“If God came down right now, I’d believe. If He showed up in all His Godness and proved Himself to me, I’d bow down and worship. I won’t believe if I can’t see, hear and touch Him – but if He appears, I’ll believe.” Have you ever said that? Or thought it? Well, that’s Thomas’s […]
Woody Allen is famously fearful of death (of course he maintains he’s not afraid, he just doesn’t want to be there when it happens). He was once asked, ‘Aren’t you pleased to know you’ll live on in the hearts and minds of those you’ve touched?’ Woody said ‘I don’t want to live on in hearts […]
“To die is not a problem when a man has accomplished his historic mission.” Unfortunately for Leon Trotsky, an icepick cut short his mission to rule Russia. His death represented a failure. But Christ would have us believe that His death was a success. Yet there was absolutely nothing on Good Friday that looked victorious. […]
— An old car that breaks down for the last time. — A sports team that knows it can’t win. — A business that finally calls it quits. In all these situations we’d say they “gave up the ghost.” In the bible, the phrase describes death. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all said to have […]
On Saturday I spoke with an atheist who made a repeated claim: “Jesus was a hypocrite.” No matter how many times I asked him for evidence, he couldn’t point to any. Plenty in me. Plenty in himself. Innumerable instances in Christian history. But none in Christ Himself. That’s quite astonishing really. Hypocrisy is almost the […]
When you think of a martyr’s death, you might picture dignified suffering, noble sacrifice, perhaps a reluctantly admiring crowd, some final, well chosen words of grace and wisdom. We often imagine a certain glory to martyrdom. But that only goes to show we don’t know what we’re talking about. Richard Wurmbrand wrote “Tortured for Christ”, […]
What does it mean for Jesus to be Redeemer? What does it mean that He is Saviour of the world? You see many people have a gospel that depicts the Son of God swooping down to snatch a lucky few from damnation. Souls are saved and saved out of the world into another realm. The […]
The trial of Jesus has everything backwards. The Judge of the world is in the dock. The Truth is cross-examined. The Righteous One is pronounced guilty. As we saw last time, the people act as judge and jury, while at times Pilate seems more like a public defender. Now in this verse, the Governor […]
In 1963, Stanley Milgram’s experiment asked anonymous participants to deliver increasingly severe electric shocks to subjects in the next room. Unbeknownst to the participants, the shocks were not real. But had they been, they may have been fatal. The great majority of participants delivered the shocks, even though there were screams of great pain from […]
The myth of violence powerfully shapes our view of the world. We imagine that force must be met with greater force if anything will be achieved. And of course we tell ourselves that the greater force is justified if it’s done in the name of some greater good. Most Hollywood blockbusters follows this storyline. Take, […]
