What the...?

Some people really do believe the weirdest things!



In case you think the picture is a mock-up, click here to see the original news story. If you've never heard of Marmite (and believe me, you're not missing anything - it's foul stuff!), click here.

There are some strange people in the world. What next - divine salami, perhaps?

Sorry, but I'm not interested.

Recently I've been invited to various events in churches. One common thread that links all these is that the people who have invited me have taken the view that what they are inviting me to is something interesting, cutting-edge or relevant. I, however, tend to take a different view. What those within the Christian subculture view as interesting or attractive is usually not what those outside that subculture, whether believers or non-believers, view as interesting or attractive. The former group compares it with the usual activities of their church and finds it more exciting, while the latter group has a much wider set of activities with which to compare it and usually finds it either sub-standard, bland, irrelevant or just "churchy" with a thin veneer of "coolness" that can be easily seen through.

Am I trying to dump on the church again here? No, not really. I'm just pointing out the problem. I used to look at all this stuff from the other side of the fence, but since taking the red pill my eyes have been opened and I find I'm not remotely interested in the things to which I get invited.

I'm not interested in "youth bands". There is much better music to be found elsewhere. The fact that they are either made up of, or aimed at, young people doesn't make any difference.

I'm not interested in going to listen to a preacher. No matter how famous he may be, or how insightful people may think he is, his opinions are not the be-all-and-end-all that will set everyone on the right path. Even the best and most fashionable preachers can be wrong. I'd rather read a few books, thanks. That way you get far more detail and have more time to digest it before making up your own mind what you think of the material being presented.

I'm not even all that interested in listening to people's testimonies (there's a Christianese word if ever there was one!) of how God has worked in their lives, because God tends to work differently in each of our lives. Plus, of course, there is no way of checking the truth of what is said - Christians have always been prone to exaggerating the "good bits" and ascribing to God what could easily have come from some non-divine source.

I'm not interested in going to listen to someone with a healing ministry. In my experience (and I've had plenty) these people tend to be either complete charlatans using parlour tricks such as the "making your leg grow" trick, or they unconsciously use suggestion to make people think they are healed, without realising that's what they are doing (obviously, as it's done unconsciously - duh!). Only very rarely are there actual healings, although I do still believe that these are possible and that they do occur from time to time. I also believe that God doesn't need some "anointed healer" to do the job for him if he's going to heal someone.

I'm not interested in going to a "crusade" or listening to an evangelist. I'm already a believer and I'm not interested in being part of the Christian "rent-a-crowd" that usually gathers at such events. If that was what I wanted I'd just go to church, not wait for a special event.

I'm not interested in going to an "informal Bible talk" in a pub - these are rarely two-way discussions and opinionated monologues bore me. Including this one, so this seems a good place to end.

Songs that mean something

I was in my car driving home from work today, listening to my iPod on shuffle. A song by Steve Taylor came on. I hadn't listened to it for ages, but it brought back to me just how great a songwriter Steve Taylor was/is. It's a pity he seems to have given up making music.

I went through a phase, when I was new to Christianity, when I listened to a lot of CCM (that's Christian Contemporary Music, for those not familiar with Christianese). That was back in the days when I swallowed the lie that "secular" music was inherently sinful and should be avoided at all costs. Nowadays, most CCM makes me cringe. In my experience it tends by and large to be a poor imitation of secular music, with cheesy Christian lyrics thrown in.

There are, however, exceptions. There are some artists - some of them in the Christian mainstream, some of them more on the fringes of Christian culture - who write songs with good tunes, humour and thought-provoking lyrics. If only there were more.

Here's one of them. This is Steve Taylor with I Want To Be A Clone.

Yes, that music may be a little dated these days, so here's a more recent version which sounds much better

Here's another classic from Steve Taylor: Jesus Is For Losers.

Here's David Bazan with Foregone Conclusions.

Here's Martyn Joseph with He Never Said.

(Click here for my favourite Martyn Joseph song - embedding is disabled for this vid.)

Tribes

I'm back! I'd almost forgotten what Honest Faith looked like!

Anyway, here's something interesting that caught my attention after an old college friend posted it on Facebook. Watch, learn and enjoy.

I'm not dead...

...just in case you were wondering. I've just had too much other stuff on my plate to keep up with blogging. I hope to be back to it in the near future though, hopefully with good news regarding my job. I should find out this week what's going on in that regard.

Redundancy looms

I work in a primary school in South Wales which teaches children aged 4-11.

Yesterday we were told that, due to falling pupil numbers, it will be necessary to make two teachers redundant this year. It could be any of the ten of us who aren't part of the school's senior management team who get the chop.

The atmosphere of the school has now totally changed. People have been close to tears, everyone is worried about their futures and staff morale and motivation have gone out of the window. None of us want to be made redundant, but equally none of us want to see two of our colleagues - people we like and respect - get the axe either. We're all in a lose-lose situation here.

Prayer would be appreciated. The final decision on who is to be made redundant, assuming nobody volunteers, will be made on March 11th.

25 random things about me

Take a look HERE.

Brother Barry the preacher

I've just been sorting out some old papers and things, and I found the notes and OHP slides from the last time I preached in my old church. Unsurprisingly, since I left the church, invitations to speak have dried up somewhat!

