To Save A Life

Watching the Rascal Flatts music video for Summer Nights (see my post, Waiting for the summer) reminded me of this film. I’m sure its main character features in the video! But I can’t be sure…

To Save A Life came out in 2010, and as far I know went fairly unnoticed. It stars Randy Wayne as Jake Taylor; I don’t think they could have come up with a more stereotypical generic name for the basketball player in the American high school. However, petty criticisms aside, this film is quite something.

It’s risky. Among the issues it covers are teen suicide, self-harm, teenage pregnancy and some drug abuse. That’s a whole bunch of difficult topics, but they are shown realistically (for the most part) and sensitively. Naturally, this film hits you where it hurts. It’s not a particularly easy watch, but it’s a good watch.

The story follows Jake as he has to deal with the suicide of his childhood friend, and how he tries to come to terms with what has happened. He seems content having a beautiful girlfriend, a large group of friends, being a basketball champion and being generally extremely popular. However, upon meeting Chris Vaughn, the youth minister at his local church, he notices something a bit different. Chris is unnaturally kind and supportive, and Jake can’t quite understand why he is acting like this. Jake begins to attend the youth group on a Sunday morning, however he meets with a vast opposition, comprising most of his so called ‘friends’ and most importantly, his girlfriend. The film follows Jake as he begins to discover what it is like to be a Christian, and how it will impact his life. He has to battle with setback after setback, but his new foundation in Jesus stands firm.

I do highly recommend this film, for Christians and non-Christians. It is well made, although perhaps a little cheesy in places. It deals with so many of the issues that sting our society today, and points us toward what, I believe, is the best way to live our lives – with Jesus Christ as Lord. It is not an aggressive film, and it doesn’t show Christians as anything more than the real human beings that we are.

I think that this honesty and vulnerability is what really sells this film – it is heartfelt, moving and beautiful. Not everything is glamorous or perfect. It’s real.

For Christians watching, may it be an encouragement. God doesn’t call us to any easy life, far from it, but He has promised us that He will always be with us. He tells us to come to Him, when we are weary and weak, when the cares of this life get too much, and He will give us rest. He tells us to cast off our troubles onto Him, because He is big enough and strong enough to deal with whatever comes. And He does this because He cares for us and loves us.

For non-Christians, try not to watch the film too skeptically. It has its drawbacks, but the heart of its message is pure. I hope and pray that it may begin to open your eyes as to what God is really like – unconditionally and eternally loving us, and always wanting what is best for us.

May the film be a blessing and not a hindrance if you do get the chance to watch it.

Counting on Your Name

Here’s another song & video that I wanted to share. The song is called Counting on Your Name, by Tim Hughes. It is a wonderful, wonderful song, and the video is fabulous.

Enjoy!

Waiting for the summer

[This is not my photo - found it here - I just thought it looked nice and was relevant!]

The sun was out today as I walked home, and it was just beautiful, even though it’s still a tiny bit on the chilly side. I had a coat on so I kept warm and could simply enjoy in the golden rays, weaving their way through the leafless trees. It really reminded me of the summer and also how much I’m looking forward to this summer in particular.

I know we’re still only half-way through winter and we’ve got a lot of rainy days to get through first, but once we’re there, it’s going to be pretty awesome! I just love the warmth, the light, being able to go out in a t-shirt and shorts, barbecues, going to the beach (which really isn’t the same in January!), sunbathing and daylight staying until late. England really can be a beautiful country.

This summer is especially nice though – for the first time I’ll be free of school – no work to do, no thoughts of going back in September, no limit to the fun factor. Hopefully I won’t be bored having less to do, although that said, it’s looking like it’s going to be pretty awesome!

The weather put me in quite a good mood, and also in the mood for some summery songs… So here are two that I would like to share with you!

The first is called Waiting for the Summer by Delirious? from the album Audio Lessonover. I love this song! And I also love Delirious? incidentally… This is the best version of the music video I could find on YouTube, so I apologise that the audio & video are slightly out of sync.

The second song is called Summer Nights by Rascal Flatts, possibly the happiest band I have ever heard! I love their style, and this song always makes me smile.

