White as snow

Snow flake (Photo credit: xJason.Rogersx)

A couple of weeks ago the snow fell on London. Lovely. And someone said something on Twitter like:

Anyone who says Jesus washed us white as snow needs a punch in the face, I’ve been stuck in traffic for two hours.

Well, thanks for blessing the world with your positive outlook. And stop updating Twitter while you’re driving. And sort out your anger issues.

Anyway…as I walked around the snowy streets of Ealing I considered that tweet…I think perhaps snow tells us more about God than simply being white. Bear with me while I stretch this analogy a little bit:

• It is perfectly white. There’s that story about the guy who says that sheep are white until they stand in snow, then you realise they’re a mucky yellowy-brown. You don’t get whiter than snow. You don’t get any holier than God. He is perfect. He defines perfect.
  
• It can stop cities and nations. When it starts to snow, England panics. Aeroplanes are grounded, trains are delayed and cancelled, cars spin out of control, roofs cave in, avalanches happen…snow can be scary stuff, particularly when it’s heavy. God’s so powerful, we ought to fear him.
• It’s absolutely beautiful. You can’t deny that even dirty, ugly places suddenly become lovely to look at when it’s snowing; white sky, white ground, white borders on everything…God has the power to change broken, hurting, bitter, nasty, selfish people into new creations! That’s why my church is called Redeemer!
• It’s really fun. I see snow start to fall, and my mind instantly goes to two places: a snowball fight, and building a snowman. There are not many weathers that make me think of having fun before anything else. God loves to make his people happy. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount begins by saying ‘happy are those who…’; fullness of joy is found in him!
• It’s more complex than I can possibly imagine. Ok, this is starting to stretch things but I simply don’t get snow. I understand rain, and hail, and frost, and fog…but snow? I don’t understand how it forms, how every single snowflake is unique, or why it’s white. I don’t know why it gives that lovely squeaky crunch underfoot, or why it’s so fun to throw snow, but I simply accept it and am able to enjoy it all the same. I genuinely don’t understand God. He’s all powerful and all just, yet is merciful and would give up his Son just for me!
• Snow’s amazing. God’s amazing.

Related articles

• Cat Meets Snow, Cannot Believe It (huffingtonpost.com)

Why the church should break the law

Priest in Eucharistic vestments (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the immediate aftermath of the recent Anglican vote against having female bishops the press was pretty much universal in its hatred for the decision. One particular title to a letter from a reader caught my eye:

The church isn’t above the law

Obviously the opinion stated was that if the Church of England is going to continue operating as a charity in the UK with the significant position it does, it should at least obey equal opportunities laws and so on.

But that doesn’t really work when it comes to faith, does it? The church must submit to a higher authority than the Government, so if the Bible says ‘you must’ when the Government says ‘you must not,’ the church ‘must’. Agreed?

‘Well,’ comes back the response, ‘that’s all well and good when you’re talking about what days of the week to work on, but really you Christians should catch up with modern society.’

Now, that all sounds ok until you ask where the line is; a couple of hundred years ago it would have been completely irrelevant for the church to have women leading churches at all, let alone as bishops! How would a woman, whose role in life was to be wife and mother before anything else, have anything useful to say to men? And before that offends you, think a couple of hundred years into the future. What will western society look like in 2100? Maybe we will continue on the same trajectory of the past century and become even more liberal (I can’t even imagine how!) but maybe we’ll end up having our minds changed and swinging in the opposite direction – we can’t predict the future.

But God can, which is why in his grace he wrote us a book.

Four observations on the vote against female bishops

English: Logo of the Church of England (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m not really involved in the Church of England, but I’m pretty sympathetic towards it. I’ve been to General Synod twice and try to follow Anglican news stories, so I found yesterday’s vote really interesting. Just a couple of initial observations, if I may.

1. The Anglican voting system has been carefully designed; those on both ‘sides’ should accept the result within the sovereignty of God, not get bitter, and trust the system.
2. Linked to that, the Church of England has been characterised over the past decade or so by internal disagreements over homosexuality and gender roles. I think now is the time to move forward and unite over things which we can all agree are more important: the Gospel, social action, and reaching the lost.
3. I found it really interesting that the more ‘senior’ the voter, the more rebellious; the ‘yes’ vote lost (I don’t think ‘no’ really won) only because of the laity. Only two bishops voted no, and three bishops abstained despite the Archbishop’s specific instructions for people not to.
4. The result was probably the safest one for the future of the Church of England. Those voting ‘no’ weren’t being sexist, they were wanting to be faithful to the Bible, whereas some voting ‘yes’ (certainly not all) were directly challenging the Bible’s authority and relevance. If the door had been opened to female bishops it would only be a matter of time before pressure started to mount for more controversial motions to be passed. That said, it definitely leaves the Church of England in a tricky, slightly hypocritical situation in which ladies can be ordained but no more than that.

