I had a recent short-lived interaction with Adobe Systems over their fantastic Ideas software for the iPad. I documented it in the following journal/comic (this may not make a huge amount of sense so feel free to skip it):

Thanks so much for the info. I love that you’re using Ideas for such a robust project. In an effort to respect our customers world-views/beliefs (whatever they may be), we have a company-wide policy to avoid religious, political or sexual content. While we’re always on the lookout for designers and projects to feature on Design Center, because your project is of a religious nature it’s not something we’ll be able to feature. If there is some other project you’d like us to consider I’d be happy to take a look.Best Regards

The software is called IDEAS. It is about expressing IDEAS. I hope that you are seeing the amusing irony of this corporate policy.

Christians and Tolerance

A couple of years ago I had the privilege of interviewing a personal hero, Patrick Sookhdeo, for a taught unit on how Christianity should relate to other faiths and worldviews. His responses were among the best I have heard on this subject. He spoke about how ideally a Christian needs to practice three things when it comes to beliefs that are different to their own:

• We should be scholarly in our understanding - to be able to intelligently grasp their views from within their own tradition
• There is a distinction between beliefs and believers - regardless of what they believe, they still deserve compassion as people
• Drawing close in care and compassion still doesn’t change the fact that a Christian must remain true to Jesus Christ (John 14:6)

The point is that if a Christian is being called to the very highest standards of love for others, then seriously engaging with their differences while embracing them in compassion is an unavoidable duty for every believer. Contrast this with Vanilla Corporate philosophy.

1Peter 1:22:

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.

Tags: Tolerance

Another short moving image version of illustrations I produced last year.

“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
1Peter 1v24-25

Tags: Crisis, Death, Evangelism, Father, Sin, Wisdom, Youth/Age, thelongwalkhomeblog

Okay so I cheated a little and borrowed from my work on Kath's blog. I did have this other idea which I may yet use but in the end when the time pressure got too much I just did the necessary thing. I really like this one.

Here is 1 Peter 1.

Tags: Faith, Truth/Lies, Crisis, Patience, Father, Death

Psalm 36:8,9, Romans 11:33 and 1Peter 2:2.

There is a ton of stuff you can digest online - much of it is pretty interesting. You can explore what experts in a variety of fields are thinking and doing minute by minute. The trouble for this Christian was that he ended up listening more to what editors,writers and other artists were saying and less to what his Saviour has said.

In the end, enough is enough. You have to acknowledge that while grazing the surface has some value, the treasures that God has freely given us should be mined regularly - there are abundant riches that will surprise, astonish and ultimately nurture/nourish.

Thanks for the textual assistance: JT, DF, RL, TW.

Tags: Faith, Grace, Holiness, Jesus, Listening, NT, OT, Patience, Prayer, Redemption, Repentance, Sin, Thankyou, Truth/Lies, Wisdom

There isn't a text for this particular piece because it is something that is written across the whole Bible.

This was really difficult to do because the story was horrible. I think that one of the unnerving aspects to the news was that the events had happened so long ago, and that there are probably kids going through some similar evil right now. I guess that the sense of powerlessness in the face of such cruelty is the big idea here.

The cartoon is really about the letter 'P'. The use of the letter is in itself interesting because it means that the child is impersonal to the wider public. In the news reporting at the time, the word 'punchbag' was used many times to describe some of the cruelty that he went through.

The cartoon aims at a few things:
1. The contrast between the word Punchbag and Precious - that the storyline of the Bible is all about God expressing our worth in the highest most glorious terms.
2. That the suffering and loneliness of the child was something that Jesus entered into willingly.
3. That the christian worldview holds great hope for this child - who knows? maybe in the darkest hour Jesus comforted him, and now after such a short and miserable life there is something better beyond the grave.

I deliberately placed the panels in this order to reflect the idea that Jesus was aware of what would be coming when he suffered. I also repeated the same punching torturer in both panels to give a sense of the same experience being delivered to both.

