“The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and loving towards all he has made.
The Lord is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth…
The Lord watches over those who love him,
but all the wicked he will destroy.”
Psalm 145.17-20
Outside Tara Street station, there is often a forlorn looking Dubliner in a green cap plugging the Big Issue magazine in quiet desperation. Every time he catches my eye, I resolve to buy a copy the next time I pass by. Just the other day, I was about to walk past him for the umpteenth time when I realised I’d put it off long enough. I paid him three euro for the latest issue.
As I waited for my DART, I turned to an article entitled “No Justice For The People of Bhopal”. The content was shocking.
In 1969 an American company (Union Carbide) built a massive carbide plant in the town of Bhopal, central India. It was an ideal location; Bhopal was situated near a large lake which provided a reliable source of water and only 2km away there was a residential neighbourhood as well as a squatter settlement containing thousands of people eager for work. Until 1979 the plant used to import methyl isocyanate (MIC), the dangerous chemical used in its pesticide production. However, in a bid to save money, the plant began to manufacture it on-site. It was this decision that lead to the destruction of a whole city and an eco-system that remains toxic to this day.
The article reads: “On the night of December 23rd 1984, the lives of the people of Bhopal would be irrovacably changed forever. At 11.30pm a dangerous chemical reaction occurred when water leaked into one of the MIC storage tanks (Tank #160). Workers noticed it when their eyes began to burn and tear and informed their supervisor, but in the spave of two hours almost 40 tons of MIC poured out of the tank and into the air, spreading about the city…Thousands were killed as they slept and hundreds of thoudands (the city had a population of 900,000) ran out into the streets vomiting, coughing with eyes streaming as their organs were decimated by the gas. The poor and the children died in huge numbers and hundreds were trampled to death in the mass rush away from the poisonous fumes.”
By morning, Bhopal was the site of a giant mass funeral as bodies piled up. 170,000 people were treated in hospitals and most of the livestock was dead. The trees withered and chronic food and fuel shortages followed the disaster. The long term affects of the gas leakage continue to afflict survivors with lingering diseases and disabilities. Many suffer from an array of serious health problems that have been misdiagnosed or ignored by local doctors. These include respiratory ailments like chronic bronchitis and emphysema, gastro-intestinal conditions such as chronic gastritis and hyperacidity, eye problems like cataracts, conjunctivitis, poor memory and motor skills, psychiatric problems and musculoskeletal problems.
Investigations and reports into the events leading up to the disaster have been repressed but it is clear that a combination of technical, organizational and human error caused the accident. The immediate cause was the leakage of water into Tank #160 but it was exacerbated by the failure of containment and safety measures and a complete lack of emergency procedures. Much of the carbide plant equipment was woefully out of order; temperature and pressure gauges were antiquated and unreliable, refrigeration units had been shut off, the gas scrubber and flare tower designer to neutralise and burn off any escaping MIC had also been off for some time. This ensured that the alarm on the tank – fitted to warn of any leakage – failed.
This litany of failings and the clear evidence of negligence on the part of Union Carbide should have ensured that the people of Bhopal revieved immediate and significant compensation. Sadly, this has not been the case. Beurocracy and corruption ensured that after a series of court cases, the people of Bhopal were awarded an outrageously paltry sum of money. Initially, a one time payment of RS1, 500 (26euro) was paid to families. Later, in 2007, after further court cases, certain individuals were paid RS25,000 (438euro). Out of the 1,029,517 who claimed for compensation, almost half were rejected. Furthermore, Union Carbide have never admitted any liability. In June of this year, local managers at Bhopal were finally sentenced to two years imprisonment for their part in the disaster, 25 years after the event. It is likely that these local Indian employees were scapegoats as no American members of Union Carbide, including the then chief executive Warren Anderson, have ever appeared in court.
The glaring injustice of such a situation is almost beyond belief. As I reflected on this article, I was reminded of the words of Miroslav Volf I had read in Keller’s The Reason for God (pp.74):
“If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence – that God would not be worthy of worship…the only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that violence is legitimate only when it comes from God...My thesis that the practise of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many…in the West…[But] it takes the quiet of a surburban home for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence [results from the belief in] God’s refusal to judge. In a sun-scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die…[with] the other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind.”
