Archive for the ‘Provocateur’ Category
Posted on August 13, 2010 - by Chris Lazenby
LIVE THE WORD?
Live the Word is a leaflet sent out to many (maybe all?) Anglican churches each week. On the rear cover are printed the bible readings for the week, taken from the lectionary. The two inside facing pages are left open for each church to print their own notices. On the front cover is a topical article related to the readings, or the calendar of the Church Year. These are often written by Jane Williams, wife of the famous Archbishop Rowan, but sometimes by others, though Jane Williams is usually named as editor of the publication, which is produced by Redemptorist Publications (a Roman Catholic organisation I believe).
The front page articles are often strange, containing typical ‘Anglican/Roman Catholic-speak’, and when reading them, I’m often driven to the odd ‘tut-tut’. For instance, in the issue for 5th December 2009, there was a piece by Marguerite Hutchinson about work. In it she wrote; ‘Some jobs might seem more obviously about serving God – joining the clergy perhaps. But those of us who are not called to such a vocation need not feel that our working lives are just wage slavery. There are few jobs which offer no scope for serving God.’ And later; ‘Working in itself is not as important as giving glory to God.’ Readers of this blog will know that I really dislike this compartmentalising of Christians into castes of ‘clergy’ and ‘laity’ (thank God that Jesus was ‘lay’!), and the dividing of the Christian life into ‘religious’ and ’secular’; both notions which, to me at any rate, do not sit well with the teachings of the New Testament. (more…)
Posted on July 30, 2010 - by Chris Lazenby
Keswick 2010; the dumbing down of Christian music
Last year, I wrote an entry expressing my concern at the dumbing down of music at the Keswick Convention (Cumbria, UK) and in the Christian Church generally. This year, I again attended Keswick, but chose the first, rather than second or third week, as this has the reputation of being a little more ‘traditional’ on the worship side of services (1).
Once again, I’m afraid my review is critical. The music has, if anything, moved further down the route of the outdated, middle of the road sounding pop song. There are hardly any traditional hymns left. It saddens me so much to see our great hymnody discarded in this way and strikes me as irresponsible and almost criminal. I felt so miserable and angry about this, that one night I couldn’t sleep and lay awake for hours, my mind running across the words of so many wonderful hymns; Love Divine, all Loves Excelling; O Love That Will Not Let Me Go; Tell Out My Soul, the Greatness of the Lord! And so on. What will happen to these and thousands more? Well, if we leave it to people who organise large Christian events, they’ll be forgotten, that’s what. (more…)
Posted on June 23, 2010 - by Chris Lazenby
There is no God. Or is there?
I wonder how many KEDS students (if any) have read There is no a God by Antony Flew? The book is subtitled ‘How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind’ and was first published in 2007 by HarperOne.
This is a wonderful read for so many reasons. Professor Flew - a true scholar and former professor of philosophy at Keele, Oxford and Aberdeen - more or less wrote the rule book for the so-called “new atheism” with his 1950 essay ‘Theology and Falsification’. The blurb on the back cover of the book tells us that this became ‘the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last half century.’ He grew famous – as has Richard Dawkins – for his atheistic views, and debated and spoke widely around the world as to why he did not believe in God. In a debate in the U.S in 1998, he said this; ‘I know there is no God’, and claimed that a system of belief about God contained contradictions similar to ‘unmarried husbands’ or ’round squares.’ (more…)
Posted on June 8, 2010 - by Chris Lazenby
The Museum of Curiosity
Listening to the back end of a programme called The Museum of Curiosity (Radio 4, noon, Sunday, 6th June, 2010), my interest was suddenly grabbed by what was being said. Simon Evans, one of the panellists, was pointing out the ‘bizarre degree to which natural objects match up.’ He said that ‘the moon and sun match up to a very high degree of accuracy’, and went on to explain why. ‘The sun is 400 times the size of the moon but the moon is also about 400 times nearer to us, which makes them appear the same size.’ I’d never thought about this and found it really interesting. Of course, this ‘matching’ of the sizes explains why the moon exactly covers the sun in a solar eclipse. ‘It doesn’t prove there’s a God’, says the presenter, ‘but I have to say that if there were a God, and he wanted to arrange the heavens to give us some clue that there was something going on, he couldn’t have done a much better job than he did.’ (more…)
Posted on May 22, 2010 - by Chris Lazenby
Genuine Fake Watches
My wife and I have just returned from three weeks’ holiday. During this time, we got to some interesting places including Rome, Istanbul, Corinth and Ephesus. As a Christian, these particular places were naturally of great interest to me. But yet again, I was struck by the superstition which still surrounds the Christian faith in so many places.
I’ve often thought the Church took a ‘left turn’ when Christianity was adopted by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century AD. From this point, the genuine article, the true faith, as revealed to us in the New Testament began to be swamped with worldly things. Pagan shrines and places of worship were ‘Christianised’, as were pagan festivals (such as 25th December). At the same time, the sudden acceptance and therefore ‘respectability’ of the faith created a demand, not just for places of worship, festivals and ritual, but relics and holy sites too. For example, whilst in Ephesus, we visited the tomb of St. John (though his bones have apparently been removed and taken to Rome). Nearby is the house where Mary, the mother of our Lord, lived out the remainder of her life (John having taken her to Ephesus with him). Such sites may or may not be genuine but of course, the tourist industry works hard to convince us that they are. In this are at any rate, ‘religion’ is still looked upon as a moneyspinner. (more…)
Posted on March 31, 2010 - by Chris Lazenby
Interpreting the Bible
The bible is an interesting and wonderful book (or, more accurately, collection of books). It has stood the test of time and had a great influence on world history. Though we may know little about it, when we pick it up and read, we can be almost shocked in places by its confrontational, take-me-as-I-am kind of attitude. And even if we don’t wish to dig deeper than the plain surface meaning of the text, or look into the history of the way the bible came to us, it seems, nevertheless, to have about it an inherent authority - a kind of given-ness. Millions of people have found real power in the words contained in the bible. It can change lives and has done so throughout its history. It is indeed ’sharper than any two edged sword’ (Hebrews 4:12). (more…)
Posted on March 12, 2010 - by Chris Lazenby
It’s only a bit of paper
One thing which really concerns me today is the tendency for people not to marry but to simply live together. ‘Why get married just to get a certificate’, people will say; ‘after all, it’s only a bit of paper’. This is not a new saying of course; it was in use when I was a young man in the late 1960s and early ’70s. The difference between then and now is that in those days, most people still got married. People who loved each other used to be prepared to stand in front of witnesses and say so, promising themselves to one another for life. But like so many issues related to family, this has all changed in recent years. And one of the saddest symbols of that change is this pathetic and silly little mantra; ‘it’s only a bit of paper.’ (more…)
Posted on March 5, 2010 - by Chris Lazenby
How Can I Find Faith?
In my last entry ‘What is the Gospel’, I spoke quite a lot about faith. The bible says: ‘without faith it is impossible to please him (God), for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him’ (Hebrews 11:6). For this reason, if you are an agnostic, ’sitting on the fence’, maybe thinking that you’re not a bad person and that if there is a God, you’ll get by okay, I’d urge you to think again. I’d suggest to you that the fence you believe you are sitting on doesn’t exist; it is purely imaginary. If you like to imagine fences where there aren’t any, try imagining this particular fence as being so narrow that there isn’t room to sit on it. You must be on either one side of it or the other. As Jesus said: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30). (more…)