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Mid-faith Crisis 340: Redeemed Elected Christian Truth Using Men
Lots of feedback this week. We talk about prayer and ritual, about what labels we use to describe ourselves and about finding joy in giving. Most of all, we touch on the hard work of transformation and the need to celebrate the small successes of our spiritual and emotional lives. Also, Joe has an Egret hat-trick and Nick has some new cocktail glasses. Cheers!
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Mid-faith Crisis 339: Revisiting nonviolence
We revisit Joe’s theses and in particular discuss nonviolence – in many ways the forgotten element of Jesus' teaching. We discuss the early church’s adoption of nonviolence, how we can so easily ‘other’ people and treat them as subhuman, and what we can do to be a non-violent presence in the world. Also, Nick takes credit for the Euros victory, and Joe has been to visit a rare tree.
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Mid-faith Crisis 338: Do we need a second Reformation?
This week we talk about the Reformation, and whether we are overdue for another go at it. Joe nails his theses to our podcast door. And Nick questions whether a second reformation starts much closer to home.
This week’s episode of the podcast explored the sacraments. It’s an episode we’ve had planned for a while – although ‘planned’ might be putting it too strongly – so long, in fact, that we’ve forgotten what discussion originally inspired it. Sacraments are hard to define. Augustine defined them as ‘a visible form of an invisible grace’ which, in the formulation of the BCP becomes ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’.
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Mid-faith Crisis 337: The Sacramental Special
We finally get around to talking about the sacraments. Where did they come from? How many are there ? Is there really a premier league? And what sacramental practices can you build into your life?
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Mid-faith Crisis 336: Cynicism and how to avoid it
We talk cynics, sceptics and assorted doubters. What is it that pushes us towards cynicism? How can we remain open to the possibilities of prayer? How does still play the prophetic bongos? And most importantly, what’s happening with Nick’s apricots?
AKA Thoughts on Mid-faith Crisis 335: A senior pair likely in their golden years We started off this week with Joe reading out to me a Meta-AI generated description of a selfie he had take of us together on a walk in the woods. Apparently AI suggested clicking a button to ‘Find out more about this couple’s relationship.’ Various responses were generated – the results are not consistent, apparently – but here’s one.
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Mid-faith Crisis 335: A senior pair likely in their golden years
People have sent in limericks about the Trinity. Joe is wondering what to do about the climate crisis. Nick is very grumpy about AI, a mood not improved by the AI-generated description of their photo on Facebook. We talk about the need to be people who care, who live lives of both gratitude and action. So join our long-term partnership, as we prioritise our relationship and spend quality time together.
This is a brilliant paper on issues around AI-generated inventions of history.
How far away are we from artificial, manufactured, perhaps even automated pasts deployed as weaponised information to encourage mythological interpretations? To marshal populations towards terrible ends? I think the answer is quite obvious: they’re already here.
Here’s the thing: AI as a technological ideology is being created by people who literally don’t care about the past. They don’t care about many things, actually, but history and accuracy seem especially disposable. In their view, history is something that just gets in the way of the future. So they don’t care if perversions of history are spewed out, backed up by entirely imaginary sources. They don’t care about the truth. They only care about their vision of progress. They are no different, in this way, to dictators and demagogues, empires and theocracies. Anything is justified, as long as it serves the party, the church, the corporation.
Of course they would know that. If they ever read any history.
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Mid-faith Crisis 334: An interview with climate activist Rev Tim Hewes
Tim Hewes is the author of Finding Beauty Behind Bars - A Climate Activist’s Enforced Retreat, a book he wrote after being arrested during Extinction Rebellion protests. He tells us about how he became so concerned, why he got involved with non-violent protest and the remarkable story of the day that eight Met policemen were sent to arrest a highly dangerous clergyman.