Daily Archive for January 11th, 2008

Responding to ‘persecution’

Published
by
Graeme
on January 11, 2008
in Ramblings
. 0 Comments

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while will know that I have mentioned my concern over the attitude of Western Christian’s to what is being called Christianophobia. Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe that this does exist, especially in places in the world that see Christians prevented from worshipping or being truly persecuted. I’m just not sure we can count things like “Jerry Springer - The Opera” and the fact that some aren’t allowed to wear crosses outside their uniforms as real persecution.

Two things have brought this subject back into the forefront of my mind. Firstly, an article by my former colleague, Jonathan Bartley, written just after Christmas. Picking up on the fact that there was the normal avalanche of stories in the lead up to Christmas about the downgrading of the season due to over political-correctness, he suggests that this was in reality achieved years, if not decades, ago. His conclusion is that:

Christmas is offensive, and for ever will be. It legitimates the undermining of those in authority. But it is also about looking after not just those who are “deserving” of our love, but those who may appear disreputable and unworthy.

The second was a piece by Nick Tomlinson in the September issue of Zoe’s Women Alive magazine which arrived from Latvia earlier this month. Tomlinson suggests that the typical suburban lifestyle is all about comfort. This striving for comfort is really the complete opposite to what real Christianity is about. One telling comment that leapt of the page as I read it is this:

…radical love and forgiveness become invincible weapons of evangelism when the Church is under fire. But when the Church is comfortable and safe, it becomes hard for its members to understand how to apply Christ’s commandments to daily life.

He goes on to suggest that maybe rather than responding by acting as if a slight on Christianity is a terribly offensive thing and insisting our status is protected from these slights, we should see an opportunity to publicly forgive and bless our ‘enemies’. Now that’s counter-cultural!

Bees

Published
by
Graeme
on January 11, 2008
in Blog stuff
. 0 Comments

The next couple of days seem to be all about Bees.

Today I discovered Adobe Labs Bee application, which is based on the Adobe Air application. This is basically a blogging application that allows me to write a blog post offline and then have it ready to publish when I go online. In fact I’m actually writing this particular post using the software and although am at home I’ve turned my wireless card off! If you can read this on my blog then you know it works. I’ve tried a few of this sort of thing, but have always found them to have some problems, so we’ll wait and see how this works out!

The other Bee thing is about tomorrow. Zoe is away this weekend at The Salvation Army’s “The Gathering” prayer event in Swanwick. Whilst she’s taken Abigail with her, Sian & I are staying at home. So tomorrow we’re having a Father & Daughter day out and amongst other things are going into Guildford to watch The Bee Movie at the cinema. It’ll be the first time we’ve been since getting back to the UK and I am really looking forward to it. While we were in Latvia, or at least before Abigail was born, Zoe & I shared the responsibility of looking after Sian pretty much 50/50. Since Abigail’s birth Zoe has been at home all the time and since arriving here I’ve not spent the same length of time with Sian as I used to. So two days together is going to be great!