Reasonable Christianity?

03/09/2026

WHAT HAPPENED TO SOUTH AFRICA?
There are some questions that stay with you. For me, one of them has been: What happened to South Africa?

I grew up in a country that, in 1995, seemed to be standing at the beginning of something extraordinary. Apartheid had ended. A nation was learning to imagine a shared future. There was genuine hope that reconciliation, justice and freedom could become more than political ideals.

Over the years, experience complicated that hope.

I watched our democracy encounter corruption, institutional decay, failing infrastructure, economic hardship and the erosion of public trust. I began asking how a country filled with so much promise could arrive at this point.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?
That question eventually became South Africa Unmade: A Christian Diagnosis of Post-Apartheid Governance and National Decline.

I wrote this book because I believe Christians have a responsibility to think carefully about the world God has entrusted to us. Scripture gives us categories for understanding authority, justice, stewardship, human dignity, sin and the common good. Those truths belong in our understanding of public life.

Writing this book has also been humbling because South Africa's failures cannot simply be placed at someone else's feet. We are all human beings, capable of courage and sacrifice, while also being deeply vulnerable to selfishness, corruption and self-deception. That reality matters when we examine power and history.

So, this journey began with a question I could not shake, and it became something I needed to understand. Eventually, it became something I felt compelled to write.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE
🎙️ South Africa Unmade: Why I Wrote This Book
The prelude episode of the Reasonable Christianity podcast is out now. Link in the Comments.

If you care about South Africa, the future we are leaving to the next generation, or what it means to think Christianly about public life, I invite you to listen.

I don't claim to have every answer. But I believe some questions are important enough to pursue faithfully, carefully and courageously.

And perhaps the question that began this journey will become yours too:

What happened?

26/08/2026

How do you know if you are above reproach?

Most people think it means you have never sinned. It doesn't. And that misunderstanding has quietly wrecked how we treat leaders who fall.

The Greek word Paul uses, anepilemptos, was a courtroom word. It meant a man against whom no charge could be made to stick. Not a man with no record. A man with no legitimate accusation still standing against him.

So here is the real question, and it is harder than the one we usually ask. Not, have I ever failed my household. Every man has. The question is, is there something true and unresolved right now, something that has never been brought into the light, confessed, and answered by real change?

And if the answer is yes, the second question follows close behind. What does the road back actually look like?

I built a companion resource for our Patreon Partners this week that sits with both of those questions properly, because an argument on its own does not change a household. It takes work.

Ten honest questions make up the first half, not about whether you have ever sinned, but about whether there is a legitimate accusation still standing against you today. Meant to be worked through slowly, alone or with your wife, before you ever turn them toward someone else.

Five stages make up the second half, laying out what an honest restoration process actually requires. Confession that names the sin plainly. A real season of removed responsibility. Accountability that can actually tell you no. Fruit that takes years, not weeks. A return, if there is one, that is gradual, never sudden.

This was written for fathers, for husbands, for elder teams who may one day have to walk a brother through exactly this.

📄 Get the full companion resource. Link in the comments.

Because the truth matters. And so do you.

25/08/2026

When a pastor falls, is he finished?

Watch how differently Christians answer that, and you will see two errors pulling in opposite directions.

On one side are believers who wave moral failure away as if it were nothing. The teacher fell, but look at the anointing, look at the crowds, look at the miracles. Think of what people like Mike Winger have spent years exposing in corners of the charismatic world, the leaders whose obvious sin is excused because the platform is too valuable to lose. That is a real error, and it wounds real people.

But there is an opposite error, and it is held by serious, godly men. Justin Peters, whom I genuinely respect, argues that a leader who falls sexually is disqualified from ministry permanently. Not for a season. For life. And I have come to believe, after sitting with the text for a long time, that this overreaches what Scripture actually teaches.

It all turns on two words. Above reproach. Paul says an elder must be above reproach (1 Timothy 3:2), and we have quietly assumed that means morally flawless, without failure, a spotless record. But does it? Because Paul uses that exact phrase somewhere else, and not about elders at all. He tells ordinary believers, the whole assembled people of God, that Christ died to present them holy and blameless and above reproach before Him (Colossians 1:22). So either the phrase does not mean sinless perfection, or not one of us qualifies for anything. What if above reproach was never about having no sin, but about having no accusation that still legitimately stands, the kind that repentance and time and real accountability can actually answer? Remember, Paul tells Timothy to publicly rebuke those who persist in sin (1 Timothy 5:20). The persisting is the problem, not the falling.

And underneath all of it is a deeper question, the one I think we keep getting wrong. What is the ekklesia, really, the called out people of God? Because if it is an organisation, then a leader who fails is a CEO who underperformed, and you remove him, and that is the end of it. But Paul does not call it a company. He calls it the household of God (1 Timothy 3:15). And if the ekklesia is a family, a household, then a leader who falls is a father who sinned. A family does not fire a father. It holds him accountable, it grieves, it waits for something real to grow, and when someone is caught in sin it moves to restore him gently (Galatians 6:1), not to bolt a door God Himself has left open.

I love the men caught on both sides of this. The ones treated as though they never fell, and the ones treated as though they can never be anything again. This episode is for both of them.

Listen now. Link in the comments.

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17/08/2026

Is divorce a sin?

Is a Christian allowed to remarry after divorce?

I cannot ask that question coldly. It matters too much, because of what marriage is, and because of how deep the wound of divorce actually cuts. And it matters to me for a reason I cannot put down. I love two brothers in Christ who have each walked through that wound, and I have watched them walk away from it in opposite directions.

