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Six-month-old babies' minds can show signs of future criminal activity, according to an American scientist.
Psychologist Dr Adrian Raine said it might soon be possible to identify future criminals in the first few years of their life.
Apart from the ethical questions about such predictive profiling (it's the plot of the film Minority Report in real life), what struck me was a quotation from Dr Raine in today's Scottish Daily Record:"Seeds of sin are sown early in life."
So according to this scientist, you'll soon be able to tell that a particular baby is likely to sin in a particularly anti-social way later in life. Or, to put it another way, the "seeds" of an area sin are in the helpless baby, years before they actually commit that kind of sin.
But how does he know that the seeds are sown "early in life"? What happens to the baby between being born and being six months old that sows those seeds? Is it how quickly their nappy is changed? Or how much TV they're sat in front of? Or how many rusks they chew on?
Or is it that they're born with the seeds of sin already in them? Could it be true of each person that, as King David put it: "I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51 v 5)? That's part of the doctrine known as "original sin": that as humans we sin because we're sinful, rather than that we're sinful because we sin.
For decades, the mainstream view has been that children are born good, and then slowly corrupted and made evil. Our sin is society's fault, or someone else's fault: it's not our fault. Dr Raine is only one scientist, of course, and his views are by no means widely accepted. But perhaps there's a hint here that in this area, what the scientific community says is catching up with what God's word has been saying for millennia. Not that you'll read about that in any newspaper!
This year’s London Men's Convention theme exhorts us to be Faithful to God at work, home, church and in mission, whatever the cost. Convention speakers include:
With solo music from Nathan Tasker and the spine-tingling experience of praising the Lord in a choir of 4000 at the Royal Albert Hall, this will be a convention not to miss. More details from the Christian conventions website or book tickets from the Royal Albert Hall.
“It melts away fears and worries, and puts in their place a sense of security, warmth and calm. This can be a life-changing experience.”
That’s what drunkenness offers, as pointed out by this Telegraph article which picks up on the actor Charlie Sheen’s struggle with the bottle.
And let’s be honest: that’s what drunkenness delivers for many people.
Of course, there’s a downside. Andrew Brown continues: “life for heavy boozers tends to be punctuated with agonizing catastrophes, messes that need to be cleared up, phone calls, pleas for forgiveness.”
But still, alcohol offers us a chance to be the "me that I want to be". It gets rid of inhibitions and gives the confidence to be "yourself".
I wonder if that’s why the traditional line churches (and particularly youth groups) give doesn’t work for people who struggle with drunkenness, as I did for years. I regularly heard: “Don’t get drunk. It’s not good. God doesn’t like it”. And yet the thing is: in many ways, drunkenness is good. And in many ways, I like it!
So this article got me thinking about how I need to remember, and I need to encourage others to remember, the sentence which follows Paul’s famous “no” to getting drunk in Ephesians 5 v 18:
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery…
“Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”
Why is the answer to the temptation of drunkenness to look at the Spirit? Because the Spirit “melts away fears and worries, and puts in their place a sense of security, warmth, and calm.”
To put it another way, people filled with the Spirit, who work to let the Spirit work in them, “are being transformed into [Christ’s] likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from … the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3 v 18).
The Spirit offers us the ability to become the me that I want to be: a Christ-like me. And there’s no downside, no morning after, no hangover. There's no need to get drunk because for the Christian, there is something better than the good things alcohol offers. I wonder if that’s why Paul finishes Ephesians 5 v 18 as he does.
ITV's Daybreak had a revealing piece this morning on Michael Carroll, who won over ÂŁ9 million on the National Lottery in 2002, spent it all, and found he was miserable and suspicious.
Amazing to find at the end that he still buys lottery tickets: I’m trying to come up with an answer as to what’s going on in his mind that leads him to chase an idol he’s discovered is worthless.
Maybe Tim Keller’s insight in Counterfeit Gods sheds some light. He's talking about a famous US millionaire and writes: “[he] knew money was an idol in his heart, but he didn’t know how to root it out. It can’t be removed, only replaced. It must be supplanted by the one who, though rich, became poor, so that we might truly be rich.
“When you see Jesus dying to make you his treasure, that will make him yours.”
Lurpak, the spreadable people, have just released this billboard ad. There's a huge one on Waterloo station that thousands walk past each day.
We've blanked out the ending, and my question is: if you could complete the sentence, and have thousands read it daily, what bubble of false hope would you like to burst?
I'd love to make first prize being able to use a large tub of paint to change the wording on the Waterloo station ad, but that'd probably get me into trouble…
PS You can find where Lurpak say salvation can't be found here and if you understand what they're talking about, please do let us know because we're slightly confused!
"A law which will end up hauling vicars before courts."
Rod Thomas, chair of the evangelical group Reform, was on Radio 4's Today programme in a short debate about the proposed legislation making religious buildings available for same-sex civil partnerships.
It's well worth listening to the points he made here.
A great line from the new blockbuster western True Grit, out in UK cinemas this week:
“You must pay for everything in this world, for there is nothing free—except the grace of God.”
More than 60 homes and 4,000 acres of land in western Australia have been destroyed by bushfires.
You can read the full story here—what’s notable is what caused such widespread devastation:
“The fire … started when sparks from a power tool accidentally ignited grass in a back garden.” (Not sure they needed to include the word “accidentally” in that sentence!)
It’s that kind of experience James must have been thinking of when he used it as an illustration for something equally dangerous:
“Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue is also a fire … it corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3 v 5-6).
Millions will hear the king speak this week in cinemas—but one man really did hear the king speak.
A 94-year-old retired policeman, he heard King George VI through a window, practicing his Christmas speech for the following morning over and over again.
How exciting to be able to listen to an actual eye (and ear) witness of the King, sixty years later! Unsurprisingly, the media are full of it, like here.
Course, many of us did that this morning anyway - just we were listening to eyewitnesses of the King of kings.
“We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." (Acts 10:39-40)
Which makes the prospect of a sermon on Sunday seem all the more exciting!
