Renew Your Mind

Justification seems such a piece of christian jargon, coming from a time when legal metaphors for salvation made sense. But what does it mean for us to say we have been justified by Christ, in our 21st century world? The place I most often encounter justification is word-processing. Microsoft Word has a series of "justify" keys- I can choose to right-justify, left-justify or centre-justify. And probably, if I wanted to, I could set up my own personal justification settings. You see, I'm the author of what I write, and I get to decide what it ought to look like. Even if something goes wrong as I write, and the words end up all over the place, with a press of one key, the whole thing leaps into place and looks exactly as I intended it to. I like to think that the story of my life is a bit like that. As I write the events of each day, they look a bit of a mess. There are crossings out, bits started and never finished, words jumbled up all over the place and even words I ...

I've just watched Paul Nurse on BBC's Horizon programme, lamenting the fact that the public no longer seem to believe scientists. He looked nostalgically back at the 300 year history of the Royal Society, with it's mantra of examining ideas and theories by collecting and analysing data, and mused that this approach to discovering truth no longer seems to be universally trusted. I could not help but hear echoes of the erosion of trust in religion. Nurse called for the scientific community to become more aware of the way in which our culture operates, and instead of assuming that the public should change to understand scientists, there needed to be a change on the part of the scientists. This seems so similar to those within the Christian community who are asking what it means to be missional. We have known for a long time that the way we used to do things just does not have much credibility to 21st century people. Rather than us becoming defensive, retreating and becoming in...

I've been reading Moltmann and Barth on work, and am left with some questions.... How do you define work, if you are a full-time mum? Or if you work part-time in a laundrette, but really your heart is in designing and making clothes? Or if teaching maths is what you get paid to do, but you call yourself a theologian? Darell Cosden writes Human work is a transformative activity essentially consisting of dynamically interrelated instrumental, relational and ontological dimensions. His book unpacks that dense definition, offering some helpful insights about how a christian ethic of work needs the balance of all three of his dimensions, but I still feel he is presuming a neat, easily identifiable "job" which he calls work. Work for many of us today is less often a single job, career or vocation, than a portfolio of projects- some of which are paid and some voluntary; some of which are long term and some may be only a day or a few hours; some with a regular fixed timetab...

One of my New Year's resolutions for 2011 is to cook at least one vegetarian meal a week for our family. That's what comes from doing a course in Christian Ethics- you can't study this stuff intellectually, and not let it influence your behaviour. The unit on Christian attitudes to eating is coming up, and has re-awakened thoughts I've had before about being a "rich" Christian in a world with so much injustice and need. It seems to me as if we in the developed world must be prepared to make some changes in our lifestyle, and admit responsibility for some of the hunger in the world. Evangelical christians in the past were often the first to raise awareness of social injustice, now we sometimes seem just as complacent as everyone else. So, although not eating meat once a week is not much, it's better than nothing.

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; Authority rests upon his shoulders; And he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6 Jesus It is Christmas Eve… Tomorrow we celebrate again, as people have done every year for two thousand years, the birth of God’s son. We celebrate the love of God for us, that was so great that He sent his son to become one of us. We wonder with Mary at the immensity of God’s plan, wrapped into something as small and helpless as a human child. We kneel with the wise men in worship before the Prince of Peace. And around us, we hear angels sing... So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her fir...

So the LORD God said to the snake: ‘Because of what you have done, you will be the only animal to suffer this curse- For as long as you live, you will crawl on your stomach and eat dust. You and this woman will hate each other; Your descendants and hers will always be enemies. One of hers will strike you on the head, And you will strike him on the heel’ Genesis 3 :14-15 Way back at the dawn of time, it looked as if man and woman had blown it. We had the chance to live forever in the garden of Eden, surrounded by good things, and we couldn’t resist the temptation to think we knew better. How the dark forces of this world must have laughed in triumph as God threw Adam and Eve out of Paradise– forever doomed to live with the consequences of their choice, realizing throughout the ages that not only was it a wrong choice, but that by their own efforts, men and women could never regain that harmony with God, with each other and with creation that had held out such promise at the begin...

Something important appeared in the sky. It was a woman whose clothes were the sun. The moon was under her feet, and a crown made of twelve stars was on her head. She was about to give birth, and she was crying because of the great pain. Something else appeared in the sky. It was a huge red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and a crown on each of its seven heads. With its tail, it dragged a third of the stars from the sky and threw them down to the earth. Then the dragon turned towards the woman, because it wanted to eat her child as soon as it was born. Revelation 12 :1-4 A cosmic Christmas If we are becoming tired of images of a stable in Bethlehem, with an infant in a manger, then look with John to this vision of Christmas. The woman in childbirth is there– but she is more than Mary here, she is adorned with the signs of Israel, she is the community of faith, God’s people on earth. And at her side crouches not the comforting figures of a donkey, the adoring shepherds or ...