What is in Kelvin's Head?

How did I do with last year’s predictions?

31/12/2025
Here’s a run down of how I did at last year’s predictions.
- Good results for Nigel Farage following the English local elections in May. Terrible results for Conservative Party.
Exactly what happened. YES
- No progress towards the marriage of same-sex couples in the Church of England
Exactly what happened. Indeed, I think things may have gone into reverse. YES
- Turbulent year for WordPress, which powers about half of the internet.
The year began with Automattic dramatically cutting its contribution to development leading to stagnation in development and much acrimony. Subsequently restored. Deep divisions remain about Gutenberg. I’m claiming this as a YES.
- 2025 will be the hottest year on record.
Final figures yet to be calibrated but all reports indicate that this, unfortunately is a YES.
- No trade deal for UK with US. Increasing talk of re-aligning economy closer to EU.
Well, there was a trade deal in May called the Economic Prosperity Deal but it doesn’t seem to much and some of the basics have already been reversed. I suppose I have to be honest and say I didn’t get this quite right so it is a NO. But…
- Ceasefire in Russia-Ukraine war but no long term solution.
Hard to assess this one. No long term solution, certainly. There have been a series of ceasefires proposed but none seems really to have been fully implemented. Partial YES.
- “Assisted Dying” aka doctor assisted suicide becomes legal in at least one of the jurisdictions of the British Isles.
I have to put this down as a NO as it completed its parliamentary journey in the Isle of Man but hasn’t received Royal Assent yet, so not technically legal.
- Turbulent year for economy but stock market higher at end of year than beginning. (FTSE currently at 8,173)
Stock market at 9,931 today and there was quite a lot of volatility in the first part of the year. So this one is a YES.
- There will be fewer Commonwealth Realms (ie countries which share the monarchy) by the end of 2025 than there are now.
This one is a NO though there has been significant progress in that direction in Jamaica and moves that way in Grenada.
- Philip Mountstephen.
Well, I was pushing Philip Mounstephen’s name as he appeared to be the only senior bishop in the C of E who actually believed the [absurd] position of the C of E bishops on same-sex relationships. But it is a NO – nothing significant to report.

So – five and a half out of ten this year. Not as good as some years. A couple of near misses.
new year, predictions. 2025

37 responses to “Biblical role models for marriage – any suggestions?”

Augur Pearce

23/10/2013

I thought the definitive answer had been given by Mrs Betty Bowers? – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw

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Robin

23/10/2013

David and Jonathan? Ruth and Naomi? At least they provide us with Scriptural passages that would grace a wedding service!

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1. Allan Ronald
  
  23/10/2013
  
  I was just about to give them a shout out myself. Admirable stories of love uncluttered by the dysfunctional horrorshow stuff attending upon some of the previous suggestions.
  
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2. Kelvin
  
  23/10/2013
  
  Well, David and Jonathan were each married to someone else and Naomi, as Ruth’s mother in law does offer her useful tips on how to seduce her kinsman Boaz. (Go sleep with him on the threshing floor and uncover his “feet”).
  
  Lovely as some of the ideas are around David and Jonathan and around Ruth and Naomi, I do struggle a bit to think that they are good examples of married coupledom.
  
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Rosemary Hannah

23/10/2013

No, especially as the clever money is on David engineering Jonathan’s death …

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Allan Ronald

23/10/2013

Well, that’s me telt.

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Nick Brindley

23/10/2013

If it’s difficult to find what you’re looking for in the Bible doesn’t that rather suggest:
1) you’re trying to fit the Bible to your world-view rather than the reverse;
2) that, therefore, a non-Biblical culture is dominating your Christian discipleship
3) that it may be worth trying the reverse procedure – rather than saying “how does the Bible answer my question that I bring to it?” saying “what does the Bible have to say to me, ask me, about how I conduct my life?”

My reading (for what it’s worth) is that neither the Old nor the New Testament, taken as wholes, are particularly positive about “marriage”. They regard this institution as full of risk and danger, of suffering and of pitfalls (like the rest of human life). Indeed the New Testament promises the end of marriage (Matthew 22:30//Mark 12:25 – when the dead rise they will neither marry nor be given in marriage)

http://loveswork.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/why-are-there-two-distinct-teachings-about-marriage-in-the-new-testament/

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1. Kelvin Holdsworth
  
  23/10/2013
  
  No, Nick. I don’t think that because one can’t find something in the bible it suggests that I’m trying to fit the Bible to my world view.
  
  Nor does it suggest that a non-Biblical culture is dominating my Christian discipleship.
  
  I take the bible more seriously than to think anyone could live in a “Biblical culture”
  
  So far as I can see, your comment was more about your world view than mine.
  
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  1. Nick Brindley
    
    24/10/2013
    
    So why can’t you find what you’re looking for? If you’ve searched the texts for something (in this case positive role models of marriage) and failed to find it, what does this mean?
    
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  2. Nick Brindley
    
    24/10/2013
    
    I’m also puzzled about your rejection of the possibility of a “Biblical culture” (a phrase I didn’t and wouldn’t use, but never mind). What is the relationship between the Kingdom of God and culture, do you think? It rather seems to me that the coming of the Kingdom for which we pray would necessarily involve the coming into line of “culture” with the will of God, which in the meantime is revealed to us, as best we can find it, through the Word of God in the Old and New Testaments, discerned under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (to use my denomination’s formula).
    
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    1. Kelvin
      
      24/10/2013
      
      I’m far from certain that God has will. Most people who want to tell me what the will of God is seem to be trying to make me change to suit themselves.
      
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      1. Nick Brindley
        
        24/10/2013
        
        “Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven” – I’m presuming you, like me, say this reasonably often (possibly in more contemporary English). What does this mean, if it doesn’t mean that God has some “will” for us and for all creation? (I would stress that I am not claiming to know what that will is nor whether anything in particular is or is not in line with it, just that I’m not sure what discipleship could be if it weren’t the attempt to discern and align to God’s will).
      2. Kelvin
        
        24/10/2013
        
        I think that God’s will is for our good.
      3. Nick Brindley
        
        24/10/2013
        
        It seems improbable to me that the prayer “your will be done” simply means “our good be done”. I simply can’t hear it as not meaning that God has some intentions (opaque to us) and we are praying that those intentions be realised. I don’t doubt, however, that those intentions, that will, are for our good.
Stephen Clark

25/10/2013

Having read, as I do the first third of the Holy Bible in the last three months….I am struck by the fact that we don’t actually seem to see anything that is a ‘good example’ of monogamous marriage. Many/most men are polygamous and the prevalence of the concubine is almost universal.
The ‘models’ in particular Mary and Joseph are not drawn from Scripture it would seem but from tradition, nothing wrong with that. But a lot of it is fanciful don’t you think.
The received wisdom nowadays that Mary was most likely in her early to mid teens and Joseph probably 30+ (possibly much older) would raise all sorts of questions and, indeed, eyebrows in your average Church

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