When I read my friend Gemma’s tweet asking her followers how they felt about Northern Ireland, I was hard pressed to think of anything positive to say.
Her tweet, coming off the back of remarks by a Pastor in Belfast that were derogatory to Muslims and Islam, left me wondering if there was anything good I could say about my home country. Continue reading
It’s funny how we use the phrase “God’s ways or understanding is bigger than our ways or understanding” when we try and pigeonhole God. It’s mostly used when people don’t know how to creatively answer questions about predestination or when it feels like God lets evil run rampant so much.
It’s also used when people question some of the parts of God that we find tricky to digest.
Yet the very people that use it the most when coming up against views of God can’t seem to let go of their own ideas of who God is and why He does or does not do things. After all, an understanding of God which states that some people were born just to go to Hell with no choice in the matter, because God has already decided, can’t see that perhaps this too is a human understanding of God. Continue reading
A week ago, David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the UK appeared on the BBC Politics “The Andrew Marr” show. While on air, he joined millions of other people in throwing support behind the #BringBackOurGirls campaign which has exploded online. Continue reading
Is it a good thing? How much impact does it really have? Does it do more damage than good?
When there is not much more we can do, surely it’s all we can do and it’s better than nothing, right?
All good and important questions.
Cynicism from some people is part and parcel when something positive grows. People like this are normally just cynical. It’s in their DNA. They don’t offer any useful, positive alternative. They want something to be angry about and this is simply the latest. Tomorrow it will be something else. We can’t change people like that. So we shouldn’t listen to their voices.
(This is why I have chosen not to give links to tweets or blogs from people like this here. It won’t change their opinion, and it will just make me more like them).
They are the grownup who tells you that your dreams aren’t realistic. They are the High school guidance teacher who says that things like that don’t happen to normal people like you.
They are closed. And the door’s locked.
Maybe they are right. My voice alone can’t persuade the Nigerian Government to act but our voice together can make our Governments sit up and take notice. Maybe, some who have tweeted their support have done so for selfish reasons. I don’t know all our motivations but I do know that I’m not sure it matters so much. They are making their voice count for something positive and I’ll take that over trying to cut something down just for the sake of it any day.
This is why #BringBackOurGirls has been so powerful. Not because we think a hashtag can change anything, rather we know that making a noise can.
And if you have a voice (or twitter, or a Government you can appeal to) then you can make a noise too.
Everyone knows that it can prove very dangerous to mess up on grammar. You can really give the wrong impression with an ill placed comma or full stop. Or in the case of the title of this blog, a question mark.
You could read the title of this blog in two ways. Firstly, you could read it as a invitation to look at porn and a response to take that invitation up on its offer.
The other way you could read it is as an invitation, followed by a response detailing a few reasons why you wouldn’t or shouldn’t look at porn.
I’ve definitely asked myself the very same question and answered in both ways, countless times in my life. But I think a question like this and how we respond shows us a lot of why churches are ill equipped to talk about porn or sex with their congregations. It’s not so much that it’s a bad question or even unhelpful, but rather not the best way to start conversations around sex. Continue reading
I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago that received more shares and more comments almost as much as all my other blog posts had together. Some loved it, some really didn’t. Which is ok because you know after all, we’re not part of the community of Jesus followers because we all agree. Continue reading
Is this what Jesus had in mind? Continue reading
Yesterday, Evangelical Alliance announced that they were parting ways with Oasis Trust as an EA member. You can read the press releases from both organizations here and here, respectively.
On the face of it, the reason given probably doesn’t give a full story of discussions that took place between the two and the months of prayer that EA have put into making this decision. Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago I watched a broadcast of an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury in which he pointed out that the average Anglican is a sub Saharan woman in her mid 30’s. This week some reports have suggested that as soon as 2025 China will be the biggest Christian country in the world. Continue reading
I haven’t written a blog like this in a while. One in which I lay out in a carefully detailed plan how I am so creative and able to construct sentences that produce such strong emotions in people that they can’t but help themselves to a click on their twitter share button. Or maybe just go “meh”!
But recently I have discovered something in how I write that may or not be helpful to you. I discovered that when it comes to many things I can be pretty lazy. I can procrastinate like no other. But I think I have found a way to make my laziness work in my favor.
Let me explain.
If I am lying upstairs on my bed watching the latest episode of Portlandia or Hannibal and I realize I have left my phone downstairs, those stairs become a mammoth trek of survival and self discovery and to be perfectly honest my bed is pretty comfy and cosy so forget that. Or if I have chocolate and I want to eat it but at the same time I don’t want to eat it, I will simply put it into Britt’s drawer on her side of the bed. Again, a matter of feet becomes a hundred mile journey and that will be enough to resist the tempting lure of chocolate.
Yes, I’m that lazy.
Also, American chocolate’s not that great.
So I got to thinking how this could work in my favor when writing. When I sit down to write I come face to face with procrastination or resistance as Stephen Pressfield calls it. The internet is my resistance. I will check my emails accounts, then check a couple of online communities that I am part of, then Facebook and then Twitter. A whole two minutes later and I will repeat the process. Unsurprisingly, not enough has changed in the world in that time to warrant such excessive checking.
Thankfully I have a new system in place. I have two online productivity tools that I will tell you about in a minute which have saved my life.
But first, what is my real problem? Is it laziness or something else? Well actually, I think it is both.
I love to write. I even want to write. I wake up some mornings and have the insatiable desire to write. Then I try and nothing really happens and I click refresh. That’s on a good day. But what this tells me is that there is something worth pursuing here and it’s worth fixing. So I ask myself, what if I didn’t have the internet?
What if I am upstairs and I didn’t have the internet to tempt me from writing? Well as I have established I am pretty lazy so even if I am upstairs without the internet I am unlikely to go looking for something downstairs. My problem is not so much that I don’t want to write but that when faced with the choice of writing or doing anything else, I will choose almost 100% of the time, something else
So I remove the internet.
Now before anyone starts panicking, don’t worry you still have access to FB and Twitter and can still send me countless annoying farmville invites.
But I block the internet for myself. Using these two great tools. Leachblock for firefox and Waste No Time for Safari. They’re both amazing and have literally saved my life and helped with a few writing deadlines. I can block the internet for specific time periods everyday. Sometimes I purposefully leave my phone downstairs do I don’t have the distraction. Sometimes I tell myself that I need the internet for research but usually that’s a sneaky way of saying I need to see what kind of things are topical so I can write about them. But that’s not good for anyone, believe me.
There’s always an excuse.
So with a double tag team of laziness to go somewhere else and the removal of options to distract me, I can get to work. Removing any other options leaves me wanting and able to write and I can feel like I have worked. Which helps me feel good, which motivates me next time I need to write.
Sometimes I need to get out of the house to write but even then I’m too lazy to go home and so end up writing more.
Maybe you’re not as lazy as me and that’s ok. I don’t judge you. Be thankful that you aren’t like me.
For the rest of us though, lazy is OK. It can be your friend and can be used to your advantage. Resistance is sneaky but you can be sneakier.
So get writing, or building, or creating. Whatever it is you do.
Just be lazy.
paulrobinsonwrites 
