The Dogmatic aTheology of AC Grayling

In today's Times, AC Grayling asks if a secular state should intervene in certain religious acts. He comments on a court decision in Manchester in which a Shia Muslim has been found guilty of child cruelty after he made two teenage boys take part in a self-flagellation ritual using a whip contain knife blades. Nasty.

Grayling then lists a number of other religious practices which involved self-harm - giving examples from Hinduism and Christianity. He seems convinced that mortification of the flesh is a popular Christian ritual and there is a good biblical justification for it. It is not popular - although it happens (hooray for Dan Brown's Opus Dei monk who made it seem more common that it was...) - but I'd hope that many Christians would agree that punishing ourselves physically for our sin is renders the cross redundant. And on top of anything else, it doesn't work. Grayling doesn't dip into this since it doesn't suit his argument. Besides, he's a professor of Philosophy. Does he even do 'facts?'

He then says this:

But that raises the second question. We do not like children being involved in either Mosley-like or religious activities of elective suffering, one reason being that we do not think they are in a position to give properly free and informed consent. This, in turn, raises the question of what else children should be protected from in the way of religious practice, or even doctrine: for psychological effects are every bit as real as physical ones.

What does his statement presuppose? Lots of things.
1. "We do not like children being involved in... elective suffering." I don't either, but that's because I'm a Christian. Biblical elective suffering takes you about as far as fasting - or denying yourself something in other that you do not sin (eg. going without a television if you think it will make you lustful or foolish). This is different from beating yourself up because you've been bad. Christ was beaten and hung on a tree for our sins. So why does Grayling not like children being involved in elective suffering? His atheistic world-view has no self-evident morality. What he's clinging clue is a post-Christian secularism, which takes the morality without the God. Clearly the convicted Muslim thought that child self-harm is morally okay - in fact, a religious imperative. On what basis does Grayling find it despicable? And why is this Muslim's self-evident morality provably wrong?

2. So we return to the problem of consent. Self-harm is okay by Grayling as long as there is consent. Is there nothing two consenting people can do to or with each other that should be prevented by the secular state? What if one agrees to be killed by the other? Is the suicidal man medically unwell - and if so, who is to say? And how will one bunch of molecules (aka a person) impose his will on the another bunch? By coercion and violence - sanctioned by the state. Like many vocal atheistic liberals, Grayling wants to use the sword of the state to impose his own flawed secularism.

3. He also writes:

One might think that teaching six-year-olds the Calvinistic dread of eternal torment in hellfire is as harmful as flagellation - the youths in the Manchester case began their self-flagellation in Pakistan at that age. But what about teaching children false or weird beliefs as fact?

Ah, we return to facts. Who decides what constitutes a fact? Professor Grayling has already decided God is not a fact. And yet I retain God is a fact. Why should his 'fact' be taught to my children and not mine.

Anyway, read the whole article here.

More Taxation Idiocy

The press are asking questions and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to make a tough decision. Does he spent £150 million of taxpayers money on art? The Duke of Sutherland has told the National Galleries of Scotland that he wants to sell the pictures that he has loaned them - including works by Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt and Poussin according to the Times. The paintings are worth £300 million, but he's offering them to the 'nation' for a knockdown price. Buy one Titian, get a Raphal free!

It's an interesting quandary. What price do we put on art? Especially when we are spending other people's money. Evangelicals are traditionally utilitarian when it comes to money, keen not spend money on fripperies like paintings, even if they are bargain-basement Poussins. I don't know what I would do if I were in the Chancellor's position, but this is largely a problem of the government's own making. For me, here's a telling remark in the Times piece:

The death of the sixth Duke of Sutherland in 2000 appeared to have brought about such a moment of crisis. The title passed to his cousin, Francis Egerton, but the heavy demands of inheritance tax put a strain on the finances of the estate, which led to the sale from the Bridgewater Collection of Titian’s Venus Anadyomene, bought by National Galleries of Scotland in 2003 for £11.6 million. Now the 68-year-old 7th Duke has again been moved to realise some of the wealth tied up in the collection.

So, the new Duke was hit hard by the Chancellor's insane Inheritance Tax. (Inheritance tax is truly barmy. You work hard for your whole life, pay tax and VAT the whole time, and then save a pension, which you then get taxed on - and when you die, the whole already-taxed lot is liable to be taxed again! We really are worthless slaves of the state.) Perhaps the Government would not have had to tax us all for £11.6 million if they didn't tax, tax and tax again.

