Bible, General, Global issues, Sermons, Social Justice

An Ancient Story’s Powerful Message for Modern Israel

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Here’s something a bit different from me this Sunday morning – a brief sermon from the ancient Jewish and Christian Scriptures, using the ancient story of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon at the height of his Empire building.

You might not believe in the Scriptures, and you might not care what they say; but Jewish people using these Scriptures as part of their claim on the land of Israel do. And their own Scriptures provide very clear, very relevant and very modern lessons.

Israel is meant to be a nation that stands as a “city on a hill” – a place for all people from all nations to come and see what God can do when a nation is built on Justice and Righteousness (mishpat ???????? and tzedek ?????). When Israel is built on war, oppression or enslavement, it will judged by God and it will bring its own destruction on itself.

Watch the video on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/q1RwZikPwrc

Read 1 Kings 9-11 with me, and see an ancient message for modern times.

Book reviews, Gender, General, Podcast, Theology

ALLIn Podcast: Four Stages of Faith

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It’s been two years since we ended Season 1 of the AllIn pod: twenty episodes that looked at how we can apply a conservative evangelical approach to Biblical interpretation and see that the so-called “clobber verses” against LGBTQI inclusion are not what we were taught they were. Season 2 of ALLIn was intended to be a return to the Scriptures to look at the positive, affirming verses that we find there. I think I may now only do that as Season 3.

The episode is available here, or on your podcast player of choice:

In this episode of ALLIn, I explain why it is probably a fools errand to try and convince conservative evangelicals to change their view of Scriptures about LGBTQI people. Instead, I think we need to invite them to a new stage of their faith development, and using the Bible as a weapon, dissecting verses and parsing verbs, is not going to get that job done.

Listen to this episode, and let me know if you agree with the four stages of faith outlined: moving from Simplicity to Complexity, then deconstructing to Perplexity and ultimately resolving to Harmony. Brian McLaren might have the best work on these four stages in his book, “Faith After Doubt”. Listen to his discussion with Pete Enns and Jaryd Bayis on “The Bible for Normal People” here: https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episode-174-brian-mclaren-the-four-stages-of-faith/.

General, Global issues, Leadership, Social Justice

VIDEO: Just Us For All

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This is my (rejected) contribution to the The World in Half a Century Forum 2020, held in honour of the famous Russian nobel laureate, Andrei Sakharov. I was invited to contribute a half hour virtual lecture to this forum, which had been due to be held in St Petersburg, Russia in 2020.

You will see why the organisers decided to reject my contribution, given what I say about truth, LGBTQI inclusion, diversity, communism and society. Sadly, even though Sakharov himself was a Russian dissident and activist against the Russian government, modern day Russian conferences were always unlikely to host a speaker with views that go against the current Russian State status quo.

So, here now for the first time is my contribution available for public viewing:

What do you think of my vision of how we build a society for the future, by focusing on diversity, minorities and the marginalised, and moving beyond the divided society we live in now?

Towards the end of the video I sum it up this way:
“We need to stop building a world that favours the rich and powerful. We must choose to build a society around the needs of minorities and those who have been previously excluded. … If we build a society for people who are not like us… we will build a better society… Those societies that do this will be better off than those that don’t 50 years from now.”

Gender, General, Social Justice

Gender is a spectrum, not just two boxes

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If you’ve followed my work over the years (and a lot of it is archived at this website) you’ll know that I have adapted and evolved my views on human sexuality over the last two decades. One of the most helpful shifts, which I believe is foundational to making it easier to engage with the many different debates about human sexuality and gender that are raging in society right now, is to stop thinking of gender as two boxes called “male” and “female” and to start seeing it as a spectrum.

Everything else in our world exists outside a simple binary. Line a random group of people up, and you can see this: height, weight, eye colour, amount of hair, ability with language, intelligence, etc, etc. Nature is filled with animals that show this spectrum, even shifting from male to female and places in between.

When we deal with human sexuality, there are three main issues to consider:
1. Sexual biology – what external and internal gonads someone has, as well as chromosomes and hormones. This is who someone IS sexually.
2. Sexual preferences – this is who someone is sexually attracted to
3. Gender – this is a whole range of societal markers that indicate a particular place in society based on the above.

