http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php Copyright 2008, Peter Hearty Peter Hearty en-US SPHPBLOG 0.4.8 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080820-081621 Rating 1 out of 5 (Hardly platitudinous at all)

The two US presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama have answered questions put to them by Pastor Rick Warren. Inevitably they were asked about abortion. Obama stated he was pro-choice, McCain, pro-life. This is spin doctor morality, where moral choices are black and white, right and wrong, where the very labels are designed to categorise their opponents as anti-choice, anti-life. In reality, couples cry and talk themselves hoarse when trying to decide. A priest provides little more than a shoulder to cry on, but it's better than the political version of morality.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080820-081621 Peter Hearty Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:16:21 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080820-081621 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080819-080841 Rating 0 out of 5 (Not platitudinous at all)

Michael Phelps has overcome Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and mockery of his gangly limbs and huge appendages, to become the highest achieving gold medal Olympian of all time. It is always inspirational to see adversity turned into a triumph. But we cannot overcome everything. People with chronic pain, pain that cannot be treated by doctors, often try to struggle on. This is especially true of previous high achievers, who find it difficult to accept that they are now dependent on others. There are some things that we must learn to accept, because we cannot alter them. Only then can we move forward realistically.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080819-080841 Peter Hearty Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:08:41 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080819-080841 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080818-075653 Rating 2 out of 5 (A little platitudinous)

It used to be that you were born into a country to which you owed your allegiance. You then followed your family into the job or trade that they chose for you. You followed the faith of your parents and believed what they believed. Nowadays we have far more choice - what country to live in, what religion to follow, what beliefs and values we share. I myself chose not to follow my father into a woodbine smoke-filled typewriter factory. "That's not for me," I said, and decided at an early age to become a Reverend Canon Doctor and Director of the Centre for Ethics and Religion, Lancaster University.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080818-075653 Peter Hearty Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:56:53 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080818-075653 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080816-091525 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Hello, Brian Draper here, from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, where we work to equip Christians to engage biblically and relevantly with the issues they face, including Work, Capitalism, Youth Culture, Media and Communication.

Everything's driven by targets these days. Police, schools, hospitals - they're all abandoning local priorities and common sense professionalism in an attempt to meet government targets. Of course targets can sometimes be a good thing, except when they're not. A bad target is church attendance figures. There's a tendency to think that, just because church attendance has nose dived in recent years, that it has somehow become an irrelevance, an anachronism, a pointless social club for middle- Englanders in a world that has moved beyond their simplistic notions of right and wrong; a world that finds the church's squabbles over women bishops and gay relationships both funny and sad. This is quite wrong of course. The value of the church is not in its numbers. Even if there's only one Christian left, that one person will always be immensely more spiritual than all the rest of you put together. (I don't listen to TFTD myself, so I don't know what a devalued, empty, word spiritual has become.) Being spiritual, which you are whether you like it or not, is about Jesus, and my Invisible Magic Friend, and peace and joy and patience and people being nice.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080816-091525 Peter Hearty Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:15:25 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080816-091525 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080815-082128 Rating 5 out of 5 (Extraordinarily platitudinous)

By gum it's grim oop north. Policy Exchange think we should just abandon all those ghastly, bleak northern cities, and let their lazy, benefits addicted populations move to the more civilised south.

This entirely misses the point of modern cities. It sees them as simple economic engines, based on such menial activities as manufacturing, trade and generally doing something useful. It misses the great ideals of their Victorian founders, who realised you could pack millions of indentured, disposable, workers into tiny insanitary slums; pay them and their children a pittance to work in their soulless, gigantic factories, and make whopping great loads-a-money in the process. With enormous civic pride, they built great concert halls, town halls and art galleries. Places where their fellow people of quality could work, relax and enjoy some cultured company.

But these industrial barons didn't just give their employees squalid living conditions. Obviously they had to give them some culture, by which I mean religion. Religion gave the lower orders hope - faith in a brighter future once they'd worked themselves to death. So, mindful of the need for Christian charity, they built churches, where the proles could ponder their low life expectancy and rejoice that all human beings were created equal in the sight of God. That's what I call Christianity. That's what I call culture. That's what I call the New Jerusalem, where the streets were paved with gold, for some.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080815-082128 Peter Hearty Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:21:28 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080815-082128 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080814-084339 Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Are you getting old and senile? Have your children put you in a home and abandoned you? Is the loss of your youth and the end of your independence making you depressed? Have you been told by your doctor that you're past it and not worth spending treatment on, treatment that can go to real people? Never fear, we can pump you so full of drugs that you'll be rolling your eyes and smiling inanely 24 hours a day. Alternatively, why not try Christianity. You can have your very own Invisible Magic Friend and the promise of a great eternal care home in the sky. Not only that, there's the punishment that will be meted out to your miscreant and ungrateful offspring, and the cheering thought that their sprogs will probably do the same to them.

