Even following the brilliant victory against that South-East London club in the semi final (that's Arsenal, in case you were wondering; Arsenal being from Woolwich, which is in East London and south of the River Thames...) I wasn't expecting Spurs to win the cup. When I saw that they were only one goal down against Chelsea in the final on Sunday, I was actually quite happy - so when Tottenham went on to win I was of course delighted.
I was disappointed to see Martin Jol leave the managerial position at Spurs as he was a decent bloke and had guided the club to European qualification - yet there can be no doubt that replacing him with Juande Ramos was a brilliant move. Ramos is an expert in collecting silverware, and with Spurs more or less out of contention for a place in Europe via the league, this cup win guarantees a place in the UEFA Cup next season - a result that was looking like a distant pipe-dream just a few months ago.
Under Ramos, Spurs are looking leaner and fitter and full of the self-belief that was previously lacking. The talent has always been there, but Ramos seems to have found the key to unlock it, and to beat the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea. One reporter referred to Spurs' victory over Chelsea as a victory of good over evil. Let's hope for more of the same.
Miracles
I'm really looking forward to doing church tomorrow. Over the last few years we've been really blessed with some quite extraordinary healings, and last week we saw the deaf being healed and gold dust appearing on people's hands. Tomorrow we welcome Billy Kennedy, who will be taking over the reigns of the Pioneer Network form Gerald Coates, so it will be great to hear what he has to say.
I'm never sure exactly how to react to the miracles thing. On the one hand, what's going on is truly amazing, and well worth making a big fuss over. After all , this is God at work, and something to be proclaimed from the rooftops. But on the other hand, this is small fry compared to what God is doing elsewhere and what he's capable of doing with us, so we should be striving for bigger and better things in him rather than being overly proud of what we have. And of course, if God wasn't working these miracles, he'd be no less worthy of our praise and worship.
I think my natural reaction is probably the right one; my attitude tends to be "That's great! Now what's next?!" We must acknowledge what God has done, but equally we mustn't get stuck in that one moment and lose sight of where the Holy Spirit is moving on to. As with so many of these things, it's a question of balance.
I'm never sure exactly how to react to the miracles thing. On the one hand, what's going on is truly amazing, and well worth making a big fuss over. After all , this is God at work, and something to be proclaimed from the rooftops. But on the other hand, this is small fry compared to what God is doing elsewhere and what he's capable of doing with us, so we should be striving for bigger and better things in him rather than being overly proud of what we have. And of course, if God wasn't working these miracles, he'd be no less worthy of our praise and worship.
I think my natural reaction is probably the right one; my attitude tends to be "That's great! Now what's next?!" We must acknowledge what God has done, but equally we mustn't get stuck in that one moment and lose sight of where the Holy Spirit is moving on to. As with so many of these things, it's a question of balance.
Guns and babies
There have been four shootings at educational establishments in the USA in the last week, with 11 people shot, 9 dead and one critically injured (to date). As long as the crazy gun laws that prevail in the States remain as they are, these incidents will continue to happen. But the right to carry arms is a fundamental part of America's constitution; the country has a history of putting choice before life. Campaigns are underway for this to be changed, and we can only hope that they are successful.
But it's easy for us to sneer from across the pond; we're not doing so well ourselves when it comes to valuing life over choice. 200,000 abortions take place every year in the UK (that's nearly 600 a day) . It is legal for babies to be aborted in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy - yet there is more and more clear evidence that children born this prematurely do stand a good chance of survival, and there are more and more frequent cases of this happening.
This means that these aren't balls of meaningless cells that are being removed and disposed of, they are human beings with a decent chance of survival. They should be treated as such, and that means it's wrong to kill them just because their existence is inconvenient to someone.
Saddam Hussein will always be associated with the horrendous gas attacks on the Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war. There he was, leader of a nation, and there existed a community growing in his country that he found inconvenient. So he ordered that it be removed. As the appointed leader of Iraq, that choice was his to make. If it was wrong for him to make a choice that put convenience before life, then surely it's wrong for anybody else to do the same.
If life matters more than choice when it comes to Americans carrying guns, or the decisions that rulers and leaders make, then life also matters more than choice when it comes to unwanted pregnancies. Yet a bill is currently going through the UK parliament that some politicians are expected to use to try and make abortion even easier in the UK, and possibly extend rather than contract the time period in which it's legal to remove and kill unborn children. Unless and until our government starts valuing life more, it would be deeply hypocritical of them to condemn the stupid gun laws in the USA and the ever rising death toll that goes with them.
