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Last night, I watched a BBC documentary about The Domesday Book. It wasn't especially brilliant - full of over-generalised statements and a lack of specifics. For the first twenty minutes, it felt like the programme hadn't really started, like the presenter was telling us roughly what he was going to tell us. What's more, he kept repeating himself and asking the same questions.

Nonetheless, he made a convincing case The Domesday Book, created in the 1080s by William the Conqueror, auditing England and who owned what, was not for tax purposes, but for legitimising the astonishing land-grab that was the Norman Conquest. Land had been seized and reallocated at the whim of the king, who was able to declare who owned what. Saxon landowners were effectively made tenants of their own land, paying rent to a Norman overlord who, in turn, paid their dues to the King, by whose authority they had that land.

In 1066, England was stolen by a tyrannical king who overturned basic property rights to suit his own ends, consolidate his rule and feather his nest. It's surprising that he isn't widely despised. But in a sense, we are so inured to the over-reaching arm of the state that what he did does not seem all that bad. But it is. People on the political Right often want strong government - or at least think they do - but this Norman kingship was nothing but dictatorship based on force and coercion. William took the throne in battle from Harold Godwinson, the natural, generally-agreed successor to Edward the Confessor. William then set about establishing a military rule which overturned centuries of Saxon consensus-based government.

I mention this because it seems a fitting end to the blog. This is blog post number 500 and I've been looking back at how my views and opinions have been shaped over the last few years. One of the key shifts in thinking has been trying to understand The State, and how enthralled we are to it - Christians included.

I hope that 2010 has been a high-watermark of state over-management, interference and intervention. The current Coalition government seem happy to slash government services, and sinister Domesday databases. This is all being done on the pretext of cost, sadly. It would be more convincing if they made more of the Big Society idea - bad name, sound concept.

I'm not going to go into specifics of how absurdly over-governed we have been by the last administration that was addicted to spending not only the massive amounts of money that it had, but money it did not have and money that is has subsequently printed (although be sure to call it 'Quantitative Easing' to distinguish it from what it is - stealing from the British people by watering down their money).

Instead, I merely assert that there are three realms that we need to understand - and society cannot function without all three of them, and becomes dysfunctional when the realms try to duplicate or steal functions from each other.

In short, we have the Church, the State and the Markets. Let's take them in reverse order:

The Markets are the free-flowing of goods and trade. Making, selling, buying - and permutations thereof. Capitalism is not a theory, but a description of how this takes place. If someone will sell you a spade for ten pounds, you may buy it. It someone offers you the same spade for five pounds, you'll buy his. You don't need Adam Smith to tell you that (although some think that because Adam Smith said it, it must be wrong, when it is plainly obviously true). Christians shouldn't have a problem with markets, since we are told to get on with subduing the earth, making living, working hard, feeding our families and not being a burden to others. This happens with good honest labour for a fair wage.

The State is all about law and order - and creating conditions in which the markets can take place. The state guarantees property rights, punishes thieves and resolves secular disputes (ie disputes between non-church members). The State should not be in the business of business, trying to behave like a company within the market, since it will skew that market and cause injustice. This is what effectively happens now. The state is a service-provider, as well as a magistrate, and it uses the coercive power it has to collect taxation to provide those services, whether you want them or not. Whether or not you use the education service provided by the state, you pay for it. The same applies for health and a lots of other things.

But here is the problem. The invisible hand of the market is a cold one. If you can't afford bread, that's too bad. The currently solution that is clamoured for by people who haven't, sadly, stopped to take the time to think about it is to get the State to give out bread for free. And/or to get the state to distort the market to make bread so cheap everyone it's practically free. What this model fails to recognise is that neither the state nor the markets are able to give us the one thing we need most of all - love. The market is sociable, but ultimately selfish. The state can give you things, bread, money, a house or whatever, but is about entitlement, not generosity. Moreover, if you commit a crime, the state has to punish you. It is not at liberty to just 'let you off' because the State is based on law. Markets have the laws of economics - Capitalism). States have laws, penal codes and statue books.

