Religious Freedom?

I was reading an interesting article today on the BBC News website about religious freedom in Dubai. The government there over the past 50+ years have made an effort to ensure that all the major world religions - Christian, Seikhism, Hindu - have places where their followers can meet and worship in peace. Whilst this is commendable is this really freedom? The worshipper a meet in walled compounds with no external evidence of their faith, and any attempt to prostelytize is met with arrest and deportation. For a Christian in light of the commission given by Jesus and our necessary role in the mission of God surely this is not freedom but imprisonment?

Morphine or Heroine?

We were discussing during our weekly Bible study from Galatians 6:6-10 if the analogy of 'sowing and reaping' was helpful in today's society? Particularly in inner city areas where some of the young people from deprived neighbours cannot even tell you where milk comes from; they have never seen cows and no one has ever made the connection for them.

The sowing that Paul refers to in Galatians 6:6-10 is the word of God and he is making the point that the Word of God, when sowed with ideas that are human ideas and not those of the Spirit, can reap fruit that is not of God but of the flesh. A modern analogy might be opium, when prescribed by a physician in the form of morphine and as part of treatment it can be beneficial to the person, but when bought from a drug-dealer to seek pleasure then it is terribly destructive.

Both Jesus and Paul used analogies and parables to explain scripture or some element of faith and they did it using something that was very familiar to the society at the time, so whilst their teaching might prove useful there are times when we may have to rely on a new analogy to get our point across. When responding to a question or when we are teaching on some biblical point we must be careful to use language that our listener will understand whilst not losing the point that is being made by the Word.