Christian, husband, father, C of E minister. Loves bad jokes, coffee, literature, talking about Jesus. (ascending order.) views mine!
Cambridge
Joined January 2013
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A piece from @HadleyFreeman full of self-aware wisdom, including this:
'Partisanship is a helluva drug. It’s a way of outsourcing your critical judgment so you never have to think, “What do I actually think of this?” You just think, “It’s on my side, ergo it’s good.”'
Me on Russell Brand, from 2023:
thetimes.com/comment/article…
I've found it; the most vacuous, pointless comment ever written in a commentary (on 1 Samuel 30):
'One cannot but wonder if our author has deliberately contrasted David and Saul in these chapters.'
YOU THINK?!?!
Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly both set a table; one feast is life, the other is death.
David obeys Abigail's voice, in 1 Samuel 25, and eats her meal: the result is blessing, and rescue from guilt.
Saul obeys the witch's voice, in 1 Samuel 28, and eats her meal: it ends in death.
A Christian's perspective (mine) on horror as a genre:
😱'Horror is at its most powerful not when it speculates on evils we never encounter, but when it offers imaginative ways to describe the darkness of the world we actually inhabit.'
@NosferatuFilm
❓ @NivLobo on why horror fascinates us: e-n.org.uk/comment/the-draw-…
Me: I find meetings burdensome, even arduous
Martin Buber: 'All real living is meeting.'
That's me told...
John Webster: 'The Spirit-filled person is the one who has been knocked out of the centre of their own life, who has been displaced by Jesus Christ, so that it is Christ who lives in that person.'
When anxiety was great within me,
your consolation brought me joy. (Ps 94:19)
For some reason, these verses leapt out at me this morning. A good prompt for me to pray for those overwhelmed by anxiety (you, reading this?) to know the consolation of the LORD that brings joy.
Louis MacNeice: The gospel of the ’20s, Self-Expression, taught us that the more you indulge your personality the more you become free […] but it is wrong. Push your personality as far as it will go and you end in a padded cell. There is an antinomy between Freedom and Egotism.
I remember being struck by the number of children who would rather be a 'content creator' than anything else. Here are some thoughts about how a Christian might do that, and a rule to follow for all our 'content creation':
e-n.org.uk/features/are-you-…
Wendell Berry ends his poem ‘A Discipline’ like this:
It is the time’s discipline to think
of the death if all living, and yet live.
Niv Lobo retweeted
The Bishop of Hereford has written today's Thunderer column in The Times.
I am very glad to see the Bishop of Hereford speaking in support of Britain’s Jewish community after three years of abuse and attack - and after the Green Party’s shameful new policy.
thetimes.com/article/98c3939…
Niv Lobo retweeted
Ten things Christianity offers that world longs for… which Christians should hold onto more tightly and hold out more readily.
With devotional accompaniment from George Herbert.
(This started as a blog series, but in the delay, it may bless you as a devotional challenge)
Patrick Radden Keefe's 'London Falling' is an utterly gripping read; it also has one-liner gems like this (true to life even out of context):
'It is easy to charm a person who talks too much: all you have to do is listen.' @praddenkeefe
I think this is right and hope that we won’t miss this obvious opportunity to call the public to follow their nose on this one, and be led to an anthropology worthy of them as image-bearers of God Himself
Niv Lobo retweeted
The empirical social science around the positive impacts of religious attendance is overwhelming.
When I tell this to crowds, I often get this response:
"Yeah, but I don't believe in all that. I can find community in other ways."
Yet, there's been no replacement for religious community created in the last 30 years that has even 5% of the participation of weekend church-going.
So, there's kind of an impasse here.