This is why the third realm, The Church, is the most important of all. The Church is Society. The Church is Community. The Church does not step in where the state fails. Or the market fails. The church should be doing all these things anyway. It doesn't need a mandate from the other two realms. For hundreds of years, the church provided the education, the hospitals and the relief of the poor. Naturally it did it in a flawed way, but arguably no worse than the way the state does it today. The Church - and the family - is where real life takes place. There should be little need for the the average Jo to have much contact with the State, unless he starts stealing bread.

The Church should not overlap with the State, using the 'power of God' to govern by fear. Nor should the Church be used by the State to 'provide charitable services'. I do not need a note from the House of Commons to give a poor person bread. I do it because I want to help, not because the State is there to ensure everyone has enough bread, because its none of the State concern. Or at least it shouldn't be.

eg Binge Drinking
The current issue is binge-drinking. It's a classic case of muddled realms that's going totally unchecked in the public thinking. Drunkenness is a moral problem. It's not that right that people are going out in the evenings and getting drunk. In fact, at the moment, they're getting drunk before they go out. The solution, apparently, is to use the State's power to intervene in the market to make alcohol more expensive. Could the realms be any more confused? To hide this, the moral problem is often dressed up as an economic one - since drunkenness is costing the State millions of pounds. So the third realm has been deleted completely. It's just State and Market - and together, these two cannot solve any problem effectively.

All this muddle, sadly, is standard thinking these days. No-one seems to understand what the state is for, how it should function and how we, as a society, solve social problems. The answer is not the State. The State is a blunt instrument. The answer is not the Markets - who do not care about you or anyone. The answer is, and has always been, the Church.

The problem is that the visible Church looks weak and has no confidence to do any of the things it used to do (eg run hospitals, orphanages and distribute alms). It doesn't even believe it should do those things, having handed them all off to the state in the last hundred (and the State willingly seized them). But this is precisely what the church should be doing - showing the love of God to the world by helping the poor, the sick and the elderly. If the Church did those things, rather than leaving them on the doorstep of the state, Jesus Christ would indeed be honoured.

I have to stop now - since my daughter wants to play and wife is feeding my other daugther. This is currently the story of my life, so for now, I shall leave it there. Thank you for your attention, and your thoughtful and insightful comments. Until another time...

This is the penultimate post of this blog - and as I round things off, one of the changes I've made in my thinking over the last few years is over baptism.

I didn't have any theology of baptism on it before my daughter was born - and I knew I would have a c.9 month period in which to get some thinking together. In the process, I came to conclusions I hadn't quite expected - and a conviction that I find surprisingly strong. I baptised my first daughter and plan to baptise my second - and here's why (using loose theological terms because I've forgotten chapter and verse and the exact terminology):

Some people think that you should only baptise Christians. That sounds sensible enough on the surface. But what is a Christian? It's not a frequently used term in the New Testament, and obviously never used in the Old. What I would do here, though, is question the question. What do we mean by Christian? And what is baptism?

When I was studying the Reformation at school, I was always most drawn towards Zwingli, who's views on the Eucharist as being purely memorial I was thought to be most convincing at the time. I've always been led to believe that ceremonies are nothing, or 'popish' or superstitious. Baptising a baby is just getting some defenceless creature wet. How can sacraments have any real power?

And yet we know that marriage, marital vows and a ceremony are real and binding. We know that these institutions have some power. If we get married, we can't simply change our minds and say 'we didn't mean it'. When you say it, it happens. You're declared married. And it is not something that can be easily undone.

