Bible Stories

The theme of God’s judgement appears consistently throughout the Bible. Although judgement is an unpopular idea today, it is something we have to face up to. But how will God judge? What standards does he expect?

God’s standard

Some people say that they are reasonably good people - better than some - and that they have done the best they can. But even if that were true, is it enough? Read more

The central Christian view of race is that there is only one race: the human race! As the apostle Paul said to the Athenians, ‘God created every race of men of one stock to inhabit the whole earth’s surface.’ At the pivotal points where God dealt with humanity -when he created us, Read more

The modern family differs very strikingly from families in ancient times. We talk today about the ‘nuclear’ family — the somewhat isolated unit of mother, father and children. The historical reasons for this are quite well-known. Read more

‘God created mankind in his own image: male and female he created them,’ says the writer of Genesis. In Greek legend Zeus first created a sexless being. Later, in a fit of divine anger, he split this into man and woman. The division of humankind into two sexes is thus understood to be an imperfect state, a weakening of mankind’s power, because the two sexes pull in different directions. Read more

Art has a lot to do with religion. Most of the ‘art-works’ unearthed by archaeologists link in with some religious practice or other. Until recent times the church was the most important patron of the arts. Contemporary artists regularly discuss their work in ’spiritual’ terms. Read more

God’s true image

Humanity’s fall is not just a theological statement; human history and experience show us that the image has been defaced in us all. As Paul puts it, ‘We have all fallen short of God’s standard’. But does this mean that God’s image has never been seen in its fullness since the beginning? No, because Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God. That is the New Testament’s bold declaration. The task of his mission was to lead us back to God and to restore the image in us.

This is where the New Testament connects the study of Christ with the study of humankind. Because Jesus is both true likeness of God and perfect man, he is the promise of a renewed humanity. To be ‘in Christ‘ is to belong to a ‘new humanity‘, just as to be ‘in Adam’ is to belong to the old, sinful humanity. The apostle Paul wrote of the ‘new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator’. As the ‘image of the invisible God‘, Jesus is the model of what men and women were created to be. Read more

In some ways we are no different from any other species on earth. We are creatures subject to the usual conditions of space and time. But we know that human beings ’stand out’ from other beings in several ways. Some of these are plain enough; they partly explain humankind’s superiority over other creatures: our creativity, our intellectual, linguistic and cultural achievements.

But the Bible adds a further and remarkable point. People stand out not by what they do but by what they are. This is expressed right at the beginning, in the creation story of Genesis 1. God said, ‘Let us make man in our image after our likeness.’ It is a theme taken up and developed in other parts of the Bible: we are not like the other creatures; we share God’s nature in a special way. Read more

One writer has confessed, the longer I live, the more faith I have in Providence, and the less faith I have in my interpretations of Providence.’

Providence is the care God takes of all existing things. So its range and depth are immense. The word itself is taken from

Abraham’s promise to his son Isaac on the way to sacrifice: ‘My Son, God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.’ ‘There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’ says Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. This is God’s rule as moral governor over all the universe.

There is also God’s forgiveness of the sinner. God’s great acts of salvation are all part of God’s activity in providence: Read more

Islam, like Buddhism and Christianity, has an identifiable historical founder, about whom we know a great deal. Muhammad was born about the year AD 570 in the flourishing commercial city of Mecca. At the age of forty he began his prophetic ministry. In AD 622 he moved to Medina (Yathrib), where he died in AD 632.

The records show him as a man of infinite patience, who preached in Mecca for thirteen years and hardly made a convert. In his later years he showed himself a great leader of men. He gave to the warring Arab tribes unity, a simple creed (the Muslim creed consists only of the two clauses ‘I proclaim that there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the apostle of God‘), and a sense of destiny. For a thousand years the Christian world was threatened by their armies. Today the followers of Muhammad exercise great influence in the affairs of the world. Read more

A hundred years ago evolution was much in the air. Everything was thought to be the result of long development. So it was taken that religion also must have developed; and as monotheism—belief in one God only — is the highest form of religion, this must have come very late in the history of mankind. Among the simpler races it was not expected we should find belief in one God; in fact, it was doubted whether there would be found any clear idea of God at all.

This idea was not altogether unreasonable. When a stranger tries to study the religion of a people he does not know, he first becomes aware of actions and ceremonies, some of which seem to him very strange. Read more