My friend David Prince, with whom I co-taught preaching for many years, texted me a viral video I would not have expected to find profound.
The video is from the creators of South Park, which is about as far from Biblical Christianity as anything in mainstream popular culture. Former vice president Al Gore once named the creators 'funny nihilists.' In this video, though, the nihilism gave way to wise insight on storytelling.
The creators noted that too many films and movies put a sequence of story lines together as 'and then this happened.' But the parts of the story that are just as important, they said, were the ones hinging on 'therefore' and 'but.' The story is driven along by the continuity and coherence and also by the interruptions and crises.
The story of your life
If you think about the story of your own life, it’s not just one thing followed by another, but things that hold together by what came before and after, those sudden unexpected moments that changed everything.
Those who teach and preach (and even those who read) the Bible should see that too. The storyline of Scripture is not a series of 'this and then this and then this,' but a series of 'therefore' and 'but' moments that center the unexpected ways God brings all that about in Christ. The story is alive, and the story is true.
I didn’t expect the South Park guys to put that so succinctly, but they understand storytelling. Storytelling in the abstract is not enough on its own to help us see the kingdom of God - but those of us who love the kingdom of God should pay attention to the story it’s telling, and how we should tell it too.
The 2024 Paralympics has been compulsive viewing for many - myself included. It hasn’t been without controversy in various areas and some of those issues continue to rumble on.
Those of us who use wheelchairs have experienced wheelchair envy as we’ve seen not just the sports wheelchairs, but the everyday wheelchairs that some of the athletes have - that probably cost the same as a family car.
Working nine to five? What a way to make a living. Working life has moved on a lot since Dolly Parton first released her catchy and timeless 1980s hit, 9 To 5. Indeed, fast forward a few generations and it would appear that flexibility has trumped security as the key thing that Gen Z’ers are prioritising when it comes to employment.[1]
Have you noticed that recruitment firms are now fronting their adverts with their ability to perfectly match people to a job that fits with their lifestyle? Have you read about the companies experimenting with a four-day week, complete with flexible start and finish times, a nine-day fortnight, and compressed hours?[2] The desire for flexibility with our employment, it would seem, is here to stay.
The issue of abortion will always be close to the hearts of us as evangelical Christians – and many others of course too.
How can it not be? The slaughter of so many millions of unborn children in the West in the last few decades is one of the great blind spots of our decaying culture. (Of course, there are always situations – for example rape, incest and imminent danger to a mother’s life – where we cannot be so black and white, but they should not distract us from the wider tragedy where no such contingencies apply.)
Many people were understandably horrified when the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics included sacrilegious mockery of our Lord’s Last Supper.
Perhaps you saw it: the scene was obviously blasphemous, and was taken as a grave insult by Christians all over the world. Why, many people wondered, would the organisers of the Olympic Games want to offend so many people?
'I don’t know how to say, "I’m lonely," without sounding like I’m saying, "I’m a loser,"' a middle-aged man said to me not long ago. 'And I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I’m an ungrateful Christian.'
After all, this man said, he’s at church every week—not just there, but active. His life is a blur of activities. But he feels alone. In that, at least, he’s not alone.
Repeatedly, almost all of the data show us the same thing: that the so-called 'loneliness epidemic' experts warned about is real. We all know it’s bad, and we sometimes have a vague sense of why it’s happening. The answers that some come up with are often too big to actually affect any individual person’s life. Smartphones aren’t going away. We aren’t all moving back to our hometowns. We see a kind of resigned powerlessness to change society’s lonely condition. So why can’t the church fix this?
Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone
The answer lies partly in a book published a near quarter-century ago: political scientist Robert Putnam’s famous Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Earlier this summer, The New York Timesinterviewed Putnam, asking him whether, since he saw the loneliness crisis coming, he saw any hope of it ending.
Putnam reiterated that the answer is what he calls 'social capital,' those networks of relationships needed to keep people together. Social capital comes in two forms, Putnam insists, and both are necessary. Bonding social capital is made up of the ties that link people to other people like themselves. Bridging social capital consists of the ties that link people to those unlike themselves.
