Month: September 2011

The most evil of people are actually pretty ordinary

A Jewish man who was translating for the American Psychiatrists who were assessing German War criminals in Nuremberg after the second world war says this:

“Did we learn anything from these psychiatric tests? No. We didn’t find anything abnormal, nothing to indicate something that would make them the murderers they would become.

In fact, they were all quite normal. Evil and extreme cruelty can go with normality. (…)”

Read the article on the BBC website: Jewish US Army translator who got close to the Nazis

Love your neighbour, indicate when you change directions.

We all forget to indicate when we change directions, don’t we? Most of the time, we don’t even think about it, and some of us never indicate.

One incident reminded me of the importance of indicating when we change direction. I was approaching a stop sign at a crossing, and the car in front of me had already stopped. The road was wide, and although the other car wasn’t indicating, he was bearing right and he seemed to be turning right. So I went onwards and stopped on his left side, since I was going straight. I looked around and started to cross the road. The guy on my right did the same, but instead of turning right, started turning left (no indicators on). We were going slowly, and looked at each other. He let me go before him and turned. No accident, the guy didn’t look angry or upset that I had gone forward at the same time as him. But it made me think: isn’t indicating where I am going a way to show love to my neighbour? So, if you truly love your neighbour,  next time you change direction or if you are going to take a car over on the motorway, please, put your indicators on.

We need the gospel

Strange as it may seem, Christians need the gospel as much as unbelievers do. We do not need the gospel to “be saved”. We need the gospel to keep us from lapsing into a performance mind-set in our day to day relationship with God. We need the gospel to remind us that we are still practicing sinners whose only hope for both eternal life and today’s blessings from God are “Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”

Jerry Bridges, Foreword to DeYoung’s The Good News We almost forgot.

The centrality of the cross

There is nothing more important in Christian theology than our theology of the cross. We must speak clearly that  the heart of the gospel is the good news of divine self-satisfaction through divine self-substitution. Never compromise on the cross. Never dilute the message of the cross. And never stop glorying in the cross where Christ accepted the penalties that should belong to us so that we can claim the blessings that would otherwise belong only to Him.

Kevin DeYoung, The good news we almost forgot.

Does the future have a church? | The Briefing

The briefing has an article on the British Protestant scene. It is interesting. the first thing that strikes me is the number of churches in the UK: 48.000, and the number of ministers: 36.000. For a reminder, there are about 2068 evangelical churches (not sure about the number of liberal protestant churches though) for about the same population. Also, the number of people who are members of a church is 5.5 millions in the UK as compared to 600.000 protestants in France (of which 46000 are evangelicals, less than 0.5% of the population). In the UK, 6% of the population attends a church service on Sundays (Thats 3.5 million people). Paul Levy says (here) it’s a pretty dire situation (which I agree with when you consider the rich christian history of the UK). But from a French perspective, the UK is a kind of evangelical heaven. No wonder many young French Christians who go to study in the UK don’t want to come back. Read the Briefing article: Does the future have a church? | The Briefing.