Blogs to change your life

Perhaps you are one of the few people who read this blog who do not also read the Blogging Parson and Nothing New Under the Sun. I'd like to recommend them as important for your life.

Michael Jensen at the Blogging Parson has been posting about the history of Sydney Anglicanism, and challenging us to avoid views of 'escaping the earth' and avoiding social responsibility. He outlines a vision for Sydney christians to have a prophetic voice for the large issues we face as a society.

Byron at Nothing New Under the Sun is such a voice. He gives us a calm and considered christian perspective on the looming (and now here) ecological, economic and energy crises. Byron's blog is an excellent resource for keeping informed. But more importantly, he helps us to think and live as christians within a changing world. It is a blog that every western christian should read and engage with.

Baptisms Baptisms everywhere

Last week (and this week too) I managed to preach on 1 Peter 3 and avoid the whole Noah business (even in question time). I did fit baptism in though (for one service, it got cut in the other four because of length).

But the blogosphere is full of baptismal goodies, and , having been looked at suspiciously for my acceptance of the paedo today, thought I'd better record these gems for posterity.

Andrew Errington- ten thoughts on infant baptism

And Byron's Baptism by the book

Belief You Can Change In

I'm all for change you can believe in.
I love to think of the future and how it might be made better.
Better for the poor, better for the environment, better for the church, better for me.
And then I realize how complicit I am in all these problems and the audacity of my hope is dashed.
I'm a terribly impulsive consumer, I don't know how to organise my life to be more envirnmentally friendly, and if I did know, I probably wouldn't want to do it. A quick glance around the church and its history doesn't fill me with confidence either.
More than that, I'm only really happy to admit this failure in a blog, where it won't have much effect on what I do tomorrow.
My worries are amplified 6 billion times over when I think most people are probably the same as me.

Back in September Byron reflected on the freedom of repentance, using an Oliver O'Donovan quote

"... the freedom at the root of all freedoms [is] the freedom to repent" The Desire of the Nations.
If we are totally conditioned and determined by our past (and present) failures, then, we are stuffed.
If we can only be who we were yesterday and today, then there is no hope for tomorrow.
To be free is to be able to turn from behaviour that diminishes us, to behaviour that is life.

It is faith in Jesus Christ that gives us this freedom, to look squarely at our character, to own it with all its warts, and then act out of character.

"There is no need for us to save the faces of our past selves, for they are saved through what God is doing for our present selves." O'Donovan again, Resurrection and Moral Order, p256

So, as much as we need Change you can believe in,
far more we need Belief you can change in.


(If anyone who knows how to manipulate images wants to make me a nice red and blue "Belief You Can Change In" poster with a picture of Jesus, feel free")

Remembering the past: Nothing New Under the Sun

The very title of Byron Smiths blog invites us to look back over his archive. There is nothing new!

In October 2006
Byron was almost drawing to the end of his 'Heaven: not the end of the world' series, that didn't end my world, but certainly rocked it. There are many posts in this series.. read them, yes all of them, every last one, fantastic for the soul (hehe and obviously body too)

Byron draws on Augustine's self-criticism . Augustine seemed to be the ultimate blogger, but gives some good tips for comments


And this monster quote from Moltmann, which has shaped my experience of hope the most over the past two years

Politics and church politics

Thinking of the current state of church politics in Sydney, some of us are dissatisfied with the current order, others are bent on convincing us that there are big nasty threats to that order, and that they are our protectors. On the one side is dissatisfaction that appears to lead to an uncertain future. On the other there is a satisfied sense of security that wants to keep things exactly how they are.

Byron had a great post on hope and dissatisfaction in politics back in February.


I wonder whether his musings on Moltmann could be helpful for both sides in our church politics.
Our desire for change doesn't have to come from demonising the present, but comes from the sheer goodness of the promised future of Christ. The certainty of that promise is what should make us dissatisfied with all politics that justify their own pragmatic (and sometimes underhanded) policies. Let me make this as blunt as possible. The ACL does not secure the future kingdom of God. Nor are they THE threat to it for that matter. They are neither the messiah or the devil.