Ask Jesus

What should Christians do if they know or think that another Christian has given a false witness?

August 19th, 2008 Posted in Christian, Jesus, disciples, judging, witness | 2 Comments »

This is a difficult question. On the one hand we want to be defenders of the faith; if we know that by their words or actions somebody is misrepresenting the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ then we want to go in and correct their “evil ways”. On the other hand there are so many flavours of Christianity that who is to say who is correct on any given issue.Fortunately (though maybe it’s unfortunately with this particular question in mind) Christianity, contra to popular belief, is not about a collection of rules and there are very few black and white issues.

So who is to say who is right? The world looks on at Christian communities and churches and sees a bunch of people who are divided against themselves. A group of people who are more concerned with what separates them rather than what unites them. Whatever damage a false witness may cause, a solution which leads to division and disunity among God’s people is not a good one.

This sounds a little bit like I am avoiding the question. *smile*

What did Jesus have to say on such issues?

1. Remove the plank from your own eye before you look at the spec in someone else’s eye! (Matthew 7: 1-5)
2. Let God deal with them as you don’t want to get it wrong and be fighting against God. (Acts 5: 29-39 - Maybe read the chapter to give a bit of context to this excerpt.)
3. How will people know that you are my disciples? By how you love one another! (John 13: 34-35)

All good advice but what does it mean in a practical way in this context.

1. Pray, for yourself, that you have clarity on the issue. Then pray for individual in question that they will be prompted by the Holy Spirit.
2. Talk to them; quietly, personally, without making a scene or a big fuss. Ask about what they doing / saying and ask them to explain how it is compatible with a relationship with Jesus Christ.
3. If you still disagree explain your point of view.
4. If you still don’t agree, leave them to it.

Ultimately Jesus was always interested in the individuals far more than what they were doing or saying. The classic ‘Christian’ line, hate the sin, love the sinner holds some water in this instance.  Let’s love each other, focus on what unites us, and let God worry about the rest.

Global Warming - A Christian Response

August 11th, 2008 Posted in Genesis, creation, global warming | No Comments »

We received an interesting question about a Christians response to global warming. The specific question was about what America should do but as a group of people based in the U.K. it’s probably best for us not to comment too much on what our American cousins should be doing. Instead, let’s look at the issue from a slightly broader perspective.Global Warming is a hot political topic at the moment; is it really happening? Who’s fault is it? Can we do anything about it? What can we do about it? Etc etc . I’m not really going to enter into this debate here. I think we should approach it from the from beginning. When God created all things the world and everything in it was entrusted to the stewardship of human kind. A quick read of Genesis 1 & 2 will give you the picture that God created the world and humans were charged as the stewards of it. We are to work it for food, maintaining it’s beauty and sustaining it for the enjoyment and necessity of ourselves and future generations.

The things that we do which do not fulfill this mandate are also the contributory factors in Global Warming. It’s not only the level of emissions but also the destruction of the natural world which are leading (have led) to an imbalance in the Earth’s natural recycling system. Essentially the Earth can no longer process the rubbish we are pumping into it.  A Hollywood style catastrophe aside, the people that are affected most by this situation are, as always, the poorest people in the world. This is obviously an undesirable side affect.

The common get out here is the “what can little old me do?” card. “How can I change anything?” On the face of it we are not going to change to world over night, but we still need to take our personal responsibility to the first task God ever gave us seriously. Put simply, we need to look at where we can save fuel and energy, where can we recycle, and how we can encourage others to do the same. On a grander scale we can get involved in the debate. Encourage our politicians to take our responsibility to stewardship seriously.

God entrusted this amazing planet to our care. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t want to be the person to have to explain to him how we screwed it up. *smile*

Was Jesus good looking?

July 21st, 2008 Posted in Jesus | No Comments »

Hot, fit, attractive, and many others that really are not repeatable. All these words have been thrown into the Ask Jesus question box since the site launched. So we thought that we would look at the question of what we know about Jesus’ physical appearance?

The answer is; well, not a lot really. We don’t have any direct information in the Bible about what Jesus looked like. We can infer a few things but we know nothing for sure. We know that Jesus was a Jew born in the Middle East and so we can assume that he had dark hair and dark skin. We know that he spent the vast majority of his adult life working as a carpenter, so, again, we can imagine that he was a strong chap and probably a little rough around the edges.

He certainly was some way from being the fair skinned and feminine creation of renascence art made famous by the likes of Raphael and Michelangelo. It fairly safe to assume that the images that adorne Churches around the world bare no resemblance at all to the historical Jesus.

Was he attractive? Well, not much changes in human terms, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Who was Jesus’ favourite disciple?

July 14th, 2008 Posted in Jesus, John, disciples | No Comments »

The question of “who’s the best”, or “who is your favourite” is one that the disciples themselves asked (Mark 9: 33-36) and one that they were reprimanded for asking. Even so, it is clear that there was an inner circle, even among the twelve close followers of Jesus.

Jesus had many follows. Hundreds, even thousands of people were continually following him from place to place. There were twelve; known as the disciples or apostles who were individually called by Jesus to follow him . Though these 12 were his closet companions there was an inner group; Peter, James, & John that seemed to share with him many of his most important and poignant moments.  (The Transfiguration, The Garden of Gethsemane, The raising of Jairus’ daughter; to name but three.)

From this inner group was one who comes across as maybe his closest friend. Described as “The one whom Jesus loved”, John would be, if such a description was appropriate, Jesus favourite disciple. John was never far for Jesus’ side and was even entrusted to look after his mother, Mary, when the time for Jesus’ death was drawing near (John 19: 25-27).

Favourite is not a term that I would choose but I think that it’s fairly plain that, like all people, Jesus had a crowd, he had friends, and he had close friends. John was perhaps his best friend.

Ask Jesus - Launched

July 7th, 2008 Posted in Information | No Comments »

Ask Jesus is a brand new site which gives you the opportunity to ask the questions that you have always wanted to know the answers to. Ask anything, using the box on the right, about Christianity, God, Jesus, The Bible, or simply life in general and we will do our best to answer with honesty and integrity.

We wont have all the answers and we shall get some things wrong but we will do our best to help you find the answers you seek.

You will not find here the official Christian view point; if such a thing exists, or the views of a particular Church or denomination. All you will find are the views of a group of people, doing their best to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ every day.

It should be an interesting journey and we look forward to sharing it with you.