Equal

UN Declaration of Human Rights: Article 1-

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

I think the biggest problem in the world today is that we don't see all human beings as equal. I see this everywhere and unfortunately it seems as endemic in the world-wide church as outside of it.

Some examples-

Israel/Palestine
Over the past 2 years there have been 40 Palestinains killed for every 1 Israeli. Palestinian land is being constantly stolen and it's people live in an open-air prison. Where else in the world are so many people denied most of their basic human rights, only to have their problems sweeped under the carpet by the world's media? The status quo exists because of American Christian Zionism. The church around the world is indoctrinated to show unwavering support to the state of Israel (a secular state) no matter what wrongs they commit. This is despite the fact that there are many more Christian believers living in Palestine than in Israel.

Muslims
When we see a middle-eastern woman in a headscarf on the news mourning her loss do we feel the same symapathy as we do for a western woman? The Republican party's main offensive in the American presidential campaign is to try and make people think (wrongly) that Obama is muslim. I've heard people here say we should be praying for McCain to get in because Obama is a muslim and Sarah Palin is a Christian. Never mind the fact that Palin makes George Bush look like a bastion of intelligence and articulation (watch this).

Africa
Sometimes I feel an underlying cynicism or resignation when people talk about issues of poverty, AIDS etc in Africa. Like their problems can never be solved, or they should sort them out themselves, or there's no point because their governments are so corrupt. Do we really see the children in Africa who are dying in their millions as being equal to our own?

Others
Homeless, drunks, homosexuals, immigrants .......

I'm lovin it???

I was out in Belfast with some mates last night. After a great night we were walking home about 330am and decided to stop off at the 24-hour McDonalds on the Newtownards Road for some quarter pounder meals.

We were chatting to the guy flipping burgers and he told us that they keep cooking food all night in case people come in. They throw out any unsold burgers after 10 minutes and cook some more. He said they throw out about £150 of burgers every night. That's £150 of what they cost McDonald's, not what we pay.

So I've done some rough calculations:
They probably throw at least twice as many out during the day than at night. However most McDs are 24-hour. A very generous estimate would be that the average McDs throws out £300 of burgers every day altogether.

Google tells me there are 25 MickeyDs in N.I. so that's £7500 wasted per day here.

There are 31,000 McDs in the world so that's £9,300,000. Nearly £10 million a day and that's being generous! Probably far more.

Rainforests are being destroyed around the world, millions of tonnes of packaging are used for a few minutes and then discarded, and I'll not even get into a world poverty rant... all because lads with bum fluff moustaches and squeaky voices are being forced to throw out their handiwork.

McDonalds boycott anyone?

Weddings, bears and brotherhood

I've seen two of my brothers wed this year and both have been brilliant days. The pic above didn't make it to the speech (the girly looking one is Mikey not Joy who wasn't born then!). I feel blessed to have brothers and a sister who are great friends as well as siblings.

As requested here are a couple of the videos from our speech. They're only really funny if you were there and I can't be arsed explaining...






btw... if you are thinking of leaving a comment along the lines of...
'you're next then'
'when's your big day',
'you need to get a move on John'
'I know a great girl for you'
...leave it out, I've heard it all before!