When you teach the Trinity you could use this:



Or you could use this:




Yes, I know one of them is more theologically correct than the other. But one is funnier than the other. And if Funny and Correct Theology had Facebook pages, Funny would totally have more friends, so it's obvious which is inherently more valuable.

As many of you would have noticed, my blog is a bit borked at the moment. I have been trying hard to get it fixed and make alternative blog arrangements. This is coming along, slowly.

However, what has been interesting is the amount of stress this has caused me. I have been feeling quite agitated about the state of my blog and it's mainly because the comments look ugly now and stuff up the formatting. I didn't have the most beautiful blog in the world, but now it looks like Geocities deformed cousin. I kinda feel like I would if I woke up in the morning with poo on my face but I couldn't get it off, and no one else was helping me do it.

It's pretty amazing to me how concerned I am with the image I portray on my blog. Why should I really care if my blog formatting is stuffed up and comments are a bit (lot) broken? This blog provides about 20 seconds of interest a day to about 30 people, it's not really a big deal. Most of the people who read this blog read it because they know me and no one reads it because it's got great design.

I worry with the comments being stuffed that people are going to stop reading my blog. Why would that stress me? I don't use this blog to bring people to Christ, nor do I use it to raise awareness of important issues, I don't advocate for the poor and I don't train people to be better leaders, lovers or friends. I talk about a few small thoughts, post a few videos, say a few silly things. It's not a big deal, but I stress anyway, because I want to be liked. How much value do I put into being able to broadcast my small thoughts to a small audience?

In fact not only have I stressed that my blog looks bad, blogging everyday has been making me worry that I don't have enough interesting things to blog about. And I don't. So I worry people might stop reading. Small thoughts, small worries, big deal.

On the other hand, tonight in church we looked at Revelation 4. About the great creatures standing in the throne room of heaven. Of the 24 elders, representing all the people of faith in the history of salvation, who lay down their crowns before God. The creatures and the elders who cry out:

“‘Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,'
who was, and is, and is to come.”

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.”

God sits in heaven receiving all glory, honour and praise, and he deserves it. He made the universe, he is eternally good, he saved the world through the greatest act of grace in eternity. He is worthy. On the other hand I sit on earth and hope my comments will work so I can be thought of a little bit better by people who don't judge me on the state of my comments or the interestingness of my posts.

I'm not saying that my love of my blog stops me from worshipping God. I am struck however that my eyes are on my blog. And when I spend all this time thinking about my blog and how to fix it, I elevate myself and the importance of my blog. Were I to lift my eyes more, and consider my blog in the context of the glory of God, it may not be such a big issue.

How do you worship God with a blog?

You blog well, you blog to add value to people's lives, and you blog knowing that your blog isn't a big deal in other people's lives, it isn't a big deal in the world, and it isn't a big deal in God's big plans, so it shouldn't be a big deal to you. I want to lay this small blogging crown at God's worthy feet.

I guess it's similar to how we can live. We live well, we live to add value to people's lives, we live to lay our small crowns at the feet of God. The big things to us often aren't really the big things. It helps to lift our eyes sometimes.

God may care about the comments formatting on my blog, but if does he probably doesn't care much. It'd be helpful for me to remember that.

I'm preaching on Sunday night on Psalm 130. I preached on it before at a school, but I'm rejigging it because the talk wasn't amazing and it certainly wasn't one I could do for church.

Anyway, the psalm focuses on God's mercy and redemption. It encourages God's people to wait for him expectantly.

I listened to a Tim Keller sermon on the Psalm a few days ago and he reckons there's a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is when you've broken a specific rule, shame is when you haven't lived up to an ideal (yours or someone else's). He says that these days we a lot of people don't feel guilt much because we've worked so hard at encouraging people not to feel guilty. But people still feel shame. They haven't lived up to their own ideals but they're not quite sure what they can do to fix it because they have not absolute morality. That got erased at the same time as guilt was erased.

I'm not sure what I think. I feel like that's a neat way of defining guilt and shame, but I'm still trying to work out if I agree. I'm not sure how people experience guilt and shame. It's not really something we talk about much.

I'm going to spend a bit more time thinking about guilt and shame. I might solve the puzzle. Or I might not. If you have any thoughts about guilt and shame, how they relate, what they are, what the worst thing you've ever done is, that sort of thing, feel free to comment.

