Category Archives: Humour

Anglican warfare

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A quote from Ruth Gledhill of The Times:

The chilling thing about Anglican warfare is that participants are too well-versed in the Word ever to need to resort to true expletives. Instead, we try to murder each other with the sharp veneer of Christian civility honed through decades of service on parochial church councils.

Well, the current goings-on in the USA and Canada, where real splits and legal proceedings are now under way, show some worldwide Anglicans in a slightly different light. But in the Church of England which I know and have a love-hate relationship with, Ruth’s description still seems to fit.

My inner European

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I’m a little surprised to find that:


Your Inner European is French!


Smart and sophisticated.You have the best of everything – at least, *you* think so.

Who’s Your Inner European?

I don’t think I am actually very sophisticated, nor smart in the sense that I think they have in mind. I never used to like the French, but I have grown to appreciate them. It’s just that sometimes I wish the feelings were mutual.

But they have got me with the picture of the Eiffel Tower. Here is a real one of me near it, from last December.

Thanks to Pam for the tip.

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.

A Mighty Deliverer of Mail?

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As my blogging moratorium for Burma has just ended, by British time, I will now post this snippet which I found in “The Month”, the newspaper of the Church of England Diocese of Chelmsford, October 2007, p.5:

‘DYNAMIC equivalence’ is a wonderful thing. It’s when Bible translators use a term which conveys the significance of a word rather than its literal meaning. For example, ‘blood’ may be rendered ‘life’. But it doesn’t always work. When children at the Cathedral School were invited to write their own psalm, in place of ‘Mighty Deliverer’ they unanimously proposed ‘Postman’.

Well, at least our heavenly Mighty Deliverer doesn’t go on strike!

Also this one on the same page:

ASSISTANT Organist at Llandaff Cathedral, David Geoffrey-Thomas, tells me their organ has been struck by lightning and all the electronics fused on ‘loud’. How frustrating to have been the organist when what they really needed was a conductor.

I will point this one out to the PA operators in our church who like to turn the music up really loud. They might find this a useful excuse when people complain about the volume.

Good news in the Bible for British drinkers

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I found the following interesting Bible verse:

No longer do they drink wine with a song;
the beer is bitter to its drinkers.

(Isaiah 24:9, TNIV = NIV, American and British editions)

Good news for British drinkers: when songs are sung, there is no longer wine on offer but beer, and better still none of that continental lager but best bitter!

Of course it isn’t actually supposed to mean this in the context, which is a very negative one. But I wonder if the translators realised that at least here in Britain “bitter” is a positive attribute when applied to beer. So this is an illustration of just how careful Bible translators have to be.

The spoof that wasn't

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Doug linked to a post The Day I Became a Calvinist at Parchment and Pen which he seemed puzzled by. I read it and decided that it was a rather convincing spoof, a reworking of a testimony of how someone became a Christian into a story of becoming a Calvinist. Among the clear signals of it being a spoof are the introduction, illustrated by the picture “The Scream”:

There are a few things that people never forget. The details of certain tragedies and trials stay by your side and the vivid details remind you of their significance.

This is followed by examples: 9/11, the death of a sister … and the day the author became a Calvinist, presented in the context as the greatest tragedy and trial in his life!

Not recognising the name of the author, C. Michael Patton, I judged that he was a non-believer or a rather liberal Christian who wanted to mock both Calvinism and testimonies of conversion.

It was only when I started to skim through the comments (over 150 in three days) that I realised that people were taking this seriously. Had the commenters not spotted that this was a spoof? Then Patton himself joined in. Was he just keeping up the joke? I still wasn’t quite sure until I posted my first comment asking explicitly if this was a spoof, to which Patton replied:

Peter, I am not sure what you mean. Maybe it was a bad post, but it was meant to be “a day in the life” type post. The scream is illustrative of how many people handle unconditional election.

Well, I get the last part, for hearing too much about that doctrine makes me want to scream. But I don’t see how Patton, as confirmed his further comments, fails to recognise how good a spoof this is. After all, it’s not that he doesn’t have a sense of humour, for he appreciates Tominthebox News Network.

If you are not a Calvinist, do read it as a spoof.

If you are a Calvinist, please explain to me why becoming one can be listed as a tragedy and a trial.

For my own take on these issues, see my previous post.

The least effective form of evangelism

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Quote from Dave Walker’s The Cartoon Blog:

I have found that evangelism is probably the least effective form of evangelism.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, this is how he continues:

If you want to communicate your faith to someone else the best way to do it is not to try.

I’m not sure that I quite agree, but I certainly understand his point! So I will not call this an evangelistic blog, even if the Christian Blogging Awards might classify it as such.

Dave continues:

The fact that someone does not evangelise on their blog could mean that they are not really interested in evangelising, or it could mean that they are evangelising using a non-evangelising method.

Neither of these, Dave. I am interested in evangelising, and it would be great if this blog had that effect (although somewhat surprising given its subject matter), but I am not using any method, not even a non-evangelising one. I mainly discuss Christian and theological matters because that is the purpose of this blog. I aim to do so in a way accessible to all, not as part of a method, but because this is respectful and (hopefully) as an example to Christians of how to talk about their faith without using impenetrable jargon.

Dave asked:

If you have been converted to Christianity by this post please say so in the comments.

I would say the same (!) but would also add that if you read this blog regularly but are not a Christian please also say so in the comments, as I would like to write things which are relevant to my readers.

Blair the Antichrist?

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Oh dear, Tony Blair’s chair in 10 Downing Street is hardly cold and Cranmer (thanks for the link, Eddie) is effectively proclaiming him the Antichrist. Let’s see, the beast with ten horns (ten years?) who seems to have been slain (well, he did jump before he was pushed) but within hours has been “healed” by being offered a new post as, in Cranmer’s words, “Middle East messiah envoy, where he will set up his throne in Jerusalem”. Throw into the mix his expected conversion to Catholicism and possible candidacy for “Emperor President of Europe”, providing “a pulpit for Mr Blair’s personal philosophy – pro-European, anti-State, anti-individualist, socialist, federalist, ‘third way’ Catholic-ecumenism.” So, plenty of room for wild speculation here.

But I agree with Cranmer in shedding no tears for Tony Blair. However I wish him well in his new job. And I wish well to Gordon Brown his successor, a man who I hope has been waiting in the wings for his chance to undo much of the damage caused by Blair. Well, maybe that is hoping for too much, but at least there should be a chance of real action, and not just spin, on issues of social justice like third world poverty.