It is Sunday morning. The small boy is shuffling around on a cold, hard, wooden pew. The service has not yet started; there is still a hushed murmur hanging over congregation as they wait for the dominee (pastor) to arrive through the almost secret door in the wall next to the large, relatively ornate wooden pulpit. The boy looks at his mother, who is staring intently in front of her, and so he also casts his glance forwards and upwards to the still empty pulpit. Like every week before, his eyes again catch the gold coloured embroidered wording on the crimson coloured altar cloth. It reads: "God is Liefde" (God is Love). Read more …

I suppose that there are a couple of ways in which Christianity can be scary for an open-minded non-Christian. One is to go to a church and to watch people around you start making weird noises with quivering lips, and fall to the floor and bark like a dog. One probably has a good reason to be scared in such a situation. But that is not the kind of scary that I want to talk about in this post. The type of scary Christianity which I want to reflect on, is one which is a bit paradoxical. On the one hand, it seems almost incomprehensible to the faithful Christian. On the other hand, and perhaps without realising it, it is very familiar. Read more …