Always Hope

Sometimes we Christians need to draw on words that aren't much used in normal conversation. The experience of God needs to be articulated by the deeper vocabulary of past ages, of the great theologians, of the Bible itself. That's good, but it can become a problem if we forget to translate for the benefit of people who don't know what we're talking about. Then we end up saying one thing, but everybody else hears something different. Yesterday the Sun website entertained its readers with this story: Drawing this response from a well-meaning brother: At least it makes perfect sense, but probably not in the way he intended.

I've been reading the account of David and Goliath for this Sunday, and musing on how we deal with violence in the Bible. This story is the classic example, a favourite of Sunday Schools for generations, cheerfully passed down by good Christian people who, under other circumstances, would not be telling stories of brutal killing to small children. Is this a problem? Should we go with it, in the interests of biblical literacy, and understand that most kids love hearing this stuff anyway? Or should we share the worries of those who say that we need to challenge the biblical texts' use of violence? A common evangelical response is to dismiss such worries as so much liberal hand-wringing, as if to say "well, the sort of people who don't believe the Bible are bound to be a bit weak in the stomach, after all". But we need to be careful about that. After all, if we do take the Bible seriously, then we're talking about real violence here. Real violence - I think the ...