The first time I was on set with a television talk-show host who, like me, grew up Southern Baptist, he turned to me before we went on the air and said, 'Pop quiz: What should always be the first song in a hymnal?' I immediately responded with the right answer ('Holy, Holy, Holy'), and we high-fived. No one else on that set knew what we were talking about. The secularist in the producer’s chair might have thought, 'What’s "Holy, Holy, Holy"?' The churchgoing evangelical behind the camera might well have thought, 'What’s a hymnal?'
That little detail of shared tribal memory, though, represented more than trivia. It was a way of recognizing one another—the same sort of church background, from the same sort of time period, the same sort of shared experience. We knew in that moment that, even if no one else in New York City knew the names of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, we did, and, even if no one in that television network building could say what words would follow 'I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag,' we would. All of us experience equivalent moments of bonding social capital.
Putnam makes it clear that one form of social capital is not 'good' and the other 'bad.' When you’re sick and need to be taken care of, usually that comes from relationships made with bonding capital. That’s good, but—when taken too far—really dangerous. Putnam notes that the Ku Klux Klan is 'pure social capital' of the bonding sort. Bridging capital, Putnam argues, is much harder, but both are needed for a person or a society to escape isolation.
A recent comment piece in Evangelicals Now suggested that while questions are 'generally good', 'we would be wise to be careful before rushing to critique St Helen’s [Bishopsgate] for their recent Commissioning Service' of lay leaders for roles that will involve Bible teaching and informal sacramental ministry.
Three metaphors were used to justify silencing those who have raised such questions: the confused picture a flotilla of boats can give when tacking; the danger of friendly fire; and the need to break eggs when making an omelette.
Weight loss is trending in the news: what does this say about culture’s relationship to the body?
I wonder if the words Ozempic or Wegovy mean anything to you? What about Mounjaro or Zepbound? And before you ask, no, they are not the newest villains in the latest Avengers movies. Ozempic and Wegovy belong to a class of medication called GLP-1 receptor agonist. In short – weight-loss drugs. Researchers have clocked an exponential and unprecedented rise in young people in particular taking these kinds of drugs. Simply put, weight-loss is trending.
On 29 July 2024, a knife rampage at a holiday dance class left three little girls dead and an additional 10 people, including several children, fighting for their lives.
It is always paramount, no less in moments of extreme grief and inconsolable anguish, that we labour to appropriately respond rather than aggressively react. If we lose sobriety of mind and self-control in body, then we may lose all respectability in our actions. The alleged perpetrator was captured and arrested, alive, and has now been charged. The community should have been allowed to grieve in peace, and the justice system permitted to follow usual due process.
I subscribe to the YouTube channel of the poet Malcolm Guite. Whenever one of his videos—usually him talking in his study, pipe in one hand and a book in the other—pops up, I save it to watch at night when I have time. A couple of weeks ago, though, his video prompted me to stop right there and watch immediately.
That’s because Guite’s setting was one of my favorite places on the planet, a place where I once felt a sense of overwhelming awe at the creative work of God. He was in the Lauterbrunnen Valley of Switzerland.
Guite pointed out that those of us who found ourselves at some point or other moved by this place are hardly alone. J. R. R. Tolkien—walking through there as a 19-year-old—later modeled Rivendell, the mythical spot of respite and safety in the Lord of the Rings books, after that very setting.
After the video, I picked up my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring to read the section set there, the one that Guite read aloud from a bench at the bottom of the Lauterbrunnen waterfall. I noticed how many highlights I’ve made in that part of the book over the years, even though I don’t remember what I was thinking when I did so. One especially caught my eye.
Speaking of Bilbo Baggins’s journeys, Tolkien wrote: "When he had left Hobbiton he had wandered off aimlessly, along the Road or in the country on either side; but somehow he had steered all the time towards Rivendell."
I wonder if you’ve found that to be true in your life. I have in mine. Knowing that we are, as Scripture tells us, pilgrims in this time-between-the-times, we sometimes expect that we should be marching forward to Zion with a detailed map, knowing exactly what route we are taking. We are surprised, then, when the roads veer off in ways we did not expect. Sometimes, we might even feel lost, and so lost that nobody will even know how to find us.
