A Theology of Refugees

It seems like refugees (or asylum seekers, if you prefer, but not illegal immigrants, they're different) are never far from the headlines here in Australia.  And discussions about refugees are not only ubiquitous, they’re also polarising. As soon as anybody, no matter how well-intentioned, asks the question ‘what should we do with those who come to Australia seeking asylum?’ it’s only a matter of time before somebody calls somebody else a fascist or a hippy, which is the signal for all participants to abandon reason in favour of insults and raspberries. But how should Christians think about refugees? 

Sermon Thoughts: Compelled to Give

So I thought that I'd start doing a (brief) post every Monday or so that talks about the previous Sunday's sermon at church. I admit to selfish motives; doing this will hopefully make me absorb more than I normally do on a Sunday night by lazily drifting through the sermon and doing the odd bit of thought about bits that draw my attention. If other people get something out of it as well, that would be very encouraging (not to mention helpful for justifying my time expenditure in blogging!)

David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions

One of my good friends put me onto William Lane Craig a while ago. Craig is a Christian apologist who, in his debates, often provides a summary of his opponent's shortcomings in a fairly blunt manner that can be rather amusing. I'm currently reading a book by another man who goes by three names: David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions, which does in print what William Lane Craig is wont to do in person.

Johnny Cash, cover songs, and bargaining with God

I promise all those things go together.

A while ago I encountered Johnny Cash's cover version of 'Hurt', originally by Nine Inch Nails. You kind of need to watch the video clip to understand what I'll be rambling on about later, so please take a minute to do so:

Giving and Getting Rich

This is one of the ideas I had that started the blog thing – I was originally going to bother people on Facebook about it, but now it’s here with a pretty background instead.

I was seriously challenged by the sermon at my local church – St Michael’s Anglican, Wollongong – last Sunday. Normally when Christians, myself included, throw around the word ‘challenged’ they mean they were somehow influenced to think differently or more deeply about a certain theological issue, and often the implication is that the different thinking should (and sometimes even does) lead to different behaviour. This was a very practically-minded sermon, though, and the thing that got me wasn’t a theological issue, but actually a rather worldly thing to do with practice. The sermon was from 2 Corinthians 8 and dealt with that irritating topic of money and what we should do with it.

A Fourfold Franciscan Blessing.

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and our Creator,
Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word who is our brother and Saviour,
and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide,
be with you and remain with you, this day and forevermore. 

Amen.

Better get started on those photography chops.

Clicky for big version.

This is a panorama of about five or six shots I took in the Blue Mountains (at that viewing platform in Katoomba that everyone's been to). I shot in RAW and I've been trying to generate some different exposures from the original files and reblend into an HDR (to try and deal with the darkness at the bottom versus the white clouds at the top), but the stitching program I'm using seems to give me a slightly different result every time, so blending the differently exposed panoramas is proving to be a headache. Anyone got any ideas?

First words.

Look! A blog!

Welcome, everyone (for a given value of 'everyone', I suppose). Basically I started this because I had an idea that I wanted to share on Facebook, and then I realised that actually I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to share on Facebook, and often I forgot about them because I never got around to writing them down, and quite apart from not telling people about all these good ideas I've been having this was bad for me because thoughts that could have changed my behaviours and my opinions, given enough attention, were drifting half-formed and shapeless into the void, which seemed like a bad way to go about life.