Where Everybody's Crazy

I want to write this down so I don't forget. Normal service will be resumed in a day or so, we're nearly done with this mission week!

As part of candidate's course, we have to create presentations profiling the countries we're going to. Here's mine. I created this using iMovie by sticking together images from Flickr tagged "japan" and released under the Creative Commons license, and adding a soundtrack. (Which someone thinks is incongruous, but I like incongruity.)

I did it all by hand, and added a few bits of text around it, but this could have be done automatically, by grabbing random photos from Flickr and setting them to music tagged from last.fm. (The thought came to mind as something tagged "Senegal" wandered past my last.fm player - this would obviously be better for more "world music" type places with distinct musical cultures.) Run a wee Perl script, and have a random country profile generated for you!

Confession: I read Bosch in the bath. This is not very sensible, because I'm supposed to be making notes on Bosch, and I can't really do that in the bath, but it's just the right sort of reading to be doing when you're not doing anything else. As I get a grip on his understanding of the new theology, I'm surprised by how often he references the Kuhnian model of paradigm shifts in the history of mission without making the obvious inference - theological and missiological paradigms are incommensurable.

In other words, it makes as little sense to say "The Early Church had better theology than we do because they were closest to Jesus" as it does to say "We have better theology than the Early Church because we have twenty centuries of development and relevation, and better tools to understand the original era". In fact, we are living in an entirely different world and worldview from the Early Church, (and the post-Schism Catholic domination, and the Reformation, and so on) and there is no continuity of reference between them.

Just an idea.

Well, I've finished my work for the term. Of course, I didn't have much work to do this term - with Hebrew and Greek, I have the first year complete, and I've been working on a second-year topic, Leadership. I got the essay done for that last week.

So this means I have very little to do, and of course the upshot of this is that I'm doing very little but I seem to be incredibly busy doing it. Hence, no blog.

I've been playing a lot of volleyball and kubb; I've been reading some NT Wright; I've been hacking Buscador and setting up a server to search and index the Perl mailing lists - this has required me to learn interesting things about User Mode Linux.

And I've also been working on another book idea. I don't think I'm ever going to stop writing books. Even after finishing my third computer book, I have two ideas open for theological books. They probably won't ever be published, because publishing in the Christian world seems to revolve around the big conference speakers, and I'm not one of those.

The first is an attempt to redress the balance in the amazing dirth of good books on singleness out there. 35% of adult churchgoers in the UK are single, yet I can count the number of good books on singleness on two fingers. By "good", I mean, that treat single people as complete individuals able to serve God fully as they are, rather than as sad cases who need a bit of pop psychology pep talking to tide them over until they're lucky enough to get married. My book takes a much more holistic approach, using singleness as a jumping-off point for a discussion of how to "be content in all circumstances." I've been writing it on and off for a year now, but I think, while the idea is good, I need to completely rewrite it because I'm much less comfortable with the style. I really feel I "woke up postmodern" last September, and now my own prose from before that time seems too dogmatic and superior.

The second idea has been captivating me over the past few days. I've been thinking about writing an article called "Why I am not an Evangelical", followed swiftly by articles on "Why I am not a liberal", "Why I am not a Protestant", "Why I am not a Catholic" and "Why I am not an Orthodox". Kind of a personal via negativa. But it seemed too negative, and didn't offer any solutions. So instead I've come up with this idea of trying to expand people's minds about the richness and diversity of theological tradition; to see that Christianity encompasses an amazingly broad range of ideas, and that each of these ideas has strengths and weaknesses, and you could argue against each position. And I wanted to do that in a way that would make the subject come alive.

Here's the first page:

Upon the table in this large upper room we find many plates of food; the cuisine tonight is Middle Eastern, and in the corner of the room is a bar, stocked with a surprisingly wide range of drinks. Surprising, that is, given that we are in the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, the Household of God. The year is 2055, and it's a Wednesday night.

No-one really remembers when the Dead Theologians Club started: just a few friends meeting up for a meal and a chat. But over these many years, some conventions have been established; one person sets the topic, and another sets the menu. Augustine is first to take his seat, as a result of some long-forgotten running joke. All the other members of this most select of institutions arrive, and soon settle down to the three things that dead theologians really enjoy: eating, drinking, and arguing about things which cannot be settled... well, they certainly won't be settled between them in an evening, but there are rumours that they are all going to be settled very soon.

It is one of the new boys, John Wesley, who sets the topic for this evening's discussion.

"Well, gentlemen, I guess this is the big one."

There is a sigh from the assembled Greek fathers, and it is Athanasius whose lot it is to interpret this.

"My brother", he says, with a depth of feeling which one who has not been to Heaven cannot truly appreciate. "I remember when we were happy to know what we knew and what we did not know. I remember when we were happy to consider and to disagree, and not to come up with one single right answer. We did not know how atonement worked; we had some ideas, but we wouldn't consider ourselves to fully understand the minute workings of the single greatest act of all of history. When a man is ill, he goes to a doctor, and he gets given a medicine. He doesn't need to know or care how the medicine works. He takes the medicine, and he gets better, that is all."

"It may be all for you, but it is not all for me!"

There is no mistaking the thunderous voice of Tertullian, as he instinctively rises to address the assembled members.