jesus: all about hell???

(The YouTube clip below will be my illustration. Start watching from 1:44, with the section following 3:11 being the most pertinent to this discussion. By the way, this post is in no way meant to reflect an opinion about a prominent Christian advertising campaign).

I watched this last week, and when I heard the comments about Christianity being a religion of fear my first reaction was to say “No!”

But then I reflected on those statements. While my belief is that Christianity is not meant to be a religion of fear, I empathised with those making such comments. The truth is that if you were to form your opinions about the Christian faith from much of the preaching that occurs today you would assume it is based on fear.

remix?… an introduction.

Well… there is nothing new under the sun (so we say), so welcome to my blog. Frightfully unoriginal? Mmm… Yes. However my hope is that this will not be a mere ranting exercise on my part (p-uh-lease don’t let me become one of those bloggers…): rather I would love this to become a forum of discussion about the bigger things in life (hence the name) for friends, followers, (friendly) fanatics and fellow(wo)men.

The concept of re-mixing things has taken on a life of its own for me in the past year: call it a ruling analogy if you will. Taking something old and reworking it to fit a new context, a new group of people, a new set of expectations or a new quarry of challenges, introducing new elements while never undermining the beauty, truth or recognisability of the original form is what I think must be done in the case of the Christian gospel. Of course this analogy is, like all analogies, imperfect: in particular the introduction of new elements would be dangerous if done without regard to the original work and not in respect to it. Anyone who has heard a good re-mix of, say, a song, however, will know that good re-mixes always operate within this framework.

As the posts begin to roll in hopefully you will find something that will stimulate your mind, challenge your thinking and generate some helpful discussion: I pray your faith is re-mixed by the Spirit to conform your mind (and actions) to the will of God. Truly, I don’t have all the answers, let alone many of them, and so the purpose of this blog is to initiate respectful discussions around the topics of theology, ministry, the kingdom of God and other big picture streams.

Let’s revise, rethink, repaint and recreate. Have fun, I’m sure I will!

MCA

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