Blog Posts - Bible Stories For Big Kids

NO MIDDLE GROUND

3/20/2018

A friend recently took her son to the doctor as he had a boil on his leg. The doctor took one quick look at the boy’s leg and prescribed antibiotics. In the ‘good old days’ ( which weren’t necessarily all that good!) a doctor would lance the boil, clean out the area and send the patient home. Instead, this child was on unnecessary antibiotics for a week, for the boil burst a day after the visit to the doctor.

But what does this have to do with Easter?

Unfortunately today, the saving message of Easter is too confronting, so it is packaged in fluffy bunnies (or bilbies in Australia), and chocolate. Easter eggs may represent new life, but the new life is more about the chicken hatching from an egg, than new life through the Cross. I am surprised ( am I really surprised?) with the amount of violence on TV which people must watch or otherwise the shows would be cancelled, but when it comes to religion, especially Christianity, people expect warm fuzzies and stories which make them feel good. ‘Most people want to respect Jesus as a teacher, as an example of how we should live, but they do not want Jesus to be God, particularly a God who dies and rises again.’ ( John Harris.)

At Easter, we come face to face with a very gruesome but wonderful message of Jesus taking the punishment for our wrong doing/sin. Jesus ensured his message was very clear from the beginning of his ministry – ‘I am the Way the Truth and the Life. No-one comes to the Father except through me’. ( John 14:6). For a person to be forgiven and become part of God’s family, there is no avoiding the cross – Jesus’ death and resurrection. Nothing we can do will earn us God’s love and without asking God’s forgiveness for our sins, there is no salvation/eternal life. Jesus, who did no wrong, was punished (on the cross) instead of us, so great is his love for all people.

I recently read an article in a Christian magazine ‘Eternity’ , which talked about the ‘Vible’, describing it as ‘the summary of the moral teachings that people adhere to today. It’s a semi-organised, fairly contemporary, unwritten set of guidelines that allow you to feel like a decent human being.’ I thought that to be a very succinct description of how a lot of people avoid Christianity and the story of the Cross.

For the many people who genuinely want to do the right by others, and thus hope to earn eternal life by being a good person ( there is nothing wrong with being a good person), they avoid dealing with the initial problem of sin, just as the doctor failed to immediately deal with the boy’s boil. The message of Easter is the centre or focal point of Christianity and cannot be avoided if we want to be part of God’s family and have eternal life.

I wish you a very Blessed Easter Celebration.

FAKE NEWS?

2/18/2018

Literacy forms a large part of the Bible Society's agenda, and why not? There is not much point in printing and selling/distributing Bibles if people cannot read them. To be able to read is such a basic skill, but such an important and valuable one.

When I was in local politics, I considered myself to be in 'opposition' because big changes needed to be made in our Council, and people had elected me to try to make at least some changes. I did facilitate change, not by having the numbers to vote in change, but by exposing what was really happening behind closed doors, thus forcing change to take place. But where does reading the Bible come into all this?

Each fortnight we were given an agenda to study for the next Council meeting, and I soon learnt to read behind what was listed on the agenda - I did love politics! However, when I came home from a Council meeting ( rather exhausted) and read my Bible that night, it was with such relief to be able to accept what was written there and not look for hidden meanings. That feeling is still with me today - I so appreciate reading the truth, even though sometimes I may question that truth as relating to today's society. But the Bible is still truth - God does not lie nor play games - we can believe with certainty what is written as there is no 'fake news'.

There is so much wisdom, wonderful promises and great stories in the Bible - that's why I wrote 'Bible Stories For Big Kids' - to make it easier to read those stories. So each time we read, whatever format that takes, we can be very thankful for the ability to read, and for all those who are giving that gift of reading to others.

WHY CHRISTIANITY?

1/28/2018

The Bible Society of Australia recently published the following statistics:-

"80% of all acts of religious discrimination have been against Christians.

11 Christians have been killed every hour, every day for the past decade.

Christians are oppressed in 139 nations - in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America ( by drug lords).

Persecution happens at the hands of ( different) extremist religious groups; but in some countries, government authorities participate in torturing, arresting, and harassing believers."

The Christian organisation 'Open Doors' has full details of persecution in these countries, but why is Christianity such a target? Like King Canute who tried to stop the tide, Communism tried to wipe out Christianity but history tells us that that did not happen.

