Chalke Talk: 95 questions for the reforming Church

In response to the UK’s governments announcement concerning the banning of gay “conversion therapy,” Steve takes some time to reflect on this barbaric and troubling practice.

The doctrine of Penal Substitution, which influences many popular worship songs and evangelistic ‘packages’ risks reducing the life, ministry and teachings of Jesus to a ‘long weekend.’

“What we believe about the Cross really matters,” says Steve in this week’s Chalke Talk. “If the church believes that God’s first response to humanity is one of anger at sin, and then views itself as God’s mouthpiece; our underlying lack of respect and love for those who don’t share our faith will leak out – however much we try to disguise it.”

This week Steve deals with one of the biggest contradictions in modern day theology: “If, as the songs and sermons teach us, God demanded a blood sacrifice and that he was unwilling or unable to extend forgiveness to us without it, then God himself is unwilling to follow the teachings of Jesus – which all becomes a case of ‘do as I say, not as God does.’”

Last week Steve argued that the God's holiness means he's different, but not necessarily separated from us.  This week Steve continues thinking along these lines as to whether God suffers or not. As Steve asks, "could it be that God who loves more than any other being in the universe also suffers the most?"

Last week Steve looked at the story of the Israelites exodus from captivity in Egypt, and the series of mysteries and confusing messages Moses was subjected to – from a burning bush, to striking a rock for water. Wrapped up in that is a huge implication for how we understand our relationship with God; it’s not about waiting for some divine revelation but instead choosing to actively follow. That’s where God meets us – in our willingness to engage.

Last week, Steve explored the yearning inside of everyone to worship. Whether that becomes God or something more material we choose to worship; worship is, in and of itself, a choice. Continuing with the theme of “choosing God” Steve looks at probably one of the most well-known stories from the Bible: Moses and the Burning Bush.

After spending a few weeks on thinking about who God is, Steve begins to dig into what this means for us. In the Old Testament “LORD” is often capitalized to signal the translation from Yahweh. But there’s more.

This week Steve looks at how people’s perceptions of God have been responsible for tremendous positivity but also tremendous damage throughout history, and today.

After explaining why God is not angry last week, Steve dives even deeper into what it means for us that God doesn’t just love, but that God is love.

This week, Steve looks at why so many have come to believe God is a vengeful wrath-filled judge, and where we, as Christians, got off on the wrong foot thinking this way.

Steve begins this week’s Chalke Talk by reflecting on some of the questions he has been asked, following the previous video in which he suggested that Heaven is likely to be filled with far more than just Christians.

Life in our globalised, multi-faith, multi-cultural, world highlights some big questions, ones which have always been there for the Church, but which have often been ignored, says Steve in this week’s Chalke Talk.

“The first readers of the Gospels would have thought its content scandalous,” argues Steve in this week’s Chalke Talk. While some of the significance can be lost to us, the pages of the four books that recount the life of Jesus are full of him pushing the boundaries of social acceptability by reaching out to people that the ‘Holy’ considered outcast.

The Ethiopian Eunuch of Acts, chapter 8, verse 26-38 is someone who should never have been welcomed into the fold. He was Ethiopian, while God’s love was for Jews. And Scripture had totally forbidden the participation of a Eunuch – or someone with ‘crushed sexual organs’ – in worship.

In this week’s Chalke Talk, Steve explores how inclusion is a fundamental theme in the Old Testament.

Examining the story of Abraham and Sarah, Steve illustrates that from the earliest pages of the Bible, we have examples of people stepping out of their comfort zone and attempting to share the news of God’s love with those that might previously have been considered unworthy of it.

In this week’s Chalke Talk Steve responds to criticism that in his previous video, he oversimplified the message of Jesus. While Steve had claimed that the message of the Gospel is simply one of love, others have pointed out that Jesus was – on occasions – a man of anger.

Jesus knew the law as well as any boy who grew up in Jewish society – and by all accounts, far better than most. But what really made Jesus different was his ability to internalize the spirit of the law – and liberate himself from the letter of it.