As I read about the disaster in Bhopal and the ensuing miscarriage of justice, everything in me wanted to do violence to a system of corruption and indifference and the individuals who assisted in perpectuating the untold suffering of thousands. The thought that there were those who deliberately aspired to pervert justice and deny the suffering people of Bhopal the compensation needed to pay their medical expenses sickened me. It sickened me even more to think that such a perversion of justice sprung from a desire to maintain the prosperity of an American multinational money-machine. The lives of thousands were ravaged to safeguard and protect the prosperity of the wealthy few. The case of Bhopal is one more sickening example of the injustice that plagues human society.
People will often say that those who believe in a God of judgement will never approach enemies with a desire to reconcile with them. Further, it is often said that those who believe in a God of judgement are irrevocably shaped into his image; they become angry, violent and puritanical. In fact, as Keller argues, the opposite is the case. It is the lack of belief in a God of vengeance that secretly nourishes violence. The human impulse to make perpetrators of violence and suffering pay for their crimes is almost an overwhelming one. It cannot possibly be overcome with platitudes like “Now don’t you see that violence won’t solve anything?” Many of the surviving men, women and children of Bhopal are seething with impotent rage and despair because of what they have suffered. They cry out for justice night and day. Can their passion for justive be honoured in a way that does not nurture their desire for blood vengeance? Can ours? According to Volf, the only resource for this is belief in the concept of divine justice. As Keller remarks, if I don’t believe in a God who will eventually put things right, I will take up the sword and I too will be sucked into the endless vortex of hatred, seething anger and retributive violence. Only if I am sure that there’s a God who will right all wrongs and settle all accounts perfectly do I have the power to refrain.
Volf, who himself has encountered the violence of the Balkans, argues that the doctrine of God’s final judgement is a necessary undergirding for the moral capacity to refrain from the hatred and bloodlust that grips us when we hear of cases like Bhopal. For the people of Bhopal too, in the grip of seething despair and loss, the prospect of a God who will right all wrongs is the only sure prospect of solace.
Signing off –
The Scribbling Apprentice
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Today I Went to The Temple
The Temple is an exhibition currently on show in the Monster Truck gallery, under the black church print studio in Temple Bar (http://monstertruck.ie). It is a joint venture by three Irish artists; Brian Coldrick, James Kirwan and Christian Reeves.
As the review says: “Taking note of the cast of characters and situations to be found in the heaving mass of subcultures, pilgrims and image worship at the swirling center of the modern city, the three artists have created a host of paintings, drawings and 3D work which pokes an eye at the robes, sacrifices and symbols of those who bow down at the temple of the city. Penitent drunks, merciless hen nights, iconic goths, preachy chuggers, awestruck tourists all weave their way in and out of the early houses, late bars, hipster stores and head shops that make up the city’s sanctuaries and apses.”
Never before has the frenzied religiosity of Dublin binge-culture been laid bare so powerfully. Employing a mish-mash of comic-book imagery, collage and printed clichés, the artists manage to capture the spirit of our city by night. Two pieces in particular caught my eye. To the right, just as you come in the door, there is a triptych that perfectly conjures up the aura of heady devotion to unalloyed hedonism that, one could argue, characterizes our culture more than anything else. In the middle of the exhibition is a totem pole replete with images that communicate the numinous magnetism alcohol seems to exert on the Irish psyche. All in all, the viewer is offered a profound, and often shocking insight into the bleary, kaleidoscopic world of contemporary paganism. It is nothing less than a manic, cartoon depiction of the spirit of the age. Well worth a look.
The Temple is on show until July 28th.
As the review says: “Taking note of the cast of characters and situations to be found in the heaving mass of subcultures, pilgrims and image worship at the swirling center of the modern city, the three artists have created a host of paintings, drawings and 3D work which pokes an eye at the robes, sacrifices and symbols of those who bow down at the temple of the city. Penitent drunks, merciless hen nights, iconic goths, preachy chuggers, awestruck tourists all weave their way in and out of the early houses, late bars, hipster stores and head shops that make up the city’s sanctuaries and apses.”
