A New Take on Contemporary Christian Music

I'm in the process of listening to the album Hymns by Page CXVI, which is a project to make the words of older hymns more accessible by setting them to more contemporary tunes. A first listen sounds good (although I am the sort that likes to mix good theology with a bit of a rocky beat), and I figure it's worth a listen and can be found here. The album is free to download for this week only I believe.

How the "Hopey-Changey" thing going?

There now follows a party political broadcast for the Conservative party (or is it the Liberal Democrats? It's hard to tell...):

When did British politics get all American? I suppose it has for a long time, but it feels particularly noticeable this time around, when it's hard to hear much about policy, but what we do know is there'll be lots of change. Change you can believe in. Change that works for you. You know it's getting bad when even the incumbent Prime Minister is talking about change...

As much as I remain politically conservative, David Cameron appears to be taking Boris Johnson's route to victory in the Mayoral Elections a few years back, a campaign for which I was surprised the Conservative Manifesto wasn't contained in one page and read:

"I'm a different person to Ken Livingstone. I also don't like bendy buses."

Not that you can blame him, it's a tactic that seems to work, the electorate appear to be quite happy for indiscriminate change at certain points. Yet it's a little frustrating that it's easy to feel that Josh Lyman's comment to John Hoynes (I wasn't going to get through this without a West Wing quote) sums up what we know of his policy quite well:

"I don't know what we're for, I don't we against, except we seem to be for winning and against somebody else winning."

As mentioned, this is not a particular will to see Gordon Brown win, I will stick my neck out and say I want to see a Conservative majority in the election and for David Cameron to make to trip to Buckingham Palace to form the next government. My problem though is the means in which that will happen - it's sound-bite stuff. The result will probably mean, with the debates, a hung parliament, as the one playing the sound-bites well at the moment is Nick Clegg. And then when all the dust has settled, we'll start moaning about parties not delivering what they promised and failing to make the connection between what happens after 6th May and what happened before...

"More than 600,000 Britons disrupted by Volcano Ash"

Well, I'm one of the statistics. I've seen so many of these news articles over the years, and although they often plucked my sympathy, you never think that it'll happen to you.

Well it has. And I'm stranded in Abu Dhabi, not really knowing when my return flight will happen. But before I garner any sympathy, I should point out I could be in worse places. This is a photo from my hotel, provide courtesy of Etihad Airways. The structure in the background happens to be the new Abu Dhabi Formula One Circuit - if you look closely you can see the Yas hotel that sits in the middle. The image in the other direction is also quite nice - it's a pretty nice room I've been placed in.

But now is time to wait. I'm unsure whether I'll be back for the start of term now, and I'm trying to see how many of my fellow educators are in a similar situation - I've met a fairly large number of teachers here waiting for a flight into Heathrow - it'll be interesting to see if there are any school closures resulting from lack of staff. I shall be watching the new with interest though, it's not like I have anything better to do...

Dalam Yesus kita bersaudera

I'm sitting in the front room of what used to be my flat some three years ago. For the last couple of weeks, I've been back in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the first time since leaving at the end of my apprenticeship in 2007, and it's been wonderful to come back. In something that seems a little bizarre given the short time I was out here (after all, I only spent 11 months in KL), the last few weeks have felt more like coming home than going on holiday, and it's been a real pleasure meeting old friends.

In wondering why that is, a clue was offered in the Bahasa Malaysia song that makes up the title, which I was sing yesterday. It translates as "In Jesus, we are family", and coming back here makes me feel how true that is. I'm not returning to acquaintances, or even close friends. In a very real sense it's coming back to family, family who welcomed me in and I shared my life with those years back. A new family, in Jesus Christ with God as Father.

"And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

Matthew 12:49-50

The flipside is that it makes departing harder than the average holiday. Maybe it's time to start looking again at the flight costs for next year...

We are what we worship

The Bible has a lot to say about mankind, and one of the biggest issues that rubs against modern culture is the fact that we are a people made for worship, or as I heard it put a couple of weeks ago, we as a species are less Homo sapiens or thinking man and much more Home adorans or worshipping man. We may resist it, but the continuing mirror held up to us is that if we are not worshipping the true God, then someone or something else will receive our worship.

All fine and well, but I've been struck recently by the fact that the object of our worship doesn't leave us unchanged, and so we are not only made for worship but made to be transformed by our worship. So then, if our worship is something false, then the results will be clear:

"The idols of the nations are silver and gold,

the work of human hands.

They have mouths, but do not speak;

they have eyes, but do not see;

they have ears but do not hear,

nor is there any breath in their mouths.

Those who make them become like them,

so do all who trust in them!'

Psalm 135:15-18

We will become what we worship. Tom Wright brilliantly rams this point home by revealing the truth of this Psalm in our modern context:

"Those who worship money define themselves in terms of it, and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners or customers rather than human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it, and treat other people as collaborators, competitors or pawns. These and many kinds of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and the lives of those they touch."

Surprised by Hope, pg 195

Idolatry is something real and very much alive among us, and so it becomes less of a trivial issue when we open our eyes not only to its existence, but they very real and present damage that it is causing to people around us.