No one can be right or wrong about how to celebrate Lent, I realised the other day. Lent is a church tradition, not something instituted by Jesus or the apostles. So we’re all in the same boat, theologically speaking, of needing to figure out how Lenten practices might sensibly and meaningfully connect us to God […]
A warm welcome back to Dr Tim Bulkeley who is posting this series based on his book, Not Only A Father, looking at gendered language for God. For more on Tim’s background, see the first post. In the previous post I started with an assumption: …[t]he One True God is beyond human understanding. God is […]
Introducing Dr Tim Bulkeley, who taught me everything I know about the Old Testament! Tim has been a social worker in Belfast during ‘The Troubles’, Father Christmas in a department store, pastor of a Baptist church, missionary in darkest Africa, refugee for a couple of days, Bible teacher in universities and seminaries in five countries […]
When I was little, my internal picture of God was nothing like the white-bearded-old-man clichés. I’d never had any exposure to that idea. If you’d asked my six-year-old self, I’d have said God looks rather like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets. Sort of stern. And definitely male. I could articulate from young adulthood that […]
It took me some courage to decide to blog on this activity from the 40 acts of generosity Lent challenge. Is there any book in the world that provokes such diverse and heated reactions as the Bible? Among Christians there is an enormous range of responses, from obedience to respect to frustration. Fans of the English language […]
I considered procuring a sackcloth onesie recently. A couple of months ago, SBJ began to add sit-down-in-the-street protests to his repertoire of new behaviours. If he wanted to run off independently in a carpark but was restrained, or, maddeningly, if we wanted him to walk but he wanted to be carried, then all in an […]