Getting a religious ad “banned” by a company that doesn’t show religious advertisements is evidence not of religious persecution but of the idiocy of the Church of England’s press office.
We should be thanking God that religious (and political) ads are banned in cinemas.
As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.
One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).
In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.
Oofft.
The world does seem to be sharply divided sometimes between people who enjoy change and people who are frightened by it. It is possible that things are not so black and white when you drill down into individual attitudes. Some of us may embrace change sometimes and be threatened by it at others. However, at…
Just in case anyone is interested in the technicalities of yesterday’s Blog Redesign… What you are looking at now is based on StudioPress’s Prose theme. What you were looking at before was based on a theme by Andreas Viklund (WP-Andreas01) to whom I am grateful for offering such a good, free, stylish theme which I’ve…
I’ve spent the morning of my day off doing a little refreshing of the blog design. I decided that it was time to say goodbye to the design that I’ve been using for ages and move to something a little more minimalist. (Did I ever tell you that I was a minimalist in my heart?)…
Today shall not pass on this blog without noting the change in the law that now allows gay people to service openly in the military in the USA. The so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule that has now been consigned to history was an emblematic piece of hypocrisy. The idea was that it was OK…
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