Is God a Liverpool supporter????

I was bemoaning the luck of the scousers in getting another bye in the FA cup with a non contest with barnsley when I wandered on to a message board where one participant had boldly claimed that God indeed was a Liverpool fan.
the response that came a few minutes later from a fellow United fan has made my day..........

God a Liverpool fan! Hmmm. that probably explains why he never has to work, gets whatever he wants for nothing, and makes things disappear without any rational explanation whatsoever!

you may be right.


hilarious

true sexuality in a over sensualised society

I read this article on the Observer website today and think it really speaks for itself.

Jennifer Moore is a virgin. A 27-year-old singer-songwriter virgin from North London, with a Jessica Rabbit physique and an irrepressibly dirty laugh. And she insists that her virginity brings her a degree of intimacy with her boyfriend that she would never otherwise experience.
'I've been going out with Juan [a music producer] for five years and chastity is natural to me. We're both Christians, and we will probably get married, otherwise it wouldn't work. I wouldn't put a guy who didn't have the same beliefs as me through that.
'I just think, why would I want to have sex before I'm married? I believe that if I'm spiritually compatible with someone, then I'm going to be sexually compatible.'
In our hyper-sexualised, ultra-liberal society, virgins are perhaps the only sexual sub-culture left with the power to shock us. You can be as gay or as fetishy or as promiscuous or as transsexual as you like; you can be a regular at Cake parties and on the dogging scene; you can be part of an open relationship, and we won't bat an eyelid. But a virgin? Are you serious? We simply don't expect to encounter them any more. We certainly don't expect to meet attractive, assertive, well-dressed, professional, celibate Christians in their late twenties. But it seems that they do exist. And furthermore, they reckon there are hidden benefits to their choice.

you can read the whole article here - http://observer.guardian.co.uk/woman/story/0,,2237778,00.html

more laws please, we're immoral!

I don't intend to often delve deeply into the realms of politics on this blog but there are some things which are concerning me at the moment about our current government.
One of the more irritating concerns I have relates to prime ministers questions. Now as you will all probably know, this is essentially theatre, where MPs get to ask questions of our main man and hold him to account on how he is running the country. There seems to be some misunderstanding though lately. I have noticed that recently our Prime Minister seems to have forgotten this most basic of principles and has taken the opportunity to ask questions of the opposition parties rather than the more difficult taks of answering the questions put to him. This shows at best a flagrant disregard for the process, and at worst incompetence and a disregard for the people he governs.
This is all very serious and maybe not that interesting, but there is one more habit which concerns me more about our present government (and no it is not their casual disregard for our safety, their gross mismanagement of the economy, their incompetence in the northern rock fiasco or even their habitual misplacement of our personal details). The habit that concerns me most is the one that assumes that every time they do something wrong (and get caught) they promise us that they will bring in new laws to prevent it happening in the future. this is wrong on so many levels.
For example, despite having brought in laws to govern party donations and the declaration thereof, and having promised on their rise to power that they would eliminate sleaze from politics, they still managed to allow greed and desperation to overrule them and fall into the same old trap of corruption. This is obviously sad, bad, concerning and disappointing but what was our governments response? Well to have a review of course (as this allows us all time to forget it) and to promise to bring in new laws to stop it happening again!! Who are these new laws going to stop? themselves!!! they are suggesting that the only way they can imagine to stop themselves being corrupt is to bring in new laws so they won't do it again! this makes no sense. the laws are already there. no-one else is breaking their laws, just themselves, so why will new laws stop them breaking laws which they make themselves?

