In this episode we continue our conversation on why faith matters in the 21st century. We explore the transformative and revolutionary idea of grace that is present within the Jesus tradition, and how it upturns the status systems we so often establish in human community. Grace is a much bigger idea than simply “undeserved favour” - in fact there are some problems with that idea. It is about a divine bestowal of human worth, value and dignity on all human creatures, and as such becomes an agitating and disruptive force whenever systems of power and oppression seek to diminish the worth of some to the benefit of others.

With all that’s going on, it can be hard to see why faith still matters in the 21st century. This is even more so if we claim that Christianity is not really about securing your eternal ticket to heavenly glory and escaping the highway to hell. Does faith still have anything meaningful and transformative to us in the present? In this episode we discuss the human tendency toward closed ideological systems of certainty, the problems that this creates (be it in religious, political, or social domains of life), and how the Jesus story offers us an alternative way of being that is centred around ‘presence’.

The early followers of Jesus were faced with the challenge of trying to figure out what it meant to have their lives reconfigured by the events wrapped up with the coming of the Christ. This episode explores how their experimentations and innovations help us to find new ways of being too. The church carries within it the challenge to embody an emphasis on authentic transformation rather than performative holiness, to include rather than reject, and to imagine new ways of living that are grounded in self-giving love; even when the rules of society tell you that life doesn’t work that way.

In this episode we explore how the story of Jesus emerges against the backdrop of the Roman empire and the continued oppression of the Jewish people. How does Jesus invite us to see what is most real, especially in ways that upend many of the assumptions of what such a liberator was supposed to do? In a radical way Jesus refused to climb on to the throne of David, redefining what a King and Kingdom are really all about, and through death and resurrection, offers us a compelling vision of God and reality that is shocking to his contemporaries and challenging to us here and now.

This is the first in a two-part series on the story of the bible. In this episode we explore the context out of which the Old Testament emerges and consider the various - and often conflicting - perspectives on God, humanness, the 'other' and how to navigate the world we find ourselves in. The invitation in the biblical text is not just to some kind of 'get out of jail free' card about the afterlife - instead it is an invitation to dive into the experience of what it is to be human, grappling with questions of meaning and God and the universe we find ourselves in.

In this episode we discuss how the various Christian traditions shape the way we think about and engage in prayer…. and how this might help us to understand where we are at now, and the possibilities that are available to us.

If we move away from the image of God as a divine puppet master pulling strings in the sky, then how does this impact on the way we think about prayer? Is prayer simply a series of requests, or are there ways of practicing prayer that invite us into a more open and grounded way of being?

The bible is a curious, intriguing and provocative collection of texts, but one that can be a profound resource for our own transformation. The invitation is into a journey and tradition of wisdom that connects with our own experience of life, God and those around us. In this episode we talk about the nature of this relationship between the journey of faith, an evolving spirituality, and the role of scripture in transformation.

If Jesus is the ‘word of God’ as the writer of John’s gospel states, then what does it mean to centre our interpretation of scripture through the kind of God we see in Jesus?

In this episode we discuss the violence that we find in scripture. What do we do with this violence that is often carried out by biblical heroes, or can even appear to be endorsed or even committed by God? We talk about the way that the scriptural narrative unfolds an evolving view of what God is like. And so the violence in the bible tells us a lot about the human condition and our tendency to use God to support our own violent ends - rather than prescribing belief in a God capable of this kind of violence. In the end, the biblical narrative undoes the view of a violent deity, inviting us instead to consider a view of God shaped by the story and ethics of Jesus.