Chris P's last cell

Millers on the South Bank

Web of Conflict

I found this infographic on relationships in the Middle East hugely useful in understanding some of the roots of the current conflict in Lebanon and the tangled web of influence and hostility in the region. I don't think I had quite grasped how much hatred and distrust exists, not only between Jews and Arabs, but between the different Islamic groups and regional powers.

Found via Information Aesthetics, which has a selection of further infographics on the conflict.

Paddling time

Does a moose in a pool need any introduction?

Interns freed

I enjoyed Pete's last internship blog entry... he's included a nice selection of quotes. I especially enjoyed the movie references!

TERRY WAITE on Whatever Comes

"...three resolutions to support me through whatever was to come: no regrets, no sentimentality, no self-pity."

In 'Taken on Trust', his autobiographical account of five years in solitary confinement as a hostage in Lebanon.

DWIGHT L. MOODY on being read

"Of one hundred men, one will read the Bible; the ninety-nine will read the Christian."

Patches of Green

I've previously posted on Christianity on Trial, a book well worth reading for its balanced and convincing approach to historical Christianity and the church's successes and failures.

The conclusion to the book asserts that "if knowledge of such dark episodes [such as the Crusades] in the history of Christianity is essential, it is also corrosive if it is the only knowledge of the past that most people possess." (p.208) The writers point out it is not just society at large, but also the church itself, that has been quick to over-represent failures and paint a unbalanced picture of Christian history that doesn't take into account all the facts available.

The book has been a excellent read and given me a much better sense of the detail of history as well as the bigger picture - the redeeming work that God has done and is doing. I've been especially struck - in a similar way to reading a biography - by what God can accomplish through individuals; the powerful impact that one or two people can have on a society, William Wilberforce being a powerful example. His story, and that of the other British abolitionists and what they accomplished, is almost beyond belief.

In 1770, slaves comprised 22% of the population of Britain's American colonies, 90% in the East and West Indies. Between 1791 and 1800, 400,000 slaves were sold, making these some of the most active years of the slave trade (p.33). It was during these years, when the British economy was heavily dependent on slavery, or slave-produced goods, that the antislavery movement began to pick up steam, driven by the Methodists and men like Wilberforce. The Abolition Act of 1833, brought the emancipation of 780,000 slaves, at a cost to the British government of 20 million pounds!

Equally striking is the reminder, in the conclusion, that we "have no need to pore over historical works to appreciate an example of the more hopeful side of the Christian legacy" as significant examples exist even in the last half century. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe began with a nonviolent campaign in Poland, sparked off and encouraged by visits by Pope John Paul II in 1979 and 1983. The authors make a convincing case for the importance of the church and Christian faith, as well as the impact of the Pope, during the ensuing events. They comment that even the Chinese government recognised the role that the churches had played and on their own turf sought to 'strangle the baby while it is still in the manger' (p.211). They argue that Christianity's "indigenous growth outside the West is one of the signal democratizing forces around the globe today." (p.211)

Philip Yancey also remarks on these 'patches of green' in a chapter in What's so Amazing about Grace:

"Remarkably, we have lived to see these [Eastern European] dissidents triumph. An alternative kingdom of ragged subjects, of prisoners, poets, and priests, who conveyed their words in the scrawl of hand-copied samizdat, toppled what seemed like an impregnable fortress. In each nation the church operated as a counterforce, sometimes quietly and sometimes loudly insisting on a truth that transcended, and often contradicted, official propaganda. In Poland the Catholics marched past government buildings shouting 'We forgive you!'" (p.261)

Durham is the time, is the place, is the motion...

Isn't Durham wonderful?

Ben Witherington visits Bishop Tom and extols Durham's long tradition of NT scholarship on his blog.

Picnic at the Beach

Cell games 2

God as Engineer or Programmer?

I enjoyed this excerpt from the 'Christianity and Science' chapter of Christianity on Trial by Vincent Carroll And David Shiflett.

Some clerics, such as the Dominican friar Giovanni de San Gimignano (d. 1323), actually encouraged sermonizing on technical topics. He included in his encyclopedia for preachers a description of everything from windmills to fortifications, to glass making. For that matter, observes Gimpel, "the greatest homage the Middle Ages offered the architect-engineer was to represent the Almighty, in thirteenth and fourteenth century miniatures, as an architect-engineer Himself, measuring the universe with a large compass. It is as if today, in film on the Almighty, God were to be represented programming a computer."

Cell games 1

G K CHESTERTON on the eternal appetite

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy

TOM WRIGHT on the pattern of incarnation

"I tell you the truth, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me." John 13:20

Those who go in Jesus' name, who get on with whatever work he gives them to do in his spirit and his love, are given an extraordinary status and privilege. Anyone who welcomes them, welcomes Jesus, and thereby also welcomes 'the one who sent him'. You probably won't recognise it at the time. You'll be too busy thinking of the people you're working for and with. But, as you look back, you may be startled by the joy of realizing that as you walked into that house, that hospital, that place of pain or love or sorrow or hope, Jesus was walking in, wearing your skin, speaking in your tone of voice. 'I've given you a pattern,' he said, and he meant it.

Tom Wright, in John for Everyone - Part 2

EVDOKIMOV on Vocation

"One's vocation is found exactly on the crest between necessity and creative freedom, along the line of faith, which reveals the direction as its free and strong confession grows... One's entire vocation is an option, an answer to a call that has been heard. It can simply be the present condition. It is never a voice that clarifies everything. The dimness inherent in faith never leaves us. "

Paul Evdokimov, quoted in 'Real Sex' by Lauren F. Winner

Touch and see

Continuing my reflections on the Incarnation...

I was struck on Sunday to recall the story of Thomas at the end of John's Gospel and the nature of his declaration of faith, "My Lord and my God!"

Thomas' statement of belief, the first of its kind in the Gospels, reads as an almost immediate response to Jesus' appearance amongst the disciples and his invitation to Thomas to touch and see that his wounds are real. Thomas is the first person to declare that Jesus is God, and although this is partly a response to Jesus' resurrection and new life, it is significant to find it following a demonstration not of Godly power, but of human life.

Jesus invites Thomas to touch him and affirm his reality, his bodily life, his humanity - still showing the marks of pain and death. In this short interaction we find an illustration of some of the magic and the paradox of the incarnation. Thomas recognises Jesus divinity, not in spite of his humanity but through it. Jesus wants Thomas to know that he is real, that he has bodily life, and is not just a spirit. But in this very human demonstration, Thomas suddenly sees the fullness of who Jesus is, Lord and God.

Sweeping up the competition

For some geek humour...check out the launch of Google Minesweeper!

It's no turkey

"Warren stresses that he's not for the right wing or the left wing but for the whole bird. Amen to that as well. Just need to make sure the bird one is holistically endorsing is the Gospel bird, and not a turkey."

Ben Witherington praises Rick Warren as a model of faith on his blog.

It's great to see one Christian writer being so generous about another, and both Rick Warren (the author of The Purpose Driven Life) and Ben W come across very well. The USA Today article Ben cites on 'America's most influential pastor' is also well worth a read.

CS Lewis on Time

We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. "How he's grown!" we exclaim, "How time flies!" as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.

CS Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms