Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
~ Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791 ~

Monday, December 29, 2014

It's all about fear, power and control

What sort of personality do you have? Are you confident, extroverted, and unafraid of conflict? Or are you shy, introverted and try to avoid conflict? Or perhaps somewhere in-between? Or something else entirely?

I have long hypothesized that your personality type is the single biggest influence on how successful you will be as a Christadelphian. So much so that many Christadelphians seem to fit into a couple of distinct stereotypes, not unlike the ones I mentioned above. What do I mean by "successful" ? In my opinion, the most successful Christadelphians are those who are self-confident, perhaps even a little arrogant, and can throw their weight around and get others to do things for them. These people are often on committees and sometimes enjoy celebrity status within a wider group. Perhaps this is true of any community, but it is certainly true of Christadelphians. Christadelphian ecclesias are the perfect "small ponds" for these "big fish" to thrive in.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

The Journey

Imagine you’re about to set off on a journey. The destination is fixed. You suspect that it takes a long time to get there, but you have no idea how long. There are many, many roads which lead to the destination. Some roads are dangerous, some have great views, some are cold and dark. All roads themselves split into even more roads, all of which still lead to the destination.

You have a choice of cars to drive.
You must choose a car, and you may only choose one car.

Let’s have a look at a few of the cars...

Sunday, December 14, 2014

More questions for all Christadelphians

Several months ago I posted an article with questions to ask the ABs.

I thought I'd follow up with some more questions. I cannot reconcile these with the Bible.
I'd be interested to know if you can, and if so, what mental gymnastics do you have to do to get there?

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Why is eternal life desirable?

Why is eternal life desirable?
Don't get me wrong - I think a "really long" life would be great, but that's not what the Bible is offering.

When I think back to people's "vision of the kingdom" and their ideas about what eternal life might be like (which were nothing more than guesses, let's be honest), it seems pretty clear that people are generally pretty short-sighted on this topic. They speak of creating another universe and being like angels in it. Great, but what about after you've worked on your 300th universe...? what then?

And on what basis do you conclude that you'll even be doing any of those things? The Bible doesn't mention it. In fact the Bible mentions so few details about this apparently valuable prize it is offering, that one begins to suspect that the Bible's writers didn't have a clue about it either. If no one knows what you're supposed to be looking forward to, why look forward to it?

To put it another way, if you're selling a product and yet you don't know any details about the product and cannot adequately describe nor demonstrate it, why would I buy it? Why would anyone but the most gullible buy it?