I bought a book on Amazon recently just on a whim: Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast. I have just sat down to start having a go at it (with a nicely brewed Mocha Djimmah, I might add) and after a few pages couldn’t resist sharing an excerpt. Deft writing always catches my eye, and Pendergrast has it – the capability of capturing the ideas he wishes to convey and communicating it in language appropriate to the subject. Thus:

‘Beginning as a medicinal drink for the elite, coffee became the favored modern stimulant of the blue-collar worker during his break, the gossip starter in the middle-class kitchens, the romantic binder for wooing couples, and the sole, bitter companion of the lost soul. Coffeehouses have provided places to plan revolutions, write poetry, do business, and meet friends.’

And so on. He has a nice turn of phrase and knows how to engage the passions, but it looks like he also has a genuine knack for history, showing how the history of coffee charts many of the important themes of modern world history itself. I look forward to reading this book!

So I started this blog actually as a more swish version of an old website I had (www.godislove.org.uk, now defunct – it got hacked!) with the pretty much sole aim of sharing thoughts from the word of God mainly to do with revelation that I wanted to share.

Over time though, of course, life adjusts and takes on new patterns and directions, and gradually I have seen the horizons broaden before me so that I feel the need to reassess how I use webspace. I feel slightly differently, now, about how it is appropriate to share revelation and insight into the word of God. My fundamental position hasn’t changed – I still seek to hear from God and understand truth through His word by the Holy Spirit, and I do want to share that where appropriate, but as I’ve begun to step into a kind of ministry (and I don’t want to lay more meaning on that word than it presently has) I have felt that the people with whom I interact on a personal face-to-face basis, be they a ‘congregation’ or whatever else, are to be the focus of any kind of ‘directive’ thoughts I may have from my meditation on the Bible and so on – words that require an accountable structure. At one time in life I thought it was okay in prophetic ministry to just send out any prophetic word to any bunch of people, even anybody who might ever read a blog, and expect them to listen to it. I don’t think this any more. Accountable structures are required and so words like that are for the group of people with whom we have real fellowship.

That’s not the only kind of thing I have written on here of course, and from time to time I might post something more concerning informative, factually-based interest-pieces; for example my studies in New Testament Greek might cause me to blog about manuscript discoveries, or address commonly-raised issues about Greek texts. Such material I find has a wide interest in the church at large and so it would be appropriate for me to post anything like this. This, of course dependant on me actually getting around to such study!

I do have a passion for theology which could be seen as a potentially more subjective topic than what I have just mentioned; as such it is common for me to want to post on some issue or other; say, views on hell, or eschatology, or soteriology, in particular questioning (but I hope with much grace as possible) widely-accepted Reformed positions where I feel they do not quite think clearly enough through the issues or the Scriptures, because of the long-held nature of Reformed theology in many parts of the church. This area is perhaps the most foggy for me when it comes to knowing how and what to post. Perhaps it doesn’t always come across, but I never want to create schism or be argumentative just for the sake of it. I’m passionate for truth and it is this passion that drives me to want to write these things, but I need to find the balance of tension between that, and my passion for people, and the unity of faith that we should all be seeking to work towards. I feel that some peoples’ “passion for truth” perhaps causes them to ride roughshod over brothers and sisters who simply have genuine questions that it is worth asking, and I don’t want to make the same mistake. While I seek to learn this balance, I will think very carefully on each occasion before posting on some theological issue or other.

But the thing that I really wanted to get to was that my life has a somewhat different shape now from what I had expected when I first set up this blog, and the things that God has led me into are not the things I expected, but I am full of joy in them! For a while already I have had a Producer page here on the website, and while that has been a token move in addition to my official music-business site, surprisingly that and other aspects of my self-employed music role have been taking off somewhat more than expected – and all through prayer! I guess I always ran that site just because music is something I can do, but after I graduated from York University in 2007 I wasn’t sure how much it was going to become a ‘main’ thing for me – wasn’t sure, even, if it was what God wanted. I think I had a narrow view of what pleases God which has taken years to break down, but slowly, surely I have realised that ‘doing’ music for a living (alongside my present part-time church role) really is a good thing and is something that gives Him pleasure because it has to do with how He made me – and consequently I feel some of the greatest pleasure when I am musicking!