Christianity: the happy, clappy alternative to happy pills. Because we know you're going gaga.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080814-084339 Peter Hearty Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:43:39 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080814-084339 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080813-082821 Rating 2 out of 5 (A little platitudinous)

Spiritual is such a hackneyed word. It's so overused that it now means little more than a personally uplifting experience. Sentimental, indulgent, rubbish. That's why you won't find me bandying around words like spiritual, like some other TFTD presenters do here and here and here and here... Not that I'm in any way criticising any of these other fine TFTD presenters who use the word spiritual all the time.

So I'm not even going to mention the word spiritual in connection with me and my family's recent holiday in Portugal, where they got to spend time cuddling and communicating with dolphins. There's nothing spiritual about talking to dolphins and discussing the environmental concerns of their fellow endangered cetaceans. In fact that just goes to show how hypocritical it is to use the word spiritual, which I'm not even going to mention once, for personally uplifting experiences when the rest of the world's going to the dogs. Nor am I going to mention spiritual when it comes to reducing humanity's share of the world's resources, and all that that implies, in order to protect the environment of other species. Instead, I'm going to neatly dodge that issue and turn to the far more pressing concern of what the word spiritual means in theological terms. As a Reverend Doctor, let me just assure you that, spiritual, a word that this sermon isn't at all about, means getting some Holy Spirit inside you. Something that I did plenty of while my family were wasting their time cuddling dolphins.

There you go, didn't mention spiritual once.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080813-082821 Peter Hearty Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:28:21 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080813-082821 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080812-091844 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Russia and Georgia are at war. Both sides accuse the other of savagery and treachery, and the now mandatory "genocide". For once they're not fighting over a theological dispute, but those old favourites: territory, resources and which one of them's the best. Now that South Ossetia will almost certainly not have to be part of Georgia, and can live a happy, carefree and independent existence under Russian protection, wouldn't it be nice if they would all just stop killing one another?

Coincidentally, almost exactly the same thing happens in the Bhagavata Purana where King Dhruva, the grandson of the first man, seeks revenge for his brother's murder by a Yaksha tribesman. He gets in his chariot with his bow and attacks the Yaksha tribe. (Despite there only being two generations since the first man, they had bows, arrows, chariots and other tribes to fight. They were very precocious, not to say, fertile, in those days.) Then his granddad told him to stop, because killing lots of innocent people is wrong. This is how we know that killing lots of innocent people is wrong. So King Dhruva stopped killing lots of innocent people and went off to become the pole star instead.

Now, which one of you is going to tell Russia to stop killing innocent people, and turn it into a thermonuclear furnace in the sky instead?

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080812-091844 Peter Hearty Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:18:44 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080812-091844 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080811-082402 Rating 1 out of 5 (Hardly platitudinous at all)

Linda Buchanan was pushed off a railway platform for asking two men to stop smoking. She could easily have been killed. Despite her bravery and the shocking response it provoked, it was the victim who looked downcast when interviewed. All the more shocking has been the response of some commentators. "who died and made her station master ? she should have kept her gob shut," said one.

Saint Thomas Aquinas says not to be aggressive, except in the face of injustice. When you see a wrong being done, Saint Thomas Aquinas says it is wrong not to be angry. Those of you who stand by and let the bullies get their way are not doing what Saint Thomas Aquinas told you to.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080811-082402 Peter Hearty Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:24:02 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080811-082402 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080809-172843 http://afterthought.crowth.net/.

It looks like commentaries on TFTD are becoming a growth industry. ]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080809-172843 Peter Hearty Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:28:43 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080809-172843 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080809-134335 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Hello, Brian Draper here, from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, where we work to equip Christians to engage biblically and relevantly with the issues they face, including Work, Capitalism, Youth Culture, Media and Communication.

We're all too risk averse these days. But Jesus, the visible bit of my Invisible Magic Friend, wants us to take risks. "Be nice," said Jesus - a totally original thought which no one had ever suggested until Jesus came along, and probably about as risky a strategy as there is. Noah knew how to take risks. That's why he built the Ark, even though on the face of it this seems to be the exact opposite of risking it when you've been told that there's a worldwide cataclysmic flood on the way.

