God

So, as you'll know, I love Mr Deity. But this episode in particular, Mr Deity and the Book, I found both hilarious and poignant.

After studying Advanced Workshop, and in partiular my essay on Joshua and Ricoeur's hermeneutics of suspicion and retrieval, I've been reinvigorated in my search to rediscover the Bible after being wounded by faith, life and the text. Mr Deity indicates many of the themes that I find myself wrestling with, and offers are somewhat anarchic solution - 'Let's Job the guy'. Not necessarily the non-violent path I would have preferred, but probably more humourous, let's face it.

I've been watching Mr Deity for a couple of months now and thought it was about time I shared it here, if you've not seen Mr Deity already.

I came in on episode 3, Mr Deity and the Light, which is just hilarious. But the first episode is great, and obviously, being episode 1, is the place to start.

As I understand it Brian Dalton, the writer and director of Mr Deity who also plays Mr Deity himself, wrote the first episode as a personal response to the Asian tsunami of Christmas 2004. And then, realising that he'd hit on a cracking theme, carried on making episodes of Mr Deity. I've just watched episode 9, Mr Deity and the Book, through the Mr Deity podcast feed in iTunes (or you may like to go to the podcast RSS feed), but it's not available on YouTube yet so I can't put it in here.

Anyway, here is Mr Deity episode 1, Mr Deity and the Evil.

Today is the sixth installment of my Advanced Workshop essay comparing New Age spirituality and Christianity.

Today I start looking at the specific understanding of the nature of reality within the Aquarian vision, using critque it from Christian understanding of the Kingdom of God. Today's post specifically examines the nature of God and the self within the Aquarian approach.

I you're just entering at this point, you may like to read for your yourself the previous posts of the essay, which you can do by selecting the links on the right of this page.

Please leave your comments or reflections - it's nice for me to know there's someone out there!

A new 3-part series is beginning on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow morning, which looks like it might be a fascinating series to listen to. 'Humphrys in Search of God' is broadcast on Tuesday 31 October, a week later on 6 November and third programme on 13 November at 9am.

From the programme website...

John Humphrys as you've never heard him before - talking with religious leaders about his unfulfilled desire to believe in God.

How is faith possible in a world of suffering, much of it arguably caused by religion or religious extremism and to which God seems to turn a blind eye? Is there a place for religion in an age dominated by science?

His guests are the Rt Rev Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury; Professor Tariq Ramadan, Muslim academic and author; and Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi.