Showing posts with label materialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label materialism. Show all posts

Tuesday 3 June 2014

Message of Pope Francis I for the 48th World Communications Day

Communication at the Service of an Authentic Culture of Encounter

[Sunday, 1 June 2014]
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today we are living in a world which is growing ever “smaller” and where, as a result, it would seem to be easier for all of us to be neighbours. Developments in travel and communications technology are bringing us closer together and making us more connected, even as globalization makes us increasingly interdependent. Nonetheless, divisions, which are sometimes quite deep, continue to exist within our human family. On the global level we see a scandalous gap between the opulence of the wealthy and the utter destitution of the poor. Often we need only walk the streets of a city to see the contrast between people living on the street and the brilliant lights of the store windows. We have become so accustomed to these things that they no longer unsettle us. Our world suffers from many forms of exclusion, marginalization and poverty, to say nothing of conflicts born of a combination of economic, political, ideological, and, sadly, even religious motives.
In a world like this, media can help us to feel closer to one another, creating a sense of the unity of the human family which can in turn inspire solidarity and serious efforts to ensure a more dignified life for all. Good communication helps us to grow closer, to know one another better, and ultimately, to grow in unity. The walls which divide us can be broken down only if we are prepared to listen and learn from one another. We need to resolve our differences through forms of dialogue which help us grow in understanding and mutual respect. A culture of encounter demands that we be ready not only to give, but also to receive. Media can help us greatly in this, especially nowadays, when the networks of human communication have made unprecedented advances. The internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. This is something truly good, a gift from God.
This is not to say that certain problems do not exist. The speed with which information is communicated exceeds our capacity for reflection and judgement, and this does not make for more balanced and proper forms of self-expression. The variety of opinions being aired can be seen as helpful, but it also enables people to barricade themselves behind sources of information which only confirm their own wishes and ideas, or political and economic interests. The world of communications can help us either to expand our knowledge or to lose our bearings. The desire for digital connectivity can have the effect of isolating us from our neighbours, from those closest to us. We should not overlook the fact that those who for whatever reason lack access to social media run the risk of being left behind.
While these drawbacks are real, they do not justify rejecting social media; rather, they remind us that communication is ultimately a human rather than technological achievement. What is it, then, that helps us, in the digital environment, to grow in humanity and mutual understanding? We need, for example, to recover a certain sense of deliberateness and calm. This calls for time and the ability to be silent and to listen. We need also to be patient if we want to understand those who are different from us. People only express themselves fully when they are not merely tolerated, but know that they are truly accepted. If we are genuinely attentive in listening to others, we will learn to look at the world with different eyes and come to appreciate the richness of human experience as manifested in different cultures and traditions. We will also learn to appreciate more fully the important values inspired by Christianity, such as the vision of the human person, the nature of marriage and the family, the proper distinction between the religious and political spheres, the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, and many others.
La parabola del Buon Samaritano Messina Chiesa...
La parabola del Buon Samaritano Messina Chiesa della Medaglia Miracolosa Casa di Ospitalità Collereale (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
How, then, can communication be at the service of an authentic culture of encounter? What does it mean for us, as disciples of the Lord, to encounter others in the light of the Gospel? In spite of our own limitations and sinfulness, how do we draw truly close to one another? These questions are summed up in what a scribe – a communicator – once asked Jesus: “And who is my neighbour?” (Lk 10:29). This question can help us to see communication in terms of “neighbourliness”. We might paraphrase the question in this way: How can we be “neighbourly” in our use of the communications media and in the new environment created by digital technology? I find an answer in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is also a parable about communication. Those who communicate, in effect, become neighbours. The Good Samaritan not only draws nearer to the man he finds half dead on the side of the road; he takes responsibility for him. Jesus shifts our understanding: it is not just about seeing the other as someone like myself, but of the ability to make myself like the other. Communication is really about realizing that we are all human beings, children of God. I like seeing this power of communication as “neighbourliness”.
