The Meaning of Chloe Grace

Two weeks ago (Apriil 12th to be exact) Hannah and I welcomed into the world our second daughter. The pregnancy and labour went very smoothly, which we thank God for, but the tricky part was giving our new little girl a name.

We had talked about girls' and boys' names (we kept the sex a surprise!) and eventually went for Chloe, with the middle name Grace. Names are important: not only do they represent us in law and to one another, they give parents a chance to say something to their child, and in some cases say something about a person.

Of course we loved the names for what they are. But here are some more reasons behind choosing Chloe and Grace for our daughter.

3 Reasons Why Freshers Should Go to CU

I had the privilege of speaking at the University of Lincoln Christian Union's Freshers' Week last week. I was asked to talk about why students should go to CU.

If you don't know, CU stands for Christian Union - basically the Christian Society - and is part of a network of similar groups across the world, a community of students who believe in and follow Jesus Christ and want to spread his message to other students on campus.

I've got three reasons why you should go ad get stuck in, and three Bible verses to go with them.

Why we don't do Father Christmas

A family Christmas tradition we have started is a trip to Doddington Hall where we will take a look around the Elizabethan house's traditional decorations, order a coffee and cake from the delicious cafe, pick out a bauble from the Bauble Barn, and bring home a Christmas tree grown on the estate.

This year, Doddington have also got Father Christmas waiting to meet children in the house's Great Hall. Almost everyone we met asked Rebekah, our two-year-old, if she had come to see Santa.

We were aware of the pressure with Santa - he is synonymous with Christmas in the UK now. So we are starting to think about whether we should introduce Rebekah to him or not...

What is the Good News?

At church my wife Hannah and I help support students in Lincoln to transition into life as a student and prepare them to leave university in the real world as a Christian.

As part of this we are looking at what the 'Good News' is and how it should affect our lives. Here is the first session looking at what news is so good in the Christian worldview.

What Would Jesus Say to a Fresher?

I was happy to be asked by the University of Lincoln Christian Union to help at their Freshers' Week this year, giving a talk during one of their lunch bars. This included the offer of free food and a talk that relates to Freshers on campus.

The topic I was asked to tackle was "What would Jesus say to a Fresher?". Here is what I think Jesus would say to Lincoln Freshers of 2014.

Why I'm Not Doing the Ice Bucket Challenge

The Ice Bucket Challenge has swept across social media and the world it seems but has always not sat quite right with me. Whether it was the cold water on my head part or the part where I put the video online for all to see, I wasn't sure. But a recent blog post from The Good Book Company has helped me ground where my unfeeling comes from.

As the article says; I don't think it is wrong to take part. Indeed giving to charity and raising awareness of horrific diseases is important. Plus, I have enjoyed watching some of the videos. We're free to do what we like with our charitable giving - ice buckets or not - I just feel that this isn't the best way to do it.

I've copied the article below to show my agreement with it and because it puts things much clearer than I could.

Why I'm ن

A phenomenon has spread across the social sphere in recent weeks with profile pictures being replaced by an arabic symbol. For me, profile pictures are for pictures of you but I have added the sign to the end of my name on social. This is why.

Amazing Grace

In Amazing Grace (2006) William Wilberforce (friend
of John Newton) used the song for the abolition of
slavery.

Written almost 250 years ago, Amazing Grace has been recorded by artists such as Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Rod Stewart, Elvis Presley, Leann Rhymes, Dolly Parton and many more. It's maybe one of the most famous songs in the English language and is regularly sang at church services today.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but ow am found,
Was blind but now I see.

But it's not often that we sit back and think about what songs are actually saying, what they mean to us.

Signs There is Something More

Have you ever felt there must be more than this life?  That there seems to be a bigger purpose to existence?  There are signs throughout life that seem to suggest there is something more than just our daily rituals, more than just birth, life and death.  This idea is explored in The Truman Show (1998) which provides a good opportunity to look at what it means for us.

Truman finds the steps to freedom.

Born To Give Them Second Birth

It's fun to look at pictures of babies and imagine what some of them are born to be or do.  You can never tell and are often surprised to see what those famous in the world today once looked like.  For example, below we have the babies who would go on to be a Hollywood superstar, the President of the United States of America and a England striker.  You'd never have guessed, hey?

Tom Cruise, Barack Obama and Wayne Rooney as babies.

You might say that they were born to fulfil their respective potentials.  Christmas is all about celebrating the birth of a baby but it's not often that it's thought what that baby was really born for, the reason that the baby Jesus arrived on earth.

Stephen Fry and Being Made in the Image of God

I'm quite a fan of QI; I love the statistics and the quirky facts they have on offer.  Famous for the television show, 'the QI elves' also publish books which they call 'Books of Ignorance' in the vein that the public are generally ignorant of the amazing world they live in.  This is true to an extent, for example: who knows that aardvarks can eat up to half a million termites in a sitting, that a cat's paws double in size when its claws are extended or that a salamander's tongue muscles attach to its hip bones.

Indeed, those facts come from a certain book, The QI Book of Animal Ignorance, which I highly recommend (it leads you through an A-Z of animals showing how amazing each one is).  Stephen Fry, famous for hosting the QI television series, writes the foreword and, though a staunch atheist, gives a real insight into what it means to be made in the image of God.

A Response to 'How to suck at your religion'

The Oatmeal is a very clever and funny, internet based comment blog (is that a good description?) which deals with a huge variety of the world's issues, specifically those popularly discussed online, using the medium of the comic.  The blog also has strong (and I'd suggest mainstream) views on religion, specifically Chirstianity.  A recent comic was titled 'How to suck at your religion' which implies a list of objections to religion held in Western culture.

Do have a look, it's quite funny and a good read.  The list has some reasonable objections but, in my opinion and from a Chrisrian perspective, they are based on misunderstandings.