And so in conclusion as I accept this becoming more a part of my life at this time, I might be reshaping the webspace a little bit in some way, or at least adding emphasis to that side of my role, which may mean that this blog gets stripped back a little bit simply as a page for a worship-leader from London who writes the occasional zany blog, and posts more music-related stuff on his aforementioned music website, or I may expand and shift here on this wordpress blog so that it becomes more of a hub for factual, interest things, whether to do with Biblical archaeology, or tips for music producers, or news of my latest gig, or a study on a particular Greek word! Probably you can all see what the best solution is, and I do want something simple and effective that works, but while my life has this dual-focus at the moment, I guess I’ll have to figure out how that best pans out on the web.

Well, I’m still reading that book. My incessant bad habit is starting books before I’ve finished. This begins to multiply itself several times over and…well, I’m sure you get the picture. So this morning I put aside Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham, The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T Wright, and an easier-going Sci-fi tome, as I realised that I really am so close to the end of Verduin’s book now that if I just concentrate, I might actually be able to finish it…

My reading habits aside, I wanted to share this beautiful paragraph. Verduin writes fantastically throughout the book. But you get these little moments where the depth of understanding that he has acquired and which so often feels close at hand suddenly surfaces and transports you from the largely historical framework in which he has been working, to something more profound.

So Verduin then, speaking of the Cross:

‘In authentic Christianity the Cross is God’s most emphatic no to man’s yes, His most emphatic yes to man’s no. A clear example is to be found in Galatians 6:12, where St. Paul pits a religion of human achievement and merit (of which circumcision was the symbol among the people whom the Apostle was opposing) against a religion of grace. He brings the issue into sharpest focus by saying “They constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.” The Cross is a sweeping declaration of man’s inability to save himself from his predicament; this is bad news for every man who has not as yet capitulated to the speech from the beyond; hence it entails persecution against those who have so capitulated. When one experiences the hostility which the Gospel of grace is certain to encounter as it collides with unhumbled man, then one experiences the Cross. This is the one and only meaning Cross-bearing has in the New Testament writings. To bear the Cross is to experience the dislike which confirmed unbelief is wont to heap upon the Christ and upon those that have aligned themselves with Him.’

Beautifully said. The Cross really does stand at the Crux of human experience.

Verduin’s cause in general, though, is to address what he terms ‘sacralism’ in the Reformation movement, ie. the vision of Church and State in harmony, and all that comes with it. Thus opening the following paragraph:

“It goes without saying that when Christianity is thrust into the sacral pattern Cross-breaing becomes obsolete, there being not further occasion or opportunity for it.” He rather wryly and deftly explains what the Cross then became to the Reformed Church. “It was…transvaluated… It became an object that henceforth occupied a prominent place in the Church’s furniture.”

In other words, where the idea that church and state are somehow in harmony remains even in the back of the mind, the Cross stands only as a symbol of what Christ did in achieving salvation. While I of course rejoice in this fundamental message of the Cross, in the New Testament, and in the vision of those Verduin chiefly writes about in his book, the Anabaptists, those who went against the grain of the Reformation, the Cross remains something which we too will have to bear, though not for the sins of the world.

This topic is not without controversy I’m sure, but I’m happy to suffer controversy for the Cross of Christ!

This verse is one that I have heard quoted a few times and interpreted in different, interesting ways, but none of the interpretations I have heard have quite convinced me. The part of the verse I am really referring to is the very last bit: “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” It’s an unusual wording to get our heads around. One interpretation used by (I have to say) one of my favourite authors/speakers/leaders, and upon which he based an entire (and otherwise extremely good!) book, makes the ‘is’ in the middle into a kind of equals sign, so: “For the testimony of Jesus = the spirit of prophecy.” His interpretation then applies to testimony in general, and how sharing a testimony can act as a kind of prophetic word so that what was shared in the testimony has the potential to happen for someone else too.

