We all desire freedom. We seek and pursue it. We cheer for individuals, groups or nations fighting for their freedom, and rightly so.

All of us want to be free.

We want to be able to make our own choices about how we live and what we do, where we live and who governs us.

The opposite of this is total control and domination. No choice. Everything decided for us, everything done for us. Imposed on us from outside.

This, we know, is not good.

There is something inside of us which understands this instinctively.

We fight against regimes like this.

They do not last. Eventually, they all fall.

Because to be human is to desire freedom – and eventually freedom wins out.

However, although there are many benefits and blessings from freedom, there is also a risk which comes with it. (more…)

I recently heard a story about a Christian couple. They had been married several years and had two children. They were part of a thriving church. All good.

But the husband then decided he was a woman. He began dressing like one, putting women’s clothes and makeup on. He decided he was going to have the operations so he could fully become a woman physically.

The wife desperately tried to talk him out of this and convince him otherwise, but she could not. She still loved the man she married and they had been happy together. She loved their children. She would not leave him, and didn’t think it was right to do so.

You’d think this was hard enough for her. Sadly not.

The worst thing was how her church reacted. (more…)

Barack Obama this week spoke publicly on the subject same-sex marriage. He made clear his endorsement of same-sex marriage and championed the push to make it legal.

It’s a big issue being discussed in popular culture and the church right now.Different people both in and outside the church are taking stands on opposing sides – and there are some very cruel and unloving words being said by some, on both sides.

The thing is, all of this discussion on the rights and wrongs of same-sex marriage completely misses the point.

It’s not the right discussion to be having in the first place.

There’s a much bigger and more significant discussion we should be engaged with. One that goes to the root of the issue.

A discussion on what marriage is. (more…)

Last time we discussed how the profile we present in the digital space can be merely a representation of the social self we display in the physical realm.

This leads into a bigger, wider question though.

Are all the interactions and spaces in the digital realm merely an extension of what happens in the physical realm?

I would argue that they are. That is why they are real.

For example, most people are not at their most vulnerable when they interact with people in the digital realm. If they ever are it is through private messages, which no one but that individual will ever get to see.

Kind of like taking a friend aside and confiding in them about something, or asking their advice or support.

Social media is not a place we generally go to make ourselves vulnerable – and neither do we make ourselves vulnerable to all in the physical space, do we? (more…)

We all have a social self. A self the world sees, the part of us that we like everyone to know, the best parts of us. The words we use to interact with those around us, the image we present to the world.

The social self is merely an image projected by us, which we control, which ensures that people don’t see the darkest, most shameful or vulnerable parts of us. It’s the self we let people see, that interacts with people on a daily basis. We don’t generally let most people past this self – only those closest to us tend to get beyond it.

In many ways this is the self which protects everyone else from seeing what’s really going on inside, from who we really are.

The interesting thing about this is, that this is an exact, word-for-word description many use of the digital realm, the world of social media, the self that exists on Facebook or Twitter. (more…)

I recently went to the birthday party of a good friend. I only knew one person at the party – the person who’d invited me.

By the end of the evening I’d chatted to at least 5 or 6 new people in depth – and made two new Facebook friends. I’d also managed to grow my own self-confidence into the bargain.

Somehow, being around people, physically interacting with them, made a difference to me. I have new friendships in the digital realm now, but there was a connection made in physically interacting that couldn’t have been made otherwise.

It works in reverse too.

For example, the day before the party above, I met and had dinner with someone in London. A friend who I had chatted to on both Twitter, Facebook and Skype. Someone who I had built up a good friendship with and talked to about some important issues only in the digital realm.

A person I considered a good friend, but who I’d never met in the flesh before that day. (more…)

Our lives are all a journey aren’t they?

Like many journeys, along the way we often get disruptions – like death, end of a relationship, people moving away, illness – which are almost forced upon us. We don’t choose them, they simply come upon us when we least expect them, and nothing at all can prepare us for them. They are painful, overwhelming, emotional and a real struggle.

Valley experiences. Losing my mother was one of those for me. You may be in your own one right now.

But there are other valleys we walk too. The ones we choose.

Jesus chose a valley when He chose the cross. He didn’t have to do it, it wasn’t forced upon Him, it wasn’t a complete shock – and He could have escaped it.

He chose instead to surrender Himself completely to it – and fortunate for us that He did.

About 14 months ago I was sitting in a pub with a good friend. We were talking and one of the matters that seemed to come up was the issue of me trusting God. Those who know me well know that trust is always a struggle for me, because of my background being bullied, coming from a broken home and losing a parent at young age.

But this was God. (more…)

Today I’m going to be going back to the topic of social media . In the time since I last blogged on the subject I’ve decided that this topic is far too big to merely have a short-term series on it.

The issue of social media is so significant  and there are so many areas to cover that we need to devote time to it, and so from now on it’ll be one of the ongoing discussions/themes of my blog.

I recently decided to take some time off from social media. I’ve always believed it important we take regular sabbaths from social media  – but I’d always struggled to really lay it down and actually do it.

Which is a good sign that I really needed to stop.

So with the help of a couple of accountability partners, I decided to spend 48 hours out of the digital realm.

Cut off. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Google + or e-mail, for 48 hours. (more…)

Welcome to the final post of my series of posts on the Passion of Jesus. To resurrection Sunday, when Jesus rose from the dead. Triumphed over death, sin and suffering.

We live in a world where people put their faith in all sorts of things. Money, success, career, power, status. We also put our hope in people. There is this very natural human desire to put our faith and our hope in something, to believe in something or someone better than ourselves, and a way of life, a way of seeing the world that is better than we have right now.

We want to believe it.

We need to believe it.

Indeed, we were created to believe it.

The problem of course, is that we put all this into people and desires we really shouldn’t. That maybe aren’t bad in themselves, but we put in the wrong place in our lives. One of the reasons we have become so cynical as a culture is because we put impossible expectations on leaders and public figures.

Culture and media encourages us to do this. It’s so easy we can do, and we’re so trained to do it that we can often begin to do this subconsciously. (more…)

Holy Saturday (or Easter Saturday as I have always called it) is a strange day. Often so quiet. Rarely discussed.

Yet I think there is so much we can learn from this day about following Jesus, and our need for Him.

The first Holy Saturday was a day without hope. A day of grief and despair for followers of Jesus. The previous day they had seen their leader tortured and crucified, publicly humiliated and seemingly defeated.

Jesus body was in the tomb, sealed in (see picture left). It wasn’t rolled away and there seemed no chance of it.

The disciples themselves were hidden away, fearing for their lives.

They had put their faith in Jesus. They had given up their livelihoods and possessions to follow Him, surrendered their lives as they knew them. They had lived with Him, eaten with Him and trusted that He was the Saviour foretold in the Holy scriptures.

They had no doubt He was the one who had come to save them, to liberate them. In their eyes to rescue them from the Romans.

Now He was dead.

Gone. (more…)