Last week, I wrote Submission and the Clash of Cultures. This week I want to follow it by writing about subjugation and the clash of cultures. For in website and blog comments regarding last week’s article the clash of world views became very obvious. The word ‘submission’ is, as I suggested, the presenting issue of something much bigger; it is a difference over “the nature of marriage, of human relationships and humanity itself”. (more…)
Archives: life
→ Christian character and good arguments
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Michael Horton has written a paper on constructing good arguments (and avoiding bad ones) for his students, and has cut out some of the essay-specific things to produce a short little set of guidelines for engaging well with people:
Especially in a “wiki” age, our communication today is prone to gushes of words with trickles of thought. We don’t compose letters much anymore, but blurt out emails and tweets. Just look at the level of discourse in this political campaign season and you can see how much we talk about, over, and past rather than to each other. Sadly, these habits—whether fueled by sloth or malice—are becoming acceptable in Christian circles, too. The subculture of Christian blogging often mirrors the “shock-jock” atmosphere of the wider web. “Don’t be like the world” means more than not imitating a porn-addicted culture, while we tolerate a level of interaction that apes the worst of TV sound-bites, ads, and political debates.
For my seminary students I’ve written a summary of what I expect in good paper-writing for my classes. It follows the classical order of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. It also explains why the pursuit of excellence in thinking and communicating is not just an academic exercise, but is a crucial part of Christian character.
It’s a bit technical at points, but it’s worth a read to help you identify arguments and engage in discussions online or elsewhere.
(And before anyone asks, no, this is not directed at anyone in particular.)
→ True Holiness Befriends Sinners
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Thoughtful and practical reflections from David Mathis:
The pursuit of holiness may keep you from bad company. But have you ever considered that it might also lead you to keep some pretty bad company?
Jesus is our litmus test of lived-out holiness. He is the Holy One of Israel in human flesh. His life serves as the best answer key for what divine holiness looks like when reflected in humanity. And they rightly called him “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19).
So what are we to do with a God-man who associated with the most blatant nonbelievers of his day?
Submission and the Clash of Cultures
Life
Behind the media brouhaha about the word “submission”, lies a clash of world views. It is a clash that feels difficult because of the heat of debate, but one that exposes something of the difference the gospel makes—not just in theory but also in practice. (more…)
The role of singing in the life of the church
Life
Now there are all sorts of reasons why Christianity is a singing faith; for the practice of making melody to the Lord, and of hymn singing in particular, has many purposes. My intention in this article is to focus specifically on congregational singing and to open up its three principal purposes. (more…)
A husband’s sacrificial love: what does it actually look like?
Life, Sola Panel, Sola Panel
In this post, I’d like to make a few observations about the nature of a husband’s sacrificial love based on Ephesians 5:25-32, and then invite others to contribute examples of how this sacrificial love might work itself out in different situations. (more…)
The power of a dependent father
Life
When you are little your father is very big; you are weak, but he is very strong; you know very little and he seems to know everything, you feel feeble compared to his powerful presence.
When your father is very powerful, you are able to do so much. You feel safe and secure in his great arms. You are comfortable, if not confident, to ask him for anything. He takes you to places, shows you things, entertains you, houses, feeds, clothes and educates you. (more…)
Learning to see God’s glories in a Melbourne spring
Life, Sola Panel
flickr: Pink Sherbert Photography
A week ago it came, kicking its heels like a witless lamb. Spring. Didn’t it know it wasn’t due yet?
We’ve been locked down in cold for months. We swap war-stories of coughs and runny noses, risk suffocation under layers of bedding, and shiver in the school yard as we wait for the kids to emerge from over-heated classrooms. I listen to winter complaints but secretly love it: (more…)
→ Saddened that the atheist billboards came down
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Rob Martin, from the City Bible Forum:
The threat of violence in response to opposition is the response associated with Christendom and the ’religious’ who are more concerned with power and influence than the Christian faith. So I cannot endorse what those ‘believers’ have threatened to those who oppose the Christian message and this response deeply disappoints me.
The real challenge for married Christian men
Life, Sola Panel
Regarding Julia Baird’s opinion piece in the SMH today… (more…)
Pushing back on marriage
Life, Sola Panel
Everyone’s commenting (in my part of the world) on the front-page SMH article on the proposed new vows in an additional order of marriage to be considered for inclusion in the new Sydney Anglican prayer book. I agree: well done to Rob Forsyth and Andy and Steph Judd for their comments. (more…)
Giving thanks for suffering
Life, Sola Panel
Edvard Munch: The sick child (detail)
I’m striving to be more thankful. Self-pity is one of my habitual sins, and I’ve found thankfulness to be a wonderful antidote.
There is one place where thankfulness is particularly difficult for me. For many months I’ve watched my son struggle with ongoing sickness. (more…)
→ To suffer faithfully
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We sometimes tend to focus on those aspects of the Christian life (spontaneity, starry-eyed-ness, passionate intensity…) in which the younger seem to have an advantage over the older, but there are a bunch of other aspects in which the very experiences that knock some of the shine off our youthful naivety are exactly the things that equip us to be better at enduring.
Practicalities for getting praying
Life, Sola Panel
The last in my series of extracts on prayer is not from Graeme Goldsworthy but from one of Matthias Media’s own very best book, Prayer and the Voice of God by Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne. 
(more…)
→ Moral imperatives
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… it’s one of those stories where all manner of addled thinking comes to the surface from everyone on the spectrum of lifestyle blogging—from the secular liberals and conservatives to the panoply of Christian bloggers in the weird polygon of ideas bounded by points produced by mixing the adjectives “conservative,” “liberal,” “radical,” “progressive,” “traditional,” “biblical,” and “missional,” with the proper noun “Christian.”
[…]
Dear Son,
Since you have made your confession about your situation, let me confess mine: I have never really been a good man at all. I could make a list here of all the times I have failed you, and your mother, and your siblings, and my employer, and the elders at church, and so on — but I’ll bet you can make that list also. You may remember some things I have forgotten, and I’ll simply stipulate to the entire exercise. I want you to know that I know I am not a good man, and I come to this problem we now face as a man who, at the end of the day, can’t advise you from the moral high ground.
I can only advise you, my son, as a man who has spent his life utterly at the mercy of Jesus Christ.
Turk only really gets going in the second half of the post, so stick with it, because it’s got a twist in the end.