A thought for Lent

"The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history - that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the domain of subjectivity. And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living God; no, we alone speak and decide what God can do and what we will and should do. And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times."

Pope Benedict XVI

'JESUS of NAZARETH'

Into Lent

For many Christians Lent begins with the sign of the cross, in ashes, generally on the forehead. Less fortunate Christians around the world from Ethiopia to the Philippines have ashes all around them, their churches burned to the ground often with mosques built on the hallowed ground. There is a good review of the situation here.


I reflected on the horrors being inflicted on fellow Christians after the penitential rite when the celebrant read the commandment:

I am the Lord your God:

You shall have no other gods but me.

You shall love the Lord your God

With all you heart,

With all your soul,

With all your mind,

And with all your strength.

How can the perpetrators of these crimes believe in one God, the God of Abraham? There is a useful explanation in this analysis. So why are we forced to support the implied legitimacy of another god by being surreptitiously sold halal food, even to Church of England schools? The barnabasfund is taking up this fight through its Operation Nehemiah. 

Christians can make their mark to assert that there is no other god by signing this petition. 

Keep the faith, spread the Word and have a good Lent.

The 'religion of peace'

Another report of the burning of a Coptic church in Egypt has appeared on the Voice of the Copts blog (see blog list).

Looking at the scale of this attack perhaps that is what Emdadur Choudhury  had in mind when he described his punishment for burning our national symbol of Remembrance as 'trivial', claiming that it was "only £10 more than a parking ticket".

Sick

The cost of two minutes chanting during the Remembrance Day silence followed by burning the poppy, the symbol of remembrance, calculated to insult our dead and those who mourn or remember them - fine £50.  


Emdadur Choudhury, 26, of Spitalfields, east London, receives £792 a month in benefits from the state he despises on top of his wages. Sorry or regret? Not a bit of it.  


Is it Islamophobia to question why we tolerate this behaviour which the perpetrator himself regards as trivial, justified by the meagre punishment? In Pakistan and other Islamic countries just a word out of place results in death. Surely there is something more deserving in between. 

Islamic doctrine towards Infidels

Thanks to the Voice of the Copts blog I have just picked up this moving video which you may wish to share with others. 

Postscript: Meanwhile the battle for hearts in the US continues.

A religion of peace?

As the 7/7 inquest drew to a close following five months of hearing evidence, Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan's Minister for Minorities was being laid to rest, after being assassinated, the latest but probably not the last Christian victim of the so called religion of peace. What possible excuse can there be for atrocities carried out in the name of religion?

"Islam is a religion of peace." I don't think so!

Guess who!

If stuck just click the image - more here