The wider concern is that this sends a message to our nation that laws don't matter, just getting caught. But also it sends a message that morality is based purely on the laws in place, rather than our laws being based on morality. this is subtle but important. What our government is saying is that the only thing that stops us behaving is a particular way is law rather than any deeper sense of right and wrong. things are only wrong if there is a law against it and it is the law that has the power to change our behaviour, rather than us or a more profound sense of who we are suppose to be.
I will turn to scripture to explain. In Exodus 20 we see God presenting the Israelites with the law which you will all be aware of at least in part. It included things such as do not lie, do not steal, do not murder, and honour your parents. These were the laws which God gave. Now before exodus 20 was it wrong to murder someone or did it just become wrong in exodus 20. was it OK to lie before this date? Was it fine to steal whatever you wanted? When God gave this law to the israelites do you think they all sat round reading it going "No Way! apparently killing people is bad! who'd have thought it?" or do you think married couples looked at the line that said 'do not commit adultery' and wondered why it was there? of course not. they already knew that adultery was something that destroyed relationships and people. they already knew that lying broke trust. they already knew that stealing caused society to break down. they already knew that jealousy and desiring what others have only ever ends up destroying something inside yourself. The law didn't make things right or wrong, it made sense of things they already instinctively knew. it shed light on what was already going wrong in their lives and their society. In scripture the point of the law wasn't to raise the bar and make life more difficult, it was to show us where we were going wrong and so make life easier. It wasn't preventative, it wasn't there to stop people doing things which they were previously allowed to do, but rather it was there show us how things were suppose to work, how things were suppose to be, how society could operate best.
In the bible is says that the law of the Lord is written on our hearts. This means that when we were created we were inbuilt with conscience, with a knowledge of what was right and what was wrong. How far have we strayed from that if our government has to create laws to stop itself from doing things.
The good news is that we are not dependant on the law to save us. If through the law, we recognise that we have gone wrong, we have disconnected from God and eachother and this creation we are responsible for and we have made some poor choices and gone against how we were created to be, then we can turn to Christ and accept His grace and step back into harmony with our creator. we can be restored to the people we were created to be.
So I will leave you with the words of Bono

I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep shit. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.

living down to expectations

I have just been listening to a debate on radio 5live about youth culture and how we need to bring discipline and prevent these young people from getting hold of alcohol so they don't cause trouble and I just thought - how sad. How much can we miss the point. the answer isn't more police and less alcohol. the answer lies with society. not just the politicians although they certainly have their role to play, but actually the answer lies with all of us. everyone! Because the answer comes down to expectations. let me tell you a story to explain.



when I was in junior school, I was a really good footballer. I was top scorer for my school team, I also played for another team where I was again top scorer. if we ever had to pick a team I was usually captain or picked first. I was pretty good. Then when I was 10 I skipped a year of school and went into secondary school. but this school was huge and I was the youngest kid in the whole school, and about the smallest. I didn't know anyone and didn't really have any friends. I wasn't popular and wasn't even allowed to play football with them in the playground. Then came the day for trials for the football team. This was my chance to show them what I could do. I took my kit in and was excited all day. The problem came when the school day ended and it was time for the trials. I went to the changing rooms and people started laughing at me and asking why I was there. they told me I couldn't play, I didn't have a chance of getting in the team, I was too small, I was wasting my time, and they made fun of me. by the time we got on to the field to start the trial my confidence was shot. But it didn't matter what they said, I could do my talking on the field. So the game started and the first 15 minutes went by and no-one had even passed to me or let me have a single kick. I was getting really frustrated but then my chance came; the ball broke down the right. our winger got to the by line and crossed for the two forwards in the box, but they both missed it, as did the keeper and the ball came over to me coming in frmo the left, 8 yards out and an open goal. at that moment I lost my footing and sliced the ball wide. missed. failed. not good enough.

I was soon substituted and when the team sheets were put up, I was sub for the 3rd team. I never recovered. for the rest of my secondary school life I never once played a good game. I had lived down to the expectations that had been put on me.

I see the same thing happening all around me. How many times do we see children being told what they will or will not achieve at school. I sometimes sit in meetings where children are written of as failing as young as 5 years old. We expect children to fail in school.

Again, every time I hear a discussion on under age sex, sex education and why we give condoms to 12 year olds, I hear it said time and time again that 'young people are going to have sex so we need to make sure they do it safely'!!!! The heart is right here because we want to protect, but our expectations are so low. we do the same with alcohol, we do the same with marriage. we do the same with so many areas. we set our expectations low and then society lives down to them.



