After a week of taking in lots of information from various staff at my new workplace, I spent part of the morning lying in, finally getting to making a lazy man’s breakfast, mainly involving toast – and picked up the Open Doors magazine I was sent recently. I was quickly struck by the gap between my relaxed Saturday morning existence and the people who are living in danger and difficulty because of their faith in Christ and the political or societal situations around them, so I thought I’d share some details.
For instance, a Pakistani Christian woman is the first woman in the country to be sentenced to death for a charge of “blasphemy” – an observer says this verdict was given under pressure from a “mob outside the courtroom”. Outrageously, the woman, Asia Bibi, held in isolation since June 2009, and her family, who are in hiding, are in danger for their lives from hard-line Islamic groups, who want to take the law into their own hands.
Another article talks about some young boys in Orisso, India, who Open Doors have provided beds for at Ladruma Boys Home. Many of these abandoned children are traumatised from anti-Christian violence in the area in 2008, when the home became a target – during which time the caregivers were taken away because of the danger! So different to the UK where a lack of sufficient care for vulnerable kids will rightly cause an uproar.
What conditions to be trying to live in, to be trying to learn in or grow in or form relationships or work and earn a living. What a poor situation many fellow believers are in!
I need to grasp just how much opposition to Jesus and his people is out there in the world, and recognise that some people are paying a high price to be identified with the Lord Jesus – because they know what a privilege they have to know Him.
If you do, how do you remember to read about and pray for less fortunate people?
In this sad and telling passage from the quirky novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe we hear how Charles sees his position living inside a time machine as living “at the origin, at zero, neither present nor absent, a denial of self- and creature-hood to an arbitrarily small epsilon-delta limit.”
Then we get this interesting passage as to why Charles’ missing father created the time machine to have this function:
“Can you live your whole life at zero? Can you live your entire life in the exact point between comfort and discomfort? You can in this device. My father designed it that way. Don’t ask me why. If I knew the answer to that, I would know a whole lot of other things too. Things like why he left, where he is, what he’s doing, when he’s coming back, if he’s coming back.
[…]
I don’t miss him anymore. Most of the time, anyway. I want to. I wish I could but unfortunately, it’s true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine; it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.” (All quotes from p.54, Atlantic Books Ltd, 2010)
Aside from this being an interestingly written (though morbid) paragraph of complex prose, what are some of the underlying ideas of the viewpoint portrayed and how might we interact with these?
Charles has made himself unknowable, a kind of island from reality. From this we see the dangers of empowering people with technology like time machines, and how people can be self-destructive due to trauma or depression.
His position is described as being “between comfort and discomfort”. This is where he chooses to live, avoiding living his life in the present. Do we not see people around us doing this psychologically, or practically – avoiding responsibility, or perhaps unable to cope with what is really happening? Or out of a sense of directionless-ness keeping on in the same dead-end situation, rather than making any changes in their lives? And doing all this as they see no end or outcome to their pain or life situation?
I love how the book’s author plays with tenses and scientific terminology and uses it as imagery in this book, but here it adds up to some quite bare truths. Here we see a mathematical methodical explanation of the pain of human experience, just laid out for us to stagger under the weight of it. Charles describes well the paradox of suffering, that we want people to matter to us and yet this could well bring us more pain, so that some suffering, even emotional turmoil, is desired as we seek to maintain our humanity and increase our love for others.
In the Christian faith, the way that pain is taken away is thankfully not for it to become trivialised or merely converted into data. No, instead, when God returns to remake the world it will be seen that all the pain of this world was an aching anguish for him to come. Pain is a profound and deep part of our experience as we wait for the God-man, Jesus Christ, to come again. And he will come and reward suffering people with his presence, wiping away the tears of pain with his love for us (Revelation 21).
Charles loses track of the days through his half- or non-living in the machine, but the experience for the Christian in eternity will be real living. God, who is outside time, promises to wrap up this world and its time, and create a new time, where things grow better and better for believers, every day, as we are eternally blessed by and get to know the depths of an eternal God. This view of time, exclusive to those in Christ’s lasting kingdom, is mind-blowing, purpose-giving and satisfying.
