Lost Pages

The prospect of my true identity being revealed in Christ on the last day means that I am not faced with the choice of either realizing and actualizing all the aspects of my self now or having them lie dormant forever. My identity can be messy, confusing, and even frustrating to me in the present in a way that does not signal an ultimate or final denial of who I am. By the grace of God I am what I am, and what I shall be has not yet been made known (1 Corinthians 15:10; 1 John 3:2). In a late modern culture that rhymes complete self-expression with authenticity and places a heavy burden on selves to become transparent and fully actualized, I know that as a Christian I need not be crushed by the obligation of having fully to express, or even fully to understand myself here and now. If I remain torn between different identities, if I remain frustrated by who I am until the moment of my death, I know that just like the carnivorous lion who will lie down with the lamb and yet be more lion ...

Why do people who claim that they feel they are born in the wrong body insist that the answer to their feeling is to change that body to conform to their feelings? I have never really understood their argument. Is it because they feel their feelings are immutable ?  In other words they believe what they feel is who they really are.  Now if that is their rationale it follows that their underlying assumption is that the true authentic part of us is that which is unchanging.  The problem is human beings by nature  are mutable. There is nothing immutable about us.  Only God is immutable.  We are always changing. We grow and decay. Indeed that is the order of the universe according to Big Bang cosmology and evolutionary theory that these people old dear.   So one cannot ground their identity in a some immutable characteristic they possess  because such a characteristic does not exist. The logic that being true to self is confirming one’s feeling, ...

Martin Davie has written an interesting review  of a recent book on transgender issues. Towards the article he highlights five important theological truths about transgender identity:   1.   Sex means the way that human bodies are configured to play a particular role as males or females in sexual reproduction. 2 . Human beings are made up of bodies and souls and, for the reason just given, their sexual identity is determined by their bodies. 3 . Intersex conditions are a result of disorders of human sexual development, which point to the inherently dimorphic nature of human sexuality by being developments which serve no positive functional purpose. 4 . It is impossible for either hormones or surgery to actually change someone’s sex. 5.  The sex into which we have been born is to be welcomed and lived out as a good gift from God because it is an integral part of who God made us to be, and that rejecting it and adopting an alternative artificial identit...

Carl Trueman  has an  interesting blog  post where he discusses why young people in the UK, and media in general, are more exercised about the death of George Floyd than what is going on in Hong Kong. He suggests that it comes down to current negative perceptions of democracy in an era of identity chaos:  I suggest that this is the result of two complementary cultural pathologies, both with rather worrying implications. First, the issue with Hong Kong lacks cultural appeal because it involves the importance of democratic freedoms—and democracy is increasingly seen by the burn-it-to-the-ground right and left (Exhibits A and B: Trump and Sanders) as part of the problem, not the solution. Fighting for democracy in the West is simply not as trendy as it was in the days of the Cold War. Now we take democratic freedoms for granted even as we decry the components of democratic culture—e.g., freedom of speech, freedom of religion, respectful civility toward those who disagre...

An interesting BBC article notes that social media platforms like Facebook are not merely reflecting our preferences but also actively shaping them though "nudge like": Platforms like Facebook are curating our news and information under catchall headings like “trending topics”, or criteria like “relevance” – but we only rarely get glimpses into how the filtering happens. This is important because subtle changes in the information we are exposed to can transform our behaviour. To understand why, consider an insight from behavioural science that has been widely adopted by governments and other authorities around the world: the policy “nudge”. This is where subtle tactics are used to encourage us to adopt a particular behaviour. One famous example is making organ donation opt-out rather than opt-in. Instead of requiring people to register themselves as organ donors, an opt-out system automatically assumes that anyone’s organs can be used for donation unless they have specif...

On 3 October 2013, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the small Italian island of Lampedusa. Many of immigrants had come to Libya from other parts of Africa. When the Libyan uprising begun they sought to find greener pastures. Around 360 perished, with Italian Coast Guard rescuing 155. A week later another shipwreck occurred killing 34 people.

Does God have a name? Is God the name for God? Is God bothered what I call him? Does God care about it at all? And if he does, why does God care? Am I obligated to care for God’s name? How do I know when I am not caring for God’s name? What happens if I don’t care for God’s name? These are important questions! Questions that boil down to a single one: Does God’s name really matter?  The third commandment provides the clearest instruction in the Bible concerning God’s name. Among the Ten Commandments that Moses delivered to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai contained this injunction: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” [Exodus 20:7] There are three observations we can make about God’s name from this verse. First, God has a name . Exodus 20 begins with God making himself known to His chosen people Israel. He declares, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out o...

There are moments in the Christian life when the weight of our failure casts a shadow on who we are in God. These moments are not diminished by how long we have walked with God. On the contrary, it is the paradox of the Christian life that the more I grow to know Jesus the more aware I become of my own sinfulness. The closer I get to God the larger the gap becomes between God’s holiness and my own sinful nature. It is the equivalent of moving from standard definition television to more high definition television. With each step of spiritual growth the reality of my own sinful becomes sharper – and so is my deeper need of God's grace! Confronted with this paradox, I am often tempted to retreat and fall back on my good deeds. I am tempted to work harder, so that my earthly account somehow gives me a resting knowledge that God is proud of me. And in succumbing to such temptations, I sometime replace a God centred identity with a self created identity. I begin curve an identity apart...

I wonder how you introduce yourself to people who you have never met before, but know that your relationship will necessaily go beyond the brief moment. These could be people you meet at the start of a new job or new neighbours. Or it might even be when you attend a local church for the first time. How do you introduce yourself? When I was growing up in Nchelenge (Luapula, Zambia) having penpals was a big thing. Penpals are people who regularly write each other letters. The more penpals we had the more good we felt that we were in touch with the rest of the world, despite living in a village! Hearing from them made us transcend our local circumstances. Starting a penpal friendship always hinged on that first introductory letter. You had to introduce yourself to her. And it was account of what you wrote that the person found you fascinating to correspond with.  The process of penpal writing helped clarify not only who I regarded myself to be, but also if the friendship lasted...

It’s so easy to cash in these chips on my shoulder   So easy to loose this old tongue like a tiger   It’s easy to let all this bitterness smolder, just to hide it away like a cigarette lighter   It’s easy to curse and to hurt and to hinder   It’s easy to not have the heart to remember   That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God   I’ve got voices that scream in my head like a siren   Fears that I feel in the night when I sleep   Stupid choices I made when I played in the mire, like a kid in the mud on some dirty blind street / I’ve got sorrow to spare, I’ve got loneliness too   I’ve got blood on these hands that hold on to the truth   That I am a priest and a prince in the Kindgom of God   I swore on the Bible to not tell a lie / But I’ve lied and lied   And I crossed my heart and I hoped to die / And I’ve died and died   But if it’s true that you gathered my sin in your hand, and yo...

Worship is first your identity before it is ever your activity. You are a worshiper, so everything you think, desire, choose, do, or say is shaped by worship - Paul David Tripp (Source: What Did You Expect? )