Back in Peter's day ( Acts chapter 5) and up against the Jewish religious leaders, Peter, when told he must no longer teach about Jesus, had the temerity to state "we must obey God rather than human authority". Fortunately, Gamaliel had the wisdom to tell the authorities "if this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them."

There are numerous stories of the suffering of persecuted Christians, but that is not the object of this blog. My question is, if Christianity is not for real, or is no longer relevant, why is there so much opposition to this religion? Even in Australia, various authorities and progressives are opposed to Christianity being taught or even discussed in the public space. The few times I have read of the New Atheists, I have heard them attack Christianity but not other religions. However, due to my limited exposure to them, I realise that may not be a proper assessment of their philosophy, although one prominent Australian athiest regularly refers to the Christian God in his weekly column.

I just find it interesting that such opposition exists towards a religion which many people want to dismiss. Why is Christianity the most persecuted religion? Why is it such a target?

Maybe just maybe, Christianity is for real after all.

November 29th, 2017

11/29/2017

These are some random quotes from Bible reading commentaries, thoughts which I have found relevant for today.

"There is spiritual blindness around us today. Those who live without a personal relationship with God through his Spirit are ill-equipped to understand spiritual realities - these realities are foolishness to them. Jesus told Nicodemus that unless someone is born again by the same Spirit they cannot see the kingdom of God. Being able to see the kingdom, even to the extent that we can have the mind of Christ, is the work of the Spirit. "
(Encounter With God - Eric Gaudion)

With the above in mind, a prayer from T.E.A.R. fund became alive " Give us the courage to remain open, aware and engaged with a broken world". It is so much easier to become closed to a broken world than realise that so often those with whom we become frustrated/angry, cannot see things from our point of view as they need God's spirit to enlighten them.

A Christmas prayer from CBM ' " Because of God's mercy the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us" :may the light of Jesus bring hope to many people in need around the world over the Christmas period.'

For me, these three 'comments' from three different people/organisations, seemed so connected and relevant to today's world. May the light of Jesus bring hope to many people in need around the world this Christmas.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.

11/12/2017

A recent Christian organisation posted on Facebook, a request for your favourite Bible verse. John 3:16 was mentioned as well as Psalm 23, but my first thought was Philippians 4:6 &7 - 'Do not worry about anything but in your prayers ask God for what you need with a thankful heart. And God's peace which surpasses all understanding will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus'. ( italics are mine). I just love that verse and can certainly testify to it especially while enduring a 40 hour category 5 cyclone earlier this year.

However, at the time of the Facebook post, I was reading Exodus 34 and made an interesting discovery. I have always thought it unfair that when God gave the 10 commandments, commandment number 2 said that God would punish children up to the third and fourth generation when the adults worshipped idols. I realise there are consequences in this situation, but surely the parents are responsible for how their children have been taught. Obviously this is a more complex theological question from God's point of view.

Exodus 34:6 ff says "The Lord, the Lord,a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin, yet my no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation". There is it again - punishing the children, but notice there is a time limit - to the third and fourth generation, whereas God's love and faithfulness have no time limits - 'thousandth generation'.

I found that a very reassuring thought - God put a limit on punishment but there is absolutely no limit to his love and faithfulness.

Something to think about.

AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION

9/28/2017

Imagine Jesus is with you, speaking this just to you.

"I am the true vine and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

"I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

"My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Fathers' commandments and abide in his love.

"I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No-one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

"I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another".

John 15:1-17( the italics are mine)

IS GOD DEAD?

9/16/2017

A recent article in the 'Weekend Australian' entitled 'Is God Dead' by Greg Sheridan made for very interesting reading, so interesting, that I wanted to share some of his writing, especially as his command of English is so much more accomplished than mine. So instead of paraphrasing or condensing his article, I have chosen to quote some of the article instead.

"In abandoning God, we are about to embark on one of the most radical social experiments in Western history. Short of war, nothing is as consequential. Human beings create themselves inside a culture. A culture without God will create different human beings.

"The book of Genesis... begins with the what was the most radical statement in favour of human rights to enter the ancient world.It was that God, one God, created human beings in his own image. This is the beginning of human dignity in the Western tradition. A case of course can be made for ancient Athens and other ancient civilisations. But in Athens, human dignity only applied to the men in the ruling elite. The franchise never went beyond 10% of the people. Women, slaves and foreigners had no rights. People were not conceived of as individuals, but as members of families.

