The Forecast Isn't Good

Evan Almighty

D’you ever have that thing where you love a movie even though all the evidence suggests you shouldn’t? In spite of the fact that all the critics pan it and no one really goes to see it – you just can’t help yourself. Well, that’s me with Evan Almighty. I know I know. Bruce Almighty it ain’t. And you can’t even win with Bruce because if you don’t like Mr Carey…
But I just can’t help it. I know it’s not a great movie, and it’s not as funny as it might have been, or as profound… But I just really like it. I can’t help it. It makes me laugh and think and maybe I’m alone here – but I reckon it beautifully illustrates how embarrassing it must have been to be an Old Testament prophet. I mean let’s face it – Evan has everything a dude could want and has to swap that for a bad beard, uncool clothes, bird excrement and er… a bonkers hobby. At least he didn’t have to cook his food on human crap, or walk around naked, or bury his underpants. You see we have this strange notion about the OT dudes, that they were cool heroes who towered above normal folk. We forget that their life was rather embarrassing and we probably would have scratched them off our party list. We talk about people being prophets today – well be warned if you’re praying for that gift – be prepared for a full scale move into crackersville. Cause it ain’t so much about talk talk talk – but look stupid, look stupid, look stupid. You see prophesy, it seems to me, is about doing something which will stop people in their tracks. Noah tried to do it with a big boat and it did stop people – but not for long enough – only for a nudge and a wink and witty riposte. Jonah reluctantly did something bonkers and wow! the people did stop. And God changed his mind when he saw that people were taking him seriously. Which begs the question – would God have actually sent the flood if everyone had got on the boat? And where would that have left the hapless Evan/Noah?

Blog 7 - Downsizer God

As Christmas approaches (and New year and Easter and Pentecost and Harvest) it puts me in mind again of the downsizing nature of the Boss. Ever since he made a perfect planet and then chose to entrust it to people like me it seems he displayed this tendency to go downmarket rather than up.

Have a good look at any of the renegades in the Bible and you see this trait again. Jacob, Samson, Solomon, (1000 women in his life and not one of them gets their name in the good book), Rahab - they're not really the people you'd expect to find ina who's who of the most Holy dudes on the planet.

Yet the One who is above all other contenders picked a bunch of misfits to pass on glimpses of the truth. Watched a lot of The Nativity Story movie again last weekend and it's an amazing moment when Joe holds up this tiny baby covered in goo and you remind yourself this is the Big Man himself, disguised as a child who'll die without the next feed from his mother and some old clothes from his dad.

The other thought I wanted to throw out is one Ive been musing on for a while and featured in a book called The Road Trip - that I reckon God lived on the earth for a good few years when he first made it. Or if not lived here had a holiday home. I reckon it's true cause the Good Book notes that it was a few centuries before people started to Worship God. Why? Why the change? Well Cain and Abel took offerings to the Boss and knew beyond doubt that one was rejected and one accepted. Maybe they walked to his house and met him. And if you think that's daft let's not forget that this is a Creator who walked in the garden with the first people and made 'em clothes out of the first sacrificed animal. So there ya go.

Blog 2 - Stardust

So - finally getting round to doing a second entry. Thort I'd make a blog to record my profound moments - seems I don't have that many. I'll foam at the mouth I guess on what I always foam on - movies.

Been a dull year for films really - last year was excellent - saw loads of great stuff - this year has been a case of limping along to the cinema - our local is a quaint monoplex, when the lights go down you're not sure whether the film is about to start, or the bulb's gone. It used to be a Methodist church which I figure is kind of prophetic really, seeing as these days I bump into God regularly in the cinema. But I digress, saw Deja Vu, Amazing Grace & Stardust which stand out, oh and Hot Fuzz. brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Spent some time catching up with old stuff - Copland, Midnight Run and Ripley's Game most notably. But back to Stardust - great God moment when fallen star Yvaine tells the rodent-like Tristan about seeing a world of violence and hatred but spotting the worthwhile moments of love. I reckon these moments are what Jesus called signs of the kingdom. Little bits oif divine static in the atmosphere to make ya think again about what matters. To us and God. Great moment and one I shall definitely use in my Big Screen Theology Sessions...

