British National Persecution

I along with 8million others and a studio audience of 1000 watched BNP party leader, Nick Griffin, on Question Time – or as it has been said ‘The Nick Griffin Show’. Personally, it was less the Nick Griffin Show and a lot more like he was in the stocks.

I’m going to try and keep this short. I am not siding with BNP politics but I couldn’t help feel sorry for Mr Griffin. In the last week he has been hot topic amongst the media and has been rapidly become one of the most, if not the most, hated man in Britain. He has been deemed a devil and a rat and is often caricatured as Hitler (lets just remember that Hitler, one of the most hated men of all time, was a mass-murder). Again I’m not agreeing with his politics but I feel that the BNP’s ‘campaign of hate’ should not be met, addressed or overcome by hate – and this seems precisely the way politics, the media and society at large are dealing with it.

On Question Time, Nick Griffin was ‘jeered and ridiculed’ (Daily Mail headline), he was constantly talked about as if he wasn’t in the room, was laughed at and shouted at by the audience, one of which, who was offered to voice his opinion, did nothing more than lay into Mr Griffin. He was often cut off and people seemed little interested in listening to him, instead they were quick to ‘read between the lines’ and cut him off.

I can understand that people are angry toward him but is it right to fight fire we fire? Do we have the right to lynch those who lynched our ancestors, friends and family? Can hate be overcome by more hate?

“If you want rid of griffin and his sad brood ballots are not the answer bullets are” say one on the facebook group ‘1,000,000 united against the BNP.

The message of yesterdays Question Time for me was clear, we will not tolerate racial prejudice and discrimination, but we will happy persecute and alienate those with differing ideologies. Is this fair in a land of democracy and freedom of speak?

Dehumanized: Is Nick Griffin nothing more than a sewer rat?

Cartoon

This is genius…

Body Worlds

On Saturday I had the privilege of taking my girlfriend to see Gunther Von Hagens’ Body Worlds Exhibition – yep, that’s right we went on a date looking at real dead bodies! For those of you who don’t know, the Body Worlds Exhibition is a travelling exhibition, which has preserved donor bodies and organs using a technique called plastination, halting decay and leaving the bodies visible. It was an amazing experience and, although quite expensive, well worth a visit. Check it…

http://www.visitlondon.com/bodyworlds/

The tour began with embryos, foetuses and new borns, and progressed into old age, taking a look at individual aspects of the human body, there specific roles and qualities. Basically, the exhibition helped me recap my GCSE biology but the exhibition has promoted me to blog because you can’t help come away with a huge appreciation for how complex the human body is – even a 5 weeks in the womb. It’s literally amazing, and its right here in front of us all day and we completely take it for granted all the time!!

Being an engineer (well, nearly), I looked upon the human body as the ultimate in engineering masterpiece, with the best examples of materials, computing power, clever pumps and fluid flows, complex pulley systems, mechanical systems, control systems, damping and lubricating systems, protection systems, audio/visual systems and energy systems, and all of this confined into a relatively small and lightweight structure which has the ability to stand alone, be independent, make individual decisions, grow and reproduce itself over and over again but each time in unique and distinct ways.

I learnt loads and I’m half tempted to list off all these amazing statistics and facts I learnt about my own body, but the only thing I wrote down whilst I was there was this, written on one of the display cards, “The Brain is the most complex object in the known universe”.

And guess what, the universe is a freakin big place and you’ve just used your own personal brain to read what I’ve written with mine…

Browning on the little man

Just a quick April post…Today the 20 most influential leaders from around the world met and proposed plans worth £681 Billion to try and save the (western?) world’s economy. 4 years ago at the 31st G8 Summit progress towards ‘Millennium Development Goals’ (including such things as reducing extreme poverty and child mortality rates and fighting disease epidemics such as aids) was hindered because of budget procedures, that is funding.  In other words, it seems to me, that we are much more concerned with bailing out car manufacturers than bailing people out of unnecessary death.

