BlackPhi Webitorial Ramblings

News & Comment From A Christian's Perspective

Moscow State Circus - Posted 15th February, 2007

The Moscow State Circus is in Reading this week, at Hills Meadow Carpark.

I wasn't planning to go - I have very vague memories of seeing a circus as a kid, and it wasn't that good. Someone I know said the Moscow (which comes to Reading fairly regularly, I gather) is really good, and she had some half-price vouchers for the tickets. Also it's half-term this week, and I was looking for something to do as a family. So we went. And they were brilliant!

No tacky animals or anything like that, just human beings pushing the boundaries of skill, strength, coordination and flexibility. You could tell they really were pushing those boundaries from the things that went wrong.

Two hours of solid entertainment, with clowns filling the gaps where equipment was being moved around; the only problem I had was that I was getting vertigo just watching some of the high acts. There was a very clever illusion act, largely based around the classic 'cutting a woman in half' routines - but with interesting variations. I think I could see how they managed to cut the woman's head off and have both head and body visibly moving whilst six feet apart, but where the disappearing woman went was a mystery.

All in all, highly recommended.

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It's Nuts! - Posted 10th February, 2007

Nut allergies are a serious matter, but sometimes things get silly. Cadbury have put out a product recall on various Easter products because the labels don't warn that they were manufactured on a product line that sometimes handles nuts. So far so good, until you scroll down the list of products and see that it includes the Cadbury Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut Easter Egg. The packaging for a fruit & nut egg doesn't give enough warning that it might contain nuts? Madness!

Curiously enough, Cadbury is the same manufacturer that last year waited five months before mentioning that it had found salmonella contamination at one of its plants.

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Shinfield Baptist Church - Posted 28th January, 2007

I don't very often get to visit other churches on a Sunday morning, as one or other of the family is usually involved in something at our own church. This is a pity, as it is something I enjoy.

So it was good to get out this morning, in the sunshine, to visit Shinfield Baptist Church, over on the other side of Reading. It's a small friendly church; I'd describe it as a 'family church' with all ages taking part, from young children to ... let's say older than me.

It was a good service, in the way small churches, at their best, do so well. There was music and prayer, on an intimate scale; kids were there at the beginning and end, but separated out for the teaching bit; we got to hear a little about their search for a new pastor - going well, God-willing; I know this morning's preacher, Steve, and always enjoy hearing what he has to share; there was coffee, cake and a chat at the end (I think the cake was a one-off because today was the keyboardist's birthday); and God was perceptibly there with us throughout.

Check out their website: I think it gives a good indication of the feel of the church. And if you live in, or near to, Shinfield, why not pay the church itself a visit - they meet at 10am every Sunday (their website has a how to find us page).

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Fundamentalists' Heaven? - Posted 27th January, 2007

I was wandering around the web last week ("Wandomwy wandewing the web," as Elmer Fudd might say), when I came across an old story about heaven - it raised a smile. Then I came across it again, somewhere else, and it started to niggle: I tend to get twitchy about what words really mean. Here is Anne Lamott's version, from salon.com:

There's an old joke about a man who is being shown around heaven for the first time, by St. Peter, who walks around pointing out the various glories where people of all colors and ethnic persuasions live -- grassy hills, green meadows, still waters, symphony halls, silent spaces, steep hillsides for people who want to hike to the mountaintops or the ponds, and so on. Then they come upon a great walled fortress. "What on earth is that?" asks the man. "Oh," says St. Peter. "That's where the fundamentalists live. It's not heaven for them if they think anyone else got in."

'Fundamentalist' is one of those highly-charged words, but ... Don't we all have fundamental beliefs? Beliefs that we base our lives on, that cause us spiritual and psychological harm when we act against them? If we have faith, doesn't that faith have its fundamentals? For traditionalist Christians maybe those fundamentals are expressed in the Nicene Creed; other Christians maybe prefer something simpler: God is love, say, and Jesus came to save sinners, and the time is coming when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away.

Then there are other groups with very different fundamentals: anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-other-faiths. The odd thing is that such groups claim to take the Bible literally, yet focus on issues that the Bible only mentions periphally, if at all.

It seems to me that there is one sort of fundamentalist that it is good to be: someone who lives in accordance with their own positive fundamental beliefs. And one sort of fundamentalist that it must be horrible to be: someone trapped in a prison of their own making; a sort of do-it-yourself Alcatraz.

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The Shallow End of the Gene Pool, Part 1 - Posted 24th January, 2007

Last Monday evening, The Hunter suffered a Marvellously Muddled Mugging. Very funny!

His previous post had people attempting to demonstrate Darwinian selection in action.

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The Shallow End of the Gene Pool, Part 2 - Posted 24th January, 2007

Last Sunday evening there was a Commissioning For Mission service at the Globe church. This was to kick off a year-long mission to take the good news of Jesus to those who haven't heard it, in Reading.

Leading the service were bishops from the Anglican Church, the Church of God Worldwide Mission, and the Roman Catholic Church, plus an apostle from the Barnabas Fellowship. Crispian Hollis, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth (whose patch includes Reading) gave the sermon, which included:

"This visionary project will change the face of Christianity in this town. There’s a temptation in all our traditions to judge and condemn what we see as a threat to or abandonment of our Christian heritage. Jesus teaches us another way. His message is not one of power but peace, not strength but vulnerability. The mission is to befriend and encourage, to help people see Jesus in our midst. We do that by example, by how we live more than what we say."

"In a secular, multi-cultural and multi-faith setting, there is no place for hostilities between Christian Communities. They will only bring disaster. My heart is full of joy, because Christians in Reading know that whatever they do, they must do it together.”

I hear that some people who went have been complaining that the service had a Roman Catholic speaker.

Sometimes I just despair!

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Thanks, Bruv - Posted 21st January, 2007

My brother bought me the book, then my family spent the following hours moaning, 'cause I kept on laughing!

I did well this Christmas for both music and books - the staples of life. This book was a little different, though: How I Broke Bath, And Other Stories by The Hunter. It is essentially excerpts from his LiveJournal blog collected together (apparently randomly, although I am sure there must be some subtle organising principle). They are an eclectic mix: anecdotes about Willow, his 8-stone Rottweiler; anecdotes about things that happened to him in his past and current employments (he is currently a "shy retiring landscape gardener", he says, but used to be a trucker - hence the incident in the title; note that Bath is a town in England); some absolutely awful jokes; and a couple of very sad stories indeed. He describes it as: "True stories of the life of an accident magnet."

My brother apparently knows The Hunter through LiveJournal & IRC; he didn't say whether he was one of the 'friends' who persuaded him to put this stuff into a book.

It seems The Hunter now has a contract with a 'proper' publisher for a 'proper' book, Trucking Hell, and they have pushed him into giving it a 'proper' structure, with themes and continuity and things like that. The Hunter is a very entertaining writer, so I'm sure a traditional style book by him would be perfectly readable, but I think this book's style suits his writing better and is more interesting.

If you use the link above to see the book on lulu.com, there is a preview button which shows you the first ten pages, including the introductory story of what happened when a three-year-old boy spent quality time with Willow, the Rottweiler. Meanwhile, here's a quick taster from later in the book:

Just for your information.

If you are using an industrial strimmer, do not use it without a faceguard.

In particular, do not use it without a faceguard whilst yawning.

In *particular* do not use it without a faceguard in an area where people walk their dogs, whilst yawning.

That is all.

Highly recommended!

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False Religion - Posted 8th January, 2007

In the olden days it was easy: you knew that if you made gods with your own hands and worshipped them, then you were guilty of idolatry and Levi's kids would soon be around to slaughter you. You knew where you were back then!

We don't use our hands so much these days, we tend to make things with our heads instead. Modern false religion is much more about ideas and attitudes, which makes it harder to spot. So now you get religious groups who are far more interested in enforcing their own human traditions and beliefs, rather than anything to do with God, yet politicians and even church leaders queue to fête them. So how do you spot false religion?

I'd suggest four indicators: putting traditions before unity, shallow legalism, fearfulness and dualism - a separation between the 'important' spiritual and the 'merely' mundane. Traditions are a human invention but can be positive: Caversham Baptist Church is within the evangelical tradition for instance. That means we place particular importance on evangelism - telling the good news of Jesus' victory to those who haven't heard it - and the Bible as the living, relevant word of God. Other church traditions have their own strengths: liberal traditions focus on social justice and inclusiveness; Roman Catholics emphasise the community of the church as the body of Christ; Orthodox traditions emphasise the mystery and otherness of God. True religion appreciates the variety and seeks to learn and grow from others' experience; false religion builds walls against difference and attacks 'others'.

Shallow legalism builds cages for those whom God has set free; at least within the Christian context. Jesus died to set those who accept Him free, but false religion seeks to lock them away again. Fearfulness often follows on from the legalism: the legalism builds impossible rules, and a false picture of a judgemental God leads to crippling fear. One of Jesus closest friends, John, wrote many years later: "God is love ... There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love."

I tend to get wound up every year in the run-up to Christmas by 'real meaning of Christmas' nonsense. The real 'real meaning of Christmas' is to do with God become man, uniting the sacred with the secular, the spiritual with the mundane, heaven and earth. Jesus was born in a grubby stable to the sound of a donkey's braying, not in Christchurch Cathedral listening to sung evensong. False religion denies this meaning, it denies the importance of 'real life' - work, school and family - and pretends that their religious activities are all-important.

Jesus brother, James, had a clear definition of true religion: if religion is real then it helps the poorest, those in most need in the community. This isn't just about church-goers, of course. Looking after the poorest and the weakest in society is the sign of a true heart in all faiths and none.

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Simplicity & Death - Posted 7th January, 2007

I was driving along a couple of days ago thinking about death - as one does at this morbid, old year/new year, midwinter season - when I remembered a report I read a few years back about a young girl whose mum died.

