Zoomtard

What would a Christian music scene look like? It probably wouldn’t look like “Jesus is my boyfriend” music produced by tiny imprints of huge multinational record companies that spews out photoshopped “talent” targeted at core demographics that offer the sweetest profit points. In other words, it wouldn’t look like the Contemporary Christian Music scene.
There needs [...]

I had a chat with my systematic theology lecturer this morning and he made the kind of off hand comment you expect from theologians. He hoped that the crash, if anything, would reveal that Ireland had been looking to “princes and chariots” for security. We had a selfish and naive faith in the free market. [...]

Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. For example, whenver I take a child into my arms to be baptized, I am, so to speak, comprehended in the experience more fully, having seen more of life, knowing better what [...]

The International has everything you ever wanted in a Tom Tykwer movie; people running through the streets of a European city, it has strong a female lead, the buildings are framed like they are characters in the film, the action is visceral, there are even glimpses of the habitual almost profound discussions about the choice-determinism [...]

Many thoughtful readers of Zoomtard loved Gilead, one of the great novels of our time. Many poor simpletons like my wife-unit found it stultifyingly boring. She assures me regularly that one day I will meet Marilynne Robinson and she’ll be horrible to me.
On a flight home last night I finished Home, the follow up [...]

On Jesus Creed, (probably the best theology blog around) the awesome Scot McKnight often responds to letters from readers. My old friend OddBabble posted a comment a few days ago and now that I am back from the cultural Arctic circle that is Belfast, I can respond. She wrote on my post last week about [...]

Soon after Jesus and Pilate, Gaius Caligula became the first emperor who demanded worship of himself. This was a development from the way it had been. Apotehosis, the process whereby an Emperor became a god begun at death. Jews of course, refused Caligula. So he dispatched his representative in Syria, a guy called Petronius [...]

I vaguely remember having had a dream once where New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg and Oscar winning Dublin muso Glen Hansard were preaching the Gospel old skool under the Spire on O’Connell St. It was formidable stuff. I thought of this this morning while finishing “Contagious Holiness“, a fantastic volume is the acclaimed New Studies [...]

Western society is increasingly atomized and individualised. We all know how this works out. We don’t know our neighbours. We call people “friends” who we have only ever met through blogs. We have no idea who to call for comfort and a cup of tea when our house gets robbed. We are social animals trying [...]

So Saul became Paul on the Damascus Road. You guys know that right? He was a Jew, filled with extreme zeal for the traditions of his fathers. What that means is that he was of the Shammaite school, who followed Rabbi Shammai who gave his disciples a severe “yoke”, a set of doctrines bound tight [...]