Comments for Church of All Nations

Comment on The true wisdom by olivia

olivia — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:41:30 +0000

There are too many men in this sermon. Do women not figure in this debate at all?

Comment on Power and love by olivia

olivia — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:38:44 +0000

After April’s fatal explosion on board a boat carrying asylum seekers, Australian PM Kevin Rudd said people smugglers were the “absolute scum of the earth” who should “rot in hell.”
Human rights lawyer Julian Burnside was asked in a radio interview to comment on this view. He said, remember that favourite family musical, The Sound of Music? In that film, the Von Trapp family were the refugees and the nuns were the people smugglers. In the same period, celebrated people like Oskar Schindler were also people smugglers.
Kevin Rudd should ask some refugees about the people they’re running from to learn a bit more about the scum of the earth

Comment on The hour has come by olivia

olivia — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:40:26 +0000

Is it better for one man to die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed?

Comment on Grace and works by olivia

olivia — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:55:16 +0000

Defiant Hope: St Patrick’s Day in Northern Ireland
by Apricot Irving

March is a miserable time of year to be in Ireland: wet, cold, and dark, with sudden storms that render the green hills an indistinct shade of gray. But if it was beauty that we were after, we got more than we bargained for. I have never seen hope more dramatically enacted than in the small town in Northern Ireland where we marched through the rain with Catholics and Protestants in the first joint St Patrick’s Day celebration in decades . . . [read more]

Comment on Grace and works by olivia

olivia — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:47:05 +0000

Damian Cooper's Dad is quoted as saying that 'any responsible parent' would agree that justice has not been done in the sentence handed down.

But grace appears yet again in that expression, 'There, but for the grace of God, go I.' It could be me, in a moment of distraction, that hit a pedestrian. Or my son who is facing a gaol sentence . . . or who throws rocks at Gaza checkpoints, or who ordered a pizza in Belfast.

Surely peace requires a measure of empathy. Meeting, listening, sharing in dialogue, humanising the other, is one way to achieve (by grace) empathy.

Comment on Do the promises still hold? by olivia

olivia — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:38:28 +0000

I expect many indigenous Australians would understand themselves (in Simon’s terms) as having both a natural and supernatural claim to country.

Simon’s thesis may be tested, regrettably, as Pacific and Indian islands are salinated and inundated by rising sea levels. If all Tuvaluans, for example, are forced off their traditional lands, will they be able to retain their cultural identity?

Comment on Sermon: Where is God? by olivia

olivia — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:09:25 +0000

Thank you, John, for your considered response to the atheist position. I was surprised and disappointed to read in Hoffmann’s article that some Christian groups in the UK have attempted to have the bus advertising banned. That seems to me a wasted opportunity for community discussion, and makes the church look both insecure and intolerant. We will not ‘win’ this ‘debate’ by suppressing dissent (even if that were possible).
It’s also interesting to wonder why the atheist campaign supposes religious faith makes people worry, and abandoning faith would lead to greater enjoyment in life. I guess they presume people believe in a judgemental and disapproving God. That’s a notion the church could challenge.

Comment on Sermon: A Mary to Believe in by olivia

olivia — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:14:32 +0000

We moderns know that women contribute half the genetic material to their offspring, which weakens the idea that Mary’s virginal status allowed God to make life out of ‘nothing.’ A something-out-of-nothing hypothesis that relies, as the sermon suggests, on Mary’s virginity, also relies on the pre-modern assumption that it’s the man who puts the baby in the empty vessel.

If this theological interpretation is valid, we may conclude either the virgin-birth narrative was created to fit first-century notions of biology, or else it’s an add-on interpretation unintended by the author.