David J. Cowpar's Blog

This is the second of my little short stories based on the prompts in a book of writing prompts I got recently. This is the third prompt in the book. The second one, I have an idea for a story for that one, but it will be longer than the sort of short story length I am going for with these, as it would have to incorporate this prompt as well to make it a story that isn't just fleshing out the second prompt.

The Prompt:

While pulling off a high-stakes heist... a thief steals something that was not on the agenda.
"Someone" actually.
Mart checked his watch. It was 12:03am on the 29th of April. The time had come. Months of planning had led to this. Mart was sitting in the back of a van, it had the logo of a local lighting company blazoned over it. That was his cover, he was here on the Warner Brothers lot to light a night shoot for the ultra popular TV show Eastern Lane. This shoot was starting at one am on the WB backlot, and Mart had gotten himself in to light the production.
The plan was elaborate. It had to be. Mart was here with Stuart, his "assistant" officially. Stuart was actually in The Industry, what people in Hollywood, and Los Angeles more generally, called the whole process of making movies. Stuart actually knew how to light a set, he was going to be the person doing the lighting, while Mart and the rest of the team focused on more important things.
The team was made up of Mart and Stuart, on lighting; then Annika was there as part of the craft services team for the evening, which allowed her to bring in sharp things. She was deadly with a kitchen knife, and might be needed if they ran into any issues. Then there was Paul, Paul was here as an extra. He was planning to slip off set and he was our controlled conditions expert. A vital part of the team. It was a small team, which was a risk, but the rewards were better.
The target this evening was the ever dwindling stock of original films kept on Warner Brothers' property in Burbank. Everything in Warner Brothers looks like something else, so the writer's room can double as the hospital Joker blows up in The Dark Knight, the production office can also be an apartment block, the office of the show runner is a house façade. That sort of thing. It can make finding things in Warner Brothers' extensive 110 acre lot a chore in itself. Luckily for the team, they took the Warner Brothers' Studio Tour and some of those buildings were explained to them, like the target for tonight's heist. The target was a building that looked a little like a prison, a little like a motel. It had two floors of large metal doors with a balcony running along the second floor. You can shoot outside it, but inside it's climate controlled, constantly cooled and kept at about 40% humidity in order to store the films.    In recent years, this stock has been dwindling. This is because of a salt mine, still active, but with large, carved out, underground caverns from which salt has been extracted. The mine is located outside Hutchinson, Kansas. It's a constant 68 degrees 650 feet below the surface, and the humidity level is always 40%. The bonus for Warner Brothers, they don't have to pay to keep it this cool like they do in the hot SoCal Sun typical of Burbank in the Los Angeles valley.

That Sun is nowhere to be seen now of course. It's 12:23am. Stuart is setting up the lights while Mart listens to the others through his earpiece. There is a guard change in the vicinity of the vaults that usually means, assuming there is no filming in that area, that it will be out of anyone's sight between 1:03am and 1:18am. A short window, but all they need.
When Mart first suggested this plan to the team they scoffed. Original films, you can buy this shit on DVD, who needs the dailies of Jurassic Park? Then Mart showed them the sort of money just one of these, B level, original films makes on the black market and they were in. Paul was added to the team shortly afterward. Paul owned a large warehouse, just down the road in Studio City. It was the perfect spot to store their stolen goods until they could sell them. Paul even had some movie studio clients using his space to store their original films. Nothing as historic as Warner Brothers, but they knew the space would work because of it.
Annika, for catering purposes of course, had a refrigerated van. She needed to unload her catering supplies, set up, swap out Mart's van for hers, and get her van over to the motel/prison/vault building in the next 38 minutes.
Mart looked up to the Hollywood Hills. Warner Brothers was positioned right behind the Hollywood Sign. You couldn't see it from here, but you could clearly see the blinking light of the signal tower on top of Mount Lee, which was positioned just above, and slightly east of, the sign itself.
Mart shook his head, reflecting on the ridiculousness of the film industry, and the demand for unique and original items from movies. He didn't get it himself, but it would certainly make him filthy rich.
Annika called to him over his headset. It was time to make the van swap. Mart nodded to Stuart. Right on queue one of the larger lights, on the other side of the set from the van, came crashing down. Everyone's attention was drawn to the disaster. The director yelled "CUT!" This gave Mart just the opportunity he needed to slip away.
Annika was in her catering van when Mart pulled up around the corner, somewhere on New York Street, not too far from the little alley in which Peter Parker and Mary Jane had their upside down kiss, and close to where Tom Holland's Spider-Man attempted to make a call on the balcony of a building to Happy Hogan, reporting in on how his day as the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man was going.
He signalled to Annika and she pulled out of her spot, and once she was around the corner he zipped in. He ran from his van, leaving it where Annika's had been, and jumped into hers. Paul was already seated beside her. The light coming crashing down meant he could sneak off set, saying it looked like a food break to him as they sorted this.
It was now 12:57. Time was pressing on. Once Annika joined them, they drove to the prison/motel/vault block. Right on schedule, the security guard walked in the other direction. He was changing shifts at 1:00am and his replacement wouldn't get here on his rounds until 1:18am.
Paul was out of the van within seconds, practically diving over Mart to get out. Mart was the strategist. He left Paul to this part, because he knew what he was doing. A noise drew Mart's attention to their left. He and Annika looked in that direction. Annika slowly got out of the van herself. Mart noticed she already had the knife in her hand, poised and waiting.
Movement brought Mart's attention back to the alley. There was definitely someone there. Annika was already on the move. Mart scrunched up his face. He felt sorry for whoever it was. About fifteen seconds later Mart heard a whistle sound, and he knew Annika had brought the mystery person's life to an end. He sighed and climbed out of the van. They couldn't just leave a body lying around. Annika reappeared in the headlights of the van. She was cleaning her kitchen knife on a dish towel. Her posture was an interesting mix. She was walking slowly and her cleaning movements were very exact, practiced, perfected even, Mart noted. But her face and her gait communicated something different, something Mart had not seen in any of the times he had worked with her. Was it fear? Was it excitement?
"You'll never guess what this clown was doing," Annika said when they were about three feet apart.
"What?" Mart asked.
"He was bringing film to the vault," Annika said, monotone, but she glanced up at him and smiled.
"I wonder what they were doing with it and why it was out of the vault?" Mart said, more to himself.
"Whatever, it's ours now," Annika shrugged.
Mart and Annika briskly walked towards the body. They had brought a dinner wagon from the back of the van with them to help wheel the body. Mart placed the film reels on top and he and Annika slid the body onto one of the lower shelves. Then they loaded him into the van.
It was now 1:13am, there were mere minutes left, five in fact, to get the rest of their treasure and hightail it out of there.
"I better go check on Paul's progress," Mart said and left Annika with the van.
When he came to the furthest door down on the vault/motel/prison building, he saw Paul was already inside.
"We don't have long," Mart said as he walked inside. "What's your status?"
"We have a new problem," Paul said and nodded, indicating a direction that Mart should look.
He did, and there was another person in the room.
"It seemed easy to get in to," Paul said, "this is why. Someone already opened the door."
"Annika killed a guy with some film reel just minutes ago," Mart said.
"You failed to inform us there would be warmies," Paul said, through gritted teeth.
Warmies was what the team called living people. Mart bit his own lip. These vaults were barely ever used, no one used film these days, he couldn't understand what a person would be doing here, at midnight. His observations told him film left in trucks for the cave every second Wednesday, the trucks left about midday, meaning Wednesday mornings, and Tuesday nights, were not the night for this job. He was meticulous.
"There shouldn't be warmies, I checked and double checked. No one uses these anymore," Mart said, the frustration deep in his brow, and audible in his tone.
"Ah..." the warmie interrupted... "it's our director, Wes Anderson, he films on film. We were bringing in the dailies from today for storage until the editing process begins."
"Hipster directors," Paul said as he huffed, "wasting our best made plans."
It was 1:14am.
"We don't have time for this. Get all you can and get in the van," Mart said as he turned to get Annika.
A minute later Paul had his second dinner wagon in the back of the van. The warmie was weeping gently in the corner, mourning his deep colleague and friend. Annika, occasionally, flashed her knife at him if his tears got too loud, this made him whimper a bit more silently as he curled into a ball. But then, blood would drip from the body of this friend, or something else would draw his attention back there. And his weeping would be louder again.
"We could always just kill him," Annika suggested.
"I didn't sign up for murder," Paul objected.
"You're already in it to your chest," Annika shrugged, "what's two bodies when we already have one?"
"I can cause these films to deteriorate in minutes if I want to," Paul threatened.
"We'll just add another body to the pile if you do," Annika said as she menacingly waved her knife in front of her face.
"It's 1:17am," Mart said. "No more death. We need to get out of here."
Paul sighed a sigh of relief, the Warmie did a happy whimper, Mart closed the back doors of the van and hopped into the front himself, alone, with some silence. Then he pulled the van out and drove the opposite way that the shift guard would come.
He meandered through the backlot, until he got to the gate Annika drove in. Security waved him through, lifted the barrier, and they were out on to Riverside Drive in seconds. It was all so easy. Mart stuck the location of Paul's warehouse into the sat nav, turned left, and began heading west towards Studio City. Overall, this job was a success, he told himself. He heard a bang, followed by a thud, and a whimper with an audible tap after it in the back in quick succession. Maybe Annika had found a way to successfully deal with the added item on their treasure agenda. Mart relaxed into the seat of the van and smiled. The job had gone well, he could see the money already, and not only did they nab some classics, they had an unreleased film in the back as well. He sighed and put his foot on the peddle, speeding toward Studio City.

