Rachel is a young Christian woman and she is thinking about becoming a diplomat in the Foreign Office. She is challenged by a Christian friend who tells her that she will be wasting her life by going into such a ‘worldly’ and political profession. Again, and again, we can come Read more
Frank is a real life opera singer who was due to play the role of Scarpia in Puccini’s famous opera Tosca. He was a gifted bass singer and had never heard a sermon that connected the Christian faith to his work challenges. On a hospital visit he asked his ear Read more
Language expert David Smith has argued compellingly that the dominant way of teaching modern foreign languages (MFL) is shaped by consumerist and materialist narratives. The hidden message here is “I shop therefore I am”. Or for those of you who are fluent Latin speakers – “Tesco ergo sum”. The focus Read more
I’ve been talking to my mate Simon who is an accountant who works for a small business. This is the fruit of our conversation. Accountants can serve God full-time if they have a baptised imagination. Accountancy has had a bad image ever since the Monty Python sketch with John Cleese Read more
Bob Goudzwaard, a Dutch Christian economist, wrote a brilliant, short book Idols of our Time back in the 1980s. It really is a superb resource for any thinking Christian. He begins the book with these words: We live in a world possessed and we know it. When we focus upon the recent Read more
Let’s focus for a moment upon a key idea – ideology. Ideology is the way in which idolatry affects people today and this includes the soldiers and supporters of IS. The term ‘ideology’ was coined by French intellectuals just before the French Revolution. The word means far more than merely a Read more
A key text for understanding idolatry in the New Testament is a passage in the book of Romans. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator. Romans 1:25, NIV Here we should notice that idolatry does not merely refer Read more
In the light of the recent gruesome activities of the Islamic State (IS) it is timely to re-examine biblical teaching about idolatry and connect this to ideologies, secularism and IS. In this first post we will look at idolatry in the Old Testament. Idol worship is something which no follower Read more