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The Screwtape Letters: Jesus Edition - by Ben Wilson

Dear Nero,

I'm delighted you wrote me. We've spent eras apart, but it's good to see the passing of time hasn't hindered the fellowship of angels. Indeed, this place has not been the same without you. I hope all that field-work hasn't carried your head too far into the clouds. With any providence - things are going well on your end.

I can tell from your letter that you've exercised much patience with your Child, but it's apparent you're getting frustrated. You mentioned he's never taken to books. That he spends most of his time in play or somatic strain. Such is the way leisure is spent these days. How I miss the breeze of pages turning, of words manifesting inspiration and ideas, the knowledge that gave rise to spirited discussion. Those were the foods that filled our bellies, that lavished our tables and blessed our banquets. In the meantime, we have little left to chew but the lesser meats of Hillsong.

How ironic that humans wish to know everything, understand and comprehend all, yet never visit the library. Ironic? Perhaps 'tragic' is bettered suited. Before you were even given a Child to nurture, He ordained learning as a sacred pursuit. To some it has become little more than classroom drudgery.

Already we've already identified part of the problem. A person is rigorously educated for the first twenty years of their time. Once that ends, they're so excited to be free of books and learning - the only reading  they get comes from advertisements. There are cases where a Child has never picked up a book again. They view learning as a period, not a lifestyle.

Who still knows the ancient classics? Who's witnessed the beauty of Dickens? Knows the pain that wrote Heart of Darkness? Remembers the ink of Marco Polo's journal? Heaven laments.

Our enemy is particularly adept at this. As well as the above, he takes joy in using the sacred texts against those who read it. He twists and pulls, convincing them that anything different or fantastic somehow dishonours Him. There is a wealth of literature that some Children refuse to read, believing it to be righteousness and in doing so miss 'The Great Conversation'. That global forum where we desperately need them - connecting with the dialogues taking place in dynamic culture.

I heard of a chap, Sam I believe, who set out to read the Twilight series for this very reason. I tell you if only one of those books were finished - the compensation he'd receive in Heaven would be abundantly more than his suffering.

I managed to catch up with Malachi last week - only took forty years to find him. He told me how he'd introduced himself to a freshman and asked the man if he'd read his book. Crickets could not chirp any louder. How awkward.

If you want your child to read, Nero, don't be forceful. Be suggestive - give him the idea. Start with the classics, the books that will captive his dormant motivation. The rest are dominoes.

May this letter find you well.

P.S Don't let them know we stole all the twinkies.

Your endearing flat-mate,

- Leon

Chloe Pryor: Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and the F-word that comes to mind...

Before you get your knickers in a twist, no I am not writing an article about what you think I am...Just needed your attention. Thanks.

It was your usual Friday afternoon; I was standing in line at the supermarket buying treats for the weekend. Of course, I had chosen the line where there was a toddler throwing a high pitched temper tantrum. Screaming, yelling, throwing. Ugh. So, instead of being wise and changing lanes, I decided to avoid the unnerving embarrassing stare from the mother and stick it out.

And actually, the latest Women’s Day had caught my eye. More importantly than drowning out the horrendous noise, it was imperative that I knew the latest on Tom and Katie’s divorce. After all, it made headlines in our evening news, it was that important. Ha. So I read the article about the millions that is going down the drain in this divorce and the speculations of what Tom could have possibly done. It was all very epic and at the same time it was all very depressing. Confession: I bought the magazine.

After reading the whole article about five times I got thinking about forgiveness. I don’t know why forgiveness popped into my head, but for some reason I felt very sad. I started thinking (as if I knew them myself...) Could Tom and Katie forgive each other? Do they really need to go through what will only be immense pain and money? And that little girl? It all seemed so catastrophic. Disastrous. Okay, it is likely that I got caught in the hype, but maybe this pain could have been avoided if someone had embraced forgiveness and reconciliation? I try to be optimistic.

These words are big and scary. I don’t know a whole lot about these words. Forgiveness scares me. I think sometimes I try to be mature and understand forgiveness, but often this concept only makes it as a thought in my life. Sometimes it is just too hard.