Jesus had a different approach. In Israel at that time children went to school at the age of 5 and for 6 years learnt the first 5 books of the bible off by heart. at the end of this most children would leave and go into their fathers business, fishing or tax collecting, or carpentry. However the best of the best would stay on for a few more years and learn the rest of the old testament off by heart! that's alot of learning!! At the end of this they would leave and go into their fathers business, such as fishing, tax collecting or caprpentry. However the best of the best of the best of the best would then become a 'talmud' or disciple. this means that they would be invited by a rabbi to follow him and become his disciple and learn his ways, learn his interpretation of scripture and eventually become 'like him'. This was the highest honour. these men were held in high esteem in society. these were the best, the guys who made it to the top, the select few.

In scripture however we see Jesus (who people called 'Rabbi') approaching young men who were fishing and asking them to follow him and become his disciples. these men were the guys who hadn't made it, the not so good, the failures and Jesus was saying 'you can be like me, I believe in you as someone with real potential. And they dropped everything to follow this guy who believed in them and asked them to follow him!

As we read on through scripture we see Jesus choosing a wide range of young men, all of whom had not made it. the not so goods and Jesus called them to follow him, he told one of them that he would build his church on him, and he commanded them to go out and heal the sick, raise the dead, save the captives, to change the world! These are the guys who turned the world upside down. the men became heroes, world savers, and they are still talked about 2000 years later, but they started by failing, by being not so good, by coming short of the mark.



coming back to today, I am convinced that the problem lies with society. We have low expectations of life, of ourselves, our potential, our young people, their potential, their decision making, their behaviour and their future, and then we are surprised and concerned when they live down to them.



maybe we should expect more, maybe we should believe in them more, maybe we should credit them with more intelligence, more potential, more hope. Maybe we should look at ourselves and our generation and ask what lessons we are giving them. how are we teaching them to respect themselves more? how are we teaching them about consequences to our decisions and our actions? how are we teaching them about healthy attitudes toward sex and sexuality?

maybe we should be more like Jesus and encourage the potential in people, teach them how to achieve it, how to live better lives.

we need to raise our expectations but to do that maybe we need to raise our expectations of ourselves first and allow God to transform us into the people he created us to be then we can release the potential in others.

water water every where and not a drop to drink

On Monday I arrived home at the end of a busy day to find chaos. It seems our hot water tank had broken and was pouring it's contents through the floor into the hall below, in which I was stood. there were people trying to fix it, drain it and all manner of other things but the end result was - we have no hot water. Now in the scheme of things no hot water is no big hardship. A little redecorating required in the hall is no big difficulty. the cost of a new hot water tank is surely not insurmountable. The problem was that my reaction suggested this was a much bigger deal than all that. I was really fed up. really grumpy. This was the year we were praying for our house to be sorted, ie new kitchen, new guttering, new doors and two new windows to stop all the heat escaping and our shower room to be fixed. ALl good you would imagine but we have no money to do any of those jobs so what I wasn't banking on was another big job being created to try and afford.
But why was I grumpy about this. in the bigger scheme of things this is actually pretty small. God is opening so many doors and doing so much incredibly exciting stuff. So much of what he has promised me is coming to fruition, do I really think that a water tank should have a bigger effect on my mood and attitude than all the blessings God has chosen to give me. How often do we allow our circumstances to dictate our Joy rather than a constant hope in the Lord. I leave you with a quote from Cornel West in a recent issue of Rolling Stone

The categories of optimism and pessimism don’t exist for me. I’m a blues man. A blues man is a prisoner of hope, and hope is a qualitatively different category than optimism. Optimism is a secular construct, a calculation of probability. Black folk in America have never been optimistic about the future – what have we had to be optimistic about? But we are people of hope. Hope wrestles with despair, but it doesn’t generate optimism. It just generates this energy to be courageous, to bear witness, to see what the end is going to be. No guarantee, unfinished, open-ended. I am a prisoner of hope. I’m going to die full of hope. There’s no doubt about that, because that is a choice I make.

Wow

the life of an atom

Do you ever look around and just think ‘Wow!’? I mean, do you ever check out how your skin heals or how your eyes work, or how your hair grows, or how your heart just keeps beating without you even thinking about it and have a moment where it just blows your mind? Do you ever see a great play in football where one player shoots as another tackles as the keeper dives and just think about how many mental and physical processes each player needs to go through to make that moment happen and wonder how it can happen so easily? Do you ever watch somebody die on a movie or in real life and wonder what makes that person alive or dead? What actually happens and what is that like? Do you ever think about how incredible it is that we can think these questions when no other species seems to be able to?
It seems that pretty much every month we have a different scientist telling us something new with complete confidence and assurance. One month we hear that alcohol is bad for us and the reason so many people are depressed, but the next month we hear with just as much confidence and assurance that alcohol is good for us and helps avoid heart disease. Now I’m not criticizing scientists, far from it; science and the desire to know more and understand more and harness creation to promote our own survival is part of the miracle of who we are, and science reveals the amazing intelligence behind creation which confirms to me with increasing conviction that God is intimately and intricately involved with creation and that He actually did a really good job. Can anyone truly look at DNA and imagine that something more advanced than our most advanced computer system just happened by chance? But this is not, in my opinion, the biggest mystery that presents itself to the scientists. No I believe that accolade goes to the atom.
You might think ‘but we know so much about the atom, we even know how to split it and how it is made up and we learn all about it in school’ but this is not where the mystery of the atom lies. No the mystery of the atom lies in us.
Each one of us is made up of trillions of atoms which hold together to make us for the duration of our lives, but the mystery is that even though these atoms choose to be us, they are not aware of us at all. That is because they are not actually alive. Of all the trillions of atoms that make us, not one of them is alive! Yet we are alive. This is the miracle of life. For some reason that we are completely unaware of, these atoms choose to be us for the duration of our lives and then stop, decompose and go to make up other things. And more disconcerting is that the atoms are exactly the same when we are alive and when we are dead, so what is it that makes us alive? These atoms that make us are the same atoms that make everything else in the world and for that matter, in the universe, and that just deepens the mystery. Why do these atoms that so compliantly make us and all the other living things on this planet choose to do so when similar atoms so stubbornly refuse to do so anywhere else? What is it that keeps these atoms together and then moves them on to be other things?
It might surprise you that the answers lie in the Bible. In Colossians 1 we read

15-18We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
18-20He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.
You see it says that everything is held together in Christ. All things – that includes you and me and atoms and planets, everything – and also that we find our purpose in Him. You see we are not just a random collection of atoms that came together by chance and after a few hundred thousand hours (if we’re lucky) cease to be us and go of to be something else. We are not just part of some evolutionary process which means that we get to breathe and live for a few decades before we stop breathing and fade away. No, we are actually created by God and our lives have a purpose, and when we come into connection and relationship with God, the God who created us, then we actually get to live. We come into contact with what life is suppose to be like. You see Life is not just some biological, physical process but there is actually a spiritual dimension to it too. That’s why we are not the same when we are alive and dead even though atomically speaking we are. And we get a further clue to what this life is about from Jesus himself when he says

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.

When we come into contact with Jesus we come into contact with life. And vice versa, when we fully enter into life, we come into connection with who Jesus is. You see life is this incredible gift, something that is invigorating, thrilling and awesome, and yet we just take it for granted and drift through it coming nowhere near our potential, but Jesus says that we can live life radically, extremely, completely, through Him, because He isn’t just involved in it, he IS life, he is truth, he is hope, he is love, and through Him we come into connection with how things are suppose to be and how things are.
It’s all about harmony, God who created it all and dreamed the whole thing up is the same God who holds it all together, so we are created to live in harmony with Him. The problem is that rather than serve God and live in harmony with Him, we put our own interest and selfishness first and serve our own purposes and so live in disharmony, which brings about brokenness, hurt, pain, disease, death, destruction, anger, frustration and fear, and not just in ourselves but on a global level. (Isn’t it ironic that these atoms which God holds together to make us and everything else, are the same atoms that we split in nuclear weapons to bring about death and destruction on a global scale). It seems we have a choice; to live in harmony with the creator of all things and bring about hope truth love and life, or to continue in disharmony andbring about death, disease, destruction, brokenness and pain.
Back in Colossians it says that God is in the process of putting all things back together, and that includes us if we let Him. The question is, will you let Him?

