This blog's reading level

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high school

And I’m proud of it. I want this blog to be accessible to most people, not just to geniuses (like John Hobbins’ blog and, more surprisingly, ElShaddai Edwards’) or postgrads (like Iyov’s). Hat tip to Suzanne.

UPDATE, 9th November: Suzanne has blogged further on this in response to various suggestions that this test is unreliable. She linked to a site offering better defined readability tests, which are probably also more reliable. That site rates this blog with a Fog Index of 8.89, which is in the range for most popular novels, and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade (corresponding to a school grade) of 5.56. I am happy with these results. But, as Suzanne suggests, the results may be affected by sidebars.

Mark Driscoll head to head with Joel Osteen

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Adrian Warnock has posted an interesting video (ten minutes long) of two well-known American preachers head to head. The video is basically part of a sermon by Mark Driscoll, but it includes a long clip from a sermon by Joel Osteen. Driscoll is one of Adrian’s favourites, and has had some generally not so favourable mention on this blog; nevertheless I respect him for his no-nonsense approach. Osteen is, I understand, well known in the USA for his prosperity teaching on TV and radio, but is not so well known here in the UK.

Adrian’s main point in posting this video is to present it as “a model of gracious rebuke”, of Osteen by Driscoll. And indeed it is this. If only Adrian and his other favourite speakers had treated Steve Chalke with this same grace, rather than accusing him of heresy! Then the whole atonement debate would have been a lot less bitter. I too need to take Driscoll as an example of how to show gentle wisdom over such issues.

But I want to look more at the different approaches represented here by Osteen and Driscoll. Continue reading →

10-20-30

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Doug has tagged me with a new meme 10-20-30. I have been asked remember what you were doing 10, 20 and 30 years ago. So here goes:

1997: For most of the year I was home on furlough from my Bible translation work. By the end of October I was back in the capital city where I was based and getting on with checking the Old Testament translation.

1987: I started my second year of studies at London Bible College, now London School of Theology, and was enjoying getting to grips with biblical languages and with theological issues – but also, in retrospect, becoming less personally in tune with God.

1977: I graduated in physics from the University of Cambridge, and stayed on for a one year course in theoretical physics (in other places it would probably count as an MA course). At the time I intended to work on a PhD in this area, but by the next summer I had changed my mind, and so took the job which brought me to my current home in Chelmsford.

In response I will tag Lingamish, Eddie Arthur and Tim Chesterton.

My ancestral home

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This week I spent a few days visiting friends in Sheffield, and included a day out in the beautiful Peak District, in perfect autumn weather. See my photos in this Facebook album. During this day I paid a brief visit this week to my ancestral home. No, not the one in this first picture, which is Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, although I greatly enjoyed walking around its grounds. But the house I have in mind dates from the same period. The first house at Chatsworth was built in 1552, but the current house dates from around 1700.

The house I really want to talk about here belonged to and was probably built by my ancestor Arnold Kyrke, and an inscription “AK 1559” gives its approximate date. Continue reading →

Bring on the Recession

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This is the startling title and thesis of an article by George Monbiot, published in the Guardian on 9th October, and brought to my attention by Paul Trathen. To summarise, Monbiot argues that continued economic growth is unsustainable and likely to lead to ecological disaster, and that we, in western countries, are no longer in poverty and so have no need for further growth.

Is it not time to recognise that we have reached the promised land, and should seek to stay there? Why would we want to leave this place in order to explore the blackened wastes of consumer frenzy followed by ecological collapse? Surely the rational policy for the governments of the rich world is now to keep growth rates as close to zero as possible?

Of course governments will not follow this rational policy, but will seek continued growth. But will it work? Recent events in the banking system have shown how volatile things may be, and people are beginning to realise this.

My new houseI have just decided to buy a new house (and have had an offer accepted on this one, just a mile from my current home and very near my church), Continue reading →

Trying to be gentle

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Eclexia in a post on her blog, and Doug in a comment here, have rightly taken me to task for a lack of gentleness in my last post. Indeed Eclexia felt intimidated by the way I was arguing. See also my comments in reply to each of them. I’m sorry that I have not lived up to my intentions when I changed the name of this blog. I will try to do better in future!

Also, as I mentioned to Eclexia, my lack of gentleness was more evident on other blogs, but that should be no excuse for failing to show the fruit of the Spirit!

"I wanted to know Jesus, but you gave me a library"

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These are the words of an illiterate boy, quoted by Jackie Pullinger, then by holy heteroclite and by Henry Neufeld. Holy heteroclite also quotes Bono (complete with YouTube clip of him singing this): “I wanted to meet God; but you sold me religion”.

I post these quotes here in the hope that they will be picked up by blogging friends like John Hobbins, Iyov and Doug Chaplin, who seem to believe in giving to people wanting to find Jesus or meet God a work of literature rather than the Word of God in a form they can understand.

Being read on an African beach

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I must say it is a rather nice thought that Lingamish has been reading my posts, about literary translation, on his mobile phone while lounging in a hammock outside a beach hut in one of the remotest corners of Africa. He even has the pictures to prove it. As my ClustrMap shows, this blog is attracting readers in nearly every part of the world; there are obvious reasons why north Africa and central Asia are rather thinly represented.

It would of course be an even nicer thought if I was able to join Lingamish on the African beach, to blog from there and not just be read there, rather than suffer the increasing cold of an English autumn. Actually it has been rather pleasant here for the last few days, but frost is on its way and I am not looking forward to it.