I suppose I’m glad the weight of making such significant decisions doesn’t rest on my shoulders – we should pray more for leaders.

Related articles

• Church of England votes against allowing women bishops (guardian.co.uk)
• Church of England rejects female bishops by six votes (religion.blogs.cnn.com)
• Church of England General Synod votes against women bishops despite late plea from next Archbishop of Canterbury (independent.co.uk)

What fictional cows tell us about God

English: Inquisitive cows. Fresian cattle and Court House Farm near Hardy Gang Wood (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have a friend who was born and brought up in Singapore. She went to school, as many children do.

While at school she had textbooks, and in those textbooks were pictures of Fresian cows. However, despite the access she had to this knowledge, not for a single moment did she ever actually think that Fresian cows were real creatures. Based on the information about animals she had available to her the existence of an animal which shares exactly zero colours with its habitat was simply unbelievable.

Put simply, a black-and-white creature living in a green landscape in Singapore would have died off a long time ago, and the idea this could have any other outcome simply couldn’t be entertained.

Yet when she moved to England in her twenties she discovered that this fairy story wasn’t as fictional as she thought. There are black-and-white cows everywhere. Who’da thunk it?!

When she told me about this it made me think about my conversion to Christianity.

My entire life I’d been told about God, but the information available to me through school, friends, TV and church to a certain extent had taught me that God is a fairy story.

But not believing something doesn’t stop it from being true; when I discovered the truth it took me by surprise.

How do you define ‘progress’?

Saltaire New Mill, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in West Yorkshire, England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of weeks ago Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony painted the stark contrast between the calm loveliness of England before Brunel drew the great towers out of the ground, turning the greens to greys and the cricket whites to factory blacks. And it was very moving and powerful, and part of me felt incredibly proud to be British.

And lots of people talked about the way that while on the surface the industrial revolution looked like a great dirty evil, it was great and dirty but it was certainly progress.

But I wonder…what is progress (i.e. how can you measure it) unless you know what the destination is?

In everyday life, if I need to go to the shop I can measure my progress; as the distance to the shop decreases, progress gets better. It doesn’t matter how fast my car is going, or how much noise it’s making, if I’m heading in the opposite direction – that’s not progress, it’s a waste of time!

The same’s surely true in technological ‘progress’.  Was the industrial revolution actually progress? And progress to what -a descriptionless better world? Obviously Danny Boyle’s version of pre-industrial revolution England isn’t an accurate reflection of all of life at that time, but it’s difficult to put a finger on exactly what’s objectively better about our nation now in comparison.

The ultimate questions, surely, are:

1. What should our ultimate destination be?
2. Where is current ‘progress’ taking us?
3. If the answers to 1. and 2. aren’t the same, how do we change direction?

For the Christian, the ultimate destination is certain, perfect, and eternal. The way there is guaranteed, and the work required to get there is finished; all we need to do is be pointed in the right direction through faith in Jesus.

Man, that really annoys me

Matthias Grünewald – Complaining Pharisee – WGA10802 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you know what annoys me? People complaining.

That, and the definition of irony in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Well, actually, people complaining in and of itself doesn’t annoy me, but in the vast majority of cases it does, and they tend to fall into these categories:

Complaining about things you can’t change

People complain all the time about the weather, taxes and late trains. Complaining about these sorts of things adds nothing to anyone except to further annoy you and spread the annoyance to others. So it seems pretty pointless to me.

Complaining about things you can change but haven’t

This is worse: people complain about the fact they overslept, or that they’ve spent all their money, or that they can’t stop looking at naughty pictures. If you put as much effort into correcting the things you’re complaining about as you do complaining, you’d be a happy person. So get happy.

Complaining about things you’ve tried to change and failed to

Less common. Most people who try to correct a situation but fail just get unhappy, so complaining can actually be a useful vent. I don’t mind this that much.

