Saturday, April 18, 2009

Does Jesus Shave?

Tim Hughes wrote a song called ‘Jesus saves’. A few days ago it was in my head, but I was been singing the word ‘shaves’ instead of ‘saves’. I’m mature like that.
This got me thinking: does Jesus shave? On one level a silly, hypothetical question (probably on every level actually).

The growth of hair on humans is biologically a strategy for keeping warm – hair (or fur) acts as insulation, trapping a layer of air between hairs and preventing body heat from escaping.
Given that Jesus now has a resurrection body and is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, does he need this? Does his hair grow? Does he need (or choose) to shave?
This is a different question to the historical question of, as a first century Jew, was Jesus likely to have been bearded or not. It’s about the nature of the resurrection body, and, to an extent, heaven. If heaven is always warm (is it?), would body hair be necessary?

Any opinions? Does Jesus shave?

Facebook is dying

Yesterday I attempted to use Facebook. I’ve been on Facebook for nearly 3 years and do not generally struggle with it. On this occasion, I went to a wall-to-wall between myself and a friend. I wanted to write on my friend’s wall, so I typed in the box at the top of the page. In the past, this would equal writing on her wall. Now, however, it appears that this is actually just a way of updating my status. To write on her wall I would have had to go to her actual profile.

This is one of many new changes in the latest version of Facebook. I’ve seen several major changes to the site over the last 3 years (going public, introduction of tabs, applications etc). Each has been something I’ve managed to adapt too. I was particularly a fan of the tabs idea. I hate (most) applications, but Facebook provided a way to block them, so I was happy.

However, the new change is different. Previous changes were just that – changes. To Facebook. This is not just a change to Facebook. This is an attempt to incorporate Twitter into Facebook. The latest version of Facebook is very dominated by status updates, as highlighted by my experience yesterday.

Facebook is (was) excellent at what it does. It’s a networking site. It’s a very useful way of (a) staying in tough with people, and (b) sharing photos and videos.
It is not MySpace, which is essentially ‘look at me, this is my page, look at how cool I am’.
It is not Twitter, which is essentially ‘this is what I’m doing at the moment, in case you’re interested’.
Facebook serves a different purpose to either of these sites. But now, having out-MySpaced MySpace with applications, it is trying to out-Twitter Twitter with status updates.

The biggest difference in the new Facebook is the news feed, which is no longer tabbed. In the past, there were several tabs, including one which was ‘status updates’. Now, it’s much more focused on status updates and less so on everything else (photos, groups etc.) This makes it harder to use the new Facebook for its real purposes (see (a) and (b) above).

I hope Facebook find a way to rectify the fact that it is currently crap. Otherwise my persona use of the site, and I expect that of many others, will dwindle significantly.

Boring Christians

I was sitting in the Spring Harvest big top last week, looking around at the people in there.
Most of them just looked very boring and out of touch with reality. They looked uninteresting, soppy, week and disillusioned. Now, this is not a judgement about these people, just a comment on how they appear.
The scariest thing about what I was thinking was ‘I wouldn’t join this!’ If I wasn’t already a Christian, on the basis of what I saw at Spring Harvest (generally considered to be a large, exciting, contemporary festival), I wouldn’t be interested in finding out more about Jesus.
In terms of what I heard in the teaching, and the experience of Spring Harvest, I would want to find out more. But just on the basis of how people appeared, which is likely to be the first judgement people make, I wouldn’t be interested.
I think it was partly the age range, partly the hair and clothing styles, and partly the general behaviour that combined to the overall look of boringness. Also, they didn't look excited to be there. They looked indifferent - massive turn-off. It’s hard to describe in words, but it scared me.

N. B. If you were there, this isn’t intended as a dig at you – you may have been one of the interesting-looking ones!

Friday, April 10, 2009

Worship Snobbery

I’m one of the setup teams at my church, which means one of my responsibilities is making sure there are enough chairs for people to sit on. This involves staying at the back of church for the first half hour or so of the service, putting out extra chairs as they’re needed. This means I don’t have much opportunity to engage in the first worship set. I don’t mind this at all but it does mean I don’t get much chance to participate in congregational worship.
One of the times I get a massive chance to do this is at Spring Harvest every Easter. I was there last week. However, I couldn’t engage with the worship, either in the big top or in iScape, the youth session. This got me thinking about my opinions on worship, and I think I might be what I call a Worship Snob. I seem to be very fussy about worship experiences and am rarely happy with them. I think this is probably not a good thing.

Here are some things that annoy or frustrate me on this topic.

‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ songs. These are just very very incorrect. Jesus is not your boyfriend! So stop singing like he is!
Lame or uninspired music, with no inventiveness – something you would never ever listen to
Lame or uninspired lyrics that say nothing and just seem there to fit the tune
Soppy songs, such as ‘All I once held dear’, except on very rare occasions (actually, the verses of All I once held dear are quite good, but the chorus lyrics and music are very soppy)
Lack of sequence in a worship set (e.g. at Spring Harvest: Dancing Generation into Let me be broken (even if you don’t know the songs, the titles alone should show the incongruity of this transition))
Over-repetition (e.g. Lord I lift your name on high, seven times, including four key changes – another from Spring Harvest this year)
Lack of oomph or passion, which is often in the soppy songs
Worship leader/band shown on the screen – this is very distracting

I think quite a lot of these things tie into two larger themes:
1. Worship, however contemporary, is a strange thing to a non-believer. Churches MUST make it as accessible as possible. A lot of the above things are very ‘Christian’ things to do and are not that accessible to non-believers.

2. Men hardly ever sing. When they do it is in sports, when supporting a team. Hardly any worship songs are sung in this way. And people wonder why there aren’t many men in the church! A lot of the above things are very unmanly (and this is coming from a man who isn’t even particularly manly!)

Another point may be that I am generally fussy about music, and I think this leads into worship music too. Maybe I have too high standards, I don’t know.

One might say that these things shouldn’t inhibit worship, but I just find myself distracted or annoyed, as if trying to worship while a fire alarm is going off.

Either I’ve got a point, that worship music is inaccessible to a lot of people, especially men, or I’m a worship snob. Or maybe both, or somewhere in between.