Never before has the frenzied religiosity of Dublin binge-culture been laid bare so powerfully. Employing a mish-mash of comic-book imagery, collage and printed clichés, the artists manage to capture the spirit of our city by night. Two pieces in particular caught my eye. To the right, just as you come in the door, there is a triptych that perfectly conjures up the aura of heady devotion to unalloyed hedonism that, one could argue, characterizes our culture more than anything else. In the middle of the exhibition is a totem pole replete with images that communicate the numinous magnetism alcohol seems to exert on the Irish psyche. All in all, the viewer is offered a profound, and often shocking insight into the bleary, kaleidoscopic world of contemporary paganism. It is nothing less than a manic, cartoon depiction of the spirit of the age. Well worth a look.
The Temple is on show until July 28th.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Church History and Apologetics
In his book, Humble Apologetics, John Stackhouse Jr. speaks of the ahistoricism that blights contemporary Western culture. There is a widespread lack of historical consciousness that, more often than not, serves to prevent people from giving Christianity a fair hearing. Stackhouse quotes C. S Lewis: “the Present occupies almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called ‘The Good Old Days’ – a small, comic jungle in which highwaymen, Queen Elizebeth, knights-in-armour etc. wander about.” Of course, Lewis was writing about a generation ago. Nonetheless today (as in Lewis’ day) people can often be quite ignorant of, and even sceptical, about history. Stackhouse warns that this disregard for history “as something that frames our current experience and as something from which we can learn important information is not recognised enough by apologists” (pp. 50).
I think he’s quite right. The ahistoricism Stackhouse speaks of chimes in nicely with current postmodern epistemological doubt and a consumerist focus on instant gratification – arguably as much hallmarks of contemporary Irish culture as Canadian or American culture (the context in which Stackhouse is writing). People are generally focused on the now to the degree that the past (and certainly the long-ago past) becomes irrelevant and somewhat disassociated from the immediate present. Perhaps the barrage of media imagery, the twitching of screens and the instant flicker of digital technology causes us to loose our sense of a concrete continuum of history.
As Stackhouse says, for most, the past is not a righly complex continuum made up of a variety forces that require patient interpretation. Instead, for many, Christianity is purely a simplistic collection “of tableaux that sit fixed in one’s mind as stark moral lessons: Christianity mounted bloody Crusades against noble Muslims; Christians burned hapless women as witxhes…Christians oppressed women and spoiled sex…Christians abused the earth.” And yet, Christianity depends fundamentally upon what happened in the past; particularly in the career of Jesus and what the Bible (the New Testament documents, for a start) says about it. As such, apologists must consider how to respond to this ahistoricism that is so dominant in our culture.
This is one reason why I think Church historians often make wonderful apologists. D B Hart, for example, is (as far as I know) a Patristics scholar who specialises in the Greek Fathers (http://davidbhart.blogspot.com/). His book, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolutiuon and Its Fashionable Enemies engages in extensive historical apologetics in the opening chapters, demonstrating from a close study of history the groundlessness of so many contemporary myths born of the prevalent ahistoricism Stackhouse speaks of.
Another church historian, writing within the context of the Presbyterian tradition, is Carl Trueman (http://www.reformation21.org/carl-trueman/ ). Having done much of his advanced study within the realm of seventeenth century church history (focusing mainly on the Trinitarian theology of John Owen), Trueman is surprisingly well equipped to engage in incisive contemporary apologetics. As far as I know, he has published two volumes of collected articles (The Wages of Spin and Minority Report). Both are replete with brilliant and quirky articles; one such article, for example, links the likes of John Calvin with digital radios and schmaltzy car-salesmen. Another explores the connections between a very unlikely pair of thinkers; Carl Henry and Edward Said. Like Hart, Trueman often delves into the dank corners of church history to unleash a salvo of crippling and on-the-botton critiques of modernity and contemporary atheism. In the case of both theologians, a deep grasp of church history makes for riveting, cutting-edge apologetics.