It seems odd to simply assume that baptism does not have similar power or meaning. So what is it? As I see, from the various reading, thinking, studying and praying that I've done, is that the Church is covenant community, and that you baptise people into that community. That's how you join. Through baptism, you are adding a member to that community. They are being grafted into God's people. And we pray that they grow and stay connected to the vine by teaching, study, prayer and fellowship - all the things you get by membership of a church (hence the wrongheadedness of thinking that you can be a Christian but not have to go to church).

Clearly some Christians, mainly Baptists, have a problem with the possibility of joining non-Christians to this covenant community. Again, sounds reasonable enough. But we do not know who are Christians and who are not Christians. And what's more we are not competent to judge, as the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds teaches. Waiting until someone is an adult before baptising them does not solve this. Plenty of people become Christians, get baptised as adults into the church, and then fall away. Jesus himself teaches this in the parable of the sower. Apostasy is not only possible but relatively likely (two of the four seeds make a start but don't grow up).

So how are we meant to know who to baptise and who not to baptise? And sort out who is and isn't going to finish the race as a Christian? We don't. We can't. We leave all that to God. We certainly do not have access to the Book of Life, in which are written the names of all those being saved. Nor do we have the power to propose names for the Book. God knows what he is doing.

So the questions is 'How do you know if your daughter is a Christian? She's only 2. How could you know? And how can she be a Christian? She doesn't understand the gospel. How could she?'

Well, there are many questions there that I have posed myself rhetorically. The first thing to say is this. "How do you know that she isn't a Christian?" She willingly prays with us. She loves hearing stories about Jesus. And quite unprovoked has said a number of times 'Jesus loves me'. She is right. He does.

Now, some would say 'Maybe he does, but that's just be affection. She'd say anything you teach her to say'. It might just be affection. It might not. It might be conviction. We have no way of knowing - either as a 2-yr-old or a 32-yr-old. But the fact remains that I'm a Christian, as is her mother. We've taught her Christianity. Which is The Truth. (What's more, if we're honest, many of our opinions are received and require careful sifting over many years of thinking and living. To pinpoint this seems somewhat perverse.)

But even if it is purely affection, promises are made to believers and to God's covenant people that there will be blessing for multiple generations. It is a normal Biblical pattern of living for Christians to raise their children as Christians and for their children to do likewise. Some children at some point will rebel. We are rebels. I get that. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ, not saved by believing, or deciding to believe. Some children will grow up to demonstrate that they were never Christians, and will renounce their Christian heritage and grieve their baptism. Or live as if that were the case, and continue to live in communion with the church until discipline or excommunication takes place. That is what church discipline and excommunication is for. There would be no need for discipline, or a biblical mandate for it, if baptised Christians didn't break with the church, or need to be thrown out. But that individual may yet return to the faith (see numerous Biblical heroes and their rocky patches) and prove their names had been written the Book of Life all along.

I return to the original assertion. We don't know who is saved. So we baptise our children, as we teach them in the faith and pray for them in the full expectation that they will live godly, fruitful and productive lives. To wait until they've past some sort of 'faith test' seems odd, unbiblical and very unhelpful as children, who thought they were Christians are effectively told they're not 'in the club' until they've been baptised.

Despite the numerous highly regarded and godly Baptists in the world (eg Carson, Piper et al) I simply cannot understand this. I have heard not one single argument that convinces me in the slightest that infant baptism is wrong. Hence my surprise at the fervour of my belief. (feel free to persuade me with a comment)

The sadness for me is how few Christians that I know really think about this for themselves and get to grips with why they baptise, or refuse to baptise, their children. It's an important doctrine that we need to grapple with because it gets to the very heart of what a Christian is, what being a member of a Church is, and what that entails eg. church discipline.

This is a function of seeing adults become Christians and being baptised that we simply assume that becoming a Christian as an adult is the norm. Historically it is not. Christians have primarily grown in number through the ages through being fruitful and multiplying.

I would have been surprised at saying this a few years ago - but here is written on the internet for all to see, forever...