I would not debate the certain possibility that spiritually, this could indeed happen. As I said, I think the book and the man that wrote it is wonderful, but I have to say I don’t quite think that’s what this verse is getting at.

What could it be then? “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” What is the guy talking about? For a start, John has just tried to worship this kind of angelic being who is talking to him – whether he supposed it was Jesus or not, I don’t know. All we know is that the being then says he is actually a fellow servant with John and with those who hold the testimony of Jesus. So here the testimony is first mentioned in this context. Within the wider context of Revelation and indeed the New Testament the word seems to me to hold quite a strong courtroom connotation which is sometimes lost in modern usage (to ‘witness to Jesus’ these days is to tell your neighbour about Him over coffee, or something; not wrong, but just not the full idea contained in the Greek word or the New Testament usage thereof). The judicial usage suggests that these brethren have a truthful testimony which they can share in heaven’s court (and maybe doing so on earth makes it heard in heaven anyway) which leads to a verdict rendered in favour of the saints and against the accuser (see especially Revelation 12:10-11). This, I think, is a bit more of what it means when it speaks of the ‘testimony of Jesus’.

So why is this ‘testimony of Jesus’ the ‘spirit of prophecy’? What does this phrase now mean?

To me, at least in this verse, another word I can think of for spirit is ‘essence’. Not that it’s a suitable alternative to the Greek word, it merely helps lead us towards what I think this verse is saying. The Greek word itself is ‘pneuma’, which can simply mean ‘breath’ or ‘wind’ as well as ‘spirit’. So we could say that the life-force of prophecy, its very breath, is this: to testify, bear witness to, Jesus.

This I think begins to fit the context rather well – always a good sign when interpreting a verse. There’s been a lot of prophetic stuff going on! John’s been blown away with some of these incredible revelations. And so when at this point this fellow has been instructing him in writing down these true words of God and John thinks it appropriate to worship this being, he tells John not to do so but to worship God. And then in saying this phrase “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” I would think that the emphasis would have been heard on ‘testimony of Jesus’, in other words, what ultimately all this prophecy is leading to, is a revelation, understanding and knowledge of Jesus through witness to Him, because ultimately that is what true prophecy is about.

Because that is what true prophecy is about, is it not? I don’t have a lot of time for prophetic words that go nowhere near Jesus and don’t make me want to worship Him more. And in fact very often such prophetic words might often come from people who would rather you worship them. But the spirit of true prophecy, the essence of what it is to really prophesy, is to bear witness to Jesus. “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Or perhaps a helpful retranslation in summary would be: “For the spirit of prophecy is to bear witness to Jesus!”

I hope this makes sense. I just thought it might be worth sharing as a helpful lead into thinking about this verse!

So what would I have meant by this un-thought-out opening line? Specifically that as a young lad growing up, the way that I perceived anyone older than me was that they were wiser, more mature, more learnèd, than I – simply due to their age relative to mine.

For this reason I always felt a little intimidated by those ever so slightly older than me, and felt a grateful sense of authority (it was probably pride) around my ‘inferiors’.

Several life changes over the past few years have forced a reassessment of this position. For example, university life blurred the lines between age distinctions, where you could forget that one peer had had a gap year while another had not; indeed one guy I lived with was several years older than me but because we were in the same year group, no difference occurred to me. Then I would have revelations that one person I perceived as more mature was in fact younger than another, and this began to shake up my simplistic model.

Now of course, I realise like perhaps many readers, that maturity isn’t an age thing. There are 20 year-olds who have seen more than their share of life already and are perhaps ‘mature’ for it; and then there are probably 50 year-olds who are still immature.

So it’s an attitude thing, not an age thing.

Nor is it quantifiable. Again, I used to perceive those older than me as ‘ahead’ of me, further down ‘the road’. Now in some senses this ‘road’ metaphor might not always be unhelpful, especially if you know what the goal is and the steps required to get there. But there isn’t a defined ‘length’ to the road any more than there is to a piece of string. The point is whether you are equipped, ready and willing to make the journey.

The thing about maturity is that it isn’t a formula for making everything work. “If you would SIMPLY just be MATURE about it, everything will work out!” Er, no – it’s not usually as simple as that.

