Monthly Archives: January 2005

General

A Big Question

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Partly as a result of my burst of pretty deep questions I’ve been asking on the blog recently, which Howard has been enjoying wrapping his mind around, he e-mailed me a question, and also refers to the same thing in this blog entry.

Basically, the Edge website, annually asks a big question, and asks a mix of scientists to give their answer. The people asked and answers given are as broad as they are varied.

This years question is this:

“What do you believe is true, even though you cannot prove it?”

By way of explanation – great minds can sometimes guess the truth before they have either the evidence or arguments for it (Diderot called it having the “esprit de divination”). What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?

Certainly a question that can be used in a number of contexts, and one that I think would be a good one to ask some of the members of the youth group at some point. I think, as Howard has said, one that requires a bit of thought, so I’ll maybe come back with an answer at a later date.

Church, MobLog

Some of Our Bells are Missing

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As I mentioned when I posted the Christmas Eve Pictures the plan for the work on the Bell Tower at St James was due to go ahead this week. As planned on Tuesday and Wednesday this week Whitechapel Bell Foundry came along and removed our peal of six bells to be retuned and turned, giving us the chance to strengthen the frame, by mounting it better within the tower.

Anyway, since tonight was Epiphany, the church flag comes down, having been flying since Christmas. Since I had to climb through all the levels to get to the flagpole on the roof I thought I’d record what the tower looks like empty!

The first two pictures are of the ringing chamber. The bells were taken out through two trapdoors in the centre of the tower. In the case of the ringing room at some point since the last time the bells came out, a lino had been put on the floor, so this had to be taken up to reveal the trap door. The second shot is looking up at the empty holes where the bell ropes come through. It both shots you can see the trap doors.

Next there are a couple of shots of the empty bell frame. The frame fills much of the upper level of the tower, and of course, the trap door is directly beneath where two of the bells hang. From the second shot from above, you can see that in order to open the trap door and take the bells out, part of the frame has had to have been dismantled. As this is a totally enclosed space, there was no chance to use a crane, everything was lifted using the ancient oak beams that support the tower roof. The trap door can just be made out in the centre. Also compare these shots to the similar ones with the bells in place from Christmas Eve.

The last three pictures are a few close up shots of bits you don’t usually see. The first is one of the holes for the bell ropes from the other direction. Then a close up of the top of the frame where the bells are hung, note the grease as well. The final shot is of the wheel that holds the bell rope, and other bits of the mounting, which are left in the tower whilst the bells are taken away.

Church, General, Movies & TV

Which Would You Complain About?

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I have a little poser for you. Below I’ll describe two programmes. Both have been seen elsewhere before coming to TV. One has already been shown on pay TV, but is coming to free-to-air soon, the other hasn’t been on TV before, but again is about to come to free-to-air. All the information I will use to describe the programmes is accurate and can be confirmed from freely available reputable sources.

The first is a show whose initial concept was to try to broaden the appeal of opera. The writer has enjoyed considerable success, including a successful comedy series on BBC Radio 4. It has been staged by the National Theatre, and currently is enjoying a successful west end run. The show is due to move to New York later this year. The show has won multiple best show awards including the Evening Standard and Olivier Awards. As well as receiving critical acclaim from theatre critics, the public and the theatre industry, the show has also attracted celebrities from around the world: Sir Michael Caine, Simon Cowell, Sheryl Crow, Michael Douglas, Kelsey Grammer, Harvey Keitel, Sir Ian McKellan, Helen Mirren, Pink, Rachel Stevens, Meg Ryan, Sigourney Weaver and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The show was described by the Guardian as “…a mega hit… this is easily the hottest ticket in London.”, and the Daily Mirror billed it as “The greatest production on earth… two hours and 20 minutes of sheer theatrical bliss….”.

Turning to the other, it is a movie that is regarded as one of the most violent of recent years. The film has a number of extended scenes of graphic, sadistic violence and torture, some lasting as long as twenty-five minutes. The well known director has in a previous film included a graphic execution and disembowelling scene at the climax of that movie. The film is in a large part based on books that have been declared as blasphemous, and banned by the Catholic Church. The film includes dialogue that is regarded as the cause of a large amount of religious hatred and violence. At showings of this movie, audience members have been removed suffering from symptoms of shock, and many are distressed by the experience. There are some cases of audience members having died during the most graphic parts of the movie.

With one of these, as a result of advance publicity, many leaders of prominent groups, without having seen it themselves, gave away free tickets to shows as they considered it so important that everybody should have a chance to see it. With the other, prominent groups have campaigned against it, saying that it is offensive and blasphemous. As a result of an e-mail campaign over 15,000 complaints the majority of complainants objecting on principle, not having seen the show, have been received prior to the TV showing. In addition Mediawatch, who monitor TV standards have written to the chairman of the TV station asking that it not be shown on free-to-air.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news over the past year or so, you’ll know exactly which two programmes I am talking about, and will of course have realised which show the complaints are being received about.

However, if you used only the facts that I have given, and no other information, you would quite probably conclude that the 15,000 complaints were received about the blasphemous violent movie, rather than the award winning show. When I say that the award winning show is “Jerry Springer: The Opera”, and the movie is “The Passion of the Christ”, things become more clear!

