St Andrew's Day

Andrew, one of Christ's twelve disciples is known as the Patron Saint of Scotland, and today Scotland celebrates St Andrew's Day. For many it's a day when they think nothing of the apostle and what his life represented. For them, the day holds no significance whatsoever. Yet for others, it's a day to "salute our Scottish heritage" while still many more find it's significance in superstition: it's a day when single ladies "pray" to St Andrew for a husband and look for a sign that he has heard their plea. St Andrew is also expected to "look after" gout, singers, sore throats, stiff necks, unmarried women, women who wish to become mothers, fish dealers, fishmongers, fishermen and old maids!

Yet I'd like to stress that I find none of these worthwhile reasons to celebrate having Andrew as our Patron. I have never really taken to, or thought much about, having a patron saint. But today, since November 30th remembers Andrew, perhaps for all the wrong reasons, I would like to think about his life and death which display an incredible witness to Christ and pray that this reason becomes the central focus of why we have this Apostle as our patron.

Andrew, the first-called of the disciples, brother of Peter, fisherman and devoted follower of Christ is probably mostly known for his life beyond what we read in the Gospels.

Tradition has it that Andrew left the holy land after Pentecost to spread the Gospel in Greece and Asia Minor. In 60AD, during the reign of Nero, Andrew was in Patras where it is said that he baptised the wife of the Governor, Aegeus. The Governor was incensed by this and ordered his death. He is believed to have been martyred by crucifiction on an X-shaped cross. This was to become the inspiration for the cross that forms the Saltire, Scotland's national flag.

There are many legends that explain how Andrew's relics came to Scotland, suffice to say that St Andrews became the religious centre of Scotland during the medieval period. Despite the many tales and thinking behind Andrew becoming the patron saint of our country, my guess would be that he himself would not want this day to focus on him. Neither would he want it to be a day to purely "celebrate Scotland" or become the centre of superstition. I suspect that he would not want this opportunity for a National Day go unnoticed if his life and death meant that it could point to his Lord.

Upon recognising his Messiah and following him, we read in John's Gospel that 'the first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, "we have found the Messiah". And he brought him to Jesus.'

My prayer is that Scotland's National Day will be remembered for the life and death of Andrew whose witness indeed brought people to Jesus. Let it be an encouragement to us that we might go and tell others we have found the Saviour, and that he alone should be the focus of our nation.

What's Your Child Worth?

Yesterday, Tim Challies' post entitled An Exhibitionist and Voyeuristic Culture, commented on an article in which radio listeners were calling in to take up the opportunity to give up their child for 24 hours in order to get a hold of a new Playstation 3.

The article recounts the radio's practical joke, or as they saw it, a "social experiment" asking "folks if they were willing to give up their baby for 24 hours in exchange for one of Sony's highly coveted video game consoles. More than a dozen people called to offer up their kids, but only a few realized it was all just a gag." Sadly, "people with babies of all ages — including a 2-day-old and a 1-week-old — made it on air. One of the more serious sounding calls came from a woman named "Katie," who agreed to give up her 1-month-old for three days. She wanted to sell the PS3 on eBay to make some extra money for the holidays."

Challies in his post goes onto helpfully comment on this sickening behaviour:

This is the kind of behavior that is only too common in our culture. We live in what is now an voyeuristic, exploitative society. We love to see into other people's lives and because of technology, this is easier to do than ever before. But there is more. As voyeurism has increased, so has exhibitionism. Countless numbers of people are willing to sell their bodies, souls or children for a fleeting fifteen minutes of fame and a ten thousand dollar paycheck. From world famous celebrities to absolute nobodies, we yearn to be noticed and have been only too willing to sell ourselves. Humiliation is marketed on television and a blurb in People magazine has become adequate payment for having personal problems brought before the world.

We, the consumers, feed this frenzy. When we turn on the television we want to watch celebrities, both new and old, living out their lives before the cameras or learning to dance or cook or crochet. We want to watch families whose spending has spiralled out of control try to fix their broken finances. We want to watch families whose kids are overweight learn how to eat healthy food or adults who are fat lose weight or couples who have forgotten the joys of sex to rediscover intimacy or normal people slurp down blood, guts and bugs. We want to see people learn what not to wear, to see people with rolls on their stomachs get liposuction and funny-looking noses get the perfect Hollywood nose job. We want to escape our own problems by wallowing in other people's problems which somehow always seem so much worse than our own. We want to see the sad, pathetic, tragic details of their lives, their personalities, their bodies. The more detail we get, the happier we are.

Back in March a web site made public a memo from ABC dealing with the hit show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Looking to cast a new season, the show's producers asked network affiliates to look for families who could be on the show. Their wishlist is nauseating.

"We are open to any and ALL story ideas and are especially looking for the following:

• Extraordinary Mom/Dad recently diagnosed with ALSFamily who has child with PROGERIA (aka "little old man disease").
• Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, referred to as CIPA by the few people who know about it. (There are 17 known cases in the the U.S.-let me know if one is in your town!) This is where kids cannot feel any physical pain.
• Muscular Dystrophy Child - Amazing kid who is changing people's views about MD.MADD
• Drunk Driving - Family turns tragedy into triumph after a losing a child to drunk driving.
• Family who has multiple children with Down Syndrome (either adopted or biological).
• Amazing loved Mom or dad diagnosed with melanoma (skin cancer).
• Home Invasion - family robbed, house messed up (vandalized) - kids fear safety in their home now.
• Victims of hate crime in own home. Family's house victim of arson or severely vandalized."

It is clear that the show was not seeking these people primarily because they are the most worthy of help, but because they make the best stories. The worse the tragedy, the better the entertainment value...

...Reality is no longer reality. Fame is no longer fame. Reality television offers anything but reality, and yet we are drawn to it. The internet offers fleeting, exploitative fame. It is escapism and exploitation. Somehow, it seems, we have come to care about other people's lives more than our own. We invest ourselves in other people's problems, other people's joys, hurts and pains all the while ignoring our own. We escape from our own lives by caring about other people's.

When a radio station offers to trade children for a Playstation 3, it does not surprise me that people are willing to accept the offer. We live in a strange new reality where tragedy can reap generous monetary rewards and personal problems can be marketed and sold. And even if there is no financial compensation, fleeting fame seems an adequate reward for exposing even the most humiliating, intimate details. We live in a society where it makes perfect sense to give up a child for 24 hours in order to get a hold of a new playstation.

But before we get too self-righteous and say that we would never hand over our kids to strangers for material gain, the thought did occur to me that we could all make subtle, yet similar transactions. It's all too easy to allow our possessions (and more so our striving for them) to come between us and our children.

Consider the parent who is always working that extra hour to make that little bit more "for the sake of kids," but who ends up losing out on valuable family time. Or the mum at home: so intent on keeping the family abode just right, making luscious meals for the household, but at the expense of giving significant focus to her children.

It is not that good housekeeping and providing for our family is wrong, they just need to have their place. Against all our material possessions, it's a good question to keep at the forefront of our minds: what's my child worth?

"Don't make me count to three!"

This past weekend I read Don't make me count to three! by Ginger Plowman. This is a practical book focussing on "heart-orientated" discipline of children, similar to that outlined in Shepherding a Child's Heart by Ted Tripp, but from a Mum's perspective. One section of the book focuses on how to give a biblical reproof, in other words how to use the Bible to correct your child when they go wrong, and to show them how they should behave. She emphasises the importance of this in the discipline process, and gives several helpful guidelines for verbal correction. In particular, she emphasises that we must choose the correct tone of voice.

Left to myself, my natural inclination is to raise my voice when my daughter is misbehaving, and I have seen this recommended on several of the popular "Nanny" TV programmes that seem to fill our screens. In contrast, Ginger Plowman states:

Make a conscious effort not to scold your child. You are ready to reprove your child biblically when you can speak to him in a normal tone of voice and with carefully measured words.

She quotes from H. Clay Turnbull who, in 1891, wrote:

Scolding is, in fact, never in order, when dealing with a child or in any other duty in life. To "scold" is to assail or revile with boisterous speech...Scolding is always an expression of a bad spirit and of a loss of temper...If a child has done something wrong, a child needs talking to; but no parent ought to talk to a child while that parent is unable to talk in a natural tone of voice, and with carefully measured words.

As I have thought about this, I realise she is absolutely right. If we are disciplining our child for misbehaving, we must verbally correct them so they can see where they have gone wrong and how they should have behaved. Doing this with a raised voice, harsh tone or wagging finger does not convey the information any more effectively, but it does convey that we have lost our temper. Discipline should not be an outlet for our parental frustration, but a "self-controlled act of love" whereby we teach our children how to live the way God wants them to.

