Image by Pixabay
Yes, I know, a lot of people are praying for peace, and a fat lot of good it’s doing. Why doesn’t God listen to us?
Maybe that’s because we are not listening to God. The point of praying is not to make God see things our way, but so that we see things God’s way. Even if you don’t believe in God, imagining God like this may help break down the common Western assumption that we know what should be done.
Photo: Catholic University of America
‘An act of God caused the earthquake in Turkey – murderous corruption caused so many deaths’ writes Constanze Letsch in the Guardian.
Good point. Without the corruption, the earthquakes wouldn’t have killed people. But our culture prefers to blame ‘acts of God’ instead of people like ourselves.
Peter’s dream in Acts 10. Image: Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing
Jesus revived a central feature of the Jewish tradition. To accept this is to understand how antisemitism misdescribes Christianity as well as Judaism. This was described in my last post.
Here I show how the early Christian movement could see itself as a legitimate development from Judaism. There is scholarly debate about both points. I focus here on what the first followers of Jesus thought they were doing.
Ezra the priest. From https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/1052775848/prophet-ezra-old-testament-jewish-priest
Some think not, because the two faiths are completely different. Whether you see it like this depends on which bits of each tradition you focus on.
To me the bits that matter most of all are the bits they have in common. This post argues that Jesus and the first Christians were reviving a fundamental insight of the Jewish tradition. I would like to think that, if Christians became more aware of the common features, this would help overcome some of the causes of antisemitism.
According to the High Pay Centre, the Chief Executive Officers of the FTSE 100 (the 100 companies with the most money listed on the London Stock Exchange) had earned more, by 2.0 pm yesterday, than the median UK worker will be paid all year. They earned in about 30 hours as much as the average person earns in a year. Last year they didn’t do so well: had to work the whole of 39 hours to earn that much.
Except that they didn’t earn that money. They were just paid it. The richest are getting even richer. Does it matter?
A fact for today’s newspapers: food prices rose by 13.3% in December.
Here are some statements I found. I was hoping to add what the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail said about it but I couldn’t find a mention. As you read them, ask yourself where they place the cause.
I went on my obligatory safeguarding course a short while ago. The two women running it had professional expertise in sexual abuse.
On principle churches welcome anyone who turns up. This includes rape victims and the people who raped them. People may see churches as good places to find a partner, or a victim. Anyone with a public profile there needs to be aware of the dangers. But if we are to create a safer society, demonising abusers won’t help. They are God’s children too.
This cheeky question is often asked in atheist circles.
I have two answers, depending on what we are talking about.
Picture: Amber Case, www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html
This post is a plug for the talk by Iain McGilchrist which went live on Friday. Entitled ‘The Brain and a Sense of the Sacred’, it’s still available here.
McGilchrist is best known for his book The Master and His Emissary. It’s left brain right brain stuff. I can’t possibly summarise his talk, let alone his massive books, but I offer a theological appreciation of it.
It isn’t clear what Conservatives think conservatism is any longer: what aspect of actually existing British society (rather than ersatz Victorian fantasy) they seek to conserve, or even what they think the roots of the country’s problems in fact are.
So writes James Butler in the London Review of Books. The chaos characterising the British Government could be about to subside with our new Prime Minister. Perhaps he will get things back to ‘normal’ – but what is that?
