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On God and Humans - a thought experiment

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  What if we tend to misunderstand the Bible? Does it matter? Does it matter if Angels really sang to shepherds or that Mary really was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus? How was Jesus both God and Man? Join me on a thought experiment for the next few minutes. First though, these are just my thoughts and as such are as much prone to error as any other human. Assume for a moment that Mary (probably Miriam anyway) was a teenage bride. Most girls married between 12-16 years of age. Let’s assume that Joseph wasn’t an old man but was also a young virulent boy/man. 16-18 years or so. If Jesus was unplanned, but what we actually see in the Gospels is a stubborn love that both Miriam and Joseph refuse to accept there is anything “wrong” in this, that there are no stables or innkeepers, instead an upper room in a family home, no angels or shepherds, no standing star – how would this affect your faith? Ask yourself the question, why would it affect your faith? It comes back to why are Ch...
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Of Gods and Humans

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  Of Gods and Humans   What if we tend to misunderstand the Bible?  Does it matter?  Does it matter if Angels really sang to shepherds or that Mary really was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus?  How was Jesus both God and Man?    Join me on a thought experiment for the next few minutes.   First though, these are just my thoughts and as such are as much prone to error as any other human.   Assume for a moment that Mary (probably Miriam anyway) was a teenage bride.  Most girls married between 12-16 years of age.   Let’s assume that Joseph wasn’t an old man but was also a young virulent boy/man.  16-18 years or so.   If Jesus was unplanned, but what we actually see in the Gospels is a stubborn love that both Miriam and Joseph refuse to accept there is anything “wrong” in this, that there are no stables or innkeepers, instead an upper room in a family home, no angels or shepherds, no standing star – how would this aff...
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Why does God allow bad things to happen

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 The world must seem a scary place at the moment.  Russia is a growing threat, the current leadership in USA appears to be unreliable, there is an increase in hatred and violence all over the world.  People are threatened by the impacts of Climate change, migration levels and financial inequity.   I was talking with a good friend yesterday and we got onto the topic of how crazy things are and they mentioned something that their daughter had said.  Essentially, they were asking a valid question of why did God allow the Bondi Beach shooting to happen.  It is a question that has been asked before of course over time.  But it remains a good question and one that on the surface would appear to be difficult to answer.  Certainly, the God who is all powerful and all seeing and yet stands by while innocent people are killed is definitely not a god who I would bow down to, or even accept.     It got me thinking of how I would answer tha...
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Location: United Kingdom
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The Christmas story.

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When you think of Jesus at Christmas, what image come to mind?  The truth is that we are surrounded by images at this time of year. Card shops, retail outlets of all sorts, social media posts bombard us with images of a stable, a star, 3 Kings etc that the image of the baby in the manger (somehow spotlessly clean!) alongside a surprisingly alert Mary and a deferential Joseph hovering in the background, that some of this has somehow become embedded in what we think of as a traditional Christmas.  We have seen this morning a lovely presentation of that story by members of the Junior Church, thank you to all involved.   Of course, there is still discussion about whether the stable really was a stable, and whether there was an innkeeper at all. It seems that Luke may have actually meant the upper room in a house, so no room in the inn, becomes no room upstairs so the baby was put on the ledge between upstairs and downstairs (where the animals were kept).  The animals exu...
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Inclusion; Like Christmas. is it too costly?

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Well I wonder how expensive your Christmas has been?   It’s been almost impossible to not be affected by the huge retail event that is Christmas here in the West.   A few weeks ago my wife and I were talking about being involved with events or ideas and the need for people to “buy in” to the event. It got me thinking about the term “buy in”.   This term itself concerns an acceptance of cost. That cost may be in financial terms, in time or in energy.   So I would like to you to think about how much you really buy in to this event we call Christmas. What does it mean to you and how much are you willing to pay?   For most people, Christmas starts well before Advent; probably around the beginning of November once the Retail sector has stopped flogging monster costumes and huge black spiders for Halloween.   Media outlets bombard us with pictures of Christmas, there are 24 hour Christmas Movie Channels, the advent of the long awaited John L...
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