 It's been quite some time since I've written a blog post, 2018 I think was the last one. Honestly, I forgot how to do sign in to this, turns out it's easy and you can just click into it from the Google Chrome home pack... typical.

Anyway, as it's been some time I want to begin with a reminder of what my TotD (Thought of the Day) series is... It's not statements of fact, it's not statements of belief, it's thoughts, the current thing I'm thinking about a particular topic that I want to commit to writing to help me process it and share to see if anyone else is processing it at the same time.

With that said, welcome to this Thought of the Day.

I was recently listening to one of Chuck Smith's C3000 series on Matthew 13. This is a section of the Gospel of Matthew where a number of Jesus' parables are collected together, and Matthew 13 has some that are specifically about the Kingdom of God, or the Church. The reason I mention that I was listening to Chuck is that he has an interesting, and probably more accurate, interpretation of these parables than the traditional interpretation.

Let's look at the first of these parables.

The First Parable: The Mustard Seed.

He put another parable before them, saying,
“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
- Matthew 13:31–32 ESV.
You've probably heard of this parable. You were probably taught it in Sunday School. And you probably have heard of it taught in a particular way. In this parable, we are told the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of a mustard seed that was planted. In the previous parable, the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9), we are told that the seed is the Word of God being planted. This is what grows in the hearts and minds of people. I. Howard writes that the parable "suggests the growth of the kingdom of God from tiny beginnings to worldwide size." That's how it's often interpreted, this little mustard seed, one of the tiniest of the seeds, becomes this huge plant  and the birds come and nest in it's branches. It's like a place of refuge the church is for the wildness and unpredictability of this world.   But is that what Jesus meant? One of the key rules about interpreting Scripture is that we use Scripture to interpret Scripture. When we come across symbolism and allegory and metaphor, to understand it we need to look to other parts of Scripture to help shed light on it.
    So, does this parable really celebrate the amazing growth of the Church in the world, providing a place of shelter and protection from the insanity of the worldliness of life?
   It's been pointed out that a mustard seed grows into a bush, not a tree. Jesus, if He was referring to normal growth, could have used an example of an actual tree, which also starts as a small seed. The fact that a bush would grow into a tree is unusual, it's not meant to be. Birds didn't nest in a mustard bush. So, if the mustard bush grows too much, into a tree instead of a bush, and the Church on earth is like that... what does that mean? It means the Church has artificial growth. How much can we see that throughout the history of Christianity?
    When the Emperor Constantine became a Christian he conquered in the sign of the Cross of Christ and promised to Christianize Rome if he would win the throne. He won, and so he began a process of outlawing the traditional Roman Empire religions and making Christianity the only recognised Roman religion, the State Religion. This caused abnormal growth in the church. The mustard bush became a tree.
    This pattern continued into the Medieval period when Christendom was established and when the Roman Church established its authority and appointed Kings and Emperors. People had to be Christians or they would be killed. The mustard bush of the church became a tree.    In the age of Exploration (or maybe Exploitation, Colonization), Europeans went off on a mission to explore, and Christianize, the world. They forced people to convert to Christianity or die. The mustard bush became a tree.
    In the twentieth century in the USA, the Moral Majority began exerting political influence. A huge movement of conservatives mobilised in order to defeat the sitting, Evangelical, president, Jimmy Carter, and have Ronald Reagan elected. Culture wars, propaganda, and fear mongering were utilised to unseat an Evangelical Christian from the highest office in the land by mobilising Evangelicals against him. The church grew abnormally as people engaged in these wars. The mustard bush became a tree.
    And, in the twenty-first century, Donald Trump did the same thing. The mustard bush became a tree once more.

We see this pattern of abnormal growth in the church throughout Christian history. Perhaps Jesus was warning us against the artificial growth of the church? But is there any supporting evidence for that theory? This is where using Scripture to interpret Scripture comes into this equation. There is another element, beyond the unusual growth of the mustard seed to a tree. The birds. How do we understand what Jesus meant by saying: "the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." What does Jesus mean by the birds?
Here, we turn back to the previous parable, the Parable of the Sower. In Matthew 13:3-4, Jesus says: "And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them" (Matthew 13:3–4 ESV). Then, when the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable, He gives them this explanation: "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path" (Matthew 13:19ESV). So, in the parable Jesus said the birds come and eat the seed when it falls along the path, and explaining this parable He told the disciples that the seed that is sown along the path means the evil one, the devil and his demons, come and snatch away the sown seed, the Word of God.    In other words, in the parable right before this one, Jesus tells us the birds are the evil one coming, the demons coming, and then in this parable he says that the birds come and "make nests in its branches." What does this mean for the church? The church grows in abnormal ways, and the result isn't that people find refuge from the weirdness of the world in it, but the evil one and his demons come and make their home in it. I think this can have big implications for the way we see the place of the church in the world.
The Second Parable: The Leaven.
He told them another parable.“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”- Matthew 13:33 ESV
It would be mad to draw the above conclusions from one parable, so let's look at the next one, the parable of the leaven. Again, you will often hear this taught as just like if some yeast, some leaven, gets into some bread it will spread through the whole batch of dough and cause the whole bread to rise and grow, so too, the leaven that is the Word of God will permeate the Church and cause it to grow in power, influence, size, authority, importance, etc. in the world.
When you consider how leaven is used in the Bible it's hard to understand why we have come to think this is the best interpretation of that passage. Even just consider Passover, and Unleavened Bread. The Jewish people were to remove leaven from their homes in the run up to Passover, and all the bread made of it couldn't have yeast/leaven in it. Why was that?    In Exodus 12 and 13, the Jewish people are told to remove anything leavened and anything that could leaven, from their homes and from the whole nation of Israel for the seven days around the Passover. To fail to do this would result in being cut off fro Israel. This is because the leaven was a picture of sin. In the same way that yeast gets into a bit of dough and causes the whole thing to rise, sin can infect a part of our lives and spreads to all of it.
    This idea is carried into the New Testament by both Jesus and Paul. In Matthew 16:6, Jesus warns the disciples to "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees". At first, the disciples think Jesus is reprimanding them because they forgot to bring bread with them on their sailing across the Sea of Galilee. Matthew's recounting of this continues:
"But Jesus, aware of this, said, “O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?Do you not yet perceive?Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread?Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread,but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees."- Matthew 16:8–12 ESV
And Paul says:
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil,but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."- 1 Corinthians 5:6–8 ESV
Leaven is never positive in the Bible. If Jesus meant the growth of the Church would be a phenomenal and good thing, He could have used a better illustration for this. He didn't, He used leaven. So, in other words, bad teaching and sin would infect the church and grow in it, until it could be totally spoiled by sin and bad teaching.
Implications for the Church Today: The Church often sees itself as a refuge in the world, a place for birds to come and nest, a place of influence and importance. It sees history as being ideally on a trajectory of church growth in the world, and growing church influence in the world. Christians will celebrate things they see as victories, but lament the state of the world and say it's all going to hell in a hand basket when some previous law that regulated Christian morality for the general populace, is over turned.    I think these parables highlight for us the flaw in this thinking. The way of Christ is not the way of power, political influence, or enforcing laws. It is the way of the sacrificial Lamb. And, seeing these parables using Scripture to interpret Scripture we see a totally different picture of the church. Not this stalwart guardian of morality, but a place where abnormal growth can occur, where Satan can hide, where bad teaching can spread, and where sin can permeate.
    The implications of these parables is not to call us to a us, we Christians, versus them, the unbelieving world, mentality. It's a call to humility, to self-reflection, to seeing the Church as it is, a flawed, broken place, susceptible to mistakes, sin, and inflicting itself on others instead of drawing people to Christ by sharing the Good news of His love and grace for us displayed in His death on the cross.