Only later do we realize that we were—usually completely beyond our own noticing—steering the whole time toward the truer and greater Rivendell. That’s because we are pilgrims, yes, but also sheep. We think we are steering when, often, we are being steered, toward green pastures and still waters.
Maybe that’s where you are right now—what seems to be the valley of the shadow of death. Look behind you, though. Maybe what’s been chasing you has been goodness and mercy, the whole way.
When Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate this week, some people took to social media to contrast him with his Republican counterpart, J. D. Vance.
Lots of those contrasts were fair game - that of a former high school coach versus a Yale venture capitalist, for instance. Some people framed the contrast this way, though - Walz is a normal guy, while Vance is a weirdo who has sex with couches.
The past several years have required sentences I never imagined I would write. Here’s another: J. D. Vance did not have sex with a couch. I believe the proposition I just wrote to be true, and my opinion of the politics or personality of the Republican vice-presidential nominee has nothing whatsoever to do with that belief.
Some might stop me at this point to note that everybody knows that J. D. Vance didn’t have sex with a couch. It’s a joke; a social media meme, started when someone posted a parody, allegedly from Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy. These people know, however, that most people don’t follow the genealogy of memes back to their origins. Many people just start to think, 'J. D. Vance is sort of a freak; people say he did something with a couch one time.'
The Vance couch meme-posters can have it both ways. They can kind of do what the Bible describes as deceiving one’s neighbor and then say, 'I was only joking!' (Prov. 26:19). Beyond that, they can say, 'Well, of course, Vance did not literally have sex with a couch. The point is that Vance is kind of weird; the couch just makes the point.'
If this were just this momentary meme, it could be passed over and forgotten. But it happens all the time. Sarah Palin never actually said, 'I can see Russia from my house.' Barack Obama never advocated for death panels for grandma. That’s what happens in politics, especially in a social media era. And, after all, most people don’t really believe the Vance couch memes; it just helps with morale. It won’t actually hurt Vance.
The problem for those who belong to Christ, though, is when the fallenness of a fallen world starts to feel normal. The problem is when you start to think your lies can serve the truth as long as the vibes feel right and the outcome is what you want.
In her new book Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, Anne Applebaum discusses the tactics employed by authoritarian regimes such as that of the Chinese Communist Party. These regimes have learned, Applebaum argues, the power of pro-freedom dissidents of the past, such as Václav Havel, who refused to symbolically lie (think of his famous example of the greengrocer who refuses to put the 'Workers of the world, unite!' sign up in his store). To undermine such truth-telling, they employ social media 'to spread false rumours and conspiracy theories' so as to 'turn the language of human rights, freedom and democracy into evidence of treason and betrayal.'
Applebaum cites Freedom House’s description of this kind of propaganda pressure as 'civil death,' meant to sever those who do not lie the way the party commands from their communities, to inundate them with lies so that even their friends and families start to think, 'Well, there must be something to some of this, since these controversies are always there.'
This does not just have to happen in matters of big life-and-death political dissent and repression. I’ve seen it happen to countless pastors - especially those who dare to preach what the Bible has to say about racial hatred. It doesn’t matter that 'He’s a Marxist' or 'He’s a liberal' are absurd charges. The game is just to say them long enough that the people who know they are lies get tired of the truth - so that they will, if not embrace the lie, at least fear the liars enough to get quiet.
On the geo-political level, the metaphor of 'civil death' is appropriate - even when it doesn’t work - because the Bible ties lying so closely to murder. Of the devil, Jesus said: 'He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.' (John 8:44).
This long, hot, sporty summer rolls on. Schools have been broken up for weeks, and children are everywhere - including all over my home! My three sons scrap over just about everything in the summer heat. Cries of ‘It’s not fair!’ seem to constantly ring out from one or the other; but how do I discern whose rights matter more when push comes to (literal) shove between the children?