I was in the shower this morning listening to a Driscoll sermon. He was preaching on Luke 24:13-35 about when Jesus appears to the two disciples as they walk to Emmaus. As they walk along, not recognising Jesus, the disciples express their sadness that Jesus was killed. Luke then goes on to say how Jesus led them in a Bible study: He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself."

I've always read that and thought "Man, wouldn't it be awesome know what Jesus said there? To have Jesus do a Bible study with you about himself. If only we knew what Jesus said." And then it occurred to me, we do know what Jesus said. We don't know the exact words but I'm pretty sure we know the content. The two disciples, whoever they were, surely did not keep Jesus' teaching to themselves. They obviously talked about the encounter, how else did Luke know about it? And they wouldn't have kept what Jesus said a secret, they would have told the other disciples. And that teaching would have then influenced how the early church interacted with the Old Testament. And I reckon that same teaching wound up in the New Testament. When the New Testament deals with the old, it would have more than a little of the influence of Jesus' Emmaus Bible study (and any other similar teachings he did) on it. The disciples were of course influenced by the Holy Spirit, but my guess is Jesus laid a lot of the ground work himself for how the biblical writers interpret and reference the Old Testament. If that's the case then we may know not know what Jesus said in that Bible study, but whatever Jesus said, if we've read the Bible, then it's probably not new to us.

Still it would have been awesome to be part of that discussion of the road to Emmaus. It'd be like the difference between reading Lord of the Rings and having Tolkin sit down and read it with you. One is definitely cooler.

I'm reading a book at the moment called, The Obedience Option. It's about obedience, which surprised me as I thought it was a spy novel. I guess sometimes titles and their books match up.

One of the points the writer makes is that obedience is primarily about choosing God's glory above anything else. And this may be an old and basic concept for many of you guys, but it was pretty revolutionary to me. Not that I couldn't have guessed it seeing as everything is about God's glory, but the idea that when I choose to obey God, I am actively choosing to glorify him, that's a big deal. Often I have viewed obedience in the negative, obedience is not choosing to do the sinful thing I feel like doing. And then I go from there to give myself positive reasons why obedience is a good idea (e.g. because sin hurts people, it makes God sad, it's why Jesus died, I might get put in jail). Sometimes I even have the idea that obedience feels better, in the long run, but when you're staring temptation in the face, it's hard to believe that. However when I view obedience as an active choosing of God's glory, it becomes for me a much more exciting prospect. Obedience stops being about me and starts being about God. I love God, and I love to glorify God, so getting to actively choose to glorify him, to do something that makes him look good, that's exciting. I'd rather be obedient because it's good, than not be disobedient because that's bad. And glorifying God is the best, so that's the best.

Kaye and Scott take photos of potential.

Today was a pretty exciting day. Kaye, Scott and I went on a field trip to our two potential locations for our church plant. Kaye and Scott are the other two people who are going to be pastoring the church plant with me, so chances are, they'll be making more appearances here on the blog in the future.

We headed out to north-west Sydney and visited to very different places. One semi-rural community (on the rural-urban fringe I learnt about in year 11 geography), which is about to go nuts with development. And another housing development that is surrounded by a golf course. The semi-rural scouting trip consisted of walking around the suburb, visting the shops, the station and looking at all the paddocks which will soon turn into a warren of brick homes with their garages set one metre back and solidly built letter boxes on the front lawn. We saw some cows, dead birds and a brown snake. We also saw their giant train station, boarded up old church and second hand furniture shop. I spent a bit of time thinking about that book "Where the Forest Meets the Sea" and about how the small sea-side community got completely changed by the seaside development. This little community is soon going to become something completely different. Hopefully it'll retain its heart.

We followed this up with a trip to the housing estate. We visited the sales centre and had a chat to the salesman there. We told him we wanted to plant a church and asked him if anything was planned for the area. He said he hadn't heard anything. He also told us it was the first time in his career that anyone has talked to him about planting a church. He didn't have any land for us to build our mega-church on but the community centre is being built and we could probably use that. It's right next to the golf club which means after church lunch in the bistro is a distinct possibility. I like that.

