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The Gospel of Jeffrey Dahmer

There’s a new Netflix documentary out at the moment which has hit the news recently about the infamous serial killer Jeffery Dahmer. I haven’t watched it, but I knew of him as a serial killer though I didn’t realise just how horrific his crimes were until I read the Wikipedia article about him! Not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. But this post isn’t really about Dahmer, not entirely, but rather the reactions to some recent social media posts about him and the (often vitriol) responses they’ve got. Here’s one example: Dahmer is probably in heaven and experiencing eternal joy. If this bothers you, you don’t know the depths of your o...

Do Christians And Muslims Really Worship The Same God?

...igion. In Christianity (and by extension, Judaism), God has always been about grace and blessing humans despite their flaws and ignorance, and helping them find him. In contrast, Islam promotes a works-based salvation where Muslims might get into Allah’s good graces if they do and say the right things enough throughout their lives, and even then, there’s no certainty they will make it to heaven. Even Muhammed was unsure of his eternal security (Surah 46:9; see also: Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 51:16 and Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58:266). Christianity: Salvation is a gift from God — not something we earn. God saves us while we are sinne...

Will UK Councils Criminalise Christianity? The Alarming Precedent Set by a Labour Council

...y to make Christianity quiet again. The Quiet Re-emergence of Old Hostilities We tend to imagine persecution as something ancient or foreign. Lions, arenas, emperors, gulags, terror attacks in far off countries. And sure, we here in the UK are not shedding literal blood for the Gospel, but that doesn’t mean persecution has vanished. It has simply changed shape. Instead of swords and prisons, we face restrictions and injunctions. Instead of mobs dragging believers through the streets, councils draft documents that treat prayer, worship, and evangelism as public threats. The methods have changed, but the intent remains strangely familiar: to push the Gospel t...

What was so good about Good Friday?

...point of Christianity, quite clear in 1 Cor 15:12-19 (emphasis mine) — Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are...

Spiritual Disciplines of the Early Church: Ancient Practices for the 21st Century

...I was asked not so long ago what kinds of things Christians did in the Early Church (first to fourth century) as a form of spiritual discipline, on a personal level as well as a corporate one. Though the concept of an individual “personal spiritual life” would have been quite foreign to first century believers as faith and Church was very much a corporate venture that had personal implications, rather than the other way around as it can often appear to be thought of today. Much of what made Christianity structured, disciplined and set apart from society, has largely been lost in practice, or forgotten and relegated to the annals of history by many practicin...

Should Christians get tattoos, and is it Biblical?

...I was in a discussion not so long ago about tattoos, and I was asked about the historical view on this practice. It wasn’t something I had looked into before from a Church Fathers point of view, so it was an interesting topic of study. In my searching, I found this article from a Catholic site which seems to give a pretty interesting overview of some of the views about tattoos in the earlier centuries. The following is a quote about a Church Council in the context of native Britons, who still practiced tattooing at that time for pagan ritual, something which Tertullian also gives a fleeting reference to around 213 AD in his On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 10....