I believe if we had a better understanding of these parables, it would give us a better theology of the church, and orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy. Or, in other words, right understanding would lead to right practice. Instead of thinking of it as us against the world, we would be more inclined to be reflective and realise we are not perfect either. It could help make the church more like a hospital for the broken, than a private club for the chosen.

 Recently on Instagram I did a Q&A thing, and one of the questions that was asked was about my writing. I haven't written anything in a while. So I decided I would download a writing prompt book to my Kindle to help me get back into the flow of writing stories. This is the first of these prompts. Feel free to write your own version of this prompt and share it with me so I can read it too :)

Prompt:

Before the existence of post offices and telephone lines, letters and news of importance were entrusted to Messengers. Write a story about a Messenger who bears news of an enemy invasion and his desperate run to the nation's capital and King/Queen.

My Story: Orion's Belt.

It was a dark and cloudless night. Orion had been 'gifted', as the other guards put it, with night watch duty. They knew Orion hated the night watch, and it wasn't fair he had been assigned to it for an entire week, because he hadn't been present last Wednesday when this rotations assignments were being decided.

Orion sighed as he stared into the darkness beyond Cosaint, the giant wall that his nation had built to protect them. Night watch duty was the strangest of the jobs when you were assigned to the group at Cosaint. It was a weird mixture of quiet and peaceful, dull you might say, but the need to be on high alert at all times, looking past the wall into the forest beyond for any signs of light, listening intently, focusing outward and attempting to ignore the sounds behind, for any hint of movement. The environment around you, the darkness, the silence, they all attempted to lull you into a peaceful, relaxed, even sleepful state of being... but the job itself entailed eight hours of total alert attention. The dichotomy hurt Orion's head.

As usual, tonight was another peaceful night. Nothing was happening beyond the wall, and the cloudless night drew Orion's attention skyward as he stared at the stars, attempting to see the patterns, people, animals, that his mother had once adored.

Orion, as you might have guessed from his name, was named after a constellation. It had been his mother's favourite, and she hadn't made it through his birth. Orion himself was lucky that he had. He sighed again. The name Orion was as much a blessing as it was a burden. The link to the mother he never knew gave him comfort, but the reaction of his father to the name in the years since had caused nothing but pain. And then there were the taunts from those he served with. "Star Boy", they would taunt as they pretended to look for Astrology readings, something Orion knew nothing about.

Movement in the forest caught Orion's attention, he looked down and scanned the treeline, looking for any hint of light and listening intently. After about two minutes, but it felt to Orion like two lifetimes, he left out the breath he was holding in. It was nothing, maybe an animal or something. No one was out there.

Orion sat again, looking beyond the forest now and into the land of Otther, and, I guess, a little into the past as well. His nation, the nation of Uzz, had once been a group of smaller tribes, as recently as his grandfather's time. It was when his own parents were babes that the tribes of Uzz came together, uniting over what bonded them instead of warring over their differences. And largely, what bonded them, was the threat of foreign, overseas, larger armies coming in and plundering our wealth and our people. But not every tribe wanted to be part of Uzz. Some of the tribes on our island could not see past their differences with us and they opted to remain outside the nation of Uzz, we call them Otther now. There are pockets of them all over the island. But in treaties they defined their land and the nation of Uzz build walls like the very one Orion now sat, to keep them out and stop Uzz having to deal with raids from the Otthers when we had bigger problems lurking beyond the waves. Our tribal people were a raiding people ourselves, and the death of the practice has been slow in Otther. They occasionally attempt raids again; thus the need for Cosaint.

More movement brought Orion back to the present. But it was followed by a screech and a squeak and Orion noted the owl catching it's prey as it flew back into the trees.

"I hate night watch" he muttered to himself and he pulled his cloak tighter around himself to ward off the ever increasing cold as the night dragged on. Orion had another job among the company at Cosaint. He was the Messenger. He had taken back ownership of the star boy name in this way. The Orion in the night sky famously has a belt, Orion's belt. Orion also had a belt, and in it he put letters from the troops at the front line, the wall of Cosaint, to their loved ones back in the capital, and he also brought their letters and messages back to the wall. This meant Orion's belt was loved among his fellows. Even if they still asked him to read the star's for them on occasion, Orion's belt, which is what everyone called it, was their favourite thing in the world, because it brought news of home.

It was while Orion had last been on a run, delivering letters, that the assignments for this week had been divvied up. That's how he landed with night watch all week. So, as much as the other's loved Orion's belt and the news it brought them, they didn't care too much for Orion himself; who had to go straight from a run back from the capital and handing out letters at the wall, to night duty, no sleep for this star soldier.

The twinkling of the stars, and the silence of the night, drew Orion's eyes skyward again. He searched the sky for his namesake. Even though he knew Orion was up there, he was never any good at identifying the supposed patterns people had long ago laid down in the star maps. He lay back, studying the sky, trying to remember which part was Orion.

A sound ripped through the darkness, piercing through Orion's reverie. He opened his eyes swiftly and saw the sky above him. He bolted upright, hoping he had not fallen asleep. The sound echoed through the night again. It was a scream, and it was coming from beyond the wall. There was another sound, a large whoosh, followed by a partial scream and a thud. Orion's eyes were wide now. He was piecing together a likely scenario based on what he was hearing.

Cosaint was not the only defence Uzz had against an attack from Otther. In the surrounding woods they had placed traps, so that if anyone attempted to come upon the wall from an unmarked route, well Orion didn't want to think about what the person who screamed was going through over those traps. It sounded like someone, and the scream was definitely human, and male, had gotten caught in a trap. The other noises, those were less obvious, but Orion was certain the person trapped had been killed by those traveling with him in order to silence his screams. And they weren't far away. Orion scanned the forest in the direction the scream had come from, but he could see no light and no other movement.

He stood.

The scream and the other sounds were reason enough rouse more guards. He walked to a small rope that was positioned to his left and pulled. A bell rang, not loud enough to wake everyone in this fortress just behind Cosaint, but enough to wake the guards in their stations just below the walls.

As Orion looked behind him, watching as his colleagues emerged from their on duty house, he heard another sound from outside the wall. Turning, he saw a bright ball of fire heading directly for him. His heart raced and his eyes widened, he said a prayer to the Uzzian god of protection, after whom this wall was named, and knew this was the end of his life.

But he had miscalculated. The fireball was not headed for him, instead it soared over his head and smashed into the bell tower with a loud clang and an even louder crash. The sound jolted Orion and he ran along the wall, toward one of the staircases down into the fortress as the bell tower came crashing down where he had stood only moments before.

Orion looked over the wall again. He could now see a growing number of little flames at the tree line some two or three kilometres away from the wall. The Otthers had clearly given up on their sneak attack tactic that caused them to end the life of one of their own when they heard the bell ring out. Now it was an all out assault on the wall he was seeing preparations for. And he was the only guard on the wall, and he was also Orion, of Orion's belt, the guy who was meant to run at the first sign of trouble to alert the capital and mobilise the army to provide back up as swiftly as possible. Orion's duel duties contended in his mind. He reached the stairs down into the fortress and ran past them. He had to be a guard until there were more guards on this wall. Then he could be Orion's Belt again. He ran up to one of the turrets scattered along the length of Cosaint. He used his own torch to light the large cannon positioned there, always at the ready, just in case. He aimed it at the largest concentration of lights he could see, and fired.

The cannonball flew through the air and hit exactly where he wanted it to. A number of mini flames were now extinguished and a larger flame began to spread in its place. Orion was already on the move to the next cannon to repeat the process when a cannonball from the Otthers hit the wall. It shook, but Cosaint was built to withstand much more fire power than this, and hopefully more than the Otthers could muster. Orion fired his second shot. This time he hit closer to the edge of their group, there were still flames here, but a lesser concentration of them. Still, even one less enemy on the side of the Otthers was one less enemy for Uzz to be concerned about.

Orion heard another noise. He turned to see a number of the guardians of Cosaint running up the various staircases to come to the defence of the town. The captain nodded to Orion as he ran past him.

"Shoot for the stars Orion", he said, shaking Orion awake again. It was time, time for him to run.

He took the steps down two at a time, passing ascending comrades as he went. They patted him on the back and the shoulder and mumbled godspeed and other words of encouragement as he went.

