Here in Toowoomba we’ve just had legislation approved to allow Sunday trading. Of course Sunday trading has been with us for quite a while in some form or other. What has now happened is that the doors have been opened to big businesses to trade on Sundays as well. In some ways Toowoomba is simply catching up with the rest of urban Australia. The question is whether this is a desirable development and whether we as Christians should boycott Sunday trading or just follow the trend. I noticed a news item this week that a German politician has launched the European...

This past week I joined with some other members of our church to have a look at some grave-plaques that had been recently installed. We went around the different plots to inspect the ‘artwork’ and to reminisce about life with our now-deceased partners. It was good to reflect on the past, face the reality of the present and look forward with hope to the future. We were able to join together in a time of thanksgiving before we headed back home or back to work. In this same week I spent some time with one of our members to discuss what...

The first day of the week (Sunday) has certainly changed for many Christians experiencing lockdowns. And setting time aside for worship, albeit online, has brought its own set of challenges. When it first became necessary to stream worship services, many Christians, although disappointed they could not meet as a fellowship of believers for mutual encouragement, made the effort to make Sunday worship special. They recognized that their faithful God and Saviour was worthy of their worship, albeit at home, perhaps sitting on the couch watching a PC or TV screen. Some would even make the special effort to get dressed in...

Some time ago I was thinking how sad it is that some organizations, that began as overtly and unapologetically Christian, have today lost their Christian distinctiveness.  I was thinking particularly about the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), which began more than 150 years ago.  Its goal was to unite Christian young men for the extension and expansion of the Kingdom of God.  Today I’m not sure that too many people even know about that goal.  In a previous life, as a youth leader, I did a youth-worker course with the YM and felt that its spiritual dimension was extremely wishy-washy and...

A brief item on the evening news this past week got my attention.  In the UK the Charity Commission recognised the Druids as a religion and gave them charity status, which means tax exemptions and some other perks. Starve the lizards!  What a sad return to paganism. The Druids stem from the ancient cult that is thought to have built Stonehenge.  They worship the sun and meet at Stonehenge for the seasons of the sun: the solstices and equinoxes.  They believe in ‘spirit guides’ (read ‘demons’ please) and in the spirits of certain places like rivers and mountains.  The million-dollar question...

From time to time noises are made here in Australia about introducing a Bill of Rights. So far that has been successfully resisted, however I fear that we haven’t heard the end of attempts to introduce such a document. Are there advantages to such a Bill of Rights? Absolutely! However, many argue that the disadvantages far outweigh the positives. In Germany there has been an ongoing legal battle between a church and an ex-employee. A Roman Catholic Church in the diocese of Essen dismissed a church musician in 1997 after he separated from his wife and formed another (adulterous) relationship. The...

It’s not very good poetry but there is a sentiment in the following words that most of us can relate to. Nothing improves my driving to quite the same extent as a police car just arriving or one that just went. The point is that in a healthy society there is respect for those who maintain law and order.  We may not like paying that speeding fine but deep down we know we deserve to get booked when we break the rules of the road.  The reality is that on our roads we cannot live the way that people did during...

Yep, big word!  Never heard it before?  Not surprising – it’s a term that comes from philosophy and literally means ‘the justification of God’. When you as a parent explain to your child why bad things like floods and fires happen in a world that God created good then you are engaging in theodicy. When you tell an unbelieving workmate why the presence of evil in the world does not make you toss your faith overboard then you base that on a theodicy. Many of us have been confronted by the argument of a sceptic that because there is evil in...

I’d not heard of American author Anne Rice, until a news item arrived in email inbox this past week.  I’ve obviously missed something because Wikipedia tells me that with nearly 100 million of her books sold she is one of the most widely read authors in modern history. Wow…!  And I didn’t even know who she was. But as I read on I wasn’t surprised.  The categories for which she especially writes, I’m told are gothic, erotic and religious.  Hmmm!  I could be interested in the ‘religious’ but as for gothic and erotic…?  A check of some of her book titles...

Yep...!  That’s the eleventh commandment, or so it would seem, if some people are to be believed. Over the years I’ve heard that little saying with monotonous regularity in all kinds of contexts.  More often than not it’s a variation on the theme.  Someone will be busy commenting critically on the lifestyle of a Christian sister or brother and then this person will pull himself up and add, “But I guess we shouldn’t judge!”  Today in our age, where tolerance is considered the highest virtue, the “eleventh commandment” is becoming ever more popular. Those of us who are fond of quoting...

