Category Archives: General

Bible, Gender, General, Global issues, Missional, Social Justice

Christmas Eve Reflection: Seeing Mary’s Christmas

2017/12/26 Graeme Leave a comment

It might be because as the only male in my household I am surrounded by “women’s stuff” all day everyday and am privileged to be forced to see the world through a distinctly feminine (and deliberately feminist) lens, that on Christmas Eve each year, my thoughts often turn to Mary and what she must have been thinking and feeling at this time that very first Christmas so long ago.

She’d have been tired from a long, unnecessary journey, and a nine month pregnancy. She’d have been scared, just a teenager about to give birth for the first time surrounded by strangers. She’d have been concerned for her future, not yet in love with kind Joseph to whom she had been promised in marriage, and overwhelmed by all that had happened to her already in her short life.

On that night, she was an oppressed minority forcibly relocated to some ancestral town she knew nothing of by a dictatorial government who saw her and her kind as a problem. On that night, she was homeless. She would soon become a refugee, and witness to a massacre of children. And she would live to see her first born child killed savagely.

I don’t think Mary had “a silent, holy night” in mind.

And, yet, we know that she knew. This child that was to be born was no ordinary child. Her child would not live an ordinary life. He would change the world, and history, forever. That night, she knew – before anyone else did – that the Saviour was coming.

I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas. I have grown to love it more as I have witnessed it through the excitement of my own children. But I’m not convinced that the message of that first Christmas is being adequately embodied in our world today – especially to those people who are precisely like Mary: pregnant teenagers, scared women, brown-skinned poor people, refugees, those in countries that oppress their citizens or have been invaded by a hostile force, the homeless and those who wonder where their next meal will come from. What does it mean to them that the Saviour has come?

Mary’s story is as important as Jesus’ at Christmas. Christmas Eve is my moment to see the greatest story ever told through the eyes of Mary, the Mother of God.

Bible, General, Theology

Chris Kratzer: Maybe, Just Maybe, If You’d Stop Quoting The Bible At Me

2017/08/27 Graeme Leave a comment

I am glad I have found Chris Kratzer’s blog. I like the way he writes, and I like the way he thinks. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he says – but then, I doubt he does either. But I like how he gets me to think.

His latest blog is about people who think they’re “engaging” with you by quoting the Bible. I think he’s spot on in his analysis of these people who are all over my social media feed. His conclusions is worth its weight in gold: “When Jesus referenced the Bible, He did so primarily to reframe it and reinterpret it through the lens of Grace, love, and Himself.” Ha.

The only thing I would add to Chris’s excellent article is that when someone throws a Bible verse at me, I quickly whip out my Bible and go back about 10 verses and start reading. I read through the verse they’ve just quoted at me, and read to the end of the next section of the Bible. Without even resorting to Greek or Hebrew or any attempt to look at the interpretation, almost always – with unfailing regularity – the point the person was trying to make by quoting an out-of-context verse can be refuted, repudiated or just scoffed by doing this. It really is one of my favourite things to do. It’s possibly slightly childish, and maybe not entirely helpful, but it proves the points Chris’s blog makes.

Read it and subscribe to Chris’s blog here, or read an extended extract below:
Continue reading Chris Kratzer: Maybe, Just Maybe, If You’d Stop Quoting The Bible At Me →

Church, General, Leadership, Missional, Social Justice

We’ve prayed for our country. Now what?

2017/04/24 Graeme 4 Comments

On 22 April, on a dusty farm outside the central city of Bloemfontein in South Africa, hundreds of thousands of Christians gathered for a prayer service led by Angus Buchan. Concerned about the state of the country, this group gathered together in response to the promise in Scripture found in 2 Chronicles 7:14, “…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

I won’t go into the many ways this passage has been abused in the past, including pointing out that it is the second half of a sentence, and that it comes in the middle of a consecration of a Temple with many other instructions attached to it. Let’s just focus on what these words themselves say. We are not just called to prayer. We called to sort our lives out, to humble ourselves, to seek God and to turn from wickedness.

I strongly support the desire Christians had to pray for our country. And I strongly support any group of people gathering together to commit themselves to good and to God. But the big question, 48 hours later, is “now what?” What happens next.

I have four suggestions, all flowing from this verse in 2 Chron. 7:14:

1. Choose to humble ourselves

Humility involves thinking of others more highly than ourselves. Humility involves believing the best about others. Humility means I accept that my views, my approaches, my worldview and my way of life are not definitive for others – that other people may have equally valid, but different views, approaches, worldviews and ways of living. Humility means not imposing my beliefs on others. Humility means asking more questions. Humility means seeing the world through other people’s eyes.