Because the difference between the mature 20 year-old and the immature 50 year-old could be the difference between the two outcomes of a decision made at the age of 18. A decision to deal with the things life throws at you with wisdom rather than folly, head on rather than ducking away, grappling with life rather than letting it take you just anywhere your mates want to go on a Friday night. The 50 year-old isn’t more mature by virtue of the fact that they have likely had more ‘life issues’ to face. One is called ‘mature’ by the attitude they take towards something.

Maturity isn’t even a strive for objectivity against subjectivity. This has been one of the biggest lessons for me, a particular fan of dealing with issues rationally, reasonably, sensibly… But often trying to take in all of the above can too easily leave out sensitivity when another in the room is having an emotional difficulty with the situation in hand, not just a practical one. Maturity is learning that not everyone thinks and works like you, and learning how to go with that even if it’s not your natural mode. It’s learning the difference between gender, age, race, and knowing how to work with those frameworks rather than to ride roughshod over them. It’s not trying to get everyone to think like you, but learning how everyone else thinks.

It’s not pride, as I indicated at the start. My mistake in my youth, in thinking that if I was older than someone it meant that I was more mature, probably led to a little bit of arrogance and pride, even if I successfully managed to hide it most of the time. This is false maturity. True maturity walks hand in hand with humility, acknowledging that there are a great many unknowns. It’s how the unknowns are addressed which illustrates the difference between someone who is mature and someone who is immature.

Nor is there an exam you have to pass. There’s not a textbook, a set ‘level’ of knowledge to which you have to attain in order to be classed as ‘mature’. A professor versed in all the Chinese proverbs ever written could still easily be considered less mature than an illiterate poverty-stricken man from a remote African village who finds ways to feed his family and keep a farm going, against all the odds.

But indeed, just as maturity walks hand in hand with humility, on the other side is wisdom. There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom as much as there is a difference between a computer and a human. Wisdom is knowledge applied with love, discretion, understanding and discernment – all ideas which if we had the space could use further unpacking in and of themselves, but I am sure the reader is capable of that.

Do you want to see someone who is mature? Don’t look for the massive library, the ivory tower, the greying hair (though mature people could be and are connected with any one of these, but only by chance not by definition). Look out for humility and wisdom. Look out for someone who takes the things life throws at them head on, rather than shying away from them. Look out for the person who can give grace to others, who knows how to be happy for others who are happy even when their own circumstances are challenging; who knows how to share the burdens of another even if their own life doesn’t demand or require it. Look for the person who understands that it’s not all about them. Look for the person who is teachable, not most taught; reachable, not most aloof; sensitive, not most objective.

Ultimately, I think, look for the person who loves, and you will be pretty close.

I picked up the book a couple of days ago at my parents’ house, and have read a few pages with interest – I’m a bit of an American-o-phile, and have been investing time in reading some of the nation’s history lately.

I’m coming to like the guy; as anyone who’s read the book will hopefully agree, he comes across as genuine, thoughtful, intelligent, caring. All the right boxes to be checked for a presidential candidacy, I suppose the sceptics might argue, but I’ve not often had time for their bitter comments.

One paragraph in particular has caught my attention just now. As Obama describes his journey of discovery of new liberties that was brought about through the sixties and onwards, he also deftly describes some of the issues he saw to arise in that time of social and political change: ‘…my rejection of authority spilled into self-indulgence and self-destructiveness…I’d begun to see how any challenge to convention harbored within it the possibility of its own excesses and its own orthodoxy…’ In other words – for this is something I myself have often thought though not been able to express with such clarity – it’s foolish to believe that going against the grain is virtuous in and of itself simply by the fact that it challenges conventions. Very often we see one of two things:

1. That the party challenging ‘convention’ are simply operating out of, for want of a better word, a ‘rebellious’ spirit or inclination, but have no substance to back up their fight – no substantial policy in which to anchor their beliefs, and they are largely ignored and fade away, or
2. With more substantial beliefs in place, the party that in the first place sought to subvert and overturn convention in the end themselves became conventional or, in Obama’s word, ‘orthodox’.