D B Hart writes: “much of modernity should be understood not as a grand revolt against the tyranny of faith, not as a movement of human liberation and progress, but as a counterrevolution, a reactionary rejection of freedom which it no longer understands, but upon which it remains parasitic. Even when modern persons turn away from Christian conviction, there are any number of paths that have been irrevocably closed to them – either because they lead toward philosophical positions that Christianity has assumed successfully into its own story, or because they lead toward forms of “superstition” that Christianity has renedered utterly incredible to modern minds. A post-Christian unbeliever is still, most definitely, for good or ill, post-Christian. We live in a world transformed by an ancient revolution – social, intellectual, metaphysical, moral, spiritual – the immensity of which we often only barely grasp.”
The ancient revolution – perhaps the only true revolution in the history of the West – is, of course, Christianity. If we are not careful to safeguard and communicate history effectively, we will slip into the mud of ahistoricism and lose our capacity to understand the infinite scope and beauty of that ancient revolution. And this pained world, esconced on the drab tides of modernity, will lose out on the splendour and bounty of the Christianity it has unmoored itself from.
Signing off -
The Scribbling Apprentice.
I think he’s quite right. The ahistoricism Stackhouse speaks of chimes in nicely with current postmodern epistemological doubt and a consumerist focus on instant gratification – arguably as much hallmarks of contemporary Irish culture as Canadian or American culture (the context in which Stackhouse is writing). People are generally focused on the now to the degree that the past (and certainly the long-ago past) becomes irrelevant and somewhat disassociated from the immediate present. Perhaps the barrage of media imagery, the twitching of screens and the instant flicker of digital technology causes us to loose our sense of a concrete continuum of history.
As Stackhouse says, for most, the past is not a righly complex continuum made up of a variety forces that require patient interpretation. Instead, for many, Christianity is purely a simplistic collection “of tableaux that sit fixed in one’s mind as stark moral lessons: Christianity mounted bloody Crusades against noble Muslims; Christians burned hapless women as witxhes…Christians oppressed women and spoiled sex…Christians abused the earth.” And yet, Christianity depends fundamentally upon what happened in the past; particularly in the career of Jesus and what the Bible (the New Testament documents, for a start) says about it. As such, apologists must consider how to respond to this ahistoricism that is so dominant in our culture.
This is one reason why I think Church historians often make wonderful apologists. D B Hart, for example, is (as far as I know) a Patristics scholar who specialises in the Greek Fathers (http://davidbhart.blogspot.com/). His book, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolutiuon and Its Fashionable Enemies engages in extensive historical apologetics in the opening chapters, demonstrating from a close study of history the groundlessness of so many contemporary myths born of the prevalent ahistoricism Stackhouse speaks of.
Another church historian, writing within the context of the Presbyterian tradition, is Carl Trueman (http://www.reformation21.org/carl-trueman/ ). Having done much of his advanced study within the realm of seventeenth century church history (focusing mainly on the Trinitarian theology of John Owen), Trueman is surprisingly well equipped to engage in incisive contemporary apologetics. As far as I know, he has published two volumes of collected articles (The Wages of Spin and Minority Report). Both are replete with brilliant and quirky articles; one such article, for example, links the likes of John Calvin with digital radios and schmaltzy car-salesmen. Another explores the connections between a very unlikely pair of thinkers; Carl Henry and Edward Said. Like Hart, Trueman often delves into the dank corners of church history to unleash a salvo of crippling and on-the-botton critiques of modernity and contemporary atheism. In the case of both theologians, a deep grasp of church history makes for riveting, cutting-edge apologetics.
D B Hart writes: “much of modernity should be understood not as a grand revolt against the tyranny of faith, not as a movement of human liberation and progress, but as a counterrevolution, a reactionary rejection of freedom which it no longer understands, but upon which it remains parasitic. Even when modern persons turn away from Christian conviction, there are any number of paths that have been irrevocably closed to them – either because they lead toward philosophical positions that Christianity has assumed successfully into its own story, or because they lead toward forms of “superstition” that Christianity has renedered utterly incredible to modern minds. A post-Christian unbeliever is still, most definitely, for good or ill, post-Christian. We live in a world transformed by an ancient revolution – social, intellectual, metaphysical, moral, spiritual – the immensity of which we often only barely grasp.”
