3 Days to the 100k Trailtrekker (62.14miles) - eek

Just 3 days to go till I do the non stop 100k Trailtrekker combining the pain of multiple blisters with the glory of the Yorkshire Dales.

I am doing it for Oxfam, who are helping stockpile aid for emergency relief that can be on a plane to where ever its needed in just 13hrs - they specialise in toilets - not only is losing sanitation bad for disease but also for dignity. So if you want to get 'toilets on a plane' (a great film to be had there!) then sponsor me and my work colleagues here

Here to find out more about trailtrekker

The Sacrifice of Isaac

The story of the ‘almost’ sacrifice of Isaac has, over the centuries, remained both one of the most evocative and also highly contested tales in the Bible. How could God ask Abraham to kill his son? It appears to teach that we should do as God says, without questioning the ethics of the demand, and in the end, God will prove himself just. Is it really right that we do not question the ethics of God's apparent commands? - an argument that could be used to justify all manner of atrocities from the Crusades to 9/11. Here, though, I suggest an alternative, probably thought of by many others before me.
It strikes me that the story probably arose at a time when child sacrifice was common. It was inevitable that any conscientious person, who wanted to appease their deity, would assume that this is the thing to do. Abraham, brought up in such a world, was no different. He would have accepted the received wisdom that God wanted him to sacrifice his son - he even ‘heard’ God command it. However his instinct for justice and his love for his son meant that it did not sit easily with him, to say the least. As he heard the sound of a ram in the thicket he had something of an epiphany. “Maybe God wanted him to sacrifice a ram instead.” The tale, I suggest, became important for later Judaism in defining the distinctiveness of their religion. It explained why they sacrificed animals, while the religions around sacrificed children. Thus, when Jews told the story of the origin of their faith, they told it as a story about the rejection of the inhumanity of child sacrifice.

Rather than reading it as a story that encourages blind, unquestioning obedience, I suggest it should be read as a tale about the ways in which we can all hide behind God’s ‘command’ and thereby do evil in God’s name. It is also, though, a story about the rescue of a loving, caring father from the brink of a murderous act in the name of God. It is about the possibility of rescue for all of us from harmful belief systems. To quote one of my favourite poems,
“ the awareness of things ill done
and done to others’ harm
which once you took for exercise of virtue”

It is about the human capacity to mishear (sometimes genuinely) and find ourselves, in the process, culpable of dehumanising. It is about the human discovery that God always works to make us more human and that any conception of God that dehumanises is to mishear or misunderstand.

I’m hoping to read “Fear & Trembling” by Kierkegaard over the holiday, which I think picks up the image of the ‘sacrifice’ of Isaac. Hopefully I’ll learn more after reading it.

Church on Fire!

"set your holy church on fire"

Is it just me, or does this line from a Matt Redman song ask God to be an arsonist?

Surely, there must be some budding lyricists out there who are capable of meaningful metaphor!

Gori Gori Hallelujah

Click pic to see this great story and don't forget to go to his page

This Nun walks into a bar.... & other good stuff

DIY parables anyone?
Rollins on belief - believe now so true soon
Raffi checks out to check in - the growing taste for real life

Great day...light

H gave me a day to myself today so i read, had coffee with my mother, went for a great fell run (in horizontal rain but that didn't include an asthma attack :-) and went to loads of artists studios as part of the Open Up festival - Great day. Loved the art and thoughts included:

:-( Sad that a number of the representations of a generic idea of violence were taken from the Christian religious tradition

:-) I LOVED this guy's stuff above. The views are some of my favorite views and his use of light (in street scenes as well - check Eccy rd) really impacted me - an evocative joy. It reminded me of a line from my previous post about light. Light in these pictures and in everyday reality is truly transformative. Even though the physical reality remains the same, somehow everything is different (dynamic, animated, pregnant with potential/meaning...etc?).

Acts 8 v 12 Then Jesus spoke out again, “I am the light of the world. The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Sermons?

More knowledge (hearing?) = progress? - good old Jon

Sermons...discuss?

Curtains?

Any one got any spare curtains for the Assist guy's? An asylum seeker just got indefinite leave to stay (brilliant) but they've got no curtains (not so good - though not really the opposite equivalent to forced repatriation, just, you know, its a dignity thing). I'll pick up from around Sheffield. I'll also ask what other stuff they need at the moment as, if you are like me, you will have a large pile of stuff to car boot but no discipline to get up for the 6am start.

Spiritwitterality

Alternative?

Theo Hobson on how 'no real alternative' most alternative worship is, and toying with something more authentic - from the good Ship of Fools

U2?

Ok, its growing on me....

