• HIV and AIDS in Scotland in 2014

    Check this video:

    marion chatterley #1.movie from Kelvin Holdsworth on Vimeo.

    It is World AIDS Day next week. To mark that date this year, I’ve recorded a number of conversations with Marion Chatterley in connection with her work as Chaplain to people with HIV and Hep C in Scotland.

    Here are some of the things that Marion and I touched on this conversation:

    • Does it matter if you become HIV+ when they’ve got medicines that can keep it under control?
    • What stigma means in Scotland today
    • How young gay men are putting themselves at unnecessary risk
    • Dating apps
    • Why the church needs to talk about healthy relationships

    There will be more later in the week. Comments and questions welcome below.

One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”

  1. Tim Avatar

    As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.

    One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
    It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
    But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).

    In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.

    Oofft.

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