One tiny detail, easily missed amidst a decently interesting article about Peter Hitchens’ return to Christian faith and finding peace with his atheist brother, the infamous Christopher Hitchens, is this mistaken caption to a nice little Hitchens-brothers photo (first photo as you scroll down), which claims that the rather Christopher-ish looking man on the left is Peter. 
So, I finally watched ‘Slumdog Millionaire’…
…after my recent time in India.
I’m not sure what the best order (trip>film or film>trip) would have been, but the experience certainly was reinforced by watching the film – which is, of course given its popularity/success, quite good.
At Carey Baptist today, our ‘after dinner mints’ (regular guest speaker spot after Tuesday lunch) guest was Mark Grantham, accompanied by his Dad, Chris, and another lady (whose name escapes me).
Mark, despite his cerebral palsy induced disability, has done very well with what he has. He advocates internationally on behalf of disabled persons, and sells chocolate bars on Broadway street in Newmarket, Auckland, to raise money to support his five World Vision sponsor children. His father has just published a book called ‘The Chocolate Seller on Broadway and His Kids‘, which has been noticed in the media – and apparently had some large NZ names at the book-launch, which is great to hear.
It’s inspiring, and not a little humbling, to see someone with such passion. I especially appreciated Mark and Chris’ sharing about how their faith has been challenged, sharpened and strengthened through dealing with disability. Everyone (even supermodels/actors apparently) has physical things about them they wouldn’t mind changing (which are probably all-too-often determined by cultural standards of what a human should look like). But what really matters is what we do with what we’ve got.
Another observation about some of the theological (as in, not biological) features of the text of Genesis 1… More »
On the 5th day, God filled the skies and seas with all kinds of sky-life (‘every sort of winged bird’) and sea-life (’swarms of living creatures’). Everything that flies through the sky. Everything that lives in the sea. A few points: More »
So I should probably post about my recent trip to India.
I could give a ‘what we got up to’ report of the work our team did (some still over – some still yet to go) on the new Freeset T-shirts building. But we didn’t only go as labourers – we went to observe as well. Kerry took us on a couple of ‘walks’ to see the areas around Freeset, and also we saw other bits of Kolkata as well. I suppose I’m more inclined to reflect on what I observed and the thoughts it brought to mind – many of which will still tick over in my head for some time to come. More »
There’s a nice parallel between Dawkins’ less-than-informed rant against theism in The God Delusion (God would have to be very, very complex, because I, Richard Dawkins, zoologist, say so) and the recent apparently less-than-informed ‘refutation’ of evolutionary theory by Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini in What Darwin Got Wrong.
Will the people defending Dawkins (a la ‘Must he hold a theology degree before he can critique it!?’) lend the same defense to the authors of this new work (‘Must the authors bother to interact with evolution as actually understood by evolutionists!?’)?
I will be offering some reflection on my recent trip to Kolkata, India…
…but probably not this week.
Cheers
Some random thoughts about NZ Bus, the atheist bus ad campaign and complaining persons (NZ Bus is currently not going to run the ad in response to public criticism)… More »
I picked up a copy of Gustavo Gutierrez’s ‘A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation‘ for a) my growing interest in the biblical theme of ‘Freedom’/'Liberation’, and b) the ‘Themes in a Missional Spirituality’ block-course I’ll be taking this semester at Carey Baptist College – with guest lecturer – and author and theologian – Charles Ringma (very exciting!).
He ends the Conclusion with this:
We must be careful not to fall into intellectual self-satisfaction, into a kind of triumphalism of erudite and advanced ‘new’ visions of Christianity. The only thing that is really new is to accept day by day the gift of the Spirit, who makes us love – in our concrete options to build a true human fellowship, in our historical initiatives to subvert an order of injustice – with the fullness with which Christ loved us. To paraphrase a well-known text of Pascal, we can say that all the political theologies, the theologies of hope, of revolution, and of liberation, are not worth one act of genuine solidarity with exploited social classes. They are not worth one act of faith, love, and hope, committed – in one way or another – in active participation to liberate humankind from everything that dehumanizes it and prevents it from living according to the will of the Father. (p.174)
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