"We Burnt Our Bras for this?"

Surrounded by packing cases last week as we began preparations for our house move, I was so looking forward to a relaxing hour at the hairdressers when I could chill out and de-stress. On the way, I dropped into a local newsagent and picked up a copy of Good Housekeeping magazine – one of the more responsible women’s magazines with handy hints and interesting articles, but within a couple of minutes in the hairdresser’s chair I was ‘pulling my hair out’. Half of me was raging, and the other half frankly wanted to cry.

One of the articles was entitled “We burnt our bras for this?”, the main photograph of topless model Jordan, and the opening paragraph went like this-

In the 1960s and 1970s, women fought to have the same rights as men. Today the battle of the sexes looks like a topless mud wrestle, with young women claiming the right to parade their sexuality rather than equality. Is this raunch culture a modern form of feminism, or are we back to square one?

The writer, Decca Aitkenhead, interviewed two glamour models and their mothers about their career choice, and debated whether this was feminism re-inventing itself in a new ‘raunchy’ form. Apparently teenage girls are now uploading topless images of themselves onto Internet websites, send topless photos of themselves to men’s magazines and tell pollsters that their role model is Jordan.

Champions of this new raunch culture have two different ways to explain why acting like a porn star is the proper way for feminists to behave – the first is that, deep down, women have always been wild, and raunch culture is what true women’s liberation looks like. The second is that any girl who calls herself a feminist should do whatever it takes to get what she wants. And if that means acting out a man’s fantasies, well, she’d be stupid not to get her latex cat-suit on.

Some of the comments in the article show how deeply embedded our society now is in it’s twin mantras of ‘freedom of choice’ and 'rights’. Although both the models’ mothers expressed disappointment at their daughters’ choice of career, they both defended their daughters’ freedom of choice. And the writer of the article makes this comment – because this kind of behaviour is seen as female empowerment:

It’s hard to know how to object. If you question the merits of Abi Titmus as a role model, or worry about BB contestants having sex on national TV, you run the risk of sounding prudish. You don’t want to seem ‘anti-choice’. If this is what women choose to do then what exactly is your problem?

How sad – how incredibly sad – that in the pursuit of women’s freedom of choice and rights, any idea of modesty, decency or morality have gone out of the window. Ask yourself how often we hear those words spoken today? It seems that in the latest re-invention of what it means to be female, women have surrendered the simple dignity of what it means to be a woman by manipulating men in order to get what they want and earn money. Why are so few people counting the pay-back price that comes with this behaviour?

Sharon James in her book, God's Design for Women, put it beautifully when she says:

Women have not been liberated by modern feminism, they have been betrayed…It is time to point to those around us to what God says about sexuality, and about how to live a truly happy and fulfilled life. While multitudes of women around us are hurting and unhappy the Bible points to the dignity and beauty of God’s design for women.

I’m struck yet again by the fact that the young women of our church are growing up in this environment and need positive role models of what godly womanhood looks like. And the buck stops here – with the ‘older women’ in the church. We have a responsibility to live out and to speak out about what true womanhood is. So in the midst of my packing boxes, I’ll somehow try to find time to respond to Good Housekeeping’s invitation to comment on the article “We burnt our bras for this?”

"Christmas Offerings"

Christmas Offerings is the latest instalment in the platinum-selling "Offerings" worship series from Third Day. It's a combination of well known Christmas hymns and new songs, written by the band, all distinctly reflecting the unique Third Day style.

On their website you can link to their mini-site, exclusively set up for this new album. There you can hear a taster of each of the songs on the album. I particularly like, "Jesus, Light of the World" and "Born in Bethlehem." Their renditions of "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "Silent Night" have been arranged well and bring a unique tune to these old favourites.

But let me leave you with a few words from the Band as found on the cover sleeve of the album:

"Just the word 'Christmas' can bring up so many feelings. For some, it is a time of family and peace. For others, it is a hectic time of shopping and traffic. It's a couple of weeks off from school. Maybe it's a time of sadness missing a family member who is no longer here. Regardless of our past experiences and current situations, we all long for a more significant Christmas. Our sincere hope is that this collection of music will help you to draw closer to your Father in Heaven who gave the ultimate Offering for all of us: the gift of His son Jesus."

