Geek Ramblings

One new thing which has struck me about Lent this year is that it is a time to seek a new vision, a direction to go for the future.

Jesus, having been affirmed by God - "You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased" - goes out into the wilderness to discover how to live out that affirmation. Likewise we, being reminded in the run-up to Easter just how much God loves us, have the opportunity in Lent to take time out to seek our response, our direction for the rest of the year, maybe longer.

This blog has changed a lot over the years. It seems to me that it has recently been tending toward geekiness, and that this is the trend to continue.

By 'geekiness' I mostly mean: enthusiasm, knowledge, enough understanding to realise that there is far more I don't know than I do, and an attitude that considers this to be wonderful news - there is always going to be more to learn!

I am a Bible geek, and I have written a lot about that. I am also a science geek: there's been a lot less about that recently; I think I should enthuse about science more in future. Also I am a computer geek: I do write a bit about that already, so I'll just see what comes up in that area.

I also love reading or hearing other geeks (by the above definition) enthuse. Not specifically in 'my' subjects, but whatever their area of expertise and geekiness may be. Enthusiasm can and should be infectious. I have rather lost track of other blogging geeks over the years; this coming year is a good time to invest some (scarce) time and (scarcer) energy in finding some more. Any suggestions in the comments below would be greatly appreciated.

What have you discovered over this Lenten period? About yourself or about this world? Are you an enthusiast? If so, what can you do with that enthusiasm? Do share below, start a conversation, "it's good to talk".

A Short History Of (My) Blogging

Two posts in the last six months - not really the way to build a blog.

I was looking back recently at some of my earliest blog posts from Christmas 2005. Back then the plan was to post weekly, at least, and to link topics of general interest across to questions of faith. Easy for Christmas, of course, but there were also posts about films and music - I even had a post (written by someone else) about a Coronation Street storyline. Back then I was website editor for a church website, and the hope was that such a blog - running in parallel with the church magazine - would attract visitors and interest from a wider range of people than simply those searching for "baptist church in Caversham". Which it did.

Unfortunately, what it didn't attract was posts from other church members - the one linked above was the only one I got. Also, we lost the church magazine: mostly because the new pastor - although, IMO, definitely a good guy - tended to preach very legalistically and obsess about sex, which drove away our magazine editor. So when said pastor - who was also very pro-Israeli - tried to censor the blog for not being sufficiently pro-Israel (the offending article is here), I decided I was getting nowhere and resigned as website editor, so the blog became standalone. You can see my thoughts at the time in the series of three posts from here.

So "Webitorial Ramblings" became "BlackPhi's Website Ramblings", and the posts carried on - still more than weekly, and still based around news, culture, and Caversham life, plus a bit of what was going on in church. A month or two later, a great guy named Jonathan Jones kindly invited me over to Blog City, which (back then) was a blogging community - with interaction and feedback, and real live comments! So I started blogging there in parallel, see here for my first Blog-City post, complete with kindly words from JJ.

Both blogs seemed to have their own readership, and transferring posts between them helped with proof-reading, so I ran them in parallel for more than two years - I can't easily count the number of posts in that time, but I'm sure it was comfortably over weekly. One of the final few posts on my standalone blog was one I found amusing about the dangers of DHMO - a widely used industrial chemical which is reported to cause over 400 deaths a year in the UK alone. Late in 2008 we moved house, and I retired the PC I had been using as a web server, so I decided it was time to retire the standalone blog also.

Blog City continued; during 2009 posts thinned out a bit but remained not too far off the weekly post average (although much more erratic in distribution, eg 7 posts in Sept 2009, 2 in October). Looking back there seem to be a lot of music-themed posts in this period, eg here and here. Posts picked up during 2010, although the feel of them seems heavier to me now, having just reread the earlier 2005/6 ones. Maybe I was just older and wearier, or maybe there wasn't so much to say. Certainly Caversham Baptist Church was becoming more of a drag and a drain, which can't have helped. There were great people there, but as a church it was (IMHO of course) losing the plot.

Then Blog City closed down. We had plenty of notice, but it was still really sad - like an established neighbourhood being demolished. I started up a new blog here on BlogSpot, but it really isn't the same: if there is a BlogSpot community I still haven't managed to tap into it. The first post got several comments, but only from BC friends, otherwise it seems to be only techie posts that get much response here, most notably one on Trusteer Rapport problems.

Posts dropped to fortnightly on average in 2011, slightly better in 2012, then less than monthly in 2013. Post lengths have crept up, and content seems to me to be getting more religious. At the end of 2012 I left Caversham Baptist Church - a painful decision but necessary, I felt. Maybe post frequency has dropped off because I'm not so angry? Or, more likely, because the final few years at CBC left me feeling very jaded and disillusioned - it's one thing to hear about churches which turn away from God, quite another to be in the middle of that. It's especially bewildering to see that the individuals involved remain Godly, whilst the 'church' community loses its direction, and stops following Jesus.

So here I am in 2014, with another post which is too long. I think it's time for another rethink, before I give up on the blog. Maybe it's time to reverse direction: the old theory was to start from the news, culture, Caversham life and seek Jesus there; maybe it is time to try working from the inside out, to start from religion and see if I can find some way to relate that to the real world. It'll certainly be a challenge!

Love The Sinner But Hate The Sin?

The total transformation that occurs within a chrysalis has always amazed me. A caterpillar ties itself up with a little silk, then its whole internal structure is reworked into something totally new. After a period of weeks or months the new butterfly is revealed, yet it is formed from just the same stuff as the old caterpillar - everything is reused except for a little silk and the outer skin. There's a wonderful description of the process, by Dr Lincoln Brower, here.

Comparisons between the caterpillar/butterfly metamorphosis and resurrection have been made before, of course, but these usually involve the thoroughly unbiblical image of some sort of immaterial butterfly casting off the shackles of material existence to fly free into heaven. It's a pretty image, and I can see why those who just want to escape from the world might like it. The God of the Bible, though, isn't interested in helping us escape from the world, he wants to renew the world, and us as well.

Jesus was the first true resurrection and he is the model for how it works. After he had been raised his tomb was empty and he was recognisably and physically human ... although changed in some odd way, maybe best described as more than human, but never less.

So for us the biggest, most important transformation to look forward to at resurrection is not the change to our bodies, but the change to our hearts and minds. That is where we will soar like a butterfly, rather than an earthbound caterpillar - doubtless the new improved body promised will be great (especially for those of us who are middle-aged or more), but renewal starts with the heart.

So why the post title: 'Love the sinner but hate the sin?' - what does that well-known phrase have to do with butterflies?

Over on Jared Byas' blog, he recently wrote a post with this same title (apart from the '?') which got me thinking and commenting to the extent that it became clear I really ought to do my own blog post. The heart of his argument is that the separation between sin and sinner is spurious, and a denial of the embracing power of God's love:

If we don’t accept that deep down we are still sinners and that sin is a part of our identity and yet Jesus still loves us, then we will keep naively and unintentionally hurting a lot people. By definition, sinners have sin as a part of who they are. So if you use this cliché, what you really mean is that I will love this part of your life but I will hate that part of your life. Or should I say, that’s often what people hear you saying. And you wonder why people find Christians judgemental and not very Christ-like? ... We are all sinners. We are all sin. We are all loved. All of us.

Jesus once said that the things we do and say come out of our hearts, from who we are. So separating 'sin' from 'sinner' is indeed spurious. So how can God love us (and our neighbours)? Does God love sin?

I think a good part of the answer to this lies in the transforming power of the Resurrection. Some churches and churchgoers talk in terms of judgement: God destroying anything that is tainted by evil. Yet resurrection promises transformation: God changing evil to good. It is like the chrysalis: all of the caterpillar is used in making the butterfly, nothing is rejected. So it is that God can see the potential for goodness and beauty in all that we are, even the parts that seem dark and ugly, and so He loves us - all that we are - and sends Jesus to save us, so that we may be made beautifully new.

Fearing The Loss

I came across a beautiful post today, on Rachel Held Evans' blog but written by Lisa McCay.

Entitled 'Peace Like A River', the post is about the feelings of fear that came after she gave birth to their first baby. In her final paragraph she includes the following wise words:

I used to feel like a failure that I couldn’t banish that fear altogether – that I never felt “perfectly” peaceful – but I don’t feel that way any more. I’m learning to greet that sort of fear respectfully without bowing before it. I’m learning to use it as a reminder to turn toward gratitude rather than worry.

If you fear losing something let that be a reminder to focus on gratitude for what you have, not on worries about the possibility of one day not having it.

I'm good at imagining things that might go wrong - I guess you could say it's a gift. I have a wife who hardly ever gets home when she says she will - I would definitely say she is a gift. Put the two together and the potential for worry is enormous. I carefully put such fears aside: they are just too crippling if allowed to get a foothold.

But McCay's approach is much more wholesome: when I am worried about losing something (or, especially, someone) I need to remember to be thankful for the good things I have. It is so easy to allow fear of future loss to get in the way of enjoying our present.

God is good; if some of his gifts do turn out to have a time limit, surely that is all the more reason to appreciate them to the full while they are still with us.