Hope you enjoyed those, I certainly did when I listened to them. I’ve decided this post is quite silly, as the light outside is beginning to fade, at only 5 o’clock…

Where can we find truth?

I watched Glee tonight.

I was persuaded to start watching the show last year after being initially critical of it… I’m glad I do, because it’s a great show. It doesn’t feature the best plots, or depth of character, but there’s something about it that makes it a good watch. I think, for the most part it’s the music that’s just too perfect, the characters that are just too fake… It’s all a total load of rubbish…but such fun.

Well tonight’s episode, entitled ‘Grilled Cheesus’ is probably my least favourite episode so far. Aside from the music being a little below it’s usual standard, the story and content left me quite irritated. The episode had a ‘spiritual’ theme, but the massive range of ideas about God, faith and religion was genuinely overwhelming. It was impossible to really know what to think… Such important issues should never be dealt with in such a shallow way, in my opinion.

It got me thinking… In a world where there are so many different things that people believe about God, about life – its purpose and direction – and death – what happens next – how can we tell what is the truth? My view is just as valid as the next person’s…so what right do I have to claim that what I believe is the truth? I don’t.

The thing with truth is that it isn’t dependent upon what people believe. If something is true, it makes no difference what people believe about it. It remains true whatever. If God is real, that isn’t because someone on earth believes in Him. If no-one on earth believed that God was real, He still would be…

So we have established that everyone has different views. And we have established that whatever these views are, the truth will remain true. This applies to everything – for example people have different views on whether the earth is spherical or flat, (I know this sounds ridiculous, but try arguing with a flat-earther…it’s harder than you might think!) but whatever the earth truly is, it will remain, regardless of what people think about it.

If we gently bring this back to God…people often have different views about Him, but they don’t make a difference to His existence. The big difference between the shape of the earth and the existence of God is the small matter of proof…although I would argue that the evidence for God is quite compelling. But I won’t get into it. Back to truth…

The Christian faith has something rather special by way of truth – it’s called the Bible. I won’t be patronising by explaining what it is… What many people don’t understand about the Bible is that it is relevant to us today, not just its writers from 2000 years (or longer) ago. Often it can be pretty hard to understand, but there are so many resources available to us to help with that. (One thing I highly recommend is Soul Survivor’s ‘Bible-in-one-year’ scheme, check the Links page).

It is so important for Christians to constantly read the Bible and see what God says. You might have noticed from other posts on this blog that they often contain a few Bible references – it’s so full of wisdom. More importantly, it’s full of truth. It’s a strange book in a sense – like no other book I’ve ever read. It has the unique ability of quite literally being alive. It is often described as the living word of God. God often speaks to us through the words in the Bible – and the more we read it, the more meaning we can unpack from it, even passages we’ve read over and over in the past. It’s amazing.

Here’s what the Bible has to say about itself:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16-17, NLT.

You might be thinking…that’s rich!! How arrogant for the writer of 2 Timothy (Paul) to say that about the book that he’s contributed so much to! I’d completely understand – that’s the sort of thing I was thinking when I first read that bit.

What I will leave you with is this: there is not a single document throughout the whole of history that is more reliable than the Bible. It stands up to every single conceivable test for such thing, and fits perfectly with archaeological evidence, other writings from its time, known human history…

It remains a perfect history, geography and life book. And this makes sense…it’s God’s book. He doesn’t settle for anything less that perfect.

I was going to leave this post there. But I’ve just realised I’ve left out the most important thing – Jesus Christ. Jesus had a lot to say about truth. I’m not sure how many times He used the phrase, ‘I tell you the truth:’ because He said that quite a lot. But Jesus also went one step further… In one of His most famous statements:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” - John 14:6, NIV.

Jesus said that He was the truth. Again, that’s a pretty massive claim, and if He was the only one to say it, it’s pretty difficult for many people to distinguish it from hot-headedness.

