In this weeks podcast Joe and I talk about the wrathful God of the Old Testament, you know, the one who is so bloodthirsty that the only way of appeasing him is to slaughter sheep, cows, oxen, some enemy tribes and… er… his son. Yes, we start back in the world of ‘PSA’: penal substitutionary atonement. I don’t want to go into that much on this blog post. Suffice it to say, it’s not a view that ever made much sense to me, even while I was dutifully forcing myself to believe in it.
We’re back! And after a long break there is a lot of catching up to do.
In this rather rambling episode, Joe and I catch up with what’s been happening in the month or so since we last recorded. After reading Rolf Dobelli’s book Stop Reading the News I’m on a bit of a newscast. I haven’t watched the TV news much, have stopped my daily doomscrolling of the websites and feel a lot better as a result.
This week, Joe and I talk a lot about Sabbath. Well, I talk a lot about Sabbath, to be honest, because it’s been something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently.
Two things have inspired me. First, I heard a great sermon on the subject a couple of weeks ago. And following up on that I read Abraham Heschel’s book, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. I am ashamed to say I’d never come across Heschel before.
In this week’s episode, Joe and I talk more about the nature of church. In particular we talk about the physical location of churches - does a church need to be visible? Does it need an identifiable location, times to meet, etc.?
Personally I think churches need a place and not only for practical reasons. Over the last few years my ideas about sacred places have changed entirely. I used to think that the church – as in the building – didn’t matter much.
In this episode Joe and I delve into his new theme of ‘nature churching’. In particular, we talk about what exactly constitutes a church.
I admit to being a little doctrinaire on this one. I think, historically and theologically there are some characteristic activities which define a church, as opposed, say, to a Bible study group, or even just a group of people meeting together.
Looking at the model of church in Acts, and accounts from the early years of the Christian church, it seems to me that the characteristic activities of a church are:
In this week’s episode, Joe and I talk about Pentecost. It’s one of the oldest festivals of the Christian church, having been celebrated at least since the third century.
According to the ever-fascinating Philip H. Pfatteicher, the English term Whit-Sunday may be from ‘white’ reflecting robes worn by new converts, or it may come from the Old English word wit, meaning wisdom, since the Spirit leads us into all truth.
In this week’s episode we discuss the article I wrote for Christianity magazine: How to be wise: Confessions of a recovering idiot.
In the article I proposed seven tips for gaining wisdom; things like finding a mentor, making a wisdom collection and most importantly, shutting up and listening. Obviously seven is a reductive, if nicely symbolic, number. There is much more I could say (and plan to say if I ever get to write a book on it).
Lots of interesting discussion this week drawing on feedback from listeners.1 We talk a bit about heresy, something I have written on quite a lot, because you can’t really do church history without encountering the concept of heresy, not to mention all the accusations, counter-accusations, excommunications and, tragically, executions.
The word first crops up in the second century AD, notably in the work of Irenaeus of Lyon who wrote a whole book called Against Heresies.
This week’s episode is a really good interview with Brian McLaren about his new book, Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart.
A few things really stood out for me. I loved how he argued that constant denial is exhausting. We often think it’s the other way – all this doom and gloom is wearing me out – but McLaren argues that, in lots of cases, once we face up to the issue, once we acknowledge the reality, then actually that can be a source of energy.
So, the question I posed was this: ‘Why does God get all the praise when I did all the work?’ By which I don’t mean that I necessarily need or want more praise (being English I find any praise rather embarrassing anyway. Not to mention ill-judged) but I was trying to explore the relationship between human skills, creativity and effort and the inspiration and work of the Divine. Of course all things come from God and of your own do we give you, as it says in the Prayer Book.