Emotional pornography

This is the first time I've written purely for the sake of linking to another webpage, but this guy (who I've been following for a couple of years) speaks truth.

http://www.nailscars.com/journal/2010/5/10/emotional-pornography.html

I guess it's like the idea that (and I quote) 'chick flicks are girl porn'.

Glee Plea

Glee seems to be very popular at the moment. The thing that intrigues me the most about its popularity is the range of different people who seem addicted to it – it appears to have almost universal popularity.
I've seen a few clips from Glee and didn't understand what all the fuss was all about, but I decided to watch an episode to give it a chance. I was very disappointed.
I have nothing against Glee. There is nothing there that offends me. But equally, there is nothing that is particularly commendable. I was firmly indifferent.
This is a plea for someone to explain what all the fuss is about. Two close friends have attempted to explain it to me. Their explanations included the following (my responses in brackets):

• It's very funny (I disagree – from what I've seen, it has the occasional amusing line, maximum. Is it just not my sort of humour?)
• It is an excellent mix between high school musical and Scrubs (maybe – I can definitely see HSM in there (personally I describe Glee as HSM on TV; however, I dislike HSM), and the style has similarities to Scrubs (but then, I haven't seen much Scrubs – of what I have seen, some is genius but much is unremarkable))
• The music is very good (I disagree. The music is not good. It's very much towards the poorer end of 'musical' music (however, part of the problem here may be that the songs are covers of songs I don't even know...having said that, I don't think I'd like the originals anyway))
• The mix of high school drama and random musical-ness is very entertaining (no it isn't, it's just unconvincing... American high school drama is 99% annoying, trashy musicals are 95% annoying, and the mix isn'treally any better - it's just quite silly)
• It's not to be taken too seriously (I understand that, and acknowledge that I have a tendency for hypercriticalness. But I still see no merit in the show.  If it's not a serious show, surely it should be entertaining...many people seem to find it so, but I don't understand why)

As far as I can tell, Glee is just High School Musical in series form. Part of me assumes I'm missing something – am I?
Someone, please explain what all the fuss is about! Although I don't watch things like 24 and Scrubs, I can see why people like them and I can acknowledge their merits. But Glee seems much more like Doctor Who – essentially unworthy of TV time.

Invading the Airwaves

Inspired by fans of Rage Against the Machine, who recently banded together and mass-bought a single to get RATM to Christmas number one, fans of Delirious recently attempted to get the song History Maker to Easter number one (it got to number four in the end).
The initiative was based at www.invadetheairwaves.org.uk, but word was spread mostly through Facebook, where over 70,000 people joined the group. I, a huge Delirious fan, was frequently invited to join, and frequently declined. I had three issues with what was being done.

1. This is a bad way to treat the music charts. The charts are designed to display the most popular songs of the week, based on people buying the songs because they like them. Not because they have an ulterior motive of trying to publicise a band (or song, or deity...more on this below). This campaign was essentially an abusive hijack of the music charts.

2. This is a bad way to evangelise. The organisers hoped that, as a result of their actions, people would hear the gospel and turn to God. This may have happened. But I expect that many more people would have been put off Christianity by what they see as a group of dogmatic obsessives trying to promote organised religion, and messing up the chart system at the same time. This is not a good way to evangelise. It is not a good way to spend hours of organisation and tens of thousands of pounds.

3. Even disregarding the above points, even if this was a great thing to do, the choice of song was very poor. Yes, History Maker is a great song, one of Delirious' best. Yes, it's iconic and inspiring and has an awesome riff. But it has two problems: it is not a single, and it is not good at sending a message to the nation. It is over six minutes long, and therefore the radio cut it after about four minutes. So no-one even heard the whole song! It's not even a new song, it's from the 1997 album King of Fools. History Maker is simply not single material. The message of the song is basically 'I will stand for God'. A good message, but not that evangelistic. As my brother suggested, God Is Smiling would have been a much better choice – it is shorter, catchier, from their most recent album, and the message is 'God thinks we're great, and love can make a difference in this world'.


So, there's three reasons why this campaign was a bad idea. Interestingly, invadetheairwaves.org.uk has now moved on to promote BeBe Vox's new single. ITA seems to be taking this very seriously, and I still think it's a bad idea. I know this is all very opinionated of me (as usual!), so feel free to comment and explain why I am wrong.