It was a pretty enjoyable trip. Very encouraging. Between those two places I think we're gonna have somewhere to plant a church. I'm feeling excited that things are moving. The three of us are getting on pretty well, and we're learning to navigate our way through leading something like this together. I wouldn't say we've found our rhythm yet, we're still pretty polite to each other, but it's early days. We like each other and tend to be on the same page with the way to go about things. I'm certainly enjoying having people to do this with. I think doing all this and making these decisions by myself would be lonely and intimidating. But doing them together, it's exciting and energising. We don't really know what we're doing but we don't know what we're doing together and that's the best way to to do it.

Christmas had all the usual things that were pretty excellent this year. Presents, family, friends, Jesus, roast potatoes. I could blog about these things, but I won't. I've decided I might blog about 5 things which were less usual, but still quite wonderful.

1. The King Parrot



We were having community brunch on Christmas Eve. It was full of Christmas cheer, which I think is like generic cheer but with Christmas biscuits thrown in. I was in the kitchen doing something domestic, when a king parrot came and landed on our kitchen door. He was red and green and loving Christmas. It felt like the wildlife were in on the joy too.

2. I Love Carol

Actually, I love carols. But there's nothing wrong with Carol, I'm sure.

After having developed a hatred of carols from my years of forced carol singing throughout primary school, it's taken me a long time to recover. However, slowly over that last few years my aversion has been wearing off, I have learnt to forgive the Three Kings, Royal David's City and the Harking of Angels. So that this year I positively loved carols. Partly because many of them have such fantastic words, but also because when done well they sound great. I went to the midnight service at St Stephen's, Belrose for a bit of a sing and celebrate, and the team there (they know who they are) did a great job. Helped me celebrate Jesus more.

3. Sleep

On Christmas evening between 6pm and 7pm I had a nap. It rocked.

4. Christmas Night Movie

Anmol, Daviandra and I went to the movies on Christmas night. We had a drink before hand in bar and then watched Meryl Streep play The Iron Lady likaboss. She was pretty awesome and the movie wasn't half bad either. If only she ahd an arc reactor around her heart and the ability to fire weapons from her jacket sleeves, it could have been the best movie of the year. Movies, good friends and beer. Best way to do Christmas night in my book.

5. Skype

On Boxing Day at Christmas with my Dad's side of the family we skyped Jo and Victor. I didn't get to talk to them long because they were by far the most popular people not in the room, but it was nice to see them. I'm looking forward to seeing them (and their offsprung) for real, but till then, speaking Star Trek style will do pretty good too.


And that is the less usual of another happy Christmas.

I love babies and I love Jesus.

Today is win.

I am currently standing in Myer, Top Ryde looking at outrageously expensive kitchen scales for Mum for Christmas. (I'm too poor, sorry Mum.)

Behind me is the Christmas Shop. They're playing carols and Hark the Herald Angels Sing was just on. I was struck just then, as I am every year, at what profound theological statements these songs make. It seems so odd and wonderfully subversive that every Christmas the wonder of 'Christ the everlasting Lord' would be sung in our temples of consumer idolatry. That we would be asked to 'hail incarnate deity' who was 'pleased as man with man to dwell' while we are also encouraged to shop till midnight for our convenience makes me so happy. It's what Christmas is about really, God being found in the midst of the most unexpected places. Even here in Myer Top Ryde.


"Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
'Glory to the newborn King!'"

I'm on my last night of camp. I've been speaking on this camp for the last week. My best speaking stuff up of the week was when I encouraged all 70 kids to "put your face in Jesus."

Faith and face sound very similar.

"Come on, guys." This is the look Jesus gave the disciples when they had taken the joke too far.


I was sitting in staff meeting today and I was thinking about having a conversation with a friend about whatever we were talking about. You know how you pretend to have conversations with friends. Anyway, my answer to whatever question my friend hypothetically asked me was all about Jesus, and my friend, in my head, responded something like "Your answer to every question is Jesus."

At that point I started to think about how my answer to everything is Jesus. Then, because these days I tend to think about life in terms of right and wrong worship, my idolatry alarm went off. I thought to myself "You think about Jesus too much, Jesus is your idol, Jesus is your false god." I felt pretty cut that I was denying God the worship he deserves. I was just about to repent for my sinful, adulterous heart, when I realised, "No, hold on, Jesus is God. He's the one thing you can't make too much of.*" I was about to ask Jesus to forgive me for worshipping Jesus. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been forgiven. That's one action God would have held against me.

