With the vote in Parliament this Friday 11th September on changes in the law to allow some degree of assisted dying, Professor John Wyatt, Emeritus Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics at University College London, outlines how Christians should think on this issue, here.
Apologetics
Christianity in the public square
Evangelical Ministry Assembly 2015 – talks
Anyone able to be at the EMA Conference this year was really blessed as we looked together at the subject of “Identity Crisis: Preaching to a confused world.”
All of the talks were good and can be found here, but if you only have one hour to spare, I would highly recommend listening to John Wyatt, Professor of Ethics and Perinatology at University College London and a specialist in the medical care of new born babies, speaking on challenges in medical ethics at the beginning and end of life.
you might also want to take a look at Professor Wyatt’s book, “Matters of Life and death: Human dilemmas in the light of the Christian faith.”
Halloween: Trick or Treat?
The Bible – Channel 5
A new TV mini series produced originally for the History Channel in the US is due to start running here in the UK on Saturday 30th November on Channel 5 at 9:00pm.
There’s a whole website promoting the series over here.
Due to it’s US release earlier this year, a lot has already been written on the pros and cons of such an endeavour and David Nilsen has a good article here on the production’s merits and weaknesses.
With the possibility of some of our non Christian friends and family tuning in to watch this, it would no doubt be helpful to keep an eye on how it develops over the next few weeks.
Halloween – What should we do?
We do not believe our not believing
It has long been said that art imitates life even as life imitates art. I would add to that. We do not believe our not believing. Our fiction imitates and undermines the fiction of our unbelief.
(Grant Horner, Meaning At The Movies: Becoming a discerning viewer, p. 129)
Atheism has no car of it’s own
I’ve previously linked to Collision, the encounter between Christopher Hitchens and Pastor Doug Wilson in which they debate the question, ‘Is Christianity Good for the World?’
I recently came across a video of an event that was part of the Collision tour although not featured within the production itself. It’s a 2 hour panel debate between William Lane Craig, Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Wilson, Lee Strobel, and Jim Dennison, and if you don’t have the time to watch it all the first and final 20 minutes frame things fairly well.
What’s particularly impressive is William Lane Craig’s summation in the last 5 minutes, where he lists 10 arguments for Christian Theism that he and the others have raised and which Hitchens’ atheism has failed to address. Craig then suggests that rather than having a rational argument against Theism, it’s a dislike for the God Christian Theism presents that is Hitchens’ real issue.
Or as Wilson has said elsewhere of Hitchens and the New Atheism in general, it’s an attempt to crash and burn the Christian car, whilst having no car of it’s own.
Should we ever tell others how to live?
Should we ever tell others, how to live their lives?
Should we as Christians ever tell non Christians we think what they are doing is wrong?
Should we seek to get what we believe to be the Bible’s morality, written into the laws of our land?
Some helpful thoughts in the video below from Kevin DeYoung and Trevin Wax from the Gospel Coalition. You can find out more here.
That seed sprouted long ago
There is water in the world that once flew out of the mouths of guards and flecked the face of the Word Himself. There is iron that once tore at His back and iron that once coursed in His blood before it fell to the stones, left for the small animals to feed on in the night. Animals were born and spent a lifetime before being slaughtered, having their hides tanned and cut into strips, interwoven with stone and glass and lashing the skin off the One Poet’s back, baring ribs full of calcium. There are proteins still, somewhere in this world, that were used in His beard before soldiers clutched, not knowing how close their fingers came to the Infinite, and tore hard.
But there is nothing now made from His flesh decomposed. That seed sprouted long ago, the firstborn, sprung from the womb of death on the first real day of Spring.
(N. D. Wilson, Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, p. 111)
In The Beholder’s Eye
WHATEVER IS COMMENDABLE 