If I may, I want to look at something that C.S. Lewis came up with. It’s often referred to as Bad, Mad or God, or maybe Liar, Lunatic or Lord. It refers to the three possible explanations for Jesus and His life – there can be no other explanation for Him having said the things He did. Either He was a ‘bad’ man, a ‘liar’, who had no good purpose on earth and sought to spread seeds of deceit amongst the people of the time. Everything He did was for His own personal gain, and He lied about who He said He was – the Son of God. Or, He was mad, a complete lunatic. He didn’t even know what He was saying. Or, He was (and is) truly the Son of God, as He said He is.

I find it hard to believe that Jesus was bad – even by reading a tiny part of the accounts of His life it is impossible to reach this conclusion. He healed people, raised them to life… He called for justice and mercy for the poor. He loved children and welcomed them openly. A bad man would never do any of these things if He was only out for himself. Jesus can’t have been bad – it doesn’t add up.

I also find it pretty hard to believe that Jesus was mad – we read of many accounts of men who are ‘wild’ or ‘possessed’ – the people of the time were pretty good at recognising when someone was a lunatic, and Jesus wouldn’t have been any different. He can’t have been mad. Why would they have believed Him?

All this leaves is that Jesus must have been the Son of God. Even that short logical analysis helps us to understand that that is the only possibility. It may be helpful to look at how long Christianity has existed and been believed, against huge opposition. It went against the entire Roman Empire and won. Something about Christianity must be true… Or how about we consider the resurrection of Christ? The Chief Jewish Priests and the Roman Governor all wanted to see Jesus dead, and remain that way for a very long time. Yet they could find no way of disputing His disciples’ claims that He was alive again. If they’d wanted to disprove the resurrection, they could have quite easily produced the body, and Christianity would never have existed. Jesus would have been forgotten.

It is impossible to ignore Jesus Christ – He is indisputably the most important and significant character throughout the whole of history. What He said must be true.

Of course, that might all be wrong. And if Christianity is all wrong, then Jesus is of no importance to anyone.

As C.S. Lewis also famously said:

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

We cannot rationally ignore Christianity when we search for the truth. Everyone on the earth has this responsibility to choose for themselves what they should believe, and anyone who does not look at Christianity and ask what it’s really all about is shirking that responsibility.

Jesus said, “…the truth will set you free.” - John 8:31-32, NIV.

I take it all back…

I’ve just finished watching the third episode of Hustle (series 7). It blew me away – just excellent! I can’t recommend it highly enough – watch it here (available until 25th February 2011).

I genuinely believe that Hustle is one of the greatest shows available on the BBC. Such a great group of actors – and after last night’s, writers too – make it a pleasure to watch. This latest episode was infinitely better than the first episode of the series, that I somewhat slated a couple of weeks ago. The show is doing a fabulous job at filling the season break in Smallville, The Big Bang Theory and Glee. I’m spoilt…

I hope I haven’t spoken too soon, because I’m expecting great things of the next three episodes. Don’t let me down, BBC!

What is church all about?

This post is going to be about church meetings. Now, I wonder how many people stopped reading there – because church meetings are genuinely notorious for being one of the most tedious and dreary experiences of anyone’s life. Oh, how I wish this stereotype didn’t exist. Perhaps this is the main reason why church meetings are typically extremely poorly attended.

Very often we hear the phrase that ‘a church isn’t the building, it’s the people inside.’ This is true, although I think there is something else to be understood about what a church is. In today’s society, the idea of Church is practically synonymous with a Sunday Morning. For many people, Christian and non-Christian alike, a church is a group of people who meet together on a Sunday morning.

Fair enough, that’s true. However the Sunday morning service is not the most important thing in church life. It forms a major part, but its importance is not paramount. It is on a par with the Sunday evening service (if any), small groups, children’s ministry and contact with the elderly during the rest of the week.

If the focus of a church becomes its Sunday morning service then the church will die. For Sunday morning services are not the purpose of God’s church. And any church that is not God’s will die.

When looking at all the events in the life of a church, the church meeting is by far the most important. For the church meeting is the forum in which decisions are made and conversations are held that affect every single other event. This is why it is so important that church meetings are focused on God and His will for the church – Sunday morning services can get away with focusing on God for most of it, but rarely do the services on Sundays focus entirely on God throughout. If they did, they’d be pretty heavy spiritually and as the service serves very often as an outreach opportunity, this isn’t wise. Yet the church meeting on the other hand is incredibly spiritually deep – every second is drenched with God and His presence (or it should be, I’m not getting in to that).

