This blog gets its name from the idea that faith and life are conducted here on Earth, and Heaven is not some distant place in the sky, but it is God’s Kingdom here and now: a “summer land” of love and joy that is progressively growing around the world. The Gospel is not the “four spiritual laws, just say this magic prayer and hey presto you have a get into heaven card!”. Nor is the Gospel constituted of blather about Jesus’ death and trying to figure out who’s “in” or not. It is an ongoing call to follow the LIFE of Christ.

Why should we not love our life in this world? What is wrong with the pursuit of happiness? Life itself is a gift from God not to be squandered in service to a false gospel of political theory, or an intellectualised spirituality divorced from everyday life.

John 1 says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus also came to set people free from the shackles of the Law and promised the life of the Spirit. Thus I believe that the sum of revealed truth is far greater than ink on paper — it’s a vital relationship with the Living God, and living in harmony with the tangible, material creation, which God has blessed and said ‘it is very good’.

Conversely, by dismissing the wealth of human experience that falls outside the parameters of empirical inquiry the rationalist’s “observed, measurable, repeatable, material” reality is actually rather circumscribed. Science should be recognized as science, not elevated to a quasi-religious metaphysic. Religion easily accommodates science, while the reverse can never be true. Religion accommodates science for the same reason that our minds do. For our minds are designed to know truth, pure and simple, whether it is empirical truth, rational truth, artistic truth, moral truth, or metaphysical truth.

Mostly I go along with Christian orthodoxy (i.e. affirming the Nicene Creed and the authority of Scripture) but I also revel in the gifts God has given — a brain and a heart and a beautiful world to live in.