‘Cumber’ is a rather quaint, old-fashioned word that we don’t hear much any more. We still talk occasionally about something being an ‘encumbrance’, but ‘cumber’ (the shorter verb from which this noun is constructed) has largely disappeared.
Archives: life
Bowels
Life, Word Watch
As a young Christian, I was torn between bafflement, amusement and embarrassment when the good old King James Version was read aloud in church, and we heard Paul telling the Philippians that he longed after them “in the bowels of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:8). I mean, it almost sounds blasphemous, doesn’t it? Or, at the very least, an invasion of privacy. Did we really need to hear that in church? And then a bit later on in the same letter, Paul is at it again: “If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies …” (Phil 2:1).
Reason vs. prejudice
Couldn't Help Noticing, Life
I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on a preaching workshop with David Jackman from the London-based Cornhill Training Course. David made some telling points from a survey of apostolic preaching from Acts 17-20, and one in particular struck me.
Partner
Life, Word Watch
Should the stewards object? A biblical approach to gambling
Life
Gambling seems obviously wrong to many Christians, and yet one searches in vain for a direct forbidding of it in the Bible. Are we justified in opposing the practice? Michael Hill takes up the issue.
The porn problem
Life
It’s official: smoking in films influences teens. Newspapers around the nation on 11 June 2003 reported a new study—published online that day in The Lancet—that surveyed 3500 adolescents who had never smoked, and assessed their exposure to smoking in movies. A follow-up survey some time later found that those who had watched ‘hard-smoking’ movies were up to three times more likely to take up the habit themselves. Health groups have called for an ‘R’ rating on all films with frequent smoking scenes.
Bagging the masons
Couldn't Help Noticing, Life
Is this a new trend in religious advertising? A local newsagent has advertising printed on its paper bags—not so unusual in itself (The Sydney Morning Herald has an ad on one side). But surprisingly the Freemasons have now started advertising in this way. Describing their social responsibility, dedication to charity and community, the organization is encouraging people to inquire, presumably about joining. For a group traditionally shrouded in secrecy, this seems a remarkably public recruitment drive. Next we’ll be hearing details of the secret handshake …
Leadership: Avoiding the pitfalls: A gospel of leadership
Life
LeadershipRise was the title on the glossy brochure that I pulled out of the letterbox recently. Aside from my curiosity as to why every second seminar these days has to have the word ‘rise’ in it somewhere, my real question was: How come we’ve got this avalanche of leadership-related books and seminars? One more leaflet in the letterbox and I think I will be well and truly buried.
A long, hard look at ourselves
Life
Jane Tooher developed this article on self-image from a conference address to Christian women, but its argument about where we find our sense of self applies more broadly. Her question: is it possible to understand yourself without reference to God?
The Sabbath Rest
Life
Workaholism
Workaholism is an addiction that needs remedy, much like alcoholism. Its symptoms are clear: long hours getting longer, work priorities overriding family and church; no time for recreation (what’s that?!). Workaholics can’t even go on holidays without taking their ball-and-chain mobile phone or laptop. But what is the underlying disease? What drives workaholism?
Can a Christian go to reiki?
Life
The subversive
Life
You know subversives. They are the people who quietly undermine stable government and accepted institutions. They’re usually regarded as a threat to all that is good and ordered in society. They’re a threat, because they want to turn everything on its head.
Christ and culture
Life
Culture is such a slippery word. It means something like ‘who are and what we do together’, which is about as broad a definition as you could hope for. A culture is more than a number of individuals—it refers to how those individuals interact with each other, and what those interactions produce. So, Australian culture is cricket, it’s opera, it’s Bondi beach, it’s Backyard Blitz. But it’s also Chinatown, it’s fine wine, it’s cynical humour, it’s Westfield Shoppingtown.
The servant’s paradox: Part III
Life
Here’s one more paradox for those living to serve Christ and to grow his kingdom. It’s one which has been taxing my mind, because it goes to the heart of what Christians believe. We live in the time that gets called ‘the now and not yet’—the period of history after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, but before the revelation of his lordship to the entire universe. It’s an in-between time, so we have the blessings and securities of the eternal age, and yet we don’t see them all, experience them all, know them entirely or enjoy them fully.
How to deal with heretics
Couldn't Help Noticing, Life, Sola Panel
The early church father, Irenaeus, was certainly not afraid to critique error. I was browsing through his Against Heresies the other day (as one does, in the Greek, without a dictionary, shortly before dictating my latest article for The Ivory Tower Review), and I came across the following passage that I felt bound to share. Irenaeus was arguing against the heresy of the Gnostics, who had an incredibly elaborate, and elaborately incredible, account of how the world came to exist. One of Irenaeus’ chief polemical methods was simply to describe in detail what the Gnostics were actually teaching, with only a few minor comments being required to point out how absurd it all is.