People are more than just workers and consumers in a 24/7 market society, and penalty rates help protect the special nature of Sunday as a shared day of rest for all Australians.

As everyday consumers, we are connected to the modern-day slave trade through the things we eat, drink and wear. Slavery strikes at the heart of what it means to be made in the image of God, and freeing slaves is a spiritual act.

Lent is a time of self-examination. What is the prophetic message for us today, in modern-day Australia, as we read Jeremiah’s Oracles Against the Nations?

Holiday’s over, back to work! That’s the cry echoing in the ears of many workers. The return to work for Christians, for all its aspects of the Genesis 3:16-17 curse, is also a Genesis 1:26-28 blessing. Work is a place to seek God’s face, near at hand, under our noses.

If Muslims do not worship the same God as Christians because they reject the Trinity and the deity of Jesus, by the same logic do Jews also worship a different God? The answer lies in understanding the relationship between the Old and New Testaments on the one hand, and between the Qu'ran and the New Testament on the other.

The question - ‘Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?’ - is both compelling and potentially polarising. Recent events at Wheaton College have shown that, despite the centuries of discourse debating the nature and identity of the Abrahamic God, this issue remains relevant to our world today and requires fresh examination.

Our culture can't deal with complexity and wants to categorise people as ‘gay’, ‘straight’ and so on. But the everyday reality of many people is very different. And, for a believer, our primary identity is that we are saints. This means walking together in our struggles. It also means that celibacy is not a disaster or failure.

On 8 December 2015, when the Holy Door opened into St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, it became a “Door of Mercy”. Its opening by Pope Francis marks the start of an Extraordinary Jubilee “Year of Mercy”, which will continue until the 20th November 2016. Surely we need a year of mercy.

To quote Bonhoeffer, the church is to “with all due deference address government directly in order to draw its attention to shortcomings and errors which must otherwise imperil its governmental office” (Ethics, p. 345). It is the responsibility of Christians to address governmental powers as to what is just and to how they should perform their function.

Substantial research has gone into the link between makeup and self-esteem, and how we perceive women who wear makeup. Women face (pun intended) an absurd double standard when it comes to makeup.