Letter from America
Wars and rumours of wars
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Dec 2017
Many of us would suppose that we live in unusually disturbed times.
A leading relief organisation in America estimates that they are dealing with, on average, far more serious crises in the early part of this century than in previous decades. There appears to be a growing flame of upsets, civil wars, brutality – and downright barbarism. Not to mention North Korea: what on earth is the world going to do about that most unstable situation?
Letter from America
Fear & loathing in Las Vegas
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Nov 2017
When there is an event like the recent shooting in Las Vegas, a national conversation begins.
It takes fairly predictable lines and moves along standard patterns. The anti-gun lobby comes out in force, as does the pro-gun lobby, and the majority of people mourn and scratch their heads in wonderment that anything so awful could be perpetrated by a human being. Such socio-cultural events seem to have increased in frequency in recent years – whether they are events of violence, race, sexuality and gender, or scandals of one kind or another. And the church is increasingly being asked by a secular society to provide moral leadership with regard to these various ‘cultural issues.’
Letter from America
The Sovereign Plan or the plans of mice and men?
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Oct 2017
Perhaps the most frequent question I have received as a pastor in America over the last year or so is a version of ‘What on earth is going on?’
It is not hard to understand why variations along the lines of that kind of question are being asked by people today. We have clear indications of cultural change all around us, as well as a grievous lack of decorum and even basic civility in cultural battles. We have a multi-polar global scene with nations jostling for influence and power culminating in various wars or regional conflicts. We have terrorism continuing to spread its blight of vicious evil on the unwary. We have political populism that has thrown up global leaders who have caught many people by surprise.
Letter from America
Trumped
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Dec 2016
I am a ‘legal alien’, I carry a Green Card and all our children have been born here, but I cannot vote in America.
With that in mind and also being a pastor, it is inimical, unwise, and probably unedifying for me to talk about party politics.
Letter from America
‘Peace on Earth’
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jun 2017
‘Peace on earth’ (Luke 2.14)
is a well-known Christmas
text that is often read with
a feeling of slight disbelief.
In what sense did Jesus bring peace on
earth? If he did what he claimed he would
do, why is it that we still have ‘wars and
rumours of wars’ (another biblical text that
hints that the first text is not to be understood woodenly)?
Letter from America
The forgotten art of listening
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Mar 2017
As I write, the signs look ominous for much of our world.
I’ve just come from a search of a recent news story seeing college students holding up placards saying ‘This is WAR’. As many will know, America has been embroiled in a low-simmering ‘culture war’ for many decades now, one that could boil over – the tensions seem to be escalating and the troubles mounting.
Letter from America
Violence, justice & church
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Feb 2017
I live in a city that had more
murders last year than New
York City and Los Angeles
combined.
In 2016 alone, Chicago had 3,550 shooting
incidents, 762 homicides. That’s two
murders and ten shootings per day. Per day.
What is more, that number (762) has surged
considerably from the previous year: in 2015
there were – I cannot say ‘only’ – 496 murders.
Now, given the huge population of Chicago,
the actual murder rate per capita is not even
close to the highest
in America. But the
combination of
sheer numbers of
those
killed and the dramatic increase over the last
year has many understandably concerned.
There is a ‘we must do something about this’
moment approaching.
Letter from America
Changing your life
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jan 2017
Life is on the wrong track.
Many people today feel that way for one
reason or another. Whether it be politics,
cultural issues, moral matters or more prosaically economic
realities, much of
the
Western world senses that times are not so
much a’changing as a’worsening.
Letter from America
Under-appreciated virtue
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Nov 2016
Suicide is second only to
accidents as the leading
cause of death among
adolescents.
This according to the journal Pediatrics, and
Internet use exceeding five hours a day has
been linked to suicide and depressive thoughts.
Letter from America
Exciting times
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Oct 2016
It’s common place.
Rarely a day goes by without someone commentating on the declining religious interest of the upcoming millennial generation. Much is debated: Are the statistics reliable? Do they reveal a decline in vital faith, or do they expose a dying religious nominalism being replaced by vital evangelical Christianity? Most perti-nently, what (if anything) do we need to do about it? Well, at God Centered Life Ministries, we are excited to call a new generation to centre their lives upon God.
Letter from America
Righteousness exalts a nation
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 May 2016
Are you familiar with the story related to American self-awareness historically?
It’s about the Pilgrims, the Founding Fathers, manifest destiny, etc. If so you will know that there has long been a sense of ‘exceptionalism’ in America regarding its disproportionate blessings, as well as responsibilities to the rest of the world. The Puritans thought of it as a ‘city on a hill’, taking of course cue from Jesus’ language to that regard, Matthew 5.14.
