What’s so good about being nice?
Nice isn't good; mean isn't bad. There. I said it. You've long suspected my heresy. Now you have proof in black and white. But it's true. Nice isn't good and our unshakeable conviction that it is, is making us bad. Let me explain what I mean. Imagine you're walking down the street and you see a guy manhandling a woman. You have several options. One of your options is to be nice. Nice might do a number of things under these circumstances. It might look away awkwardly and tell itself that the matter is between them. It might offer her a sympathetic glance; the proverbial "be warmed and filled." It might even, in it's more courageous expressions, approach the man and ask him to be nice. The thing nice cannot do in such a circumstance is be good. Goodness demands anger in such circumstances. A... Read more
What is marriage?
I sat down this afternoon to consider a question of increasing importance in modern life. What is marriage? What exactly is marriage? What follows is a collection of my thoughts on that question. It is not my goal to outline what a marriage should look like. Or what is Christian marriage per se. But rather, my goal is to get to the very fundamental core of what constitutes a relationship as a marriage. Biblically. These thoughts are prompted in part by a post titled When Two So-Called “Married” Women (or Men) Repent by John Piper in which he argues that same-sex marriage is not valid marriage. To decide whether I agree with him, I need to understand what marriage is more precisely. What is marriage? Is marriage a legal thing? Is marriage an ecclesiastical thing? Is marriage a spiritual thi... Read more
Delight
How would you label the expression on the face of that Ugandan boy?! When my granddaughter started up her new bubble-making machine, the 50 or so noisy Sunday School children stopped suddenly with their mouths open. They’d never seen bubbles and were afraid of them! After being shown that they do not hurt, the children were delighted. Ecstatic, some were still afraid to touch the bubbles and used small branches to pop them. When is the last time your heart was so thrilled that joy and delight registered on your face? Is this even possible in the midst of severe trials? Everything God does is to increase our joy in Him. In the midst of our unworthiness and our pain, God’s love, majesty and tender mercy actually bring joy and awe. He delights in delighting us. “God is good and does good.”1 M... Read more
You get one life. How are you using it?
This is not an inspirational book. It's a hands-on, 44-page guide for living your life deliberately in 2017. But it is rooted in some inspirational truths. This is how the introduction starts: You get one life. Just one. You live it. You use it up. And then it’s gone. Your one life is precious. It’s short. It’s fragile. And it’s permanent. It’s precious because it’s an irreplaceable, customised gift from God himself. It’s short because it precedes the infinity of eternity. It’s fragile because it could end at any moment. It’s permanent because it’s unrepeatable, irreversible, and has implications for you and others for as long as God lives. This is not a practise run. There is no “take two.” There is no backspace on the keyboard of life. The moments come, they pass, and then they are gone.... Read more
A new lease on life for InFocus
It's been over eleven years since InFocus was founded and this year could have easily been the last for this website. But I sat down with some key people behind this website recently and we decided that the website still has a role to play and a purpose to serve. For instance, there are topics that the more mainstream blogs won't feel the need to cover because their readership don't come from a Fundamentalist background. Not only can we offer an Australian point of view, but we can offer a perspective from a Fundamentalist background as well. We can, therefore, provide a bridge between Australian Fundamentalism and more mainstream Evangelicalism. We don't want to be an "abuse blog." We don't want to be an anti-anything blog. We want to be pro-God, pro-grace, pro-gospel, pro-health, pro-gro... Read more