Single & Biblically Feminine

Biblical Womanhood, whether married or single is the latest discussion in the recent edition of the Journal for Biblical Manhood & Womanhood. "When You Don't Have a Better Half: Encouraging Biblical Roles as a Single Woman by Carolyn McCulley is probably the more unique of the articles in that it tackles the issue of how a single woman can exhibit biblical femininity.

In it she describes her journey from feminism to a fully fledged position of: "sign me up" to this "biblical womanhood thing." Admittedly, Carolyn then looked for that other half to complement her new found perspective on being a female, but soon found that no husband came calling. She writes:

"Over time, I began to identify more with an adjective than a noun. I was a single woman. Singleness dominated my perspective. In fact, I just became a single. As in, “So what’s going on with the singles these days?” Or, “Let’s invite some of the singles over for dinner!” Or, “The singles are going on a retreat next weekend.” Thus, the church became a collection of husbands, wives, and singles—the gender-neutral third wheels that messed up the seating arrangements wherever we went.

In the LORD’s rich mercy, this perspective was radically altered when I was asked to work on a project mining the gracious truths of biblical femininity. As I studied, I realized that Scripture’s emphasis was on being made a woman in the image of God. My marital status informed how that would be applied, but I was to be more preoccupied with my femininity than my singleness. The lingering whiffs of feminism’s androgyny were thereby extinguished. I was not a female form outlined in dotted lines, waiting for one man to fill me in and therefore complete my femininity. I was feminine because that’s how my God made me, and there was something of his image that I was to reflect as a woman—even a single woman."

In the rest of her article, Carolyn goes onto to explore how single women can cultivate femininity in non-romantic relationships, while encouraging the men around them in their application of masculinity. It is an article well worth taking the time to read, informative and encouraging for many who don't, as yet, have a proverbial "better half." You can read the article here.

(HT: SGM)

Legacy of Faith

I recently read a book called "Legacy of Faith: From Women of the Bible to Women of Today" by Lydia Brownback. In the introduction, she writes:

"The grave error many women make today is believing the lie that we are more enlightened than women of previous centuries or those in less civilised countries. Educational opportunities abound in our culture like no other, yet the pursuit of enlightenment comes not from any classroom or college course. It comes only from God's Word applied by the Holy Spirit."

She goes on in the book to give short insights into the lives of twenty four women found in the bible, concentrating on a particular characteristic of each one. She helpfully draws out the lessons that we can learn from each biblical woman and her relationship with God. She studies a variety of women including Eve, Sarah, Abigail, Gomer and Sapphira, and shows how relevant the lives of these women are to us today. Each chapter is around ten pages so it is very easy to read in manageable chunks. It can be dipped into from time to time, and does not necessarily need to be read all at once. You could even read one chapter a week, and use it as the basis for a more extended time of bible study.

The introduction also states:

"As you read about their lives, it is my hope that you will see, when the cultural veneer has been stripped away, that we share the same hopes and can lay claim to the same promises that they did, because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

How true, and how wonderful that, even if our earthly role-models are few, we can look to the Bible to show us how to live as godly women. I highly recommend this book.

Piper on "John Piper is bad"

The other week, we posted about the "John Piper is bad" clip. Find out what the man himself thinks about it, in an interview with Louie Giglio.

Movie Moments

I mentioned last month about the soon to be released "Nativity Story". To see what a Hollywood director with a PhD in theology thought of it, click here. In the meantime, here's a short trailer of the film to wet your appetite.



(HT: JT)

Speaking of films and the media. A little known fact is that my husband, Colin, used to be part of a team producing short "thoughts for the day" on secular radio with Gospel Radio Fellowship (GRF) in Glasgow . GRF write and produce a variety of different programmes for others to broadcast on the airwaves. The "short spots" (generally lasting only 15-20 seconds) are used to stimulate listeners to ask questions related to the Gospel. GRF have made these excellent clips available over at audiopot for church's to use. You can find a broad range of different spots for all kinds of topics.

GRF recently creatively produced some of these spots on the back of the recently released Bond film asking the question: "So who is responsible for all the pain and suffering in the world? 007 goes on a mission to find out." To give you a taster, here is one of the clips. To listen to the other five, you must register here at audiopot.