It's great to see good churches grow and grow. There have been some really exciting success stories recently, most notably Mars Hill in Seattle which now has numerous campuses and pours much energy and resources into a church-planting network. (I personally have been greatly helped by these guys and listened to hours and hours of sermons and talks from these churches.) This is all to the good, but there is one aspect of it that I find worrying - it's the prospect of virtual preaching: the sermon is beamed in from the mothership so that the highly-skilled and gifted preacher/teacher can be available to as many people as possible. In one sense, it seems like a no-brainer. Who wouldn't want to receive regular Bible teaching in their church that is of the highest quality? And if it's in HD, it's almost like having the guy in the room?

But I don't like it. And I have a few slightly ill-defined reasons why.

1. The leader of the church should be able to teach the leader of the church. He is responsible for the content of the sermons, and setting the programmes for mid-week groups. Pastoring happens within that context. Driscoll talks about the 'air war' and the 'ground war' which is a useful analogy. The preacher preaches and conducts the 'air war', but the small group leaders are waging the 'ground war'. Those two elements need to be well connected and co-ordinated if the job is to be done well, effectively, responsibly and sensitively. But getting someone else to conduct your air war for you feels like calling in air strikes that you will drop napalm all over your congregation. It may bring refining fire, but there will be quite a lot of collateral damage.

Lots of churches are 20-250 in size. It is possible for a pastor to know almost everyone - or at least know what the main issues are within that church, and which individuals are dealing with them. Most pastors will the know the feeling of preparing a sermon and realising there are issues cropping up that will be very personal and difficult for certain members to hear, and need to be phrased correctly. Imagine abrogating that right to preach to your own church while you hear your 'boss' preach a sermon in a way that you know is going to be unnecessarily offensive to some (offence is okay, but you have to be careful). Sitting in your own church listening to the big guy preach on the screen would be like watching a movie with your parents and suddenly there's an intense and graphic sex scene. Embarrassing. But in this case, also pastorally irresponsible.

2. There are also local variations within congregations to bear in mind. In a UK context, a sermon preached in central London will not necessarily have the same resonance in suburbs or even other cities, and certainly not little towns and villages. Central London evangelical churches are predominantly young and 'sophisticated' (see Tom Lehrer for a definition of that word) and face issues that would be alien to those in other contexts, rendering the sermon less effective or, at least, less applied.

3. Even though the technology allows this, there should be no need for it. Each church has elders - all of whom should be able to teach. Naturally some may be more able and gifted than others, and be better at teaching in different contexts, but surely one guy should be able to stand up and preach every Sunday. The defenders of Virtual Preaching at Mars Hill/Acts 29 say the church's own pastor preaches 12 sundays. One a month? Why? The teaching of the church is the responsibilty of the elders. They should be able to teach (or else they shouldn't be elders). And so they should get on and do it (or be allowed to do it). And if they can't teach and/or have received no training in teaching and preaching God's word they have no business planting a church in the first place.

4. Naturally, some of these elders would feel inadequate compared with the leader of their church network. But they shouldn't. If they are appointed to be the pastor of the church, they are qualified to preach the word. They need to work hard at it, but no-one said it would be easy. They may feel that a beamed-in sermon would be much more effective and impressive - but they need to remember that the preacher in question has abilities and gifts given by God, and that it is God's word that has power, and that this comes about because of the Holy Spirit. Not the rhetorical ability of the preacher. Marc Driscoll is a wonderful preacher who has been greatly used by God to bring honour and glory to Christ. But it doesn't matter if Marc Driscoll isn't preaching at your church - as long as God shows up, you'll be fine. He promises to. And he does. So you'll be fine. The only question is whether your confidence in God's word or the preacher - be it the Christian superstar or you.

And that is why I'm against 'beaming-in' sermons. I might be wrong. But I don't think I am. I'd welcome the views of others.