An excellent purchase, this graphic novel seems to draw on a whole culture created by Stephen King in his fantasy series, including a specific Wild West-inspired dialect and weapon set, an interesting approach to honour, a sense of legacy and supernatural mystery about the evil John Farson’s men.
It opens within some apprentices seeking to become “gunslingers” to follow their missing fathers into war, seeking to "remember the face of their fathers" (brilliant enigmantic phrases like this abound). Beyond that we find a tale of growth and hope and dark brooding despair, inked in gorgeous gothic detail by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove.
It’s particularly the mix of courage and doom that got me excited, and that strange narrator spinning us the story, provoking us with “what ifs” and lamenting the strange bents of the unfortunate characters and their destinies – it’s unlike any other graphic novel in this respect. By the end, writer Peter David gives us a sense that we have witnessed something truly significant, a fate that will have great implications for this world and the future.
Has anyone read the whole series of Dark Tower novels, which this was inspired by? Apparently, as part of his desire to include many different realities, the books incorporate elements (and characters) from Stephen King’s other works – how does this work I wonder? I wonder is John Farson is supposed to be Satan? And how you feel about meta-narratives, with many levels – do you like them, or do they just create too many complications?
Click here for a list of other graphic novels I recommend.
On the right I have added a page with some evidence for God - adapted from a talk I heard back at New Word Alive 2010. Yes, this is long overdue! A snippet I liked is below. This is from a portion where we are talking about how the accounts of the New Testament of the Bible are good historical evidence to show us the amazing events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, who came from God to show Him to us.
The gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability. For instance, take Luke, who wrote both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts (or “the Acts of the Apostles”) in the New Testament. The opening to the gospel of Luke, where he explains he intends to write an accurate history based on eyewitness accounts, is written in Greek, which was the language used by learned historians of the time. By doing this Luke is straight-away pinning his reputation on the work as a work of history.
But was Luke reliable in getting his facts straight? Looking closely at the book of Acts, which overlaps significantly with the history of the ancient world, classical scholar Colin Hemer has found a wealth of historical detail, from political to local knowledge, that all matches up with what we know eg about trade routes in particular years and areas and the peculiar titles of local officials. Professor Sherwin-White says “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming… even in matters of detail”. According to world-famous archaeologist Sir William Ramsey “Luke is a historian of the first-rank … This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”
Click on the page on the right entitled "Evidence for God - a few examples" for more. Thanks to Amy Orr-Ewing who didn't have time for me to interview her as she had to go pick up her kids - but she gave me some of her notes :) Check out her book But is it Real?, which I wrote about here.
This Japanese animated film isn’t going to be for everyone, but you will probably like it if you liked the weirdness and the action of The Matrix or Akira and the colour of Slumdog Millionaire. Starring two brothers, Black and White, known as the Cats, who roam the streets and stamp their authority over the area, much of the drama comes from the fact that they are both children, making their way on their own, carrying out death-defying street-running stunts; but, because of how young they are, the violence they get into is quite disturbing, the measures they take to protect one another necessarily lethal.
Why are they being attacked by Terminator-like, unstoppable blue figures, silent figures who appear with little explanation, as if from some advanced alien future? They have been set on the Cats by Snake who wants to modernise Treasure Town and bring in more money for the Yakuza. The gangsters are trying to change, despite growing pains, and the brutal tactics they take mirror Black’s journey, who, as the older and more canny brother, becomes wilder in defending their street lifestyle.
There are mysteries a-plenty in the town, especially the bond between Black and the childishly playful White, with her strange, probably psychic, insights. And the theme of loss of innocence as the city changes pervades the story, including a brief scene depicting the two cops (whose empty threats are ignored by the gangsters) visiting a strip club for the first time to meet an older Yakuza. Perhaps the blue men are figures of an unstoppable amoral future, or show how the city is being taken over by a modern alien world outside.