So, I did it. I decided I was going to be proactive, rather than reactive. I put a little girl on my lap and slid down the slide with her. Whooaaaa!!! I know what you're thinking, is there no end to this man's daring? But that's the kind of courage you get when you've been fortified by Jesus. Take that dangerous sports fans! Take that war zone journalists! Take that SAS!

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080809-134335 Peter Hearty Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:43:35 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080809-134335 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080808-082111 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

That great spiritual event, the Olympic games, gets under way in Beijing today. Despite being the capital of the evil, godless Chinese, people of all races and faiths have come together to show how much better their country is than everybody else's. It reminds us of all the great virtues: heroism, sacrifice, temperance, fortitude and perseverance. It certainly requires all of these for the burkha clad Iranian women's 400m hurdle team. It teaches us that you must persevere with your faith. In fact the more pointless and self contradictory your faith becomes, the greater the virtue in remaining faithful.

Many sports men and women will win without the use of illegal drugs, and the vast majority, especially the losers, won't even get advertising contracts with multinationals. As St. Paul reminds us: nearly everybody loses. Meanwhile political leaders gather from around the globe, in a spirit of friendship and hope. They particularly hope for new manufacturing contracts with Chinese businesses.

Let us now spare a thought for Eric Liddle, who after his own Olympic victory, returned to China to teach all those poor, backwards Chinese people about Jesus. Thanks to good Christian missionaries like Eric Liddle, thousands of poor, backwards Chinese people (although Eric himself actually only taught rich ones) came to know about Jesus, and so became just like real people.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080808-082111 Peter Hearty Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:21:11 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080808-082111 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080807-083722 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Christian who spoke out against the evils of Stalin's labour camps, is dead. I read "The Gulag Archipelago" during a wet summer holiday when I couldn't find anything else to do. His first book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had a baptist, like me, in it. Being a baptist, like me, he was a really good person. The importance of these books is that they teach us to remember the past. I could state the obvious here and say that we should remember the barbarity that humans are capable of when unchallenged dogma is wedded to absolute power, but instead, I'll talk about Jesus and St. Paul. Jesus and St. Paul gave us the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and the International Criminal Court (even if it isn't supported by that great Christian nation the United States). Jesus and St. Paul remind us that we can get through anything if we have an Invisible Magic Friend. Jesus and St. Paul (and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which this talk was ostensibly about) weren't they just wonderful?

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080807-083722 Peter Hearty Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:37:22 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080807-083722 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080806-081034 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

We've jusht had an ecunomical conference (hic!). Conshtantin...(hic!)...ople had one too, but they weren't a shquidshy blob like us. They invented the Nicene creed (hic!)...again. No presh were there - at Canterbury that ish. But not to worry, there was a shteady shtream of bishops here on Thought For The (hic!) Day to tell you about our momentusss decishions not to decide anything and to hope that the whole sordid problem will jusht go away. We're going to become a Beauty-Full butterfly (hic!) instead of an ugly shquidshy blob. And we never mensshhioned you-know-what once.

Oh bugger me...gimme the sherry bottle!

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080806-081034 Peter Hearty Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:10:34 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080806-081034 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080805-080732 Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Mountaineering is a spiritual experience. We all need to get away from it all, that's why tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims decided to visit the Invisible Magic Friend at the top of a mountain all at once. Over 140 were killed in the subsequent panic and stampede, but this wasn't the Invisible Magic Friend's fault, as some spiritually empty and morally void cynics have tried to suggest. I recommend getting away from it all at the top of a mountain, although if you're getting away from it all with 10,000 other people, I recommend some sort of crowd control on the narrow mountain paths. Worshipping the Invisible Magic Friend gives you a real high. It's just like a bottle of vodka or an LSD tab. It gives you the same transcendental, spiritually purified, altered consciousness, inner awakening, especially in the rarefied atmosphere of a mountain top. Without a transcendental, spiritually purified, altered consciousness, inner awakening you can't have any empathy or love for fellow human beings. So get up a mountain and start being spiritual.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080805-080732 Peter Hearty Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:07:32 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080805-080732 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080804-082306 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

As a Reverend Canon Doctor and Director of the Centre for Ethics and Religion, Lancaster University, I was asked to teach a group of foreign students at Christ Church, Oxford. Those of you in the know, will know that this is the top college in Oxford. You will now be suitably impressed and will attend carefully to my words, according them the level of gravitas which they so assuredly deserve.

