Monthly Archives: November 2007

Ruth Gledhill is also having problems with comments

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Ruth Gledhill of The Times gives an excellent illustration of why it is important for comments to be allowed on blogs. Astonishingly, she had to put a post on her own well known blog just to contact a blogger who misquoted her. Here is her whole post, including the title:

Christopher of In God’s Coutry – contact me

This is the only way I can think of contacting you as the unhelpful people who run your Six Apart software won’t contact you on my behalf and it seems to be impossible to register to post a comment on your blog. Neither can I find any contact details for you on your blog. Your post misquotes me and needs correcting, that’s all. Please email me, thank you, Ruth.

Not brains on a stick

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John Hobbins has made an interesting point, which many of you may not see because it is hidden underneath some Hebrew in a post on Psalm 100 which seems a bit heavy to digest on top of turkey and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving day (not that I am eating them, but John is and no doubt most Americans are):

Verbal acclamation of יהוה [Yahweh, the LORD] was part of a kinesthetic act of worship. You shout. You whoop it up. You process into God’s presence. Hasidic Jews and charismatic Christians know this. Others approach worship as if they were brains on a stick.

Well, as I posted before I tend to be kinesthetic. That is surely why I don’t relate to worship which appeals to “brains on a stick”. And maybe that is part of why I love charismatic worship – but the other part is the presence of the Holy Spirit among the people of God.

Thanks, John, and enjoy your feast and the rest of your holiday!

Some comment threads from Adrian's blog

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Here, for the record, I am copying and saving some recent comment threads from Adrian Warnock’s blog. I think I have included all posts which have any comments (even the one on football!) back to the beginning of November, which includes the whole series on Piper’s book about Wright as well as the controversial Mark Driscoll Firm, But Kind, About Joel Osteen on Prosperity Teaching. Continue reading →

Do not read Adrian's blog any more

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I am asking my readers and anyone else to stop reading Adrian Warnock’s blog. This is because Adrian has made a deliberate decision to refuse to be accountable for any errors and distortions which might be found on this blog. He read my post yesterday on the need for accountability in blogging, and commented on it, and then made the decision to go ahead with closing his blog to comments.

If you want to make your opinion on this matter known to Adrian, please e-mail him on this address, which he makes public on his blog.

I may write more about this later, but I must go out now.

Ever felt like this about comments?

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Have you ever felt like Dilbert does here about comments on your blog, or responses to anything else you have written? Perhaps this is how Adrian feels about comments. But ultimately, of course, blog comments don’t matter because they are not (usually) from our boss. So if we don’t like them, we can ignore them. The comments which do matter are those, which don’t usually appear on our blog servers, from our heavenly Boss.

Comments, Respect and Accountability

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A couple of days ago I criticised Adrian Warnock for censoring comments. He has shown the inconsistency, or at least the arbitrary application, of his comment policy by accepting the following comment – not written by himself, of course, in fact from an otherwise unidentifiable “Mark”:

every time I hear/read Driscoll he gets more and more obsessed and more and more extreme

while rejecting my much less ad hominem one, even when toned down to present the “accusation” as a question, like Adrian’s (in post titles) “Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel?” and “Does Piper Neglect the Resurrection?” But I am pleased to see in the latter post a critical evaluation of one of those I have called his idols.

Well, Adrian of course has the right to accept or reject comments as he wishes. But if he wants his blog to retain any respect or credibility the comments he should be rejecting are ones like anonymous Mark’s rather than mine.

Now I can understand Adrian wanting to get rid of the problem of comments completely. He wrote in a comment here on this blog

I am thinking seriously of nuking the whole concept of comments over at my place. I do hope you guys understand my dilemna.

Yes, Adrian, I understand your dilemma. Justin Taylor faces a similar one, and is also considering disabling comments. But I still feel that your problem is that you are over-sensitive. Blogging is like a kitchen, if you can’t take the heat you need to get out of it. Continue reading →

Driscoll: Single men "cannot fully reflect God"

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The issue I was trying to raise in my rejected comment on Adrian Warnock’s post has been ignored in the discussion which has raged about it. But it is an important issue. Here is part of what Mark Driscoll said at the MenMakers conference in Edinburgh, as reported by Adrian:

The only thing that was described as “not good” before the fall was man being alone. Some single guys are strange, and what they need is a woman. There is nothing that sanctifies a man like a woman can sanctify him. Many young men run away from responsibility and think being alone is good. This is not true. The difference between a man and a boy is the responsibilities they carry. You need help! …

God is not alone. He is trinitarian. Man does not have that relationship in himself. He cannot fully reflect God unless he has someone alongside him—namely a woman. …

So, according to Driscoll, we single men are “strange”, irresponsible, boys rather than men, and, most damagingly of all, unable to fully reflect God. Now I can understand him coming to this conclusion from reading the Old Testament. Indeed it seems to have been the majority Jewish view, both in Jesus’ time and today, that men are fulfilled only in marriage. But in the New Testament we see a very different picture. So, no wonder I wrote

Looks like Driscoll has not read 1 Corinthians 7:25-32, or noticed that Jesus was not married. Come to think of it, looks like Driscoll has not read the New Testament at all, except perhaps for isolated verses, …

If, as Driscoll teaches, a single man “cannot fully reflect God”, then what does that imply for his view of Jesus? Is he not “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15)? In principle, as shown here, Driscoll accepts that Jesus should be an example for Christians, that

Being spirit-filled means living the life of Jesus.

But why is it not Spirit-filled but rather irresponsible and not reflecting God to follow Jesus’ example of singleness?

Within the Christian church there has always been an ambivalence towards marriage. Continue reading →

A ray of hope for the Anglican Communion?

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For the first time for a long time I have seen some news offering a ray of hope for the Anglican Communion and the Church of England. According to the Daily Telegraph as reported by Anglican Mainstream,

The Archbishop of Canterbury is preparing to target individual bishops whose pro-gay policies threaten to derail his efforts to avert schism … by withdrawing their invitations to next year’s Lambeth Conference.

It seems to me that this is almost the only path which Archbishop Rowan Williams can take which has any real chance of holding the Anglican Communion together. Postponing the Lambeth Conference would help, but only by postponing the inevitable unless combined with some other strong action. But by excluding from the Conference bishops who deliberately flout the church’s agreed policies on homosexuality, he just may be able to avoid the threatened mass boycott by more conservative bishops, which would imply a schism right through the heart of Anglicanism.

The problem now for Dr Williams is exactly who to take off the Lambeth invitation list. Continue reading →