Lost Pages

I have a list of Christian books that people always assume I have read because I am a pastor. I have often wondered whether the underlying assumption is that I have a lot of time so I am supposed to have read them. I suspect the it is more likely that such books are regarded as "essential" so not reading them is quietly intepreted as a dereliction of personal spiritual care.  C S Lewis Screwtape Letters is one of those books. As it turns out I believe I had read the book when I was a young. Though the circumstances escape me. It is therefore entirely possible that I have simply come to believe that I had read it. Not that it matters any more because I recently read the book, just to make sure I do not forget, and of course get to grips with it.. Hence the reason I am talking about it now. What is the book about? The Screwtape Letters is a novel by C. S. Lewis that was first published in 1942. Screwtape is a senior devil writing to a junior devil, his nephew, Wormwood, on ho...

Gene Edward Veith has written a wonderful  open letter  to encourage pastors, as we wage war on the front lines of today’s cultural and spiritual battles. I particularly found his summary of the morphing of competing ideas to Christianity very helpful (with a little bit of rearranging of the points on my part):  “Modern and postmodern ideas and practices that have challenged Christianity have been taken to ever greater extremes. But some have been pushed so far that they are coming apart or morphing into something new. The arts seem to be at a creative dead end, rehashing their past and running out of new ideas.  Science was thought to have banished the mysteries of existence, but now it is showing the universe to be more mysterious than ever. Technology is performing wonders, but in giving us virtual reality and virtual relationships, it is undermining actual reality and actual relationships. Society has become an assemblage of isolated individuals, under a pola...

Last week social media went into a frenzy after the singer Adele released a snap on her birthday where she looked unrecognisable. It turns out the singer has lost quite a lot of weight during the lockdown. In a normal world, this would not be headline news but Covid 19 has generated a negative supply shock to news. The media is desperately trying to find any non-Covid stories to report. At the time of reading the story on the BBC, Adele’s Instagram post had gunned millions of likes and spawned much discussion on Twitter! Adele before the weight loss All of this of course has made me wonder  whether I should be writing on this at all. I suppose what has got me thinking about this are the comments people have made about her. All of them admired how wonderful she looks now .  The media has used words like “stunning”, “incredible”, “sensational”, “beautiful” and other words better not to be repeated. These media comments largely report what Adele’s celebrity pals and fans origi...

The Daily Mail  on how a growing number of women in Japan are stepping out of the shadows to say they were forced to work in Japan's multi-billion-dollar porn industry: Young, pretty and hoping for stardom, Saki Kozai thought she had found her ticket to fame after an apparent model scout spotted her on a Tokyo street and offered her a job. Then just 24 years old, starstruck and excited, she quickly signed a deal with the agency he introduced her to, believing that she would soon star in promotion videos. In fact, it was not a modelling agency, and on her first day Kozai discovered the job required her to have sex on camera. "I couldn't take off my clothes. All I could do was cry...There were about 20 people around me, waiting. No woman could say 'no' when they're surrounded like that," she said. It is good to see the Daily Mail report this story because this is not just a Japanese problem it is a global problem. In a world of the internet the supply of ...

I have just finished reading ' Dataclysm ' by Christian Rudder. It has the interesting subtitle ' Who we are when we think no one is looking'. The book has some interesting reflections on what online data (drawn largely from the online dating data of OkCupid) reveals about our nature. Here is one quote that struck me : It is no longer socially acceptable to be openly racist. In response to that pressure, there is some portion of the public who have therefore slunk away: if I can't shout hate at some schoolchildren anymore, well, fine, I'll just shout it at the TV. This is not the typical American. Most of us—almost all, in fact—recognize that racism is wrong. But it is still implicit in many of the decisions we make . Psychologists have a name for the interior patterns of belief that help a person organize information as he encounters it: schema . And our schema is still out of step with how most of us know the world should be. By hundreds of small, everyda...

The desire for wealth does not need to be taught; it is an integral part of all human nature. Hence, when young men in the army attack cities and scale back walls, break through the enemy lines and drive back the foe … it is because they are spurred on by the prospect of rich reward... In like manner, when the women of Chao and the maidens of Cheng paint their faces and play upon the large lute, flutter their long sleeves and trip about in pointed slippers, invite with their eyes and beckon with their hearts, considering it no distance at all to travel a thousand miles to meet a patron, not caring whether he is old or young, it is because they are after riches … When officials in the government juggle with phrases and twist the letter of the law, carve fake seals and forge documents, heedless of the mutilating punishments of the knife and saw that await them if they are discovered, it is because they are drowned in bribes and gifts … Thus men apply all their knowledge and...

There's a fascinating exchange in the movie Welcome to the Rileys  that came to my mind recently. It concerns the 16 year old stripper Mallory and Lois Riley. The two are not related. Lois is actually the wife of Doug Riley who has struck a friendship with the young stripper to try and help her reform. All part of his gathering of himself together following the death of his daughter  : Lois Riley: Allison, I don't think you should do this anymore. Mallory: Do what? Lois Riley: You know what I'm talking about. Mallory: You don't work you don't eat. Lois Riley: Wait! I can't let you do this. Mallory: Lois don't. Lois Riley: What? Mallory: Don't be stupid. Lois Riley: I apologize for being so unsophisticated but I cannot let a 16-year old girl prostitute herself! Mallory: I'm a f****** dancer. Lois Riley: And a prostitute! Mallory: [yelling] Well you're not my f******* mom! So get the f*** out of my way! In the cont...