Orion was exhausted, it was less than twenty-fours hours before he arrived back at Cosaint. Now he had to run back the way he had come, again.

The earth shook as Orion ran. Explosions sounded behind him. The full power of Cosaint was being unleashed on the Otthers, and they were fighting back with the same amount of ferocious determination. Orion couldn't stop to look. He had to keep running. Cosaint was surrounded on both sides by forest, but on this side there was a large, straight road. It led right through the woods.

Orion ran like he had never run before. But he was also aware of the exhaustion in every fibre of his being. He had no sleep. And he was tense over what had happened that day. Who wouldn't? He cleared the forest in what felt like the shortest amount of time he had ever run it, but also the longest as he muscles screamed. He thought of the old lady who lived in a small farm house on this side of the woods. Sometimes he would stop in to her with supplies and news of the nation. And in turn she would allow him some time to rest and some food. Her home cooked rabbit stew was one of the best he had ever tasted. He looked in the direction he knew her house was, only about a kilometre away. How he longed to go there now, to rest, to have some stew. But he knew he couldn't, and he knew that dear old woman would be asleep still. Dawn was creeping in, but had yet to make itself fully known.

No, Orion couldn't go to rest. He had a message, the most important message ever to find it's way 'into', figuratively speaking, there was no physical message, Orion's belt. He had to press on. He ran past the turn to the elderly woman's home, cursing himself with every step he took.

Not too far out of the woods, Orion came to his next obstacle, his next choice to take the easy road, this time literally. Left brought you to the capital, directly, but it was almost all uphill until you could see the capital from above. Then it was downhill until you ascended Capital Hill itself. But there was also a road to the right. It didn't go to the capital, but in about ten kilometres there was a fork, and turning left on that fork did bring you to the capital. This route went around the mountain, so much less climbing, so much easier to run it. However, this route added about fifteen kilometres to the journey. Even with the benefit of flat land, this would make the journey too long; especially at this crucial moment. So, left it was... That's the choice Orion needed to make. His muscles could take a break later. The capital was the goal. And he needed to get to it as fast as he could.

He started towards the left and the earth shook again. This time it was much more violent than previous. Two loud sounds were heard coming across the trees. The first was victory cries, and Orion allowed himself a moment to breathe a shy of relief. But then the second was heard, there was a second bell at Cosaint, further back from the wall, louder, deeper, crisper, than the one Orion had to ring earlier.

The wall has been breached, Orion realised on hearing the bell. He looked ahead of him, up the hill, all the fatigue that had been coursing through his body instantly gone, and he ran on.

In the not too distant past, maybe a couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with someone. The person was concerned about the board game Dungeons and Dragons, having heard that it was some form of evil, or somebody told them it was evil.
I asked if the person they heard that from was a Christian, and they said that it was.
I rolled my eyes and said "You can't trust Christians when they are talking about this sort of thing."

So, some time has gone by since that conversation, and it was really something I forgot about. Then, this morning, it popped back into my head, like Bosco popping out of his box. 

As per is my usual for these blogs I feel will be a little long, I have broken this into sections:
1. Apologising for When the Church Lies.
2. I can't Hear Your Gospel Truth, Example.
3. What about the Bible?
4. Practical Things to Help Our Honesty.

Apologising For When The Church Lies:
Have you ever felt the need to apologise for the lies of the Church?

It's an interesting situation to be in, isn't it? We claim to be people who know the Truth, we claim to be people who stand for the Truth, we claim to be people who preach the Truth. We confess that this is a statement that is true about us, or that we are working on making true with the help of the Holy Spirit: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, and who correctly handles the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15)

But sometimes we get a little taken in by things that aren't exactly true.

You might think that statement on a line by itself has little to do with that Bible verse, because the 'Word of Truth' is the Bible of course; but it does. If Christians are seen to be lying, or espousing a story, perspective, narrative, worldview, that isn't true externally to the Bible, why would someone believe us when we tell them anything else we believe to be true?

I Can't Hear Your Gospel Truth, Example:
Let me give you an example of this, since returning to Ireland I had the opportunity to work with a lovely guy from Northern Ireland (for those of you who don't know, Northern Ireland is a separate country from the Republic of Ireland, where I was born, grew up, and live. It is still controlled by the UK, by its own choice. Typically, Evangelical Christians in the North are from a Protestant background, and typically Protestant background people are Unionists [people pro the Union with the UK], so they are normally not as into Irish culture and identity as people from the North who have a Catholic background are, typically). So this guy came from the North, I am only assuming him to be from a Protestant background based on this exchange, and he was ministering in the Republic, spreading the Good News of Christ in Limerick.

In one conversation I had with him he mentioned a child of his being taught about the Irish famine, you can read the Wiki article about it here, and there is a growing number of people who agree with Historian Tim Pat Coogan that the Irish famine was actually an act of genocide by the British government, you can see an article about that perspective here.
This man told his child that he should relay to his teacher that there was no such thing as the Irish Famine, Irish people are simply stupid and merely forgot where they buried their potatoes.

If you are currently in Ireland, or if you are planning to come to Ireland, and you hold to that belief, or wish to propagate that belief, can you please do Jesus a favour and leave (or don't come as the case may be). How can someone in a country so hurt by the colonial powers ever hear the truth of the Gospel from the same mouth that downplays the greatest disaster in our history. If you read the article I linked above, the first sentence calls the Great Famine our Holocaust, that the cultural place it has in our psyche.

What About the Bible?
2 Corinthians 8:21 says, "For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord, but also in the eyes of man."

I believe our honesty as Christians comes into that verse. Now, I'm not saying you have to be a genocide theory proponent in regards to the Irish famine, in fact, I would think that holding that view ardently as a Christian can be similarly problematic as regards truth and honesty as holding the view that the Irish were too stupid not to starve themselves does.

But what I am saying is we need to take pains to do what is right, we need to take pains to make sure the things we are propagating are true things.

"Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with it's practices." (Colossians 3:9)
"Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbour, for we are all members of one body." (Ephesians 4:25)

That's our standard, that's what we are in our new lives in Christ, by His grace and in the power of His Spirit.

That gives us a certain responsibility too. We need to be pursuers of the truth. It has been famously said, "All truth is God's truth." That's very true, and if that is very true, which it is, it means that Christians should be the foremost in society at seeking out and propagating truth.

Practical Things to Help Our Honesty:
So, what things can we do as believers in Christ that would help us to be more honest, to be perceived as seekers of truth and not propagators of misinformation? I have a couple of suggestions. In today's climate you might already have, or you might on reading these, automatically jump to political debates, there is a place for that, it will come, but hold out for it, there's some other things to look at first.

1. Don't Believe Everything You Read:
I think Christians are some of the worst people for this. You often see many people sharing things on Social Media that are untrue. I have done it myself. We read an article on some Facebook page, often one purporting to be Christian itself, and it is shocking and unbelievable and so we share it. "Look what's happening in California!" "Look at what the Government are doing." And those sorts of comments we put on as we share it. (Again, I am aware I have done this). But, by the time we post the article (government microchipping us through fluoride in the water, for example), there has already been some fact checking website that has written about the issue, searching for the truth and explaining what really happened in the situation. But we, Christians, defenders of truth, have posted some misinformation as if it was the Gospel itself.

Some people love conspiracy theories, and are seekers of truth in the fact that they are really trying to seek the truth behind these theories. And that's great. But we need to be careful that when we present our theories, that we present them in a way that doesn't come across as if we are presenting truth. The integrity and believability of what we say as Christians needs to be looked after, in the grace of God, so we need to take a moment to check our story, or if we are aware it's a conspiracy theory, make that clear. Being honest about what we read and then post on social media will help us be believable when we claim Christ is our salvation.

2. Don't Believe Everything You See:
This is, of course, linked to the previous one. Video editing is amazing these days. If you see something that seems a little unbelievable, do some research, as before. If it is a known conspiracy theory, be upfront that it's something unproven but interesting when you speak about it. If you see someone in the public eye saying something outrageous, you might see an article, but you might even see a video of them saying it. Seek out the context. Find the full speech and see what they were saying. Often those sorts of clips are "This other group says, "REALLY OUTRAGEOUS THING", but I say, "SOMETHING QUITE SENSIBLE."" and the editor has taken the person saying "REALLY OUTRAGEOUS THING" and posted it.

