Revelation 12:9 describes “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” (New International Version) Satan, the devil and ‘the enemy’* are generally used interchangeably to name God’s chief opponent. This conflation has been going on for some time. According to a footnote in Wikipedia, “Both the words satanas and diábolos are used interchangeably […]

Judgment is one of the great themes of the Bible. It contains many passages referring to both individual and collective judgment. But what does it mean? Why do we judge? Why shouldn’t we judge? Don’t judge others I’m going to approach these questions through three statements from Jesus: “You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, […]

“You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye.” (Matthew 7:3) It’s one of many truth bombs that litter the early chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. For a long time, it surprised me how little this verse seemed to pop up in Christian discourse […]

The structure of the Bible bears a specific resemblance to a blockbuster Hollywood film. Blockbusters start by presenting us with a problem to be solved. They introduce a hero or heroes, and at the end of the film we discover if or how the problem is solved. The Bible varies from conventional Hollywood film structure […]

Some tools are more powerful than others. Some tools are easier to use than others. It doesn’t come as any real surprise that the most powerful tools are the hardest to use. Case in point: the tool in this article. Like the self-observation tool discussed in the previous article, this is one of those tools […]

It’s easy to conceptualise heaven and hell as opposite ends of a spectrum; that we all sit somewhere in the middle, our proximity to the celestial realms or the pits of fire and brimstone determined by thought and deed as we make our way along the road of life. Jesus asks us—and we sometimes even […]