Image of Big Bang seen in piece of toast!

Hot news:

“I have always been an Atheist and to see my life choices validated on a piece of toast is truly astounding,” said one guest at the Huddlesfield Arms Hotel.

It must be a sign…

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the Pentatonic Scale

Ooh yeah… wow.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Hat-tip to Errol.

“To the ends of the earth, not to the end of our tethers”

Simon Barrow of Ekklesia writes on the missiological aspect of the current strife in the Anglican Communion. We’ve been here before, he says – as early as the first century CE and the angst between Peter and Paul, between Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians:

What does all this have to teach us today? Well, it might suggest to us that Jerusalem isn’t always right – or wrong! It might make us ponder the idea that if we take the Bible seriously, then scriptural precedent… should not become an obstacle to the Good News and to God’s gracious work among those we may have come to think of as unclean or unworthy. The mission of Acts is to the ends of the earth, not to the end of our tethers.

An anointed State?

In ancient Jerusalem the dominant description of reality revolved around the conviction that (a) the temple is YHWH’s permanent residence; (b) the monarchy is YHWH’s chosen agent; and therefore (c) the city is safe from and immune to the threats of history. Mutatis mutandis, the dominant description of reality in U.S. society is that (a) democratic capitalism is the wave of the future that is sure to produce peace and prosperity; (b) the United States is God’s chosen agent in the spread of the gospel of democratic capitalism; and (c) the United States is by divine assurance immune to the threats of history. In both ancient Israel and the current sense of self in the United States, there is a theologically rooted exceptionalism that imagines privilege and entitlement of idolatrous proportion… We have, in the U.S. church, spent a very long time ceding over our evangelical voice to accommodation, to an alliance with U.S. exceptionalism and a timid refusal to say what we know most deeply. [W. Brueggemann, The Word Militant (Fortress Press 2007), 18]

Brueggemann writes in and to the contemporary U.S. situation; I as a Briton would be the first to add that his critique applies no less strongly to British colonialism and empire of recent centuries.

Divine intervention?

In a short but helpful post, Jonathan hits an important nail on the head:

So, there can be no good answer to the question, “Does God intervene in history?” because the question is so badly framed.

Find out why here.

Yesterday I went to London

“Bit of politics, ladies and gentlemen, yes indeed”

Some people can really write…

… I mean really write. Like this - beautiful.