Whenever communication is primarily aimed at promoting consumption or manipulating others, we are dealing with a form of violent aggression like that suffered by the man in the parable, who was beaten by robbers and left abandoned on the road. The Levite and the priest do not regard him as a neighbour, but as a stranger to be kept at a distance. In those days, it was rules of ritual purity which conditioned their response. Nowadays there is a danger that certain media so condition our responses that we fail to see our real neighbour.
It is not enough to be passersby on the digital highways, simply “connected”; connections need to grow into true encounters. We cannot live apart, closed in on ourselves. We need to love and to be loved. We need tenderness. Media strategies do not ensure beauty, goodness and truth in communication. The world of media also has to be concerned with humanity, it too is called to show tenderness. The digital world can be an environment rich in humanity; a network not of wires but of people. The impartiality of media is merely an appearance; only those who go out of themselves in their communication can become a true point of reference for others. Personal engagement is the basis of the trustworthiness of a communicator. Christian witness, thanks to the internet, can thereby reach the peripheries of human existence.
As I have frequently observed, if a choice has to be made between a bruised Church which goes out to the streets and a Church suffering from self-absorption, I certainly prefer the first. Those “streets” are the world where people live and where they can be reached, both effectively and affectively. The digital highway is one of them, a street teeming with people who are often hurting, men and women looking for salvation or hope. By means of the internet, the Christian message can reach “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Keeping the doors of our churches open also means keeping them open in the digital environment so that people, whatever their situation in life, can enter, and so that the Gospel can go out to reach everyone. We are called to show that the Church is the home of all. Are we capable of communicating the image of such a Church? Communication is a means of expressing the missionary vocation of the entire Church; today the social networks are one way to experience this call to discover the beauty of faith, the beauty of encountering Christ. In the area of communications too, we need a Church capable of bringing warmth and of stirring hearts.
Effective Christian witness is not about bombarding people with religious messages, but about our willingness to be available to others “by patiently and respectfully engaging their questions and their doubts as they advance in their search for the truth and the meaning of human existence” (BENEDICT XVI, Message for the 47th World Communications Day, 2013). We need but recall the story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus. We have to be able to dialogue with the men and women of today, to understand their expectations, doubts and hopes, and to bring them the Gospel, Jesus Christ himself, God incarnate, who died and rose to free us from sin and death. We are challenged to be people of depth, attentive to what is happening around us and spiritually alert. To dialogue means to believe that the “other” has something worthwhile to say, and to entertain his or her point of view and perspective. Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the claim that they alone are valid or absolute.
May the image of the Good Samaritan who tended to the wounds of the injured man by pouring oil and wine over them be our inspiration. Let our communication be a balm which relieves pain and a fine wine which gladdens hearts. May the light we bring to others not be the result of cosmetics or special effects, but rather of our being loving and merciful “neighbours” to those wounded and left on the side of the road. Let us boldly become citizens of the digital world. The Church needs to be concerned for, and present in, the world of communication, in order to dialogue with people today and to help them encounter Christ. She needs to be a Church at the side of others, capable of accompanying everyone along the way. The revolution taking place in communications media and in information technologies represents a great and thrilling challenge; may we respond to that challenge with fresh energy and imagination as we seek to share with others the beauty of God.
From the Vatican, 24 January 2014, the Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales.
FRANCIS
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Saturday 19 April 2014

