John Goldingay
Jeremiah for everyone - Cursed Be the Day I Was Born
Jeremiah for everyone - Cursed Be the Day I Was Born
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Cursed Be the Day I Was Born When my first wife’s multiple sclerosis starting taking more of an emotional and mental toll on her (though I don’t think we recognized that this was what was happening), it began to take more of a toll on me, too…
Jeremiah for everyone - Pottery Smashed
Jeremiah for everyone - Pottery Smashed
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Pottery Smashed In Hanoi there’s an embassy that gives visas to people who want to find the bodies of relatives who died in Vietnam’s wars. The family wants to be able to give them a proper burial to avoid their becoming angry ghosts rather than guardian spirits…
Jeremiah for everyone - Clay in the Potter's Hand
Jeremiah for everyone - Clay in the Potter's Hand
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Clay in the Potter's Hand There’s a neat Christian song that expresses our commitment to being “clay in the potter’s hand.” It’s a suggestive image. It means that we are malleable, open to being formed into what God wants us to be…
Jeremiah for everyone - Who Am I?
Jeremiah for everyone - Who Am I?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Who Am I? In a poem he wrote in prison, on his way to being executed by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked the question, “Who am I?” Am I one person today, and tomorrow, another? Do I look brave to other people, though before myself I’m “a contemptibly woebegone weakling”?…
Jeremiah for everyone - Your Marriage Isn't Your Own
Jeremiah for everyone - Your Marriage Isn't Your Own
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Your Marriage Isn't Your Own I’ve mentioned my first wife’s illness, which was a dominant feature of our marriage for most of its forty-two years. If I’d wanted to separate Ann’s illness from my work, I couldn’t have done so…
Jeremiah for everyone - I Don't Trust You
Jeremiah for everyone - I Don't Trust You
by SPCK - John Goldingay
I Don't Trust You In the latter years of my first wife’s life, from time to time I’d attempt to confront God about the way she was increasingly affected by her multiple sclerosis. God was inclined to be equally confrontational in his response (I could get away with a cry of pain …
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (2)
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (2)
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (2) My wife’s daughter and her husband work on behalf of Darfuri refugees who long ago fled from Sudan to Chad, seeking to make their plight known in the United States. My wife often feels it’s as if they’re bashing their heads against a brick …
Jeremiah for everyone - How Do You Get People to Change?
Jeremiah for everyone - How Do You Get People to Change?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Do You Get People to Change? In the 1960s a man called Arthur Blessitt moved from Louisiana to Hollywood in order to preach to hippies, runaways, addicts, bikers, prostitutes, flower children, and would-be actors and rock stars; he became known as the minister of Sunset Strip…
Jeremiah for everyone - Why Do the Faithless Do Well?
Jeremiah for everyone - Why Do the Faithless Do Well?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Why Do the Faithless Do Well? In connection with Jeremiah’s opening chapter, I mentioned a “How” question in connection with disability. There’s also a “Why” question. My first wife was wheelchair-bound and unable to do anything for herself for the last twelve years of her life…
Jeremiah for everyone - No Shrugging of God’s Shoulders
Jeremiah for everyone - No Shrugging of God’s Shoulders
by SPCK - John Goldingay
No Shrugging of God’s Shoulders Christians sometimes think that Jews believe they’re “justified by works.” I just came across a quotation from a Jewish commentary on Exodus from a thousand years ago, which undermines that assumption. Why do the Ten Commandments not appear at the …
Jeremiah for everyone - On Facing Reality
Jeremiah for everyone - On Facing Reality
by SPCK - John Goldingay
On Facing Reality We were doing our monthly stint serving dinner at a homeless shelter last night, and I got to talk to one of the residents. She’d had a successful and lucrative career in the movie business and lived in a house in Malibu…
Jeremiah for everyone - Does God Really Punish?
Jeremiah for everyone - Does God Really Punish?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Does God Really Punish? At dinner last night, one of our friends was troubled by the way the Old Testament speaks of God’s exercising violent judgment by means of Israel. I tried my usual ploy of asking whether she was as troubled by Jesus’ speaking of millions of people being th…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Misleading Scholars
Jeremiah for everyone - The Misleading Scholars
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Misleading Scholars Yesterday a student asked me whether a particular book would be taken seriously by the wide majority of Old Testament scholars. The response I forgot to make was that whatever is the consensus of scholars today won’t be the consensus in a decade’s time…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (1)
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (1)
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray My first Old Testament mentor once told us about his first visit to the new cathedral in Coventry in the center of England. The old cathedral, like much of the city, was devastated by bombing in the Second World War…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Perilous Position of Prophet and Priest
Jeremiah for everyone - The Perilous Position of Prophet and Priest
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Perilous Position of Prophet and Priest Today we had a bumper crop of birthdays to celebrate at church; I was tempted to ask people to stand up if they were not having a birthday this week. As a wondrous coincidence, the Gospel reading was the story of a birthday party…
Jeremiah for everyone - Uncircumcised Ears
Jeremiah for everyone - Uncircumcised Ears
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Uncircumcised Ears I had an odd experience yesterday. My wife initiated a quite ordinary and reasonable conversation about moving around some of the furniture and repainting the walls and replacing the dining furniture that’s falling apart…
Jeremiah for everyone - If You Can Find Anyone