It was a nice discovery that, for change, my heart was in the right place



*Along with the Father and the Spirit, of course.

It's Saturday. And for the first time in 21 days I haven't had any ministry activities to do. Very happy to rest.

I'm doing a Bible Study on Homosexuality in Bible study tonight (Monday).

Would you be so kind as to let me know:

a) If you believe that a monogamous homosexual relationship is a valid lifestyle for a Christian
b) If you think that gay marriage should be allowed
and
c) Any biblical support you have for your position.

I understand you're probably all off doing long weekends, so don't stress. But if you feel like giving me some opinion, that'd be awesome.

Thanks friends, readers and friendly readers.

I've been at a conference today for work. It's a chaplains conference.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I thought I would have to do a lot of networking, which isn't really my strong suit. I hadn't put any thought into the sessions.

Turns out the sessions have been pretty good. Good for the head, hard on the heart, important for the soul.

The first keynote speaker we had (we have five keynote speakers, which could be a record for keynotes) was John Dickson speaking about humility. He said a lot of good stuff but what struck me most was something he didn't really talk much about but is something I've been thinking about and that's seeking criticism. I never go out of my way to have people tell me what I'm doing wrong. I never look to have anyone tell me of my sin. I just hope the people close to me are kind enough to tell me my faults, and I'm humble enough to listen.

I've been thinking maybe I need to figure out a way to listen to people criticisms of me, and to help people to feel safe to tell me where they think I have room for improvement. But until I figure out a way to do that, feel free to just tell me, or email me, or comment on my Facebook, and I'll try and humbly listen and change.

We had a talk about burn out and stress, which was nice, because I feel like I'm doing ok with that one.

Tonight we had a talk about the pornification of our culture and the sexulisation young girls from Melinda Tankard Reist. It was pretty horrid content but quite important. Very emotionally taxing. I feel like there's probably a whole other post in it, so I might leave it till I get to it.

In summary, this conference has been harder and easier than I expected. The networking has been pretty low key and easy. The sessions have been demanding, but good.

Maybe tomorrow will be easier.

"On 9/11 I thought, For the most powerful, militarized nation in the world also to think of itself as an innocent victim is deadly. It was a rare prophetic moment for me, considering Presidents Bush and Obama have spent billions asking the military to rectify the crime of a small band of lawless individuals, destroying a couple of nations who had little to do with it, in the costliest, longest series of wars in the history of the United States. The silence of most Christians and the giddy enthusiasm of a few, as well as the ubiquity of flags and patriotic extravaganzas in allegedly evangelical churches, says to me that American Christians may look back on our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat. It was shattering to admit that we had lost the theological means to distinguish between the United States and the kingdom of God. The criminals who perpetrated 9/11 and the flag-waving boosters of our almost exclusively martial response were of one mind: that the non-violent way of Jesus is stupid. All of us preachers share the shame; when our people felt very vulnerable, they reached for the flag, not the Cross. September 11 has changed me. I’m going to preach as never before about Christ crucified as the answer to the question of what’s wrong with the world. I have also resolved to relentlessly reiterate from the pulpit that the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on their own terms by crucifying the Son of God.” - Bishop Will Willamon

From here.

We had a discussion at work the other day about why it is we say sorry to God for our sins, but then we thank God when we do something good. We take responsibility for the bad stuff we do and we say that God is responsible for the good things we do. It seems a little odd to me, either we're responsible for our actions or God is.

I know the correct answer to this, and I agree with it. But that doesn't mean I can't have an unorthodox thought every once in a while.

I may not have been blown away by John Piper during the conference, but I keep thinking about things he said. One of the biggest things has been working at asking God to give me the joy to the things I don't want to do but I'm going to do because they're the right thing to do. That wasn't one of his big things, but it's stuck with me.

I've been at a conference this week for work. It was called Oxygen. John Piper and John Lennox were speaking.

I wasn't all that excited about the conference going in. Mainly because I hadn't heard much John Lennox and I tend to find Piper boring. I think he has great things to say, I just don't tend to hear them because I spend most of my time tuned out.

It turns out I did spend a lot of time struggling to pay attention. I also fell asleep a lot. This is not a sign of the boringness of the speakers just the mild narcolepsy I seem to suffer. I fall asleep in the cinema and going to the movies is my favourite thing to do so preachers should not be offended.