Complaining to God about stuff He’s done

This can actually be useful too! Complaining to God by saying ‘You’re an idiot!’ doesn’t help anything, but saying ‘I don’t understand what you’re doing!’ can actually remind you of your insignificance…

I’m selfish, lazy and ruthless…and so are you

WWW (Wet Wide Web) (Photo credit: Rickydavid)

Jakob Nielsen said that ‘online users are selfish, lazy and ruthless.’ I’m one of them, and if you’re reading this on my blog then so are you.

So why start this happy, sunny week with a fat dose of abuse? Well, I blog pretty regularly and am always interested at getting better at it so found myself stumbling upon a little article about the best way to write online.

And I’m not sure how good I am at it.

So here’s the deal: read the article, and let me know in the comments how well-written you reckon this blog is, according to the guidelines written there.

Ironically, Nielsen doesn’t like blogging…

The riots and the gospel

Image by Robin Kearney via Flickr

I had to drive to and from work this week (a novelty for me) so I got to hear quite lot of the news on the recent riots, and was struck by something I like to return to every so often: the balance between justice and mercy.

Like pretty much everyone else I was pretty intimidated, upset, terrified by the riots and can completely understand why people wanted to get out in vigilante groups to stop them. On one news report I saw the police breaking up a crowd and using their batons to beat down a particularly abusive and aggressive rioter, and it made me feel good that justice was being done: ‘Stop them causing so much damage, hurt and fear!’

I heard of the rioters being put through the courts, and was so pleased when every case came back with the response: ‘We can’t give them a severe enough sentence, these need the Crown Court.’ When that was reported even on a man who hadn’t stolen anything, damaged anything or hurt anyone I thought ‘good’ – he was part of the crowd which did it, and deserves that punishment.

Like the rest of England I’m desperate for justice. The offenders should have their freedom taken away, they should be made to personally pay financially for all the damage they’ve caused to families, individuals, businesses, the police and the communities.

But then I heard an interview with a couple of the rioters, who were clearly upset when it was suggested that the same damage and robbery could happen to their houses. They recognise that what they did was wrong, but certainly wouldn’t like to pay the penalty for it.

I was outraged – what fools! They deserve everything that happens to them!

But, in truth, I’ve done things to others that I wouldn’t be appreciative of if others had done them to me. As a non-rioter it’s easy for me to scream for justice and know that’s right, but I actually don’t want justice if it means bad consequences for me.

This is why the gospel, the good news of Christianity, is such wonderful truth. Every single one of us has personally rebelled against God, none of us are perfect. And God is just. Justice must be done, and justice is done, whether through us bearing the consequences of our rebellion or through Jesus bearing those consequences himself on the cross. We get mercy when we should get justice, yet justice is still done – hallelujah!

Our response to the riots should be:

• physical action to help restore our communities
• continual prayer for those directly and indirectly affected
• continual prayer for the rioters
• continual prayer for national and community leaders
• thankfulness to God that by his grace we don’t experience scenes like that all day every day – because that’s what we deserve

London: my, you’ve grown

I work in London and often find myself walking the streets inbetween clients, looking at the buildings, and thinking, ‘I wonder what this looked like a couple of hundred years ago?’

Well, it turns out that there are a whole bunch of photos over here answering that very question!

Here’s an example – a photo taken in 1875:

The new Oxo ‘England’ brand: the laughing stock

Thanks to Phil Brown for that one-liner. Oh all right then, let’s have a rant about the World Cup.

I thought England played pretty well against the USA. Apart from the obvious mistake by the unfortunate Rob Green we were on top, and if we’d put together a few more plays we’d have won.

However, watching the team on Friday was just painful – I pretty much complained at the television for the whole thing, not least of all the lack of Joe Cole, the mind-boggling Lennon/Wright-Phillips substitution, and playing three strikers in a 4-4-2 formation.

So, I think we’ll win against Slovenia. I thought we’d beat the US, and I thought we’d beat Algeria, but I definitely think we’ll beat Slovenia.

Seriously.

No, honestly.

Why is no-one taking that seriously any more? Oh, yes. I remember. Because we’re English – we’re pre-programmed to genuinely think that the underdog can do it – I’m sure all the English watchers cheered when North Korea got that goal back against Brazil last week.

Anyway, I hope that England and USA both win on Wednesday. And I hope we meet in the final. And I hope that Capello starts thinking outside the box and asks me to play – after all, every other England fan is convinced they could have played better than the team did the other day, I might as well jump on the bandwagon.

Call me