Yikes!

So I decided to press the Google home screen Halloween thingy.  It tells me about witches.

A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft, which is the use of magical faculties, most commonly for religious, divinatory or medicinal purposes.

Origin: Early human cultures
Grouping: Homo Sapiens
Sub-grouping: Supernatural human
Food source: Strange Brew, candy
How to avoid: Don't eat red apples from strangers; hide if you see a flock of flying monkeys
How to defeat: Throw a pail of water

 

The definition is decent enough, the origin and grouping somewhat dissonant with the sub-grouping (surely a supernatural human originates Somewhere Else and is more like a super-group than a sub-group).  Still, this is all serious stuff in a way.

 

No, wait.  Someone in the Googleplex thinks , 'It's about the kids really - let's get kid-friendly' and plonks in some comic food sources - especially candy.  After all we don't want anyone - nay, even any animal (vegans can be witches too!) getting eaten.

 

Hey no we don't want our kids to feel that the witches might really be able to GET them.  Let's make witches really easy to avoid.  Strangers and Monkeys take a hit here.

 

And given the limited possibility of having eaten such an apple proffered by the stranger, there is a moderately easy solution via a pail of water (though I imagine if practised in the child's bedroom this endangers the child's life from an irate parent).

 

Well, what fun that was.

 

Not.

 

Because the first parts are true (for supernatural human read in harmony with the divine creative principal which is the Witches' own definition) it would be useful for Google to have stuck to the facts later on.

 

The food source is the same supermarket or farm shop or village market as everyone else. 

 

Avoidance is nigh on impossible - and very discriminatory.  I'm quite surprised that Google have got away with that.  It's not going to play well if they try the same thing about Atheists, Muslims or any other religiously orientated definition of people.

 

How to defeat.  Again Google has gone all discriminatory.  Google wants to defeat a religious expression?  At least on this last point Monotheists and Witches can agree that there is - in the spiritual sense - a conspiracy of victory and defeat which spans the centuries.  Sometimes it's been expressed very unpleasantly one way or another.

 

Let me say this in sympathy of witches:  I really don't think that Google has any right to seek their defeat, or encourage children to do so.  Furthermore the average Pagan Witch would have a great deal more respect and harmony with a pail of water than a global Western-based behemoth corporation or the targeting child.

 

Yet in its simple way Google has stumbled upon spiritual warfare.  Where there is supernatural there is battle and, in the End, defeat or victory leading to harmony.  The Bible describes this as the Lord Jesus eventually putting all his enemies beneath his feet.  The Witch, on the other hand, might describe victory as beliefs in the likes of Jesus or Mohammed being subsumed in the great creative divinity god/goddess/force thingy.

 

If ordinary humans are to be on the winning side spiritually, the Bible explains, they'd be a lot wiser to put down the bucket of water and climb (as it were) the hill with a cross on it where one of them who was also God defeated other spiritual powers by the greatest possible sacrifice.  Blood, not just water.

Paid?

Continuing the theme of last Sunday's African Children Choir's inspirational visit to our church, I was brought down to (English) earth by reading this national newspaper correspondent's letter about his granddaughter's involvement in her Parish Church choir.

When asked if she was now considering being baptized into the Church, my granddaughter said she was unsure (she's 11). When asked why she sings in the Choir I was enlightened to these facts:

1) she likes singing

2) it gets her away from her nagging mum and

3) she gets paid (not a lot but paid nevertheless) and tells me she is saving her money so she can go to UNI later on in life.

She likes singing but feels the rest of the service, especially the sermon, is 'boring'. I asked her how many people attend church. "Quite a few in the morning", says she,

"How many?" says I,

"Oh about 20."

"What about Evensong" says I,

"Oh not many, about 8."

 

 

Backflips

Our church has a limited platform area.

There are two reasons why I have never done back flips as part of a service.  The first is that there is not enough room.  The second - let the reader judge whether this should be the first - is that I can't.

 

Undeterred by my poor advertisement for such an activity we had a back flip or two on Sunday evening with the third visit to our Church of the African Children's Choir (more specifically the 39th African Children's Choir).

 

What a fantastic evening we had! It is one of those evenings that makes me prouder of my faith than my country.  I should be this anyway I know.  I just cannot see how the primary school pseudo-nativity or the Cathedral School Evensong training can hope to produce the dynamic spiritual life that these choirs always display.

 

What I loved was the way that they made US feel special.  This was quite an achievement on their part.  I notice that among other things the Choir, as part of a long, long tour has sung the National Anthem at an Atlanta Braves home game which must make Sunday Evening at Union Baptist Church feel, well, intimate.

 

They have spent a lot of their recent weeks on tour in Florida.  Which must make High Wycombe feel, well, grey.





And as if that wasn't humbling enough, they leave us (and our 168th Church Anniversary weekend) to go to Malmesbury Abbey which was founded before England and over 1300 years ago.

 

 

So, what made last night special was certainly nothing that we brought to the party.  We'll have to put the specialness and the origin of back flips down to God and Africa.

Disconnect

Jesus said, "Do not worry about tomorrow" (Matthew 6).  Tomorrow is our Church's anniversary day.

We are blessed by being disconnected from our future.  Joseph Parker lyricised it thus:

What if tomorrow’s cares were here

Without its rest!

I’d rather He unlocked the day;

And, as the hours swing open, say,

“My will is best.”

The very dimness of my sight

Makes me secure;

For, groping in my misty way,

I feel His hand; I hear Him say,

“My help is sure.”

To the unbeliever, the one certainty that the future holds for all human beings is decline and death.  This, Jesus has conquered!  For the believer decline and death are the two things that can be definitively ruled out.  Jesus has disconnected us.

We are blessed in as far as we can choose to be disconnected from our past.  Lots of stuff there we want to hold in memory but plenty else:  sudden deaths, failed tests, disrupted relationships, missed opportunities, wasted years - I could go on. One thing I do, letting go those things which are past, and stretching out to the things which are before, wrote Paul the apostle.

Jesus has detached the past from us, our sins forgiven, our defeats redeemed, our failings covered, our inner wounds healed.

But there is not a third disconnect - a disconnect from the present. We may wish there was. We may behave as though there is. But with the future unrevealed and the past put behind us the Present is the location of service, commitment, attachment. 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me'. Today is mine!  I must make it His.

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, that I ought to do. And what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I shall do." (Edward Everett Hale).

Book Review: Francis Schaeffar

 

Part of Evangelical Press’s Bitesize Biographies Series, this book is an introduction to Schaeffer’s teaching and writing as well as an outline biography.  This is entirely appropriate as many readers will meet Schaeffer primarily in his writings.

There is enough information to help the reader contextualise Schaeffer’s thought in the issues he faced in the last century.  We observe him battling liberalism in American Presbyterianism then wrestling with the markedly different 20^th century evangelical cultures of North America and Europe where he founded the L’Abri Fellowship before returning to the States and engaging in some of its late century ethical issues.

This is an ideal book to read before launching into one of Schaeffer’s works.  As we move further away from the 20^th Century it becomes increasingly important to remember the issues that its evangelical leaders faced so that their writings can be appreciated in a new generation.   The mind-set of the youth of the sixties to whom Schaeffer ministered is the mind-set that inhabits the corridors of power today.  And it's hurting.