Painting Fakes

I'd almost forgotten George Harrison's All Things Must Pass .  Years ago I had a pirate tape of it which I listened to so much it died.  I never got around to replacing it until about a month ago when I found the album posted in its entirety on Youtube while I was looking for something else.  I surrendered to the impulse, partly out of pure nostalgia, but more so because my recently acquired love for the 'Jesus is my Boyfriend' song and my admiration for the subtle Sufi devotion of Richard and Linda Thompson's best work made me want to listen once again to Harrison's songs of spiritual awakening. Harrison was the first of the Beatles to launch his solo career, with All Things Must Pass  hitting the stores in November 1970, a mere six months after the Beatles announced their split.  He didn't do it by halves, either.  The original release was a three LP set, with two LPs' worth of original songs and a third containing a series of bluesy jams with ...

So, 31 August 2014 is my next preaching gig.  As usual, someone else chose the readings but this time it was a parishioner called Audrey, who will be preaching on the same readings earlier in the day.  It will be interesting to see what she takes from them. The first of the readings comes from Psalm 139. For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you. This psalm celebrates God's deep knowledge of us, and his deep ...

It's strange to admit that I've read my way through a fairly large pile of books of Jesus scholarship and pseudo-scholarship, and yet have only just now read any works by Geza Vermes. Vermes was born in Hungary in 1924, his parents non-practicing Jews who converted to Catholicism during Geza's childhood but were still swept up in the Holocaust.  Geza himself was ordained as a Catholic priest despite being rejected by both the Jesuits and the Dominicans because of his Jewish ancestry.  In the late 1950s, however, he left the Catholic church and reasserted his Jewish identity.  Most of his later life was spent in England, where he served as Professor of Jewish Studies at Oxford University until his death in 2013.  His book covers quote both the Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph describing him as "the greatest Jesus scholar of his generation". He has two main claims to fame.  One is as a translator and interpreter of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which he first examine...

I've been finding myself singing this Bruce Cockburn song to myself a lot lately. Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage  Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage  Suddenly it's repression, moratorium on rights  What did they think the politics of panic would invite?  Person in the street shrugs -- "Security comes first"  But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse   Callous men in business costume speak computerese  Play pinball with the Third World trying to keep it on its knees  Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea  And the local Third World's kept on reservations you don't see  "It'll all go back to normal if we put our nation first"  But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse   Fashionable fascism dominates the scene  When ends don't meet it's easier to justify the means  Tenants get the dregs and landlords get the crea...

My family and friends include a number of stong supporters of Israel.  A lot of conservative Christians feel this way, for reasons which include their understanding of Biblical prophecy, their immersion in the history of Israel via our shared religious heritage, and a fear of the spread of Islam.  This means at a time like now my Facebook feed is flooded with pro-Israeli propaganda. I find it distressing.  I am not a supporter of Hamas.  As far as I can tell they're an unprincipled group of religious ideologues.  Nor do I have anything against Israelis.  However, in the context of a war in which there are currently 200 Palestinian casualties for every Israeli one I think Israel's supporters need to ask themselves some serious questions.  What could lead someone, particularly a Christian from a neutral country, to lend support to the stronger party in such an asymmetrical war? In the interests of keeping it real, I've taken to updating the death ...

So, my rather haphazard journey through the world of Christian apologetics has brought me to William Lane Craig.  The much-traveled Craig is perhaps the most prominent conservative evangelical apologist in the English-speaking world, holding debates with militant atheists in all sorts of places in between his day job as Research Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology in Southern California.  He was even part of a widely advertised debate here in Brisbane City Hall with prominent atheist scientist Lawrence Krauss.  I couldn't get to the debate but friends who did told me I didn't miss much. Craig is a prolific author and speaker, with over 30 books in print as well as numerous articles, scholarly and popular, and DVD's of his lectures and debates.   Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics  is his attempt to bring all this together in a package.  It started life as material for his seminary courses in apologetics and was origin...

We are currently being forced to accept, reluctantly and to our collective sorrow and shame, that for a long time our society has been remarkably tolerant of the sexual abuse of children.  Our Royal Commission here in Australia has been sitting for some time now, hearing horrendous stories of abuse in institutions which are mostly connected to the churches, Catholic and Protestant.  That we are hearing these stories has little or nothing to do with the willingness of churches and institutions to admit fault and change their ways, and everything to do with the courage and persistence of abuse survivors who have fought to be heard every step of the way. Now, as if to remind us that it's not just the church, the British legal system has finally wound its methodical way to the conclusion that Rolf Harris is guilty of 12 counts of sexual assault committed on four young girls between 1968 and 1986.  These charges seem to be the tip of the iceberg.  A makeup artist he on...