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.

There are ways we can look at being a Christian at work, which can help us reframe, to feel more positive about who we are, and help us glorify God at this time of year.

In a time when Western society is rapidly altering its image of marriage, the church is pressed to decide: Should we follow suit? The church is called to discern between the fading forms of this passing age and what is “good” and “acceptable” according to God’s will.

The catastrophe of Syria’s emptying and Europe’s and Australia’s contradictory attempts to respond was captured recently in an image. This was not the most influential, visceral image of three year-old Aylan Kurdi’s limp body face down on a Turkish beach. It was an Age cartoonist’s picture of Mr Abbott as lifesaver lifting some Syrians with one hand from the water and holding others under-water with the other.

All societies and cultures have laws against murder, based on the moral belief that it is wrong to kill an innocent human being. The right to life is the most basic of human rights. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this belief is based on humans being uniquely created in the image of God. But respect for life is not just a religious value, it is a foundational value of all societies in which reasonable people would want to live.

"Both in popular culture and Church, there’s often a radical distinction between faith and work, with work typically seen as bad. That’s an analogous distinction to the being and doing of humanity. But in Scripture, particularly John’s Gospel, Jesus’ experience of God’s love is interwoven with his labour in God’s love."