With a shocking climax that takes us further away from the reality of the colourful city, it’s clear that in this town the price of safety is corruption, but what kind of safety does it buy? And can corruption be undone? These are questions left ambivalent despite a satisfying end to the brothers’ story. Maybe too disturbing or weird for some, I found this action-packed and interesting story highly entertaining.
As I’ve been playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii lately, I just want to share how awesome the Lakebed/Water Temple is. OK, the previous temple in the Goron Mines had some brilliant sections as you worked out how to magnetise parts of the wall to get to different areas. But the Water Temple I loved because the whole area was one big puzzle. There must be some Japanese riddle-maker behind this entire area, to keep you from the darkly powerful “fused shadow” which the boss guards inside. Perhaps the idea is that, even as you unlock the rooms, you are proving your worthiness of the prize, as a persistent and wise hero.
If I drew a diagram of the Temple and marked how you get to the boss it would involve lots of circles around a central point. The central island contains the exit to the boss, but to reach it you need to release water from the lake above you out of the right surrounding rooms to raise the water level in the centre. But even within this puzzle there’s more – as you need to release some of it so it is funnelled in the right directions to access particular doors in the central room in order to release more water. And you need the right keys along the way.
I guess the layout is similar to the ugly but ingenius Goron temple in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, a game I sadly never finished.
Rarely am I inspired enough by a computer game to want to write about it, but this was one of those moments. I also like the anime-inspired story of the game, which is fuller than in previous instalments of Zelda. Weirdly though, the game is almost too similar to previous games. It makes a change when you get to swordfight a band of goblins on horseback through Hyrule, scare the townspeople in your cursed wolf form, or find a new item to exploit. The music should be better too. I hope Nintendo can continue to keep the series true to its epic and heroic roots while taking into some more unexpected directions as well.
When I move next week I’m going to miss having the family Wii around, to play this, Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition, Super Mario Galaxy, Wii Sports Resort, and Super Smash Bros Brawl – all great games.
Happy New Year! In the next week or so, expect a few posts from me on everything from anime film to reasons for believing in God's existence. But for today, here are some of the things I've been learning about God and his ways in the last few weeks and months.
There are two paths in life, God's one and the way of fools, the latter of which will be attractive to the eye, but only the former both offering and giving things of lasting value and excellence (see Proverbs, where Wisdom calls out offers us true life, prefiguring Jesus and his role in preaching the kingdom of God).
The Christian life is about responding to God’s goodness and undeserved love towards us by doing God’s will here on earth as part of his family, identifying ourselves with him while we wait for the fullness of the salvation that has been won for us (Romans 12, Mark 3:34-5).
The end of all history is God’s end, planned from long ago with a special place for us who know and love him (Ephesians 1:4-6, Romans 15:8-13, or read When I Don’t Desire God).
The call to love others in the church is God’s heart goal for us, that through this love we would show him to the world. Plus there is a great need to pray earnestly for the lost (from a talk on humility by Francis Chan).
It's been amazing to understand over Christmas the way Jesus came to live on earth ultimately to die for our benefit, to do a work of God for the glory of God. What gets me is how this precious anointed one of God, loved from eternity by the Father in heaven with the Father and Spirit, this one, the Christ, lived through the daily hard knocks of a life of poverty and frustration and pain and disappointment - and he did it joyfully obeying his Father, he did it to rescue us and be our light and the way to God for all who take up their cross and follow him. He lived this normal life for us, growing up like us, coming under men and women who taught him and berated him. And this life he lived came with all its hurt, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, striving for more, seeing only less; with being treated evil-ly in many ways and by many people; with being shown barely any love in return in comparison to the infinite love and worship he is due. He was committed to us and to God's glory in us with his whole self. He loves us!
It's no good trying to do something - anything - for God, or for love, without asking God's help. It's an arrogance to try to go it alone. It's a folly not to seek his help with any goal or meeting or event or time with family or with church or time to relax. It's a folly not to seek him for assurance that he cares for us, because he does. It's dumb to not ask to grow in Him. It's silly to not seek his help to become like Christ and to have a good relationship with God.
God is my exceeding joy. (Psalm 43:4, and taught throughout the book When I Don't Desire God).