All three of these exist on spectrums, and can shift and change over time.

Here are some resources to help you understand this further:

Bible, Church, Gender, General, Missional, Sermons, Social Justice, Theology

Lessons from Jesus’ Baptism and a New Community

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This is a sermon I preached at our small faith community, ‘We Are Church’ in Johannesburg, on 9 October 2022.

There are lessons from Jesus’ Baptism, as recorded in Mark 1 for churches. We need to heed these lessons of new beginnings, of not getting stuck in church structures, of not being stuck in Empire thinking, of not getting stuck in creating exclusive and excluding communities.

There are lessons here about God’s love for us all, about God’s image being in all of us, about God’s invitation to be part of new faith communities.

I was as sick as a dog as I was preaching this, so there’s not much energy or outward passion. But this sermon came from the depths of my soul. It is what I believe most deeply.

Watch it here:

Bible, Church, Gender, General, Sermons, Social Justice, Theology

Sermon: The Bible and LGBTQI inclusion and affirmation

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This blog hasn’t been active for the last two years. Covid has taken my focus from these theological issues to practical, local community action. But my passion for building inclusive and affirming communities of faith remains unwavering.

My wife, Jane, is heading up a small faith community in Johannesburg, South Africa, that we have called “We Are Church”. It’s independent and informal at the moment, but we will see how things progress. I have been asked to summarise my views on LGBTQI inclusion and affirmation for this group, and will share the videos of these meetings here.

The first of these videos is entitled:
The Bible and LGBTQI inclusion and affirmation

It is a summary of the work you’ll find at this blog in my special series on how we interpret the seven verses in the Bible that appear to oppose LGBTQI people.

I become more and more convinced that we have been wrong in our historic interpretations of the Bible, and this approach I suggest is a significant improvement in our understanding of God’s Word.

Gender, General, Social Justice

Put your pronouns into your bios

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I wish more churches would tell this to their people this morning: you should put your pronouns in your social media bios.

The article below is one of the best explanations of why we should do so that I have read.

We need to normalise talking about gender and how, for more people than you think, it is not as obvious as it might first appear. Just because it appears obvious in some people (I am, as I appear, a cisgender, heterosexual white male), doesn’t mean it is obvious in everyone. And for those people dealing with a world that has not allowed them to discover and live out their gender and/or sexual expression, showing that you’re an ally is literally the least you can do.

PS. Jesus’ pronouns would have been “they/them” – think about it; I’m right on multiple levels.

PPS. If you read the attached article and the few swear words offend you more than the reason the author is impassioned enough to use them, you need to take a moment of self-reflection.

Continue reading Put your pronouns into your bios →

Church, Gender, General, Global issues, Missional, Social Justice, Theology

There are no walls

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I really wish more churches would preach this: there are no walls.

The attached Naked Pastor cartoon is one of the most powerful he’s ever done (and he even managed a touch of poetry too).

Over and over and over again in his ministry, Jesus demonstrated that those people the religious leaders were excluding and judging were actually accepted and welcomed by Jesus. The only people Jesus ever warned about being “outside” were those religious leaders themselves.

Am I saying “everyone will be saved”? No. Some people don’t want to be saved. What I am saying is that it is mainly the people who want to close the doors for others who are choosing to not be saved. They’re choosing instead to build something that is the opposite of the Kingdom of God: they’re choosing to build an exclusive, exclusionary club, and so – by their own approach – they will be allowed to choose a future where live in a space as small as they wanted it to be, as excluded as they were exclusionary, as rejected as they were rejecting and as sad as they made many seekers of love and truth. Their hell has already started.

This is not what God wants. The story of the history of God is a story of ever expanding inclusion and acceptance (or more accurately, of our ever improving understanding of God’s inherent inclusionary character). From one man and his family, to his tribe and a nation, to their neighbours and eventually to the ends of the earth, and all peoples, nations, tribes and tongues. The story starts in an empty garden and ends in a limitless, sustainable city, open to everyone and capable of accommodating us all.

And, yes: it specifically includes all genders as well.

Naked Pastor Cartoon

Graeme Codrington's musings on a new kind of Christianity