Driscoll on ABC Nightline

I don't mean to turn today in 'Driscoll Video Friday' but i've just spent a very profitable time watching Mark Driscoll, Deepak Chopra, Carlton Pearson and Annie Lobert debating the existence of the Devil.

I think Driscoll does very well, although i suppose i would. I thought he did pretty well not to just get up and hit Pearson on a couple of occasions. It's very, very sad to see and hear Carlton Pearson and, to an extent Deepak Chopra, falling over the same problems that can be well answered by some high schoolers i know. Very sad. I'm so sick and tired of this lazy, subjective, 'real to you' junk that these guys come up with. Also, somewhat illuminating to see that Deepak and Pearson get angrier and more defensive than Driscoll. Top work. I'm glad the Gospel is true, i'm glad that the whole of life isn't a system of enlightened feelings and knowledge. Thats very sad...and the Gospel is good news. I want it to be true...

A postscript on House and 24

Day Seven is the first series of 24 i've ever watched, so apart from the two hour special, i've got no Jack background to work with. Tell me about him... Are we supposed to like him? Is this what happens when our values outweigh our morals? I'm enjoy 24 more than Lost, which i've pretty much completely given up on, although it's clashing with Wednesday night church and important basketball games hasn't helped it's cause.

I know we're not supposed to like House. Can you imagine working with him? Really? And yet, i can't help being pleased every time he's on screen. Not in an Atticus Finch way, but definitely in a 'i wouldn't watch this show if it was called 'Cuddy' or 'Foreman'' kind of way. But more and more in the latest season of House his friendships grow in both dysfunction and closeness. It's obvious Wilson and House value each other, even if they'd never admit it, more so Cuddy and House. Possible spoiler warning. Otherwise why would Cuddy make sure House could get his job back? She seemed more concerned about losing him than he was about losing his job. Why would she value his comfort as a friend more than his effectiveness as a doctor?

And what do the 'House playing the piano on his own and drinking scotch while his colleagues have a good time' scenes mean if not that House is slowing learning the error of his ways?

Or maybe, enjoying them...

Gregory House and Jack Bauer

It all changed with Bonnie and Clyde. At least thats what Graham Daniels said, and used to play professional football, so he must be right. For the first time in Bonnie and Clyde, we're supposed to side with the bad guys over the good guys, we're supposed to cheer the robbers rather than the cops.

I'm sure it's just a fluke of scheduling, but watching House, and then 24 back to back on a Monday night makes you think of some similarities between the two. Gregory House is the obvious heroic anti hero; addicted to vikiden, rude to patients, colleagues and superiors and with questionable morals outside the workplace. Yet House saves lives. Even if he just sees them as a 'puzzle to be solved' people come in dying, and House makes them well. So does it matter how he does it?

I'm less clear, and at the same time, more clear on Jack Bauer. This is the first season of 24 i've watched to forgive me if i overlook some obvious points. Jack should be the all American hero. he fights the bad guys, he does everything to protect his country, inside and outside the law. But that's the problem, the great contradiction with Jack. On the one hand a great hero, a great man who risks life and limb for others' freedom, and on the other hand a man who sees no problem with a baby being held at gunpoint as long as it gets him what he wants.

What should we do about this collision of good and bad? It's not like this in Maybury, there the eponymous hero of the Andy Griffith show defends his 1950s small town America with a firm fairness, and still finds time to take the kids to the fishing hole. He was a simple 'hero' and watching that show is like a window into a different world. I guess that's exactly what it is.

Jack and Gregory and different, but the same. We're supposed to like Bauer, we're not supposed to like House, and yet they're the same. The lines today are as blurred as they can get. Probably. There's only ever been One hero we can trust totally, only ever been one Man who was totally consistent, only ever One never let anyone down. I like the similarities between House and 24 because they illustrate that what ever our expectations, no man will ever be worth all of our trust. And that takes me back to the Bible, and back to Jesus.

Vanity Lair

It's not often i have a Saturday morning without anything to do, but yesterday was one such occasion. Sadly i ended up watching a few minutes of a new channel four show called vanity lair. Before i turned it off for the sake of my mind i learnt the premise of the show was something like this:

Vanity Lair is home of ten beautiful Lairmates. Each is competing to be crowned the most beautiful and win a cool £10,000. Every week, three outsiders compete for a single place in the coveted Lair. The Lairmates must decide who stays,(the one they consider to be the most beautiful) but at a cost... The outsider they choose will have to pick a Lairmate who must leave the Lair forever (who they consider to the the least beautiful)



Having turned off the tv for the sake of my brain, i opened my Bible to the start of the beautitudes, and was hit in the face fully by how different the values of the world are from the values of the Kingdom.

'blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted'

Do we want to achieve happiness as Christians? Then the Lord says we must mourn, and it will be happiness that world neither understands nor envies. The verse more or less says 'happy are the sad' Mourning can cover many different things in today's society, or at least, cover many different sorts of occasions but it seems that Jesus has mourning over sin in view here. A righteous, holy grief over our rebellion against the King of Kings. Carrying on from His last sentence 'blessed are the humble' he now turns our attention what should make us humble, our sin, and what our reaction to it should be. Mourning.



And why is mourning the way to joy? Because in honesty and humility we can hold our hands up and say tho those around us 'i messed up, in fact, i don't just do bad things, i am bad' in total security knowing that those around us are in the same boat, that our individual weakness combined gives us great strength. And why else are the mournful happy? Because you can't be mournful over sin, not properly, unless you know Jesus, unless you've looked at Calvary, unless you've been with Him, tasted His goodness, and realise that it was your sin that sent Him to the cross. That should make us mourn, that should bring us to a contrite joy in the Lord, and it will make us secure in our communities of the redeemed with others who have done the same. In the Church here, and then ultimately where true blessing is, in unbroken relationship with Jesus forever in Heaven.

That feeling, that pleasing grief and mournful joy is a million miles away from the Vanity Lair house. There may have been outward beauty there, but it manifested itself outwardly in insecurity, pride, argument and backbiting. The cross deal with this. As we kneel together before the cross we realise that none of us, not one us is there because we deserve to be, we look up at the tree and see Jesus hanging where we should be. And we mourn. But in that same moment we rejoice, we rejoice because of the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father that effects our forgiveness, and initiates our relationship with Him. I want that deeply joyful mourning over the microcosm of 21st century culture which is the Vanity Lair any day.