Related links:
But it's easy for us to sneer from across the pond; we're not doing so well ourselves when it comes to valuing life over choice. 200,000 abortions take place every year in the UK (that's nearly 600 a day) . It is legal for babies to be aborted in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy - yet there is more and more clear evidence that children born this prematurely do stand a good chance of survival, and there are more and more frequent cases of this happening.
This means that these aren't balls of meaningless cells that are being removed and disposed of, they are human beings with a decent chance of survival. They should be treated as such, and that means it's wrong to kill them just because their existence is inconvenient to someone.
Saddam Hussein will always be associated with the horrendous gas attacks on the Iraqi Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war. There he was, leader of a nation, and there existed a community growing in his country that he found inconvenient. So he ordered that it be removed. As the appointed leader of Iraq, that choice was his to make. If it was wrong for him to make a choice that put convenience before life, then surely it's wrong for anybody else to do the same.
If life matters more than choice when it comes to Americans carrying guns, or the decisions that rulers and leaders make, then life also matters more than choice when it comes to unwanted pregnancies. Yet a bill is currently going through the UK parliament that some politicians are expected to use to try and make abortion even easier in the UK, and possibly extend rather than contract the time period in which it's legal to remove and kill unborn children. Unless and until our government starts valuing life more, it would be deeply hypocritical of them to condemn the stupid gun laws in the USA and the ever rising death toll that goes with them.
Related links:
The archbishop and all that
A lot has been said about the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent comments. It seems that everybody was astounded by his comments, and in turn he was astounded by the reaction. And for me, it is the reaction that by and large is more interesting - and more disturbing - than anything that Rowan Williams said.
I found the reaction of Gordon Brown particularly interesting. Since he came to power, the Prime Minister has been trying to draw the country together and avoid division. We saw this with all the talk of "Britishness" before he came to power; we also saw it when he tried to form his first cabinet as "a cabinet of all the talents" - including invitations to members of other political parties. So it came as no surprise that the first headline about the PM's own reaction to Rowan Williams' comments was to describe the Archbishop as "a man of great integrity". All well and good.
But it was in the detail of Gordon Brown's comments that came something fairly worrying: "British laws must be based on British values and that religious law, while respecting other cultures, should be subservient to British criminal and civil law" This, like much of the reaction to Rowan Williams' comments, makes a couple of fundamental mistakes. The first is an assumption that "religious law" is a different kettle of fish to "British" law, when in fact they are on the whole compatible. In fact, it was this very compatibility that Williams was trying to get at in his speech: that by handling relatively trivial issues in Sharia courts, Muslims can take a lot of the burden off of the mainstream legal system, and save us taxpayers a fair whack of money to boot. Moreover, British law is of course largely based on the Christian faith - so the idea that it is somehow in conflict with "religious law" is nonsense.
The second, and perhaps more important, mistake is to leave God out of the equation. God is big. He is the creator and ruler of the universe. His rules outrank any and every man-made legal system there could possibly be. The notion that the law of God "should be subservient to British law" is a notion that belittles God; for the Prime Minister, our chief law maker, to say that is essentially for him to say "I am more important than God". If unity is what Gordon Brown seeks, that is not the way to achieve it. Instead, he risks alienating everyone in Britain who believes in a deity - and that's a huge slice of our population.
So, what about Rowan Williams' comments themselves? Is his the Christian point of view? Well, whilst there's been a lot of negative reaction even within his own denomination, I think that there's certainly something good to take from what he said (or at least, if not what he said then what he meant!). As I understand it, Islam is a very legalistic religion. A Muslim has to pray at certain times each day, facing a certain direction, whereas a Christian can pray whenever he or she wants, facing any direction he or she chooses. The BBC News website explains Sharia law thus:
So in a way, the archbishop is attempting to spread a Christian message into Islamic culture: resolve disputes among yourselves rather than taking them to court. In a highly legalistic culture such as Islam, it is fairly inevitable that the dispute resolution process would also be highly legalistic - hence making Sharia law "almost inevitable in the UK" - the words that Rowan Williams was shot down for saying. Meanwhile, for the rest of us, out-of-court settlements and dispute resolution processes are becoming more and more common. Essentially all Rowan Williams was doing was acknowledging that established fact.
So, like the Archbishop, I can't see what the fuss is about - in a nutshell, Rowan Williams said nothing new or in any way controversial. But in trying to calm this storm in a teacup, Gordon Brown made a claim that has much bigger and more profound implications. Sharia law in the UK is one thing, but the UK Parliament outranking God is something else entirely.
