(CREDIT: Artondra Hall via Flickr)

I’ve been reading a number of detective books recently. So when someone handed me a book about Jesus written by a detective I was curious. The book is called ‘Cold Case Christianity‘ by J. Wallace. He’s a seasoned homicide detective and he applies what he has learnt to the witness accounts of Jesus, especially from ‘cold cases’.

At first I was quite captivated by all the real life stories he threw in, but as I read on he introduced more and more sophisticated analysis.

He made some very persuasive arguments in favour of the reliability of the witness accounts about Jesus.

We’ve probably all heard the argument that witness accounts often tell things from different perspectives. But he gave a much more detailed explanation of this point, using forensic analysis. Specifically he wrote about the phenomenon of ‘inadvertent support.’

No eyewitness ever gives a full account of a scene. So often their description raises a particular question. When Jesus calls Peter and Andrew in Matthew, the account at first seems odd. These men drop everything and immediately follow Jesus on their first meeting. Why would they do that?

If Matthew was the only account of Jesus this would remain unanswered. But Luke ‘inadvertently’ answers this question.

In his account we get a prior story of the fisherman encountering Jesus. Jesus used their boats to teach the crowds by the lake. He then instructed them to take him out and fish. They’d had an unsuccessful night of fishing but now they take an exceedingly impressive catch. This certainly gave them something to think about when he later asked them to follow him.

There are many of these incidental questions & answers in the Gospels.

Now these things by themselves don’t prove Christianity, but it’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect if the witnesses are real and telling the truth.

Simon Chaplin

CREDIT: Ryan Melaugh via flickr.com

After many years of hard work, our Anglican Diocese has developed a policy to help our churches provide the best possible care to people suffering from domestic abuse.

The policy was launched this week at the Anglican Diocese of Sydney Synod, our annual combined meeting of churches and organisations.

In launching the policy, Sandy Grant acknowledged that “clergy and church members have often been under-educated and naive; and on the other hand, sometimes over-confident in their insight or ability.”

He also recognised that “abuse can be hard to distinguish from regular conflict or dysfunction” and that “abusers can be very manipulative”, and so “extra detail and reinforcement of good practice is needed.”

After every member of the Synod united to accept this policy, we also supported this statement of grief, thanksgiving, prayer, regret, and apology:

“We grieve with victims and survivors of domestic abuse, and pray for their healing and recovery. We give thanks to God for those women and men, clergy and lay people, who have faithfully supported, cared for and protected such victims in our churches and communities.

We grieve that God’s good gift of marriage can be distorted and dishonoured through the sin of perpetrators. We pray for their repentance and restoration to faithful living under Christ.

We also deeply regret that domestic abuse has occurred among those who attend our churches, and even among some in leadership. We apologise for those times our teaching and pastoral care have failed adequately to support victims and call perpetrators to account.”

If you or someone you know or love is experiencing domestic abuse, please speak to one of our ministers, or contact ‘1800 Respect’ by visiting 1800respect.org.au or calling 1800 737 732.

Jodie McNeill

(CREDIT: t-bet via Flickr)

Our church has recently started testing a new, online prayer diary called ‘PrayerMate.’

It enables people to subscribe to prayer points from many, terrific organisations and missionaries.

It also helps us connect with the regular prayer points of our own church.

One benefits is that it gives me a list of people from within our church that I can specifically pray for each week.

But what should I actually pray for each person?

Well, according to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, I could start by thanking God for each person, and particularly, for their faith and their love, as he writes:

“…ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (Ephesians 1:15-16)

It’s great to start our prayers by thanking God for how he is working in each person, leading them to grow in their trust in him, and in the outworking of that through the love they have for other Christians.

But after that, Paul prays that they would know God better:

“I keep asking that the God  of our Lord Jesus Christ, the  glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17)

The reason we pray that people would know God better is so that they can enjoy the riches of their relationship with him.

It’s a bit like getting to “know” a friend or a spouse: it’s not so we can pass a knowledge test about them, but it’s so we can grow deeper in our friendship.

So, let’s keep thanking God for each other’s faith and love, and keep asking him to help us know God better.

Jodie.

Young kids love to dress up and pretend to be somebody else.

Whether it’s Elsa or Buzz Lightyear, they love to play another character.

Adults also enjoy pretending to be someone else, often at a costume party or a masquerade ball.

Sometimes we pretend to be someone else on social media.

Even though Facebook requires the use of real names, people don’t always act in a way that matches their real-life persona.

Sometimes this can be a form of social ‘makeup’, where we try to appear our very best when we’re sharing our photos or making comments.

At other times we keep silent about our beliefs and opinions, especially when discussion rages about controversial matters like same-sex marriage.

We can also appear different to the real world when our comments, likes, and shares clash with the person we claim to be at church or in our daily communities.

There’s a constant temptation to have a different ‘face’ when we’re on Facebook.

In his first letter, the Apostle Peter warns Christians to “rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” (1 Peter 2:1.)

This means that when we’re online we need to avoid hypocrisy by making sure we don’t have a different ‘face’ to our real-life persona.

The person we are when we’re engaging with Facebook needs to be the same person we are when we’re chatting in the real world with friends, family and colleagues.

And the motivation is simple and powerful: we “have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” (1 Peter 1:23)

God’s word has given us a radical new life, and we are called to live this life online as well as offline, to God’s glory.

Jodie McNeill

This is an excerpt of Jodie’s upcoming seminar at this year’s MTS Mission Minded Conference called, “Can I be a Christian and on social media at the same time?”

CREDIT: Wendy Longo via Flickr.com

Our Federal Government has asked us to say what we think about changing the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex unions.

As I have engaged with the hundreds of Facebook comments on our post from last week, it is clear that most of us wish this discussion would go away.

Some people want the Government to just make the changes without holding a plebiscite so that this painful discussion can stop.

Many Christians would rather we didn’t have to be distracted from sharing the news of the real hope that comes from knowing the real Jesus.

Yet, either way, it’s an important discussion to have, and we need to keep talking in a respectful way about this major change to this core unit of our society.

But in the end, there is something that matters more than marriage… and that is eternity.

Life is short, and there will be a time when everyone of us will stand before God to give an account for our life.

On that day, many people will say to God that they deserve his acceptance because they’ve done good things in life, and have tried hard to be nice.

But the problem is that no human is able to do enough good things to pass this test. Nobody.

And we all deserve eternal punishment from God, which the Bible calls ‘Hell.’

Yet, the best news of all is that if we ask God, then he will transfer our personal judgment from us to Jesus.

And because Jesus was punished on the cross in our place, it means any one of us can now have a certainty for eternity if we trust in Jesus as our loving ruler.

We need to talk about marriage, but eternity is far, far more important.

Do you have certainty for eternity?

Jodie.