The amazing thing about the Bible story is that God has entered such a bleak landscape with such incredible passion and depth.

Tags: Sin, Redemption, Jesus, Judge

The Bible epilogue text can be found here (you will need to scroll down to find the exact part).

There is a bit of a joke here that is more about the Boney M song, although it also does twist the sense of Psalm 137. The thing that got me thinking here was ho the impending credit doom really cuts away one of the most cherished idols of the modern age: materialism is particularly strife in the UK and if there was ever an evidence of people ignoring God then this must surely be it.

I was originally going to use some of the stuff in James about wealth but it felt too much like a distortion of the argument. The Peter text provides a better general response I think.

There are lots of sketchbook notes that I will hopefully upload at some point, but for now please take my word for it...

Tags: Consumerism, Credit Crunch, Storms, Crisis

The Bible epilogue text can be found here (you may have to scroll down a bit to find the exact part...).

This one was related to the whole Madonna/celebrity adoption fiasco that hit the headlines. Can a celebrity bypass correct protocols and take a child from africa? Isn't it in fact a compassionate move to share their lives with those less fortunate? Is it right to remove a child from his/her home situation and place them in the ultra-consumerist setting of a celebrity home?

The debates are many, but I wanted to use this situation to look at how Jesus' mission is rather like this: he snatched us from slavery to the devil and brought freedom and blessed adoption. The really great bit is that he didn't bypass any of the necessary protocols - death on the cross and a mighty resurrection put paid to any arguments about the legitimacy of the move.

I enjoyed imagining the angelic celebrations...

Scott McCloud refers to how cartoonists should try to develop the interaction of text and image in their compositions. I tried to do this with this piece after really getting a kick out the Stockholm Syndrome piece two months previously. The three panel layout is something I am really pleased with on this, and I deliberately kept to a simple stick person-type display. This is how I tend to do stuff at school when I am using my white board to teach stuff, and I think that it probably makes a good impact in my strips.

The dedication is for one of our then-newly-joined friends at church. The great thing with a real christian church is that it goes way beyond the idea of pews and formality - it becomes a family in an organic and vibrant way that people often don't see.

Tags: Adoption, Jesus, Redemption, Sin, Death, Devil, Eyewitnesses, Crisis, Holiness, Wisdom

The Bible epilogue text can be found here (you may have to scroll down a bit to find the exact part...).

Terry Wogan earns a huge amount of money. I thought that this was well worth using because it raises the big question of 'who is worth that?'. The lovely thing about being a christian is that God places infinite value on us by giving His life for us on the cross. People with little or no self esteem can be cherished and cared for in the arms of God. Amazing.

I cheated a little here. The image comes from a set of three pictures I produced for the Brighton Festival Fringe.

Tim Bongers is the dedicatee. I did this specially for him and then the EN staff inadvertently chopped off the whole right hand side of the strip... it was made worse by me telling Tim to look for it. Sorry.

Tags: Work, Consumerism, Credit Crunch, Crisis, Hypocrisy, Wisdom, Redemption, Entertainment, BBC, Terry Wogan

The Bible epilogue text can be found here and here and here(you may have to scroll down a bit to find the exact part...).

Hurricane Katrina was horrific on all accounts. After some thought I picked up on a couple of points that seemed to be helpful: firstly when a disaster like this is about to strike you should just get out (which corresponds to the christian message to repent or turn from the way you currently live before God's judgement falls); and secondly, those who are in any position to help should help anyone and everyone regardless of their cultural situation. George Bush had been criticised for not caring about black people and I had wondered whether it was something that could be levelled at christians... are they selective about who they share the news of Jesus with?

Images of Bush, a card game I saw on the news and a satellite image of the hurricane.

I don't think that this one works very well. I took advice from Mike Tindall a few years back about using the epilogue text as an interactive element - to send people to the Bible to look up the words and try to work out the connections rather than lay it all out on a plate, but this one is just too abstract. Who know what I was talking about?

Tags: Storms