“Following Jesus isn’t about religion and all its paraphernalia; signing up to a system of doctrinal statements in the hope of escaping judgement after death – instead it’s about how to do life right now!”

The Apostle Paul is often written off as an anti-sex, anti-marriage, anti-women misery. But, when we take every word of Paul as universally applicable, we make a horrendous pastoral mistake. We end up imposing theological constructs on him which just aren’t there.

The Church has a responsibility to engage with and tackle the moral and spiritual issues of contemporary society. However, we can only do this when we tap into the timeless wisdom of scripture – and that requires understanding that the Bible does not have the final word on every moral issue.

100 years on from the Representation of the People Act, which heralded the first concrete steps in the long process towards women’s suffrage in the UK, the Church has failed to learn the lessons of its historic, and doctrinally driven, social conservatism.

When we walk into a library – even a specialist library on a particular subject – we expect the books present to have much in common with each other; but we would be highly surprised if they uniformly agreed on everything. The Bible, Steve argues in this week’s Chalke Talk, is a library and we should expect some disagreement between the books that constitute it.

Irresponsible church leaders, who encourage a literal and juvenile interpretation of the Bible, are partly to blame for heightened mental illness and physical harm among LGBT people, argues Steve in this week's Chalke Talk.

What do we mean when we call the Bible 'God-breathed'? To what extent can we ever call the Bible infallible?

2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching. But it never uses the word ‘infallible’. In the latest instalment of Chalke Talk, Steve argues that by labelling the Bible as infallible we have discouraged people from asking big questions about its content, from grappling with it in its entirety and understanding its true meaning.

How do we deal with contradictions in the Bible – occasions where one verse describes an event in a certain way and another verse talks about the same event completely differently?

An obsession with creation vs evolution has caused large parts of the Church to miss the true message of the creation story, says a prominent Christian leader. “In fact”, he explains, “here we are in the 21st century and most of the world has still not come to terms with Genesis’ radical message of inclusion and equality.”

The way we interpret the Bible is driving down church attendance, says Steve in this week’s ‘Chalke Talk.’

Off the back of new figures which show that the Church of England has lost two-thirds of its members in the last three decades, we need to ask questions about what it is that pushes people away.

“Moses, a late bronze-age thinker, puts late bronze-age words into God’s mouth,” says Steve Chalke in the latest edition of Chalke Talk. “And the problem is that some of them stuck.”

Some Christians, often with passion and pride, argue that the Bible does not need to be interpreted. Every word – every syllable – can be applied without thought and interpretation. This, Steve argues in the latest addition of Chalke Talk, is nonsense.

Many Christians, Steve argues, are in the habit of picking and choosing which bits of the Bible to believe. If a part of it is uncomfortable, we tend to gloss over it.

Luther was extraordinarily brave. Despite risking death, he had the courage of his convictions to speak out about the things that really mattered to him. Throughout history, many Christians have found the strength to do the same.

The church needs heretics and Jesus himself was seen as one, argues Steve in the 4th instalment of the Chalke Talk video series.

“Bad theology costs lives” argues Steve in the third instalment of ‘Chalke Talk.’ From Luther and his persecution of the Jews, to the Church’s relatively recent poor treatment of unmarried mothers and divorced people, misunderstanding Scripture can lead to mental and physical wellbeing being seriously undermined.

Luther asked the questions that the 16th century Church really needed to grapple with – and because of his courage the world changed forever. But none of this means that he didn’t make mistakes. Did his ‘two Kingdoms theology’ – which called for separation between Church and state lead to a world where Christians started to turn a blind eye to secular evil? Could this even have shaped a German Church which ailed to speak out against Nazism in the 1930s?

On the 500th anniversary since Martin Luther supposedly posted his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg - effectively ushering in what would become known as the protestant reformation – Rev Canon Steve Chalke is launching the new ‘Chalke Talk’ video web series. Through a weekly succession of videos, Steve will focus minds on ninety five burning questions that he believes the Church needs to face up to as part of a radical rethink of its theology, engagement and role in society.