Mother Nature Unleashed???

It's more likely today that newsreaders will intone the sad news that 'mother nature unleashed her power' again in the latest tornado or cyclone or earthquake.

This language fits exactly with living in a post-Christian society of course but perhaps even some Christians are chary of suggesting that an earthquake is a God's demonstration of his power.

And yet the Old Testament is full of such witness (e.g., Ps 60.2; Isa 2.19, 21) and the New Testament too (Matt 28.2; Acts 16.26).

'Mother nature' which is creation, does not operate autonomously but is under the hand of God the creator. How could it be otherwise since creation is His creation?

But then what of the devastation that such acts of God bring about? Deaths, injuries, damage to property, dislocation of populations! No small consequences!

Whatever we come to conclude about the problem of evil we have to reckon with Jesus' words in Luke (13.1-5) who commented that those caught up in two contemporary sufferings that they were not worse sinners than others not so affected.

Jesus did not address the issue of evil but rather challenged his hearers, 'unless you repent you will likewise perish' (v5). These happenings are salutary warnings about our transient state as creatures.

I don't necessarily accept all of John Piper's theology but he writes some good things on this Lukan passage above.

Hindu Woman from a Brahmin Family finds Salvation

This video is an inspiration and shows the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ over the powers of spiritual darkness.

The Trinity a Forgotten Teaching Among Worship Song Writers?

When I hear some recent church songs I wonder whether Christianity has become a Jesus-only movement!

Some songs talk about nothing else but Jesus. Of course we all love Jesus but the calling of the Son is to lead us to the Father.

I appreciate that the Trinity is heavy-duty teaching in so many ways because heretics stand ready to demote the Son to a mere creature and the Moslems want to relegate him to an inferior prophet to Mohammed. And Judaism sees him in even lower terms.

And Christians too claim not to understand it! Yet the teaching makes the Christian religion distinctive among all religions!

But we are Christians, followers of Jesus because he is God's son who reveals the Father through the power of the Spirit.

What we do in our songs/hymns we are likely to do in our prayers. So some will pray to the Son directly and never mention the Father. That's not the practice of the biblical writers who consistently pray to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit (e.g., Eph 1.16-20). Even the Lord Jesus in the Lord's Prayer teaches us to pray to the Father.

Why then do we find this poor hymnology that fails to get the persons of the Godhead in their rightful places?

Cruden's Times and Insanity

Postscript to my recent post on the life of Alexander Cruden (1699-1770).

We find it quite hard to imagine to imagine how people could found themselves so easily incarcerated in gaols or private asylums supposedly 'mad' or 'insane'. Julia Keay has an interesting comment on that fact.

She said that when one looks that earlier centuries that the mad and insane are treated quite differently from those unfortunates of the 18th century because in former times they were usually left alone.

When Robert Burton (1577-1640) wrote his justly famous Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) he took the view that melancholy was a complex phenomenon. For him it had physical, social, spiritual, biotic, mood and actions aspects to it. Burton saw melancholy (clinical depression) as related to sin and the devil but also realised that other matters contributed such as diet, fresh air, exercise, and amount of sleep. Burton also used the ancient idea of the four humours to explain depression: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm and blood with depression being said to be an excess of black bile.

However, for him as an Anglican theologian and scholar at Oxford, what was important was the Christian teaching regarding the Fall of man into sin. Others of the time even regarded lunatics as supernaturally gifted!

But with the coming dominance of the Age of Reason and later the Enlightenment a different paradigm of human history became prominent; within this paradigm Reason was exalted and anything that smacked of God's intervention or the devil's or any supernatural power was regarded as superstitions. All of life was understood to be open to rational scrutiny.

Hence, English society became more intolerant of its insane members and began to lock them away. Laws to permit these imprisonments were first enacted in England in 1714.