Sandy Grant Profile picture
Jul 18, 2022 18 tweets 5 min read Read on X
“Goldfish might not know the chemical composition of H20, but it's still central to their lives. In the same way, I'm guessing that the [following] concerns …resonate with you: equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom and progress…” Image
“…None of these values are self-evident, nor are they widespread among the civilisations of the world. So where did they come from, and how did they get to become "the air we breathe"?
We can answer that question in one word, in two sentences or in ten chapters…”
“The one-word answer is: Christianity. The two-sentence answer goes something like this:

The extraordinary impact of Christianity is seen in the fact that you don't notice it…”
“You already hold particularly "Christian-ish" views, and the fact that you think of these values as natural, obvious or universal shows how profoundly the Christian revolution has shaped you.”

So says @glenscrivener, p13, in “The Air We Breathe”
Friedrich Nietzsche’s explanation:
"Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life." [The Anti-Christ]
“If natural selection means the survival of the fittest and the sacrifice of the weakest, Christianity is about the sacrifice of the Fittest (Jesus Christ) for the survival of the weakest (us). It is a moral revolution, confounding the Nietzsches of the world” @glenscrivener p65
He says: “In the Gospels (the biographies of Christ's life), the word that describes Jesus' emotional life more than any other is "compassion"…“Compassion describes the life of Christ, and it’s meant to describe the life of the Christian… incredibly strange… to Roman ears.”
“Jesus is Pity with a capital P. He entered the pitiless realm of nature and suffered its brutalities. Yet in love, he chose the cross. And it was on the cross that Christ, the Fittest, was sacrificed for us, the weakest, so that we, the weakest, might survive…” (p75) #thankful
“It is wrong to impose your views on others” - @glenscrivener, p116 ‘The Air We Breathe’ Image
“It’s Jesus who taught us to ‘put away your sword’…”, p127. Image
Self-evident? Yet the Declaration must invoke an “endowment” of human rights by their Creator! And the principal author, Thomas Jefferson, with his rejection of supernatural Christianity, was the owner of 600 slaves. Image
Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, who both endorsed the Declaration’s sentiments, would in their speeches, “weave together the declaration and Scripture because, in truth, without biblical foundations Jefferson’s words are faintly absurd”, @glenscrivener, p151!
P156 (sorry for poor page photography) Image
P157 Image
Slavery fell away in ‘Christian’ Europe during the Middle Ages, for various reasons, including spiritual beliefs. When the evil erupted again with European conquests of the Americas, the Christian imperialists sought to justify it by appealing to Aristotle not the Church Fathers!
With the involvement of Christians in slavery, as with church abuse or the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition, the evil is judged by the good they claimed to honour.
And it was undoubtedly a Christian coalition with Wilberforce, using undoubtedly Christian arguments, over decades of campaigning that won.
#Wedgwood “Am I not a man and a brother?” Image
When abolition spread from Protestant Britain to lands of other religions, diplomacy required new language, with slavery now not a crime against the Creator or Christ, but a “crime against humanity”, says @glenscrivener, referencing Tom Holland.

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More from @SandmanGrant

Jun 4
@SteveMeisterVDM Steve, Paul has been such an encouragement as an historian, NT scholar, and as a church leader here I. Sydney Australia. As a young man, “Is the New Testament history?” was so helpful, and his brief “Apocalypse Now and Then: Reading Revelation Today” so sensible.
@SteveMeisterVDM Later “Jesus and the Logic of History” and “Jesus and the Rise of Early Christianity” (& two others in that series) were such stimulating history. And obviously his 2 Corinthian commentary. But…
@SteveMeisterVDM Walk over hot coals to find the now out of print: “Paul and His Friends in Leadership: How They Changed the World” - fascinating biblical exploration of the scores and scores of often incidental partners in ministry that Paul names! Brilliant and encouraging.
Read 4 tweets
Apr 21, 2023
Welcome to my final day of live-tweeting from #gafcon23 at Kigali Convention Centre. The land of a thousand hills is also a land of morning mists (& maybe a little wood burning smog?) and this week, morning rains. But here’s today’s dawn from out 11th floor hotel room. Image
On 3 of my 5 mornings here, I’ve run a 5km circuit of the centre. Seen institute of forensics and statistics, bank head offices, also small traders, coffin shops, many small pharmacies (which will please mum & dad), endless motos, and many large bags of bananas on people’s heads! Image
It’s pretty much all up hill & down hill, with not much flat, & all at altitude of ~1500m. For comparison the highest point of the Blue Mountains is 1100m. So I was puffing but on the day I was on my own I was able to go at 4:49/km pace! Thanks for indulging a personal interest! Image
Read 42 tweets
Apr 20, 2023
Welcome to Day 4, #Gafcon23. Each day the Bible reading has been delivered by memory by an American cathedral Dean! (Couldn’t quite get all of Colossians 3:1-17!)
Archbishop @KanishkaRaffel addresses ‘identity’ in a world where
* identity has been used to divide from the land of his heritage - 🇱🇰- through to the nation that hosts us here - 🇷🇼;
* sexuality & identity have often merged as one, and ‘male & female’ are oppressive to some.
And he asks us: we are many cultures, backgrounds, languages, style or emphasis … how can we be one?

His key verse is Colossians 3:11 - “Christ is all” - and he puts everything else into second place. Image
Read 66 tweets
Apr 19, 2023
#gafcon23 Day 3 started with one of the great hymns, and here’s a sample… I reckon we sung the chorus another dozen times too. How Great Thou Art, God, How Great Thou Art!
Today’s keynote sermon - Colossians 1:28-2:23 - is delivered by James Wong, Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, on the 40th anniversary - to the day - of his ordination. Image
Archbishop Wong notes that the Colossians church was struggling with some kind of gnostic thinking - asserting possession of secret knowledge hidden from ordinary Christians and question deity of Christ. He sees parallels in those who question whether the Bible is fully divine.
Read 46 tweets
Apr 18, 2023
Bishop Jay Behan from New Zealand opens up Colossians 1:15-23 for us in the first morning session of #Gafcon23 Image
We always want more, better, newer… So too in Colossae… maybe Jesus is a good start, but is there more?

No, our theme is “go to Christ” and you cannot get a more exalted picture than that given in Colossians 1:15-23.

We must be breathless at the dignity & glory of Jesus!
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him... Image
Read 33 tweets
Apr 17, 2023
#gafcon23 begins in Kigali, Rwanda. This is our theme this week. Image
The chairman of the GAFCON primates conference. @FoleyBeach calls us to be
1. A repenting church (Mark 1:15, Acts 2:38)
2. A reconciling church (2 Cor5:18-20)
3. A reproducing church (Acts 28:19)
4. A relentlessly compassionate church (1 Tim 1:5)
This included the serious and sad point…
Read 9 tweets

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