Welcome to my website
Trying to see the world from a Christian perspective
This Blog
I only write occasionally here now, as you will see. However, there is an archive of over 2,000 posts which I’ve made over the last 20+ years, which are all still accessible.
Latest Posts
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Is Twitter making us dumb and angry?
Every few years, it seems to be an unwritten rule that the newspapers have to have a scare about dumbing down, e.g. GCSE results now don’t mean as much as they used to back in the good old days. Now, whether they have a point or not I can’t say, but it does seem to…
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Status Update
Things have been getting a bit heavy once again on this blog recently (sorry!), so I decided to write a quick update about how things are going with me. Funny how things have changed since this time last year – last year I was basically only writing personal updates. Now it’s the other way round,…
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Some adverts are controversial. Get over it.
Once again, it falls to me to leap into the quagmire of misinformation and correct it with my iron sword of reason and moderation. (Everyone should have a sword of reason and moderation. They’re all rage these days.) In case you hadn’t heard, a bus advert has been banned: a group called Core Issues Trust,…
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Reverse Missionaries
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been watching a mini-series on the BBC called “Reverse Missionaries”. Unfortunately it seems to have disappeared from the iPlayer, but the basic premise was that three people from countries which were influenced by British missionaries (Jamaica, Malawi, and India) have returned to the places where those respective missionaries were…
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Love Lustres at Calvary
Easter Saturday is a slightly odd day, I find. It falls in between Good Friday, which is a very sombre day looking at the cross, and Easter Sunday which is joyfully looking at the resurrection. I find it’s not really a special day but it’s not a normal day either. Given that I didn’t post…
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What it means to follow Jesus: Sermon on Mark 8:31-38
This is the text of a sermon I preached yesterday morning at at the 9:00 communion service at St Thomas’ Kidsgrove. It was the last day of their ‘week of events’ or mission which I mentioned in my post last week. (The week went well, by the way, thanks for asking.) The passage is Mark…
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Atheist Delusions: The Review
Recently I mentioned that I was reading through “Atheist Delusions” by David Bentley Hart, and I said I would write up a review of it when I’d finished reading it. Well, I’ve finished reading it now, and really enjoyed it. Quite a lot of the book deals with the same kind of things I’ve been…
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Easter Break
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the term system at Oak Hill is a bit strange. Last week was the final week of this half of the third term… we’ve got six more weeks after Easter, then exams, then that’s it for the year. Three weeks into the new term and I’m beginning to…
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New Scientist: “The God Issue”
Yesterday Mrs Phil bought me a copy of the latest New Scientist magazine, “The God Issue”, because it looked interesting. I’ve had a chance to read through it now – or at least the relevant articles – and I thought I’d post up a quick review. Know Your Enemy The introduction, ‘Know your enemy’, starts…
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Need… Caffeine…
We’re a few weeks into lent, and I’m … just over a week into my caffeine fast. Well, tea and coffee drinking fast. Well, tea and coffee with caffeine in drinking fast. But it doesn’t really sound as good if you say that. I did this once before, a few years ago (although strangely enough,…