May have to read ...

...the Da Vinci Code. Looks like it's so popular and contains so many fictions about Christian faith etc that it may be necessary to know what they are before they start being accepted as fact and cropping up in conversations about spirituality, faith etc. Unfortunate fact is that people seem ready to believe all sorts of stuff about the Christian faith "True origins" which are harder to square with the evidence than the actual claims. We are really swimming against the tide in terms of popular perceptions when people find fictions more believeable than the realities. It isn't that people are more skeptical in general, no [as GK Chesterton pointed out so many years ago]: it's that having abandoned the Christian faith they [in general] are ready to believe anything but.

Our most urgent missionary task in this culture is to recover plausibility and that will mean paying attention to what gains respect and a sense of plausibility in popular culture with regard to the spirtual dimensions of life. The New Age movements are perhaps a helpful indicator of which way the wind [or Wind?] is blowing.

Cholesterol skepticism

Originally I found this in the guardian but followed the link they gave. The interest is to people like me who have a family history of people having heart attacks and in my case also a raised level of cholesterol. The medical advice seems to be conflictual but I must admit that the evidence coming in from people doing the Atkins diet seems to be intriguing -their higher fat in the diet [and satuarated at that] does not raise levels of serum cholesterol. What seems to do so is carbohydrate. This would explain why, despite lowering the amount of fat in my diet my serum chlesterol has never realy varied greatly. I have long suspected that the liver produces the stuff itself from non-fatty sources and the article on the Atkins diet explains the biocemistry as to why that should be so. So I'm rethinkng my diet approach and wondering whether a more Atkins-like diet might be a good idea: don't worry so much about the fats: worry about the carbs. Now the question is about whether I can tweak a vegetarian diet in that direction easily enough...

Forgiveness for a part in genocide

"when he wrote up the story 20 years later, he [Simon Wiesenthal] sent it to the brightest ethical minds he knew - Jew, Gentile, Catholic, Protestant, and irreligious. "What would you have done in my place?" he asked. "Did I do right?"

Of the 32 men and women who responded, only 6 said he had done wrong in not forgiving the German. Most thought he had done right. "What moral or legal authority did he have to forgive injuries done to someone else?" they asked. Some questioned the whole concept of forgiveness."

The incident that caused this questioning was being asked by a German soldier for forgiveness for the part he had played in killing Jews in Russia. There is a theological aspect to this also: how can God forgive wrongs done to others? -I don't fully know how to answer that one but I think it is important to pose it. I suspect that part of the response to it is to note that God is close to and values each human [well each part of creation in fact] and takes a personal interest in each and every. Like when we love someone who is hurt -it hurts us too. Though that doesn't tie it all up it does lay the basis for establishing a link between wronging other people and that being a sin in relation to God which needs God's forgiveness...

As I've only managed to get about half way through the various things I wanted to do on forgiveness during Lent I hope to continue through Eastertide.

Rowan at Easter

I think I could get to be a Rowan Williams fan: this sermon is good stuff. Well worth the short time it'll take to read; pleanty to think on about.

Burying your carbon in the sand

It's an idea that just won't go away. Make up your own mind about whether you think it could work and do so on a long-term basis. But it looks like burying CO2 is on the serious consideration agenda at least in Australia. I have to confess that while I ffeel cynical about it, it might have th epotential to help -as long as we didn't see it as THE solution and fail to do the other things that we know are good ideas.

Christians in the Holy Land

I can't decide whether I support this organisation or not [is their methodology the best way of achieving their aims?]. However, I do share their concern; the emigration rates of 'native' Christians from middle eastern countries is alarming, particularly recently. And yet there's another part of me saying -so what? But the part that says it is a shame that the way things are is making Christians feel so uncomfortable [to say the least] that they would rather emigrate than stay and it is a loss to the potential mission of Christ in those lands .... Interesting what this says about Muslim majority countries at the moment, in the light of George Carey's much criticised comments [blogged earlier].

Geopolitical implications of global warming

a Canadian perspective on the effect of polar ice cap melt and the prospect that the northwest passage becomes a straight navigable all year round ....