Every day, hundreds of millions of Christians around the world wake up to the threat of rape, beatings, murder, false accusations, arbitrary incarceration, looting and torching - simply because they are Christian. The International Day of Prayer for the persecuted Church is one important way we can respond.

How have we become a people so fearfully protective of our (apparently threatened) ‘national sovereignty’? We are blind to the spiritual dynamics behind our smashing of the vulnerable – and ourselves – with the mother of all idolatrous sledge hammers, Mammon. But change won’t happen without sustained, courageous and intelligent spiritual warfare.

In the wake of recent and ongoing revelations about sexual harassment in the secular and Christian worlds, women are speaking out about sexism and demanding equal pay. But is there a connection between sexual harassment and the cultural, structural, sexual and economic injustices facing women in the academy?

Will gay marriage lead to agitation for ‘the right’ to use whatever techno-scientific means available to produce children? The choice of sexual and procreative identity is divorced from the body and from any complex notion of the body as bio-social ground.

The proposed ‘safeguards’ in Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill are inadequate, and the Bill will inevitably legitimise suicide and fundamentally change the nature of our society. It is inherently discriminatory and palliative care is a better option.

It is puzzling how proponents of the legalisation of euthanasia can confidently claim, as they do, that in the Netherlands and Belgium - the two jurisdictions with the longest experience of legalised euthanasia - there have been no slippery slopes, when the evidence is clearly otherwise.

The purpose and reality of human gender and sex can only be comprehended from the perspective of the End, a perfected state already realised in the exalted humanity of Jesus. Conversely, if gender and its meaning are fluid and definable merely by human choice, then the biblical understanding of marriage is completely evacuated.

A social media fast may be seen as the path of less temptation. However, engaging in the complex reality of relationships online provides opportunities for connection and transformation that we may otherwise miss - as long as we are intentional and prayerful in our engagement.

Wherever we go in the world today we find trouble. Australia is not immune, nor are we as Christians. God doesn't take away the tough times; He strengthens us through them, giving us hope and peace as we pray, and reminding us that His Only Son, too, suffered as we do.

We often define people and their human dignity according to their rational and relational assets and activity, or even their relational capacity. But our dignity does not reside in any human function, or even in our knowing God, but in being known by God.