“There is a depressing predictability to what’s currently happening in the Middle-East. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth – something that Jesus warned about in the Sermon on the Mount. Israel under Roman occupation was the original context of those words. If you live like that, the whole world ends up blind and whole world ends up toothless. But how do you break the cycle of violence? (And do we wish to?) Jesus, didn’t lead a violent revolt against the Roman Empire; he didn’t attack other religions. He criticised his fellow Jews for their hypocrisy and taught his disciples to be meek ..read more

“Jesus has already decided that he, like the father in his story, wants to be in the house with all the sinners. Now he is hoping that the religious folks will join him. He knows it is a stretch. They have trained themselves to reject people, convincing themselves and each other that separation is pious and necessary ..read more

“Jesus taught us that the kingdom of God is near, close, not far away, among us, within us, and people are pressing into it. To participate in this kingdom we are called to live in a state of deeply honest and perpetual re-cognition. I believe that there is a current reality of true peace and joy that we miss out on because the subtle influence of institutionalized Christianity has shifted our focus far away from the present and, like the Pharisees, has “shut the kingdom of heaven in front of people”. Unhealthy religion refuses to live in the present; it will either push out hope into a distan ..read more

“I want members to know what it really means to be a Christadelphian. We are a dynamic community, constantly changing, re-reading, rethinking, and adapting. The way the Christadelphian community is defined is different from actual Christadelphian practice, which now includes a diverse range of worship styles ..read more

“So I had started to wonder. Perhaps God was just an idea people made up? Maybe that’s enough for there to be some kind of meaning? But I was stuck. I still loved the scriptures with their teachings and narratives, but I didn’t know how to square them with the physicalist assumptions I had silently taken on board ..read more

“Thus, we learn Eve’s help for man is described in the same way as God’s. This marries perfectly with her name: she is the Heavenly breath to Adam’s Earthly clay. In both cases the implication encoded in the Hebrew is that God introduced woman to man, not as a subordinate, but as a message from Heaven to commend (perhaps even model?) godliness ..read more

“Shouldn’t we be mending our nets instead of rooting out tares, rending our garments, or dividing our fellowships into smaller and smaller groups? Jesus told us to become fishers, not weeders ..read more

“Whilst so many suffer, the simple hope of Christmas is for a fairer world full of peace and justice. This on its own should encourage us all to tell this story far and wide, free of fear that it contains anything which would offend our God ..read more

“It's tempting to crave certainty and steadfastness in our faith, but that is not faith. God is steadfast, that is what we can be certain of. He demonstrates his certainty and steadfastness in his unrelenting, and pursuing love. The steadfast thing that we can cling to is being known and loved by God. That is what we can rest on ..read more

“All around us in nature we see the pattern of death, burial and resurrection. Seeds die, fall to the ground and then new life occurs. It is just the same with the spiritual. The unhelpful desires must die and be buried in order for new life to grow ..read more