Disappointment of the year - easily The Bourne Ultimatum. I'm sorry, I know it was the action flick of the year and probably an all-time classic but you can't please everyone... Two words to Mr Greengrass - Fig Rig. Oh and one more - Tripod. The cinema's spent decades perfecting the art of shooting stuff so it doesn't give you a headache - Mr Greengrass has set us back fifty years in one movie. Please please, please let's not have more movies with this much lauded camera shake. Everyone else loved it. I nearly left the cinema. Emporer's new clothes anyone?

Finally (for now) Hot Fuzz. Let's face it - Simon Pegg really puts the comedy into editing. It's like an 18 rated episode of Midsomer Murders.

Blog 1

So I’ve decided to keep a blog, and here I am, somewhat self-consciously beginning by admitting that I’m one of those people who likes the thud of his own keyboard and has the arrogance to believe that other people should have the benefit of my ‘wisdom’ and/or stupidity. I find myself at the dark age of 44, increasingly confused about life and its meaning, yet increasingly convinced that the Good Book is extremely relevant to all this working, playing, struggling, imagining and fearing that makes up the pieces of our reckless fragmented lives.

What I do wanna say about the faith is this. For too many years I believed a whole load of stupid things about the faith, the Good Book and the meaning of life. I mean totally stupid, it seems we can easily become extremely polarised about religious things.

Various viewpoints seem to prevail, here’s just a few highlights:
That all religion is bad, and anyone with faith in someone greater than ourselves is sadly deluded.
That one particular train of belief is the one and only way and anyone with other faith, or lack of it, is sadly deluded. (This kind of thinking leads to the attitude that I have the truth and must dump it all over you – which isn’t a million miles away from what’s going on with this blog.)
That hidden somewhere on the planet there is irrefutable evidence that Jesus was really a terrorist/evil genius/benign Superman/alien predator with a foolproof agenda for overthrowing everything everywhere, and if only we could lay our hands on it the world would be very different and we’d discover that all religion is bad and anyone with faith is sadly deluded. (N.B., worth noting here that the beloved DaVinci Code is somewhat irrelevant anyway as Jesus had at least four brothers and two sisters, so therefore there’s bound to be his great, great, great to the power of x, nephews and nieces walking about today who apparently haven’t managed to solve the world’s problems.) Sorry Dan.
That all religions are really the same, despite the fact that the founders of said religions worked blooming hard to emphasise the differences.
Worst case scenario – that Jesus was a nice guy, who wanted to heal the world with a bag of miracles and a smile. And if we were all just better people and more ‘Christian’ everything would be fine.

But I’ve had enough of talking about that. For me the faith is about being human, engaging with the world, engaging with other people, and spotting signs of the kingdom as we stumble across them in the cinema and the hospital, high street and bus shelter. Not that I believe people are God, but it seems to me that, for some reason, God has chosen to be invisible and invited us into the job of making him visible. Which can seem bloomin’ annoying, but that’s the way it is. So I have to get over it. And if God is God – why shouldn’t he do things that way?

Arguing for the existence or non existence of some kind of deity seems a fairly pointless exercise to me. All I’ll say on that is either we came from something bigger than us (e.g. a Creator) or something smaller (e.g. a jellyfish). The fact that we possess knowledge and ability and laughter, along with a sense of justice and humour, suggests to me that we came from something greater than ourselves, and the fact that so much of what we have can easily become twisted and damaged suggests that we often require the assistance of something greater, not smaller.
(On a bad day though all I would say is this – I have nowhere else to go – looking, up, out, around for God is my default option.)

For better or worse I love the Bible – not the shallow stilted book so often discussed in public – but the book that’s jammed with people wrestling with faith, despair, temptation, purpose and doubt. I am only beginning to glimpse the context of much of what is going on in the Good Book, but I’m with a guy called Rob Bell, who asks this kind of question: is the Bible effective because it happened in the past, or because it happens today? Again arguments about what did or did not take place may miss the point. Every day I’m offered the kind of Eden fruit that may sow destruction in my life, every day I face the Job-like threat of losing everything precious to me, every day I may encounter a transfiguring moment of enlightenment, standing on the most unlikely metaphorical mountain, every day I may get confused and abandon my faith, and run like the rocky Peter.

One final thing. Clearly Jesus understood ordinary people and, unlike much religious hokum these days, spoke the language of the people, in the places of the people. I’m a coward, and a poor example of doing that, so I’ll hide behind this blog and make vain attempts to spit out little gobs of hope from a distance.