Jesus returns and so every generation must raise up the next generation to take responsibility and leadership. The church without a youth group will have no family ministry in the next generation, and no old people in the one after that. It is critically important to always invest in the next generation (Ps 78:5-7). (more…)
Should Australians be upset that one of the new ministers in the Federal Cabinet swore his oath on a Qur’an?
This week as the Governor General swore in the new cabinet, Mr Ed Husic, chose to swear on the Qur’an rather than the Bible or make an affirmation. A ‘non-practising’ Muslim from Bosnia, Mr Husic was sworn in as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and Parliamentary Secretary for Broadband.
Swearing is a strange symbolism, by which we persuade and reassure people of our integrity in making promises. Christians should not need to swear for we should be people of our word. As Jesus said in response to pharisaic hypocrisy, “Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No”; anything more than this comes from evil (Matt 5:37, cf. Jas 5:12). (more…)