She was about six years old and her mum died after a long illness. Her father was devastated, so she went up to him and gave him a hug, and said something like, "Don't be so sad, Dad, Mum's gone to be with God". That evening, when her father went to tuck her up for the night, he found her saying her prayers. But at the end of the prayers, she kept on going, talking to her Mum, telling her about the day they'd had. As the report said, "How do you explain to a six-year-old that dying isn't really like that?".

My question is, "How do you explain to an over-sophisticated adult that, sometimes, children see things more realistically than they do?" The reporter clearly didn't give any thought at all to the possibility that a six-year-old might see the truth more clearly than him, and presumably the girl's father didn't either. Which is a pity, because he might have found some comfort from her.

Adults are so clever ... are you sure you have nothing to learn from a small child?

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Making A Quick Buck In Bethlehem ... And Reading - Posted 23rd December, 2006

According to the BBC News website this morning, UK retailers were expecting record spending today by UK consumers, to offset their lower than hoped-for sales figures so far this Christmas (sorry, I can't link to the story as they've rewritten it since: see here for the updated version). However, when I went shopping in Reading this afternoon, I was surprised to find it less crowded than a typical Saturday. It did get busier as the afternoon wore on, and I'm sure exhausted shopworkers will have to keep going well into the evening, as well as putting in their six hours plus tomorrow, but I'm not convinced Reading retailers are having their hoped for last-minute bonanza.

People often complain that Christmas has become too commercial, and it's hard not to disagree: between rising levels of personal debt and large retail corporations pushing the boundaries of the law, and their employees' family lives, to try to squeeze ever more profit out of British families. But think about that first Christmas in Bethlehem. The Romans were making loads of people move around to the country for their census. Lots of back-country hicks coming to more sophisticated areas, like Bethlehem, ready to be fleeced. How do you think traders (and innkeepers) responded? They'll have put up prices and made money while they could. That's life, that's economics, that's commercialism, and that's exploitation - it's what people do. And that's where Jesus came - not to some happy spiritual paradise, but to the real world with all its garbage.

Religious people have a habit of ignoring reality, or at least trying to; but when God became man then he plumbed reality to its depths, including commercialism. That's a part of what Christmas is about.

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Have a Very Happy Christmas - Posted 23rd December, 2006

It's a year and two days since I posted my very first blog entry. Back then I was editor of our church website, so I thought a blog might add some life. Others disagreed.

Looking back on those entries from last Christmas, it strikes me that I am far more tired and much grumpier this year. This time around it's all got out of control: after running around in ever-decreasing circles to get my work cleared before the Christmas break, a small company whose computers I support had a major server failure and lost nearly all their information. Meanwhile stuff needing to be done for Christmas piles higher and higher, and the time available for doing it becomes less and less.

Of course, this is nothing compared to Joseph's situation that first Christmas. Young wife, first child imminent (and you're not the father), far from home, nowhere to stay ... Why not? In a culture where the extended family is all-important, arriving in the family home-town, childbirth imminent, yet there is no-one there for you! Looks like a thoroughly ugly family breakdown. Peace and goodwill, eh?

Have a really good Christmas break and, as the comedian Dave Allen used to say: "May your God go with you".

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Congo: Hope and Horror - Posted 6th December, 2006

The Democratic Republic of Congo has sworn in Joseph Kabila as its first freely elected president in forty years. Kabila has headed a transitional government since a peace deal was signed in 2001 to end the horrific war which had killed more than 4 million people since 1998, sucking in neighbouring countries (by comparison the Iraq war has killed some 60,000 people directly, rising to some 660,000 'excess' deaths according to a controversial - and methodologically suspect - study published in The Lancet). His opponent in the second round run-off, Jean Pierre Bemba, has peacefully conceded defeat - to the surprise of many observers.

Meanwhile, in the hills of the east, a mass grave has been discovered at a military base: allegedly of victims of the Congolese army. Reports of mass murder, rape and sexual slavery are almost routine among the various armed groups, with the official army feared by many as much as the rebel militias. As one eye-witness put it:

There are two types of soldiers: there are some good ones trying to protect, but there are also some bad ones... who just want to destroy us.

Also in the east, fighting has broken out again after rebel general Laurent Nkunda attacked border posts on the DR Congo/Uganda border. However, the BBC reports that many of his men have laid down their arms and surrended following a direct appeal by the president, so the hope is that the rebellion will fizzle out. Providing neighbouring Rwanda doesn't support him, that is.

Politically, the map above shows part of the problem that Kabila has: his support is strongly focussed in the east of the country, whilst Bemba is strongly supported in the west, including the capital Kinshasa. The incredible mineral wealth of the country encourages and funds both Congolese militias and neighbouring armies. And a complete lack of democratic experience and tradition make the whole thing seem incredibly fragile. But maybe, just maybe, the difficulties and the horrors will focus peoples' minds, and encourage them to really work together to pull back from the brink. Maybe, just maybe, this enormous nation at the heart of Africa can change from basket-case to success; if so it should be the best thing that could happen for that troubled continent.

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