There is another bizarre taxation feedback loop going on with fuel prices. The government wants to help. Really and truly it does. They love to make us grateful and they love to announce things so this gratefulness is maximised. So there's popular move to tax energy companies on ther windfalls they've made recently. This is bafflingly stupid even by the tiny standards our current government. Where do energy companies get their money from? Our own gas bills and electricity bills? From our credit cards pummelled in petrol stations (where there is another double tax. Duty is charged on the fuel - and then VAT whacked on the whole lot, so we pay tax on the tax!). If the fuel companies have to pay a windfall tax, they'll pass the tax onto aliens on another planet - oh no, that's right. There aren't any. So they'll pass the costs onto us, the consumers. This is state-sanctioned, press-fuelled idiocy of the highest order. And it's costing us all about 40% of our income - money that would b better spent on almost anything else other than our self-serving, grandstanding political regime.

Greenbelt 2008

I've just spent four days at the Greenbelt Festival and once again I had a fascinating time. Allow me to list some of the activities I went to and took part in - for the record and for comment:

On Friday, I focussed on my main area of responbility - Last Orders. It's a late night chat/comedy/music show which starts at 11.15pm and rumbles on until about 1am. Among our guests that night were Brian McClaren - as in THE Brian McClaren. I met him earlier that day and he was a thoroughly pleasant and unassuming man. We teased him on the show for being in the list of Time Magazine's 25 most influential evangelicals. On the performance he gave - and what I've read - I don't question the influence. It's the evangelical part that seems up for grabs. On the show, we also had Victor Thiessen Nation, a film critic and organiser of film-club evenings;

On Saturday, I heard a talk by Frank Shaeffer, the son of Francis Shaeffer. He was giving a talk based on his book, Crazy for God - in which he gives a brutal account of family life, growing up in L'Abri, taking on his father's business/ministry and dropping out of it completely. He now attends a Greek Orthodox Church. I then took part in an event called 'Liquid Lunch' in which we talked about what we were looking forward to at the festival and what we'd already seen and done. It's meant to be fairly comic in tone.

That evening, I attended a panel discussion hosted by Dave Tomlinson called 'The Bible Tells me So'. Panellists included Pete Rollins, one of the founders of Ikon and a slightly rock'n'roll theologian from Northern Ireland. Also on the panel were Joel Edwards of the Evangelical Alliance, Richard Burridge from King's College London, Tina Beattie and AN other who's name I've forgotten, I'm afraid. It was a bizarrely good-natured discussion and they all attempted to say roughly the same thing. I was rather impressed with Pete Rollins and the way he would fling himself at the text. And he was insightful and fascinating at times. Later, I was assured that I wouldn't like this book - or his theology in general - but it was interesting nonetheless.

Later that night, it was Last Orders again, and we produced a fairly 'workmanlike'. Last Orders, with guests including Stu Hallam, a chaplain for the Royal Marines who had just served seven months in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. (What are the marines doing there? It's a land-locked country).

On Sunday morning, I attended a talk by a delightful and witty man called Andy Tate about Resurrection in Modern English literature. I chatted to him late and we compared notes about Kevin Pietersen's England Captaincy - and then we talked books and I resolved to read some Tim Winton. I then witnessed an interview with Philip Yancey conducted by Cole Moreton. It was short but interesting - and Cole asked Yancey how much money he made and what he did with it all. Good question and Yancey had a good answer.

That afternoon, I decline to attend the 'communion service'. The Sunday service is always a problem for me. In the past, I haven't attended because no-one gives a decent talk from the Bible which I stand any chance of agreeing with. (If they give a talk at all) This year, the thing that bugged me was the mis-use of communion. People like to think that communion is a sign of Christian unity. That's only part of what the Lord's Supper is, and shouldn't be used in indiscrimate way. Since no-one is 'guarding the table', a communion for 10,000 people from extraordinarily different backgrounds is, at best, a waste of time. At worst, it's an abomination. I haven't decided which it is.

Last Orders on Sunday night was our best show of the festival. Our guests were Frank Shaeffer and Joel Edwards, with some comedy from Jude Simpson and the Rev Gerald Ambulance, alter-ego of Steve Tomkins.

On Monday, I gave a talk on Comedy and the Bible, which was pleasingly full and seemed to go okay. Details are on the blog-post below. At 7pm, I saw a full show of the Rev Gerald Ambulance at which I laughed a lot. As I was listening, I was wondering how such an act would go down at Spring Harvest. Very badly, I thought. I thought it was hilarious and very close the bone at times, in a good way. Then at 9pm, I ate fish and chips listening to Miriam Jones in the Performance Cafe. Miriam Jones is thoroughly fab and I've been humming her tunes for the last 24 hours. Her myspace page is here.
Then at 11.15, Last Orders was a fairly loose affair, but a good one for it, I think. Our only guest was John Davies - who is a vicar who likes to walk places and think about them (psychogeography. seriouly. He's walked the route of the M62). We also had comedy from the ever-wonderful Paul Kerensa.

Overall, the festival frustrated me as I feel that Greenbelt is too at ease with itself. Greenbelt is normally awkward and challenging, but it felt that it had reached some sort of muddy consensus. But, given my opting out of communion and rubbing shoulders with great people who have a very different understanding of the Christian faith from me, it made me wonder what Christian unity looks like. It isn't in pretending to agree with each other, or not discussing the differences, or, perish the thought, sharing the Lord's Supper. So what is it?

Comedy in the Bible

If you're reading this blog post, it's possible you came to my session at Greenbelt on Comedy in the Bible.

Here are the books I'd mentioned that I recommend.

The Serrated Edge by Douglas Wilson available here.
Deep Comedy by Peter Leithart which is here.

Douglas Wilson has also blogged this. It's a brilliant, wise and helpful set of principles for doing satire.

I also may have mentioned:
And God Created Laughter by Conrad Hyers. I review some of it here.
The Prostitute in the Family Tree by Douglas Adams - reviewed here.

On this blog are various posts about comedy in the Bible. There's stuff on Jonah, Romans, Jesus riding on a donkey among others. Plus there are posts about comedy stereotyping and offence and stuff.

Make me a Christian continues...

As suspected, some ministers involved in Channel 4's spiritual train-wreck, 'Make me a Christian', know that moralising at a non-Christian isn't going to help them. Joanna Jepson - whom I know personally (she's delightful) - has been taking legal action against the programme to have her contribution removed from the show. She says:

"There was clearly an agenda behind making the programme designed to make Christians look obsessed with people's sex lives and intent on imposing Christian behaviour on everyone else. Christian behaviour is only possible after a spiritual transformation. We were encouraged to take part on the understanding that we were dealing with a group of people who genuinely wanted to embrace Christianity. But that was clearly not the case."

The story appears in the Daily Telegraph here.

Cultural ABCs

What is culture? How do you even define it? My friend, Matt, and I tried to define it the other day. Matt said he hadn't read a definition of culture that was less than three lines long. It's a problem. It's not one I'm about to crack, but I've just started reading a book called Culture Making by Andy Crouch. The first chapter has been acting as a catalyst in pulling some threads in my mind together. There threads are an ABC of sorts.

A is for Aviator, The. I saw this film over the weekend, and although I enjoyed it, I came away feeling unsatisfied. Where was the resolution? What was the point of the film? I discussed this with another friend today - Adam (A is also for Adam). As we talked, we realised that lives don't fall neatly into three acts, as we've been realising when thinking about Make Me A Christian. The truth is messy. Our lives are disordered and chaotic. A biopic is very hard to make since you need to 'find a story' within someones life. Lives are a story, but they are abundant with redundant facts and moments. The storyteller has to select, edit and re-tell, but it is easier said than done. But done it must be. Why? Because we, as people, like to impose order on chaos, or the appearance of chaos.

B is for Britain from the Air. This is a new series on BBC1 in which the fabulous Andrew Marr gives a portrait of our nation from the skies, looking down on our fields and factories. Last week he pointed out that the green and pleasant countryside we see from the air is not natural at all. It is cultivated and worked. The fields are ordered and fenced. Even National Parks are un-natural in their own way since they are tightly controlled and monitored, and need to be reseeded when walkers ramble all over the place. The houses and planning regulations strictly enforced create an architectural and cultural time-warp - again, not a natural process at all. Marr points out that Britain used to be convered in a huge wild wood that was slowly chopped down over time by early Britons. And there is barely an acre in Britain that is not tended, cultivated or used in some way.

Man by nature cultivates the land - and if he didn't, Britain would be completely wild woodland, and less picturesque and beautiful as a result. We, as people, impose order on chaos - the chaos created not by divine indifference or accident, but by gracious abundance. One of the most striking things for me in the creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 are the seed-bearing plants - which need to be cultivated by man from the start because of their fruitfulness. Man's need to order creation does not derive from the need to 'clear up after sin', although he does need do that. He does not just have to deal with the problem of death and decay. He prunes, works and cultivates because nature is fruitful by design. And Man is integral to creation, not plonked on the top as the king to exploit and pillage, as naturalists suggest we are (and should stop being).

C is for Culture, Culture-Making and Crouch (Andy) who is usefully pointing out that culture is not just opera and jazz, or sitcoms and newspaper. It is everything. Crouch says "[Culture] is what human beings make of the world. It always bears the stamp of our creativity, our God-given desire to make something more than we were given." That's not a bad summary of culture. I'm still not sure that's all of it. I'm arguing that humans, by nature (God-given nature), seek to impose order on abundance - telling neat stories with a beginning, middle and end, when we all know that reality is more complex. It's finding mathematical equations to describe what the patterns we find in arithmetic. It's categorising plants and animals in groups, genuses and species, so we can keep track of the enormous number of species God has created. And culture (and art) is reinterpreting all of this data in a way that is abbreviated, ordered and coherent.

And look what I've just done. I ordered my thoughts into an ABC - in the order of letters of the alphabet for the sake of neatness. We do it by instinct. (And last Sunday I preached on Psalm 37 - which is an acrostic)


In my previous conversation with Matt, I had commented that I wanted to develop of a Theology of Everything because everything matters. Everything is saying something about something. One of my frustrations in life generally is that people accept things for what they are, rather than considering how they could be, and why things are as they are and not as they could be. Crouch is now going on to give us a theology/cultural analysis of omelettes. I think I'm going to like this book. You can have a read of the opening chapters here. Or find out more here.

The Prostitute in the Family Tree

There aren't too many books about the use of comedy in the Bible. There is comedy in the Bible but it can seem rather distant and obscure to us. Some of us miss it completely, some is lost in translation - and for many of us, over-familiarity with the stories deletes any kind of comic surprise. So when I track down a book still in print on the subject of comedy in the Bible, I grab it.

My latest grab is The Prostitute in the Family Tree by Douglas Adams. Not THE Douglas Adams (Boy, that must get on his nerves), but an American chap. The book is short, readable and often engaging. He is enthusiastic and passionate in his quest for hidden comic gems in the Bible - and this is part of the problem. It's very easy to think that 'your thing' should be everyone's thing. If you're ill and you see a neurologist, he'll probably tell your pain stems from brain trouble. In the same way, Adams sees comedy in many places in the Bible - and in one or two passages where this isn't any. And some of what he describes isn't 'Funny Ha Ha' but just incongruous - or 'funny peculiar'.

He does succeed in recapturing the earthiness of the Bible, and presents Bible characters in a warts'n'all state. This is a good thing, but when he tries ii on Jesus, he is less successful and, I think, borderline blasphemous at times. You need to think carefully before saying that 'Jesus lost his temper'. Certainly Jesus could be harsh with people, but losing one's temper implies, to me, sin. Which rather renders the cross redundant.

What I learn from this is that we need to be very careful with our language and accurate with our speech. And this is not Adams' strong point. He's rather sloppy as he excitedly points to Biblical jokes. I often say that the problem with looking at humour and the Bible is that it's written about by theologians, who understand the Bible, but not humour - beyond dry dictionary definitions. Adams is no theologian. By is own admission, he picks bits up from other theologians. But he's not really a comedian either. That is to say, his comedy on the page doesn't really work. What he does is explain to the reader how he deals with various passages with groups of people in churches, how he gets people to stand up, do things, act out stories and give their opinions. I'm sure he's very good at that, but he needs to reapply himself to the medium of the book and the written word.

I wonder whether I'm too hard on him - and whether this book itself is a little lost in translation. He is American. I am British. He talks about himself rather a lot and I find it irritating. The odd anecdote told against yourself is fine, but to consistently put yourself in a book that's meant to be about comedy in the Bible seems a little self-regarding.