How can we truly demonstrate a spirit of humility in South Africa and the world right now?

Continue reading We’ve prayed for our country. Now what? →

Bible, Church, Gender, General, Social Justice, Theology, Youth

Only hypocrites would boycott Disney over a gay character in Beauty and the Beast

2017/03/23 Graeme Leave a comment

Disney’s latest real-actor remake of one of their classics has just been released in the USA, and early reviews are effusive in their praise of Beauty and the Beast. Except for a few die-hard conservative, evangelicals – the perennial party-poopers of the modern age. Led, of course, by the increasingly frothy-mouthed Franklin Graham, there has been a loud call for Christians to boycott the movie, and in fact Disney as a whole, because one of the characters in the movie is gay (or, maybe gay).

Conservative Christians have a long tradition of targeting Disney for its stance on LGBTI rights. When Disney pre-empted legislation on gay marriage by extending employee benefits to those in same sex relationships two decades ago, Christians staged a boycott of Disney. But Disney was unmoved, and eventually the pull of Mickey Mouse overcame Christian objections and they went back to Disneyland as they had before. Apparently their children’s need for entertainment overcame their principled objections. More on this theme later.

The concern this week is that in the new Beauty and the Beast movie, Disney made it more obvious than in the original 1991 version that Gaston’s sidekick LeFou may be, as we already suspected, gay. It’s not overt, it’s not sexual and it’s not a theme in the movie at all. In fact, in a 129 minute feature film, this issue takes up slightly less than 30 seconds. Yet, Franklin Graham has said:

They’re trying to push the LGBT agenda into the hearts and minds of your children—watch out! Disney has the right to make their [movies], it’s a free country. But as Christians we also have the right not to support their company. I hope Christians everywhere will say no to Disney.

Of course Disney have the right to make these movies. And, yes, Graham and his accolytes have the right to boycott it. But I also have the right to point out how hypocritical that is. Because that is precisely what it is. Embarrassingly so.

Continue reading Only hypocrites would boycott Disney over a gay character in Beauty and the Beast →

Gender, General, Theology

I am a Christian

2017/02/08 Graeme 5 Comments

I often get invited to speak at churches, mission organisations and other Christian gatherings. People who know my stance on gay marriage sometimes protest against my involvement, writing me off as a heretic before they’ve even heard what I have to say and most often without taking the time to study my theology (easily available via videos and blogs). The worst detractors go on a smear campaign against me, claiming I am a “false prophet” and even worse things. They do this, of course, without ever attempting to contact me or engage with me.

So, just in case there’s any confusion or doubt, I want to be very clear: I am a Christian. In fact, I am a Bible-believing, evangelical Christian. I don’t really like that term these days, as the Christian right in America has co-opted “evangelical” as a label that now stands for a political and social view I don’t want to align to. But “evangelical” is technically applied to someone who believes that the Bible is God’s Word and the standard for our faith and practice, and that we should take Jesus and His words seriously and share Him with others. And I definitely believe that.

I am definitely a Christian.

You don’t have to take my word for it.

The Bible gives us only four ways by which we can truly judge someone’s salvation and devotion to Christ, and you’re welcome to use any and all of these to judge me. Just because we may differ on a few issues of interpretation does not give anyone the right to call my salvation or my commitment to Christ or my commitment to His Word into question. To do so, would be, quite ironically, totally non-Biblical.

Four Ways to Know If I Am a Christian

1. Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

I declare this, without reservation. I am saved.

2. 2 Timothy 3:14: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it…”

This verse leads into the famous 2 Tim. 3:16 which talks of Scripture being God’s Word and useful for us. It tells us that there is a received orthodoxy and tradition that we should stand in. It doesn’t say that our beliefs and understanding of God will not grow and develop over time – in fact, Jesus quite specifically told us that the role of the Holy Spirit is exactly the opposite: He will continue, over decades, generations and centuries to grow in our faith and knowledge of God.

But over the centuries of church history, the best and brightest of our spiritual elders have codified all the core beliefs of the Bible into Creeds. There are a variety that have stood the test of time, and each one has a richness and depth of meaning. My favourite is the Apostle’s Creed. I stand by every word of every line of this creed:

Continue reading I am a Christian →

FutureChurchNow by Graeme Codrington

Category Archives: General

Chris Kratzer: Maybe, Just Maybe, If You’d Stop Quoting The Bible At Me

I am a Christian

Four Ways to Know If I Am a Christian

Graeme Codrington's musings on a new kind of Christianity

The Invisible Character of White Privilege

And Jesus Said Unto Paul of Ryan …

Four Ways to Know If I Am a Christian

Graeme Codrington's musings on a new kind of Christianity