Back to the issue of the fairly poor attendance. I feel for many people that the church meeting is something quite optional – something that carries equal weight to watching a film, going to bed early etc. etc. I’m not suggesting that we force people to go to meetings…but the people that make up a church need to realise that the church should be their priority. The church is the bride of Christ – if we put the church first in our lives, we are well on the way to putting Christ first in our lives too. Of all the ‘things’ that people do – work, school, clubs, social stuff – for a Christian, the church is the most important of all. The way we spend our time reflects the desires of our hearts…those who truly seek after God will show this in how they spend their time.

Therefore, if the church meeting is the most important event in the life of a church, and church is the most important thing in the lives of its members, then everyone would be there, without a doubt (excluding those who can’t make it due to illness/looking after children etc.). The fact that hardly anyone – the same small group of people time and time again – turns up to church meetings shows clearly that the essence of church has been somewhat lost. And it’s a huge loss – we need to find it again!

The paramount importance of church has been iced over by so many other things. Often we hear the concept that a Christian doesn’t have to go to church to be a Christian. Rubbish. We need to get out of our consumer-based society and our culture of entitlement and get back to where God wants us to be – serving His church and therefore His world.

I said in a previous post that the church is the hope of the world. The church is God’s plan A, and He doesn’t have a plan B. Come on, church, sort it out! Otherwise we’re all going to end up looking like massive tools to the rest of the world…and that’s genuinely useless.

Much better

Hustle, that is. This week’s was excellent – well worth a watch. Available here until 25th February 2011.

There must be more than this…

Recently, a planet called Kepler-10b has been in the news – it’s about 1.4 times the size of Earth, and pretty much the first of its kind to be discovered – a similar sized ‘rocky’ planet to ours. Its discovery suggests that there are other planets out there that are of the same sort of size, and if we discover one which isn’t quite so close to its star as Kepler-10b (its surface temperature is around 1300 degrees Celsius) we may have discovered another place in the universe capable of supporting life.

It’s really quite exciting, especially for the physicists of our generation.

Before I start getting all geeky, I’ll return to the subject of the post. It hit me today that we are constantly searching for something more than there already is – we look to space to find distant phenomena or signs of life, we look more deeply into the structures that make us up (at places like CERN) to find out exactly what is going on. We’re massively curious about everything.

C.S. Lewis had some very interesting things to say about this in Mere Christianity - ‘If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.’ Hold on, you might say, science will satisfy my desire to know more about everything…

I firmly believe that this is not the case. However far science advances toward the total enlightenment, there will always be something that we haven’t quite got our heads around, and when we manage that we’ll realise that we don’t quite understand something else…and so on.

So often, we find ourselves in a place where all we are concerned with is this world and the issues we face here. I’m not in any way belittling this – the past few days have seen some rough things thrown up for many people around me. I’m thinking of things such as poverty, war, the price of petrol, the economic situation – you know the drill.

Someone said to me tonight (about some of those issues), ‘It’s fairly clear no-one is or can do anything about it or they would have by now.’

After having thought about that for a little while, I realised that actually that’s dead true. What a brilliant point! Well, not exactly, the point is, someone can do something about it, and He has!

The death of Jesus solved everything, because Jesus’ death was not on the same level as the worries and cares we have on earth. Jesus’ death was about defeating Satan, death and hell once and for all. If we can grab hold of this, then nothing else matters!

Of course, that’s a ridiculous thing to say. And it’s not true – of course what happens on earth matters. God cares deeply about this planet and the lives of those on it, and He’s done something there – it’s called the church. The church is the hope of the world – it is God’s plan A and He doesn’t have a plan B. It’s worthy of another post but in short, the church is responsible for being a worldwide, radical movement, seeking to turn society upside-down and inside-out. The gospel is only half about our personal relationship with God – the other half is about the world and what we are doing.

