Nathan Campbell, who runs one of my favourite sites “St. Eutychus” interviewed me a couple of weeks ago about some of my recent media work, how it came about and the principles I try and work under when I’m doing stuff like that.

It’s fun looking back at what you slightly recall saying.

Here’s the link to the whole thing, “Being on message for Jesus without projecting yourself: an interview with David Ould“.

I agree – but when you’re approaching an issue like asylum seekers – I really liked that post you wrote where you retold the Gospel as a refugee story – I’m thinking there’s an art to that, and that’s the kind of social justicy stuff I think we should be doing – social justice that specifically demonstrates the Gospel story. There doesn’t seem to be a huge model for that…

There is a model for that. The Scriptures, not least of which, Jesus himself. It’s a model. Marriage models the Gospel – so when you’re talking about marriage and sex and that kind of thing, you talk about it as a picture of the Gospel. And you’ve got Jesus’ parables, he’ll go “so there was a farmer in the field, and he needs some workers…” – he tells the Gospel of Grace in categories of whatever the debate is at the time. What he never allows those categories to do is distort what the Gospel is. It’s about letting the Gospel shape the way you come to an issue – so you ask “what does the Gospel have to say about this issue?” not “what does moralism have to say about this issue?” that’s the difference isn’t it. The question you need to ask is “if the Gospel were to be framed in the categories that are now in front of me, how would that be expressed?”