It would be similar to taking Jesus' "you have heard it said... but I say to you" statements in the Gospel, but editing it to only have the "you have heard it said" part.
For example, in Matthew 5:31–32, Jesus says: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
So this would be like editing this to say:
"Whoever divorces his wife, let him write her a certificate of divorce." - Jesus Christ.
Technically, that's not incorrect. But it is very incorrect to represent Jesus' opinion on divorce as such. So when you see someone saying, or quoted as saying something outrageous, try and find the context before you share it in conversation or on social media. Being honest about what we see and then post on social media, or bring up in conversation, will help us be believable when we claim Jesus is the one way to God.

3. Don't Believe Everything You Hear:
Again, it's similar to the other two, but I want to highlight the specific example from the introduction, the conversation I had that got me thinking about this. As Christians we hear a lot about what is good to watch, listen to, take part in, play, etc.

As I'm sure you well know by now, I am a fan of the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show itself did a lot to make me think about God and my faith and even in some ways to reinforce and confirm the greatness of the God I believe in. I did a blog on God in Buffy, which you can read here. At the same time as Buffy was helping, in a tiny way, to strengthen my faith, (it still has the best example of grace I've ever seen on TV, you can read about that here); a conservative Christian group in the United States were constantly trying to have it taken off the air. Almost every week that an episode of Buffy aired, the next day there would be news of this group complaining and wanting it gone. As a Christian who liked the show and benefitting from it that hurt me quite a bit and made me suspicious of Christians, something that evidently lives on to this day from the conversation in the opening section to this blog.

I know of people who had their Pokemon cards taken from them because Pokemon are real little demons, I've heard of people not allowed watch Harry Potter because the spells are all real, there are as many stories in this area of things as there are episodes of Judge Judy... I wonder how many that is... who knows, 23 seasons though.

As a parent you need to be careful of this. Even if a trusted person tells you they heard that a TV show, game, whatever, is of the devil, you shouldn't take it as face value.
The end result might be damage to your children's relationship with you, and even your children's relationship with God.
Far better to get involved in what your children are interested in. Watch it yourself, read it yourself, talk to them about why they like it, what they do with it, how it impacts them.

One of the things I really respect my parents for is that they allowed us to watch things after they watched them to see what they were like themselves. If we were interested in something they were interested in it too, at least to the extent that they watched it with us, or watched it to see what happened in it. Being honest about what we hear and then tell others, or use as a basis to make rules in our family, will help us be respected when we tell people it is by grace we have been saved.

4. Be a Berean:
The Bereans are people in the Bible, in the book of Acts. When Paul passes through their town he preaches the Gospel to them in their Synagogue. The Bible records, "Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11). We should be 110% like this when we hear something about the Bible, but it is good practice to be like this when we hear about these other things we have been looking at too.

I love the story of Lee Strobel. His wife became a believer, and he was weirded out by it, feeling as if she were cheating on him with Jesus. He is also a journalist. So he set out to disprove Jesus' existence. He was being a Berean. He visited many experts and at the end of his search was convinced of the truth of the Gospel and became a Christian. If you are in the US and haven't seen his story it's called The Case For Christ, and last time I was in the US it was on Netflix. Being like the Bereans means that people will know that our opinions and thoughts on things in the world are well researched and thought-out. This will mean they will have confidence that when we say Christ died and rose again on the third day that we have thought long and hard about this belief, and have some compelling reason to believe it (even if they don't agree).

5. Applaud Seekers of Truth:
Okay, so for this example I want to get a little political.
Back in 2016 when the FBI reopened the investigation into Secretary Hillary Clinton's use of emails while so worked in the State Department under President Obama I was furious with FBI Director James Comey. I have been a Hillary supporter since she stood against Obama in the primaries in 2008, and actually wrote a paper about her becoming President in 2000 (it was actually Bush, I was like 9 and the internet was less reliable in those days, she had become a New York Senator at the time).
Clinton has been found innocent (whether you believe that or not, until further evidence comes to light the FBI and other investigators have found her innocent and we believe in innocent until proven guilty, so let's stop with the 'Lock her up' for a bit).

But, I was wrong to be so annoyed. If it was true that Clinton had used emails nefariously, it would have implications for her as President, and so would have implications for the USA, which, admittedly, I'm not as invested in as I am in Ireland.

My Christian Republican friends will like that so far, but I think they know what's coming.

Robert Mueller is conducting an investigation into current President Donald J. Trump's campaign and presidency, searching for collusion with Russia. We know that the Don likes to call this investigation a witch hunt, and has done mad things like suggesting he would use his power to shut it down and end it.

Sadly, like I did with the Hillary email debacle, many Christians cry "witch hunt" right alongside the President.
You may believe it is a witch hunt. But I hope you can see by now that as Christians we are to be seekers, proclaimers and defenders of the truth. Proverbs 12:22 says, "The LORD detests lying lips, but He delights in people who are trustworthy."
Let's hope and pray that the President of the USA is trustworthy. But let's not cry witch hunt with him. Instead let's support investigations into Democrats and Republicans, into Hillary Clinton's email use, and Ivanka Trump's.

Obviously this one applies to more situations than the Clintons and the Trumps, but at time of writing it's a very contemporary issue that takes up a lot of news time.
Christians should be champions of investigations searching for truth, into political parties, scandals, the Church itself, everything. Luke 8:17 says, "For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light." That should be something we are interested in as Christians.

6. Give the Benefit of the Doubt:
Building on some of the things we have seen, heard, or read, I think another great, practical way to be honest is to give the benefit of the doubt when we bring it up in conversation or post on social media. Instead of stating things as fact, and instead of being negative, we can be a little more positive.

I was reading a book once, a book that someone say on my social media and contacted me. This person was well meaning and looking out for me in their intentions, but they hadn't read the book. I was of no set opinion on it, at least until I read it, but they had read a blog on a webpage they typically agree with slating the book and even calling the salvation of the author into question, because in their opinion his theology as expressed in the book was that bad.
This is a perfect situation where giving the benefit of the doubt could be used to help us as Christians be honest. You can warn and express that you have heard bad things about a book or an author, and that's helpful and appreciated by most people, but we need to do it honestly. There is doubt there, because you haven't read it yourself, just read about it. Coming at it in that way helps your credibility. Even reading it for yourself if your relationship with the Lord is in a place that that's a possibility and then commenting on it from your perspective would be great, but taking someone else's opinion and offering it as the truth can be harmful to your relationship with the other person and to witness to Jesus Christ. Giving the benefit of the doubt can help you show yourself to be reasonable, loving and a safe place for others to come and seek advice and help.

7. On Giving an Opinion:
The last of these seven practical ways to show honesty amongst ourselves as Christians and to others has come up already. This is to be intentional about giving our opinion. I'm a demon for this one. I like to think I'm right all the time, so everything I say or write is true. In reality, that's not the case. It's one of the reasons I have deliberately put TotD beside a lot of my blog posts. If you don't remember TotD stands for Thought of the Day. It's not a fact of the day, it's the thing I am thinking about a topic at that particular time. It could be wrong, I may change my mind after more research and looking into things, and following my own advice and being a Berean.

Make it clear when you are posting something, or speaking about something that you aren't 100% sure on. And, if you do talk about something as if it is gospel and later learn it isn't, you can always talk to that person again, let them know you've looked into it a little more and think you might have been hasty with your previous convictions. That's basically repenting, or giving the benefit of the doubt, and what a great witness it would be to someone that you can be humble and say when you are wrong. For me, personally, that's something I know I have to work on in my life.

Jesus:
As always, Jesus is our example and Jesus is our goal. Jesus never sinned. And since the Bible records lying as a sin, we can be sure that Jesus never lied.

As Christians we are on a journey to Christ-like-ness. In part, this will mean becoming more honest, as well as becoming more gracious. Of course, even as you have just read the examples above, they aren't things we can muster up inside ourselves. But Jesus can. The Holy Spirit living inside us can bring our attention to those things if we are relying on, and in communication with, Him. He can empower us to stop and think when we are passionate about a topic, He can direct us to sources of information that will help inform us, He can implant that desire to be Berean about our passions within us, He can remind us of the grace shown so freely to us so that we are inspired and enabled to show that grace to celebrities, TV show makers, game makers, politicians and our government, Christian authors, and one another. And, when we inevitably fail on this journey to being honest like Jesus, He can lift us up, dust us off, and walk with us again, as well as showing us the need to humble ourselves and admit our mistakes to Him, first and foremost, but also to those we talked to about whatever misinformation we believed, and seek truth in all things.

Awhile back I wrote a blog called "I Dream of a Church", you can check it out here. In it one of the lines is: "I have a dream of a Church where truth and honesty are the way of life." I want to strive for that, I hope you do too.