I've been enjoying reading the post and comments over here at The Vicar's Wife blog. Expectations of the behaviour of children in church, especially if there is no Sunday School, is a guaranteed to get people talking. The main thrust of the comment I left is that most of us don't really know why we're meeting on a Sunday and 'doing church', and therefore it's pretty hard to work out what the role of children within that is and should be. I include myself in this widespread Christian ignorance. And I don't think that it's likely that we, as a nation, will see a widespread return to the church until the church knows what it's doing and why it's doing it.

I've encountered rather a lot of Sherlock Holmes recently. On Friday night, I watched the Guy Ritchie movie, which is a swashbuckling, rip-roaring romp. It's really well-directed and the 'case' that he solves is an intriguing one. Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law were interesting choices for the two main roles. At the end, I was perfectly satisfied, and will merrily watch another. But BBC1's latest adaptation - set in modern day London - left me shreiking with delight. I'm a huge fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, who inhabited the role wonderfully, and Martin Freeman's Watson were only overshadowed by a brilliant script by Stephen Moffat. The only flaw in the whole show was the fact that the murderer seemed relatively obvious at one point - and Holmes missed it.

I heard on the radio that this is about the 100th different adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. The most notable is House, MD - which is another tale of a sociopathic genius who sees problems, not people. This, too, makes me shriek with delight and I'm waiting for the latest DVD boxed set so I can catch up. What is it that makes this character so appealing - and recast and reworked more times than that other great favourite, Robin Hood?

Sherlock Holmes is an anti-hero - and a dramatically more interesting and complex one than Robin Hood. Robin Hood is 'good', operating outside the law, but always to help the oppressed and the down-trodden. He steals from the rich to give to the power. He fights against the corrupt authorities to bring about justice. In this way, Robin Hood is a very much a Jesus-type. He is a saviour who puts himself in danger and breaks the law for the greater good.

Sherlock Holmes isn't terribly interested in justice. He wants to be right. He wants his knowledge to be vindicated and put to good use. He is a savant who puts himself in danger and breaks the law to prove his point. In this sense, Sherlock Holmes is an anti-hero, a deeply flawed crime fighter who has decided to play it on our side of the law. Moriarty, his intellectual equal, is simply the other side of the coin.

There is also an innate appeal to Robin Hood because he can do anything. No matter where he is, or whatever he does, he can dodge an arrow or a blade, slip out of manacles or solve any physical. Robin Hood is, in one sense, Christ-like in his omnipotence. Sherlock Holmes is Christ-like is his omniscience. There are no secrets from Sherlock Holmes. From the merest details, he knows everything about you. Such characters are compelling, albeit it rather scary. Knowledge is power. And Sherlock Holmes is very knowledgeable.

There is one character that I find more appealing than both of these characters, since he is almost an amalgamation of them. Benton Frasier. He's a mounty, who works at the Canadian Embassy in Chicago and is the hero of Due South which ran for about four series in the 1990s. Benton Frasier is a brilliant creation, being strong, athletic, good-looking - and good - and extremely intelligent. He is Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes. But his great strength is his flaw - he is a law-man, an honest mounty, and always operates within the constraints of the law, being not at liberty to bend it, much to the frustration of his red-blooded friend, the policeman Ray Vecchio. It's possible that this latest Sherlock Holmes adaptation will supercede Due South in my affections. Time will tell.

I've recently seen Up in the Air a couple of times. We watched it for a our church movie club on the recommendation of one of our regulars. I thoroughly recommend it.

It's the third film I've seen made by Jason Reitmann, who is on a bit of a winning streak for me. He is the man behind Juno and Thank You for Smoking, the latter being one of my favourite films of all time. I wrote very briefly about it here.

Up in the Air is in the same vein of films that are very easy to watch, smooth and polished, but don't present you with easy questions or facile answers. The film centres around George Cloony's character who spends his life in aeroplanes going from place to place firing people (on behalf of people who are too gutless to do it themselves). He also does some conference speaking and has a compelling talk about the advantages of living an unburdened life, and that people and possessions slow you down. He is the epitome of that himself - travelling light and living in a flat that's barely furnished. His only really goal is racking up 10 million airmiles and joining an exclusive club of seven people to do so.