When I think about forgiveness I ultimately think about Jesus

I think about an innocent man taking the weight of my wrongs and wiping it clean. I think about a man who loves me so much that he doesn’t look at my life counting up the wrongs but rather has shown me how those wrongs can teach, grow and heal me, all because of his forgiveness.

So then I take this concept of forgiveness and place it in my world. And it seems lost. I look around at the hurt and chaos and feel nauseous. Do people even forgive each other any more? Can we forgive? Will we ever ‘turn the other check’? Again, I’m optimistic.

I want to experience and know this forgiveness in my day to day life and in my relationships because I have seen the fruit that forgiving can produce. Unfortunately it seems so unattainable. It seems like an ideal that will never quite hit planet earth. It seems like an abstract concept that goes against every bone in my body, especially when someone has seriously wronged me. It seems like something I will never achieve.

And then I remember; the forgiveness that Jesus has shown me is perfect, I am not.

I realise that I will never ‘forgive and forget’ like Jesus, but I can only hope to do my best.

I want to learn to forgive well

Like many, I have watched people living in un-forgiveness.

It appears that bitterness seeps into every corner of their lives, the hurt hardens them. They lose touch of reality. In this state, we can lose touch of our humanness.
However, amongst the hurt and pain of being fallen, being human means we do have choice. We do have the choice to forgive and move forward.

Personally, I don’t want my hands to be tied by un-forgiveness. I don’t want to live in bitterness.

Someone once told me “Un-forgiveness is like living in a jail cell, only, your holding the key”. I can just picture it. I imagine sitting in there, cold, bruised, and banging against the walls yelling for someone to let me out. All the while, I’m holding the key... It’s that moment of realising, duh, I can let myself out.

To forgive, it starts with a choice. A commitment to forgiving. And then we need to ask Jesus to give us the strength on a daily basis to continue forgiving that person, because whether big or small, it’s going to be hard. It was painful (literally) for Jesus to forgive us, but the pain has made it worth it. And it will for us.

But the hope is this, we couldn’t ask for a better example, he’s the ultimate forgiver. He will show us how, everyday, through his own mercy and love.
It’s a challenge. It’s mighty hard. But personally, I don’t want to live life feeling like I’m trapped in a Jail cell when I could do something to get out.

I know I’m being idyllic, but one day I hope this “f word” can change the headlines in our news.

reasoning with spirituality

A friend of mine sent me this video a few months back and I've been waiting to stick it on the blog for some discussion. When you hear about spirituality talked about in these terms you can often feel rattled by the way in which our experiences are framed and placed into a different narrative.

Rather than simply labelling this as unsettling or deceptive, in order for us to be able to speak into the wider conversations that society is having about issues central to us as Christians we have to be able to engage well with stuff like this. It is uncomfortable, but if what we believe is true, then it is true in spite of views like this.

So as you watch it, think about what we mean by transcendence, about community and about "evolutionary truths". Is religion about losing ourselves? Simply just a means to give purpose? And what do we think about these assumptions around evolution, culture and the enlightenment? How is he using this rhetoric? And how do you feel when you hear this stuff?

Ben Wilson: The Problem With Christian Music

I discovered Life FM when I was fifteen. My Christian journey was starting to cement itself in the Jesus sub-culture; bible-reading, prayer and finally music. I had joined the God squad. It was exciting times - I did the Parachute thing and my brain became a neurological Ipod of worship songs and Christian rock.

Teenage enthusiasm doesn't stay long. The Christian music scene was getting dreary. My vigour for the 'Mumsdollars' and 'Hillsongs' declined as I realised Christian music can actually be quite crap. I started listening to The Rock and sure enough found the same to be true - but this was a different galaxy. The lyrics were raunchy, the emotions were raw and the suffering was real. We say we're to be honest and genuine as Christians. Our music should reflect this, so why are we still paraphrasing King David?