Letter from America
Maturity and gospel centre
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Apr 2016
I’m a big fan of the gospel.
No secret there – it’s all over everything
I’ve done. I’ve said time and time again that
the gospel is not just the ABC, it is the A–Z
of the Christian faith. What, however, does
that mean with relation to Christian spiritual growth or ‘maturity’? How do we encourage growing up and growing deep and
becoming more like Christ?
Letter from America
Cultural engagement
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Mar 2016
It used to be simple.
Or at least it looks like that in hindsight. America was founded on, broadly speaking, Judeo-Christian lines. The framers of the Constitution may well not have all been ‘evangelicals’ but they were all influenced by the King James Bible, as well as by the thinking on ‘freedom’ that grew out of John Locke and other Enlightenment tolerance proponents that, while in some cases certainly radical (the French Revolution), were themselves also operating within or reacting to the same basic set of principles and assumptions.
Letter from America
The gospel and race
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Feb 2016
It would take an ostrich to not be aware that the issue of race has been prominent in recent months in America.
The matter of race has been one that has troubled humanity itself down through the eons. Obviously, the ante-bellum slavery has left its own nefarious trail of dehumanisation, bitterness, and defensiveness, and at the same time other racial/racist attitudes pervade other cultures too.
Letter from America
Reading the Bible – radical!
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jan 2016
In my prized possession is
a letter from John Stott.
He was replying to say that he supported
me, as the new President of the Cambridge
Inter-Collegiate Christian Union,
in my
desire to revitalise the daily Bible reading
and prayer life of the Union. Hardly radical
stuff. Or is it?
Letter from America
How much has changed?
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Nov 2015
Yet another survey of American religious beliefs has come out recently.
This was a telephone survey of 1,000 adults that purports to show that most Americans (no surprise here), including those who do not affiliate with a denomination of one kind or another, believe in a ‘Creator’*.
Letter from America
How should Christians vote?
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jun 2016
Many Christians at election season scratch their head and wonder exactly what sort of principles are to guide them as they face the ballot box.
This is particularly true at this election season, not only in the UK with 'Brexit' but also in America as citizens here begin to face up to the likely options that they will have on the table. What does it mean for a Christian to vote his or her conscience? What sort of guidelines can be given regarding voting that do not stray over the line of partisanship?
Letter from America
Caesar, Planned Parenthood & God
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Oct 2015
Jesus famously said: ‘Render
unto Caesar that which is
Caesar’s, and to God that
which is God’s.’
Scholars have long debated the exact significance of this phrase. Certainly it was a brilliant, Houdini-like, escape from the trap that
was set for him. He took a coin, showed them
the face on the coin, and pointed out that it
might not be so immoral after all to give
Caesar taxes, given that the money they were
using was distributed by Caesar anyway. But
at the same time he made it clear that allegiance through all and above all was to God.
Letter from America
Out of Africa
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Apr 2015
This week a man nicknamed ‘Africa’ was shot by police in Skid Row in Los Angeles.
Unusually after such incidents it emerged that there was a video of the event that had been posted online. No doubt, there will be discussion as to what exactly took place and why the man was shot. The police say that he was grabbing one of the policemen’s guns.
Letter from America
WWJD about Ferguson?
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Jan 2015
The slogan WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) was popular some years ago.
It was a way of attempting to summarise a complicated ethical challenge to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. For all its brevity, and inevitable inaccuracy (there are some ways that the answer to what Jesus would do cannot be applied to mere mortals like you and me – walking on water, for one thing) it is an interesting question to ask about the current crisis taking place in Ferguson.
Letter from America
First they came for the fire chiefs...
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Feb 2015
The year was off to such a good start.
Finally we said goodbye to Newsweek’s scandalous butchery of the multi-faceted academic debate regarding the historical reliability of the Bible – a reliability that has eminent, respected and authoritative defenders from the late great F.F. Bruce to the esteemed denizens of Tyndale House in Cambridge University. Perhaps the New Year would usher in a season of common sense to Western culture. No such luck.
Letter from America
Mars Hill – tell it not in Gath
Josh Moody
Date posted: 1 Dec 2014
From a distance, the Mars Hill story looks an imponderable mess.
Who did what, when, why, how, and (what’s more) why on earth could it have been allowed to get to this level of angst? These are questions that people like you and me, who are outside the celebrity inner circle, ask but are unlikely ever to find answers.