Beannachtaí.

I’ve been reading a book: Homo-Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. It has been a grand source of food for thought and so here is one of the prompted thoughts. 
I’ll give you what Harari said first. 
“If I believe in God at all, it is my choice to believe. If my inner self tells me to believe in God — then I believe. I believe because I feel God’s presence, and my heart tells me He is there. But if I no longer feel God’s presence, and if my heart suddenly tells me thy there is no God — I will cease believing. Either way, the real source of authority is my own feelings. So even while saying that I believe in God, the truth is that I have a much stronger belief in my own inner voice.” (275)
So this is coming in a section that is talking about our thoughts and minds being the ultimate source of reality and meaning in our lives. And while I think Harari doesn’t have a handle on what Christians would say, think, believe or practice throughout a lot of his book I think this quote is full of things that Christians will say in order to back up their belief in God, “I feel God’s presence so that means He is real.”
Though we say things like that, I don’t think that it necessarily follows, as Harari believes, that the ultimate source of authority for Christians is actually our own thoughts, our own inner voice. 
When we talk about our relationship with God we are talking about something, an objective experience, that is often above and beyond what we can communicate in normal language. But just because we are bad at communicating what we are experiencing and what we know to be true, doesn’t mean that the objective experience isn’t real and just our inner selves (which Harari will later even argue doesn’t exist) determines our beliefs. 
There are often times in the lives of a Christian in which we do not feel God’s presence. There are times that, to gratify whatever desire we have in that moment, it would be easier to believe God isn’t real. Yet, we know, that He is real. The objective fact we build our lives on, despite our feeling and the desires of our inner selves, is that God is real. 
It’s a shallow thing to say that a person only believes in God because they choose to believe in God, as if we thought Him up ourselves (which is of course Harari’s argument). Instead, we react to what we experience externally to us, filtered through our experiences, for sure, but not created by our inner monologues. This doesn’t even take good theology into account. If we are talking about Arminian Christianity then sure; you could make an argument that people choose God, but it still wouldn’t be right. But good theology also includes the truth that God chooses us. We aren’t the sole agent in coming to God, though our choosing Him is important. God is actively involved in our salvation and in drawing us to Himself. So to say we choose God because of our inner selves explaining our experience as “god” doesn’t take into account the fact that God is active and at work, that the Holy Spirit is with us, and that God chooses us too. 

“I believe in God,” as C.S. Lewis once famously said (but he said Christianity) “as I believe the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

I’ve been doing a thing lately where I write blog posts and then don’t post them. So here’s the first one. I’m finding it hard to title though. 


Hi...
So you probably know that in the past year I started a church...
I wanted to talk a little about why and what I see the church as and what I hope for this small and hopefully growing gathering group of people called “Calvary Limerick” or “Calvary Chapel Limerick” if you like. 
Some of you reading this will think “yeah, I know this guy from school (or when he was a kid) it makes total sense that he would run a church sometime.”
If that’s you, I put on a good show, and I’m sorry.
There’s others of you who will say “I know him from school (or when he was a teenager) and I thought he would have given up on this Christianity bull by now.” 
If that’s you, give me a chance to explain why I’ve gone so deep as to “organize religion”, not just meddle in it myself. 
So, to be quite frank and to just throw a thought out there that I hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt to read the next couple of paragraphs after reading this next statement:
I hate the church.
What I mean by that is that I hate this system of falsities that we humans have created where we “do church” and what actually happens is we sit with some people in a room for a bit, maybe sing, listen to some guy talk (that guy is now me

Today is Saturday the 26th of May,

It is a day of massive 'achievement' and 'advances' in women's health and rights in Ireland because the 8th Amendment to the constitution has been repealed, and with it, the only protection of the life of the unborn has been removed from our constitution.

It's apt that this has happened on a Saturday, with the vote on a Friday. I think we can still see the sovereignty of God at play.

Good Friday, as it is now known, was not good the day it happened. The Apostles were confused and feared for their lives, the women who followed Jesus were shocked and in mourning, and the leaders of the country celebrated the death of one who stood in the way of their political agendas.
There is a lot to compare here, but obviously that bad Friday was to become Good Friday because on that day Jesus died on the cross, paying the penalty for our sin so that we could be right and in relationship with God again. It's hard to see yesterday as ever being called Good Friday from this vantage point, at this point in time. But I know God better than that.

The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday has had various names, I'm going to call it Dark Saturday. On that day hope was gone, there was mourning, weeping, fear, confusion, devastation on the one side, and shouts of joy, celebration, victory, and success on the other side.
Today feels very like that day. It feels like a devastating blow was dealt to the land of saints and scholars yesterday and as we watched Christian Ireland die, we who follow Christ are left like those who followed Christ on that first Dark Saturday, all while the leaders of our country celebrate and shout for joy.

I think our Dark Saturday will be longer than the one in the first century, but it ends the same way. God is sovereign, God is in control, God is still on the throne. Sunday's coming!

We don't know how to deal with this new Ireland. It has been a long time since Christians in the West have had to live in societies more akin to the Roman Empire Jesus lived in than the Ireland our great grandparents lived in. But we have to learn.

That is, I think, where our attention as the Irish church needs to turn now. The church flourishes in places where it is not the norm. The death of Christian Ireland opens up new opportunities for the Christians of Ireland that we have to find and use and allow the Holy Spirit to guide us through new and, admittedly more difficult, terrain.

One of the heartening things I have heard many yes voters saying throughout this campaign as they tackled my no views on my Facebook and in private messages and conversations is that they want to see an Ireland in which there is no need for abortion, but they believe there is a present need for abortion.
That's something we can agree on.

Some people I spoke to voted yes, in fact many people voted yes, because they see the pain people are going through and want to help. That's a noble reason to vote. Of course, I believe that this vote will only cause more pain, when people begin to see abortion isn't the holy grail they were looking for, when this thing that has been held up as the answer to so much pain proves to be unable to live up to the hype it has been given.
Abortion has been raised high and it's going to fall from it's height.

As Christians we know that true hope, true comfort, and true healing from pain lies in Jesus Christ. He is the light of the world, the healer of nations, the prince of peace. It is Him that hurting people need.
I called today Dark Saturday, and I like that analogy. You know why? Light is so much more powerful in darkness.
While Leo and the government and Together for Yes celebrate the 'light' they have brought to Ireland, we know that the true light is found in Christ. Everything that man does to bring light to situations is like having a battery powered torch. The batteries are just going to run out. When they do, the people of Ireland need to be able to see a true light source, one they cannot notice right now because 67% or so of them are looking at the torch (and the other 33% are looking at the torch too).

So, how can the church shine brighter in this darkness?
We can be the church!
All we have to do to reflect the light of Christ is to let the light of Christ shine through us.

Practically what I think that means is not shouting about the result, not giving out, not calling it rigged, not saying Ireland is evil.
I don't think that's light.

Grace is light. We need to be an alternative lifestyle. That's how the church has always been effective and we have so many more opportunities to do that in Ireland today.
- We can marry members of the opposite sex.
- We can stay celibate until marriage.
- We can not have abortions when we get pregnant.
- We can support children's charities and disability charities and adopt unwanted children.
- We can confess our sins when we do fall and not try to hide and cover things up.

As well as this we can show the love, grace, mercy and compassion of Jesus towards the people of Ireland. Ireland isn't evil, it's just lost. God doesn't hate the people of this country, He wants them to know Him.
Our reaction to today can create more darkness, or it can shine the light of God's grace into this country so that when the torches blink out, the light that is left is the true light, the light of God's grace for the people of this country.

I mourn for the lost little ones but I'm also really hopeful, because I know the God I serve, I know He is good, He is kind, He is loving, He is merciful, He is gracious, He is powerful, He is in control, and He is moving in ways we haven't seen Him move.

I also know He is just, and I am so thankful that the just punishment I deserve for my sin was laid on Christ and the justice of God was satisfied in Him and in what He did on the cross and I want to see that reality for more and more of my own people. That's why I came back to plant Calvary Limerick, my desire is to hear praises in the Irish language when we are in heaven and I believe that on this Dark Saturday we have the opportunity to shine brighter than we have before.

Grace is, as always, the way forward. And our God is the source of grace upon grace.
It's a Dark Saturday, but Sunday's coming!

~

So I saw The Last Jedi and this post is obviously going to be choc full of SPOILERS so don’t read until you’ve seen the movie.



As per usual I've divided these, check the bold!