He goes on to say how his observations were formed in the conversations held in college dorms, hives for subversive language and activity, and how he came to recognise

‘the point at which the denunciations of capitalism or American imperialism came too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claiming moral superiority over those not so victimized.’

I think his words should echo across post-modern society and give people pause for thought in all Western countries, indeed perhaps more particularly Europe. But of course not everyone will, and some will no doubt see him as merely another Democrat spinning off rhetoric in an underhand attempt at winning votes. I, for one, think he has something to say. So there.

Still, I gave it a try, and I have to say, it’s not going terribly. I bought Simon Schama’s The American Future on the iBook store to read on my iPhone, and I’m enjoying it. But the thing is, it has made me realise how much it’s the case that I distinctly enjoy a book on two levels:

1. the contents of the book
2. the fact that it’s a book

Point 1 is obvious; it’s point 2 that is causing me the trouble. I’m enjoying Schama’s writing, but frankly I’m really not happy with the fact that I can only stare at a small portion of text at one time. That the page doesn’t crumple and bend under my finger. That, apart from a highly functional indicator at the bottom of the screen, I can’t really feel or tell how far through the book I am. I can’t just flip back and remind myself of something very easily, or simply flick pages. Sounds silly I know. Some of it could probably be solved by me getting used to the ‘search’ feature, but sometimes it’s not that serious. You just want to look back at stuff you’ve read, for fun.

So for me, for now, in my state of epiphany, iBooks just don’t do it for me, at the moment. Don’t worry, Schama, I expect I’ll finish your book, it’s good. But for me a book has to be a BOOK, not a well-organised set of electronic data presented in an attempted replica of a book.

On the surface of it, of course, there might be other reasons for this kind of thuggery. Poverty is rife as always in our nation. A government which purported to bring us ‘prosperity’ (Labour) left us in undoubtedly the stickiest fiscal situation we have seen in a long time (though the 20th century demonstrates a considerable pattern of crashes, depressions, crunches and debt, giving me little cause for confidence in the relatively young machinery of capitalism), and the ensuing debt crisis has left a sour taste in many mouths, and perhaps an impression in some of these criminal minds that it’s never going to get better for them. Combine poverty with a society littered with strong advertisements telling you what you don’t have but must definitely get, and it’s no wonder that these criminals think they should have the 42″ widescreen TV, even if they have to steal it.

Gang culture of course, which is at the hub of most of the rioting, naturally fosters a kind of rebellion. You might even have some kids in there from slightly more stable homes but if they unwittingly get drafted in they can still inherit the kind of spirit that hangs around in that atmosphere.

So, some of the questions that I feel most need asking:

How can society encourage good parenting? Why on earth is there not more of an emphasis and focus on this important societal role?
How can more jobs be found for the unemployed youth be created? How can employers be encouraged to give them opportunities? Even the basic sense of worth that comes from a simple job could make all the difference!
How can youth organisations be further empowered to target and begin to disseminate and discourage gang culture?

Some of these are huge questions but in my view they are some that fundamentally need addressing. Of course, this will probably just remain my humble opinion floating in the blogosphere, but I hope that at least some of these things will be more widely recognised and will become the focus of our government and of society in general.

First of all, welcome to the new look site. Of course, it’s just another theme from WordPress. I like ‘em.

Secondly, I have a final exam tomorrow for New Testament Greek, which I have been learning for a year. It is incredible, fascinating, illuminating, to even discover some of the basics of the language and understand what they spoke. For me I get a lot from discovering the links between language then and now, knowing that our vernacular today has roots way back into ancient history. So ‘ballo’ means ‘I throw’ – because you would throw a ball! And about a trillion other examples (many of them much more meaningful, too).

I have learnt about the behaviour of language in general as well as New Testament Greek in particular. Our class has been shown a great many ‘gems’ that are uncovered in the New Testament when the original language is investigated. (Conversely we have learned how some of them are covered in most modern translations!)

But the thing that has most struck me is that my journey of discovery isn’t over yet.