From Winterdarkness into light of Spring

Sometimes we can have the impression we are Living in the Wilderness of the chaotic jungle of the industrial world.


English: Skulls remaining on the field and tre...
Skulls remaining on the field and trees destroyed at the Battle of the Wilderness, 1864. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The darkness of the Winter-months has been with us for a long time. Week after week we got grey skies, winds which brought the the kill feeling deep in us. Every year in the month of February the undertakers have the busiest period of year. This year it was not so bad. The funeral directors could look so deadly serious having less people than normal, because the weather was not so bad. Notwithstanding we can see many gloomy faces running around.


People have demanding jobs, and are taken by the need to get enough money in the till to have the family living reasonably well. It all seems to be great? We seem to be living in a world full of luxury.  Like we may have a shadow of democracy, a varnish civilization many may be king in their home only in name. The banks own most of what people have. Under the show of pretence many do think to have 'many friends'. Social media may be booming but more and more do we find lonely people. Lots of what people pretend is only on the surface.

Glamour, cosmetics, we can find it everywhere around us in this varnished world where so much is not what it seems to be. In that world many do not mind to be the blind one. When they do not know they do not have to worry. Why would they take notice of others or to be worried about things far away from their own house, when they have already enough on their own mind.

So many people are so concentrated earning their money working on whet they call success, they forget to see where the real treasures lie. They are not feeling happy. They do not know where to look for the real happiness. They go looking at the wrong places. So many try their luck by games and by trying out one person after the other. They think all can be said and measured by the amount and quality of sex they can have.

They are not so much interested in talking or in having real deep going conversations. Reading serious or long articles for them is mostly considered a waste of time. today so much have to be so short and so quick. Everything may be casual. This is the world of cursoriness. Hastiness rules this world.

In our transitory being many forget the deeper values of life. they are blinded by all the materialism and are not interested in the spiritual.

Now Spring has come we should Not hold back and should be getting out of darkness.
Many may have been looking for ways to keep the Darkness Out.
Many are also Afraid of the Dark.

We should not Be Afraid From “Life’s Darkness”.Those wanting to get out of the dark corners of this world, can find a new place on the web, where people are asked to come together and to share their ideas, to bring a positive note in this life. there they understand that there is to much Darkness’s Pain.
Some might think they are in a sinking world…. but I am convinced it should not all be so bad, and we can do a lot to keep all together our heads above water. I am convinced that if more people should join hands they could do so much better and rally could bring some change. But they have to be willing to join hands, to contribute, and to go forwards, with heads up, accepting the diversity in this world.

Sink or Swim
Sink or Swim (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is up to us all to chose if we want to Swim or Sink. Each individual has to make a choice: ~ Sink or Swim ~.

What is important is if we want to See the conquest and believe that we can gain the victory.

When you think you have nothing to say or to show the new website wants to show you differently. You may already be connected to many Social networking Web sites, but that new site From Guestwriters does not want to pretend to become an other social network. We do believe you may love to spend time on such social networks. You may love to have short words and do some chit-chat, Putting your feelings into words and sharing them.
Where-ever you may live, be it in Winter or Summer, living in a small village or in a big town or even Living in the Wilderness, you might like to find a place of rest, peacefulness or a place where you can meditate or think about nice things. there is already so much bad news in this world, so why not having a look at better things. But not many sites present those nice things, the little miracles which happen here and there.

As itseirene wrote in a comment:
“Blogs will always come in different shapes and sizes, and with each shape and size is a platform to inspire and touch lives. I hope I have inspired you and I hope you inspire others. Let’s continue to do this together!”
With Spring in sight I also want to bring some positive corner out of the dark. Pleas do find Welcome to “From guestwriters” and have a look if you would not like to become  part of those people who bring positive news in this world.

We need more positive thoughts in this world, to bring more light and colour in this grim places.
Do you not feel like you can help us to achieve some goal of bringing happiness and showing more beauty to many more people?


Please find to read about our aims and aspirations:

  1. Welcome to “From guestwriters”
  2. Guestwriters for you
  3. About Guest-writers
  4. We all have to have dreams
  5. Spring in sight
  6. When you think you have nothing to say or to show
  7. Putting your feelings into words and sharing them
  8. Helping words
  9. Spark of Positivism
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Wednesday 26 February 2014

Reflect on how much idolizing happens

In several countries people go mad about their stars. In certain countries, like in Belgium, on television they may talk about people who are called "wereldberoemd" ("world-famous") though they might be just some ordinary people who had some more screening on one of the commercial television stations or be spoken of in the gossip magazines.

