Book Review: Days Like These by Kristian & Rachel Anderson

This is a chronological walk through Kristian’s cancer, in his own words. Blog posts he wrote during his struggle with cancer have been compiled into chapters with a summary section at the end of each written by his wife Rachel. It’s incredibly personal, very personal, and of course very emotional throughout.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book like this before – written in the middle of the struggle, describing every up and down, no hiding behind cliches or spiritual catchphrases – and it’s pretty powerful. Simply by reading this informal journal we’re taken on a detailed and highly personal journey through cancer – it isn’t pretty, but it’s enlightening. I’ll definitely look at cancer differently having read this.

To be honest, I found the book quite difficult to read; firstly, the obvious subject matter, but also because it’s written as most blogs are, simply a collection of thoughts he’s having on that particular day with very little thought-through holistic storyline. That’s part of the beauty of it but I’m not entirely convinced it lends itself well to book format – it took me a long time to read it, and I read a lot. That said, the personal nature of it did genuinely draw me in to the point that I really felt like I had built a relationship with Kristian – it moved me to tears more than once.

An issue some might have with it is that he uses language every so often that some would consider offensive. I’m not sure whether this is because Australians (like Kristian) approach language differently to Brits (like me), or whether it’s simply a genuine expression of his frustration at that moment, but if that’s the sort of thing that would lose you, you’re probably not going to enjoy it.

Overall I’d certainly recommend this to anyone who is struggling with cancer, knows someone who is, or doesn’t know anything about it. Kristian’s focus invariably returned to Jesus in spite of the bad news that kept coming his way, and that attitude is something pretty much everyone could learn a lesson from.

I got this ebook for free from BookSneeze.com in exchange for an honest review.

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Social media etiquette

Image via CrunchBase

I like antisocial media. I use it quite a lot – between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus I probably get into double digits when it comes to the number of times I check social media sites. And I probably enjoy reading people’s posts, seeing their photos, laughing at videos and thinking about blog posts far more than I let on, because I’m really not very good at publicly ‘liking’ them.

But that’s what annoys me most about other people! I take the time to write a witty, clever observation in 140 characters, and how many retweets/favourites/likes/thumbs up do I get? None! This leads me to two potential conclusions:

1. It wasn’t that witty or clever; people just didn’t like it that much.
2. People did like it, but it would have taken a moment to have pressed like or whatever, so they didn’t.

Now, ignoring the fact that I’m almost certainly not as witty or clever as I think I am, I’m going to lean towards the second conclusion because that’s how I use social media; Facebook and everything else is all about me! It’s not about me liking other people’s work, it’s about me putting a fun picture up there, and everyone else thinking, ‘Wow, Sam’s definitely both clever and witty.’

I’m part of an online community of bloggers, and there’s a reasonable proportion of the community who log on, post a link to their blog, and don’t even bother to look at other people’s stuff (as far as anyone can tell). They’re known as post-and-runners, and they’re annoying.

I wonder, would social media be a nicer place if we all publicly liked each other more?

This may be a tenuous verse to bring in, but I reckon it fits:

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

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What we mean when we say ‘Christ’

Each Wednesday I’m looking at what I posted exactly one year ago. On 6 March 2012 I had a look at Jesus’ title ‘Christ’.

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English: Resurrection of Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When we say ‘Jesus Christ’, we know exactly who we mean: Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s son. But do we actually realise how significant that title is?

Obviously ‘Jesus Christ’ wasn’t Jesus’ actual name; most Christians know that ‘Christ’ is the Greek version of the Hebrew title ‘Messiah’, and that it means ‘Anointed One’, and that Jesus fulfilled all the messianic prophecies, blah blah blah, but – just think about it…

21st Century Jews are still waiting for Messiah to come, in a similar way to the Jews in the 1st Century. Back then they’d been waiting for a couple of thousand years too. Then this ugly, homeless guy born to a single teenage girl showed up, and literally within one generation thousands and thousands of people claimed that that guy from Nazareth was the Messiah.

If you’re not too sure, just imagine something with me. In Acts 2, 3,000 Jews are recorded as having believed in Jesus as Messiah, all in one day – and all at a time thousands of years before trains, telephones, or Twitter.

Do we actually realise how significant this is? Imagine if tomorrow’s newspapers reported 3,000 Jews in one town all at once saying that they were remaining orthodox Jews but that God had been born a man and had fulfilled all the messianic prophecies.

Jesus was far more extraordinary than we give him credit for.

You can read the original post here.

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How do I know if my brain is faulty?

The cartoon here, created by the ever-clever xkcd, spots a problem, but misses out on asking the right question. So let’s ask a different question:

Can I trust my brain?