The ancient revolution – perhaps the only true revolution in the history of the West – is, of course, Christianity. If we are not careful to safeguard and communicate history effectively, we will slip into the mud of ahistoricism and lose our capacity to understand the infinite scope and beauty of that ancient revolution. And this pained world, esconced on the drab tides of modernity, will lose out on the splendour and bounty of the Christianity it has unmoored itself from.
Signing off -
The Scribbling Apprentice.
Who or what did Jesus think He was?
Another brilliant almost-4-minute short of N T Wright describing who Jesus understood himself to be - touches on what Jesus understood by the Kingdom of God and the significance of his death on the cross. Well worth the time.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Scandalous Cross
I’ve spent most of the afternoon preparing a sermon on Acts 9.1-20, Luke’s account of the conversion of Saul. It strikes me that the reaction of Saul to the earliest Christians offers helpful insight just how the message of a crucified Messiah would have been received. As noted in the last post, only those who were cursed by God were nailed to a cross; only the most despised reprobates suffered crucifixion. The words of Deuteronomy 21.23 were burned into the mind of every religious Jew of the first century AD: “Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” And so it was with Saul; the message of the atonement, the crucified Messiah, could not be tolerated. It was anathema. It was unthinkable. It was obscene and profane.
Saul first crops up in Acts 8.1, guarding the outer garments of the witnesses (in conformity with the law set down in Deuteronomy 17.7) as they hurled the first stones at Stephen, who would become the first Christian martyr. Saul is “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (Acts 9.1), intent on rounding up and assasinating those who would contravene sacred Jewish law and preach a crucified Messiah. He secures letters from the High Priest to synagogues in Damascus so that he might round up Christians who were seeking refuge there. It is likely that he determinedly walked the 300 km between Jerusalem and Damascus, utterly fixated on rounding up those "who belonged to the Way” – the Christian converts who were making such a mockery of Jewish ancestral tradition by proclaiming that a crucified Nazarene was the Son of Man.
Saul’s intense hatred of the earliest Christians gives us an insight into just how scandalous the message of the cross was to the ears of a first century Jew. The concept of a crucified Messiah was outrageous blasphemy. The gospel the Christians proclaimed was totally incompatible with the Jewish tradition Saul was a part of. F. F Bruce writes in Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free: “No heed could be paid to them when they [the Christians] supported their affirmation with claims that Jesus had come back from the dead and appeared to them. In making this claim they were either deceivers or self-decieved, for none of the arguments which they used for Jesus’ messiahship could stand against one irrefragable argument on the other side: a crucified man could not conceivably be the elect one of God” (pp. 71).
“Hanging up alive” is the Hebrew phrase for crucifixion in 4QpNah, one of the Qumran scrolls; it well conveys the horror with which crucifixion was viewed by pious first century Jews like Saul. According to Luke (Acts 5.30, 10.39), the phrase “hanging on a gibbet” was used in the earliest apostolic preaching of the atonement, as if to convey how religiously shocking this mode of execution was. The cross was so cruel that the Romans refused to allow their own citizens to be crucified, regardless of what the person had done. Cicero, the Roman statesman and philosopher (106-43 BC) reputedly wrote that crucifixion was “a most cruel and disgusting punishment. It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in chains, it is an enormity to flog one, sheer murder to slay one; what, then, shall I say of crucifixion? It is impossible to find the word for such an abomination.Let the very mention of the cross be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears.”
After Saul’s dramatic encounter with the risen Christ, he began to preach the message he had so passionately sought to stamp out; the gospel of the crucified Messiah. He would later write, as the apostle Paul, in the midst of much hostility from his own countrymen: “we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block (skandalon) to Jews and foolishness to gentiles…” (1 Corinthians 1.23). The message of the atoning death of Christ was a scandal; it was repulsive to Jew and Greek alike.
To a great degree, we have assimilated the cross as the symbol of Christianity; it is a given, something taken for granted and causing very little stir or reproach. Certainly it rarely, if ever, shocks or appals anybody. It does not gall our religious sensibilities as it did the Jews' of the first century. In fact, it has become the world’s most prominent and beloved symbol of Christianity. Nonetheless, as Mark Driscoll points out, this is basically “akin to a junkie’s needle or a perverts used condom becoming the world’s most beloved symbol and adorning homes, churches, and bodies.”
