Last year, the Australian Parliament agreed that its Members of Parliament (MPs) should seek the views of constituents on the question of same-sex marriage.
Have you given your local MP the benefit of your view?
Archives: life
A tribute to John Stott
Life, Sola Panel
Friends, I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear when I opened up my computer on Thursday morning to read that John Stott had died, aged 90, and gone to be with the Lord.
One more sip of the coffee
Life, Sola Panel
Sandy Grant is a man of integrity.
Back in the early days of Sola Panel, I wrote a post about the fad of Christians supporting the fair trade coffee movement, in which I basically suggested that while the sentiment of wanting to help poor third-world coffee growers was noble, trying to do it by a centralized price-fixing mechanism would probably do more harm than good.
God’s agenda
Life, Sola Panel
Is God on your to-do list, or is he helping you accomplish those goals? Tony Payne shares the secret to keeping the church/God/Bible ball in the air. (more…)
The unconverted Christian
Life
“Since you have taken off your old self…” can be a troubling verse for those who have always been Christian. Tim St Quintin goes searching for the old self in the believer from birth. (more…)
Emptied to be filled
Life, Sola Panel
I’m sure you’ve met her. She’s polite, poised and polished. She talks in correct and considered sentences, but rarely about herself; certainly never about anything intimate. You won’t see her at a loss. You can (barely!) imagine her in tears, but only when no-one’s looking. If she has worries or grief, they are well hidden. Her house is immaculate, her job responsible, her hospitality faultless. She’s strong, capable, and generous.
Plastic language, plastic marriage
Life
I guess it is no surprise that the gay community are pressing for a change to the definition of marriage in the Commonwealth Marriage Act. I have been rather more surprised at the number of ‘ordinary Australians’ who apparently (at least according to the media) support the change. I have been absolutely amazed at the buzz amongst some quarters of the Christian community that we should lay down and die on this one.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised and amazed.
Suffering servant, suffering servants
Life
I used to think that interest in the persecuted church was a specialty within a specialty. There are social justice issues, like poverty, homelessness, amnesty, and displaced people groups, and in my head the persecuted church was a subset of these. I probably wasn’t alone in thinking that it’s a highly specialized, and therefore a peripheral, issue. Christian persecution is off-radar for many churches and a blind spot for many individual Christians.
I’m sayin’ somethin’ about climate change
Life, Sola Panel
I’m with Tony. When it comes to telling you what to do in response to the issue of climate change, I’m sayin’ nuttin’. But I’m also with Carl Henry as quoted by Tony. So here’s some biblical truths that I am willing to say. Maybe they’ll help you to think more about climate change. (more…)
How sweet the sound
Life
Not so long ago I was part of a church that regularly went and visited a local nursing home, and on occasion ran a church service in one of the lounge rooms. This was for the residents who were unable to get out and go to church on their own, or even accompanied. These occasional services consisted of a number of hymns, a short talk, some prayer, and afternoon tea. It was quite lovely, and there were a number of residents who obviously looked forward to it all month (we could only go every four weeks or so). (more…)
What makes ‘progressive’ progressive?
Life
Choosing the hill to die on
Life
Apparently you have the option to choose the hill you are going to die on.
What I know about military strategy can be written on the round bit of one of those metal thingies that come out the long bit you point at other people when using a rifle. (more…)
Lies, lies, lies!
Life
I was talking to a friend lately who struggles with eating issues, and she told me that one of the techniques she is using to combat her anxiety is something called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). If I’ve understood her correctly, ACT is when you try to keep your thoughts focused on the present instead of allowing them to drift off in all sorts of unhelpful directions. So, for example, when she gets a craving for a cookie and starts to think that she couldn’t possibly get through the afternoon without one, she acknowledges that she’s had that thought, points out to herself that what her brain is telling her is a lie (i.e. that she can get through the afternoon without a cookie, and she knows that because she’s done it before), and then moves on with the rest of her day. (more…)
What kind of nonsense?
Life
At the core of the Christian gospel lies some abject nonsense. But the real question is: what kind of nonsense is it?
The Christian message is not a matter of opinion (although it certainly has a bearing upon your opinions), nor is it a world view or a philosophy of life (although it certainly brings radical changes to your way of seeing the world and living life). Instead, it is the declaration of certain events that took place in human history; events that reveal God’s purposes for his world, and to which certain promises from God are attached.
Four reasons not to worry about the ethics classes
Life, Sola Panel
What do we do when a law we’ve benefited from changes? Perhaps it’s time to brush ourselves off and get back to the work of the gospel.