Why All Police Officers Should be Replaced By Dogs

Don't make us get dogs to do our jobs!

So this morning at about 5:00 am I was laying in bed and there is some noise outside, people talking. Knowing that this is a theological college and everyone should be in bed I looked out the window to check it out, and sure enough there were these two guys trying to steal my friends motorcycle! Unbelievable! So I tried to dial 911, but unfortunately that doesn't work here (it is 999, I guess), so I found another student here (who was in the Army) and got him to call while I went downstairs to scare them off (or something, I don't know what I was thinking, it was too silly and too early). When I got outside they had turned on the bike, but had moved a house down and were working on stealing a car. So my friend and I walked over to them (again, not sure why), came up the the car and my friend (Nick Stott) says "Bad night? It just got a lot worse." Perfect. So this guy is getting out of the drivers seat when the first police unit shows up. Now things get interesting. He makes a dash for it, I got after him running down the street. There are two police officers, a woman and a man. They start shouting and the guy catches up to me and grabs me while I am running after the other guy. Now I know I must have looked like I was fleeing the scene, but seriously? Instead of us catching the criminal, he has me pinned and is asking me all sorts of questions while the woman has given up on catching the other guy.

Interestingly enough my friend back at the car doesn't know the cops have come and just assumes I went after the guy, so after holding the second man (there were three total) for a minute he lets him go assuming the police won't show up. Then when he sees they are there he starts chasing after the guy he released but is stopped...you guessed it...by a woman weilding a baton. I am sorry I missed out on that fun, I was detained elsewhere. So all three guys got away and we were pretty ticked, although by now about fifteen police officers had shown up (apparently 5:00 am is a pretty dull time in Oxford). So they staked out the area and called in the K-9 unit (for what?) to help. I was pretty sceptical at this point and cold.

I guess they can fix cars too!

But the dog unit arrived and started going into the garden area of Wycliffe and I was thinking "this is exactly why this is useless, there is no way the guy stayed this close." Then I hear some noise and the police officer yelling "Get out of there" and they actually caught one of the guys! The just down the road the third guy was "waiting" for a ride at the bus stop, we identified him and off he went too! Two out of three, not bad Oxford Police Force! Another hour and a half was spent filling out witness forms and drinking tea. Awesome!

So here are some reflections on the event:

1. K-9 units do much better work than average police officers, we should replace the entire force.
2. Women shouldn't be on duty officers. The guy that got away (although they may have picked him up later) was definitely catchable except that the woman couldn't keep up with him and the other officer and I were having our fun.
3. We should cut the Gospel writers more slack on inconsistences in the Scriptures of eyewitness accounts. Nick and I were both given our statements and I was comparing the details of our stories, which were quite different (I said one guy was 5'10'' and he said 5'0' - no difference there!) and we definitely saw the same thing! So I think the resurrection narratives look pretty good in my book.
4. British people drink tons of tea.

And two final comments to conclude the episode:

1. When the officer asked me for "just facts" I immeadiately thought of telling him that there are no such things, but I decided to accept the rules of the language game we were playing and everything went along fine. Silly modernist police force! That's for you Charles.

2. After the dog had been loaded back into the police car after the successful catch, the trainer said "Good work you bitch." Sounded weird, but I mean, I guess he is right. Still kind of weird though. But at least the dog didn't try and arrest us (again - superiority of police dogs to police officers).

Crazy story, eh?

Can 10 Pence Buy Happiness?

Yes! At least for today. I have been out riding around Oxford for the last two hours and it has been pretty dark and dreary this afternoon. I guess it was about time for it to start looking like England, but the sun has been great too. So I was in some more downscale areas of Oxford on my bike, avoiding cars and trying to figure out which side of the road to ride on and was getting a little bit pessimistic. I guess I really love the suburbs of America, but being in the less afluent areas of town made me kind of depressed - I was wondering if I would be called to serve in an area like this and if I could enjoy it there. I know it is a bit shallow, but run down houses and neighbourhoods are not totally my thing, and who knows where I will be ministering when I leave here? So everything was a bit blue.

Then I went to the post office, which is totally different than the States because they are more like local market stores. And me prefered one is on a street close to Wycliffe called North Parade (see below, the store is on the right).

The great part about this post office is that it feels more like an olde tymme corner store. There is always the same middle age friendly man working at the counter, really helpful and pleasant. Plus they have a ton of candy, including a lot of gummi ones you can buy individually or put a few in a bag. I went for a cola bottle (10 p) and imagined it was a nice summer day at the beach in Canada where I spent a bit of my childhood. Great. I guess I just needed to appreciate the little things more and know that no matter where I end up, there will always be something to cheer me up. Even for 10 p.

P.S. If you found this post vacuous, look out for an upcoming one on cessation of tongues. Big issue here!

Covenant vs. Law/Gospel: Why Calvin Rocks and Luther Doesn't

I have been thinking about this Covenant hermeneutic vs. the Law/Gospel hermeneutic due to some discussions with a fellow ordinand here from the States (check out John Zahl's blog for the most distrubing song ever!) who is totally committed to Luther's method of sundering the Bible into Law and Gospel. Rough and ready definition of both:

"Have you accepted me into your heart yet?"

Covenant Theology: the Bible is made up of five covenants which hold the whole story together. First covenant to Adam and Eve, then after fall there is the Noahic covenant for stability (no more total death!), the Abrahamic covenant for setting up a nation and people of God, the Mosaic covenant giving these people a divine law and blessings with a land, the Davidic covenant giving this nation a king (royal covenant) and then finally the New Covenant establishing God's rule through his own kingship and redemption in Jesus Christ.

"How can I marry a nun..."