One of them has become convinced that he, and every man like him, can never marry again. Not for a season. Ever. His reverence for the covenant is real, and part of me honours it. But he has taken up a sacrifice and laid it on his own shoulders for the rest of his life, and I keep asking, quietly, whether God ever asked him to carry it. Awe is a beautiful thing. But awe can bind a man to a burden the Lord never placed on him.

The other brother went the other way. He married again much as he married the first time, and the choices that helped unmake his first marriage were the same choices standing at the door of his second. Where the one holds the covenant so high he cannot move, the other holds it so loosely it keeps slipping through his fingers.

One brother grieves me because he may never taste a gift God might have given him. The other grieves me because he keeps reaching for the gift without reverence for the Giver. And I love them both.

So what is the faithful thing? Not the easy answer the world hands out, and not the harsh one either. What does Christ actually require of a person standing in the ruins of a marriage, wanting to honour Him?

That is the whole of this week's episode. It was not born from a debate I wanted to win. It was born from two men I love, and a question I could not stop carrying because of them.

🎧 Listen now. Link in the comments.

Because the truth matters. And so do you.
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11/08/2026

Some questions are difficult because we do not have an answer. Others are difficult because we are afraid of what the answer might mean.

This week on Reasonable Christianity, I went into one of those questions.

Why would God allow a child to suffer and die?

I have thought about this question for a long time. It is easy to talk about suffering in the abstract. It is much harder when the suffering belongs to a child who has barely had the opportunity to live.

And I think Christians sometimes reach too quickly for familiar answers. “God has a plan.” “Everything happens for a reason.” Those statements may be true, but they can feel painfully inadequate when you are standing beside a small grave.

So in this episode I tried to slow down.

I wanted to ask what we can actually say with confidence from Scripture, where we are making theological inferences, and whether the Christian doctrine of providence really gives us somewhere solid to stand when suffering becomes almost impossible to comprehend.

But somewhere along the way, the question became more personal.

Because if we believe that the child who receives only a few weeks of life is still fully known by God, fully held by God, and ultimately safe with God, then perhaps the tragedy also exposes something about how we think about our own lives.

Some of us have been given decades.

What are we doing with them?

I know this episode will be difficult for some people. Especially for parents who have buried children. I don't pretend that an hour of theology can heal that kind of wound.

But I do believe that truth matters. And I believe that when the questions become hardest, Christians should be willing to face them honestly rather than hide behind easy answers.

Episode 1: Pain & Providence is now available.

The link is in the first comment below.

If this question has ever troubled you, or if you know someone who has had to walk through this kind of grief, I hope you'll listen. And if you do, I'd genuinely like to hear what you think.

06/08/2026

🎤 Looking for a speaker who will challenge minds, strengthen faith, and inspire your audience with Biblical truth?

Roland Albertus is available for church services, conferences, youth events, leadership seminars, retreats, and community outreach.

If you'd like to hear Roland's teaching before inviting him to your event, you can listen to our podcast and access exclusive Biblical content on Patreon. The link is in our bio (or in the comments).

📞 To book Roland for your next event, contact us on 066 008 6499.

We'd love to partner with your church or ministry!

06/08/2026

Have you ever noticed that the people telling you to "just be yourself" never seem to agree on which self they mean?

Be authentic. Find your truth. Look inward. It is the loudest sermon of our age, preached from every screen you own, and almost nobody stops to ask the obvious question.

What if the self you find when you look inward is not actually the real you?

What if it is the wreckage?

We have been taught that faith is the thing that makes a person smaller. That to follow Christ you hand in your freedom at the door and collect a list of rules on the way out. Plenty of Christians live as though this were true. They carry their faith like a weight instead of wearing it like a homecoming.

There is another way to see it. An older way. One that says the most fully alive, most fully human being who ever walked the earth was not the man who answered to no one. It was the one who was completely surrendered to His Father, and He is the pattern for what you are being remade into.

That reframes everything. Your holiness. Your struggles. The parts of yourself you are quietly ashamed of.

We put the whole case together in a new article. It is free, and it might be the most hopeful thing you read this week.

Link in the comments.

Because the truth matters. And so do you.

03/08/2026

Two years ago I gave up trying to convince myself this podcast was a bad idea.

One man. One microphone. One conviction I could not shake: Christianity is not merely true. It is reasonable.

I did not start Reasonable Christianity because the world needed another podcast. I started it because of what I kept seeing.

Believers who loved Jesus with everything in them, and could not give a single reason for the hope inside them.

Sceptics walking away, not from Christ, but from a shallow caricature someone had handed them and called the whole thing.

Rooms full of people counted as disciples, who were only ever being counted as attenders.

I thought that was worth giving years of my life to.

That was a hundred episodes ago. And this week, at the hundredth, I sat down and asked the honest question. Was I right? After everything I have studied, argued with, and watched hold under pressure, is this work still needed?

This episode is my answer.

Not a highlight reel. Not a celebration of a number. A founder's charge. It traces why this began, what "reasonable" actually means and the three things it does not, and the convictions that became impossible for me to ignore the deeper I went.

It ends somewhere I did not expect when I started. More convinced, not less.

Episode 100 is live now. 🎧

If it gives you something the shallow version never could, stay with us. This was never meant to be a podcast alone, and what comes next, we are building in public.

Because the truth matters. And so do you.

👇 Links in the comments.

29/07/2026