Still, when I was paying attention, I did learn and was challenged by some stuff.

Piper's big thing is that we need to seek God's glory in everything because God seeks his glory in everything. The way to seek his glory is to live in obedience and worship of him. To seek all your satisfaction in him. His catchphrase is "God is most glorified when you are most satisfied in him." He spent most of the conference explaining what that meant.

The challenge I found, was to make everything about seeking to be satisfied in God. I'm not really sure what that means. Piper doesn't seem to be great on practical application. But I think he's right. I guess I'll try and figure out how to do it.

Lennox is way too smart. He spends his time debating the leading atheists in the world. So when he was on his apologetics stuff, I was hooked.

Today he talked about Psalm 69, among other things and mentioned verse 6:

Lord, the LORD Almighty,
may those who hope in you
not be disgraced because of me;
God of Israel,
may those who seek you
not be put to shame because of me.

I've never thought a lot about that verse before, but certainly struck a chord with me. I have often felt like the weak link in the chain. I desperately want people to meet Jesus and grow in their love of him. I don't want to be the guy who let's them down, who makes God seem less wonderful than he is through my lack of faithfulness. I probably won't make this my regular prayer because it's pretty negative. But it's nice to see David saying something I feel.

And those are just two things I've picked up. There are lots more. I seem to be getting little snippets of Piper popping up in my brain as I got through the day. I'm hoping I can make much of God, since he as made much of me. The conference has spurred me on to be doing that.

I've been enjoying reading Don Miller's blog lately.

I just read this post where he stuck up a video of Bill Hybels announcing that Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, had pulled out of the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. Schultz pulled out of the event because of an online protest threatening to boycott Starbucks because Willow Creek is perceived to be anti-gay.

I really appreciated the way Hybels was so gracious to Mr Schultz and even to the people who had started the petition. I also appreciated that he stated Willow Creek's view on homosexuality positively and without judgement.



In contrast to Hybels' comments I saw this on ABC news today. And while obviously biased and heavily edited, I wish Christians didn't say dumb stuff like this in public. (Also see if you can notice Richard Dreyfus sitting next to Bob Katter.)



I hope when people let me down and misrepresent me I can be as gracious as Hybels.

Here is Part Two of my series on the centrality of the cross. Part One is here

Ok. So the cross is central, someone might say, but if you keep mentioning the Cross all the time, what’s to stop it becoming formulaic and just the magic words to keep a service orthodox? Isn't mentioning the cross just religion?

The truth is that anything you want to keep as a defining principle or event, can be mentioned only out of compulsion, or habit but it is not inevitable. I think the trick is to keep asking throughout the life of the church “How does the cross impact on this?” In major times of teaching we must be clearly showing how the cross makes a difference. Let me show you how this works for three different topics, dealing with evil, relating to people of other faiths and responding to the poor.

The Cross and Responding to Evil

In this world we are constantly faced with the reality of evil. We are confronted with war and terrorism on a global scale, violence, rape and neglect in our communities and anger, hurt and abuse in our own lives. The church, if it is truly going to engage with world needs to know how to respond to evil.

Biblically the church will be calling its people to a ministry of reconciliation, of love for enemies and forgiveness. It will also hold firmly to the principle of justice and the fight against evil.

When the church teaches these things without the cross then it either becomes too hard, too soft or the preacher of two irreconcilable ideals.

If the church preaches forgiveness and love without the cross then evil becomes tolerated and the victim’s suffering gets dismissed. Forgiveness comes free and costs nothing. The suffering victim is told to love their enemy and forgive because that’s what Christ taught we should do. The evil doer escapes punishment and the victim must carry the burden of someone else’s sin.

Any justice achieved now will be unsatisfactory. How do you make a people group adequately pay for the acts of genocide they committed against their neighbours? How do you make the rapist adequately pay for violence they committed against someone created in God’s image? How do you make the mother who neglects and verbally abuses her children adequately pay for all the pain they inflict and the future damage they cause? You don’t because you can’t. We are a church that worships a holy God who hates sin. This means that no punishment and vengeance dolled out by earthly authorities will ever make up for the sins committed.