Don't have it yet? Check spotify to listen to U2 or almost anything else for free

Been a long time.... (3 months in 1 post)

I'll try and condense everything I intended to post but didn't get round to into (as close as I get to normal) sentences:

• Got a new Job - Corporate Responsibility - doing good (trying to) feels good doesn’t it?
• Israel / Palestine - read Esther - violence (without God) is cyclical - that’s what's so radical about the Jesus story - refusing revenge = chance of change
• Light is a powerful universal symbol that we miss because we can flick a switch
• I wanted Easter to be a 're-personalisation' of a transformative story / person /(ongoing) event
  Taking up your cross is not about (the myth of?) 'redemptive' suffering (the cross = general suffering association is later) it’s about going up against the dominion system and the 'way' of transformation through death/resurrection
• I don't miss the blogosphere because - as U2 sing on up till now disappointing new album, ' your enemies will define you' / real people matter more
• I do miss the real people on the blogosphere
• Write a Book = vanity v useful ?
• My old church was great
• Is there a balance between reconciling oneself to not being able to change everything and wanting to change everything?
• Too many good books to be read
• Is it only me that one day thinks its all made up, one day thinks its all true, one day doesn't care but just want to get on, one day doesn't think at all etc etc?
• Individualism is its own worst enemy
• Justice / Holistic Worship / Proclamation?
• Rowan was profound when he said that God doesn't promise to stop us ruining stuff (God is not a responsibility mop (the Gospel is as much a responsibility distributor as receptacle)
• Easter = Love wins/ Life = trying to believe and do that
• I think its still worth doing something in Sheffield on Spiritual Development to give a bit of a map for fellow travellers
• Things are complicated, but even harder when simple
• G20.....?
• Engage......?
  
• Good to be back?

Theology that changes things

As an advocate of social change, who likes to sit at home and do as little as possible, I've been wondering:

What kind of theology changes society as well as people’s hearts?

Here are a few historical perspectives:

Postmillennialism to Pre-millennialism. These ideas can be highly tedious hair splitting exercises in interpreting Revelation. On the other hand, they can reflect very different perspectives about the relationship of God to social change. Certainly from the time of the Puritans until the end of the 19th century Protestantism had held the view that Jesus would return after the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. This meant that social change was both desirable and achievable. It meant human beings were a part of the process of the return of Jesus. At the end of the 19th century, and coinciding with the mainstream church becoming less interested in social change, the church moved to the idea that Jesus would return before God’s kingdom was established on earth. If Jesus was to return to earth first, what happened to the earth before that was pretty academic. I, personally, do not want to advocate either, but I do think a theology that hopes for the kingdom of God established on earth is preferable.

Imminence and Transcendence Most churches have historically preferred transcendence over imminence. Look at the songs we sing – they talk about God ‘up there’, beyond us, understood by admiring the wonders of creation. By contrast, such songs did not appear amongst black slaves in North America. Instead, God was among them – he worked out his purposes through the slaves. They saw God as imminent. Thus, they did not wait for God to come as a bolt from heaven, for when they acted God acted.

Predestination and Free will. I have no desire to unpack these philosophical ideas! Just to say, that advocates of free will (e.g. Wesley, Finney) were active in bringing social change. I’m sure either extreme is mistaken and maybe reflects the failure to grasp what the slaves recognised – that God acts through us, so such distinctions are irrelevant.

Who is up for a theology that incorporates the imminence of God with a belief that God will establish his kingdom on earth?

The Condensed Bible

A pupil today presented me with a book he'd made "The condensed Bible". I opened it. It said, "Chapter 1: be a good person".

Put People First

I think I will go to this. Anybody else?
go to this to find out more:

http://www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk/about-us/media/

Losing Life to Save it!

I love James Cone, and here he is at his usual uncompromising best. He asks 2 questions of the black church that could be asked of any church: What is the mission of the church - to save souls or bodies? And, is the church called to save its own life or called to lose its life for the sake of others?



Its amazing how easily a church can find itself sustaining itself. We're trying to find a church at the moment. We visit a church and we know that they have lots of jobs for you to fill and we suspect that when they see us in the pew, they see someone to fill their vacancies. it makes us wonder who they are for - is the church for the people or the people for the church?

I'm absolutely certain there is something outwardly unimpressive ('failed') about a church that decides not to use its energies to prop itself up. There is only a limited amount of energy and time out there and a church that chooses to use that to serve others or just let people rest is going to look unprofessional, limited, 'failed'. But herein lies its real success that, like Jesus, it chooses the path of unimpressive success. For me, its not the ultimate vindication of Jesus in the resurrection that makes Jesus' work a success - success is to build nothing in his lifetime, except to be prophetic in his unpolitical, uncompromising defence of the weak.

Evangelicals ended slavery!

Evangelicals, Quakers and other Christians were a significant influence in ending slavery, but initially attempts to change things were pretty pragmatic - gradual change was proposed. But something happened in the 1820s that radicalised a small proportion of the population of North America to insist on immediate and uncompromising abolition of slavery. What was it? This is how Professor Blight of Yale University answers that question:

"First, it was Evangelical Christianity. Some of the radicalism they took from their faith. They took from the so-called Second Great Awakening. They took from this idea that somehow, it was their duty, it was their place in the world...to save souls...it was only one step further--and Finney told them that--to save society as well. And if conversion to Christ or conversion to faith, conversion to salvation, can happen immediately in a person, why not a whole society? If you can revolutionize a single soul, why can't you revolutionize a hundred, 100,000, 1,000,000?... We're living in a different kind of era of Evangelicalism in the United States--although some Evangelicals are indeed reformers, they tend to be seen today largely as political conservatives, social conservatives. Some of the Evangelicalism of the 1820s in America, in the 1830s, became a much more radical kind of Evangelicalism in terms of the social changes that they were advocating."

The false dichotomy between saving souls for another world and saving the world itself, was clearly not understood by nineteenth century evangelicals. Certainly, my research on the period confirms this and has revealed Christianity's relationship to slavery to having been a broadly positive one.

For anyone interested in reading the full transcipt or watching the lecture, it can be found here.