religion - a frog's tale

When I was in my mid teens and disillusioned with the church and the world my friend and I decided to take things in to our own hands and start our own religion. We sat and chatted and laughed for hours as the object of our faith emerged along with slogans, a marketing campaign and clothing range. We established the religion of Freddie Frog, the Frog who is there for us, in whom we have our Hop. The main slogan was ‘if you don’t dig it, rib it’ which was a statement of intent really to make fun of all religions we didn’t like. We designed badges with a picture of Freddie and ‘rib it’ underneath, we designed t-shirts with various slogans poking fun at other religions and stating that Freddie’s our frog – rib it.
The problem was we were embodying everything that is wrong with religion, even in our irony, we missed the point. Unintentionally we were stating that for us to be right and to feel good about our religion, we had to degrade and make fun of other people’s firmly and intensely held beliefs. It was important that for us to be right, they had to be wrong. We needed our religion to give us a sense of superiority. In addition to this, another trap we fell in to was that we had created a god that served our purposes. It goes without saying that Freddie never challenged us, changed us, asked us to step out of our comfort zone, or stepped outside of our understanding of him. The reason for this is because we had created him. He was a god who fitted our image, our needs, our world view, our ideology and even our humour.
This is very obvious in one sense and I am not ashamed to say it because it was a bit of fun that demonstrated where I was at and what I felt about the world. The problem is that I am beginning to realize that this is what we tend to do all the time even with our more seriously held beliefs.
The Bible says that God made us in His image, but actually, more often than not, we make God in our image. A God of our convenience, a God that says that we make it and the others don’t, and we feel good about that. A God that inspires us to fight a war against people of other faiths. A God that fits in to our lifestyle rather than demanding we fit into His. A God that holds our values rather than inspiring us with His values. A God that saves us and serves us rather than a God that we serve.
Isn’t it incredible how we do this? We package God into something we can understand and control. We want Him to nice neat defined edges but the Bible says He has no limit. We want Him to serve our needs but the Bible says that He is Lord which means that we can have no other reaction to Him but to fall on our faces and serve him. We want Him to be on our side but the Bible says that we are on His side. You see we have the whole thing upside down and back to front. We treat our salvation like a ‘get out of hell free’ card in a cosmic game of Monopoly when salvation is something so much bigger than that. It isn’t something that kicks in when we die but rather it is something we continue to work out now. It isn’t a question of life after death but rather real life now. Jesus is in the process of restoring us to be the people He created us to be but we have to let him continue that process in our lives. It isn’t about heaven or hell when we die but heaven and hell now here on earth. Are we agents of the Kingdom of God bringing about hope and restoration and salvation, or are we agents of destruction, bringing about prejudice, separation, hatred, pride, selfish ambition, rejection and death.
One of the fundamental areas we get this wrong is theology. I don’t believe God is a God to be understood. That brings Him to our level and within our grasp of understanding which is to deny who He really is. No God is a God to be known. He is a relational, personal, awesome God who when we come into relationship with Him transforms us from the inside out. The problem is that relationship is awkward, challenging, uncomfortable and humbling, and so we go for theological understanding. It is much easier to hold a theory about God which gives us a sense of superiority and control rather than be in relationship with God who shows us up to be the broken, messed up people we are. But in relationship is where the real power is, because when we come to know God and love God, it is through that experience that God begins the process of putting us back together and restoring us to be the people He created us to be; people who are made in His image.