The pivot of history

Posted on 09/10/2023 by Jon Garvey

At the purely geopolitical level, war in Israel is a highly significant and concerning matter. But if biblical prophecy is more than the fairy-tales the New Atheists loved to claim, without investigation, before their own demise as a movement, then war in Israel may be of cosmic significance. I have no intention here of going down the rabbit hole of placing the current situation of Israel in 2023 into the prophetic matrix of the Bible. Instead I want to take a look at the wider question of whether there is a basis for taking that matrix seriously, rather than airily dismissing it like the Gnus’ talk of “your imaginary friend,” or perhaps for the average Christian, simply shrugging it off as a dubious esoteric interest.

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Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 6 Comments

It’s always ther cloimate wot gets the blame

Posted on 30/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

As I anticipated, our Harvest Festival had a significant section on failure of harvests in poor countries and how we need to help, in this case focusing on Uganda – a country where, but for providential circumstances, I might have worked. I voiced my reservations about the anthropocentrism of harvest thanksgiving nowadays in my previous blog, and I won’t labour the point. What I will mention, though, is another near-universal theme in the kind of video we were shown – that it is the poor who are already feeling the brunt of climate change, witness the increasing droughts being experienced by farmers in Uganda.

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Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science | 11 Comments

Providence, raindrops and horsehoe-nails

Posted on 25/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

One throw-away line in a video for the excellent Christian course Discipleship Explored
caught my attention. The narrator, speaking of God’s care for us, said that “each drop of rain has its intended target.”

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Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 2 Comments

Forgetting the gift and the giver at harvest time

Posted on 19/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

It’s the time of year when churches still tend to have some kind of harvest festival. I was reminded of that this morning both by having to get the songs for our harvest service out to the various musicians, projectionists and so on, and even more by my daily reading happening to be Acts 14, in which Paul and Barnabas discourage the Lycaonians from treating them as gods by reminding them that the true God has revealed himself to them because “he has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” Ironically, the net result of this affirmation of God’s goodness is that Paul is stoned.

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology, Theology of nature | 4 Comments

What’s wrong with the mark of the beast, anyway?

Posted on 15/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

It’s generally thought that the earthly reality behind the book of Revelation’s “mark of the beast,” the infamous 666, was the imposition of emperor-worship by Nero, whose name is argued to add up numerologically to that number. For the Christian, it meant the compulsion to own any other god than the true one revealed by and in Christ.

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More on soul as the sole reality

Posted on 09/09/2023 by Jon Garvey

I eventually worked through Joshua Farris’s The Creation of Self, as mentioned recently, and have to say I felt it improved towards the end.

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Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Permission to hate, Sir

Posted on 29/08/2023 by Jon Garvey

Standin’ on the gallows,
Stagolee did cuss.
The judge said, “Let’s kill him,
before he kills some of us.”
That bad man, that cruel Stagolee

(Stagolee, Mississippi John Hurt version).
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Posted in Politics and sociology | 1 Comment

The sole soul

Posted on 23/08/2023 by Jon Garvey

the Apologies for sparsity of posts just now, but it’s both the B&B season for visiting grandchildren, and the labour-intensive mowing period for our hillside wild-flower meadow. Nevertheless I’ve had reason, whilst raking a hill-full of grass, to ponder the matter of the human soul.

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Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology | 1 Comment

National priorities

Posted on 16/08/2023 by Jon Garvey

Two current statistics: Britain has the tenth biggest economy in the world, according to IMF: and one in 7 British households (around 11 million people) lack food security, according to Trussell Trust, which organises a majority of our food banks.

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 11 Comments

Pandemic religion – a lab leak?

Posted on 12/08/2023 by Jon Garvey

I well remember, as a student, going to the home of another guy to pick him up for some evangelistic work we were doing. For interested Brits, it was actually street-theatre in North Wales with a group called Breadrock, later to become Riding Lights, Britain’s first Christian theatre company, which is still going strong although its co-founder and Artistic Director, my good friend Paul Burbridge, sadly died this April. RIP Paul – see you in glory, with many a laugh.

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Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments