Regardless of how dark it seems around us, our calling is to live differently. It does not have to be out loud, trying to drown out the cacophony of sound in the political space – but we thank God for those who are there! But if we all pay attention to the ‘millions of small and tedious good deeds’ every day, so that those around us can see charity in action, it will make a difference. That is our job, in which we can celebrate with joy. It is also why God chose a ‘peculiar people’– to show how we are made to live.

We appear to live in times that seem to be harder for those of us who wish to live out our Christian faith in public. Although as I reflect back across my over sixty years, the marginalisation started for me in the late 1960’s. The early sixties were fine because in my local government primary school, it was taken for granted that our moral code was based on Biblical principles. It was like we lived by the ‘second tablet’ of the Ten Commandments (about ethical life together) even if not everyone held to the ‘first tablet’ (about putting the Creator God in His rightful place).
But then came high school. I and a friend were the two shortest in a cohort of over 240 students. But I was the only one who would ask ‘God questions’ (now known to me as ‘deep’ or ‘philosophical enquiry’). That was enough to see me picked on in some way, including being hit (normally by a group – bullies need that reassurance to act).
What followed was university. That was in 1974. My first year was a blur because I had no idea what I was doing (being the first one in my family to have that opportunity). By second year, the questions started coming back to me, and I looked forward to asking them in a place of ‘higher learning’. But if I asked in Psychology or Sociology something like, “So professor X, can you please explain what you think are the ‘parts’ that make us humans who we are?”, the response was always the same: “We are not here to discuss that.” Or if I asked in Industrial Relations (in an honour group no less), “So what do you Marxists or Capitalists think drives people deep down, so that your theories will work?”, I got the same answer.
So by the mid-1970s, if my experience is anything to go by, the academic world in Australia had let go of thinking and discussing deeper philosophical aspects of human life – personal and social.
But in discussing this recently with a friend, who has been involved in higher education for a significant time, I came to understand that this tactic of ‘ignoring the question’ had shifted for many of our young people. These days, asking these kinds of questions is more likely to result in them being harassed, or if asked via social media, cancelled. Their teachers are more likely to face the same consequences.
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Written by Kyle E. Sims |
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Love must be seen in our denominations. Many denominations are going through difficult times. The issues are serious. Some cut to the heart of what we believe and others to disagreements on how best to live out the Bible. As church leaders, we should be setting an example of love in disagreements and conflict.

Love should be a ubiquitous characteristic among Christians. The scriptures are replete in calling for this emphasis on love in the life of every Christian. Jesus answers the Pharisees that love for God and others were the greatest commandments.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” – Matthew 22:37–40 (ESV)
The world speaks of love but really they only mean acceptance. Worldly love is predicated on set conditions. In the church, love is much deeper. Love does not just accept people, it works for their best interest.  Christian love should be a much greater love. The church is a place where worldly distinctions are melted away by an intense love fired by a common salvation, a shared hope, and the powerful indwelling by the Holy Spirit. It is a love that is active and involved. The early church father Tertullian wrote how the pagans noted the evident love Christians had for each other.
“But it is mainly the deeds of love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred.”
Love is at the center of Christianity. God’s gracious and merciful love for sinners is at the heart of the gospel. Once experienced, the Gospel brings a genuine love for God and develops a love for all men. Apostle John speaks about this truth in his First Epistle:
We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 John 4:19–21
Christian, you must be a person of love. Our great enemy knows the power of this love in our hearts, relationships, and churches.
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Accountability to a fellowship is good, but without honesty, is insufficient. More often than not I have coddled my sin rather than killed it. I’ve fed the beast, thinking that I might keep it at bay, all the while it has been plotting its attack. We cannot co-exist with sin, making excuses for it, placating it with promises of tomorrow. Our idols are ruthless task-masters; we have made them too heavy to bear up, their weight will crush us. We must grind them to powder and throw them to the wind, or we might find that God has ground them for us, though the taste will be bitter on our tongue.

The lights dimmed. The movie began. A man waking in a hospital bed repeatedly pressing a buzzer that is never responded to. He gathers his strength to stand, slowly exploring the empty halls, calling repeatedly to his echo. He’s alone.
The lonely man wanders the quiet streets. He seems small in empty world. Wind blown waste shudders down the side path, newspaper headings about a virus, the date read 28 days earlier.
That’s when the zombies attacked.
It was also the exact moment I left the cinema. Like a fool, I walked in to watch a movie I knew nothing about while attempting to kill time on an interstate layover. I don’t watch Zombie flicks. I’d like to say I have some grand theological reason why that’s the case, the truth though is simpler—I don’t like scary movies. It baffles me why zombie movies are so popular, why the idea of the living dead still attracts a crowd—but it does. ‘Fright’ is cheap entertainment.
I don’t need to entertain fictional zombies, I have enough of my own to contend with. I’ve been a stumbling follower of Jesus since my mid-teens. I’ve had my moments of victory, mountain-top experiences of joy that modern worship songs love to extol. But sin has plagued me. Of course, the sins of youthful lusts and pride were present, and my twenties were a decade of struggle. My thirties saw the struggle change, but still present. I thought I’d left much behind, but in my mid forties, a new army has arisen—a zombie squad intent on tearing apart what God has built.

“So then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Romans 8:12–13, CSB)

Here’s what I am learning. Paul asks me to slay sin, a theme that John Owen would later riff off as he famously quipped, “Be killing sin or sin will be killing you,” and I thought I was. But I was wrong.
Burying sin is not the same as killing it.
I’d take a stab at killing my sin, I’d strike at it with my willpower and see it step away into the shadows again. My foolish mistake was assuming I’d dealt it a mortal blow, some fatal slash, and so I would consider it dead and buried. I’d rise on the mountain-top victoriously. But now the horde grows close again. Buried sins. The ugly undead.
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