This week Steve wraps up, his 95 questions pertinent to the church today, Chalke Talk. Started as a response to the 500-year anniversary of the Martin Luther’s 95 questions to the church of his day, which set off the reformation, Steve has journeyed through tough questions that boggle the minds of Christians today, and are often responsible for behaviour which is contradictory to the message of the gospel.
Read MoreCall it God. Cosmic Justice. Karma. Or, what goes around comes around. Since the beginning of time, people have believed that this world is heading somewhere. And the Ancient Jews, Steve comments, were no different.
Read MoreAs the song goes “Ooo, Heaven is a place on earth!” But aside from 80’s classic, is this actually a fundamental theological point?
Read MoreLove never fails. It’s become a platitude familiar to so many of us, as Christians. But do we actually believe that to be true? Or, is it true for everyone? Or just a select number of really good Christians.
Read MoreHell is perhaps one of the most polarising topics within the church, and the way it’s been represented often damages our witness as Christ-followers. It’s for that reason that Steve has been dedicating weeks of Chalke Talk to explore it.
Read MoreThis week Steve continues on from last week with how we've misunderstood the doctrine of hell, particularly what Paul thinks about it.
Read MoreThe judgement of God, and often his followers, is frequently cited as the main reason that turns people away from Christianity. A religion that is meant to be about love, it seems, cannot be about judgement as well.
Read MoreIt’s a common misconception, and common because we often don’t realize we’re making it. Steve asks, this week, Why do we think Paul thought like us? Paul wasn’t westerner, a modernist, liberal nor a conservative. He was deeply a product of his culture and his encounter with the gospel.
Read MoreFollowing on from last week’s Chalke Talk, questioning why an often misinterpreted idea of the afterlife still makes its home in mainstream Christianity, Steve asks is every exclusion a failure of love?
Read MoreWould God, who is described as the definition of pure love, punish people with infinite and eternal torment based on decisions and actions taken in their few short years of life on earth?
Read MoreSteve argues, this week, that the notion of eternal torment has left our culture deaf to the real message of the gospel, one which is so desperately needed: love.
And with this episode of Chalke Talk, he explores, as he has in previous episodes and throughout his most recent best-selling book, The Lost Message of Paul, how we’ve got it wrong and what we need to do to get it right.
Read MoreBack from a summer break, this week Steve continues to explore what the bible actually teaches – or doesn’t teach – about Hell and the idea, as the medieval church put it, of ‘perpetual punishment with the devil’ for those were ‘unworthy of Christ’.
Read MoreThis week Steve ventures on to a new topic with Chalke Talk: the afterlife. More specifically, what was the context for Paul's understanding of it and how have we come to understand it. Or rather, misunderstand it.
Read MoreIn previous episodes, Steve has questioned the centrality of the cross to Christianity. The cross is nothing without redemption, Steve suggests.
Read MoreIt means someone who had an obsessive desire for power, many times, at all costs. And unfortunately, that's often how God has been understood. Love is an afterthought to a legalistic God who's otherwise concerned with his people subjecting to and honouring him.
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