Since marrying for the second time I’ve become acutely conscious that we are very much shaped by the events that happen in our lives. I wasn’t so conscious of that when I was married to Ali.  We had grown up together in the same congregation, taught Sunday School together for a while, sang in the same choir for a couple of years and went to the same youth group.  We were both twenty-one when we married so we didn’t have all that much history behind us. People say that second marriages are much more challenging.  A lot more has happened in...

It’s always rather sad when folk declare themselves to be atheists. Little do these people realise that according to the wisdom of Psalm 14 this rejection of the existence of God puts them in a certain unenviable category of people.Okay…! I know it doesn’t sound very respectful to call our Prime Minister a fool. But when Julia Gillard declared on public television that she didn’t believe in God then according to the logic of Psalm 14 she is a precisely that – a fool.I readily admit that there have been many fools like her who were great rulers and leaders (by...

Years ago, when I was a young parent, I was asked by a Christian acquaintance whether or not I prayed for the conversion of my children.  That pulled me up… because I knew that I didn’t and his question made me wonder whether I had been remiss in doing something important for my kids. I told him that I would need to go away and think about that as I wasn’t sure whether I ought to be doing that or not.  I also had to think about what he meant by ‘conversion’.  In a sense we need to be converted daily...

My difficulties with infant baptism came about because of my friendship with some Baptists.  They convinced me that since Scriptures teaches us to “repent and be baptised!” or to “believe and be baptised!” infants should not be baptised since they can neither repent nor believe.  That argument appeared to make good sense.  It still does. The Reformed Pastor whom I talked about that when we were expecting our first child asked me whether I agreed that Baptism means essentially the same thing as Circumcision and that it has replaced Circumcision.  I could hardly disagree because the Apostle Paul equates the two...

With the present baby boom in our church we’re going to be having a number of baptisms and that always presents a special challenge for some people who are troubled by the practice of sprinkling some water on a baby’s head. I sympathise with them. I grew up in a Reformed Church family where that was the norm... and I accepted that infant baptism was part of the scene in the church to which I belonged.  However, that all changed in my late teenage years, so that when my first child was about to be born I faced a crisis.  I couldn’t...

A week in politics is a very long time.  That was just so obvious this last week. Last Monday evening some of our folk were watching a web-cast in which the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition were quizzed by church leaders on some issues that are of particular concern to Christians.  By the end of that week Kevin Rudd had become another Australian ex-Prime Minister and, consequently, at least part of the web-cast had been relegated to irrelevance. I’m not a political commentator so it’s not my intention to analyse what happened from a political point of view...

Some weeks ago in a sermon I touched on the teaching of perfectionism.  Please don’t think that this is just a theory.  Abraham Kuyper tells of a man he met who claimed that he hadn’t sinned for a whole year.  Once at a Bible Study in our home the elder who led the study closed in prayer and asked the Lord to forgive us the sins of that day.  Someone who was present objected to the prayer and said: “Next time you ask God for forgiveness for our sins just pray that for yourself and not for all of us, because...

We recently had a phone call from a relative and the discussion turned to church and to worship.  The caller indicated that the family no longer attends church and she then immediately became rather defensive: “After all Discovery Channel recently had a documentary on Jesus Christ which proves that he was just the leader of a sect.” Wow...!  If you see it on television it must be true.  How sad that we’re prepared to base our religious practices (or lack thereof) on the presuppositions of a modern television documentary rather than on the authoritative Word of God and the testimony of...

I write these words on the day that gangland killer, Carl Williams, was buried.  Last night, on a television news coverage, they announced that his ex was to “do the eulogy” at his funeral.  That led me to do some thinking.  Eulogy literally means “good words”.  So what good words do you say at the funeral of a man who was doing 35 years for murder and drug dealing?  What good things can you relate about an underworld gangster who called himself “The Premier” because he said that he ran the state? Over the years I’ve often had huge problems with...

Today is one of those fairly rare occasions when Anzac Day falls on a Sunday.  Anzac Day is not only a time of commemorating those who gave their lives in battle, it is also a time of celebrating our freedom.  For dinki-di Aussies it’s also something of a day of nationalistic sentiment as our thoughts go back to Gallipoli and that event that many see as foundational for the building of this nation. There are many aspects of the Anzac experience that one could focus on.  Traditionally it has become a focus for the very Aussie idea of mateship – a...