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The law is an ass

Today I read some articles on a court case against a Christian foster couple. They were apparently banned from fostering because if their beliefs against advocating homosexuality, despite them saying they would still look after and care for someone who was gay. Now as annoying as this kind of "new" persecution against Christians can be, it's not really that which annoys me most. What gets me is that in one article it was quoted as saying that matters of sexual orientation take precedence over matters of conscience on the basis of "equality". When.. Or rather, how, did the law end up like this? How has it become that having a c...

Digging through ancient texts

The Orthodox and Catholics have all the books from the Septuagint, which is what most of the early Christians would have known regarding the Old Testament. Those "extra" books that Protestants call the Deuterocanonical books (or that the general laypeople often refer to as 'The Apocrypha'), they're just part of the Old Testament the same as the more familiar OT books.During the Reformation in the 16th century, Luther decided to remove these books (and planned to remove some New Testament books too) as he believed they weren't canonical and cited Jerome as his authority to make this decision. It was Jerome ...

Open Doors: Helping Persecuted Christians

Open Doors: Helping Persecuted Christians: Today a man from Open Doors came to speak to us about the Persecuted Church – specifically those in North Korea. Due to the nature of his work, and the dangers that go with helping illegal churches within North Korea, there is no video of his talk to protect his own identity, and those he helps.Who is Open Doors?Open Doors supports persecuted Christians with Bibles, Christian materials, training, livelihood skills, advocacy - and in a whole host of other ways - so that they know they are not forgotten and can stand strong to serve their communities. So that they can give life....

Hell and all that damnable stuff

So on light of all the Rob Bell controversy, it resparked my desire to look into the traditional doctrine of hell. My thoughts on it all began long ago before I went to study theology about 5 or so years ago now. A good close friend of mine was struggling in her faith over the traditional hell concept and found it hard to rectify or justify in her mind. It was the usual question of "how can a loving God burn people forever?" infinite punishment for finite crimes. I had thought about it before then but never in any great depth as I just didn't know where to begin, being a fairly new Christian at the time. I did my best to try w...

Book review on Rob Bell's “Love Wins”

This book was quite openly condemned by some prominent Christian leaders when the book was first announced back around Spring 2011, mainly mainly accusing Bell of being a universalist and denying the existence of hell. Lots of leaders formed opinions about the book and thus lots and laypeople took on various opinions as their own without much insight or research. The problem was that these leaders hadn't even READ the book! It wasn't released yet at the time. They decided their opinions based on the blurb and promo video which posed provocative questions about the doctrine of hell. The book starts up asking lots of questions c...