The end point in the fight against evil must be the destruction of the source of evil. If a church preaches justice and the fight against evil without the cross it must fight a battle that it cannot win with a God who is uninvolved. The reality is that all of us are participants in evil, and if we pursue evil to its end, we will pursue it not to the ends of the earth, but to the centre of our hearts. If we are to destroy evil, we must destroy others and we must destroy ourselves. If we were ever to whole-heartedly fight evil outside of the cross we too would just join in the cycle of violence.

In the history of the Church whenever it has been in charge of the state it has almost without fail ended up punishing sin with an iron fist.* Death for the adulterer, the homosexual, the witch and the disobedient child. And in the churches’ pursuit of justice it becomes the committer of evil.

Yet when we face evil in the light of the cross we see a God who hates sin, who punishes sin, who never trivialises suffering, who puts the wicked to death and gives life to the righteous.

At the cross Jesus takes all the wrath of his father heaped upon him. He, the sinless one, has the sins of humanity placed upon him. There on the cross, beaten and naked, he goes through hell and we see just how much God hates sin, that he would kill even his own Son.

He does this so that through him God would be able to forgive the wicked. Here at the cross we see God’s justice as he punishes evil, rebellion and sin. And we see God’s mercy upon the sinner as he offers his grace and forgiveness.

So when the church preaches forgiveness and reconciliation to the victim in light of the cross it does so knowing that God has already forgiven us. We are all perpetrators of evil and the one who we have done evil to, first and foremost, is God. Yet God forgives us and takes all the wrath we deserve upon himself.

When we call on each other to forgive those who sin against us, we do so in the knowledge that God has already forgiven us. But not only that, one way or another, the sin that has been committed against the victim will be dealt with. Either God has punished it at the cross or he will punish it at the end of time. No evil escapes the hand of God. Justice will be done.

At the cross we see how seriously God takes evil. He doesn’t trivialise suffering but shows that it is so serious that only the life of his beloved Son will pay for it. Jesus takes the wicked, gives them a new heart and a righteousness that is his own. The destruction of wickedness need not mean the destruction of the wicked if it is Christ who makes them righteous. Or to put it another way the wicked person is put to death, as they die to sin, and are born again, a new creation in Christ.

The cross shows us our King who is not dead but will one day come to right the world. What he began on the cross he will finish on that last day. The wicked will be judged and the righteous will be vindicated. Judgement will come and it will be great and terrible just as it was at the cross, yet no more will the innocent suffer for sins they did not commit. We will celebrate because we know that the right response to evil is the wrath of a righteous God.

The church can rest assured. The churches’ fight against evil and for justice can march on knowing that the true judge of the world has come and is coming again. The church fights knowing that we do not, and the systems of this world do not, need to be the final reckoning for sin. When we strive for justice we know that because Jesus is taking care of punishment we must strive for fairness and equality; More than that, we strive for love. As the cross shows us love, love becomes our modus operandi. Because of the example and power of the cross we see that our greatest weapon against injustice is love, and we work so that all people might be changed by love, ultimately to have their evil nature put to death, and to be given new life in Christ. Only that power comes through the cross.

When the church centres it’s response to evil in the cross it finds a response that is more compassionate to the sinner and to those who have been sinned against than could be imagined and harder on evil than is thought possible.


The Cross and Interacting with Other Religions

In Australia we are blessed to live in a multicultural society. This means that one of the great challenges to the church in our country will be how we interact with other faiths.

This is even more important given that we, the people of earth, have a history of fighting over religion more than anything else.

For the church to engage in fruitful dialogue with people of other faiths it must hold the cross at the centre of its thinking and its speaking because the cross gives Christianity it’s greatest distinctive, it clearly sets us apart from every other faith.

Often interfaith dialogue seeks to show the similarities between multiple faiths and find areas of commonality so as to build mutual respect because “we are just like you.” This can end up with people praying to the same God, in the same religious services, under the ridiculous notion that all roads lead to the same God. We flush out all the distinctives in an effort to forge better relations with other faiths.

Unfortunately this insults all involved. Dialogue is vitally important, but dialogue never has to mean acquiescing vital tenets of faith in the name of tolerance.

When the church talks to and about other faiths, it must keep the cross front and centre, otherwise how will we know who we are, and how will they know who we are?

No other religion has a God who is so foolish as to let himself be killed by those who he created. No other faith solves the problem of the human heart purely through divine initiative. No other God has saved its people purely out of his own goodness and through no merit of the people.