Right so wasn’t that really surprising?I feel like Rian just looked at all the theories and questions out there and if you imagine them as a chess board, he just threw that board and all the pieces away like Luke does with the lightsaber Rey gives him.(I mean come on Luke, 2 years we’ve been waiting to see you take the thing and you toss it aside like garbage, hilarious moment but also not on).

I think the movie made it pretty obvious that the theme of the movie is failure, Yoda even says it (he, by the way, did not fail, what an epic scene!) So we should expect pretty much everyone to fail, which makes for annoying storytelling, but Rian successfully made a frustrating movie about failure, which I guess means it was successful?

Characters in the movie, key moments and how they fail?So Luke for most of the movie is a depressed idiot who thinks because he had a moment of weakness that inadvertently created the thing he feared (Kylo Ren) that he should go die in Ireland... Luke was always a little pathetic for a series hero, but this one took it to whole new levels. So Luke for the first 2/3s disappointed me, it’s like he didn’t grow as a person in over 30 years at all. Luke failed Ben Solo, and fails Rey and Leia for most of the movie too.
Rey is fantastic in this movie. She is a little less perfect in this one, just a little, because she mistakenly believes Ben Solo is a good guy. She fails to convert him to the Light side of the force.I don’t know if I believe Kylo that her parents are nobodies and sold her for food, I wouldn’t trust him. I think there is still scope for JJ to add another twist and shock us again with who they are. I do love the idea of her as a sort of chosen one that is born of the light as the darkness becomes too strong which was hinted at.
Snoke fails too. He fails to kill Rey or Luke, and he fails to notice Kylo turning on him, as well as failing to notice the lightsaber turning towards him.
Since seeing this one I am convinced Snoke is Palpatine’s master. If you remember back to episode 3, Sidious is telling Anakin about a Sith who learned to stop death and create life as they watch the bubble opera thing? His master was called Darth Plageius and Palpatine said he killed him... but how exactly do you kill someone who can cheat death? Also, Snoke’s disfigurement looks an awful lot like scares from a lightsaber blow to the head and force lightning (like Palpatine after his conflict with Mace Windu his face looks sort of melted and we know Sidious’ weapon of choice was force lightning.)If you remember, as Snoke died he bragged about knowing exactly what Kylo was thinking. Either his arrogance at his own power (which is a lot and adds to my thought that he trained Sidious, the previous strongest dark side user we’ve seen) that arrogance blinded him to Kylo’s real intentions or it was his plan. If he is Darth Plageius then he can regenerate in time. So big woop. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in 9 and that we learn it was all part of a greater plan to cement Kylo’s dark side resolve which it seems to have achieved. I think we may learn that he spent the time from before episode 1, when Sidious “killed” him to the Force Awakens honing his power and becoming even stronger, moving beyond the Sith in the dark side, something beyond the power of ambition, hate and selfishness. 
I was very disappointed by the Finn and Rose storyline. Obviously, they both fail. Rose is a very loveable character but besides for igniting rebellion in the young broom floating boy’s heart in Dubrovnik (Canto Bight?) their story accomplished nothing and was pretty pointless. It’s like Rian needed something for Finn to do, found nothing and made up a crap side mission for him that if it were deleted from the movie would take nothing away. Even if it was cool to see the streets we walked down for Jon and Catherina's wedding on the big screen.

In that vein Captain Phasma was, again, disappointing. She has been on screen for all of 10 minutes across both movies yet she is shown as a main character all the time. Again, Rian couldn’t come up with anything for her. We were promised she would come into her own but her role was pretty much the exact same as the Force Awakens. Her absence would have taken nothing from the movie. Also, she was left on Star Killer base as it exploded, but survived and now she’s been left on Snoke’s SHIELD logo ship as it exploded but I bet she’ll survive. I hope she dies again in 9 it would be like how people lost an arm a lot in all the Old movies. She failed to kill Finn or Rose in this one, and maybe failed to die again too.
I also need to point out that no one lost an arm! Is it even Star Wars. Also, I currently don’t remember anyone saying “I have a bad feeling about this.” Tut tut Rian! [He says it is there, but I can't remember it, unless it is BB8 that says is to Poe at the start in beeps].
Poe is potentially the most interesting character in this one. He is rash and wants to know everything, he disobeys Leia’s orders and arrests her replacement (more on that below) Admiral Holdo(?) and almost gets everyone killed. Again, a whole lot of failure there.

The Resistance fails to not get blown up, a lot.... And though they blow up the Dreadnought (Fulminatrix, apparently), they lose so many. As Leia remarks, "many heroes, no leaders".

Leia fails to rally support to come to the aid of the Resistance, "use my personal codes," but nothing comes of it and then she loses hope.

Hux fails to win, again.

Kylo Ren fails at everything except tricking Rey and killing Snoke, his failure on Crate/Krait/Krate, the salt planet, as he takes over as Supreme Leader Emo Kid is astonishing, and we get this glimpse in Hux's eyes that he will attempt to overthrow Kylo (when he was out after Rey's lightsaber exploded Hux would have shot him had he not woken up).

The First Order fail to wipe out the Rebellion (which it is again now, it's no Resistance anymore, the First Order rules supreme, as the opening crawl informs us).

DJ fails to have morals.

Chewbacca fails to eat porgs or stop them taking over the Millennium Falcon.

C3PO fails to get his odds of surviving out without being told to shut up by Poe.

Above I said Yoda doesn't fail. The only other two characters that don't fail are R2D2, who successfully convinces Luke to come to Leia and the Resistance's aid by playing the old hologram of Leia saying "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope", one of the most moving scenes in the movie. The other is BB-8, who is just so badass in this movie. He shoots chips in a casino, steals a space craft and a walker. It was actually great.

Things I really Loved.
Poe was annoying most of the movie, but then at the end there is a great moment where he leads people to safety instead of a war they cannot win. Everyone looks to Leia and she looks behind here, a comical and perfect moment that allows us to see Poe becoming something of a General himself for 9.

When Luke comes! Like... Wow... He gives the dice from the Falcon to Leia and she mentions about changing her hair, that was great. Then he goes out and faces the First Order alone (something he told Rey he couldn't do, and it was ridiculous of her to expect him to). Then all these guns fire on him and after that he still stands so Ben faces him alone and he just ducks and dives until he has an Obi moment and allows Kylo to strike him down, but he isn't there, he is still in Ireland! Legend.

The kid that force pulls the broom to himself at the end and swings it like a lightsaber, showing the Rebel symbol on his ring! Perfect end!

Leia's use of the Force to bring herself back aboard the Raddus. It was very interesting, she is seconds from death and almost like instinct pulls herself back on board her ship.

The Raddus being named for Admiral Raddus from Rogue One, he was the one that looked like Admiral Ackbar.

Yoda, just all of it "Page turners they were not." I want a Yoda movie!

Porgs! They are cute and funny! I love when the one screams as Chewy does in the Falcon!

The boy with the broom!

The chase scene through Canto Bight, Dubrovnik.

How much Ireland was in it!

R2 and the hologram!

When Admiral Holdo goes to hyperdrive and crashes into Snoke's ship. The scenes there are like paintings they are so beautiful as the ship is being ripped apart and there is no sound. Those shots were just beautiful, destruction can look nice, who knew?

John Williams and the music, the use of well known Star Wars themes (Imperial March, The Emperors theme, the Force theme, Leia's theme, brother and sister theme from Return of the Jedi, Rey's theme, the March of the Resistance. It was a great soundtrack!

Gareth Edwards, director of Rogue One, is the guy in the trench that is told that the planet is a salt flat by his colleague next to him. That was good!

The parts played by Carrie Fisher's dog, Gary (Canto Bight scene) and Carrie Fisher's daughter, Billie. Billie was in Force Awakens but you'd hardly notice. She had many scenes in this one and it was good to see her becoming less one dimensional and more of a character. I hope she is a leader in the Rebellion in episode 9. It's nice she went from a cameo in 7 to a role in 8.

Things I did not like:
How Admiral Ackbar dies and it's just like... whatever.

Finn and Rose's story and Finn and Rose kissing...

Poe's mutiny. The whole Poe as a wreckless and feckless idiot. I love his development and him stopping Finn from rushing to help Luke, and he notices Luke is giving them time to escape. But I don't like how we had to get there.

Phasma's lack of importance.

Luke goes and becomes one with the force after a Force projection Lightsaber battle with Kylo... I want to see him fight one more time.

The Rebellion is now the size of the Millennium Falcon.

