Category Archives: Snippets

Interesting or humorous snippets

Religious tolerance and secularist intolerance

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For my 300th post (at least, the one which WordPress numbers 300), I return to the theme of tolerance. A couple of weeks ago I quoted Justin Thacker of the Evangelical Alliance on Deciding to tolerate difference. In fact the article I quoted from was in part a trailer for a major speech on tolerance between religions by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, which was given last night. Now Ruth Gledhill reports on the speech, and on the intolerant response to it from secularists.

See also what Joel Edwards actually said about tolerance in Ruth’s article in The Times. Here is an extract:

It is our task in this debate to persuade society that tolerance is not the absence of conviction, or even of conversion. It is the absence of coercion. In a liberal democracy it is more intolerant to disallow religious views based on secular prejudice …

It makes a nice change for religious people to be presented in the secular media as standing up for tolerance, and for secularists to be seen as opposing this.

One commenter on a previous post of mine implied that I supported coercion against practising homosexuals. I don’t. I do hold to the right of people to express their disapproval of homosexual practice. And I support the right, and the duty, of churches not to appoint practising homosexuals to positions of leadership. For other homosexuals, I leave the decision on whether to practise or not between them and God.

The CIA edits Wikipedia …

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… according to the BBC. So do the Vatican, political parties, and companies.

So what? Isn’t the whole point of Wikipedia that anyone can edit its entries? But they cannot do so completely anonymously, they can be traced through their IP addresses, which can often be linked to physical addresses. That is one of Wikipedia’s safeguards.

The only surprise here is that the CIA was so incompetent, or so deliberately open, as to do this editing through computers and IP addresses known to belong to it. It would have been rather easy for them to do this editing through proxy computers at anonymous residential or commercial locations.

Facing up to Facebook

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Not long ago I thought that Facebook was a toy application for kids, or at least for students. But it seems to be gaining in popularity even with serious and not so young bloggers like my old friends Eddie Arthur (did I call him serious?) and David Couchman, not to mention younger bloggers like Dave Walker of the Cartoon Blog.

And then last week, at the Fusion service at my church, mainly for youth, the young preacher was saying that we should not give God limited access to our selves, as on Facebook we can give our not so good friends limited access to our profiles, but we should give God unlimited access to our lives. Afterwards he told me that 90% of the congregation were regular users of Facebook and so would understand his analogy. Well, I suspect he was exaggerating: I know of at least three others who were at that service and not on Facebook, and the congregation was under 40. But I took his point.

And then yesterday I read somewhere that “only 2%” of pensioners use sites like Facebook. Well, if even pensioners are starting to use it, perhaps I should before I become one! Not to mention what Dave Walker wrote:

if you are in inside it is all very well, but outside there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So yesterday I signed up. If any of my blogging friends would like to become my Facebook friends as well, send me an invitation for peter AT qaya DOT org, or send me your e-mail by e-mail to that address or in a comment. But, unless I know you well, and because of the well known security concerns, I don’t guarantee to give you the same unlimited access to me that I am (in principle) giving to God.

Smenita yet again

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I was thinking of posting some profound thoughts for this post number 200, as I tried for my 100th post (which for some reason became number 101 here in WordPress). But I couldn’t think of anything, so instead you get this item of trivia:

Smenita is back yet again! I thought we had seen the last of her, with the completely new Blogger software package. But it was not to be, she has struck again tonight. At least she is not cruelly eating comments as she did last year, but being benign as she was in January:

Smenita doesn’t seem to be the problem she used to be. In the past when I typed in her name Blogger didn’t recognise it, and gave it to me again for word verification. Now Blogger does recognise “smenita” and accept the comment, and repeats the same word verification.

But how long will she be around this time, and when will she next turn up? Does Lingamish’s Institute for Smenitalogical Studies need to be reopened? At least, the Blogger folks need to tweak their random word generator so that it doesn’t get into loops like this.

At least I don’t have this problem any more on my own blog now that I have moved to WordPress. I do see some repeats in my list of verification words, which are Bible names, but it doesn’t get stuck in a loop like the Blogger one. At least, not yet!

John Stott announces his retirement

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I thank Adrian Warnock for the news that John Stott is to retire at last, at the age of 86.

Adrian also clarifies Stott’s position on penal substitutionary atonement. I don’t think I can fully accept this position. But at least this confirmation that Stott’s view of PSA is clearly different from Chalke’s spares Stott from a danger of severe embarrassment: the invitation for his final speaking engagement at Keswick will not be withdrawn because he is perceived as taking a “soft” position on PSA.

I greatly appreciate Stott’s ministry, despite our relatively minor differences over PSA and also some different opinions on charismatic issues. It is now over 30 years since Stott’s book Christ the Controversialist (IVP, 1970) played a major part in bringing me from a rather vague Christianity to a committed evangelical faith. The book is still on my bookshelf.

Stott will be greatly missed. I wish him a long and happy retirement.

Steve Chalke's other marathon

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Rev Steve Chalke has reclaimed the world record for the most money raised by running in a marathon, nearly £2 million (or US $4 million) – news from the Church Times, tip from Adrian, but nothing else in this article is new. See also this article.

Yes, this is the same Steve Chalke who is still being vilified by many Christians for calling a distorted view of the atonement “cosmic child abuse”. The money he raised shows how many people still support him and his ministries. Chalke completed the London marathon in less than four hours, but his atonement marathon has been running for nearly four years, and still looks set to run and run.

Don't filter out God's messages as spam!

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I am very grateful for my spam filters, both the one for my e-mail which catches most of the 600 or so spam e-mails per month which are sent to me, and for Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam and Akismet which catch most of the spam comments sent to this blog. It is sad that some of these spam e-mails are now coming from apparently genuine Christian ministries such as Christian Music Updates (no, I won’t give a link to them).

In this busy world where more and more people seem to be trying to catch our attention, I’m sure most of us have equivalents to spam filters for our junk “snail mail”, telephone calls and callers at the door. I suppose we all throw away some mail unopened and politely put down the phone on some callers. We can even find ways of getting rid of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons on our doorsteps.

But there is a danger in all spam filters and equivalents, that if they are used without great care they can filter out genuine messages, that people who we really want to hear from are unable to contact us because their messages are being wrongly discarded as spam.

Dave Warnock makes the point in passing here (explained further in the comments) that even messages from God can get caught in our spam filters. Of course at least since the childhood of Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1-10) people have often mistaken the voice of God for a human message, but God in his persistence has managed to communicate in the end. But in these days when there are so many messages bombarding us, it is perhaps far too easy for us to filter out all messages which we don’t immediately recognise. In these circumstances, what chance has God of being able to communicate with us?

Well, of course if God really needs to communicate with us, he will find a way. We should be careful about pushing him this far, as his way may be through sickness or even death (compare 1 Corinthians 11:30). But in other cases, if we won’t listen to him he simply gives up on us, and perhaps looks for someone else to do his work.

So surely (and here I am preaching to myself as much as to others) each of us needs to find a place and a time where we can get away from the insistent voices of the world trying to grab our attention, let down our spam filters, and listen to what God has to say to us.