Critic Cal

"The Mating Game Has Evolved", proclaimed the bottle of shower gel that I'd scraped from the bottom of our where-did-this-even-come-from? toiletries barrel on my hurried way out of the house. "Unleash The Chaos With Lynx Attract For Her – A Fragrance So Irresistible It Will Drive Guys Wild." Chaos did not ensue. Much as I deplore false advertising, I was, on balance, relieved. Still, it got me pondering their promotional premise: hooking up is a unisex sport now. Women are no less free to pursue numerous casual sexual encounters than men. To which I say: yes to equality! and great if we're really (really?!) gonna lay off with the misogynistic shaming ... All the same ... I dunno. Two things: Firstly, "evolved" strikes me as an ironic word to describe a drift towards instinct-led sexual ethics. Isn't, like, the human ability to reason against our immediate animal appetites in part why we fancy ourselves a somehow higher form of life tha

The last thing  I wrote on here was about Kingdom life being contagious, stronger than death, more aggressive than corruption and decay. Nowhere do I see this more joyously evidenced than in the book of Acts – the sequel to Luke's account of Jesus' life, about the church in its earliest days. Jesus' followers are rapidly growing in number ; some of their most fervent opponents are joining them ; they are finding new ways of living in loving community ; they are witnessing miracles of healing and resurrection and they are catching themselves doing things they 'shouldn't' be able to do, like walking out of locked prisons and communicating in languages they have never learned. It's as exciting a read as any adventure novel, and it provides a (for me) really helpful bridge between the events of the gospels and the theology of the letters. But there's a handful of episodes in there which are a bit 'gulp'. One in particular stands out; it