I hope you find this helpful. See you I hope during the year, and perhaps we can talk about how God is to shape our lives.
If the music industry is anything to go by, it seems that Christmas is the time of year for optimism, a kind of hope against the odds. We hear songs of peace and joy for those in need, songs proclaiming an end to war, songs about all our dreams coming true.
Which, in the UK, is quite an odd thing for us. We are used to brushing off any news of new education or health schemes with a good dose of cynicism; we are used to being sceptics that the wars we fight do any good or that they will end; we are used to accepting the prevailing attitude that “Life is a bitch and then you meet one”.
So how far do we accept all these songs of hope and joy and fulfilment? Do we let them wash over us and never get our hopes up too much? Or are we required to take some action to work at loving others and bringing peace?
And here’s the “heart issue”: For Christians, who have hope, how should my attitude be different to my cynical work colleagues?
Let me be clear – I’m not saying would should hold back when critically assessing politics or our leaders in war, or the messages of the media or entertainment industry. Far from it! I’m just saying: Shouldn’t the Christian’s attitude to life be distinctive? Shouldn’t our hope be evident, so people ask us for the reason for the hope that I have? And not just at Christmas!
What got me thinking about this again was Coldplay’s excellent new song “Christmas Lights”. The band can be incredibly soulful, but also very uplifting, and in the new song it’s the mix of realism and optimism that struck me.
Chris Martin paints the picture of a man alone, walking the streets at Christmas, with a longing for something better – his feelings don’t match up with his expectations: “You’re still waiting for the snow to fall/ it doesn’t really feel like Christmas at all”. The reason is a very down-to-earth one: Despite it being “Christmas night” he and his partner have had “another fight”.
The lyrics encompass the loneliness and the ache of fresh pain, and a sense of disorientation: What will Christmas mean for him now? He needs fresh markers, he needs new meaning and he seeks it in the streets of London (“I took my feet/ to Oxford Street”).
But the song turns to optimism as well, as the man sings to the Christmas lights “Keep shining on” and hopes that they will “bring her back to me”. There’s a sense of anticipation as if his longing and his singing will bring her back. They hold on to festive "chandeliers of hope".
A brief look elsewhere...
Other Coldplay tracks similarly show a strong hope amid the uncertainty of the ‘now’. In “X&Y” we hear that something’s broken and they are trying to repair it “any way they can”. Even though they are both floating “on a tidal wave”, they are there “together”, which seems to be the point of the song.
In “White Shadows” although even sound “is breaking up” – the song suggests “Maybe you’ll get what you wanted/ Maybe you’ll stumble upon it/ Everything you ever wanted/ In a permanent space” but it seems to depend on something: “Maybe if you say it you’ll mean it/ Maybe if you find it you’ll keep it”. A message about pursuing a dream and finding it can become a reality, if we really want it?
And one of the most positive songs they’ve written “Strawberry Swing” talks of not being able to wait for “tomorrow”, to be with someone, and that day being “a perfect day”. In the heady way of love, he proclaims “The sky could be blue/ I don’t mind/ Without you it’s a waste of time”. The joy he holds is completed and validated by his being able to share it. And in “Life in Technicolor II” the idea of being released from gravity is an expression, I think, of freedom. What a great track record of celebrating positive things in song!
What it all boils down to
This year I’ve read lots of articles and books (and heard plenty of opinions elsewhere) which are cynical about truth claims or religion, cynical about people or society changing, cynical about there being a purpose of life, or even fairly despairing about achieving a goal they have in mind. Some people look at the world and have a pretty gloomy view of where things are going.
But as Christians, there’s much more going on for us. There’s not just human things to be concerned about. There are the things of God, growing, often unseen, in this world. There is a realm of perfect peace which is coming which we get a taste of now. So let’s act like hope and joy are real things, that we can have in Christ and his Kingdom. It’s not something idyllic that will never happen. It’s not just a fairy tale – it’s real and so is our real Christmas Light – the light of the world.
I had the pleasure of borrowing two more volumes of The Sandman recently from the library and I want to talk a bit about Sandman #25 (which is Episode 4 of the storyline “Season of Mists”).