Over in Paris, the Olympic women’s boxing has also been dominated by cries of ‘It’s not fair!’ Just 46 seconds into her bout against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, Italian Angela Carini was punched so hard in the face that she fell to the floor weeping, ended the fight, saying to those in her corner 'Non è giusto' ('It’s not fair'). Later, she said she had feared for her life.
The running debate over transgenderism has revealed the obvious conflict between two ideologies that the Olympics are attempting to unite.
The controversy around boxer Imane Khelif has been one of the many at this year’s Paris Olympics. Viewers were horrified to see Italian hopeful Angelina Carini pull out of the fight in just 46 seconds to 'save her life.'
JK Rowling tweeted: 'Explain why you're OK with a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment.' However it was intended, this comment from such a public figure turned a single boxing match into a global debate about transgender issues.
In June 2022, Aldershot Military Cemetery Chapel (not far from where I live) hosted a service of remembrance for Falklands veterans from the Parachute Regiment. That service is held every five years.
The recent ‘commissioning service’ at St Helen’s Bishopsgate has attracted predictable criticism.
In that bastion of Church of England liberal thinking, the Church Times,Angela Tilby decried ‘the voice of the angry Puritanism that has been channelled down from the Reformation,’ before adding (oddly): ‘Today’s Puritans find it as hard as their ancestors to live with the creative ambiguity that, many would claim, is the lifeblood of the Church of England and defended by canon law.’ Er, come again? Many would argue that the ‘lifeblood of the Church of England’ is the 39 Articles with their insistence that ‘it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written’ etc.
‘What strengths do the younger generation have?’ The youngest person in the group asked this question in a meeting of church leaders, exasperated at the negative tone of the conversation. It was an appropriate rebuke in the middle of a discussion about the apparent reduction of younger people seeking to serve full-time in gospel ministry.
It is easy to feel despair at our times. Anyone who has read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation or Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy will be aware of the increase in diagnosed mental health issues among young people. Both books raise valuable matters we need to consider – issues around smartphone technology, outsourcing childhood to experts and counsellors, creating a climate of fear and anxiety among parents in the ‘real’ world, and yet ignoring exposure to harm in the ‘online’ world.
For many years, I’ve led children’s ministry. Although I’m no longer doing that, I’m grateful for this opportunity to help others to understand the expectations of that role.
Hopefully, this article will be enough of an eye-opener for readers to realise that coming alongside those who lead children’s ministry is critical to prolonging their time serving for a church.
There’s been a word doing the rounds up here in Scotland recently. I wonder if you have noticed it - or even caught it (wherever you live)! Optimism. That was the strapline to the well crafted adverts for the drink Irn-Bru that were plastered up and down the country in the run up to the men’s football European Championships.
As a nation we embraced the message. Let’s toast to the future being brighter than the past and believe that this time round things might turn out differently. Did they? Well, as we watched Scotland fail to qualify from the group stages of the tournament, it didn’t take long for my can of Irn Bru to taste of tartan tears and for optimism to turn to realism.
On Wednesday, King Charles delivered the Labour government's first King's Speech in the House of Lords. Part of the State Opening of Parliament, the speech set out the new government's priorities for the months ahead. This was a speech designed to demonstrate that the new government means business. Themed around Labour’s five key missions, there are a grand total of 40 Bills, with four of these being draft ones.
Labour’s missions are as follows: secure sustained economic growth, make Britain a clean energy superpower, build an NHS fit for purpose, make Britain’s streets safe, and break down barriers to opportunity at every stage.
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Surprising lessons from South Park (of all things)
My friend David Prince, with whom I co-taught preaching for many years, texted me a viral video I would not have expected to find profound.
The video is from the creators of South Park, which is about as far from Biblical Christianity as anything in mainstream popular culture. Former vice president Al Gore once named the creators 'funny nihilists.' In this video, though, the nihilism gave way to wise insight on storytelling.
The creators noted that too many films and movies put a sequence of story lines together as 'and then this happened.' But the parts of the story that are just as important, they said, were the ones hinging on 'therefore' and 'but.' The story is driven along by the continuity and coherence and also by the interruptions and crises.