Today we have the modern equivalents of the feasting in Corinth on the food that had been offered to the idols, especially in prosperous countries in the things that the masses idolize. In Corinth athletic sports were idolized, it is no different today – people call them ‘Stars’ or 'gods' . We better reflect on how much idolizing happens!

The apostle Paul also look at those athletes and recognised
“Every athlete exercises self control …they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable”(1 Corinthians 9:25).
He tells believers,
 “So run that you may obtain it …I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified”(1 Corinthians 9:24,27).
When we look at those athletes and film icons, how do we appreciate their work. How much recognition do we give to the television star or to a footballer, and to the doctor who saves many lives. When we look at the wages the footballer earns and than look at what a doctor or a nurse receives monthly, it show how much life has become worth in our society. A very good barometer to get to know what a human person is worth is looking at the prizes of hitman. the prizes of contract killers have gone down enormously the last few years.
The prize of surrogate mothers kept about the same for the last 5 years.

The policy of looking at human beings has worsened the last few years. Most people got more interested in the car or electric gadgets the neighbour has than in the person himself. World has become so commercialised and so materialistic that there is no place for the common man and certainly not for the Creator of all things.

Not many are interested in getting to know the other human beings and being ready to come to their help. To get to know a Spirit, Which they can not see or hear, is even worse... Why should they show any interest in Such an unreachable Bearing?

Those who love the God of gods, should come out and show the world their love for the Most High of all. They should show the world that That eternal Spirit is One of a kind. In Him they should put all their trust and come forwards to tell people about all His Works and promises.

Being aware of the particular love they received, believers in the Only One God, should be willing to share that love with others.
Love is, above all, an active quality; genuine love causes us to do things: it motivates our heart. Now, the things love causes us to do are not things we do out of a sense of obligation, there should not be occasions when we say,
 “I suppose I had better do …”
especially when it comes to serving the Lord.

Time is at hand that we come in to the public to serve the Most High Almighty.

When Jehovah God, who sees all things through his spirit (Psalm 139:1-6) knows that our professions of love for him come right from our hearts – we are “known by God”. But this is more than a one sided sense of knowing, to truly know God results in a two-way relationship, David’s Psalms show this, we read this morning,
 “Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his”(100:3).
We are the ones who belong to God and are willing to show that to the world.

We read a few days ago in Exodus,
 “Moses said to the LORD …you have said, ‘I know you by name …therefore if I have found favour in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you…””(33:12,13).

Knowing God comes through knowing his ways; leading to the realization that we are “working together with him”(2 Corinthians 6:1).

One of the wonders of this, Paul told the Corinthians, is to realize that
 “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it”(1 Corinthians 10:13).
Let us endure all tribulation which may come over us because we our lovers of God. Let us be brightened by His Glory and pronounce His Name with full dignity.

Not the idols and stars of this world should receive all honour, but title should be given to the Most High, Divine Creator, Jehovah God.



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Please do find additional reading:

  1. The business of this life
  2. Materialism, would be life, and aspirations
  3. Christian values and voting not just a game
  4. Idolatry or idol worship
  5. Worship and worshipping
  6. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God 
  7. A God between many gods 
  8. Finding God amid all the religious externals
  9. Seeing or not seeing and willingness to find God
  10. People Seeking for God 1 Looking for answers
  11. People Seeking for God 2 Human interpretations
  12. People Seeking for God 3 Laws and directions
  13. People Seeking for God 4 Biblical terms
  14. People Seeking for God 5 Bread of life 
  15. Only worship the Creator of all things
  16. Praise the God with His Name
  17. Jehovah Yahweh Gods Name
  18. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name
  19. “If anyone loves God, he is known by God” (February 25 thought)
  20. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #5 Prayer #1 Listening Sovereign Maker
  21. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #5 Prayer #3 Callers upon God
  22. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #10 Prayer #8 Condition
  23. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #14 Prayer #12 The other name
  24. In the death of Christ, the son of God, is glorification

