Painting Fakes

If you read this blog from time to time you'll know that I'm a big fan of Bruce Cockburn.  So you won't be surprised to hear that I was very excited about the publication of his memoir, Rumours of Glory,  which hit the shelves in late 2014. I first heard Cockburn in the early 1980s and his music was a revelation to me.  He was the first singer I heard (and still one of a select few) who combined an overt Christian faith with a deep commitment to justice and an immersion in political and social issues.  He is a big name in his native Canada - winner of multiple Juno awards (the equivalent to our ARIAs) and inductee to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.  Elsewhere he has a fairly low profile and a small but devoted following - especially from people like me. I read Rumours of Glory  over the Easter holiday as we travelled around western Victoria and New South Wales.  Among other things, it inspired me to fill some gaps in my collection of Cockburn CDS ...

So, Michael Clarke has announced his retirement from international cricket, to take place at the end of the Ashes series. It's kind of surprising and not surprising.  Surprising because he's only 34, still young for a cricketer, and because he had been so adamant that he was not retiring.  Not surprising, because his degenerative back condition always meant he would retire younger than most, and because over the past few months he has looked like his heart's not in it. No-one in elite sport is universally loved even among among their team-mates, especially not while they're playing.  Elite sportspeople are driven and competitive and this often makes them abrasive and inconsiderate.  Still, Clarke seems to have copped more criticism than most considering his achievements.  So, in the interests of fairness, here's six things to remember him by. 1. 2012 In the 2012 calendar year, the year after he took over as captain, he scored 2,400 test runs including ...

Over the last couple of years I've been listening attentively to all sorts of religious music in the process of rethinking my own practice.  There's been nothing systematic about it.  Often what I've been listening to is music I've known for a long time, but because I'm more focused on the question I'm listening with different ears. How can we get past heavily theological, formulaic music and find something that creates a genuine emotional connection?  How can we get out of the atonement bubble and sing about everything that matters in our lives?  Are we prepared to weep and get angry as well as celebrate and praise? I've expressed my frustration at the music currently promoted in my church and others like it .  I've contrasted this with the ancient Israelite practice shown in the Book of Psalms , and with some other Christian practices that are often unfairly derided.  But I've also found a lot of what I'm looking for in songwriters from o...

I'm late to the party as usual but I've just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, originally published in 2005, thanks to a tip-off from my clever niece Alisha . The bombing of the World Trade Centre is becoming old news, but its effects are still with us and even more so still with our Islamic communities.  Last night I went to the launch of my friend Dave Andrews' book The Jihad of Jesus  which deals with dialogue and common ground between Christianity and Islam.  That's a whole other subject, but  Dave's friend and local Islamic community leader Nora Amath shared her own story of how, in the wake of that event, she and her friends and family in Australia experienced increasing suspicion and aggression as they went about their daily lives.  They had nothing to do with it and were as horrified as everyone else, but were still blamed and vilified - and continue to be to this day. How can we see this event in perspectiv...

The important thing about Jesus' miracles is not their factuality but their meaning .  Jesus' miracles illustrate and reinforce his teaching about the Kingdom of God .  The same goes for the resurrection.  Having summarised what I think the resurrection stories are describing , I'd like to talk a little about how the apostles used the story and what they made of it. Whole books have been written about this.  I'm just going to give you the highlights under three headings - vindication of Jesus' life and message, a new life for his followers here and now, and a future hope. Vindication In Acts 2, Luke reports a sermon by Peter which centres on the following words. “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law...

A while ago I wrote a series of posts about Jesus' miracles.  Without wanting to go over old ground, the general drift was that the miracles are teaching incidents.  They are not intended as displays of divine power, but as illustrations of the nature of the Kingdom of God coming among us.  Did they happen?  Not sure, I don't dismiss them but I hold their factuality relatively lightly. Anyway, I kind of hinted then that I would do a separate post on the Resurrection, but it's taken me a while to get around to it.  It's a difficult subject and not one to be taken on lightly.  However some of my recent reading, including William Lane Craig , Paul Barnett and Geza Vermes , has helped to crystallise my thinking about the question in a way I think is worth telling you about.  I'll do it in two parts, otherwise it would be too long - this one looks at the evidence for the resurrection as an historical phenomenon, the next will look at what it meant fo...

There is a stunning amount of scholarship and pseudo-scholarship about Jesus in circulation, and the flow doesn't show any sign of letting up.  I guess with 2.4 billion people around the world identifying as Christian in some way, there's no shortage of interest in the subject. Unlike the spate of recent writings on the subject, the sources of evidence are strictly finite.  There are documents - the writings of Jesus' first followers, plus scattered (generally brief) references in non-Christian contemporaries like Tacitus, Josephus or Celsus.  There is a wide range of contextual information from historians and archaeologists which can throw light on the meaning of these documents and against which they can be checked. Yet out of this evidence, or out of the silences between the evidence, authors have produced a huge variety of pictures of Jesus - divine being , freedom fighter , charismatic prophet , cynic philosopher , even (as we shall see) a wholly imaginary pe...