The title of my talk was Honesty and Realism in Faith, and I started off with the picture on the left, from the story The Emperor's New Clothes. I talked about our tendency as believers to be gullible and believe anything we're told from the pulpit. I referred to The Emperor's New Clothes and said that Christianity is about reality rather than just believing anything. I talked about not being afraid to ask questions, about not being afraid to ask questions without having preconceived answers, and about testing the truth of the teaching we hear (even mine). I talked about the differences between received faith and mature, personalised faith. The key point was that wes hould work through hard questions and doubts, and help others to do the same, rather than just telling them that they're wrong and telling them what they "should" believe, which would lead both us and others from a shallow, received faith towards a deeper, more mature, personalised faith.

Regular readers of this blog will recognise the theme as something very important to me. I've even blogged about it in the past. If Christianity is to have any credibility, any real value at all, it must be based on reality, on honesty and on the truth. Anything else is just a fantasy at best, and a spiritual snare at worst.

It was only a few months after I preached this that we left the church. I don't think my message had much effect, if any, but then I don't believe preaching (i.e. lecturing with a spiritual veneer) is an effective teaching medium in this day and age, so I'm not really surprised.

Anyway, I finished with a responsive prayer (a very unusual thing in Pentecostal circles, where any form of liturgy is frowned upon):

Lord, give us courage to ask hard questions about our faith and to accept that we don't have all the answers.

All: Lord, give us strength and help us to grow.

Give us wisdom to support those who are working through doubts and questions rather than simply tell them what they should believe.

All: Lord, give us strength and help us to grow.

Help us to move from received faith to strong, mature and personalised faith.

All: Lord, give us strength and help us to grow.

Amen.

Life

Following on from my last post, which was all about death, how should we respond in this life?

Note that I've been deliberately avoiding talking about life after death here. We believers often spend too much time focusing on that aspect of things to the detriment of other aspects, so I want to redress the balance a little.

We know that life is short, and then we die. How can we best make our lives count? Sometimes people are so caught up in the day-to-day necessities of earning a living, providing for their families, bringing up children and making sure they spend at least some quality time with their families, that they don't have time to do any of the "great" things for which some people are remembered.

My thought is this: providing for your family, bringing up children, doing a good job in your chosen career, spending quality time with your family and struggling on even in the face of adversity are the great things in life. As Dewi Sant (St. David) is reported as saying: "Gwnech y pethau bychain." ("Do the little things.") Investing ourselves in others (which includes our families), in whatever way, and setting a good example for others to follow, to me constitute the highest "calling" of all. We will not last more than 70-80 years on average, but we can make sure that the next generations have at least some of the resources, values and knowledge they will need when we are no longer here.

Death

When I left work today I decided to visit an old chapel, high on a hill, that is familiar from my childhood. Like most churches and chapels of a certain age, it is surrounded by a graveyard. I quite like visiting old cemeteries because there's something peaceful about them, and it's a good thing to be reminded of mortality occasionally. Sometimes the older graves have a verse or a poem on them as an epitaph.



The above picture is the gravestone of Thomas Morgan of Llaniddel (Llanhilleth), who died in November 1896 aged 55. The language is Welsh, which was the language of the majority of people in this area when Thomas Morgan was alive. The epitaph (with poor spelling!) reads:

MEDDWL DDYN WRTH FYNED HEIBIO,
FEL 'R WYT TITHAU MINNAU FUO.
FEL 'R WYF INNAU TITHAU DDEUI,
COFIA DDYN MAE MARW FYDDI.

Translated into English, it means:

Think, man, while going past,
As you are I used to be.
As I am you will become,
Remember, man, that you will die.

It struck me that every single grave in that graveyard contains the mortal remains of someone who once lived, loved, was loved, laughed, cried, worked hard, experienced joy and suffered hardship. They were just like me, with their own daily challenges and, undoubtedly, a love of life equal to my own. And now every single one of them is dead. The only signs that they were ever here at all are the fading scars on the landscape caused by the coal mining industry in which most of them were employed, and a collection of lichen-spotted gravestones in various stages of erosion.

When Thomas Morgan of Llaniddel died, no doubt there were grieving family members and friends who felt his loss keenly. I know he was married because his wife, Jane, is buried in the same grave, having died at a later date. No doubt she loved him and treasured his memory after he was gone. However, Thomas Morgan's wife and friends all died as well, one by one, as the world grew older and time marched on. With them gone, the only memory of Thomas Morgan is an inscription on a slab of sandstone written in a language that few people in the village of his birth now understand.

Death has no meaning. Death has no nobility. It is cruel, merciless and final. No-one escapes it. It's possible (though by no means certain) that I could live another forty or fifty years, but one day, sooner or later, I will die. Eventually there will be no memory that I was ever here. All the joy, sorrow, love, heartache, work and play that now characterise my life will, at that point, be meaningless. As far as this world is concerned, I will no longer exist.

Will I go to be with the Lord after I die? I believe so, but there is absolutely no proof. The atheists would say that I will simply cease to be when I die. There is as much evidence for their position as there is for mine, which is to say none at all.

Whether death really is the end or not, in earthly terms it is absolutely final. Our life here is cruelly short. Nobody gets out alive. Many people I once knew, some of whom I loved dearly, are lost to me because of death. I will never see them again in this life. Death may have been robbed of its final victory by Christ, but its sting, at least for those of us left behind, is still very real.

What should we make of all this? My thought is this: life is short and those we love are with us for all too short a time, so make your life count. Focus on living a good life in the here and now, and on being as good and kind and loving as you can to those who enrich your life now, because neither they nor you will be here forever and once you're gone, you will all too soon be forgotten.

A morbid preoccupation with death may be unhealthy, but it's a good thing to remind ourselves occasionally that this life doesn't last forever.

MEDDWL, DDYN, WRTH FYNED HEIBIO ...