Well, to find out whether or not I can trust my brain I need to perform some sort of test. Hm. Do I think that 2+2=4? Yes I do! Therefore, my brain must work…but the only reason I think that is because I know that…definitely a bit of circular reasoning going on there.

This is by no means an original thought but Christians have no problem with it; God created my brain, and therefore I can trust it. Great.But the atheist can’t think like that; no-one ‘created’ their brain, it adapted over millions of years. We simply assume we can rely on our brain’s reasoning abilities because otherwise there’s no scientific method.

Assume.

Assume basically means blind faith. Both Christians and atheists trust their brains (we have to really, don’t we) but Christians have a genuine, logical reason for doing so based on our beliefs whereas atheists don’t.

Bit of a problem, that.

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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.

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Why I blog (and maybe you should too)

The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started thinking a while ago about blogging – whether I should continue with it or not – because blogging has a significant number of downsides:

• The time it takes to write posts takes time away from other things which are arguably more important.
• It impacts on my thought life; something happens, and I immediately start thinking about how it would fit into my blog.
• I don’t feel like I get loads of visits so it’s not as if I’m changing the world by blogging – I could probably save the internet a good few megabytes by cancelling the whole thing!
• The responses I see are generally negative; far more people leave critical or angry comments than grateful comments. That doesn’t make me feel too good.

But, of course, it’s not all bad:

• Blogging makes me better at communicating – looking back at the first year or two of blog posts makes me cringe at my own naivety, aggression, and uninformed opinions. I’m sure I still have a long way to go, but I’m heading in the right direction.
• It impacts on my thought life; a few years ago, life just happened. Now I’m far more analytical, I think things through more logically and clearly, enabling me to appreciate God’s grace in creation, other people, and myself.
• I’m handed a heavy dose of humility whenever I see the stats or the eloquence of those who disagree with me.
• I’ve learnt a lot about how to deal with people who disagree with me.
• Having to face challenges head-on, and thinking through tough things, has only ever strengthened my faith in God. It’s good to have had that experience.

For the moment, I think I’m going to keep on blogging. Not many other people seem to read my blog, so doing it for the benefit of mankind would be a bit silly, but I’m going to maintain these objectives:

• Get better at communicating.
• Think about lots of stuff so that when people ask, I have an informed opinion.
• Create posts about Jesus so that random internet browsers are more likely to read something about him.
• Hope that some book publisher out there asks me to write a book that becomes an international bestseller, meaning I can think and write about Jesus full-time.

Oh well, I suppose three out of four wouldn’t be too bad.

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…

You’re racist, you just don’t know it

1900sc Postcard-Give My Regards To Broadway (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Picture this: you’re just starting to cross the road when a cyclist comes screaming towards you. Immediately, without thinking, you step back to avoid being knocked over. Calamity averted.

Wait a minute, though. Without thinking? No, you clearly thought something because your body responded to electronic impulses sent by your brain, it’s just that you weren’t consciously thinking, and that’s something different entirely.

The problem is that unconscious thinking doesn’t just happen in these extreme situations, it happens all the time. And I’m going to prove it to you.

If you’re like me you think that everyone is equal in worth regardless of background, gender, sexuality, culture, religion, you name it. So I did a little test to see if that’s what I think unconsciously.

And it turns out that unconsciously I have a slight automatic preference to white people than black people.

In other words, if a black person and a white person were in two courtrooms accused of the same crime, were dressed the same, were educated the same, had the same accent, and had the same story, I’d be slightly more likely to judge the black person guilty than the white person, despite the fact that consciously I know there’s no difference.

That’s actually pretty scary.

What’s more scary is the fact that 70% of people who have taken this test have an automatic preference for white people over black people, whereas only 12% prefer black people.

So, how about it? Will you take the test? Let me know how you do! (If you’re willing to admit it, that is.)

And if you’re interested there are a whole bunch more looking at your unconscious attitude towards gender, sexuality etc.

Do you suffer from FOMO?

A protester holding a placard in Tahrir Square referring to Facebook and Twitter, acknowledging the role played by social media during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The way that social media has taken over everything has led to a brand new disease: Fear Of Missing Out.

Seriously. You go on holiday from the internet for a couple of weeks, then come back and realise that you’ve missed out on hundreds, nay, thousands of updates on your Facebook timeline, Twitter feed, RSS reader and everything else – how much useful and vital information have you missed out on?!

So what do you do? Not go on holiday from the internet is what! Go on holiday from everything else, but still keep up-to-date with blogs and Facebook. You’re not an idiot.

But just in case you’re afraid that you might be, there’s a useful little article with the solution to FOMO.

The hunter becomes the hunted

They say a picture paints a thousand words.