(Admittedly I’m not an economist and I don’t know all about these things, and I’m sure saving the worlds economy will mean a lot of people don’t slip into lives of (relative) poverty and all that, but at the same time there still seems to be a unhealthy bias somewhere…)

The Bible: based on a true story…

            The Bible is possibly the most talked about and debated book in history. Many people claim that the Bible is the complete word of God, a historically accurate document that stands the test of time, while others neglected it completely, claiming it as ‘old wives tales’ and myth. Many, possibly most, on the other hand have given up caring.

 

But is it possible for the bible to be true, but not historical? Can it be relevant and not fact?

 

          I think the bible can only be understood properly (however never fully) when we have an appreciation for ancient culture and literacy genres. Yes, the bible is full of historical accounts – each with their apparent biases, like reading a newspaper – but the bible is also full of songs, poems, letters, records, stories, myths, metaphors and parodies. Appreciating this can make a world of difference – What does it mean when we read ‘Corinthians’ as a letter, or ‘Jonah’ as a Satire and ‘Job’ as an Opera? What effect does it have on the gospels if we see that they too are full of metaphor and parallels?

 

          The Hebrew Scriptures tells the unfolding of Israel’s past; it is Israel’s media – TV/magazines/newspapers/the lot, all rolled into one. These are the stories that Israelite children would have grown up hearing, the tales of their past woven together in a blur of history, metaphor, exaggeration and comedy. It’s like when you watch a Hollywood blockbuster ‘based on a true story’ – often the events actually happened but a storyline has been overlaid for entertainment (e.g. Titanic/Last King of Scotland) or the film raises real life issues but creates fictional events (e.g. blood diamond/Constant Gardner). I sometimes find that my idea of history is made up from the inaccuracies of period dramas and films.

 

The people of Israel told stories, not only for entertainment and to keep their inheritance alive, but because they knew the power behind the tales, just like when Jesus told parables. A story, especially one with a moral or meaning, can and will affect people. There is little doubt that the media uses similar ways to covey messages today, some of which have a significant influence on our worldviews. Take for example the front page of yesterdays Guardian:

Guardian Article – 14/2/09

I’ve also uploaded the current Listerine advert as I think it’s a great example of how exaggeration is used to make a point. The advert isn’t actually saying that tiny little water men will cause a massive explosion in your mouth (and log cabin) that will clean your mouth, but its using the power and comedy(?) of exaggeration to make a point of how good the product is. Will people in 1000 years time watch that advert and say ‘did they really think that happened?’ – this is probably fairly obvious to us, so shouldn’t we understand ancient media in a similar light?

          Media has a profound affect on us, and I think Israel understood this. The stories that we immerse ourselves in can easily become the stories we want to live. Israel was keen to live the story given to them by God, and so these stories became very important to them – they were central to Jesus, and hence His followers. Nowadays, I feel we rarely have an appreciation of the fact that we share in ‘God’s Story’, instead we live the stories in our media – Eastenders, Hollyoaks, Skins, South Park, these are the lives we aspire too. They aim to reflect an exaggerated culture but then culture reflects them back. The stories we’re rapped up in become ours, and I think secretly we like to have a life similar to those we hear about – even if it happens to others so we can gossip about it and say thinks like ‘ooo, you wouldn’t believe it, it was as if it was off TV’. Magazines and fashion culture are prime examples.

 

         

If the Bible were still being written then the entries into it wouldn’t just be the testimonies, songs and poems of the millions of God loving people from around the world. It would be full of some great fictions too, like Bruce Almighty, the story of the Hare and the Tortoise, or Soren Kierkegaard’s Geese Parables – plus some great stand up comics who all to often exaggerate the truth for laughs but convey a compelling message (was Jesus a stand up comic?) These would be narratives to help individuals to better understand God and/or become more like God intended – not just another advert telling you to be like everyone else.

           

In my own life I’m keen to not read the Bible at face value but to try and understand it as much as possible, taking into account history and theology, as well as testing it against my own experiences in life. I believe that the Bible is the ‘Word of God’ but not explicitly the ‘Word’s of God’ – and by that I mean I take the Bible seriously, but not, always, literally. For I’m learning to see that something can be true whether it’s historically accurate or not.