The story of your life
If you think about the story of your own life, it’s not just one thing followed by another, but things that hold together by what came before and after, those sudden unexpected moments that changed everything.
Those who teach and preach (and even those who read) the Bible should see that too. The storyline of Scripture is not a series of 'this and then this and then this,' but a series of 'therefore' and 'but' moments that center the unexpected ways God brings all that about in Christ. The story is alive, and the story is true.
I didn’t expect the South Park guys to put that so succinctly, but they understand storytelling. Storytelling in the abstract is not enough on its own to help us see the kingdom of God - but those of us who love the kingdom of God should pay attention to the story it’s telling, and how we should tell it too.
What do the Gallagher brothers teach us about unity?
One of my favourite psalms is Psalm 133 which begins: 'How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!'
The 2011 NIV obscures the original word 'brothers', choosing to translate it with the more inclusive 'God's people'.
Paralympian or dead? Lessons from Paris for your church
The 2024 Paralympics has been compulsive viewing for many - myself included. It hasn’t been without controversy in various areas and some of those issues continue to rumble on.
Those of us who use wheelchairs have experienced wheelchair envy as we’ve seen not just the sports wheelchairs, but the everyday wheelchairs that some of the athletes have - that probably cost the same as a family car.
Can a Gen Z work ethic advance the gospel?
Working nine to five? What a way to make a living. Working life has moved on a lot since Dolly Parton first released her catchy and timeless 1980s hit, 9 To 5. Indeed, fast forward a few generations and it would appear that flexibility has trumped security as the key thing that Gen Z’ers are prioritising when it comes to employment.[1]
Have you noticed that recruitment firms are now fronting their adverts with their ability to perfectly match people to a job that fits with their lifestyle? Have you read about the companies experimenting with a four-day week, complete with flexible start and finish times, a nine-day fortnight, and compressed hours?[2] The desire for flexibility with our employment, it would seem, is here to stay.
Abortion matters
The issue of abortion will always be close to the hearts of us as evangelical Christians – and many others of course too.
How can it not be? The slaughter of so many millions of unborn children in the West in the last few decades is one of the great blind spots of our decaying culture. (Of course, there are always situations – for example rape, incest and imminent danger to a mother’s life – where we cannot be so black and white, but they should not distract us from the wider tragedy where no such contingencies apply.)
The sacrament of sacrilege
Many people were understandably horrified when the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics included sacrilegious mockery of our Lord’s Last Supper.
Perhaps you saw it: the scene was obviously blasphemous, and was taken as a grave insult by Christians all over the world. Why, many people wondered, would the organisers of the Olympic Games want to offend so many people?
The loneliness epidemic - and the church's mission
'I don’t know how to say, "I’m lonely," without sounding like I’m saying, "I’m a loser,"' a middle-aged man said to me not long ago. 'And I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I’m an ungrateful Christian.'
After all, this man said, he’s at church every week—not just there, but active. His life is a blur of activities. But he feels alone. In that, at least, he’s not alone.
Repeatedly, almost all of the data show us the same thing: that the so-called 'loneliness epidemic' experts warned about is real. We all know it’s bad, and we sometimes have a vague sense of why it’s happening. The answers that some come up with are often too big to actually affect any individual person’s life. Smartphones aren’t going away. We aren’t all moving back to our hometowns. We see a kind of resigned powerlessness to change society’s lonely condition. So why can’t the church fix this?
Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone
The answer lies partly in a book published a near quarter-century ago: political scientist Robert Putnam’s famous Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Earlier this summer, The New York Times interviewed Putnam, asking him whether, since he saw the loneliness crisis coming, he saw any hope of it ending.
Putnam reiterated that the answer is what he calls 'social capital,' those networks of relationships needed to keep people together. Social capital comes in two forms, Putnam insists, and both are necessary. Bonding social capital is made up of the ties that link people to other people like themselves. Bridging social capital consists of the ties that link people to those unlike themselves.