I mean, in several senses, of course it isn’t, it would be arrogant for me to suggest that it is over already. As a believer in such a magnificent, awesome, holy God, I should expect that only eternity presents sufficient bounds for understanding and knowing Him. Secondly, I’ve only been studying Greek since September – I’m not an expert yet (much as I might like to pretend that I am!).

But that intriguing and wise character that is the ‘Original Greek’, it turns out, doesn’t stand at the end of the road in terms of discovering God and His nature through the New Testament (nevermind his distinctly older and more shadowy companion, Ancient Hebrew). If you thought that once you could argue from the New Testament using perfect koine Greek, you’d be the best theologian in the world, you’d have another think coming. No amount of scholarship can save us, can it? It’s the message behind the words that we’re after, not the words themselves, however helpful they may sometimes be. Mr Greek is a thoroughly useful guide on the journey, but if we really use our understanding correctly, we will continue to seek Jesus, and our understanding of God through Him. That is the believer’s journey. I suppose the journey of many scholars ends with Mr Greek, but for those knowing God and trusting Him, this is just a tool, albeit a useful one, for continuing our pursuit of Him.

Our journey is relational, not formulaic, and it’s important we remember to keep it that way. I’m going to continue to use what I’ve learnt this year (and hopefully continue to learn over the coming months and years) to pursue the One who captured my heart long before I even knew so many words in English. If you too are entertaining the idea of engaging this language, I would encourage you to do so! It’s just worth bearing in mind that you can be a Greek scholar and still be biased in one theological direction or another. Our anchor, Jesus, will help us to keep the right focus as we journey through life.

Trigg over and out.

Reflecting as I have been on the various arguments that often run to and fro between theological camps, particularly between Calvinisticly-Reformed believers and Arminians/open theists, as well as other polar tribes, I feel that perhaps what lies behind the two approaches and which often create the immovable loggerheads are two different starting points, two different convictions on which to base one’s arguments.

On the one hand (eg. Calvinistic/Reformed) I perceive to take a very functional, orderly approach to Scripture, where everything is seen to be neatly tied-up theologically in the Bible, and it is by reading literally from there that we can apply whatever we read systematically, with little need for nuance, variation, or otherwise. This is well and good, however I would suggest that it is only a post-Enlightenment Western society that would condition the presupposition that this is of course the way that we are meant to approach Scripture.

On the other side then where I sit, the approach is not first to find the functionally sound answer to my problem from a text of Scripture (though without question the God-breathed Scriptures are helpful for us when we’re in trouble!). I mean to distinguish this because a functionally tied-up answer with a verse of Scripture to quote may not deal with the whole situation; my approach then I humbly suggest fits with 1) a generally earlier, more Jewish approach which is relationally centred and doesn’t depend on the rationalistic processes of the Enlightenment and 2) the passion and heart of God as revealed through Jesus for relationship, with God and with one another. In other words, Scriptures are best understood through relationship with God, communing with Him and discovering in that context what He has said and how He wants to say it now.

Hence why you will find differences cropping up. The first approach sounds very ‘correct’ and certainly it shouldn’t be debunked – finding out what Scripture says about something is a valuable part of the journey. But I would suggest that with God the full journey is about relationship, and figuring out what God’s character is like should be one of our highest aims and ideals. So where on one side there is no problem with saying that God predestines some people to salvation (and therefore leaves some out of it) because this is what Scripture is perceived to say about what God DOES (His actions – ie. a functional approach), I have a problem with this because my highest value is knowing His character, and what He is like, and believing in a God who is love and in love bestows free will and wants everyone to be saved really doesn’t fit with the picture that was discovered by functionally approaching Scripture and trying to take it literally (which can often lead to grave misunderstanding when the context is not taken into account etc. etc.)

So, there’s my first problem of many with the (I would say unfortunately) all-too-pervasive and widely-accepted theological presuppositions that are preached every Sunday which I feel stem from too much emphasis on the Reformation principles and from a post-Enlightenment system of logic, and not enough from the Biblical context of relationship and indeed the Jesus-centric interpretation of Scripture. But I’m sure I’ve got a lot to work out on this yet, and that others will have helpful feedback and discussion points to raise which I hadn’t thought of