I've read two other books on this topic. Wilson's Serrated Edge - more specifically about satire - is confortably the best. Conrad Hyers book, which I blogged about here, is probably a bigger help than this one by Adams. But there are useful insights in Adams' book which I'm glad I've read. I just felt, at times, he was describing occasions and worskshops in churches that were probably funny if you were there. The fact they seem less funny to those of us who weren't rather sums up the problem of finding humour in a book written thousands of years ago by multiple humans hands - even if it had one divine hand.

'Make Me A Christian' as expected, sadly

I finally managed to watch 'Make me a Christian'. It was a sobering experience. It shows us how badly wrong television can go, how poorly represented Christians are in the media and how consistently Christians keep shooting themselves in the foot.

I don't know how the programme was made and edited, but I was stunned by the way the programme came out. Our team of ministers went to individuals and tried to get them to live a Christian lifestyle, condemning their sin and throwing unexplained Bibles at them. This is not a kind thing to do. And the said ministers would surely have known that.

Telling a lapdancer about the sin of fornication - in fact, just using the word fornication - is not an especially constructive or relevant thing to say. It may be true, but the worst thing was I sense that she know that it was true. She seemed, in the brief seconds on screen that we saw her, that she was looking for forgiveness and acceptance. Maybe they're holding that back for week 2, when the explain that Christ has washed away our sin - and that some key women in Biblical genealogies and stories were prostitutes. Jesus was descended from Rahab. He dealt compassionately with broken, confused women. Perhaps there'll be a big finish in week 3 when they say 'Surprise! None of us are good enough for God. And it's Him that opens blind eyes, not us. So this whole three week experiment has been a hoax! Relieved?' Oh the humanity.

For a decent review of 'Make me a Christian', try reading Charlie Brooker's of the Guardian.

Being Light

The world is a dark place. We know this to be true. But do we think we stand any kind of a chance against the darkness? Jesus says Christians are light. A light in a dark place.

We forget what happens when you turn on a light. The darkness is utterly destroyed. There’s no conflict between the light and the dark. Light wins against dark every time. If you flick a light-switch you don't wonder if the lights going to win again. Light destroys darkness. Just as good destroys evil.

Christians are light. They shine. And there’s plenty of darkness for everyone to destroy. In our homes. On our streets. In our offices. In our schools. In a nation as a whole. On the internet. Simply being Christian in these places, doing Christians things in these areas, destroys darkness. Kindness destroys meanness. Cheerfulness destroys bitterness. Generosity destroys envy.

One act of kindness or grace has an extraordinary effect on a situation. Sitting around a table, you may be part of a group who are talking about someone who isn't there, listing all his faults and flaws, laughing at his inadequacies. If you pipe up with one compliment, one kind word, the atmosphere will change dramatically. The darkness is dented by your light.

Robert Lewis Stevenson, who wrote Treasure Island, was a sickly child. One night his nurse found him with his nose pressed up against the frosty pane of his bedroom window. He was transfixed by the old lamplighter slowly working his way through the black night, lighting each street lamp along the way. Robert exclaimed, "See! Look there! there's a man poking holes in the darkness." Isn’t that a great expression? That’s what Christians are to do. Poke holes in the darkness. And we do that by being Christians.

Why do we feel ineffective as Christians? Because we hide our light under bowl? When Jesus says 'No-one puts a light under a bowl', we would say 'obviously!' and yet that's what we do all the time. We hide our light.

Naturally, then, Christians are destroyers of darkness but we chose not to be. It’s actually an effort, a conscious decision, to cover up the light. Why do we do it? Because we feel it's easier. But we are covering up our true nature. We all do it all the time. And that’s often why we feel frustrated as Christians! We’re not showing our true selves. We’re being someone else. Pretending to be someone else.

Imagine you’re a Fulham FC fan. You’re Fulham born and bred. You always check the results. You watch the matches whenever you can. They have a huge match against Arsenal. You can’t get in. And someone offers you a ticket. You meet them at the gates and discover the seat is at the Arsenal end. Fulham supporters aren’t meant to sit in the Arsenal end. So what do you do? You’re wearing your Fulham shirt. Obviously you can’t take it off - you're a Fulham fan. So you put your coat over the top. You’ve covered up your team. And you sit there. In your seat. In the crowd. Covering up your emotions. Fulham score! You want to cheer. But you stop yourself. Got to cover up your true nature. And keep silent. Then a Fulham player is mashed in a tackle. You want to shout out ‘Foul! Referee!’ But you can’t. You’re covering up your true nature. And by the end of ninety minutes, you’re utterly miserable.

And the truth is that that is how many of us live our Christians lives. We cover up who were are. We put our light under a bowel. Put the suit on for work, and then pull on this work mindset. And all day we want to cheer what's good. Or cry 'foul' at injustice. But we we can’t. We don’t. And by the end of the working week, we’re thoroughly miserable. Take off the bowl. Shine. You will win.

Make Me a Christian

Television and religion don't mix very well. A show starting on Channel 4 might demonstrate this. It's called 'Make me a Christian'. Here's the official premise of the show:

The Reverend George Hargreaves thinks Britain is in a state of moral decline and that a return to a more 'Christian' way of life would stop the rot. He and his team of mentors aim to show how by convincing a group of non-Christian volunteers to live by the teachings of the Bible for three weeks.

A few thoughts on this:

1. This show is almost certainly made by a secular production company (I can't find out which) but before heaping scorn on them that 'they don't understand Christianity' (which they don't) it's worth pointing out that Christians have totally failed to come up with decent, engaging programmes. It's a genre of television I've been keen to get into but finding allies in the evangelical world is almost impossible. Evangelicals don't like television (and are scared of it) - so we can't be surprised that when we refuse to play their game, they'll carry on without us.

2. I happen to know a few Christians who've been involved in the making of the show at various points to various degrees. They are rather gloomy about how the show is going to turn out.

3. Here's the problem with modern documentary making. You need to tell human stories in three or four chunks - establishing characters, encountering problems, overcoming them, hugging, crying. Look at Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares or Mary Queen of Shop. Guru finds failing business. Gives advice. Advice not heeded. Tears. Advice heed. Success. Tears. Credits. Does that reflect real life? Sometimes. Are the stories fabricated? Probably not. Are they edited? Of course. Are the true stories? In a sense. But...

4. ... here's the problem with 'Make me a Christian'. How does someone become a Christian? Guru comes in and gives advice. Not heeded? Tears? Heede? Success? Tears? Credits? By no means. Someone becomes a Christian by hearing the gospel and receiving grace. God has decided which of the characters are going to become Christians - and if you don't invite him to your production meetings, you're unlikely to be in on it.

5. The format's a problem even if you're an Arminian - and think that people really can decide to turn to Christ by themselves (which they can't, by the way. Sorry. I know it seems like they can. And feels like we can but, no, they can't.) The problem is that at the moment of conversion is something that happens inside someone. There's no TV drama there. In reality, it's a wonderful thing and angels in heaven are rejoicing (again, unfilmable) - but Christians and non-Christians on earth now kind of look the same. There is no 'before' and 'after' photo worth taking. So they can't do that bit at the end of the show - that they like to do on these shows - where they compare new and improved Jo or Sally with sad, old, dysfunctional Jo or Sally from fifty minutes ago.

6. And because you can't really film a conversion, you have to make people do stuff. Behave like Christians. Stop doing this. Start doing that. So the programme info continues:

The mentors visit the volunteers in their own homes, to get a picture of their lives and to give them guidance. The parents are asked to spend 15 minutes each day with their children. The lesbian is ordered to get rid of her explicit pictures and books. The young man and his pregnant girlfriend are given some instruction in the basics of Christianity. The lap-dancing manager is discovered to have more than a passing interest in witchcraft and magic - her books and ceremonial paraphernalia are taken away. The womanising 20-something is persuaded to agree not to 'look lustfully at a girl'. The biker, so far, is challenging every instruction and the others are beginning to get fed up with his refusal to listen.

So, if this press statement is to be believed (which it may not be), it's a works-based religion. Do this and do this and that makes you a Christian. In fact, it's Christ who makes people Christians. Obvious but true. It's His Spirit that empowers people to change - and gives them the will to change. I'm not sure if He was involved in the show at all. Perhaps, by God's grace, he will be.

You can read more of the show's blurb here.

Tonight on Radio 4

Series 1 of Hut 33 is going to be repeated tonight on BBC Radio 4 at 6.30pm - when you're either stuck in the car, washing up or chopping vegetables. Do have a listen. You will also be able to listen again via the BBC website.

I've written an article about the tricky 'first episode' problem on the Hut 33 blog here.

The Olympic Vision

The Olympics is one of those events that sounds like a wonderful idea. The world comes together in perfect harmony celebrating unity, oneness, fair play and anything else that looks good on a slow-motion montage set to Bruce Hornsby’s The Way It Is. They run, they swim, they jump – and then have a refreshing can of Coca-cola and take off their Reeboks.

Personally, I find the idea very hard to get excited about. Apart from the all commercial endorsements, at what is meant to be an amateur event, there are other issues of concern. We all know that the Chinese have a vile, repressive government who persecute God’s people, imprison tens of thousands of people without fair trial and control all information that flows into the country. And it was hoped that awarding the Olympics to Beijing would help this government come round to our wonderful, democratic, anything-goes, ‘secular’ capitalist system (yay for us).

It obviously hasn’t worked. The Chinese government, who merrily sold guns to Mugabe, simply don’t care what the world thinks. So it’s worth reminding ourselves of what the Olympic vision actually is. Thanks to unfettered internet access (which the Chinese people don’t enjoy) you can find out the Olympic Charter on the offical Olympic website.

Fundamental Principles of Olympism
1. Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.

2. The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

3. The Olympic Movement is the concerted, organised, universal and permanent action, carried out under the supreme authority of the IOC, of all individuals and entities who are inspired by the values of Olympism. It covers the five continents. It reaches its peak with the bringing together of the world’s athletes at the great sports festival, the Olympic Games. Its symbol is five interlaced rings.

4. The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play. The organisation, administration and management of sport must be controlled by independent sports organisations.

5. Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.

6. Belonging to the Olympic Movement requires compliance with the Olympic Charter and
recognition by the IOC.

At first glance, it seems harmless enough. In fact, it’s slightly comically pompous. Especially paragraph 3, in which the Olympic Movement claims to be “concerted, organised, universal and permanent action.” Permanent? Did anyone say Ozymandias? No? Just me laughing then. Sorry. Also, the practice of sport being a human right is quite funny. I’m sure the people of Zimbabwe are more interested in human rights that involve voting for the candidate you want without law-enforcers coming round and breaking your legs. Let’s not pretend sport is a human right. It isn’t.

Like most well-meaning secular organisations, the Olympic Movement makes one classic mistake of assuming ‘universal fundamental ethical principles’ (see paragraph 1). Exactly what are these based on? Exactly what can be universally agreed by a Chinese peasant farmer, a Japanese businessman, a Turkmenistani political, a French mother, a Jordanian imam, a Norwegian teenager, a Spanish bullfighter, an American talk-show host, a Canadian aid-worker, a Mexican cattle rancher, an Argentinian banker and an Amazonian pygmy hunter? This is the great delusion of our time – that we can all agree on a few basics. The reality is that the basics are simply ripped off from a Judean-Christian framework, decontaminated, dechristianised, and then passed off as Human Rights. (Like Dawkins, Toynbee, Pullman and co. do all the time.) What’s even more annoying is that these values are then retrospectively attributed to the Greeks. Pierre de Coubertin, who pioneered the Olympic vision, is buried in Lausanne in Switzerland, but his heart was buried near the ruins of ancient Olympia. Seriously.

China is changing. But not because of the ‘Olympic dream’. It’s changing in the short term because of commerce, money and the unstoppable information revolution empowering its people. But China is more likely to change far more and in a much more surprising way because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese people are becoming Christians and discovering the actual source of the Western Secular Values. They see them undiluted, and embodied in a person – not Pierre de Courbertin, or a plucky swimmer who ‘has a go’ but is lapped by the Australian muscle machine. But in Jesus Christ. Who needs five rings when you can have unity in the cross of Christ?

Culture Making

Here's a website from Andy Crouch and friends that's worth a look.

Children Need Theology

Apologies for lack of blogging this week. I've been involved in a children's holiday club - which has been all-consuming, exhausting, but very worthwhile. It's been great to be reminded that the best way to love and care for children is to tell them about Jesus Christ - not just that Jesus was good and powerful, but that he is God's promised King who rescues us from our sin. This week, we've effectively explained substitutionary atonement. (Admittedly, I've spent most of the time running around in a cape pretending to be a superhero. Hamster Boy. I guess you had to be there). The reality is that children can understand far more than we think. Those who insist that children need to grow up and experience a 'conversion' to be proper Christians may not necessarily be aware of what a very young child can take in.