The first time I was on set with a television talk-show host who, like me, grew up Southern Baptist, he turned to me before we went on the air and said, 'Pop quiz: What should always be the first song in a hymnal?' I immediately responded with the right answer ('Holy, Holy, Holy'), and we high-fived. No one else on that set knew what we were talking about. The secularist in the producer’s chair might have thought, 'What’s "Holy, Holy, Holy"?' The churchgoing evangelical behind the camera might well have thought, 'What’s a hymnal?'
That little detail of shared tribal memory, though, represented more than trivia. It was a way of recognizing one another—the same sort of church background, from the same sort of time period, the same sort of shared experience. We knew in that moment that, even if no one else in New York City knew the names of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, we did, and, even if no one in that television network building could say what words would follow 'I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag,' we would. All of us experience equivalent moments of bonding social capital.
Putnam makes it clear that one form of social capital is not 'good' and the other 'bad.' When you’re sick and need to be taken care of, usually that comes from relationships made with bonding capital. That’s good, but—when taken too far—really dangerous. Putnam notes that the Ku Klux Klan is 'pure social capital' of the bonding sort. Bridging capital, Putnam argues, is much harder, but both are needed for a person or a society to escape isolation.
St Helen's Bishopsgate, asking questions, and the danger of metaphors
A recent comment piece in Evangelicals Now suggested that while questions are 'generally good', 'we would be wise to be careful before rushing to critique St Helen’s [Bishopsgate] for their recent Commissioning Service' of lay leaders for roles that will involve Bible teaching and informal sacramental ministry.
Three metaphors were used to justify silencing those who have raised such questions: the confused picture a flotilla of boats can give when tacking; the danger of friendly fire; and the need to break eggs when making an omelette.
Weight loss, a quick-fix culture and Scripture
Weight loss is trending in the news: what does this say about culture’s relationship to the body?
I wonder if the words Ozempic or Wegovy mean anything to you? What about Mounjaro or Zepbound? And before you ask, no, they are not the newest villains in the latest Avengers movies. Ozempic and Wegovy belong to a class of medication called GLP-1 receptor agonist. In short – weight-loss drugs. Researchers have clocked an exponential and unprecedented rise in young people in particular taking these kinds of drugs. Simply put, weight-loss is trending.
The UK riots: the need for absolute moral clarity
On 29 July 2024, a knife rampage at a holiday dance class left three little girls dead and an additional 10 people, including several children, fighting for their lives.
It is always paramount, no less in moments of extreme grief and inconsolable anguish, that we labour to appropriately respond rather than aggressively react. If we lose sobriety of mind and self-control in body, then we may lose all respectability in our actions. The alleged perpetrator was captured and arrested, alive, and has now been charged. The community should have been allowed to grieve in peace, and the justice system permitted to follow usual due process.
Russell Moore: Are you wandering to Rivendell?
I subscribe to the YouTube channel of the poet Malcolm Guite. Whenever one of his videos—usually him talking in his study, pipe in one hand and a book in the other—pops up, I save it to watch at night when I have time. A couple of weeks ago, though, his video prompted me to stop right there and watch immediately.
That’s because Guite’s setting was one of my favorite places on the planet, a place where I once felt a sense of overwhelming awe at the creative work of God. He was in the Lauterbrunnen Valley of Switzerland.
Guite pointed out that those of us who found ourselves at some point or other moved by this place are hardly alone. J. R. R. Tolkien—walking through there as a 19-year-old—later modeled Rivendell, the mythical spot of respite and safety in the Lord of the Rings books, after that very setting.
After the video, I picked up my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring to read the section set there, the one that Guite read aloud from a bench at the bottom of the Lauterbrunnen waterfall. I noticed how many highlights I’ve made in that part of the book over the years, even though I don’t remember what I was thinking when I did so. One especially caught my eye.
Speaking of Bilbo Baggins’s journeys, Tolkien wrote: "When he had left Hobbiton he had wandered off aimlessly, along the Road or in the country on either side; but somehow he had steered all the time towards Rivendell."