Small things can be just as important as big things. Really, really important big things, which we intellectuals call "politics", may be more significant on a global scale, but the pimple on your bottom is probably of greater concern to you right now. Jesus, who was the Invisible Magic Friend incarnate, knows that less weighty concerns can be just as weighty as more weighty concerns. He knows absolutely everything about everybody, although you had to be alive in 1st century Palestine and get close enough to him before he'd heal you. As one early Christian writer pointed out, the invisible magic afterlife is much more important than the pimple on your bottom. So big things can be more important than little things, provided the big things are invisible and magic. This does not in any way contradict my overall message that little things are as important as big things, since generally speaking less significant matters are usually just as significant as more significant matters. Life is full of little things that are just as big as big things.

So there.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080804-082306 Peter Hearty Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:23:06 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080804-082306 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080802-084600 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Hurrah - the Olympics are coming. Like all great sporting events, the Olympics is a terribly spiritual affair. In between being spiritual, many sports-persons will want to take the opportunity to express themselves freely. If not, then the 20,000 journalists attending certainly will. Although I haven't actually said journalism is a spiritual occupation too, it almost certainly is, since everything is.

Freedom of expression has always been very dear to the church. From Arianism to Nestorianism, all the way through to the Spanish Inquisition, the church has always been the world's biggest supporter of freedom of expression, unlike those dirty commy Chinese.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080802-084600 Peter Hearty Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:46:00 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080802-084600 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080801-081729 Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

The poor old Anglican communion, tearing itself apart over you know what. But then there have always been arguments in the church. Saint Peter was a traditional, conservative Jew, who just happened to be first pope and hated you-know-what. Contrast that with the enlightened, radical, liberal, thrusting Saint Paul, who hated you-know-what. It really puts the world's problems in perspective when you consider the theological differences of the 1st century church. Something which is so incredibly important and that I know you're all terribly interested in.

You can't help wondering that if only the Anglicans had stayed with the real church they wouldn't have all this bother. After all, the pope has infallibly contemplated his winkle and infallibly concluded that shirt lifting is an inherent moral evil. So what's to debate? No, I mustn't laugh though, that would be unkind.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080801-081729 Peter Hearty Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:17:29 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=08&entry=entry080801-081729 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080731-081642 Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Sarika Singh has won her legal battle to wear her Holy Bangle to school. Those of us who think there should be one set of rules for unbelievers and lots of special exemptions for believers, would like to remind you of this. It's not because we're gloating or feeling smug or anything - that would be most un-Christian - but just to make sure you know that you always have to give way to our demands.

Just why is this so important? As the judge said "This is how Sikhs get handcuffed to the Invisible Magic Friend." "Without my Holy Bangle I might do all sorts of wild and wicked things, " said Sarika. "I'd be like all the other, less holy, girls at my school: defying the rules, undermining authority, making the teachers' jobs harder and constantly looking for special privileges. Wearing the Holy Bangle stops me doing all that. It reminds me to do good, rather than evil, which I'm tempted to do all the time when I don't wear it. It especially reminds me to do good with my hands, although I only wear it on the right hand. I'm not going to go into the kind of wicked things my left hand gets up to."

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080731-081642 Peter Hearty Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:16:42 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=07&entry=entry080731-081642 http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080730-084927 Rating 5 out of 5 (Extraordinarily platitudinous)

Well we've all had a lovely time at Canterbury, with no disagreements at all, mainly because the bishops we disagree with aren't here. But it will be nice to get back to Liverpool. Liverpool is a terribly spiritual city. You can tell this from the fact that we like music so much. Unspiritual people, who don't have an Invisible Magic Friend, don't have any music. Sir Paul McCartney nearly sang in the cathedral choir, but we wouldn't let him. That didn't stop him believing in the Invisible Magic Friend though, so you should too - that way you can be as spiritual as Paul McCartney is. You want to be as spiritual as someone as rich and famous and talented as Paul McCartney don't you?

Then we've got really good concerts, like Taverner's Requiem, spreading hope and making people spiritual. Contrast that with Richard Dawkins in the Philharmonic Hall, talking about nature and truth, and not making anyone spiritual at all. There he was, teaching people "science", a kind of glorified accountancy, spreading doubt, making you doubt the Invisible Magic Friend, making you doubt me. BAD Richard Dawkins. BAD doubt. BAD scepticism! You must not doubt me or all the other bishops that had such a nice time in the lovely sunny weather at Canterbury, although you may doubt all the bishops who didn't come and thankfully didn't spoil the party.

Let's hope that one day you'll all start being spiritual again, because spirituality isn't about wonder, or passion, or an appreciation of art and science, it's about not doubting what I tell you.

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Read]]> http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry080730-084927 Peter Hearty Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:49:27 GMT http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=08&m=07&entry=entry080730-084927