Mad, Bad, or God? Or something else?

Was Jesus Mad, Bad, or God?

Why do I ask?

Well, there’s a common attempt to explain the fact that Jesus must be God because the only alternatives – that he was mad, deluding himself, or bad, deluding others, don’t quite fit with what we know of him. I think the idea originally comes from CS Lewis. As I’ve heard it explained, “don’t try to tell me that Jesus was ‘just a good man’. He hasn’t left that option open to us.”

But surely there is another option. How do we know that Jesus has not simply been misrepresented? Misquoted? Had words put in his mouth (and actions to his hands) by later commentators?

In other words, to what extent can we trust scripture to be a true and full record of what Jesus said and did?

Laughing IS praying

Came across an interesting thought here whilst aimlessly browsing today.

It works for me. Even if it is a bit twee in parts.

Site Stats

My goodness, look what happens if you don’t post for a few days…

Words from a “Former Christian”

Been poking around on the old interweb thingy for (more!) stuff to read and came across a very well-written and challenging blog called “Unreasonable Faith“, written by a guy who once believed and now doesn’t. What I’ve read so far sure is interesting stuff.

Blogger.com vs WordPress.com

It’s been a few weeks now since I transferred this blog here to WordPress.com from its former home of Blogger.com. So what’s the difference?

Well, overall,  I’m preferring it here at WordPress.  The interface is somehow neater, and I like the very much greater control over the comments system. And the built-in stats are very useful. I was impressed by the way WordPress managed to import all my posts and comments from Blogger when I made the switch, too. I’ve a feeling that wouldn’t have been possible the other way around.

But there are a couple of things I do miss from Blogger…

WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to use javascript in the sidebar. Now, I wouldn’t have known that Blogger did allow that, but when I went to use a couple of bits of third-party code I’d used fine over there I found they wouldn’t work over here. Hey, I didn’t even know they were Javascript, so it took me a while to discover why they woudn’t work in WordPress. (And I still don’t understand why WordPress doesn’t allow them. They didn’t seem to cause any problem over at Blogger.) 

The other thing I liked at blogger was the option to display your archive in a hierarchical structure, which isn’t available over here. (You can see what I mean on my family blog, Which Way’s Up, which is still at blogger.)

Meaning it.

I see the last seven posts have had nothing remotely to do with God. What does that say about how much my spiritual search occupies my mind?

Well, in church on Sunday morning we had some old songs. (Well, I say old, they were probably about fifteen years old which by many church’s standards are positively up to date, but the felt old for us.)  And – for a change – I was in the congregation rather than up front behind the drums, which meant I had time to think a little about the words. And all I could think over and over again was “do I mean any of this?” I can’t honestly say that I do, you know.

But does it matter whether I do?

A silly question

I was speaking to someone in real life the other day, and she mentioned that she’d “read my blog”. (Referring, as it happens, to my other blog.) She immediately went on to say, “I hope you don’t mind.“

Do I mind? If someone reads my blog? If I minded I’d be pretty daft having it on the internet. The more the merrier, I say.

Bill Bailey on Desert Island Discs

Bill Bailey is one of my favourite performers. Genius stuff. I’ll not try to pick a favourite moment, but there’s plenty of clips on YouTube to pick from.

Anyway, to get to the point: I found out too late that he was the guest on Desert Island Discs last week, and have discovered this morning that Desert Island Discs is one of the few shows from Radio 4 that is not available online. “Copyright reasons”, apparently.

If anyone out there has a recording of any type, I’d love to hear from you. (Is there a radio equivalent of YouTube?) Please post a link in the comments section.

Oh, go on. I’ll be your best friend.

Midlife Crisis

No, I’m not suffering from one yet (I don’t think) but I am in a band called Midlife Crisis which I’ve never mentioned here. So why mention it now? Because I’ve just spent a while playing about with a new band website, that’s why. Here’s a sample video, recorded at a recent private party; there are a couple more on the new site.

Twitter ye not

I saw Twitter mentioned on someone else’s blog. I’d heard vaguely of it, but this guy’s recommendation made it sound quite fun, so I signed up.

Like other sites I use (Facebook and Flickr), Twitter lets you upload your address book so it can look to see if any of your contacts are signed up, so I did. And you know what? Of my 300 or so contacts, not a single one was found.

Seems Twitter won’t be much fun for me, then.

Update: I have now discovered that I can have my Facebook status updated from my Twitter status, which is handy as I’d not been able to update Facebook by text message, but I can update Twitter that way. So maybe it will be a handy tool after all. Hoorah!