Sunday assembly

You may have heard of this "church without God".

Which is a totally vacuous concept.

Church without God misses the point.  It's a marriage without a bride.  It is spiritual masturbation - trying to have the sensations without having the relationship.  but we don't go to church for the sensations, or even for the social action.  We go to church to meet with God, to talk to him and hear him speak.  Relationship with God is the core purpose of church.  So church without God is a nonsense.

And as a side issue, I posted a well written and slightly more polite version of the above on their blog.  They deleted it.  So out seems they don't handle criticism very well and will censor opposition.  Not a god sign.

Damp squib

Went to see the local bonfire celebrations.

Lashing horizontal rain in the furious wind.  Put the dead umbrella in a bin on the way.

Met loads of people coming the other way.  "the bonfire is canceled.  The rides are closed.  Its knee deep in mud.  All the children are freezing and crying.  And they won't give us our money back, we have to go on the website .... But the fireworks will still be on"

Well the fireworks were the reason we were going.  But we had our doubts, given the wind.

Dubiously we paid, and then behold, the fireworks did actually start.

Embers were falling over the sparse audience so we made sure not to stand directly downwind.

We stood with our backs to the rain and squinted at the display out of the sides of our hoods.

It was ok I suppose.

Meanwhile a display of fire eaters was going on to the right, and they also sent the cried scattering when there sparks got out of hand.

Of don't know why it wasn't canceled completely, but at least we all felt stoically miserable in a truly british way.

Accelator

I've been at work again.  The DWI wants improvements to this water treatment works. (its not a fault with the accelator in the photo, which I just happen to like as a photo. The problem is that a pump downstream gets bypassed when theres a power failure)

Political prayers

I found it hard to say amen this sunday.

The person doing the prayers is a member of the christian lawyers association.  He took the opportunity to highlight the kind of cases they deal with, ie fighting the 2013 marriage act (gay marriage), abortion, etc.  To be fair to him, the format he used was to identify the issue and let the people make their own prayers, and he acknowledged that there would be a range of views, but it was very clear where he stood on these issues.

No wonder or church finds itself unable to retain its gay members, with even some long standing members leaving recently.

Moments of self doubt

I am an engineer.  But not really a very good one.  (I don't really understand the Colebrook-White equation on which all the hydraulic calculations I do are based)

I have applied to be a vicar, but don't feel that I will be a very good one. (I have a goldfish memory and frequently doubt the existence of God)

So, which career shall I choose, feeling that I will be at best mediocre in either role?

Manic weekend II

..... And on a lighter note:

Went to the safari park.  there were three lions up in a tree, ask on the same branch.

I didn't know lions could climb trees! 

they seemed stuck, so I was worried they would jump down onto the roof of the car as I passed below.

Manic weekend

My wifes pastoral contact came to the morning service very drunk and had to be taken out.  Her new boyfriend came to church for the first time.  While I was trying to welcome him properly a church member butted in wanting assurance that her ten minute item that the vicar had promised she could do next week as part of my service was going ahead.  She has to do this to avoid letting down someone in a pastorally sensitive situation.  Of chose the vicar hadn't told me about this item.  What he had told me is not to go over time, and my programme was timed to the minute and includes a number of people I can't let down for pastorally.  Awkward!  I told her I would communicate later in the day.  She went off to the vicar while I went back to my 'client'.  Then mrs came over to tell me we had to leave now to go to her friends house, mainly to get her out of the building.  We were to go in our car and she with the boyfriend.  We went first, foolishly it turns out, because the drunk was intercepted by another pastoral case who managed to extract cash from her and by another pastoral worker who told her off for giving cash to the other one.  She then dragged a random teenage boy who happened to be paying into the church and demanded that the church provide him with the help he needed, and slandering the church for its hypocrisy in not helping.  (so if you were a teenage boy and a drunk woman dragged you into a church how would you feel?)

Eventually she came to the house.  I finally had my chat with the boyfriend.  But the lady was too drunk to be able to help her much.

She is a recently baptised christian who has a lot of learning to do.  And I think that part of the church's help will be a referral to alcoholics anonymous.

Rejected

My project to report for the XYZ site has now been knocked back three times by my reviewer.  He accepts that I have dealt with everything that the client wants, but he now wants me to tresh out a side issue that I have discovered.  it is a UV plant with three channels that are supposed to carry the same flow but I have found records showing up to 780% variation between them.  The sure staff deny that there is any sensor present to measure this, and yet the record is there so something must be measuring it.  And a variation greater than 10% falls outside of the specification.

Personally I think that these are momentary blips that we should ignore, but the boss seems determined to overspend the budget investigating them.

Shall we work less, that grace may abound?

The evangelical doctrine of salvation by faith alone gives rise to a cynical attitude towards those who do charity.

It makes adherents of the doctrine feel that charity workers are doing it just to earn a place in heaven, no mayer how sincere and altruistic they are.

Is this just a minor misinterpretation of a sound doctrine, or is it a sign that the doctrine itself is fundamentally flawed?

Discuss

Rheumatoid arthritis, science and faith

Mrs RA has bern generally deteriorating, and was particularly bad over the summer when she could barely manage to walk 100 yards and even that was an endurance test.  Of course she is not allowed to claim disability living allowance because she can walk ando it is 'not unreasonable'.  I disagree.

Mrs has received prayer on many occasions, and to be honestI have not seen any changes that could be attributed directly to the prayer.  So she went for a steroid injection into the knee, which didn't work last time.  And this time one has to admit there has been an improvement.

Mrs says this is an answer to prayer.  On the other hand, nothing happened when she was prayed for but there was a big improvement when she went to the doctor and had a jab.  To make that into an answer to prayer you have to say either that God sent get for the jab or that God made the jab work.  Both those answers may satisfy a person predisposed to faith, but I don't think they will persuade many atheists.

Meanwhile, there have been rumblings about her having knee replacement operations in both legs and ankle repairs on at least one.

At a recent visit to the surgeon, he said her knees were severely arthritic, and that he could see from the x ray that it was very painful.  (perhaps we should get him to sort out the DLA for us!)  He does not normally encourage such young people to rush into surgery, but saw out as a necessity for my wife within the next three years, preferably sooner.  In fact next summer would be good, which works our conveniently for our hopeful progress through the ordination discernment process.  So maybe God is involved after all.

Meanwhile mrs has talked to an old lady at the church; one of the sprightly ones who overtake her.  Apparently this lady also had RA, but read a book by a christian medical person advocating a specific diet.  She implemented it, and her fingers which she says used to be as badly deformed as my wifes straightened out.  I can testify she looks fine now.

So mrs is borrowing the book.  I have to day I am sceptical of diets for RA, and most things take the months to take effect anyway so our is hard to know with certainty what is going on.

But if my wife can read a christian book recommended by achristian at church, and if she then improves, then even my doubting thomas mind will have to sit up and notice, and grudgingly accept that maybe miracles do happen.

I will let you know the title when it arrives.