"It took a long time to abolish slavery. But Christianity brought with it the revolutionary doctrine that slaves were human beings with human souls, with human dignity, with a personal relationship with an Almighty God. The New Testament even gave us the first monotheistic religious statement in favour of a secular political order "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God, that which is God's."

"Without God, human beings are no longer unique, universal and special in nature - they are just one more chancy outcrop of the planet and its biosphere. And when Christianity is more completely eradicated from our consciousness it will dawn on the culture that without God, there is no final human accountability. Life is just what you can get away with and no ultimate price to pay."

But what about churches in the context of this discussion? "In his bold and high-selling new book, 'The Benedict Option' Rod Dreher suggests the churches have to rethink their social roles. He thinks they need to re-conceive of themselves as minorities. This would give them some advantages. They need, too, to reconsider the seriousness of their purposes, so that even if they no longer represent a consensus, they can at least continue to offer and alternative.

"This is not the end of days. But it is the end of that long period when the West has known Christianity, even if it has often honoured the faith in the breach. Our culture, our people, not to mention our poor and our sick, will miss Christianity more than they can possibly know."

There is also a detailed discussion on atheism and communism. "Nothing is easier than to find bad deeds and sayings of individual Christians over 2000 years and then implausibly claim that this invalidates the whole of Christianity. Dawkins ( a high profile atheist) graciously concedes that Joseph Stalin was an atheist and mass murderer. So while he acknowledges Stalin's atheism, he said it had no effect on Stalin's actions. But whereas Dawkins attributes any bad thing done by any Christian to their Christianity, and any good thing done by any Christian to a lingering humanism in contradiction of Christianity, his contrasting escape clause for the effects of atheist belief is absurd."

A very interesting article and relevant to our society today.

(The italics are mine as these thoughts correspond with my thoughts exactly.)

THE TRIUMPH OF LOGIC

8/8/2017

Anyone who says the Bible is out of date has never read the story of the man born blind as recorded in John Chapter 9. Whereas in my last blog I spoke of outrage and entitlement preventing free speech and the open discussion of ideas, this story so aptly depicts the closed mind of the fundamentalist - in this case, the Pharisees.

Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath and instead of compassion towards the blind man now being given his sight for the first time in his life, the Law of no work on the Sabbath took precedence in their minds. They argued and argued with this poor man so that in the end, all he could say to them was the truth - "One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I can see". They even approached his parents to verify that the man had in fact been blind from birth. Because of their fear of the Pharisees, the parents said that this was true, but when questioned further as to how he received his sight, the parents told the Pharisees "go ask him - he's an adult and can speak for himself". The Pharisees did indeed speak to the man a second time, but in love, Jesus also sought out the man who affirmed his true belief in Jesus.

Here was a man who was blind from birth, but after an encounter with Jesus, could now see. What is so difficult to understand about that? However, there was no way the Pharisees wanted to believe that Jesus could do this, as it would point to him as the Messiah, the one who would "make the lame walk and the blind to see" ( Isaiah 42:7) and they were not prepared to believe in Jesus. Their bitterness even drove them to kill him, but even death could not conquer the truth - Jesus is the Messiah.

Recently, the Queensland Government issued a statement to schools that students attending Religious Education were not to talk to other children about Jesus, and amongst other things, were not to share Christmas cards showing the nativity scene. This was immediately refuted by the Minister for Education, but all I see in these types of instances, and these days there are many, is the same attitude as the Pharisees - a closed mind to Christian philosophy and ignoring the positive influence of Christianity in our history. This fundamentalist attitude of these educated people absolutely blinds them to the truth - like the Pharisees, they want no part of Christianity nor do they even want to allow a respectful discussion.

I smile at the logic of the man born blind, as, no matter what the Pharisees had to say to him, nor how badly they treated him, in all honesty he could say "once I was blind, but now I can see".

No-one could refute that statement!

A WORLD VIEW

6/22/2017

How contemporary is the Bible.

Micah chapter 4:5 says “For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.” Reading the news from which ever country, we see people wanting what is best for them – the ‘I am entitled’ syndrome instead of what is best for everyone. People have their own gods which translates ‘I want....’ and we are all seeing the consequences of this – usually not good news!