I wonder if you’ve found that to be true in your life. I have in mine. Knowing that we are, as Scripture tells us, pilgrims in this time-between-the-times, we sometimes expect that we should be marching forward to Zion with a detailed map, knowing exactly what route we are taking. We are surprised, then, when the roads veer off in ways we did not expect. Sometimes, we might even feel lost, and so lost that nobody will even know how to find us.
Only later do we realize that we were—usually completely beyond our own noticing—steering the whole time toward the truer and greater Rivendell. That’s because we are pilgrims, yes, but also sheep. We think we are steering when, often, we are being steered, toward green pastures and still waters.
Maybe that’s where you are right now—what seems to be the valley of the shadow of death. Look behind you, though. Maybe what’s been chasing you has been goodness and mercy, the whole way.
Harris, Walz, Trump and Vance: are we being truthful?
When Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate this week, some people took to social media to contrast him with his Republican counterpart, J. D. Vance.
Lots of those contrasts were fair game - that of a former high school coach versus a Yale venture capitalist, for instance. Some people framed the contrast this way, though - Walz is a normal guy, while Vance is a weirdo who has sex with couches.
The past several years have required sentences I never imagined I would write. Here’s another: J. D. Vance did not have sex with a couch. I believe the proposition I just wrote to be true, and my opinion of the politics or personality of the Republican vice-presidential nominee has nothing whatsoever to do with that belief.
Some might stop me at this point to note that everybody knows that J. D. Vance didn’t have sex with a couch. It’s a joke; a social media meme, started when someone posted a parody, allegedly from Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy. These people know, however, that most people don’t follow the genealogy of memes back to their origins. Many people just start to think, 'J. D. Vance is sort of a freak; people say he did something with a couch one time.'
The Vance couch meme-posters can have it both ways. They can kind of do what the Bible describes as deceiving one’s neighbor and then say, 'I was only joking!' (Prov. 26:19). Beyond that, they can say, 'Well, of course, Vance did not literally have sex with a couch. The point is that Vance is kind of weird; the couch just makes the point.'
If this were just this momentary meme, it could be passed over and forgotten. But it happens all the time. Sarah Palin never actually said, 'I can see Russia from my house.' Barack Obama never advocated for death panels for grandma. That’s what happens in politics, especially in a social media era. And, after all, most people don’t really believe the Vance couch memes; it just helps with morale. It won’t actually hurt Vance.
The problem for those who belong to Christ, though, is when the fallenness of a fallen world starts to feel normal. The problem is when you start to think your lies can serve the truth as long as the vibes feel right and the outcome is what you want.
In her new book Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, Anne Applebaum discusses the tactics employed by authoritarian regimes such as that of the Chinese Communist Party. These regimes have learned, Applebaum argues, the power of pro-freedom dissidents of the past, such as Václav Havel, who refused to symbolically lie (think of his famous example of the greengrocer who refuses to put the 'Workers of the world, unite!' sign up in his store). To undermine such truth-telling, they employ social media 'to spread false rumours and conspiracy theories' so as to 'turn the language of human rights, freedom and democracy into evidence of treason and betrayal.'
Applebaum cites Freedom House’s description of this kind of propaganda pressure as 'civil death,' meant to sever those who do not lie the way the party commands from their communities, to inundate them with lies so that even their friends and families start to think, 'Well, there must be something to some of this, since these controversies are always there.'
This does not just have to happen in matters of big life-and-death political dissent and repression. I’ve seen it happen to countless pastors - especially those who dare to preach what the Bible has to say about racial hatred. It doesn’t matter that 'He’s a Marxist' or 'He’s a liberal' are absurd charges. The game is just to say them long enough that the people who know they are lies get tired of the truth - so that they will, if not embrace the lie, at least fear the liars enough to get quiet.
On the geo-political level, the metaphor of 'civil death' is appropriate - even when it doesn’t work - because the Bible ties lying so closely to murder. Of the devil, Jesus said: 'He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.' (John 8:44).
Women's Olympic boxing: 'It's not fair!' Or is it?
