The Syro-Phoenician sister’s lived experience

(The woke answer to Matthew 15:21-28 and Mark 7:24-30)

So, I heard this faith-healer was speaking in Tyre, and I went to hear him because of my daughter’s mental health issues. If I’d realised he was Jewish, of course, I’d have been there with my “Death to Zionists” banners rather than thinking about my daughter, who always stays at home for protests because they trigger her. In fact, the only time I took her to one she was arrested for decking a policeman and screaming “Why don’t you arrest my demons instead, Pig?”. That’s where NHS child psychiatry gets you!

Anyway, not realising at the time this healer was a Zionist, I got into conversation with him about my daughter’s issues. And do you know what? He compared me to a dog, which immediately showed he was not only a Jew but a chauvinist pig. So as you can imagine, I stopped listening because I immediately felt in danger of literally dying, so I started screaming like my daughter, and brought the whole meeting to a stop. In fact everyone was screaming at him by then.

Fortunately I was able to find a policeman and tell him I’d been a victim of hate-speech, and they carted this Jesus guy off to the cells overnight, before giving him bail on condition he didn’t come back to Tyre or Sidon. I think he ended up causing more trouble in Decapolis, but that won’t last because I’ve got friends on the District Council there and have told them to cancel him under the Terrorism Act. With a bit of luck they’ll jail him. There’s already enough racism here without Far-Right Zionists coming in from who knows where and victimising women with disinformation.

And when I got home, I found my child had set light to the bed and was worse than ever. Some faith healer.

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Understanding the Cult Wars (or trying to)

Toby Young (of the Free Speech Union – join!) reports that he had a moment of revelation recently when he realised that England’s current ruling class is, in fact, a “technocratic theocracy,” acting in effect as a secular State Religion, its own beliefs being unchallengable truths, and its opponents irredeemably evil.

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Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 5 Comments

Helping Starmer build my internet footprint

Yesterday, the fifty-ninth anniversary of my new birth in Christ happened to coincide with my being asked to preach on one of the parables of Jesus. I chose “the labourers in the vineyard” from Matthew 20, and it seemed natural to include some testimony to my six decades of being one.

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The Turin anomaly

The Shroud of Turin is in the news again, after some sophisticated scientific study of the aging of the linen cloth not only suggested that it is, indeed, two thousand years old, but proposed the most likely itinerary among those previously suggested, based on climatic factors, and assuming, I suppose, that the shroud is a genuine relic from Jesus’s time.

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Unpluggable gaps?

Earlier this month I wrote a piece on the accusation that ID resorts to a version of the “God of the Gaps” fallacy (whilst repeating my belief that the fallacy is itself largely a fallacy).

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Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature | 4 Comments

Christians outsourcing persecution?

To follow up on my last-but-one post, consider this.

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Mental health and the young

Quite regularly some new statistic appears about the increasing levels of mental health problems amongst children and young adults. The latest survey suggests one in five souls aged from eight to twenty-five had a “probable” mental health issue in 2023. It seems the conditions primarily blamed are anxiety, autism spectrum disorders, and depression. That does not indicate a healthy society.

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Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology | 3 Comments

Christians hindering revival?

The time has come for judgment to begin, and God’s own people are the first to be judged.

1 Peter 4:17

The thing that upset many people most during COVID, and in the permacrisis since, was the total failure of a majority of people to comprehend that there was anything fundamentally wrong. That blind attitude has persisted into the most recent manifestation of the crisis (if you don’t count monkeypox and the NATO invasion of Russia at our expense), that is the protests and riots that have many US commentators wondering what has become of English justice, and even caused a friend in the impoverished and violent state of Sri Lanka to phone me to see if I was safe.

I’m not safe, of course, because I write “anti-establishment rhetoric,” and that gets people jailed over here. But it seems that a majority accepts the narrative that Far-Right groups instigated the protests for the mindless hell of it, and should all be banged up and the key thrown away. The despair of ordinary folk goes unnoticed by those more fortunate, as well as by Keir Starmer.

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Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 7 Comments

Confessions of a Far-Right thug

paid-up Well, since I can see that the game is up, as the authorities trawl through the internet and efficiently mop up old ladies making angry tweets, I know that real members of the Far-Right like me are on borrowed time in England. It’s clear that prison sentences of a couple of years for one Tweet of an opinion will be several times greater for those who antagonise justice by not pleading guilty. Or that’s what we see from the January 6 occupation in America – even thinking about attending a rally gets them solitary confinement for three years before trial – until they make a plea deal and become one of the 800 self-confessed unarmed insurrectionists. When America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. So it’s time to own up now and plan for my eventual release while I’ve still got time to pay into my State Pension.

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Plugging more gaps in the God of the gaps

Last Thursday I was interviewed for a podcast on God’s Good Earth by geologist Gregg Davidson, co-author with Ken Turner of the excellent Manifold Beauty of Genesis One, as well as writing an excellent sci-fi trilogy. The podcast should be online in about five weeks, Gregg says, so I’ll let you know about it when it happens.

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