Mike in Narnia?

"MAX FLETCHER, a gangly, asthmatic teenager, is sure the gray van following him is involved in his dad’s disappearance. His concerns soon lead him into an inter-dimensional battle of wits and courage when a strange boy gives Max and the McKenzie twins, VIC and MEREDITH, a puzzling poem. Enlisted as Irregular Ones in the service of the Arkalos immortals, Max, Vic, and Meredith use their extraordinary powers to save Max’s dad from kidnappers, then set out to prevent KOS EIVAL of the planet Gentor from acquiring unspeakable powers and enslaving Earth."

That's the blurb to Mike Feazell's book for younger readers, The Irregular Ones of Luemenor.  It's the first of a series featuring lead character Max. Mike apparently has had a longstanding interest in children's literature, though any book that features unicorns on the cover has to be ten points down in youth cred. to start with. 

I'm not sure there's a Christian subtext, but knowing Mike's background I suspect there has to be.  But this much one can confidently say, it's gotta be better than his serious stuff for adults!

In any case, here's the Amazon Kindle link: The Irregular Ones of Luemenor: A Max Fletcher Adventure.

About Face on FB

I give up!

It's been months since I deactivated my Facebook account.  I even briefly flirted with Google+.  But it seems you can't fully engage with life in the second decade of the twenty-first century without it.

From petrol station promotions to the bar on the main street, Facebook is all over the place.  Even if their share price isn't what they hoped, it ain't goin' away any time soon.  Personally, I'm not much into social media, but tonight - in a moment of weakness - I reactivated FB.  Peter had photographs of his Kerikeri garden, Tony was up for a chat, and Pam linked to the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain!

I also reactivated my long neglected AW gmail account.  Apologies to anyone who has been beaming me stuff on it over the last quarter - and yes Reg, that certainly includes you, hence I only just caught up with the news that Mike Feazell has retired from GCI.  Oh dear, what a loss...

You've got to wonder how many not-quite-dead email accounts are cluttering the ether?  How many websites are frozen in cyberspace because their creators changed both their email accounts and lost the all important password?

I feel a panic attack coming on just thinking about it.

A Voice for Liberal Christianity

Marcus Borg is a leading voice for progressive Christianity.  What we used to call liberal Christianity before the evangelical fringe decided to use that term as a label of contemptuous abuse.  His books are a mixed bag, and I've cooled on him in recent times.  A refugee from Missouri Synod Lutheranism, that I understand, but what could have possessed the man to apostatise to Anglicanism of all things? 

Be that as it may, his most recent endeavour, Speaking Christian, is an important contribution in defence of progressive Christianity.  These poor progressives live in the crossfire between their conservative brethren, who regard them as barely Christian at all, and many less than subtle atheists who gleefully fire spitballs and taunt them with loud cries of "rhubarb!"

Borg attempts to make a case that the progressive view is not only as legitimate as the Bible-toting evangelical mainstream (at least mainstream in America) but more faithful to the original.  A hard task that, I hear you say.  Borg however is undaunted in his quest to set the record straight, and for the most part this is a highly readable attempt.  The chapter on "The Creeds and the Trinity" is, for example, not only mercifully brief but even somewhat convincing if one is of a mind to prattle off the Nicene Creed without feeling that it's all complete nonsense.

Borg also takes a sideswipe at the ridiculous rapture doctrine (have at it brother!), and radically reinterprets a number of key concepts in the old 'heaven-hell' model. It's a noble cause in its own way, even if a bit Don Quixote-ish.

Despite some reservations, I'm of the view that he deserves a hearing.  A critical hearing to be sure, but much more than a casual dismissal from the trenches on either side or, even worse, those more thoughtful believers who are willing to give these views credence on a personal level, but are afraid to say so openly for fear of 'scaring the horses'.  The kind of Christianity Borg advocates is a very different beast from the stereotypes that bray so loudly and aggressively in the public arena.

And that in itself is refreshing.

Zealandoz

O look, a new country at #9

It's sad really, and in the spirit of Trans-Tasman amity I hesitate to point it out.  And yes, Australia, population 22.6 million, has really done very, very well to currently stand at twenty fourth (that's 24th) on the Olympic medals table.  I think we should all congratulate our dear Australian cousins.

(Pause for polite applause).

Of course, those of us in New Zealand have a mere 4.4 million fellow citizens to correctly pronounce the ancient shibboleth "fish and chips" as fush und chups - in contrast to the Strine version (Feesh een cheeps).  But we don't mind, not really.  I mean, I'm sure cane toads are very pleasant creatures once you get to know them, and that nice Tony Abbott is such an open minded and sensitive man you just know he'd make a wonderful Prime Minister.  Yes, we are very fond of our Australian neighbours. 