We're missing a crucial opportunity to connect with the world. Sometimes I look at the songs Christian (especially worship) bands write - and I've seen them a thousand times before. They use the same cliches, the same jargon we've whispered to God for thousands of years. Worship is an expression of love to God, but it seems we've limited what worship is allowed to be.

Something that continues to perplex me - is why we don't sing about sex. Ancient Greek writers were into it like swimwear and Songs of Solomon makes no apologies. Surely the most intimate act a person can engage in - created by God for a beautiful purpose deserves to be celebrated in another beautiful form of expression. It doesn't have to be rude, it doesn't have to be explicit. I've seen it done before. Why aren't we getting creative with our lyrics? Why aren't we exploring new and hard territory? I long for the day when Christians create their own Shit Town or Lightning Crashes.



Singing of a woman dying in child birth, her lost dreams, the baby's future. Doesn't that already honour God? Is that not close to His heart? There are so many harsh realities in life, so many things that aren't fair. So why don't we sing? Why does the secular scene do it so much better than us?

Perhaps it's because we try provide resolution when there isn't always. We give hope, saying God will pull through, that He's sovereign. God's truth is comforting, but it shouldn't be the way we tackle everything. Not every situation brings closure, nor should we. Sometimes grief and suffering need to be embraced, our emotions explored and life's problems acknowledged:



The inequity on this planet is overwhelming. In a perfect world there would be no poverty, women wouldn't need to sell their bodies, fathers wouldn't need to steal, orphanages wouldn't need to exist. In a perfect world I would be able to sing about these, but I can't, so I write instead.

The keyword in this article has been 'we'. I use it loosely as I'm not even a musician. Harping on about Christian music fells unfair when there's scarcely a thing I can do about it - but it's not just music. Our lives should reflect this kind of transparency and consideration to life and injustice - showing a people who engage with the crappy times.

I'm being mean - there are great Christian artists out there who already do this. Quite often it's ersatz, but when it's done right; the cadence is irresistible:

i talked about fight club. i know i know i know.

Fight Club was one of the first novels I truly loved. It was a compulsory text in 7th form English, but I was hooked straight away and loved the narrative style, dark musings and what Palahniuk did with his characters. The critique on Western materialism is prolific within the pages and is a sharp statement about our culture. The movie is pretty good too, and while not as good as the book, it has still commanded a cult following and displays the grit and brutality of the ideas well.

One of the best parts about the film and book are Tyler's rants and critiques about the way people in the West live. Here's what is possibly the most poignant of the lot:

"I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential. And I see it squandered. Goddamn it, an entire generation pumping gas. Waiting tables. Slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. Working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off."

As I read this for a second time a couple of months ago, I began to see some parallels between the disillusionment towards that story of celebrity, candy culture, smiling billboards and images of the good life – parallels between that, and pop Christianity. The Sunday school flannel board Christianity. The "Jesus is Nice" Christianity that I have been fed at many points growing up in the christian subculture. I've grown to realise that this Christianity does not stand up to real life and needs to be called out for what it is.

So it inspired me to rewrite this speech of Tyler’s. This is my rant in the style of Tyler Durden:

"I see in churches some of the strongest men and woman in the world. I see the best of humanity. But I see many of these people squashed into ideals of niceness, compliance and shallow sentiment. I see greatness pushed into narratives of the good life that told us that becoming a Christian would mean we would be prosperous now that God had our backs. It told us that life with Jesus would always be an adventure, and that God’s great plan for our lives was to fulfil the desires of our hearts, like some cosmic genie. That when Jesus said that he wanted us to live life to the full it meant that we jumped from one exhilarating spiritual experience to the next. But now I don’t know what to do with moments of monotony. This message told us that we were able to achieve anything we wanted in God’s power and would walk in victory all the time. That we would know he is near because we would be in a heightened emotional state due to the fact that the Christian walk is always exciting, spontaneous and personally fulfilling. But it's not like this. And we who call ourselves Christians are slowly learning this fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

Too harsh? I think a critique is needed. Christian living is not like this. The way we do church cannot reflect an 'adventure gospel' and evangelism cannot operate under a message that following Jesus is an adventure. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is the opposite.