Listen / Read
If only we had done away with social policy, and made a familiarity with the Bible the only requirement for entry into public office and the civil service, then everything – absolutely everything – would be just fine right now. Children wouldn’t get abused and killed, the economy wouldn’t be crashing, and the climate wouldn’t be changing either. The Biblical prophets really had social, economic and environmental policy nailed. I really don’t know why anybody bothers writing any new books, they’re clearly just confusing people.
I hope Gordon Brown was listening this morning, because he clearly hasn’t been reading his Bible. And when theologian Jim Wallis said that he was “listening to the message of the Biblical prophets“, well, clearly, he must have been mistaken. And when Rev Joel Edwards said that Alastair Darling was a modern day Jeremiah, well, clearly, he must have been mistaken too.
However religious and prophetic these men might seem to religiously trained observers, it’s obvious that they’re just not trying hard enough. They probably need to stop spending so much time going to meetings and making decisions and all that malarkey, and focus instead on reading their Bible and prophesying. In fact, they should both quit politics altogether and while away their days reading the Bible and writing Christian songbooks. Look at all the songbooks John Bell has written:
- We Walk His Way: Shorter Songs For Worship
- The Singing Thing Too: Enabling Congregations To Sing
- I Will Not Sing Alone: Songs For The Seasons Of Love
- Sing Away the Bling: Songs for a Simpler Life
- One Is the Body: Songs of Unity and Diversity
- The Singing Thing: A Case for Congregational Song
- There Is One Among Us: Shorter Songs for Worship
- Songs not Bongs: Getting High on Christ
- The Courage to Say No: Twenty-three Songs for Lent and Easter
- Come All You People: Shorter Songs for Worship from the Iona Community
- Innkeepers and Light Sleepers: Seventeen New Songs for Christmas
- Songs for Hard-Ons: Singing Temptation Away
- Songs of the Incarnation
Way to make the world a better place, John. Good job. You see, by writing Christian songbooks, John Bell is avoiding that mistake, made by writers of factual prose, of confusing people with superfluous, non-Biblical, non-rhyming knowledge. The idea is simple: abolish debates in parliament and policy meetings at social services departments, and just have a big sing-along instead. After the sing-along, which I suppose you could call a hymn service, everyone will tootle off to work, all happy and rejuvenated with lyrical, prophetical, Biblical wisdom, and later that day children will stop being abused and dying, the economy will stop crashing, and the climate will stop changing.
Isn’t it simple when you don’t think about it?