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Friday 14 February 2014

19° century London and Unitarians

 It is not like certain website may want to  believe people that the "original movement began in Poland back in the mid-1500s when a member of the Minor Reformed Church challenged the Trinity doctrine."
 Unitarians, are people wanting to keep to Only One True God have been around for ages. Though we do agree that the the church denomination which is called Unitarian Church did come into existence many years after the death of the son of God. Most people in Poland were such believers in Only One God and took Jesus as the son of God, who really died, whilst God can not die.
Those who agreed with the member of the Minor Reformed Church who challenged the Trinity doctrine were given the ultimatum to convert to Roman Catholicism or leave.
 Most of the once preferring to keep to the biblical Truth went to Transylvania, which is where they first used the name “Unitarian” to describe themselves.
 Unitarianism came to the U.S. in the 1780s; Boston’s King’s Chapel was its first church. Many Unitarians, including the ones who attended church with the family of Andrew Sullivan, the author of the Dish, refer to themselves as Universalists. The term originally meant universal salvation, opposing the idea that God would punish or not save anyone. …

°°°

19°Century U.K.


Unitarianism has made way in England.


Newington Green Unitarian Church, London, Engl...
Newington Green Unitarian Church, London, England. Built in 1708, this is the oldest non-conformist church in London still in use as a church. (October 2005) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act became law the Unitarians in England were a small sect, and had not a single place of worship.  It was not till 1779 that it ceased to be required of Dissenting ministers that they should subscribe to the Articles of the Church of England previous to taking the benefit of the Toleration Act, and even this small boon was twice thrown out in the Upper House by the King’s friends and the Bishops.  In 1813, however, one of the most cruelly persecuting statutes which had ever disgraced the British code received its death-blow, and the Royal assent was given to an Act repealing all laws passed against those Christians who impugn the commonly received doctrine of the Trinity.  It was no easy matter to get this act of justice done; the Bishops and the Peers were obstinate.



  In 1772, we read, the Bishop of Llandaff made a most powerful speech, and produced from the writings of Dr. Priestley passages which equally excited the wonder and abhorrence of his hearers, and drew from Lord Chatham exclamations of “Monstrous! horrible! shocking!”  A few years after we find Lord North contending it to be the duty of the State to guard against authorizing persons denying the doctrine of the Trinity to teach.  Even as late as 1824, Lord Chancellor Eldon doubted (as he doubted everything that was tolerant in religion or liberal in politics) as to the validity of this Act, and hinted that the Unitarians were liable to punishment at common law for denying the doctrine of the Trinity.  Yet the Unitarians have a remote antiquity.  They can trace their descent to Apostolic times, and undoubtedly were an important element in the National Church, in the days of William and the Hanoverian succession.

Dr. Parr, says Mr. Barker,
 “spoke to me of the latitudinarian divines with approbation.  He agreed with me in thinking that the most brilliant era of the British Church since the Reformation was when it abounded with divines of that school;”
 and certainly Unitarians may claim to be represented at the present day in Broad Churchmen within the Establishment, and in divines of a similar way of thinking without.  They have been much helped by their antagonists.  No man was less of a Unitarian than the late Archbishop Whately, yet, in a letter to Blanco White, he candidly confessed,
 “Nothing in my opinion tends so much to dispose an intelligent mind towards anti-Trinitarian views as the Trinitarian works.”

