The dehumanising force of administrative sludge

There is definitely something in this one.

“You Don’t Love Your Daughter.”

‘We were young parents. Our daughter was four, and we were expecting our second child. We lived in relative isolation as missionaries on a pioneer mission field. It was our third year on the field. There was no one around us to speak into our lives other than the Buddhist Cambodians around us. Then a pastor and his teen daughter came to visit. What he said to us before he left changed us forever. He challenged our love for our daughter.’ This one goes on to explain how and why he was right.

John MacArthur 1939-2025

This past week, news came in that John MacArthur had died. My friend, Dave Williams, offers an honest and balanced assessment of his ministry here.

Ostracising shiny people

‘Something there is that shuns naivety, that puts purity of motive at arm’s length, and that views openness as a threat. There is something ingrained in us as humans, especially in dark times, to suspect genuineness, to take for granted those souls who are not set on self-advancement, but who present themselves to the world with candour and without projection or swagger. We tend to exile such souls at best, and quench their spirit at worst.’

Leviticus and The Right Hand of Fellowship

This one looks at why, in some parts of the world, it is vital to only use your right hand. It then draws some lines from this to the book of Leviticus and helps us understand what is going on with all those laws about cleanliness.

What Happens to Your Soul When You Die? 

The Bible really doesn’t say much about this question. There is very little data on what we call “the intermediate state”. But this one helpfully turns us away from views that fill in more blanks than we can whilst pointing us toward the bits of data that the Bible does give us.

From the archive: Worry about repeating yourself when there’s no need to repeat yourself anymore

‘I used to worry that I had said things in sermons that I had said before. I used to worry that applications in Bible studies kept reeling round again. I used to worry that I had written blog posts that largely said similar things. I used to worry that podcast episode were overly similarly. Surely people don’t want to be hearing the same things over and over again? But if I sound a bit repetitive, I make no apologies for it.’