Category: Emerging Church
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An Emerged Theology: Can We Actually Say Anything about God?
Nice bit of banter going on between Tony Jones and Pete Rollins, where Tony challenged Pete to ‘give up atheism for Lent’. Outlining what this might look like, he requests: I’d like Pete to post some beautiful, flowery prayers on his blog. I’d like Pete to make some conclusive claims about the characteristics of God.…
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The Empathetic Civilisation | Dirty Heaven [4]
Rumbling in the background of these posts has, of course, been the debate about Rob Bell’s views on hell – which have been picked apart by everyone despite the fact that his book has yet to be released. What is so interesting is that the reaction to the press releases about the book go a…
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The Empathetic Civilisation | Dirty Heaven [3]
I’ve been thinking about Jeremy Rifkin’s talk on ‘The Empathetic Civilisation’ which he gave at the RSA last year. It sparked my interest because of this quote: “There is no empathy in heaven, because there is no mortality. There is no empathy in utopia, because there is no suffering.” This made think a little about…
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The Empathetic Civilisation | Dirty Heaven [2]
Jeremy Rifkin’s talk about empathy leads us to some interesting conclusions about heaven. Because empathy is about engaging with those who are other, and experiencing some of their pain, heaven – as traditionally seen – must be a place where there is no empathy, because pain cannot be experienced. The typically Christian view of heaven…
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The Empathetic Civilisation | Dirty Heaven [1]
Thanks to my friend Tom for putting me on to this RSA Animation: Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. Empathy is something I explore in some depth in Other, and it is,…
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“Lord I just…” | Do you believe in Prayer? | Speaking into the unknown
A couple of times recently I’ve been in situations where people have said ‘let’s pray together.’ It’s struck me that there are some interesting group dynamics going on when we do that, which I thought would be good to air. Firstly, if God is God, then why do we need to pray aloud? The answer…