But get this – and it’s pretty simple – it doesn’t matter what happens to us if our lives are secure with Christ. Even death can’t keep us, because death isn’t the end of anything!

Thinking about God’s plan and solution makes me realise how much we often miss the point. There is more than this, there is more than us – we can worry all day about what is happening in the world and think that there’s no fixing it… But God’s solution takes a different line. He doesn’t tackle the problems of the world as they are, He makes a way for every individual to be saved, regardless of their situation, sex, race, age or abilities. God’s solution is concerned with a bigger picture than we often see.

I do hope this post isn’t too all over the place… Most of it is still very fresh in my mind. I’ll leave you with these words of Jesus:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” - Matthew 6:25-34, NIV.

We must keep our eyes fixed on God’s kingdom and His righteousness, for that is what is important. When all else fades, He remains.

May the Lord bless you
and keep you;
may the LORD make His face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
may the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26, NIV).

What makes a man?

I’m currently watching a hilarious programme on E4 called Tool Academy – it is well worth a watch if you get the time! There are some very interesting characters on there…

I don’t want this to be a long post – the show got me thinking about what makes a real man. At first, lots of things popped in to my head – being a faithful husband, a good father, strong, handsome…

Then I realised that that’s all complete rubbish. Wonderful traits they may be, they don’t make a man a man.

I managed to whittle it down to two things:

Love God.

Love People.

Quite simple, really.  Well, not really – managing to fulfil both of those requirements completely, all the time is a mean feat. Indeed no one can fully achieve it…except Jesus.

Jesus is the perfect example of a man. (And a perfect example of a human in general… Notice that there is no gender requirement to love God and love people!)

We should all try to be more like Jesus Christ. That is after all where the name Christian came from in the first place!

Hu$tle

Last night, Hustle returned to our screens for a seventh series. (Available here on BBC iPlayer, until 25th February 2011.)

I must say I was genuinely disappointed – the episode just didn’t manage to live up to the show’s usual outstanding quality.

You could say that I should have seen it coming – series 6 left a lot to be desired, and it seems as if it was the beginning of the show’s demise. It seems to me as if it could have been so much better so easily – it just requires someone with a taste for quality and intelligence at the BBC.

For a start, the characterisation was just ridiculous. The four marks were vastly overplayed, far too flamboyant and stereotypical. It was impossible to believe that those people could exist in the real world. As a consequence, the characters lacked depth and appeared merely as tools to drive the plot.

In the past, the marks have been almost as well played and interesting as the grifters – notably Carlton Wood and Harry Fielding from series 5 provided a formidable opposition – starting in the second episode and returning for the sixth – leaving the viewer unsure as to whether the grifters would actually succeed. There was a true sense of suspense and tension. Now, the opposition seems to be all too easy to con and the tension, one of the best parts of the show, has all but disappeared.

On top of this, the plot from last night was ridden with holes. For a show which could easily be believed to be realistic, the people in it seem to act like fools – it’s just too perfect a con.

It wasn’t all bad. Any cast comprising Adrian Lester, Robert Glennister and Robert Vaughn can’t go too far wrong. I’m massively impressed with Matt Di Angelo and Kelly Adams – I was a little dubious as to how well they would replace Jaime Murray and Marc Warren when they joined at the start of series 5, but both have given solid, believable performances. And Rob Jarvis as Eddie, perhaps the weakest regular, remains enjoyable to watch.

It’s the writing that is letting Hustle down. It’s a brilliant show concept – entertaining, clever and quite fascinating – that gives the viewer a sense of superiority over the humiliated marks each time. Whether or not this is a good thing is a subject for another day… But it does keep the viewing figures high. Yet like a lot of TV programmes these days (try the last couple of seasons of Doctor Who, the last few episodes of Misfits, season 9 of Smallville or season 4 of Prison Break) the quality of writing has gone down the drain. It’s such a shame that such great acting talent is wasted on weak scripts and characterisations.

Series’ 1-3 and 5 were the best Hustle has been and I think probably the best that Hustle will ever be.

But let’s hope that in 5 or 6 weeks I’ll write another post saying about how wrong I was today – let’s hope that this series picks up and surprises us all.