Travelling with Gershom

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy my favourite character was Aragorn, the ranger from the north descended from the kings of former times, a man who is brave, noble, and loyal. In the recent movies, he was wonderfully portrayed by Viggo Mortensen, who brought Aragorn to life in full. I have been watching season one of ROME this week, and feel about Lucius Vorenus much as I do about Aragorn. Kevin McKidd ably plays Vorenus as a man who is out of his time in many ways. His bravery is not in doubt, a heroic soldier in the 13th Legion. His also loyal, to his leader, to Rome, and mostly to his old friend Titus Pullo. Deeply moral, he is often conflicted about things in the deeply immoral world he lives in. Vorenus' character often gets him into trouble, as his behaviour is often at odds with the culture. Both Aragorn and Vorenus remind me of the things I aspired to as a young man and try to live up to today. A passion for justice, and compassion for others. A sense of duty, and doing one...

Whenever my wife or I have to travel on business and have to away from each other for more than a few days, we find the time apart difficult. And when these mercifully infrequent trips occur, as one is at the moment, we try and connect for a few minutes by telephone each day. Busy-ness and time differences can make it challenging to get more than a few minutes to talk at the end of someone's day, so we always try to cut to the chase and talk about the most important thing. You know what I mean...the daily routine of our lives. In those moments we reconnect by recounting our days, and we feel like we have been part of the other's life even while we have been apart. We commiserate, advise, celebrate, share news, and so on, nothing special...but actually very special. The stuff of our day to day existence - work, conversations, struggles, victories - is what makes up our lives. We share it when we are together, when we come home at the end of the day, and by sharing it when we are...

It seems to be very popular to complain about Christians and their intolerance, and to cite religion generally (and often Christianity in particular) as a source of evil in the world. This opinion is expressed in books and blogs, the media, and in private conversations. As a Christian, let me expound a little on this view of Christians. Most of the time, the complaint is deserved. We behave badly, in a non-Christian manner, and end up defaming Christ. This is partly due to human weakness - is there any leader or follower of a political or social movement who has not fallen or failed in one way or another? - but in some (and the most important) instances it is more than that.  We all expect people to lose their temper, make mistakes, and the like. The real problem is that when we are presented with an issue like abortion or gay marriage we fail to think first and respond later. In fact, I would go farther: we fail to think. Following Christ is not about a set of rules and regulations th...