As a sect, the Unitarians are a small body, and at one time were much given to a display of intelligent superiority as offensive in public bodies as in private individuals.  They were narrow and exclusive, and had little effect on the masses, who were left to go to the bad, if not with supercilious scorn, at any rate with genteel indifference.  There was in the old-fashioned Unitarian meeting-houses something eminently high and dry.  In these days, when we have ceased to regard heaven—to quote Tom Hood — as anybody’s rotten borough, we smile as a handful of people sing—
“We’re a garden walled around,
Planted and made peculiar ground;”
yet no outsider a few years ago could have entered a Unitarian chapel without feeling that such, more or less, was the abiding conviction of all present.
  “Our predominant intellectual attitude,”
 Mr. Orr confesses to be one reason of the little progress made by the denomination.  A Unitarian could no more conceal his sect than a Quaker.  Generally he wore spectacles; his hair was always arranged so as to do justice to his phrenological development; on his mouth there always played a smile, half sarcastic and half self-complacent.  Nor was such an expression much to be wondered at when you remembered that, according to his own idea, and certainly to his own satisfaction, he had solved all religious doubts, cleared up all religious mysteries, and annihilated, as far as regards himself, human infirmities, ignorance, and superstition.  It is easy to comprehend how a congregation of such would be eminently respectable and calm and self-possessed; indeed, so much so, that you felt inclined to ask why it should have condescended to come into existence at all.
  Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks, as described by that lady herself, may be taken as a very fair description of an average Unitarian congregation at a no very remote date.  Little Nell says, “I never saw any waxworks, ma’am; is it funnier than Punch?”  “Funnier?” said Mrs. Jarley, in a shrill voice, “it is not funny at all.”  “Oh,” said Nell, with all possible humility.  “It is not funny at all,” repeated Mrs. Jarley; “it’s calm, and what’s that word again—critical?  No, classical—that’s it; it’s calm and classical.  No low beatings and knockings about; no jokings and squeakings like your precious Punch’s, but always the same, with a constantly unchanging air of coldness and gentility.”
  Now it was upon this coldness and gentility that the Unitarians took their stand; they eliminated enthusiasm, they ignored the passions, and they failed to get the people, who preferred, instead, the preaching of the most illiterate ranter whose heart was in the work.

In our day a wonderful change has come over Unitarianism.  It is not, and it never was, the Arianism born of the subtle school of Alexandrian philosophy, and condemned by the orthodox Bishops at Nicea; nor is it Socinianism as taught in the sixteenth century, still less is it the Materialism of Priestley.
CDV portrait of James Martineau
CDV portrait of James Martineau (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
  Men of the warmest hearts and greatest intellects belonging to it actually disown the name, turn away from it as too cold and barren, and in their need of more light, and life, and love, seek in other denominations what they lack in their own.  The Rev. James Martineau, a man universally honoured in all sections of the universal church, confesses:
“I am constrained to say that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with the Unitarian heroes, sects, or productions of any age.  Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity.  I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to writers not of my own creed.  In philosophy I have had to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early text-books and the authors in chief favour with them.  In Biblical interpretation I derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham.  In devotional literature and religious thought I find nothing of ours that does not pale before Augustine Tauler and Pascal; and in the poetry of the Church it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley or Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor and cold.”
  This is the language of many beside Mr. Martineau — of all, indeed, to whom a dogmatic theology is of little import compared with a Christian life.

Let us attempt to describe Unitarianism negatively.  In one of his eloquent sermons in its defence, the late W. J. Fox said,
 “The Ebionites, Arians, is not essential to Unitarianism; Dr. Price was a Unitarian as well as Dr. Priestley, so is every worshipper of the Father only, whether he believes that Christ was created before all worlds, or first existed when born of Mary.  Philosophical necessity is no part of Unitarianism.  Materialism is no part of Unitarianism.  The denial of angels or devils is no part of Unitarianism.”
  Unitarianism has no creed, yet briefly it may be taken to be the denial of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, or of the natural depravity of man, or that sin is the work of the devil, or that the Bible is a book every word of which was dictated by God, or that Christ is God united to a human nature, or that atonement is reconciliation of God to man.  Furthermore, the Unitarians deny that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit, or that salvation is deliverance from the punishment of sin, or that heaven is a state of condition without change, or that the torments of hell are everlasting.

  It may be that the Broad Churchman entertains very much the same opinions, but then the Unitarian minister has this advantage over the Church clergyman, that he is free.  He has not signed articles of belief of a contrary character.  He has not to waste his time and energy in sophistications which can deceive no one, still less to preach that doctrine so perilous to the soul, and destructive of true spiritual growth, and demoralizing to the nation, that a religious, conscientious man may sign articles that can have but one sense and put upon them quite another.  Surely one of the most sickening characteristics of the age is that divorce between the written and the living faith, which, assuming to be progress, is in reality cowardice.