This long, hot, sporty summer rolls on. Schools have been broken up for weeks, and children are everywhere - including all over my home! My three sons scrap over just about everything in the summer heat. Cries of ‘It’s not fair!’ seem to constantly ring out from one or the other; but how do I discern whose rights matter more when push comes to (literal) shove between the children?
Over in Paris, the Olympic women’s boxing has also been dominated by cries of ‘It’s not fair!’ Just 46 seconds into her bout against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, Italian Angela Carini was punched so hard in the face that she fell to the floor weeping, ended the fight, saying to those in her corner 'Non è giusto' ('It’s not fair'). Later, she said she had feared for her life.
Olympic boxing: where ideology clashed with reality
The running debate over transgenderism has revealed the obvious conflict between two ideologies that the Olympics are attempting to unite.
The controversy around boxer Imane Khelif has been one of the many at this year’s Paris Olympics. Viewers were horrified to see Italian hopeful Angelina Carini pull out of the fight in just 46 seconds to 'save her life.'
JK Rowling tweeted: 'Explain why you're OK with a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment.' However it was intended, this comment from such a public figure turned a single boxing match into a global debate about transgender issues.
The CofE's 'trojan horse' changing the doctrine of marriage
In June 2022, Aldershot Military Cemetery Chapel (not far from where I live) hosted a service of remembrance for Falklands veterans from the Parachute Regiment. That service is held every five years.
What should we make of the St Helen's Bishopsgate 'commissioning'?
The recent ‘commissioning service’ at St Helen’s Bishopsgate has attracted predictable criticism.
In that bastion of Church of England liberal thinking, the Church Times, Angela Tilby decried ‘the voice of the angry Puritanism that has been channelled down from the Reformation,’ before adding (oddly): ‘Today’s Puritans find it as hard as their ancestors to live with the creative ambiguity that, many would claim, is the lifeblood of the Church of England and defended by canon law.’ Er, come again? Many would argue that the ‘lifeblood of the Church of England’ is the 39 Articles with their insistence that ‘it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written’ etc.
‘What strengths do the younger generation have?’
‘What strengths do the younger generation have?’ The youngest person in the group asked this question in a meeting of church leaders, exasperated at the negative tone of the conversation. It was an appropriate rebuke in the middle of a discussion about the apparent reduction of younger people seeking to serve full-time in gospel ministry.
It is easy to feel despair at our times. Anyone who has read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation or Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy will be aware of the increase in diagnosed mental health issues among young people. Both books raise valuable matters we need to consider – issues around smartphone technology, outsourcing childhood to experts and counsellors, creating a climate of fear and anxiety among parents in the ‘real’ world, and yet ignoring exposure to harm in the ‘online’ world.
Reflections of a former youth pastor
For many years, I’ve led children’s ministry. Although I’m no longer doing that, I’m grateful for this opportunity to help others to understand the expectations of that role.
Hopefully, this article will be enough of an eye-opener for readers to realise that coming alongside those who lead children’s ministry is critical to prolonging their time serving for a church.
Irn Bru and positivity - all you need?
There’s been a word doing the rounds up here in Scotland recently. I wonder if you have noticed it - or even caught it (wherever you live)! Optimism. That was the strapline to the well crafted adverts for the drink Irn-Bru that were plastered up and down the country in the run up to the men’s football European Championships.
As a nation we embraced the message. Let’s toast to the future being brighter than the past and believe that this time round things might turn out differently. Did they? Well, as we watched Scotland fail to qualify from the group stages of the tournament, it didn’t take long for my can of Irn Bru to taste of tartan tears and for optimism to turn to realism.
What does a Scriptural analysis of the King's Speech show?
On Wednesday, King Charles delivered the Labour government's first King's Speech in the House of Lords. Part of the State Opening of Parliament, the speech set out the new government's priorities for the months ahead. This was a speech designed to demonstrate that the new government means business. Themed around Labour’s five key missions, there are a grand total of 40 Bills, with four of these being draft ones.
Labour’s missions are as follows: secure sustained economic growth, make Britain a clean energy superpower, build an NHS fit for purpose, make Britain’s streets safe, and break down barriers to opportunity at every stage.