What I enjoyed about the movie that his lifestyle was initially very attractive. He had no commitments beyond travelling. He was unburdened. His initial speech to a conference about his lifestyle includes the line 'it's exhilerating'. Sometimes, life is a burden and we just want to escape, get in a car and drive (hence the popularity of road movies) and get away from all of those people who depend on us and want things from us. (I work freelance and have a wife, two kids and a high rent to pay living in Fulham. Let's just say it resonated.)

But as he approaches his dream, his life begins to all fall apart in other ways. He has to go on the road (well, in the air) with a younger colleague who is something of a contradiction. She is proposing firing people by videophone, but is the one with the boyfriend and the big suitcase that she struggles to leave behind.

There are lots of very funny set-piece scenes, and some emotionally harrowing ones. These are guys who have to fire people, and many of them take it badly, and there is one scene in particular that I really find hard to watch. A 57-year-old man simply cries and cries and cries. There are absurd moments too and some big laughs, as well as some subtle jokes.

The message of the movie is clear - that we all needs friends, family and relationships. But it's not a neat message. And there is a point where the film decides it is not going to be a Richard Curtis-style romantic comedy. I'm not going to spoil it (I haven't already, have I?) but the film leaves us with more questions than answers and that is a good film, in my opinion.

As you can probably tell, this blog is slightly running out of steam. There. I've said it.

I'm not running out of steam personally, I hasten to add. Quite the opposite. My head still buzzes with concepts, ideas, scripture and culture and how they all fit together. It's just the tricky business of living life leaves me little time to write anything worth reading. Work has never been busier, which is a wonderful blessing, and my family is swelling - those two daughters are not going to raise themselves. I'd rather be there doing puzzles with them, reading them stories - and writing them stories too - than be sitting here tapping away (no offence).

So I think I'll stop (for the forseeable) when I get to Blog Post 500. Hopefully the six remaining posts will be good ones, and I hope to reflect a little on what I believed when I started blogging, and what I believe now. It's sort of the same, but a little bit different...

I often dip into Heresy Corner for some interesting and provokative views that are always thought through. Here's a more tongue-in-cheek one that appealled to me (the joke, not the idea).

I'm a week behind on watching Rev, BBC2's comedy about a vicar in London. I reviewed the first episode over at sitcomgeek here from a comedy perspective. Episode 2 is worth considering from an evangelical perspective. And it's well worth watching over on iPlayer. At the time of writing, it's still available here.

This episode was probably more close to home than the first since the charismatic/evangelical church in question - arbitrarily based in Fulham where I live - is an interesting conflation of two slightly separate theological strands that I am familiar with. St James, Fulham had a charismatic (with a small 'c') vicar played brilliantly by Darren Boyd (who isn't on TV anywhere near enough for my money) - who was well aware of the power that he had and the wealth of his congregation. This character does remind us that Evangelicalism - Charismatic, Conservative or Reformed - can appear too impressed on one particular leader. The show pleasingly resisted cheap shots by implying the vicar was corrupt or creepy, but there was a ring of truth to much of that character.

What was most interesting to me was how Evangelicalism of all forms can look like to outsiders. It can look like a 'show'. It can look faddish, vacuous and simplistic - and too business-like. The church I attend (in Fulham) does not fit into the mold of St James, Fulham, I'm pleased to say, but the alienation of those who see things very differently is worth considering.

There are lots of other things that can be said, but that's enough for now. It's pleasing to see the writers and creators of the show have done their homework and taken advice so that the arrows are landing much nearer the target than they otherwise might. I'm going to keep watching.

The Onion is always worth a look. Here is one of their more recent pieces of spoof video news that may amuse regular readers of this blog:

Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming