Author Archives: Sam Freney

About Sam Freney

Sam is married to Kristy, and the father of Elissa. He's a Christian, and works with a local church and a certain Christian publishing house. (Sometimes the latter vocations can happen without the first.) Many people call him a nerd, which he prefers to geek. He's keen on biblical studies, languages, great technology, science fiction, coffee, photography, frisbee, family, jazz, and hats. You could call his tastes eclectic.

→ Hell-raiser

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Tim Challies reflecting on Christian leaders who slide into gross moral or theological failure:

Did it begin with becoming a professional Christian instead of a man who communed with God day-by-day? Did it begin with allowing doubt to become a virtue and belief to become a liability? Did it begin with a desire to read the wrong books, to listen to the wrong preachers? Somehow, over months and years, he drifted away from the truth, he began to believe and then teach the lies. And then he followed those lies and celebrated them and destroyed his ministry.

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→ The joy of sects

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Carl Trueman reflecting on how the English Anglican Synod’s rejection of women bishops is being cast as cultural suicide:

One of the key failures of the currently trendy Christian cultural engagement movement is that it takes the questions which the culture is asking too seriously. We often assume that it is the answers which the world gives which are its means of avoiding the truth. In actual fact, there is no reason to assume that the very questions it asks are not also part of the cover-up. ‘Answer my question about women’s rights or saving the whale’ might simply be another way of saying, ‘I don’t want you to tell me that my neglect of my wife and children is an offence to God.’

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→ Why People Hate the Sermon on the Mount

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This is a bit of a down-the-rabbit-hole reference: Andy Naselli tracked down a paper by Virginia Stem Owens that Tim Keller quoted in a sermon at TGC. It’s a fascinating insight into the effects of biblical illiteracy on those hearing Scripture:

Beyond that, however, I find it strangely heartening that, except for the young man who found the Sermon on the Mount a guide to good manners, the Bible remains offensive to honest, ignorant ears, just as it was in the first century. For me, that somehow validates its significance. Whereas the scriptures almost lost their characteristically astringent flavor during the past century, the current widespread biblical illiteracy should catapult us into a situation more nearly approximating that of their original, first-century audience.

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War Histories or History Wars?

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One holiday I read a book entitled “What If…’. It contained a series of essays posing questions about the great turning points of history and asking the simple question “What if something different happened?” What if Alexander the Great had been slain in battle? Or what if the Spanish Armada had landed successfully in Britain?

At the base of this book is the great truth that the world as we now know it is the result of earlier decisions and actions. Our life and society is contingent on past lives and society. (more…)

→ Seven cautions for eager polemicists

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Kevin DeYoung on fighting:

I am not against polemics. It is a necessary virtue for Christians in so far as Christianity believes in the immovability and central importance of truth. Where would the church be today if Athanasius, Augustine, and Luther eschewed polemics? Christians must be willing to enter the fray and engage in controversy if they are to be faithful in a fallen world.

I also know there are many dangers with polemics. I see them in myself and can spot them (more easily, sadly) in others.

All seven are worth reading.

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→ There’s more to Bible reading than… being on your own

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Interesting reflection from Arthur Davis on the ‘Quiet Time’:

Of course, there’s a place for personal Bible reading — and the Church has a rich heritage of contemplative practice that goes way back before mass-produced Bibles appeared. But there is no good reason to expect private reading to be the most important way of accessing the Bible.

Reading the Bible with others is not just acceptable. It’s great. The Bible is a library of community documents crying out to be accessed in all sorts of social ways.

So let’s change the question: What would it look like if we actively treated the Bible as inseparable from community?

What do you think?

h/t @Nathan Campbell

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Marching for Allah (5): a cultural shift

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I have been arguing that sometimes we fail to realize that some things we think are just western are actually Christian, and we have been shaped by thinkers who worked in an at-least-vaguely-Christian milieu. Let us take an example; a theological issue current in missiological literature. Above, when I was discussing the way people from shame-cultures understand the gospel, I mentioned that very often they see the work of Christ in terms of his humiliation, shame and exaltation. Might we then, when we commend Christ to people from such cultures, explain the gospel in those categories?1 Do we need a new version of Two Ways to Live that is better contextualized? There are many good reasons to do so; not least of which is that the Bible itself understands Christ’s work in this way sometimes (eg. Is 53:3, Ps 25:3, Rom 9:33, 1 Pet 2:6). Christ has dealt with our shame as much as our guilt. He has exalted the humble, and destroyed the proud. In many ways this is a fantastic example of the way people from other cultures can help us to see better what is there in Scripture that our own culture has made us blind to. Even making this observation will be a big step forward in speaking with people of shame-based cultures about the gospel. (more…)

Marching for Allah (4): culture, and the complex task of commending Christ

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Having made the observation that what is rational in one culture is often weak and irrational in another, as Christian evangelists, we are left in awkward place. On the one hand, when we speak as missionaries to people of other cultures—whether in Egypt or Hyde Park—we probably want to be understood. We feel like we should commend the gospel to them in a way that will appeal to their rationality, using arguments that will be convincing to them. After all, do we not want to become all things to all men so that by all means we will win some (1 Cor 9:22)? (more…)

→ Preaching matters

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Here’s a new resource from St Helen’s Bishopsgate, an evangelical church in the middle of London:

Preaching Matters is a monthly video series designed to equip, encourage and inspire those who teach God’s word. Each month we sit down with preachers and ask what they have recently been thinking about and preaching on.

The series will include video interviews with, amongst others, William Taylor, Andrew Sach, Phillip Jensen, and David Cook. The first couple of videos up on the site are some behind-the-scenes type chats with William Taylor on Luke, and Charlie Skrine on 1 Corinthians and celebrity preachers, with updates out the first Monday of each month. Interesting food for thought.

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Marching for Allah (3): a clash of rationalities

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Over the last couple of days we’ve been thinking about the idea that what we call rationality is actually, in part, cultural, and so different cultures will have different rationalities. One example of the difference between rationalities came across starkly in a public Christian-Islam debate I attended recently in Melbourne. It was done well. It was set up as an irenic dialogue about the differences in our ideas of God. The two participants were allowed to speak freely, and each responded respectfully to the other side. But in the end it was most valuable as an exercise in how difficult cross-cultural communication can be sometimes. I don’t pretend to be a dispassionate observer, but for my part I was impressed with the way the Christian debater engaged. He was soft-spoken and difficult to provoke. His arguments were careful, they relied on firm evidence, and he was very measured in his statements. If he didn’t know something, he said so. He committed only to say what he could demonstrate. And he wasn’t afraid to acknowledge that his opponents made good points from time to time. For the most part, I found his case compelling. (more…)

→ A barrier to honesty

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Tullian Tchividjian on ‘accountability groups’ that wind up focussing on our own struggles with sin more than our saviour:

Setting aside the obvious objection that Christ settled all our accounts, once for all, such groups inevitably start with the narcissistic presupposition that Christianity is all about cleaning up and doing your part. These groups focus primarily (in my experience, almost exclusively) on our sin, and not on our Savior. Because of this, they breed self-righteousness, guilt, and the almost irresistible temptation to pretend, or to be less than honest. Little or no attention is given to the gospel. There’s no reminder of what Christ has done for our sin—cleansing us from its guilt and power—and of the resources that are already ours by virtue of our union with Him. These groups thrive, either intentionally or not, on a “do more, try harder” moralism that robs us of the joy and freedom Jesus paid dearly to secure for us. When the goal becomes conquering our sin instead of soaking in the conquest of our Savior, we actually begin to shrink spiritually.

 

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