a white kanye west?

It’s pronounced boofey (buffet) here. I wasn’t aware of that. However, they don’t pronounce fillet with the same “ey” on the end. They pronounce it with an “et”. Fillet. I’ve mentioned several times that it’s a French word, that France, is the next state below us, and that there’s really no excuse on this one, but they’re going with it anyway. And so I still call it football, despite the fact that we don’t play it with our feet.

I’m on a train this evening coming back from York…or somewhere up north. I’m never quite sure where I’m at on this trip. I was asked to speak at this retreat last year and had no idea where I was. In the span of a year I’ve still not bothered to look it up. All I know is that the views are magnanimous (I do not think that means what you think it means). The retreat centre itself is made out of an old church. Beautiful. Incidentally, why are British trains so hot? Are they familiar with the green house effect? A building, with lots of windows, but no ventilation, equals the kind of environment where plants mass produce in a matter of hours, but where mammals die of heat exhaustion. That’s this train.

This week a friend called to tell me that, after watching the VMA’s, she and her husband had come to the conclusion that I looked like a white Kanye West. Not in the way I dressed. And not in the way I rapped, or even in my stage presence. But literally from the neck up. I’m thinking about sending she and her husband money because they’re apparently too poor to afford glasses. And that is sad.

I just finished up two 90 minute sessions. The first was on the story of the Bible. The second was on what it means to be a disciple. Pretty easy stuff really. Hopefully they’ll ask me back next year to do a short session on Revelations-the prophecies fulfilled and yet to be fulfilled. The thing about both of those topics is that you either only need thirty-seconds, or you need a week.

In thirty seconds I can tell you that the Bible is the story of God trying to re-commune with the human race. That the so-called “Old Testament” is not just the story of the Jewish people, but that it’s an allegory meant to represent what sin leads to and our need for a savior. The so-called “New Testament” is the climax of the overall story. I’ll get back to that in a second.

On being a disciple, I can tell you that it really comes down to two questions. If the goal of a Biblical disciple was to “be like” their Rabbi, then all you have to figure out is what that Rabbi spent his time doing and saying. Then do and say those things. The same is true for Jesus. Jesus narrowed down the entire “Old Testament” by telling us to love God and love our neighbour. So do that.

Ok, I actually need less than twenty seconds to cover both of those topics. Or again, I need a couple of weeks.

Back to the topic of the so-called “Old Testament”. I was thinking the other day, while preparing for this session, that if nothing after the gospel of John had been written, surely there wouldn’t be an Old and New Testament? And surely there’d be no page in our Bible separating the two. Instead of seeing the “Old Testament” as an obscure book full of crazy stories about death, war, slavery, and the wrath of God, we’d see the entire Bible as the story of God trying to reconnect with mankind. The gospels wouldn’t be something “new”, but would simply be understood as the climax of the story, which is what they are. Mankind was separated from God (because of women), God put a plan into motion to reconnect with mankind, and the plan was ultimately achieved through Jesus. Instead we have this strange separation where the “Old” Testament is seen as this collection of stories, with some spiritual and personal significance, but as being old, dated, and over. Too bad. We miss out on a lot when we understand the Bible from that disjoined perspective.

(good grief, I had one small bag of chips – crisps- and I’ve got heartburn.)

I was also thinking about the misunderstanding that exists concerning the story of the flood. It’s a hard one to share with my daughter at her age. “And then God wiped out the entire planet, except Noah and his family. Goodnight Olyvia, and remember, God loves you!” Without a little more thought, you end up with a God who absolutely hates the human race. But consider this…

God could have simply wiped out the human race. Clearly he felt no guilt in doing so. After all, he wiped out all but eight people. But He didn’t. For some reason, as disgusted as He was by our “wickedness”, he still really wanted to save the human race. So He did. Pretty remarkable when you think about it from that perspective. And quite a different understanding from the one where God simply destroys the planet. We were awful. But God - for some reason! - really wanted to heal us, redeem us, and then reconnect with us.

Wow!

(disclaimer: the “because of women” comment was “sarcasm” which, I’ve discovered, is often mistranslated over the internet. It was a joke, Palin supporters. It was a joke.)

(disclaimer: the “Palin supporters” comment was also “sarcasm”.)

I’ve been offered “cheap sandwiches” five times now. I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing more enticing than the phrase “cheap sandwiches”. I only have a few pounds with me tonight, though, so I’m holding out for the stale Coke. Hopefully it will be offered soon.

Finally, if you find out that I was arrested today, it’s because I punched the guy behind me for talking on his mobile phone too loudly. Unfortunately, and since I typed out my intent on this blog ahead of time, I was also found guilty of “premeditated assault”, which means that this will be the last you’ll be hearing from me for a long time. Just know that it’s all politics, he had it coming, my British lawyer screwed me, and the judge had it in for me from the very beginning for making fun of his white wig. What can I say, it looked stupid!

(almost as dumb as that guy in the bow tie............I can’t let it go.)