Imagine how God felt when he saw the Jewish nation, his chosen people, taking on the values of its neighbours, instead of being the example that God had asked it to be. This was to be a prosperous nation, caring for its people and being such a shining example so that others would see that the God of the Jews was the true God, but instead, they were in decline with Israel ready to be wiped out and Judah condemned to 70 years in exile, all because the majority of the people chose to follow their own god instead of the true God.

Having been around for 70 plus years, I have seen the movement of some Christian organisations, and that has not always been for the better. I have seen what were outreach thinking churches in this area retreat to declining Christian clubs with no public face, let alone community involvement. Yet I read of churches in some areas, thriving and ministering to their community in the name of Jesus. I have read recently of the need for the Uniting Church, now 40 years since the amalgamation of 3 denominations, having to reassess their future, because of the decline in membership.

Stopping to think where we are heading is a good thing as it is easy to go our own way and be sincere about it, but be sincerely wrong. I can only imagine the frustration of the Old Testament prophets, when the people refused to listen to their warnings of impending doom and destruction if they did not turn from their wicked ways. The faithful Jews must also have felt the same, as they knew that they would also suffer because of the majority turning away from God.

God calls us to be continually faithful to him, not in our own strength but in his strength, despite what is going on around us. This has been particularly difficult for people in the Middle East or in Muslim countries especially during Ramadan, but with the ‘entitled’ attitude now creeping into Western culture, it can even be difficult for Christians to speak out on Christian values.

An anti- discrimination complaint was lodged against the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart because of the church’s attitude towards marriage being between a man and a woman – a view held for hundreds of years. Eventually the complaint was dropped but not before a lot of unnecessary and nasty confrontations. Margaret Court, a famous Australian tennis player with a tennis complex named in her honour, and now a Christian Pastor, also spoke of her view of marriage being between a man and a woman, and suddenly there was an outcry from some sectors of the public to rename the tennis complex because these same people did not agree with her views. Yes, even in a Western democracy, it is becoming harder to express one’s views or maintain freedom of speech . Outrage and entitlement have replaced open discussion and dialogue and the freedom to disagree. That is why Micah’s opening sentence struck me as so relevant for today.

Being a Christian today is not always easy, so I interpret this prayer from a Christian organisation to not only relate to helping people in Jesus’ name, but also standing up for what is right and best for all people.

“Pray for the well-being of all the people who do good in this world so that they can restore their energy and keep being a force for good.”

Micah 4:5....”but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever”.

WHY READ THE BIBLE?

5/13/2017

I discovered an interesting article about teaching the Bible without preaching it and I found the following statements to be very topical, especially as the article was written in America 10 years ago.

"If somebody is going to carry on a sophisticated conversation with me ( about the Bible) I would rather know what they're talking about than look like a moron or fight my way through it".

"The Bible so pervades Western culture, that it's hard to call anyone educated who hasn't at least given thought to its key passages."

"Knowledge of the Bible is essential to being a fully-fledged, well-rounded citizen."

"The Bible is the most influential book ever written. Not only is the Bible the best-selling book of all time, it is the best selling book of the year every year."

"According to one estimate, Shakespeare alludes to Scripture 1300 times"( on comparing the works of Shakespeare to the Bible).

Christianity is now the most persecuted religion and with the popularity of social engineering and political correctness, it can even be difficult for a Christian to be heard in the public sphere. I find it interesting that when a Christian topic appears on Face Book, the opposing comments are usually negative and often nasty, rather than showing an informed different point of view. But how can a person conduct an intelligent debate if they do not know the subject upon which the debate is centered? I thought education was meant to open people's minds but truth appears to have been left behind in favour of what a person believes the truth to be.

That is why I found the quotes from this article so interesting, as they highlight the changes of attitude in our society today - the 'post truth' era tries to re-write history and attitudes when it comes to the Bible.

When teaching Religious Education at our local school, I really enjoyed 'teaching' the Bible stories rather than 'preaching' them, for the stories can speak for themselves and God is quite able to apply to each person what He wants them to learn.

The Bible will always be relevant to our society despite many opposing views on this subject, and it is up to Christians to live out God's love each day in thought word and deed.