Homosexuality

Yesterday I returned from Spring Harvest, where the theme was 'Different Eyes' - all about Biblical ethics and ethical living. One issue under discussion was homosexuality. On night 4 there was a debate about homosexuality. On nights 3 and 5 there were other debates - on War and Peace, and Money.
The homosexuality debate attracted about 3 times as many people as the money debate (I'm not sure about the War one, I wasn't there). This is interesting, given that homosexuality is mentioned 6 times in the Bible, while money comes up, on average, every 8 verses. Discrepancy?

There are a few brief points to make:
1. Christians blow homosexuality out of proportaion compared to other sins, as if it is the worst sin and/or as if it is worse than any other sexual sin. This is not true. Look at the biblical time given to it, compared to pride/greed/selfishness/dishonesty/expolitaiton etc.
2. Homosexuality seems to be a very emotive issue. People think they have a right to sexual activity, and don't like being told that they can't have sex. This is a wrong assumption - not everyone gets to have sex - some are physically incapable, some choose to abstain, some don't find a suitable partner, either as single heterosexuals or homosuxuals.
3. Homosexuality, while getting big press in the media, isn't discussed enough in the local church/small group. It becomes a massive issue, with an element of taboo, and therefore as soon as Spring Harvest offer a debate, it is three times as full as other debates!
4. Homosexuality is treated as a person's identity rather than what it really is - their sexuality. Homosexuals often define themselves as 'gay' and it becomes a central part of their identity. Sexuality should not equal identity. Doing so makes it into a bigger 'issue' than it should be.

Disgustingly lucky

A year ago, I returned from Spring Harvest and wrote a blog about worship

I have just returned from Spring Harvest 2010. Again, I was very critical of the worship during the week. I think part of the problem is that I am dissgustingly lucky to be at a church where the main two worship leaders are superb, and they are just the tip of the worshsip-leading iceberg.

I was also disappointed with the teaching at Spring Harevst this year - again, I am disgustingly lucky to have some amazing teachers at my church.

Church family

One of the coolest things about church is how it is like a family. It must be the only group of people where it is possible to have friends who are old enough to be my grandparents or young enough to be my children.
We were talking about this at cell tonight and I lokoed around the room, thinking about the people there who I think of as my big/little brothers/sisters, or aunts and uncles. It was very cool. And it's not just in my local church - I have brothers and sisters all over the UK, and an uncle in South Africa! But specifically thinking about my local church, Kings, I am amazingly lucky to have such a great family around me.

For Good

At last, I think I have found the song I've been looking for, for years. So many songs are about romantic love. There are hardly any songs about the beauty of platonic love. Now (actually a while ago, but it's come back to me recently) I have found such a song - For Good, from the musical Wicked. Other than this song, I can't think of any good songs about the joy and significance of a friendship. Here is a Youtube link, and below are the lyrics.

ELPHABA:
I'm limited
Just look at me I'm limited
And just look at you you can do all I couldn't do
Glinda,
So now its up to you
For both of us
Now it's up to you

GLINDA:
I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led to those who help us most to grow
If we let them, and we help them in return
Well I dont know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you.

Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
But, because I knew you
I have been changed for good.

ELPHABA:
It well may be
That we will never meet again in this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me is made from what I learned from you
You'll be with me like a hand print on my heart
Now whatever way our stories end
I know you have rewritten mine
By being my friend

Like a ship blown from it's mooring by a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a sky bird in a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you

GLINDA:
Because I knew you

BOTH:
I have been changed for good

ELPHABA:
And just to clear the air, I ask forgiveness
For the things I've done you blame me for

GLINDA:
But then I guess we know there's blame to share

BOTH:
And none of it seems to matter any more

GLINDA (ELPHABA):
Like a comet pulled from orbit
(Like a ship blown from its mooring)
As it passes a sun
(By a wind off the sea)
Like a stream that meets a boulder
(Like a seed dropped by a bird)
Halfway through the wood
(In a wood)

BOTH:
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better

GLINDA:
And because I knew you

ELPHABA:
Because I knew you

BOTH:
Because I knew you
I have been changed
For good

God's action in the world

Note: this is a very early, initial, not-entirely-thought-through post on something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and something that, for me, is the biggest theological question. So it might not make complete sense. As always, please comment.

The other night I was driving to cell and was running late. I hit a red light, and a friend in the car joked that maybe God changed the light to red at that moment to slow me down and keep us safe.