Questions I still want answered:
Who is Snoke?
Who are Rey's parents really? Is Kylo lying?
What happens to Leia?
Can Poe use the Force? Is that why he is such a good pilot?
Where is Lando?
What is the extent of what a Force Ghost can do? Yoda destroyed things and hit Luke, can all ghosts do that? Just Yoda?
Can a Sith be a Force Ghost? Could Sidious or Maul return and physically interact with their environment in 9?
What does Kylo plan to happen next? Is this all part of Snoke's plan?
Is Rey now a Jedi? Will she train broom boy? Yoda says she already has all the knowledge the ancient Jedi texts contained, so...?
Are the Jedi still ending or are we back to the light-side, dark-side dynamic?
What happens with the hyper-space tracker? Can they track the Millennium Falcon? How do they survive?
What happens the Jedi Order now?
Is this a way to move past the past and have a new Jedi and Sith order? That isn't based on Eps 1-3?

Some scholars opinions on the King James...

Introduction to Biblical Interpretation by   Klein, Blomberg and Hubbard on the KJV:
Summary of what they say about the KJV:Though the translators did their best for 1611, many of the Greek texts they used were from the same area. Since then, a wider spread of texts and ones closer in date to the time of the original authors have been found. It is generally accepted that things closer to the date they happened are more accurate, so having earlier manuscripts should influence how we translate the Bible.
Would they recommend the KJV/NKJV as Bible scholars?"We really ought to be thankful, for example, that Mark did not write the KJV rendering of Mark 16:18, but readers who limit themselves to the KJV will never know this. Readers of the NKJV will know the differences among manuscripts, if they read the footnotes, but they will naturally conclude that the better readings are those of the KJV. For this reason we cannot endorse the widespread use of these versions when alternatives are available." (120)
How to Read the Bible for all its Worth, Fee and Stuart: "The KJV for a long time was the most widely used translation in the world; it is also a classic expression of the English language. Indeed, it coined phrases that will forever be embedded in our language ("coals of fire," "the skin of my teeth," "tongues of fire,"). However, for the New Testament, the only Greek text available to the 1611 translators was based on late manuscripts, which had accumulated the mistakes of over a thousand years of copying. Few of these mistakes- and we must note that there are many of them- make any difference to us doctrinally, but they often do make a difference in the meaning of certain specific texts. Recognising the English of the KJV was no longer a living language- and thoroughly dissatisfied with its modern revision (RSV/NRSV)- it was decided by some to "update" the KJV by ridding it of its "archaic" way of speaking. But in doing so, the NKJV revisers eliminated the best feature of the KJV (its marvelous expression of the English language) and kept the worst (its flawed text).This is why for study you should use almost any modern translation rather than the KJV or the NKJV." (40)
Grasping God's Word Duvall and Hays: They note a prominent scholar of the day wasn't happy with the translation saying:"Tell his majesty that I would rather be rent in pieces by wild horses, than any such translation by my consent should be urged upon poor churches. The new edition crosseth me. I require it to be burnt." (Dr. Hugh Broughton, cited 162) I know nothing more about him but he's presented in the book as being against it not on religious grounds but scholarly ones. 
"The King James Version was a good translation for the early 1600s since it was written in the English of the early 1600s. Today, however, most of us would have trouble even reading a page of the original 1611 version, since it was printed in Archaic English."To argue that we should still use the 1769 KJV edition (the one that is popular today) is to admit the necessity of revising a translation. This is the case since there have been thousands of changes from 1611 to 1769; they are literally two different bibles. Why not continue the process of revision by drawing on the latest in biblical scholarship and using language that today's readers can understand? Anything less seems to violate the intent of those who translated the original King James Version." (164) 



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Of the four bible study/interpretation books I found in the CCBC library, only Andy Deane's (a Calvary Chapel guy) recommended the King James as one Bible to use (but even he says you need to compare any Bible translation you choose as your main translation to others to get a full understanding of Scripture)

Yeah, I know, a blog about Buffy, I'm surprised this is about Buffy too.

So, recently I have been reading about, and learning from, and realising the importance of, God's grace. And, as many of you will know, I love seeing Christianity in popular culture. I have previously written a blog on God as seen in Buffy the Vampire Slayer as being one of the reasons I really love the show. If you want to you can read that here.
In that blog I talk a little about an episode in season 4 where Faith (as Buffy) stops some vampires that are taunting God after taking a church hostage. That episode left a big impression on me (I was maybe 9 or 10 when I first saw it). I even visited the church because it's not too far from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA.

Anyway... flash back to now. I'm wondering and thinking about grace in popular culture, and my brain is finding it really hard to find any good examples. Sure, there are examples of forgiveness, thanksgiving, mercy and love in popular culture, but grace... where is grace?

I've been thinking about this for awhile but today my brain hit on something...
Buffy was a show of seven seasons (running from 1997-2003). Season six is almost universally the most hated by Buffy fans. It probably contributed for Sarah's decision to quit playing Buffy as she constantly complained that the new show runners were taking the character of Buffy in a direction that Sarah, having played Buffy for five years at that point, didn't agree with and believed she wouldn't do.

So, at the end of this awful season is the best picture of grace I have seen in popular culture. I hadn't even considered it, because it's a bad season!

Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Willow, Buffy's best friend, has become addicted to magic. She attempts to give it up earlier in the season, but then her girlfriend is shot and killed in an attempt to kill Buffy. Willow's grief consumes her and she gives in to her addiction, finding all the magic she can in order to kill the three people responsible (or partially responsible by association) for Tara's death. She is basically Evil Willow (or Dark Witch Willow as the toy of her is called).

Where sin abounds?
So, Willow has gone dark. She has killed Warren, the guy who shot the gun, and she is after the other two. Buffy tries to stop her, and she beats Buffy up, turning against those she loves and who love her in order to get what she wants, in order to fulfil her desire for revenge.

Enter Jesus character No. 1
Giles, Buffy's former mentor, returns imbued with the magic of love (not really called this in the show, but hinted at when it states Willow's power is from a place of grief, pain and vengeance, while Giles' power is from 'the true source of magic'). Giles faces off against Willow, weakening her. He convinces her that she needs to steal his power to be the most powerful, so she does.
Taking Giles' powers weakens him, and he knows he is going to die. His plan was to sacrifice his own life in order to give Willow the good magic, that it might just spark something inside her.

However, Giles' plan doesn't exactly work out. (Unlike actual Jesus who saved us by His finished work on the cross). Willow now has more power than any other mortal has ever had, and she has this added compassion to all her grief power. She feels the grief and pain of the entire world and decides to end the world.

Enter Jesus character No. 2
Willow traps Buffy and her sister Dawn in a bit facing what are sort of like tiny Ents from Lord of the Rings. Root-Ents. So Buffy cannot help.
Instead, Xander, the powerless one of the group, the only one without magic, or teleportation, or enhanced strength etc. comes to face Willow.

Willow has raised this Satanic Temple and is channelling the essence of the earth (I'm guessing) through her and into it. Xander steps in the way and the line is broken.
Willow blasts him out of the way, but he gets back up, breaking the line again.

Xander tells Willow that she is his best friend, and if the world is about to end there is nowhere he would rather be than by the side of his best friend.
She strikes him with her power again. He tells her a story of how she broke a yellow crayon on their first day of school, and how he loved her then, and loves her now in all her black magic power.

She blasts him again, causing gashes to appear in his shirt and on his body.

He tells her he loves her and begins to take steps towards her, repeating that he loves her with every step and every strike.

By the time he is within arms reach she cannot use her powers anymore and is in tears, she hits him, not like a powerful witch but like a scared young girl in her twenties dealing with grief. She collapses into his arms and her hair, which was black as she was evil, becomes its natural red again.

Giles' sacrifice to implant love in Willow, and Xander standing in the way, taking a beating to show how much he loves her, saves the day... and saves Willow too who becomes a full member of the group after some time in England rehabilitating in season seven.

Comparisons to God's grace:
It's hard not to see the parallels with God and His grace there. I cannot believe I missed it for so long.
Giles is willing to die to give the one committing evil a chance at love and to reenter relationship.
Xander is punished for Willow, in order to keep telling her he loves her.
Finally, relationship is restored and Willow joins the team and her friends forgiven, accepted and loved. In the end, the power from love proves to be more powerful than the power of grief and pain, as Willow will be one of the key players that helps save and change the world in the next season.

"Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more."

The episode even has a song as Willow falls into Xander's arm, that as I rewatched I noticed was very Christian. It is the Prayer of St. Francis, sung by Sarah McLachlan.

And, if you want to see the best example of grace I've seen in popular culture, you can see it here.