SIMON PHIPPS

The Grass is Greener Where You Water It Recently I was staying at a monastery .  I sought spiritual direction from one of the monks and during our time together I discussed some of the things that I was thinking about. He began to speak to me about the importance of faithfulness within the commitments that I had made. Commitments in marriage , commitments to my children , to my church , to my career . As he spoke it reminded me of the quote above that I had read a few weeks earlier. It is relevant in so many circumstances. In our relationships, our careers, our geographical location. As humans we are terrible at judging where we currently are – we take so much for granted – and it isn’t till it is gone that we realise just how good it was. This is where we get the concept of the grass is greener on the other side . We look at everyone around us and think “they have a nicer car than I do”, or a better job, or more happiness etc. Wherever You Go, There You A...

Saint Paul famously said in his letter to the church in Rome: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15) Thanks to developments in Psychology and Neuro-science we are able to say with more certainty why we do the things that we do (and equally, why we do the things that we don’t want to do). One of the core models for understanding behaviour is Fogg’s Behaviour Model . As illustrated below: The diagram shows how three factors are needed for a behaviour to occur: Motivation – How much do we want to do the behaviour. Our motivation can be split into 3 categories: Sensation, anticipation, belonging. These three motivators can then be split further: Sensation : Pleasure / Pain Anticipation : Hope / Fear Belonging : Social rejection / Social acceptance. Ability (also called simplicity) - How easy or hard is it for us to do the behaviour. These can be split into 6 factors: Time Money Physic...

Many view the pursuit of happiness to be synonymous with the pursuit of pleasure and wealth . We have all heard Howard Hughes-esque stories of rich successful people who had everything that they wanted except happiness. Research suggests that wealth is indeed important – to a certain degree. To constantly be worried about whether you are going to be able to afford to feed your children or pay your rent is certainly not a path to happiness. But what the research found is that once you have enough money to alleviate the basic pressures of life, adding any more on top of that will not lead to happiness. Equally a pursuit of pleasure, as epitomised by Aleister Crowley’s ‘do what thou wilst’, does not lead to happiness. John Stuart Mill , the famous utilitarian philosopher who argued for a pure pursuit of happiness nearing the end of his life said this: “ I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and th...

Your values are those things that you hold dear.  They can be assessed by where we place our time , our money , our efforts and resources .  For some this is family , friends or helping people , for others it is the pursuit of knowledge , learning and growing , still for others it is the pursuit of material gains or power and prestige . Before we look at how knowing our values will change our life, let us look at how it has shaped others by looking at a large societal issue: The difference in educational achievement between minority groups and non-minority groups . Researchers at Stanford University had minority students complete value affirmations within critical points of the school year (beginning, prior to a test, and near the holiday season) – this involved writing about what they valued i.e. family relationships, friendships etc. Whilst a control group wrote about other things, such as daily routines. They followed the academic results of these ...

Last week I published a blog post looking at MarkanSandwiches and how they have helped me to make sense of Mark’s Gospel and what Mark was trying to achieve – and by extension this helped me to deepen my faith and understand scripture better. This post I wanted to talk about another curiosity within Mark’s gospel that has had a similar effect – The Messianic Secret . The Messianic Secret was first expounded by the theologian  William Wrede . He noticed that throughout the gospel of Mark, Jesus was constantly asking people not to say anything about who he was. This generally took the form of: a)  Jesus casting demons from people and then commanding them not to say anything about who he was, and b)  Jesus healing people and then asking them not to tell anyone about what he had done. Wrede argued that Mark used this device as a cover up for the fact that Jesus never spoke enough about the fact that he was the Messiah; however I think that theolo...

As followers of Christ, we look to the Bible as one of our main sources of inspiration and guides in our lives. So it follows that we all want our times reading the Bible to be as rich as possible. Learning more about the Bible is one way to help with this. It is particularly helpful when we know the types of things that the authors of the books used to aid us in this task. To this end I wanted to talk about something that has enriched my reading of the gospel of Mark: Markan Sandwiches (also called interpolations ). Essentially, what Mark does is get one story within his gospel, and inserts it inside another story ; this serves the purpose of giving both stories a greater sense of meaning. It’s purpose is to make the reader stop and think “Mark is trying to tell us something important here”. In practice it looks like this: Story 1 – Introduction Story 2 – Introduction & Conclusion Story 1 – Conclusion We can see where the idea of the sandwich com...

Recently I was listening to a podcast when I heard this quote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In that response lies our growth and our freedom ” It is a quote by Victor Frankl , a holocaust survivor and renowned neurologist & psychiatrist. When I heard the quote it sent shivers down my spine. I was half listening to the podcast on my walk to work, paying attention to the natural beauty of the canal, but when I heard this quote it gripped me. I knew that it had power, that it resonated with where I was. When we are exposed to a stimulus , we are immediately struck by a sea of emotions and thoughts , brought on by all of our life experiences, as well as the hard-wiring in our genes. These emotions and thoughts lead us to want a particular response, to react in a certain way; whether that is to run or hide, or strike back, or hug someone, or buy a donut. However before we c...