This got me thinking, not for the first time, about how God acts in the world. It seems that there are two ways of thinking about this:
1. God intervenes at certain points in the world – to change a traffic light, to deflect a bullet, to heal an illness etc. God sometimes points his finger, says ‘zap’, and something happens. I call this the zap model.
2. God is continually doing stuff in the world, most of which we don’t notice. This is the continual model.

Biblically, there are many cases of God intervening by the zap model – mostly miracles (see here for a more detailed discussion of miracles). The main problem with the zap model is that it suggests that a lot of the time, God isn’t involved in the world. This contradicts the idea that God is constantly involved in the world, sustaining creation (e.g. Colossians 1.17).

The continual model makes more sense in my head, because it includes the assertion that God is always, without fail, involved in the world, never sitting back or ignoring it. Unusual events like the parting of the red sea can cause a bit of a problem to the continual model, but could possibly be explained by an argument along the lines of “God knew it would be needed so he set things in motion well beforehand so that, when Moses needed the sea to part, the ‘natural’ (bad word, sorry!) storm that caused the parting occurred at exactly the right time”.
Personally, it impresses me more that God could have to foresight and genius to know things that will be needed and set up millions of ‘coincidences’ a day to provide people with what they need. As has been argued before (can’t remember where), the real miracle is in the timing.

I definitely subscribe to the continual model, because of its consistency and its emphasis on God’s constant involvement. But I think it has one massive weakness – it makes prayer very difficult. The zap model makes prayer easy – you just pray for something, and hopefully God zaps. In the continual model, God is already doing loads of stuff, so it’s harder to get a clear picture of how and what to pray, and how it will make a difference, especially if God has already set lots of things in motion.

(This also touches on the question of why we pray – is it primarily to change God’s mind/plans about something, or is it primarily because we need to, to acknowledge his power and our dependence on him?)

Maybe the best model is some sort of hybrid of the zap and continual models. Anyone got any thoughts on all this?

A Great Album

I was asked the other day what I look for in an album. What makes an album great? Here are my thoughts, based partly on thinking about my favourite albums.
• The music must be interesting (this discounts almost all of Green Day, for example), to my taste (if you don’t know, this is generally indie/rock-ish), and must have some oomph. By this I do not mean it must be heavy – A Day Without Rain by Enya has plenty of oomph. But I don’t like anything floppy or incidental (Jamie Cullum, for example).
• The lyrics must be inventive, poetic and purposeful (this immediately discounts most pop)
• The themes or message of the album must be something I really agree with. This is a difficult one, because it generally takes me a lot of listening to an album, and quite a bit of research, to work out all the themes. Therefore my appreciation of the music and lyrics tends to come before an appreciation with the theme. This is one reason why a Best Of album could never be a favourite of mine, no matter how good the songs are – a Best Of album is never a complete piece of work, precisely because it is amalgamated.
• The album must hang together well as a whole, rather than being disjointed (the main weakness of Mezzamorphis by Delirious). The whole should also be greater than the sum of its parts (the problem for How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb by U2).
• X factor – the indefinable thing that makes the album special. Sometimes it’s a unique vocal style, sometimes it’s a particular run of songs, sometimes it’s the memories attached to the album.
• Strong ending – the vast majority of albums start relatively strongly and then tail off in the second half (Californication by RHCP and Hot Fuss by The Killers are great examples). A great album is as strong, or stronger, in the second half.
The single album that most completely hits all these points for me is No Name Face by Lifehouse (which I’ve written about before) – my all-time favourite album. The music and lyrics are inspired and inspiring, the theme is superb, the album hangs together brilliantly, and it has a superb second half. I think the X factor is probably the honesty and rawness of the album.

Critical of Christmas

Christmas is great and all that, but I’m a critical person and have lots of problems with how we do Christmas. Now the season of goodwill is well behind us, I think I can write about this without causing quite as much offense to people. So here are some of the reasons why Christmas annoys me.

Christmas is overhyped. The buildup lasts months, only children get genuinely excited, and the day itself tends to be anticlimactic. The shops start selling Christmas stuff in August or September (i.e. far too early). Most of the decorations and other stuff that people think they are ‘required’ to buy to make Christmas work are cheap and tacky. And very overpriced. And horrifically over-packaged. The music also sickens me. Cheap, formulaic, cheesy, manufactured pop. Absolutely no quality to it. The Christian element of Christmas (I say element, but really there shouldn’t be any other element to the celebration) gets lost in the presents and food and decorations. Christmas hasn’t been about the incarnation for a long time. It’s now a festival to money and excess. Moving on to the Christian stuff – even in religious circles, far more time, money and attention is given to presents, food etc than to Jesus. While in the secular world it might be mostly about gain, in the Christian world it is mostly about family and giving. But still not about Jesus, so still not really good enough. A central feature of many Christmas day services is the examination of presents. This is an awful thing which just reflects the general commercialisation of Christmas (and Easter, while I’m at it). Christmas services are full of unnecessary tradition, including some appalling songs – musically, lyrically and theologically. Even the best songs (there are only 2 that I feel are worthy of singing) are out of touch, dated, and clichéd. When it comes to sermons, most are unoriginal, uninteresting and uninspiring, and many focus more on Easter than Christmas, as if it is physically impossible to talk about Jesus’ birth without also talking about his death.

Christmas needs stripping down. In an ideal world, the commercial/secular element would be completely removed. In a real world, the format of Christmas should be changed as suggested here. This would at least remove the excessive hype, which is a start.

Credits

When I go to the cinema, I usually stay to watch the credits. This is for 3 reasons:
1. I've paid good money to see them
2. People have worked hard to get their names there, so I watch them out of respect.
3. It gives me a few minutes to reflect on the film and form some initial thoughts on it.

I am genuinely baffled as to why the vast majority of people do not stay to watch the credits.

Second/third album syndrome

Some music critics pick up on 'second album syndrome' - the phenomenon of a band's second album being significantly weaker than their first. Other critis believe in 'third album syndrome' instead.

I took 15 of my favourite bands/artists and ranked their first 3 albums. I gave 3 points to the best album for each band, 2 points to the second beat, and 1 point to the weakest.
The overall results:
First albums: total 27 points
Second albums: total 34 points
Third albums: total 29 points

Only 4 bands registered their first album as their best, compared to 5 bands (though none of my fave six) who registered their second album as their best, and 6 bands whose 3rd album was their best.
7 bands registered thewir first albums as weakest, compared to only 1 band whose second album was the weakest and 7 bands whose third was the weakest.

I conclude from this small study that second/third album syndrome is a myth.

Snow

The night before last it snowed in Durham, which reminded me of something I plnned to write a few weeks ago. Here it is.
Snow is fun. It looks really cool, and sledging, snowball fights etc, are very enjoyable. But after a while, it all gets annoyingly wet and cold, some of it turns to sluch, and travelling, by foot or wheels, is difficult. Snow is fun, but then it gets annoying.
The best thing about snow is not sledging or snowmans or anything like that. The best thing is the strange way that it unites people. Complete strangers will suddenly go out of their way to help each other out of a problem caused by snow. It's nice to see.

Almost overwhelming

It was my birthday on Monday. Which was nice.
In the evening I played football with some friends, as is our custom on Monday evenings.
Upon my return to my house, I found about 30-40 friends gathered in my kitchen yelling 'surprise!', singing Happy Birthday, complete with party poppers, balloons, cake and presents!
It was genuinely one of the biggest shocks of my life, and made me feel almost overwhelmingly loved. It sounds cheesy, but it was just one of 'those moments'. I was still shaking an hour later.
It made me realise, as I do every few weeks at the moment, how lucky I am to have the friends I do, both in Durham and elsewhere.

Bridge to Terabithia

This is possibly the best film I’ve seen since The Lord of the Rings.

A few weeks ago, my sister bought me this DVD, saying I’d like it.

Now the compulsory shout-out is over, I shall explain my outrageous opening statement by means of a review.

Bridge to Terabithia is the story of 12 year old Jess Aarons.  He is bullied at school and has no friends until new girl Leslie Burke arrives next door.  The two become friends and invent an imaginary magical kingdom in the nearby woods.  The film follows their adventures, which give them a means of escape from school and their families.

I won’t spoil any more for you.

In explanation of the opening statement:

• The story is wonderfully told, completely convincing, and surprisingly gripping.
• The acting is nothing short of outstanding.
• The line between reality and imagination is trod perfectly and the two are very cleverly combined.
• The moral of the story is vitally true but not overly preached.
• The film moved me in a way that no other film, except LOTR, ever has.

The operative word in the opening statement is possibly – Stardust, Shrek 2, The Prestige and others are all contenders, but Bridge to Terabithia is right up there with them and is, I think, a more important film to watch than any of them.  If I could list five films you should watch to help you become a better person, Bridge to Terabthia would definitely be one of the five.  It might even be top.  It is truly superb - one of those films to which words cannot do justice.  Just watch it.  With tissues.