- p. 196 - p 202 from The Religious Life of London by J. Ewing Ritchie
Release Date: June 16, 2010  [eBook #32844]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Religious Life of London, by J. EwingRitchie 

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continues with: 19° century London, Unitarians and Evangelical Alliance
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Thursday 19 December 2013

Christadelphian Youth Coalition 2013 Bo City conference

From 19th to 22nd December 2013 the Christadelphian Youth Coalition of the Christadelphian Bible Mission (CBM) is holding their annual conference at their Ecclesia Hall Water Lane in Bo City.

The event wants to bring together youths from various CBM branches in Sierra Leone (Freetown, Kenema, Bo, Blama, Wanjama, Talia etc.), for strengthening the relationship in the Body of Christ and to prepare the mindset of young people to be more focused and committed to the things of God.

In this world of materialism the spiritual is often forgotten. Youngsters are quickly taken by the modern gadgets and the facilities of internet social media and youtube video-clips.

At the conference various youth leaders shall be able to deliver messages of sound doctrine to sway the minds of youths from such worldly activities. In the Christadelphian community it is important to put the mind on the true values of life.

We and the CYC Youths believe that the youngsters are the future of the church. For that reason Stepping Toes is still looking for young people to write on the platform and to help create a magazine where youngsters also could find stuff interesting for them.

This gathering in Bo City shall enable the youngsters to come together to discuss issues of importance that ensures the development of their various Ecclesiae.

Several activities have been lined up to ensure a successful conference. These include:
  • Bible Discussions in the morning and evening,
  • general meetings to discussing and addressing issues of development that unites the Christadelphian Family in Sierra Leone,
  • outdoor preaching, elections of new executives and indoor games.
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The Christadelphians, “Brothers and Sisters in Christ”, are a body of Bible believing people, who aim to live by faith in Jesus Christ, according to the teaching of his followers from the first century AD, finding their instruction in a wholly inspired Bible. Central to Christadelphian belief is that Christ will one day return to the Earth to establish the Kingdom of God and grant eternal life to his people – those who have tried to follow him and God.

The fundamental Christadelphian beliefs are:
The Bible is God’s word and the only message from him. It is without error, except for copying and translation errors. (2 Timothy 3:16, Hebrews 1:1. See also: The Bible, Why I Believe the Bible, and Alleged Biblical Errors.)
There is only one God – the Father. The Holy Spirit is God’s power. (John 17:3, Luke 1:35, Deuteronomy 6:4. See also God, Jesus and the Crucifixion, and The Trinity.)
Jesus is the Son of God, and also the son of a human being, his mother Mary, so making him Son of Man. Jesus was tempted just like us because of this. But Jesus was not just a great man, he was the Son of the Most High God, and was perfect. (Luke 1:30-31, John 3:18.See also God, Jesus and the Crucifixion, and The Trinity)
Man is mortal, having no existence when dead. (Psalm 6:5, Isaiah 38:18, Acts 2:29,34)
By living a sinless life, ending with his sacrificial death by crucifixion, Jesus has opened the way of salvation from death. (Hebrews 4:15, 1 Corinthians 5:7, 1 Corinthians15: 20-23, Galatians 3:27-29)
Belief and baptism are essential steps to salvation. (Mark 16:16. See also Baptism and Salvation.)
God raised Jesus from death. Jesus is currently in Heaven, on God’s right hand. He will one day return. (Acts 10:40, Romans 8:34, Acts 1:11)
When Jesus returns, he will raise his “sleeping” followers from death and grant immortality to the faithful who have tried to live by God’s precepts. (1 Corinthians 15:20-22)
His followers will help him to rule, bringing justice, righteousness and peace to the whole world – the Kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 15:23-26).
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Find Stepping Toes the internet magazine composed by (more progressive) Christadelphians: Stepping Toes



Being Religious and Spiritual 8 Spiritual, Mystic and not or well religious








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