A Proverb a Day

Over the summer I got to know a group of amazing people from Starkville, Mississippi including Grant Arinder, the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church there.  This month he and the Calvary congregation are reading one chapter of Proverbs for each day of the next month (there are 31 chapters), collecting thoughts on the book at the Twitter hashtag #aprovaday.

I would like to invite all of my followers to join the congregation at Calvary and read a chapter of Proverbs a day. Share @ #aprovaday
— Grant Arinder (@Dr_GDog) July 23, 2012

I like the idea, especially the integration with Twitter, and will be trying to read along with my brothers and sisters across the pond!

An Answer to Sceptics (Book Review)

The Reason for God
Timothy Keller (Buy on Amazon)

The subtitle for this book is 'Belief in an Age of Scepticism' which pretty much sums The Reason for God up. Tim Keller, a pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, in Manhattan, New York, tells in the introduction of how his move to plant a church in inner city New York was ridiculed by those around him; that no one in Manhattan is bothered about religion. Those who generally live in this area are single, career-orientated people, sceptical of the traditions of Christianity, but Keller has now a 5000+ strong church there and this book is a testament to how that was achieved.

Split into two parts, The Reason for God first addresses the many objections to Christianity Keller has been met with over the years from sceptics in NYC, including 'how could a good God allow suffering?', 'science has disproved Christianity' and 'you can't take the Bible literally'. Keller gives an answer to each of these using his personal experiences, quotes and teachings of philosophers and theologians of the past and the themes of the Bible itself. Some arguments are stronger than others but each is very logical and persuasive. After all, many have asked these questions to Keller in the past and are now a part of the church in Manhattan!

Why Ricky Gervais is an Atheist, and Why I Agree With Him

Ricky Gervais, the British comedian behind such series as The Office and Extras, has some interesting ideas.  He is a self-confessed atheist, as anyone who follows him on Twitter would know, and wrote a great insight into why he holds this view back at the end of 2010.

In fact he has some very valid ideas and points and I agree with him on many of them:

• "The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t."
  Agreed.  Truth is truth, if you believe something that isn't true, it doesn't make it true...
• "From what I can gather, pretty much the worst type of person you can be is an atheist. The first four commandments hammer this point home. There is a god, I’m him, no one else is, you’re not as good and don’t forget it. (Don’t murder anyone, doesn’t get a mention till number 6.)"
  There's an interesting point here; not that atheists are any 'worse a type of person' than someone else but that it's the first four commandments that  that God takes most seriously and that people (in general, Christians or not) ignore the most.  It's not necessarily what you do that makes you good or bad but your relationship with your Creator.
• "Well, nearly. 75 percent of Americans are God-­‐fearing Christians; 75 percent of prisoners are God-­‐fearing Christians. 10 percent of Americans are atheists; 0.2 percent of prisoners are atheists."
  Indeed, just being labelled a Christian, a Hindu or an atheist doesn't mean you will or will no likely end up in jail, be 'good' or 'bad' or anything.
• "If mum had lied to me about God, had she also lied to me about Santa?"
  An important question, from both sides, as discussed in the past...

Chocolate Egg Laying Bunnies or the Day the World was Saved?

As Britain, and much of the Western world, becomes more and more secular, one religious event still shapes the calendar that people live by: the Easter weekend.  Though most will know that it is something to do with the death of Jesus Christ, today the holiday stands for different things for different people: family, food, the Easter Bunny, welcome time off work, chocolate eggs and more.


Still, though people will being saying "Happy Easter" over this weekend, it seems that few really take in why Easter is happy, especially if it is based around the death of Jesus.

What's So Good About Good Friday?

The Friday of the Easter weekend is always called Good Friday.  Maybe it's the bank holiday day off that we think is good about that day or the sneaky Easter egg you might eat up a few days early (I'm guilty of that already) that makes this day 'good' but the real reason behind it is found in the Easter story that the whole weekend is named after.

However, surely the leader of a religion being nailed to a piece of wood and innocently murdered isn't a good thing?  The anniversaries of most famous peoples' deaths are mourned, marked by a minute's silence and the laying of flowers.  Why is Good Friday labelled good?

#PrayForMuamba; But to Who?

Fabrice Muamba has become famous across the United Kingdom and indeed further in the past few weeks but probably not for the way he would have had it.  On the 17th of March, Muamba collapsed during Bolton's FA-Cup Quarter Final against Tottenham Hotspur, suffering a cardiac arrest and spending 6 minutes on the pitch under CPR from medics and a doctor from the crowd.  He was rushed to hospital amidst the players and fans at the stadium visibly praying for his safety and the world of Twitter showing their support through the hashtag #PrayForMuamba.

I was shocked to see that the world of Twitter, and seemingly spreading the the wider world, turned to prayer to deal with this tragedy.  In the light of things, though, I shouldn't really be surprised.

Players in disbelief as Muamba is treated on the pitch.  thesun.co.uk

If There Were No God...

The Brick Testament

  In the beginning, God created the earth, and He looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

  And God said, "Let Us make creatures out of mud, so mud can see what We have done."  And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man.  Mud as man alone could speak.  God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around and spoke.  Man blinked.  "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.

  "Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.

  "Certainly," said man.

  "The I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God.  And He went away.

A parody of Genesis 1 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in Cat's Cradle found in a chapter on nihilism in James W. Sire's The Universe Next Door.

Kony 2012: Only One Man for the Job

This week a campaign went viral, spreading across the internet like wildfire, which has shocked and inspired the world.  Kony 2012 is the project to make Joseph Kony, a rebel, military leader in Central Africa, famous in an attempt to force action from international bodies, specifically the US government.

It is a tough subject with no clear solution but there is one person who could, and has, made all the difference.