Welcome
Welcome to my blog!As I begin this I wanted to share my thought process a little. I've been toying with the idea of doing this for a while. Starting something like this fills me with apprehension about...
View ArticleCome and Go
"Where can I go to get away from your Spirit? Where can I run from you? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I lie down in the grave, you are there." Psalm 139:7-8How often have you been in a...
View ArticleBible Say, Bible Do
The other day someone posed this question to me: is Genesis sexist? It got me thinking about the way in which we approach Scripture, with what we expect of it as much as anything else. So here's a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mark of Blame?
The cinematic equivalent of the Cain and Abel story. Credit: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, New Line Cinema)Sometimes it's the small things that can make all the difference - the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Paradise Now? One Dangerous Afterlife Perspective
Here goes. This is going to be my first attempt at bringing in reflections from film into the blog. I confess, The movie I'll talk about is straight out of my Film Studies module. It's called Paradise...
View ArticleFlags Are Dangerous
"Abner shouted to Joab, "Must the sword kill forever? Surely you must know this will only end in sadness!" " 2 Samuel 2:26Don't worry. This isn't going to be a health and safety post about hazardous...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An Unexpected Generosity: How 'The Hobbit' Shows Us the Merciful Face of God
It's the film that everyone and their dog are going to see. Nine years after the concluding part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was released, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has hit the screens....
View ArticleWomen Bishops: Why It's Not a Big Issue
By now the dust has settled on the outcome of the Church of England's vote on women bishops. And there was quite a dust storm. The story occupied central attention on British news sites and provoked a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Numbers Don't Change Anything (Happy New Year)
A new year is almost upon is. It's the time of year when the annual New Year's Resolutions kick into force. If they were all written down, I wonder how many of them we'd find had been kept. Probably...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is God OK With Slavery?
Christians often find it awkward to talk about slavery. It's seen as one of the fundamental injustices of human history and yet it's felt that we can't really speak out on it because...well, doesn't...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My God Laughs
Over the past few months I've found myself taking on a number of unfamiliar new roles: blogger, film critic and comedian. The latter can confuse people. How can a Christian do stand-up? Doesn't God...
View ArticleA Landmark and a Survey
It's now been a little under five months since I launched this blog, and I'm really happy with how people have been interacting with it. This week we passed the landmark of the 1,000th view. I'm really...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We All Fit Together
So this week I went to the dentist. I'll be honest - I had a couple of fillings put in. The anaesthetic left me without crucial abilities such as swallowing for a couple of hours and, I'm sure, made...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ambition and Coach Carter
Ambition can be a crippling thing. Coach Carter (Thomas Carter, 2005) is a film about a group of young people who don't have any. Their lives resolve around basketball but they generally don't have any...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Banquet / He Will Reunite Us
We all have friendships that have changed over time, people that we once used to be best of friends with but whom we haven't spoken to for years. It varies from person to person but I know that, for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Banquet / A Party Worth Going To
In my last post I explored the central place that community has in Jesus's imagery of eternity, with the picture of a banquet being a repeated theme. The main place this banquet imagery occurs is in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why I Am That Awkward Christian
Last summer I was at the Olympics. "Oh", I hear you ask, "what events did you go to?". Well, none. In fact, I saw a great deal less of the Olympic competitions when I was in London than when I was back...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shaun of the Dead: He Is Coming Back
Zombies. And Jesus. Intriguing, heh?Shaun of the Dead is, in many ways, a film about a pub. 'The Winchester' is the setting of a scene in which five characters sit alone around a table, waiting. In the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Burning For What?
In January Chris Tomlin released his latest album, Burning Lights. It was astonishingly successful, reaching number one in the US albums chart ahead of such artists as Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars and One...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dead Shepherd
The following is a short story that I originally wrote in February 2011, based on Zechariah 13:6. I share it here in part because I'm interested in introducing stories onto the blog but (by in large)...
View Article
