There are two Bible verses that capture the tension this episode explores: on the one hand, there is Ecclesiastes 2:24: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God …”. On the other, there is a verse like Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

So which is to be? Love the good life that God has given you and enjoy it to the full? Or hate your life, pick up your cross and follow Christ?

Mikey Lynch is intrigued by this tension, and is writing a book about it. He dropped into the plush CCL studios here at Moore College (i.e. a table in a corner of the morning tea area) to talk about it.

Spurgeon famously said that defending the Bible was as necessary as defending a lion. But if the Bible is where the powerful Lion of Judah speaks to us, challenges us, comforts us, changes us, why do we so often find it difficult to slow down and actually listen—even in “Bible study groups” that most of us meet in each week—groups that are supposed to be specifically for this purpose?

In this episode, Tony Payne and David Höhne talk about the challenges of reading the Bible with one another in small groups—in particular, the difficulty of being patient enough to listen closely and humbly to the Word itself, rather than just skipping quickly to familiar answers and applications we already know.

The underlying issue is authority: does it lie in the traditions and common truths we hold in common—even good evangelical traditions and truths—or is it in the Scripture, from which those traditions and truths come?

What dignity, value or significance does our daily work have? Does it really matter to God? Or are gospel preaching and Christian ministry the only things that really matter in the end?

This much-discussed question (at least recently) is the subject of Episode 3. Moore Theological College lecturers Chase Kuhn and Peter Orr speak with Tony Payne about the dangers of both over-valuing and under-valuing our work, about the common arguments and key texts that come up in the debate, and about the vexed question of how our work relates to ‘the work of the Lord’.

Christians have always grappled with how they should relate to the world around us. Is the idea or category of ‘exile’ a good one for thinking about that perplexing relationship?

In this episode, Tony Payne talks with Phil Colgan and Lionel Windsor about what ‘exile’ means in the Bible, whether or not we should think of ourselves as being in ‘exile’ in our culture as Christians, and what difference it all makes to how we live in the world.

How can you become the best possible version of yourself? In this very first episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast, Tony Payne interviews David Höhne about the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the self—who we really are and who we long to be—and shows that the seemingly elusive and impossible quest to become our best selves is indeed impossible, but at the same time, it's also very possible—if, however, we know where to look.