The main point I want to make is that, if they receive an e-mail that says the BBC is going to show a programme that contains thousands of swearwords and is blasphemous, most Christians will get concerned (indeed 15,000 of them have complained). However with The Passion of the Christ, it was trailed, and indeed most people seem to think that it is strongly based on the bible. The fact that Mel Gibson based large parts of the film used two books that were banned as blasphemous by the Catholic Church, and that those sequences can’t be found in any Bible, usually comes as a big surprise. The fact is that both campaigns are examples of exactly what I have done here. The campaigners know exactly who they’re trying to sell their message to, and are highlighting specific facts in order to get the desired response. Basically it is spin.

Moving on to the secondary question about whether either of those controversial programmes should be shown (incidentally “Passion of the Christ” is the one that has already gone out on pay TV), I would say yes, but with caveats. The caveats being that in both cases there is significant content that people may find offensive, or be disturbed by, therefore it has to be shown at a suitable time, and with suitable warnings. One is excessively violent, the other uses large amounts of bad language, both of which are offensive to large proportions of the audience (not just Christians), both contain sections considered blasphemous and sections that are religiously offensive to some group or other in the multi-ethnic United Kingdom.

Both have been particularly successful with large numbers of people in the UK. The BBC is paid for by everybody in the UK with a TV, and therefore has a duty to provide programming that will appeal to both broad areas, and specialist programming that will appeal to minority groups. In simple terms it has to appeal to some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. However I believe that to do that it can’t appeal to all of the people all of the time, and that if it is forced to do that then ultimately it will be lost, if not in this charter review, but in ten years time.

There are loads of programmes on the BBC that I don’t watch, and that if I had to pay on a per programme basis, there are a number I would be quite happy not pay for, however it is important to realise that for all of those programmes there is an audience, even if I’m not part of it. The same is true of both Jerry Springer: The Opera, and The Passion of the Christ.

I know people who, having actually seen Jerry Springer: The Opera on stage, loved it, and are looking forward to watching it again on TV. Others I know don’t want to see it at all. The BBC and others offers a choice of channels, precisely to allow people to have a choice over what to watch, and there has been ample publicity of the content of the programme.

Incidentally, as to whether I’ll watch it – probably not. Based on what I’ve heard, it doesn’t sound like something I’d enjoy, but besides that there is something else that I want to watch on another channel, I’ll watch that instead!

Church, General

“I’m angry at God, and that’s precisely why I don’t believe in him.”

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I’ve just finished reading a blog posting by Father Jake, an Anglican Priest in the US, trying to explore through his blog peoples questions about where God was in the tsunami?

Like many at this time, he doesn’t have any answers, but he quotes from Rabbi Michael Learner, who appeared on a radio talk show, and said he was amazed by quite how many people phoned in with essentially the following comment:

“I am really angry at God, and this is precisely why I don’t believe in Him.”

It is worth just considering that statement, many many people are angry with God, but then use the fact that he didn’t intervene as evidence that he doesn’t exist. However if he doesn’t exist, why waste time and energy getting angry?

I highly recommend reading the whole blog posting, and I won’t attempt to repeat the whole discussion here, as it is a slight tangent from the point I’m trying to make here. However the concepts that are touched upon, reach into the very heart of faith, and ones concept of God, and are well worth exploring.

Anyway, the quote also reminded me of another quote I read today, which slightly bizzarely I had come across as a result of the current e-mails circulating campaigning against the BBC showing Jerry Springer: The Opera on Saturday night.

As I hadn’t seen the show, I’ve been finding out what I can about it. As with most stuff circulating on the Internet by e-mail I’ve learnt not to take it at face value, invariably the e-mails don’t tell the whole story, or are wrapping up something else. In the same way as I won’t click the ‘security verification link’ in some, I won’t act on something that turns up on the e-mail without checking out facts.

Anyway, I came across the line in a Daily Telegraph review. It is spoken by God towards the end of the (for Christians) controversial second act of the show. Jerry has been shot at the end of the first act, and is pulled out of limbo by the Devil, who asks Jerry to reconcile him with Jesus through the medium of his show. As anyone who has seen the real Jerry Springer show will know, a series of other people involved are brought on, one of whom is God, who sings the following line:

“millions of voices making the wrong choices and all of them blaming me”

I think it is pretty clear why the “I’m angry at God” line reminded me of this, and aside from the irony that it comes from a show being campaigned against by Christians, it does give another view of the place of God in what has happened.

The image of God given by this line is not some cosmic puppet master who either caused the tsunami to happen, or equally failed to stop it, but someone who created us with experience and free will to live in creation.

I was taught at school about the plates that form the earths surface, and the ‘Ring of Fire’ that surrounds the Pacific. On the basis of that knowledge it is no suprise that earthquakes occur in that area. Indeed as I mentioned before, the Pacific has a tsunami early warning system in the Pacific precisely because such earthquakes have occured and threatened America.

However, as people with free will we chose not to offer similar protection to all people affected by the risk. Maybe God has given us everything we need to have not let so many people die, but as the quote said, we made the wrong choices, and are now blaming God for the mistakes he gave us the free will to make.

Is that an answer or an explanation? I’m not sure, I guess like Father Jake I’m still asking questions, and this is just one possible answer.

However, whilst such questions have been, and will continue to be asked for a long time, the priority now is for those who have been affected. Donations to the relief effort can be made through the Disasters Emergency Committee website, and many others.