Law/Gospel: the Bible is made up of the two parts, the Old Testament (or most of it) is a preperation for Jesus Christ, the Law condemns people of their sin and forces them to see the need for a mediator in Christ. The Law forcefully proves to everyone that they can't earn God's favour by works, they need grace. Then the New Testament brings the good news in Jesus and he fulfills everything and releases people from that horrible and condemning Law. Free at last!

So here are three problems I find with Law/Gospel:
1. If the Law was supposed to point everyone to a Christ figure, how is it that no one figured this step out? I mean, don't you think after more than 2,000 years of works righteousness someone would have said "We need something totally different?"
2. More importantly, does anyone really think God had the old covenant around for such a long time just to show everyone they couldn't fulfill it? I mean, was he waiting around to see if someone might actually pull it off, then one day decided to give it a go himself?
3. So now that Christ abolished the Law, does that mean I can do whatever the heck I want? I mean, it is all fuliflled right? Nothing left but historical information, right? "Sin boldly?"

So the whole Law/Gospel thing just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. I think it makes the Bible too discontinuous, too ridiculous, and certainly doesn't much sense of the concept of Messiah as King. What is Jesus ruling over? He abolished his kingdom on the cross, right? Covenant Theology seems to hold everything together so much better, the Bible is the working out of God's intention to rule the earth as he does the heavens (read the first part of the Lord's prayer again). I think it is great to be free from any burden of the Law for salvation, but it seems that the whole idea of salvation by works is being questioned by Wright and others anyways. I mean, what part of works was the covenant of Abraham? The Old Testament is screaming grace the whole time, not condemnation. I think there is far too much continuity between Jesus and the Old Testament to say he did something so radical as Luther suggested. Think about it.

Irony vs. Sarcasm: the humour of the Brits

I wasn't aware that there was a real difference between sarcasm and irony, but over the last week it has become apparent to me and I will need to work on my irony skills if I want anything but strange looks. Example:

I am on a committee to 1) redecorate our student common room and 2) possibly add a bar to it. I find this rather interesting since I am 1) colour blind and 2) don't drink, but be that as it may, someone had to volunteer for this thing. Besides, who else would suggest pink as a theme colour? Also it should be noted that the committee is made up of three men. We are off to a good start. So I figured we should bring a woman on board who might be good at this sort of thing, or at least have a sense for matching colours. As another background insight we had just finished a student meeting setting up this committee and it was the most labourious process of motions and ratification, a process that needs to be done twice even if everyone is in agreement! Very interesting systems they have over here.

So I told one of the other members of the committee that I had invited this female student to join us and his response was "well, we will probably have to go through a search process and then have the requiste votes in the next two meetings before establishing her as a offficial or non-official member." I kind of looked at him funny and said "I don't think we need to do that, do we?" At this point he made it clear it was a joke, which I was confused about. Especially since he deadpanned it. So I guess that is British irony.

Now my main style of humour is either sarcasm or the non sequitur. The non sequitur works fine because no one is supposed to understand what is going on, but my sarcasm is almost completely useless here. An example:

That same evening we went out to a pub and were talking about evangelism and such. I forget how this came up but something about America's liberation of countries and the Gospel, and I said that deomocracy and the Gospel are two words for the same thing, emphasising that you can't have Jesus in Iraq unless we force them into a democratic government with our superior military strength (I think I cited the tank called "the new testament"). God bless George Bush! All I got was strange and uncomfortable looks, like they thought I actually believed that Bush's main motivation for Iraq was spreading the message of Christ.

So it has been a struggle for me here with my humour because I am always explaining my statements and reassuring people that I am using sarcasm, which I always thought was the same as irony, but apparently is quite different. I guess I am kind of disappointed because I really prefer sarcasm to irony, but then again the phoenix is always riding, isn't it?

As a side note, I just finished a postmodernism essay (which was fragmentary, unlegitimized and definitely a discourse of power) but found out I wrote it all in vain. Apparently there is an amazing site called the "Postmodern Essay Generator"(http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/) which immeadiately cranks out postmodern essays when you click on it. My last two essay titles were "The Collapse of Discourse: Cultural posttextual theory and the subcultural paradigm of expression" and "Neodialectic theory and subcapitalist appropriation." Awesome.

Oxford Union Debate: Me vs. Gene Robinson.

And I won! Well actually, not totally, but check this out. We had a debate at the Oxford Union tonight, the foremost debate society in Europe with Gene Robinson and our ethics tutor here, Andrew Goddard, plus four other speakers. Any member of the university has a shot at participating in the debate, so after four of the six speakers made their cases, the floor was opened to six Union members, three for and three against. The resolution was "This House does not think a homosexual lifestyle should bar a person from becoming a bishop." At the start of the debate the president of the Union mentioned that the best speaker from each side would be rewarded with all this cool stuff, plus bragging rights, but I wasn't really listening because I definitely wasn't going to get up in front of 1,000 people and Gene Robinson and make a case! Not on my first time in the Union!
So the two speakers on the opposition side (against Gene) were making irrelevant arguments and we were looking pretty bad, so I figured "Why not give it a go." So I raised my hand, got selected by the president, got in front of this hall (see below) and gave the final speak before Gene and the opposing bishop spoke.

Imagine this thing full! Scary!

And I was selected as the best speaker! Totally awesome! So that was pretty cool, and I hope this gift package contains bath soaps and other such items. I will let you know when I get it. Also tomorrow I will post the results of the debate, we might have pulled it out. Anyways, just thought I would share the news. Awesome! I also got to shake Gene Robinson's hand and tell him that even though I don't agree with his lifestyle I love him as a brother in Christ. And that is true.