Twittering

There are some upsides to Twitter.

Yes, it encourages people to be narcissistic and self-important. And waste hours of the their life. But people's tweets, and Facebook statuses, are often a joy to read. They are frequently witty, self-effacing and pleasingly ambiguous. Recently, I went to Bletchley and my Facebook status reflects that. I was excited and wanted to share. I anticipate lots of questions about it in the next few weeks as people who saw my status ask me about it in person. All good.

But another upside of Twitter in particular is that 140 characters really does focus the mind. What can be said in 140 characters - including spaces? I would argue that a brief, intriguing message draws people in more effectively than long exhaustive ones. It is possible to catch people's attention without being crass, untruthful or overly sensational.

Moreover, to say something briefly is not to say nothing. And to say something ambiguously is not always a bad thing. But remember it only takes 140 characters to say: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life – John 3:16”. And ultimately, how could one say more than that?

It's the little things...

Here's a dilemma, which hides a worrying trend.

Today, I drove into the congestion zone in London. This was not a dilemma. I drove a car into Central London in order to give a Christian talk for some students. No big deal. Driving in may take some time but it means you get home very quickly. The trick is to time your drive so that you enter the congestion zone just after 6pm, so that you don't have to pay the £8 charge.

This time, there was a problem.

The traffic was lighter than expected, so I approached the zone earlier than I might otherwise have done. Plus I was distracted. I was dropping off my sister at a tube station, drove off and into the zone. I looked at my clock a little later it was 6.05. But for how long had I been in the zone? I was impossible to tell. There are no signs up which say "Zone no longer in force" or a lit up blonde face of Major Boris with a speech bubble saying "The congestion charges are on me!" So how do I know if I have to pay the charge?

One would have thought it would be simple. I phone them up and say "Here's my car registration number. Do I owe you £8?" And they'd tell me. I did that. And they didn't tell me. Couldn't tell me. The answer was "Don't know."

How can they not know? If I don't pay, they'll send me a bill, so they must know. In fact, if I don't pay £8 today, or £10 tomorrow, they'll send me a bill for £120, which they will cheerfully cut in half to a mere £60 if I pay within 14 days.

But here's the question: Why do they not know? What sort of an enforcement system is it which refuses to yield the answer to whether you are obliged to pay until it delivers you a graceless bill for £120. It's the slow-lane to a Kafka-esque world. It may not get there. But it is headed in that direction. This is a sad and worrying trend. And to avoid worry, I paid.

Defending Marriage

I'm currently writing a sermon on Malachi 2:10-16. At the moment, I'm thinking about how our society views marriage and the family - and how polarised opinions can be. As usual, The Onion have nicely summed up the ardent, angry defenders of marriage with this.

The Qualifications for Leadership

The latest scandals in the Houses of Parliament has thrown up a number of issues - not least the nature of leadership. The Members of Parliament who currently are being hounded about their expenses claims are, sadly, our leaders. Some have emerged with honour. Many have not emerged at all. But what has become clear is that the way MPs behave matters. It is not enough that they follow the letter of the law - even their own laws that they've set for themselves. What they are being castigated for is the plain old sin of greed.

It is interesting their expenses are going to be handled by an 'independent body'. Presumably this is a body that we can all trust. But one would hope that the House of Commons was filled with people we already all trust to get on with this sort of thing. This is not only being shown to be not the case - there is no question of it ever being the case in the future, since the body is being set up so that MPs are being checked by other 'independent' people (as opposed to those chosen by the people).

This whole tawdry affair has, for a while at least, done away with the nonsensical view that what MPs do in their 'private lives' can and should have no bearing on their roles as MPs. A number of people consistently push this line - that a politician can live their life one way, but operate as a politician in a different way. For example, sending their children to private school when their party despises paid-for education. Or refusing to reveal whether your child had the MMR jab during their hysteria of previous. It is false.

The myth is that leadership skills exist apart from character and virtue - as if a politician is able to manage a government department when his own household is a mess and his friends think he's an over-ambitious idiot.

The qualifications for leadership in the Bible could not be more different. They are all about character and conduct. This is not to say that the qualifications for secular governance should be same as the those of Bible teachers and pastors. But it would be a good place to start, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be great if our MPs were like the leaders highlighted in Titus 1:7-8:

Blameless, not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. A hospitable lover of good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.

I'd vote for that guy.

The Truth: More or Less...

A government produced report on domestic violence says this:

We know that domestic violence is a serious public health issue and that the statistics are shocking. For women aged 19-44, domestic violence is the leading cause of morbidity, greater than cancer, war, and motor vehicle accidents.

The statistics are shocking. In fact, they're scandalous because it seems that they can't possibly be true. That is, however, because they aren't true. This so-called fact about a very serious and distressing issue has been repeated and amplified around the nations media again and again. Why? You would have thought that some would check it, wouldn't you, especially before repeating on a national news programme? No.

I was made aware of this by the splendid BBC Radio 4 programme More of Less - a show which almost by itself justifies the licence fee. It is an admirable show because it is primarily interested in the truth and, as such, is a very fine piece of work. It's not trying to be eye-catching (or ear-catching), clever or sensational. It's honest fact-checking.

It's worth pondering why we lie, why our journalists lie - or fail to check their facts - and why our politicians lie, or fail to speak the truth. When we lie, we're being idolators. We're interested in someone else's opinion more than God's. We want people to like us - so we embellish our stories. We want people to agree with us, so we inflate our statistics. We want people to keep watching our TV shows - so we cherry-pick to the extent that a crop of numbers no longer represents the field of data. We all do it. We repeat this statistics, exaggerate our stories and fail to check the facts be recycling the inaccuracies of others. If we all told the truth 29% more often, the economy would grow by 6.9%. Surely?

Rubbing ones Nose in it

Christians are prudish people. They are frequently appalled by scatological humour or coarse talk. In fact, the Bible teaches to avoid coarse joking. But naturally, it depends on the way in which it is used and the motive behind it. God uses this language to make a point - and a very powerful point it is too, as I heard on Sunday, listening to Malachi, chapter 2. The priests running the temple are offering God second-rate sacrifices, blind and lame animals and witholding their best from God, because ultimately, they do not believe God is good. God says this:

2 “And now, O priests, this command is for you. 2 If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. 3 Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it.

Now, that's a powerful image. It is both humourous, repellent and highly effective. God will not be mocked.

Post-Christian Society?

I've just been listening to a podcast from Christianity Today magazine about Christianity in a Post-Christian society. Which you can also view - here. The mics are up at the start so you can hear the panel chatting while the intro is going on, which is quite funny.

I'm about half an hour into listening and they're now talking about what I might have started with had my overblown, poorly-conceived opinion been sought. The question is this: Is this really a post-Christian society? In one sense, it is since comparatively few are interested in Jesus Christ specifically. But here's what I find interesting. We live in a society that is passionate about social justice, helping the poor and feeding the hungry. Our society takes as a given that the sick must be looked after and the elderly cared for.

The way it goes about those things is, naturally, questionable at times. I would argue that the 20th Century nationalisation of those intentions - rather than leaving them to churches, volunteers and philanthropy - is a grave mistake. The churches were undoubtedly complicit in this as they stopped preached Christ, but Christianity, moralism and retreated into Evangelical ghettos, only venturing out to win intellectual arguments. We are, arguably, still in that position today.

But the intentions of our society, and the demands that it makes of its government, and the demands it wants the government to make of those people, are undoubtedly very similar to those of Jesus Christ. They are Christ-informed. I'm not sure I've used Rowan Williams' phrase 'Christ-haunted'. But the bedrock of values in Britain remain undoubtedly, in some way, Christian.

So we're still a Christian society. Well yes and no. But it's more that we've become estranged from Christ - rather than the aims of Christianity. Clearly Christianity isn't much use to anyone. We need Christ, not Christianity. We need Church - Christ's body - not Christianity.

It's almost as if we've forgotten that in Jesus is the ultimate God-Man who wants what we wants - and has begun the work of social regeneration to bring about the society that we want. And this work is going to be completed and all that is evil and unjust will be destroyed - who wouldn't want that? Surely it's the job of the Church to not only live in Christ-centred communities, but to speak of the God-man himself.

Parenting 101

Last night, I attended a parenting course being run by my church. It was really helpful and interesting. I was most struck by the need for consistency - and most impressed by my mother's extraordinary faithfulness and ability to keep her promises.

In parenting, I'm discovering, we lurch from crisis to crisis - being too harsh, or too lenient, one then the other and then back again; then we try to get our way with bribery. Then threats.

Think of the child's perspective. What do they make of this? What messages are we giving them? The problem is that consistency is time-consuming, costly and painful. Before we issue a threat of discipline, we need to be sure that we can execute that discipline. So that when we have to, we do. This will mean changing our own plans, putting our own lives on hold, in order to demonstrate faithfulness and consistency to our children. And that is, I think, why it's so hard. And yet my mother was faithful. She never made a promise she couldn't keep. She never issued a threatened she was not prepared to carry out. And I'm very grateful for that. I've seen that it is possible.

The other thought that occurred about parenting is that the effects are so slow and gradual that it's always easiest to cut corners - because most of us know that many children seem to turn out fine regardless. If our children are spoilt when they're five or six, they'll learn when they're older that they can't get their own way, we think. And yet we know that's a lie. How we raise our children does matter - not just because we do it in the sight of our children, but in the sight of God. And it matters to him a great deal.

Planet Narnia repeated

Pleased that the documentary about Michael Ward's book Planet Narnia is to be repeated at 7.30 pm, Monday 18th May, BBC4 - and, I guess, for the following week on iPlayer. Splendid.

Hut 33 News

I'm currently writing a third series of Hut 33, a sitcom set in Bletchley Park during World War Two. The first recording on May 25th is, apparently, fully booked, so sorry about that if you've missed out (or see you there...). More recordings to be announced soon.

The second series is to be repeated on BBC Radio 4 this Thursday at 6.30pm and following. I would imagine they're leading off with episode 1, about which more has been written here.

While we're on the subject of Radio comedy, Think the Unthinkable - a series what I wrote for the Radio a few years ago - is proving a bit of a hit on BBC7 and is currently the most favourite thing on BBC7's iPlayer page - beating off Hancock, The Now Show, the splendidly funny Mark Watson, the wonderful Count Arthur Strong (do give it a listen) and Andy Hamilton's verstion of Satan himself. Which is nice. Anyway you can here the episode that's going down well here.

Assurance

Could this be a splendid illustration for assurance?

PJ O'Rourke

I've just finished reading PJ O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores - published in 1991. It is a general attack on all things governmental. He tries to explain how the American system works - or doesn't work. A few comments to make:

1. I really enjoy PJ O'Rourke as he is one of the few witty and intelligent voices arguing for a much smaller state. Such as:

For the people in government, rather than the people who pester it, Washington is an early-rising, hard-working city. It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vasts amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.

His arguments seem to be more pragmatism than principle - although he does have basic principles of liberty at the heart. And the book finishes with a moral argument. He critiques the default position of government describing it thus:

The whole argument of goverment is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.

He is very persuasive on the immorality and corrosiveness of bullying the government into doing what you want - and making everyone else who doesn't agree with you pay for it.

2. PJ O'Rourke is not a Christian. At least, I don't think he claims to be. He is a theist, as he claims when comparing Santa and God. He paints Santa in a favourable light. And God in a less favourable one. But says that Santa's crucial disadvantage is that he doesn't exist. As a result of his 'theology', O'Rourke can be rather mean, rather than satirical. I wholeheartedly endorse his satire of the ruling classes and self-aggrandising elites. His treatment of lobbying groups trying to help the poor are misguided at times. I agree that the principle of getting the state to do welfare and charity is laden with problems. But have some pity on those who need some welfare and charity.

3. O'Rourke is more even-handed in his party politics. He wishes a plague on both houses. He obviously favours Republicans, but admits the massive problems with it. He says this about the parties in the election run-up debates on p30:

When you looked at the Republicans, you saw the scum off the top of business. When you looked at the Democrats, you saw the scum off the top of politics. Personally, I prefer business. A businessman will steal from you directly, rather than getting the IRS to do it.

On p19,he says:

Democrats are also the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.

4. There is an extended chapter on the American savings and loan financial crisis of twenty years ago. It is eerily familiar and unwittingly makes the point about how slow to learn governments are, and how poorly the perform the most basic of tasks like regulation.

I thoroughly recommend O'Rourke's works. Even if you disgree with his philosophy of government, which you probably do, he'll ask some pretty tough questions about the status quo.

Ken Myers Interview

There's an interesting interview with Ken Myers here. He used to work in American public radio (NPR) and has done a lot of thinking on media and culture - and how the medium affects the message etc. Myers now runs Mars Hill Audio (nothing to do with Driscoll or Bell). Lots of provocative stuff in this interview by Mark Dever - whose questions, I have to say, seemed rather obtuse and over-simplified at times. Dever's a good guy, but not at his best here. Myers gets by. Have a listen.

Reading Old Books

How do you make up your mind about things? How do you decide anything? How do you navigate your way through church debates and controversies? I was talking about this with a friend of mine - and in the processes thinking to myself that I really ought to read Calvin's Institutes - when he recommended reading old books. And not only that, suggested I read some words by CS Lewis on the subject. I was very glad he did. Here are some of those words from from C.S. Lewis’s preface to Athanasius: On the Incarnation:

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato
said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.
This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.

Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it...

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at
least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook - even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united - united with each other and against earlier and later ages - by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where
they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

...Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

Free Copy of Crossword Ends in Violence (5)

Crossword Ends in Violence (5) is a novel that I wrote about a professional crossword-setter called John Fellowes. He is discovers his grandfather was accused of being a spy in World War Two and a quintessially British comedy thriller ensues.

And now it is currently available as a free download. Just go here. So you can print it out and read it for precisely zero pounds. The sharper ones may have spotted that this will make me no money whatsoever. This is true. But having worked that hard for that long on the thing, I just want people to read it. So dive in. The book is still, of course, to buy in handy book form at here.