So it's with some hesitation I note that New Zealand's current standing on the medals table is 14th (that's fourteenth) - even though our entire population base is less than that of Sydney.

But we're being humble about it, even when a leading Aussie paper - bless 'em - tries to claim our successes by forging a new united national identity  - AUS ZEALAND - especially to save face.  Sydney's Daily Telegraph is welcome to create this new trans-national entity, tongue in cheek or otherwise, but - and I think we have to politely insist - it should be correctly known as ZEALANDOZ instead.

Sanity incompatible with Reformed confessions

Jim West lards on the praise over these comments by Brian Mattson.

Since his dismissal, [Peter] Enns has so quickly evolved in his views that he now denies the historicity of Adam and Eve, denies that the Bible says anything about human origins, embraces theistic evolution, and denies the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture.​ What happened to the "Enns is perfectly Reformed and orthodox" defense? One can still argue (wrongly, in my view) than he was right; one cannot argue that his views are compatible with the Reformed confessions.

Peter Enns, a Reformed academic who has been mentioned here before, is the author of The Evolution of Adam, a book which Mattson slates as "extremely provocative (and theologically poor)".  Those who sympathise with Enns are described as "acolytes".

Mattson, like anyone else, is entitled to a bit of polemical venting; fair enough, I've done a bit of that myself.  But what is pushing his buttons?  The poor guy is apparently herniating over the silly "Chik-Fil-A flap" and his eyes are, one suspects, blood red with holy homophobic indignation.  How he ties that into Peter Enns' views on the Bible is beyond me.

But putting aside that particular red herring, let's just pause for a moment.  Enns is charged with:

• denying the historicity of Adam and Eve.  
• denying that the Bible is clued up about the scientific origins of our species.
• seeing evolution as a process compatible with Christian faith.
• denying the inerrancy and infallibility of the biblical documents.

And because of this his views are incompatible with the Reformed confessions?

If that's the case, then there is either something horribly wrong with the Reformed confessions, or at least Mattson's wooden approach to them.  To put it plainly, Adam and Eve are mythical characters, the Bible writers lived in a pre-scientific era and were therefore incapable of conveying information about human origins (though that's not to say that some of them didn't have deep insights into human nature), and the idiotic concepts of inerrancy and infallibility are relatively recent theological aberrations.

Facts however can't be allowed to compete with dogma; what Mattson calls "God's transcendent and utterly reliable revelation to us."  Now there's a fine example - it's tempting to say a revelatory example - of Reformed bull-roaring.   

Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that Mattson has just succeeded in shooting himself in the foot.

Rewiring the brain

The front page of this morning's Dominion Post features an article about the effect our information-rich, technology-soaked society is having on our kids.  A follow-up feature on page 4 expands on the theme.

Anyone who has seen a two-year old playing around with an iPad knows what I am talking about.  The digital world is leading to different ways in which the brain develops... (Sir Peter Gluckman)

I suspect he may be right.  And who knows, it might not be a bad thing.  Unlike some though, I'm not so sure our schools should undergo an immediate radical reboot as a result.  Bandwagoning invariably leads to distorted outcomes, and no field demonstrates that better than education.   Despite that, there's no doubt in my mind that the classrooms of the 2020s will be, as they say, "something else."  The last thing we should be doing is hoping it'll all go away.

The Christian brain has been undergoing a process of rewiring over several generations too.  The appeal of the old denominations with their predictable weekly services, grovelling hymns, platitudinous sermons and earnest (and invariably humorless) attempts at interfacing with the broader society, has largely evaporated.  Those with get-up-and-go have got up and gone, some into New Age fads, others into the kind of motivational fundamentalism the prosperity preachers sell, while most have simply been reabsorbed into an increasingly secular society.

And who knows, that might not be a bad thing either.

It isn't just today's kids who are being rewired.  Past generations attended church because it filled a need.  Women in particular, often shackled to home and hearth for six days of the week, could freely network after the compulsory pew warming hour.  That, not the preacher's sermon, was what most often brought the faithful coming back week after week.  But the era of Kinder, Kuche und Kirche is long gone, a disappearing memory of a disturbing dream, blown out of the baptismal waters with two income families, childcare, a global communications technology that gives us all 24/7 networks of choice.  Who would have predicted this kind of systemic change back when the first baby boomers were born. 

How have the churches responded?  Bandwagoning in the more fervent sectors, slowly or not at all in others.  If somebody actually has a workable plan, I haven't heard about it.

Lets hope our schools manage the trick.

A word fitly spoken

From Lester Grabbe.

... critical scholars will disagree with one another, which is fine–that’s part of scholarship.  But they should present evidence and careful argument for their positions:  chest-thumping and penis-waving will not substitute.