Wessel's blog

The End of the Richwood Informal Settlement: Part 4, The Community Today

Former Richwood informal settlement resident sitting in contemplation
Read time: 12 minutes

In the previous article of my series on the Richwood informal settlement, I explained what appeared (and still does) to me to be a dishonest and amoral move by the local government to displace and gain control of the land of Richwood. In this article, I am going to explain how the City has been treating these people post-move and what their situation is today. Read more …

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Quote 09/14

Charles Hodge
Read time: 1 minute

The exercise, or state of mind, expressed by the word 'faith', as used in the Scriptures, is not mere assent or mere trust; it is the intelligent perception, reception, and reliance on the truth as revealed in the Gospel.

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The End of the Richwood Informal Settlement: Part 3, Nothing Illegal

Aftermath from the Richwood Evacuations
Read time: 8 minutes

Previously I wrote about the eviction of the residents of the Richwood informal settlement, although "evacuation" might be a more technically correct word. In this article I shall explain, as far as I understand it, why and how the evacuations happened. Read more …

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The End of the Richwood Informal Settlement: Part 2, The Move

Remnants of Richwood shacks
Read time: 6 minutes

I previously wrote about how I became involved with our church's outreach ministry to the Richwood informal settlement. But what happened to it? Why am I writing under the title, "The End of Richwood"? In this article I explain what happened. Read more …

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The Hapless Watchmaker

Richard Dawkins
Read time: 9 minutes

On Wednesday, renowned evolutionary biologist and new atheist Richard Dawkins sparked outrage by stating that foetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome should summarily be aborted1. In this article I argue that while Dawkins is being consistent with his beliefs and views of how the world works, he needs to take care when pronouncing value judgements on individuals. I do this primarily by pointing out an awkward truth about naturalistic evolution. Read more …

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The End of the Richwood Informal Settlement: Part 1, Introduction

Children enjoying bread and soup on a sunny winters day
Read time: 7 minutes

The Richwood informal settlement is no more. The hair suspending Damocle's sword has snapped and brought it down on a small impoverished community, cutting off the people from their land like a scythe through the tall spring grasses.

I realised when searching through my archives that I have never before written about Richwood here before, even though I had wanted to do so. While my friends and family know about it well, some readers here may not be aware of what I have been doing at Richwood. In this article I am therefore going to be giving a background to this story. Read more …

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Humanists' Crusade Against "Faith Schools" Opens Exciting Opportunities for Christians

School
Read time: 7 minutes

The British Humanist Association (BHA) wages, amongst others, an ongoing campaign against "faith schools". Last week they achieved a significant milestone: these schools are now no longer permitted to teach creationism as science.

I think this opens exciting opportunities for Christians. Read more …

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Quote 06/14

Read time: 1 minute

Man is obviously made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now, the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its Author and its end.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées 146

How Do You Define "Faith"?

Read time: 33 minutes

This article describes an informal survey which was conducted to see if and how the definition of the word "faith" has changed over time. The survey is non-exhaustive and spans 14 dictionaries (including different editions) and 250 years. The impetus for this survey was continued disagreement between especially Christian theists and atheists on the former group's use of the word. The latter group generally insists that to have faith means to abandon all reason and logic. The former group contests that they are able to have faith exactly because of reason and logic. This article concludes that the "negative" view of faith developed gradually over time and was probably driven by growing apostasy and eventual anti-theism. However, the application of the word remains broad and a narrower, more precise term is available for the latter camp to use. Read more …

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Farcical Pharisees and Silly Sabbaths

Keep Calm and Remember the Sabbath
Read time: 8 minutes

In the gospels, Jesus often gets into trouble with the Jewish leaders (Pharisees) for doing good deeds on the Sabbath. The purpose of telling these stories were to show that the Jewish leaders, at that point, had gotten so caught up in their laws and legalism that they could not look past it to do good. This was turning them into uncaring and unloving hypocrites. Most Christians can identify this lesson and the warning which they need to take away from it. But the Jewish leaders' fervour for keeping the Sabbath "holy" seems almost comical. Why were they so strict on it? In this article I am going to explain my theory for their strictness. Read more …

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Rampaging through the Tokyo of Free Speech

Read time: 5 minutes

On Thursday the 3rd of April, the newly appointed CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, Brandon Eich resigned—an event which got many people to sit up and take a worried notice. Eich resigned because of internal pressure from his employees because of his personal beliefs. Read more …

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