In many passages in the Bible, God warns his people not to follow other gods instead of him. The word for this is ‘idolatry’, which means to worship an idol. In traditional religions, idols often took the form of little statues or carvings which were bowed down to and sacrificed to. That’s not normally how …
The title of this blog post might seem a little odd. After all, you might think, I bought my Bible for $9.99. Or perhaps it was free – it came with an app on your phone. Most people don’t own old Bibles or illuminated ones worth millions; the paper or the software is pretty inexpensive. …
When was the last time you heard a sermon where the preacher warned you of the dangers of hell? That God is angry with sin, ‘furious’ is a better way of putting it, and would one day bring such terrible judgement that we can hardly imagine it? I would guess that in many Christian circles, …
People who have never read the Bible tend to think that the people of God in the Bible were all perfect models of morality and faithfulness. The kind of people who we are glad are out there somewhere, but people who are not really like us. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Bible …
One of the most confusing things to someone investigating Christianity is the range of different churches that are out there. Many of them have ‘brand names’ that surely have some technical meaning that new believers don’t understand (like Baptist, Presbyterian, and Anglican). If you were to visit these different types of churches, you would see …
Have you ever heard someone say that they had prayed about an issue they were facing, and they had “a sense of peace” that a particular decision was the way to go? This internal peace is seen as confirmation that God approves of the decision being made. It sounds like a holy, Christian way to …
I just finished a fascinating book called ‘Everybody Lies: What the Internet can tell us about who we really are’ by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. The author is an economist who specialises in what is known as ‘Big Data’, information collected from Google searches and large databases. In our world where everything is online, it is much …
No-one likes to be told that what they are doing is wrong. Most of us actively flee from conversations like this, whether we need to do the telling or we need to be told. We’d like to believe that whatever we are doing, whatever lifestyle choices we have made, they are fine. The problem is …
I forget a lot of conversations I have had in the past. I’m sure you do as well. So many interactions are critical at the time but don’t stick with you months or years afterwards. There are two exceptions to this. Conversations where someone has been harshly critical of you, and conversations where you have …
The weekly Sunday worship service at my church starts at 10am. Often about 30% of the congregation is actually there by 10am, rising to about 80% by 10:20. Some stragglers turn up as late as 10:45 on most Sunday mornings. Speaking to friends from other churches, I learnt that this kind of tardiness is not …