And yet, Calvin could call the cross a glimmering, many-sided jewel. How can the bloody death of a man on a cross be described as a precious jewel, shining with radiant beauty? Some of the following posts will view the crucifixion of Jesus through the only lens that enables us to see the cross for the treasure it is; the words of Scripture.
Mightily,
The Scribbling Apprentice
Saul first crops up in Acts 8.1, guarding the outer garments of the witnesses (in conformity with the law set down in Deuteronomy 17.7) as they hurled the first stones at Stephen, who would become the first Christian martyr. Saul is “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (Acts 9.1), intent on rounding up and assasinating those who would contravene sacred Jewish law and preach a crucified Messiah. He secures letters from the High Priest to synagogues in Damascus so that he might round up Christians who were seeking refuge there. It is likely that he determinedly walked the 300 km between Jerusalem and Damascus, utterly fixated on rounding up those "who belonged to the Way” – the Christian converts who were making such a mockery of Jewish ancestral tradition by proclaiming that a crucified Nazarene was the Son of Man.
Saul’s intense hatred of the earliest Christians gives us an insight into just how scandalous the message of the cross was to the ears of a first century Jew. The concept of a crucified Messiah was outrageous blasphemy. The gospel the Christians proclaimed was totally incompatible with the Jewish tradition Saul was a part of. F. F Bruce writes in Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free: “No heed could be paid to them when they [the Christians] supported their affirmation with claims that Jesus had come back from the dead and appeared to them. In making this claim they were either deceivers or self-decieved, for none of the arguments which they used for Jesus’ messiahship could stand against one irrefragable argument on the other side: a crucified man could not conceivably be the elect one of God” (pp. 71).
“Hanging up alive” is the Hebrew phrase for crucifixion in 4QpNah, one of the Qumran scrolls; it well conveys the horror with which crucifixion was viewed by pious first century Jews like Saul. According to Luke (Acts 5.30, 10.39), the phrase “hanging on a gibbet” was used in the earliest apostolic preaching of the atonement, as if to convey how religiously shocking this mode of execution was. The cross was so cruel that the Romans refused to allow their own citizens to be crucified, regardless of what the person had done. Cicero, the Roman statesman and philosopher (106-43 BC) reputedly wrote that crucifixion was “a most cruel and disgusting punishment. It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in chains, it is an enormity to flog one, sheer murder to slay one; what, then, shall I say of crucifixion? It is impossible to find the word for such an abomination.Let the very mention of the cross be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears.”
After Saul’s dramatic encounter with the risen Christ, he began to preach the message he had so passionately sought to stamp out; the gospel of the crucified Messiah. He would later write, as the apostle Paul, in the midst of much hostility from his own countrymen: “we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block (skandalon) to Jews and foolishness to gentiles…” (1 Corinthians 1.23). The message of the atoning death of Christ was a scandal; it was repulsive to Jew and Greek alike.
To a great degree, we have assimilated the cross as the symbol of Christianity; it is a given, something taken for granted and causing very little stir or reproach. Certainly it rarely, if ever, shocks or appals anybody. It does not gall our religious sensibilities as it did the Jews' of the first century. In fact, it has become the world’s most prominent and beloved symbol of Christianity. Nonetheless, as Mark Driscoll points out, this is basically “akin to a junkie’s needle or a perverts used condom becoming the world’s most beloved symbol and adorning homes, churches, and bodies.”
And yet, Calvin could call the cross a glimmering, many-sided jewel. How can the bloody death of a man on a cross be described as a precious jewel, shining with radiant beauty? Some of the following posts will view the crucifixion of Jesus through the only lens that enables us to see the cross for the treasure it is; the words of Scripture.
Mightily,
The Scribbling Apprentice
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
What exactly is the Kingdom of God?
These two videos of Dr. John Stackhouse speaking on the Kingdom of God are apt, in light of our recent sermon series in Immanuel church (www.immanuelchurchdublin.org). We've been looking at precisely the same topic in the parables of Jesus, found in Matthew 13. RecentlyI've been reading Stackhouse's book, Humble Apologetics. It is a very helpful, concise and insightful work. I'm hoping to jam up a post containing some of the interesting things he has to share. In the meantime, enjoy these short videos.
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