When I was about nine or ten, at the height of worldwide panic about AIDS, I stumbled across a newspaper article that outlined the symptoms of the dreaded disease. I can still recall reading, to my horror, that one of the tell-tale signs was ‘thick, white matting on the tongue’. You see, I had a few small but obvious patches of white matter on my tongue. And my ten-year-old self became utterly convinced: I had AIDS. The fact that I was in the world’s lowest-risk category didn’t matter, nor did the fact that I was asthmatic and regularly took large doses of medication that left white deposits on my tongue. For at least a week, I was convinced that my end had come.

In my early 20s, it was a brain tumour. After all, I had a few really bad headaches on the way to uni one week; what else could it be?! As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become slightly more sanguine, but I’m still highly susceptible to fear setting in. Honestly, I feel like I’m tempting fate (even though I totally don’t believe in ‘tempting fate’) by even writing this piece.

I am a card-carrying hypochondriac.

So you can imagine how the last few weeks have made me feel. I’ve had to dig in and battle hard to not give in to the paralyzing fear of the coronavirus that’s been sweeping the globe. Continue reading →

Why do celebrity deaths stop us in our tracks and shock us so deeply?

Kobe Bryant is dead. It feels like a sick joke to type those words, but it’s much worse than a sick joke. It’s real.

I have an old but powerful memory that’s making it feel unreal.

In 1997, I ran a 2-on-2 basketball tournament where the winners’ prize was to meet Kobe and take a few shots with him during his off-season tour of Australia. The event with Kobe was held in a small high school gym in the inner city of Sydney. Probably 40-50 people were there on the day, and maybe 6 or 8 people had the chance to play against him for various reasons. We all figured Kobe would glide in, fulfil his obligations, smile for a promotional photo, and glide out again as quickly as possible.

But we didn’t know Kobe. Continue reading →

The inevitable has happened: the number of people with ‘No Religion’ in New Zealand now far exceeds the number of Christians. We are officially one of the most godless nations on earth.

This is hardly breaking news—because I’m a bit late to the Census data party, but also because Visually Impaired Freddy could have seen this coming for years, if not decades. It was only a matter of time.

The 2018 Census[1] records no fewer than 2.26m people (48.6% of the population) as saying they have ‘No Religion’. As I’ve pointed out before, there are no nominals in the No Religion category. Meanwhile, the number identifying as Christian continues to plummet, with just 1.74m (38.3%) ticking this box. And let’s face facts: the overwhelming majority of those people would be ‘Christian’ in name only, lacking a saving trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here, in the form of several graphs (along with the odd extra note or editorial comment), are the key findings from the most recent Census (with figures going back to 2001 to help us see the trends).

While we all knew that ‘No Religion’ would become New Zealand’s dominant ‘belief’ in this Census, it’s more of a blowout than expected. Growth from 1.63m to 2.26m is clearly a very pleasing result for the secularists. That’s 629,000 more people (in a small country) in the space of five years. Continue reading →

Words are endlessly fascinating. As a card-carrying pedant, I’m forever analyzing the way that words are used in various contexts. I find it especially intriguing to observe the ways in which subcultures develop their own idioms and jargon.

Christians are no different. We tend to spend a lot of time within our own communities, with each Christian subculture developing its own slightly nuanced, quirky ways of speaking.

Often this can be positive, reinforcing biblical ways of thinking and encouraging one another in the truth. Sometimes it can be completely neutral, nothing more than the development of quick and easily understood references. Christian jargon becomes unhelpful when it excludes newcomers or outsiders, confusing them or perhaps making them feel like unwelcome onlookers who are sneaking a peek at some exclusive, odd little clique.

But sometimes our Christian jargon can become unhelpful in another critical way—not just for outsiders, but for those within the community. We can inadvertently develop ways of speaking that cause confusion and lead us away from clarity in our thinking about God and his ways.

So I’d like you to pause and think with me about one important word that probably has a place in your Christian subculture’s jargon: call. And let’s include all the variations: call, called, and calling. Continue reading →

For many months now, a good friend and I have been slowly working our way through the book of Proverbs together. One of the many things that has struck us is the book’s obsession with our words and our speech. But we aren’t just urged to say things that are true; we’re urged to say the right things at the right time and in the right way. “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!” (Prov 15:23) “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” (Prov 25:11)

Perhaps building on Solomon’s wisdom, the apostle Paul wrote that one mark of a mature Christian is not just speaking the truth, but “speaking the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). Hopefully, your experience of life has already shown you that this is true. It’s simply not enough to go around saying true things; we also have to develop both the wisdom and the love to know how and when to say them—and, therefore, when not to say them. Continue reading →

How do we process the tragic events of March 15th? Will we find not just the common grace we know so well, but the saving grace we need?

New Zealand is a country saturated in God’s common grace. I sometimes feel that these islands are about as close to heaven on earth as you’ll find. We have our problems, but we’re served by stable and accountable government that has ensured religious freedom, prosperous without being ostentatious in our wealth, filled with astounding natural beauty, a place that people from all over the world choose as their home (48 cultures are represented at my son’s school alone). Christchurch, my home, is as friendly and tranquil as any small city on Earth, and New Zealanders are a people of quiet strength—not brash and self-seeking, but resolute and generous. Continue reading →