I found the reaction of Gordon Brown particularly interesting. Since he came to power, the Prime Minister has been trying to draw the country together and avoid division. We saw this with all the talk of "Britishness" before he came to power; we also saw it when he tried to form his first cabinet as "a cabinet of all the talents" - including invitations to members of other political parties. So it came as no surprise that the first headline about the PM's own reaction to Rowan Williams' comments was to describe the Archbishop as "a man of great integrity". All well and good.
But it was in the detail of Gordon Brown's comments that came something fairly worrying: "British laws must be based on British values and that religious law, while respecting other cultures, should be subservient to British criminal and civil law" This, like much of the reaction to Rowan Williams' comments, makes a couple of fundamental mistakes. The first is an assumption that "religious law" is a different kettle of fish to "British" law, when in fact they are on the whole compatible. In fact, it was this very compatibility that Williams was trying to get at in his speech: that by handling relatively trivial issues in Sharia courts, Muslims can take a lot of the burden off of the mainstream legal system, and save us taxpayers a fair whack of money to boot. Moreover, British law is of course largely based on the Christian faith - so the idea that it is somehow in conflict with "religious law" is nonsense.
The second, and perhaps more important, mistake is to leave God out of the equation. God is big. He is the creator and ruler of the universe. His rules outrank any and every man-made legal system there could possibly be. The notion that the law of God "should be subservient to British law" is a notion that belittles God; for the Prime Minister, our chief law maker, to say that is essentially for him to say "I am more important than God". If unity is what Gordon Brown seeks, that is not the way to achieve it. Instead, he risks alienating everyone in Britain who believes in a deity - and that's a huge slice of our population.
So, what about Rowan Williams' comments themselves? Is his the Christian point of view? Well, whilst there's been a lot of negative reaction even within his own denomination, I think that there's certainly something good to take from what he said (or at least, if not what he said then what he meant!). As I understand it, Islam is a very legalistic religion. A Muslim has to pray at certain times each day, facing a certain direction, whereas a Christian can pray whenever he or she wants, facing any direction he or she chooses. The BBC News website explains Sharia law thus:
Sharia rulings have been developed to help Muslims understand how they should lead every aspect of their lives according to God's wishes... For example, many young Muslims ask themselves what they should do if colleagues invite them to the pub after work or college.Imagine if every decision we made, even ones as trivial as that in the example above, had to go through a court of law! Yet that is the Muslim culture. It is in stark contrast to the Christian culture, which is very much more based on freedom and making choices for ourselves. In fact, the Bible encourages us to avoid courts of law if at all possible, and resolve any disputes personally, with the oversight of mutually respected leaders or elders if necessary.Many people would of course make up their own mind about the appropriate course of action. But others may turn to a Sharia scholar for advice.
So Sharia covers a lot of very mundane and banal daily issues where observant Muslims want to ensure they act within the legal framework of their faith.
So in a way, the archbishop is attempting to spread a Christian message into Islamic culture: resolve disputes among yourselves rather than taking them to court. In a highly legalistic culture such as Islam, it is fairly inevitable that the dispute resolution process would also be highly legalistic - hence making Sharia law "almost inevitable in the UK" - the words that Rowan Williams was shot down for saying. Meanwhile, for the rest of us, out-of-court settlements and dispute resolution processes are becoming more and more common. Essentially all Rowan Williams was doing was acknowledging that established fact.
So, like the Archbishop, I can't see what the fuss is about - in a nutshell, Rowan Williams said nothing new or in any way controversial. But in trying to calm this storm in a teacup, Gordon Brown made a claim that has much bigger and more profound implications. Sharia law in the UK is one thing, but the UK Parliament outranking God is something else entirely.
Related links
- BBC News: PM extends support to archbishop
- BBC News: Q&A: Sharia law explained
- Archbishop of Canterbury official site
Simplified
We've tried a good few things with WagWeb, and here's the latest incarnation of the site. It's a blog, pure and simple, generated using Google's Blogger software. The advantage is that it's free (unlike the last iteration of the site) and, hopefully, just as easy for us to use (unlike the iterations before that) so hopefully all is good. But, this being my first post, I don't even know if it works yet! If you're reading this, clearly it does.
I'll make no promises about keeping things up to date, but I will try and get our previous content visible again at some point as well. Enjoy...
P.S. Sorry about the pink, I'll get rid of that soon :)
I'll make no promises about keeping things up to date, but I will try and get our previous content visible again at some point as well. Enjoy...
P.S. Sorry about the pink, I'll get rid of that soon :)
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