Always Hope

The Mail today reports that the Ark of the Covenant is to be "revealed" in Ethiopia. It's revealed, not "found", because apparently it has always been there, it's just that nobody is allowed to look at it, it being the most holy relic on earth. But now the roof of its chapel is being repaired, it will need to be temporarily removed, exposing it to public view. The paper's source is photographer Tim Makins, who has frequently travelled to Ethiopia, and reveals a good working knowledge of the Ark by discussing the necssary means of transporting it (slung from two wooden poles). The Ark has long been a source of fascination in popular culture, a niche that was cemented for it by Raiders of the Lost Ark. It shows my ignorance, but I had no idea that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claimed to have it in their possession. My first thought on reading that it had been there since the 1960's was to wonder where it had been between the Babylonian conquest and...

Thanks to Phil Ritchie for alerting me to today's news that every school in the country is to receive a King James Bible to commemorate the 400th anniversary of that hugely important edition. Phil's piece on his blog is lucid and succinct as usual. This is a great Friday evening story. There's part of me that really wants this to be a good idea. Certainly it's further evidence that we are living under a political regime that no longer seems to think that faith and religion are shameful concepts that need to be banished from view. It's easier to have the public discussion about Church, the Bible, and even Jesus now than it has been for years. And anything that causes such annoyance to the National Secular Society is welcomed by Always Hope. This is not because I'm hostile to Humanists, but the fact that the NSS so rapidly disappears up its own fundamental orifice when something like this happens shows what a silly, petty, and irrelevant organisation it is.  ...

This week saw the launch of The Good Book , by (or, as the cover has it, "made by") A. C. Grayling. This, as he no doubt hoped, has triggered a huge reaction, at least if the blogs are anything to go by.  It's difficult to find a Christian blog in the UK that hasn't reacted to this (although I haven't yet found anyone who has read it).  Of all the interesting responses, my favorite is Phil Ritchie's , which really nails the issues from a Christian perspective.  The Good Book is billed as a "secular Bible".  Many people, hearing this, have jumped to the conclusion that it is a Bible with all the bits about God taken out, but it isn't.  It is an alternative to the Bible, a tome of wisdom to live by.  Nor is it, as some people are assuming, an entirely original work by Grayling, although it seems to contain some of his own thoughts.  In fact, he has edited together a collection of texts from various philosophical traditions from many cent...

Don't forget, May 21st this year is the deadline for repentance, as explained by the careful and very certain Harold Camping here and here . If there are many things of this world that you yet hope to experience, you need to organise your diary quite carefully. On the plus side, those of you not expecting to be raptured can make a few quid by signing up for pet-sitting duties . Although, as Mr Camping would tell you if only you would listen, you won't have much time to spend it. To understand why this isn't just an excuse to laugh at the deluded, and why "Biblical" Christians ought to be careful what they say, read my original post on the subject .

Nicholas Carr is a writer who has made it his mission to alert us to the re-wiring of our brains. In last Saturday's Times (no link because Times Online is closeted behind its paywall), he published a summary of his points and a plug for his book . Carr's argument is that the internet has "changed the way we think". In his own words: I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I feel it most strongly when I'm reading. I used to find it easy to immerse myself in a book or lengthy article... That's rarely the case any more. Now my concentration starts to drift after a page or two. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. This, he says, is the result of our engagement with the internet, the way we access information online in an instant and flit from site to site, browsing and messaging simultaneously. No longer do we think in good old book terms, starting at the beginning and working through to the end, but we spider about all ...

I'm preaching on Mark 2 tomorrow (apologies to liturgical purists), Jesus healing the paralysed man after he is lowered through the roof. What an engaging passage it is. I love the way in which it is so graphically visualised, dragging us in to the action, and then hits us with the enigmatic dialogue which makes us stop and think. Verse 9 is especially challenging: Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, `Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, `Get up, take your mat and walk'? Which is it? I was taught at an early stage that it's clearly the latter, because only God can forgive sins, and so it must be harder to do that. But now, when I read this, that just doesn't seem to fit. Why does Jesus then go and heal the man? If that is the easier thing, it doesn't prove that he could do the harder thing. So is it easier to say "your sins are forgiven"?? I suppose in one way it is, because if you say "get up", and the guy stays where he is, it d...

Today, courtesy of the perennially marvellous Ship of Fools , Always Hope brings you the curious case of wecanknow.com and the Latter Rain. This seems so incredible that I can't decide whether it is really what it seems, or some kind of elaborate hoax, so judge for yourselves by looking at this website , or this one , where you will find everything you never knew (and probably didn't want to) about the imminent judgement day. Of course, confident predictions of the end of the world are nothing new - the Jehovah's witnesses have predicted it many times, with zero percent success so far, but usually the door is at least left ajar for the possibility that God may have alternative plans. "We Can Know", however, takes apocalyptic certainty to new levels. So many things about this are bizarre, that it's difficult to know where to start. What I find most perplexing, though, is that this comes out of the stable of "Bible-based" Christianity, that we know ov...

I've been reading the account of David and Goliath for this Sunday, and musing on how we deal with violence in the Bible. This story is the classic example, a favourite of Sunday Schools for generations, cheerfully passed down by good Christian people who, under other circumstances, would not be telling stories of brutal killing to small children. Is this a problem? Should we go with it, in the interests of biblical literacy, and understand that most kids love hearing this stuff anyway? Or should we share the worries of those who say that we need to challenge the biblical texts' use of violence? A common evangelical response is to dismiss such worries as so much liberal hand-wringing, as if to say "well, the sort of people who don't believe the Bible are bound to be a bit weak in the stomach, after all". But we need to be careful about that. After all, if we do take the Bible seriously, then we're talking about real violence here. Real violence - I think the ...