Tag Archives: Bible

A God who speaks my language

Bible, Culture, Faith, ,

I haven’t blogged in the last few months as I have been busy finishing up my thesis, but I’m hoping to get back into it soon. For now, here’s a post I wrote for Tabor’s blog “Manna” last week …

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Isaiah 65

I teach Old Testament and one of the things students often struggle with is how foreign and distant the text can seem from us. There are huge gaps between us and the Old Testament’s original readers: gaps in terms of time, location, and culture. And that means it can be quite a bit of work to try to bridge those gaps so we can interpret the Old Testament well and discern its relevance.

But every time a student raises this issue, I’m reminded about a wonderful and profound truth those gaps teach me about our God.

The reason the Old Testament seems so foreign and distant to us is, of course, because it wasn’t spoken or written to us. It wasn’t written in our language, or through our worldview. It was written in Hebrew, through an ancient near Eastern worldview, because that is how the people to whom it was…

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Resisting the Echo Chamber

Bible, Culture, , ,

A post I wrote for Tabor MTC’s blog “Manna” on the challenges of listening to different perspectives and voices in a cultural context that encourages us to only engage with those we “like” …

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echo One of the highlights for me at last year’s Rethinking Conference was a talk by Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC (and a Christian). He spoke about the fragmentation of the mainstream media and the impact of social media. And he introduced me to the idea of the “echo chamber,” an enclosed space where sound reverberates.

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Zambia

Bible, Culture, , , ,

An article I wrote for Tabor Adelaide MTC’s blog “Manna” on the teaching I am currently doing in Zambia …

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Melinda's class Melinda’s class at Kabwe

After classes for the semester at Tabor Adelaide concluded two weeks ago, fellow lecturer Matt Gray and I out flew out to Zambia. With us are SA pastor Jenny (a Tabor Adelaide graduate), WA pastor Mick (who also teaches at Tabor Perth), and WA church leader Mark. We’re here to teach pastors and leaders as part of a partnership established between Australian and Zambian Baptists. The Zambian Church has asked us Aussies to help with theological education, and the goal is to set up a program that both teaches foundational courses to a wider group of pastors and leaders and also trains a smaller group of those students to become teachers of those courses into the future.

This is my third visit to this beautiful country, and it is wonderful to have Matt join the team this year. I’m teaching in Kabwe, a town of about…

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