This being the case the cross gives the Christian, no right to boast. Knowing that salvation comes only through the death and resurrection of a loving God rather than our own goodness, means that we cannot in any way look down upon people of other faiths. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is not that the Christian is smarter, better, more special or more moral. The difference is only Jesus, and the faith that he gives.

So as we relate to those of other faiths, the cross will lead us to love them because, just like us, they too need Jesus. As Luther (or someone) said “We are all mere beggars trying to show other beggars where to find bread.” The cross will lead us not to acquiesce the uniqueness of our faith in the spirit of unity and tolerance but to humbly share with people of other faiths a vision of a God of ultimate love and ultimate mercy. Then they will see Christianity clearly, and true inter-faith dialogue can happen. But until we embrace the cross we insult our God who died for us because we hide away his greatest act of love, because of it’s offensive nature, and we insult those we speak to about our faith, because we think they cannot handle the most distinctive part of our faith.


The Cross and the Poor

People will often feel the church should be focusing on sharing Jesus’ love through deeds of justice and mercy. The church has a responsibility to be loving the poor and marginalised. If the church is to stay true to its mission we will be loving the poor.

This emphasis can be seen as being in tension with preaching the cross. We can spend our time in church talking about Jesus or we can spend our time in the community loving like Jesus. It’s a choice between words and actions. If you follow this thinking to its most extreme the only time we should be talking about Jesus we should be talking about him in relation to how we care for the poor.

But the truth is that the best and true motivation for our love for the poor has to come out of the cross. A proper understanding of the cross has to lead to a changed response to the poor.

Without the cross our care for the poor and marginalised becomes about obeying the rules set forth by our teacher, it becomes an exercise in changing our hearts through our actions. The more we love the poor, the more we will be conformed to the likeness of Jesus, and our hearts will be changed and the more we will love the poor. The more we achieve this, the more we will be living in the will of Christ and worthy of his love and honour. It’s a religion of work with ourselves at the centre. We are at the centre because we try and please God with our own goodness and adherence to his values. We are at the centre because we are doing the work that changes our hearts, and hoping this will please God.

But the cross turns that on its head. The cross says that for our sake Christ became poor (2 Cor 8:9). He came, the most rich becoming the most poor. And he poured himself out for a wretched and sinful people, saving them from their own self-imposed, spiritual poverty, making them children of God and giving them, in himself, every spiritual blessing.

The cross shows us a God who has saved us in the greatest act of generosity ever to brighten the universe. Our life comes from a God who has saved us out of his heart, a heart inclined towards the undeserving poor.

Christ has risen to new life giving us a new heart and his power through the Holy Spirit.

We now have a responsibility to be loving the poor and marginalised because we know that we are the recipients of Christ’s love when we were poor. We know that we are only who we are because God had mercy on us when we had nothing.

As a result we live out the teachings of Christ not to change our hearts, or to please our Lord, but because he has given us a new heart and through the power of his Spirit he changes us to be like him and live out his love. We love because we have been loved and received his love. We love the poor out of grace. We love the poor who are undeserving because we are undeserving. We reach out to the lowest, seek out the most lost and go into the places that are darkest because he came searching for us when we were lower, more lost and in greater darkness, and now he empowers us to search and love like him.

Any church that spends all its time talking about the cross but does not see justice and mercy as an outworking of the cross hasn’t really understood the cross. And any church that forgets the cross when talking about the need for loving the poor and marginalised has forgotten where the true locus of power lies in Christianity.



So there are three ways where the cross is played out in giving meaning to the everyday issues Christians face. Jesus Christ, known and preached as our Lord who came, lived, died and rose again for us, must be at the centre of all we do. Without him and his saving work done at the cross through his death and resurrection, we are to be pitied more than all people. I’ll let John Stott bring it home: “To encounter Christ is to touch reality and experience transcendence. He gives us a sense of self-worth or personal significance, because He assures us of God's love for us. He sets us free from guilt because He died for us and from paralysing fear because He reigns. He gives meaning to marriage and home, work and leisure, personhood and citizenship.”


* I haven’t actually done my research and looked up every time the there has been a Christian theocracy in the past two millennia and examined their penal system. But I can think of plenty of examples of the Church gone feral when given the reigns to power.