It's not often that I agree with Bob Carr, the former Labour Premier of New South Wales. He's a pro-abortion, pro-embryonic stem cell research and small ‘l’ liberal. (Why do so many small ‘l’ liberals join the Labour party? BTW, I really don't need this question answered.) But I think in ‘Rights charter like a dead parrot’, he gets it spot on.
We're half way through our series on prayer by Broughton Knox today. And the further we go, the deeper we go. Today's piece speaks of the need to persevere in prayer.
The weekend before last, I spent a wonderful time away with the folk at Christchurch Currumbin up on the beautiful Gold Coast. It was an enormously encouraging time as we looked together at what the Bible has to say about the resurrection. On the Friday night, the meeting leader exhorted us to love each other:
You're about to spend a weekend together. You'll eat together, sleep in rooms separated by not-so-thick walls, share bathrooms together and be with each other 24/7. This isn't like chatting after church on Sunday. This is going to mean learning to be gracious and patient with each other.
Well, they were certainly very gracious and patient with each other (and with me, which is remarkable indeed). But it made me wonder: what is the secret to living together in the same space without biting each others' heads off?
Just a quick update on improvements to The Sola Panel: we've now installed CAPTCHAs on the site and removed comment moderation. Unfortunately, these particular CAPTCHAs aren't particularly friendly to the blind (i.e. unlike reCAPTCHA [which I tried and failed to install], there's no audio version). Please let us know if this affects you.
Also unfortunately, the CAPTCHAs that we are using here may not stay ahead of the spambots for long. (For geeks like me who are interested in the subject, this is quite a fascinating New York Times article on the subject, and it explains why reCAPTCHA is better—and more useful—than your standard CAPTCHA). So this may be a temporary solution. If it starts failing, we will start implementing Plan B.
I've been thinking a bit lately about contextualization—not so much the contextualization of language (‘charms’ and ‘calms’ and so on), but the contextualization of lifestyle: becoming “all things to all people” (as in 1 Corinthians 9:22).
My thoughts were sparked by an evening we spent with our next door neighbours recently. As Dave and I were clearing things away at the end of the night, I reflected on the evening and the way that I'd approached it.
Before our guests arrived, I had chosen an outfit that approximated the style of clothes my neighbour wears, I made an extra-gourmet salad and I bought a couple of fancy cheeses. Over dinner and afterwards, I spent a lot of time talking about mortgages and extensions and consumer products. I had also talked a lot about work—the work I used to do (before kids)—in an instinctive effort to establish the kind of education and career credentials that might be taken more seriously than my current job as a full-time mum. And finally (this is the killer one!) I found myself squirming in my seat, wanting to change the subject, when they asked my four-year-old daughter what her favourite thing in the world was, and she answered, “Jesus”.
All this got me wondering what's the difference between contextualization (or whatever word you want to use to describe doing what it says in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23) and chameleonization (or whatever word you use to describe not doing what it says in Matthew 5:13-16)?
One of the things The Sola Panel strives to be, as Tony pointed out in his introduction, is Bible-driven: the foundational question for almost all our posts is “What does the Bible say?” This is why we keep pointing you back to Scripture, and why posts are often peppered with Bible references. We want to encourage you to read those parts of the Bible so you can see for yourself whether we're just making things up or actually following what the word of God says.
One of the ways we help you do this is by hyperlinking all Bible references so that Scripture is never more than a mouse click away. Recently Lionel suggested we install RefTagger, a handy little tool for websites that supplies both hyperlinks and pop-up javascript windows with verses for all Bible references. We have done so, and the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed RefTagger at work—mostly in our Saturday blast-from-the-past Briefing specials.
However, RefTagger has the unfortunate problem of being webpage-based only; it does not work in RSS. And so, for the sake of all our feed readers, some of our Panellists and our resident web elf Karen have been hyperlinking every single Bible reference. (NB: This is not very arduous with the magic of Textmate shortcut keys.) However, this negates RefTagger's pop-up windows; they won't work with the HTML coding.
And so we thought we would put it to you, our dear readers, to decide. This poll will only be up for a week, so make sure you cast your vote before it's too late.
We were looking at Luke 6 in church the other day, and it got me thinking about hypocrites. More particularly, am I one?
The old gag suggests that I am: “The church is not full of hypocrites—there’s always room for one more!”
On this understanding, hypocrisy is an unavoidable description of the normal Christian life. We all say one thing, but do another. We preach against lying, and yet find ourselves telling porkies. We rail against greed and materialism, and then chat about it all the way home in our Audi A4.
I picked up and modified this helpful rubric:
Drawing the longest bow yet in this series, I am going to attempt to connect child-raising techniques and the history of word changes in Wesley's ‘O for a thousand tongues’ in order to talk about contextualizing the gospel. If you're as interested as I am in how I'm going to do that, read on.
Having spoken in the last two weeks about the relational nature of prayer, which involves a recognition of the nature and character of God, Broughton Knox moves on to examine the nature of prayer itself. Is it surprising to find that prayer consists of requests?
Stephen Jackson on The Sola Panel is dead; long live the Sola Panel!
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Marty Foord on The Sola Panel is dead; long live the Sola Panel!
Dianne Howard on The Sola Panel is dead; long live the Sola Panel!
Mike Bull on Daniel 2-7, Harry Potter and Narnia
The Sola Panel is dead; long live the Sola Panel! by Tony Payne (4 comments). Regular Sola Panel readers will no doubt have detected a little slowness and quietness over the past six weeks or so. … more
Kids’ culture watch spot: Facing fear by Gordon Cheng (3 comments). By popular demand (two people asked), here is my next script for a culture watch spot I did with the kids … more
Daniel 2-7, Harry Potter and Narnia by Gordon Cheng (1 comment). It's a Sunday as I write this, and I'm speaking on Daniel 2 and 7 later this morning at a friend's … more
A constituent on same-sex marriage by Sandy Grant (34 comments). Last year, the Australian Parliament agreed that its Members of Parliament (MPs) should seek the … more
A tribute to John Stott by Sandy Grant (2 comments). Friends, I'm not ashamed to say I shed a tear when I opened up my computer on Thursday morning to read … more
Talkin’ ’bout my generation (part 3): On giants’ shoulders by Scott Newling (26 comments). This is the third post in this series; you can read part one, and more
Bible reading with kids by Sandy Grant (0 comments). I was asked for recommendations for resources that would encourage parents to read the Bible with their kids, especially … more
Talkin’ ’bout my generation (part 2): Stepping aside (not out) so others can step up (not in) by Scott Newling (3 comments). This is the second post in this series; you can read the first post, Unassuming … more
One more sip of the coffee by Tony Payne (8 comments). Sandy Grant is a man of integrity. Back in the early days of Sola Panel, I wrote a post … more
Talkin’ ’bout my generation (part 1): Unassuming generations by Scott Newling (30 comments). There is a model of ‘intergenerational theological decline’ that has been doing the rounds of late, and perhaps you … more
Paul is one of the Staff Editors at Matthias Media. He is married to Cathy and has three fantastic kids. He loves student ministry, reading, writing music and playing the saxophone, and is looking forward to meeting Jesus face to face.