It's an interesting episode in a series that isn't afraid of tackling such subjects as
what is really real and what is imaginary
the various prisons we make for ourselves, especially through fear about our appearance
the perversions that, say, greedy men, serial killers or ancient faeries or forgotten Greek gods enjoy
where real genius comes from
and, here, the nature of hell.
Sandman 25 is a story which stands apart from the main storyline about Morpheus, otherwise known as Dream, or the King of Dreams. Instead, it's a parable about letting go of an evil past, which follows a English school-boy who is unwanted by his teachers, left behind at his boarding school by his only surviving parent. This character comes to epitomise the unwanted person who is oppressed and made to fit into boxes for convenience, or bullied for the pleasure of evil-doers.
As he meets the ghosts of past students and teachers he sees them meaninglessly reliving their past unhappy lives, and his eventual “escape” from the school seems to me to be an exploration of leaving behind a history of psychologically damaging abuse.
Wonderfully, in the end, the pattern of others' damaging behaviour does not have to control this boy; he is individual – in a sense, when he leaves the school, he triumphs over the system. Although they have taken a lot from him, the boy is still able to become a man, responsible and engaging in the world more-or-less in a way of his choosing.
The story cleverly shows us the implication of what has recently happened to Dream, who has been duped by Lucifer, the king of hell – because it shows the reversal of nature as the dead haunt the living as damned (or unlucky?) souls are released from hell. As the school-boy and his oppressed (un?)dead companion leave, they talk about whether hell is something we make for ourselves and whether hell is a place or not. They conclude by suggesting that hell is a place (ie. the school) but “you don't have to stay anywhere for ever”.
The positive event of the two companions leaving the evil characters in the school behind faintly recalls the unsettling events of Sandman 23. Here, the Sandman version of Lucifer shows he can leave hell, turfing the demons and evil men and women out into limbo or the world, saying they have suffered enough in hell. This kind of liberation seems wonderful at first, but appears sinister when souls start returning to haunt the world and proud psychopaths, who know they should be punished, are freed.
The role of God in people's lives
The school-boy, Charles Rowland, teaches us about experiencing life and taking action to prevent falling into becoming a victim of depraved patterns of living. But where is God in this story? He acts at points later on to deal with the problems caused by Lucifer. But he isn't shown to take care of the victims, to care for people's souls, to care for the individuals in the story. Here, he is less than invisible: he is absent from the lives of ordinary people!
Instead we have the liberal myth rearing its head saying that expressing oneself and defying authority brings true liberation in life. OK, so I agree that where authority groups are evil they need to be opposed fiercely, and the comic is right that liberation is needed, and broken lives can really be helped by others' love and care and a good environment for healing.
But as a Christian I know that God's role is more. He loves us! And he is good. And we are to mimic and follow him. It's his role to oppose evil, to liberate people from evil through his Son, to work in power to bring justice one day by judging the living and the dead. God holds the key to hell and God says who goes there because of their sin. God goes out of his way to call people into his kingdom of light, to be able to enjoy eternity with him in heaven and ultimately in a new perfect, brilliant creation. God loves the marvellous people he has made and acts in the lives of the broken or oppressed people who make up his church – granting true comfort, peace, joy, relief, material help and a caring community which becomes a family and a help to those who are lost.
People do evil things and that's a problem. But God cares about us and brings help and freedom from sin for those who ask. Amen to that.
Here's a taster of a painting (in acrylics) I'm working on - I was determined to at least START something creative during the week I have given myself off "between jobs" (more on the publishing job search another time). What do you think so far? Below are some images I created for reference from a picture I took in a summer of mixed weather.
For instance, a Pakistani Christian woman is the first woman in the country to be sentenced to death for a charge of “blasphemy” – an observer says this verdict was given under pressure from a “mob outside the courtroom”. Outrageously, the woman, Asia Bibi, held in isolation since June 2009, and her family, who are in hiding, are in danger for their lives from hard-line Islamic groups, who want to take the law into their own hands.
