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There are more than enough books in the world on the subject of marriage. Every man and his dog wants to have an opinion on the subject. One of the features of being engaged is that now suddenly you own a large number of those books, as everybody scrambles to buy you a copy of their favourite (thanks everybody! I really am grateful, honest!)

One of those books that really stands out for me is This Momentary Marriage by John Piper. As you might expect, Piper holds a very high view of marriage, and paints a Biblical vision of just how glorious marriage as God designed it should be. But one of the distinguishing features of this book is the equally high view of singleness you'll find in it.

Piper's main premise is that marriage is not the ultimate, it's not the thing that's going to solve all our problems and make us happy and fulfilled. It's a glorious thing, yes, and it holds a special place in God's purposes for displaying his glory, but it's only ever a temporary thing that will not exist in the New Creation. Just as the relationship between a husband and his wife is a tangible illustration of the relationship between Jesus Christ and his church, happily-single Christians are a tangible illustration of the sufficiency of Jesus and the final state all who trust in him are heading towards. So at the same time as giving us a higher view of marriage, it also stops us making it the very highest thing in our thoughts, helping us keep first things first rather than drifting into idolatry.

Most books on marriage claim to be suitable for all kinds of people: people already married, people about to be married, and people vaguely thinking about marriage in the future. But in my experience, it's rare to find a marriage book that I would genuinely want to recommend to a single friend for fear of making them feel a little bit sad - I know that I've often read stuff about marriage in the past and just been made to feel like I was missing out on something. This book bucks the trend. It reminds all of us, single or married, that as Christians we have a relationship with the Creator of the Universe that's going to last for eternity, and that that ought to excite us more than any human relationship.

Of course Piper also explores the usual practicalities of marriage: the purpose and place of sex, the Biblical view of gender roles, brining up children, and so on. He does so in a way that gets you excited about serving God in whatever situation you're currently in, with the gifts and personality God has given you. I found the chapter on hospitality especially helpful: Piper says what a shame it is that often married and single people in the church end up being segregated, when there's so much potential for good if single people were to show hospitality to married people and if married people were to show hospitality to single people.

If you're a Christian, whether you're married or not, be excited that there's someone in your life who knows you better than you know yourself, and who loves you enough to die for you - and we get to go and spend the rest of eternity in intimate relationship with him! Everything else is just temporary, but our relationship with God lasts forever.

Related posts: My review of 'Redeeming Singleness' by Barry Danylak - which is the basis for Piper's chapter on singleness in 'This Momentary Marriage'. It's helpful stuff for single people wondering about their place in the church.

Every now and again you find yourself coming across a particular book being mentioned over and over again in various different settings, until you eventually succumb and go out and read it. One such book that I've just reached the end of is Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves To Death". Originally released in 1985, it's a treatise on how television affects the way we think as a culture, and particularly on how we engage with and discuss important subjects like politics, religion and education.

It opens with a compelling comparison of two grim predictions of the future made in the mid 20th century: those of George Orwell in his book 1984, and Aldous Huxley in his book Brave New World. Here's a little snippet:

"Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance."

Postman then goes on to argue that Huxley's fears were well-grounded, and that the age of the television has, to a large degree, brought them to pass. His argument is essentially that the medium used to communicate information always shapes how that message is received and understood. Just as the invention of the printing press created a culture dominated by "typographic thinking", where sustained and reasoned arguments prevail and the aim is to establish the veracity of a particular truth claim, so the invention of the telegram and then television has ushered in a new era of show business where entertainment is king and truth is irrelevant. Commercials for products today rarely spend much time setting forth actual arguments related to their product for why it's worth your money; instead they focus on you, the viewer, and seek to make you recognise what your life is missing - what void their product can supposedly gratify.

Lots of the illustrations Postman uses are fairly dated and also from a US context, and I generally didn't recognise the names of the particular TV stars he was referencing. But I think the actual arguments he makes are more relevant than ever, and are as true of the internet as they are of television, if not more so. Two points in particular really stood out for me:

1. One is the way that television eliminates any sense of context. No prior knowledge is assumed, and you can often pick up a show even when you switch on part way through. TV news shows are a selection of entirely independent slots, and all it takes is a brief segue "and now.... this" to get from some horrific news of an earthquake in Japan to some utterly banal segment about a talking dog in Montana. No response is required of you as a viewer, and even the bad news ends up becoming a disturbing form of entertainment. The fact that it's all put side by side as though it were equally important ends up reducing it to the level of trivia. Postman suggests that it's no coincidence that the rise in popularity of the crossword came at the same time as the invention of the telegram, as people had to find a use for all this irrelevant information they had now gained access to. As much as I enjoy using Twitter, it really is everything Postman warns against on steroids, as serious news items are squashed between photos of people's dinner and a YouTube video of a machete-firing crossbow. Context is impossible on Twitter, so providing a quick laugh is by far and away the easiest way to engage your followers.
2. The other thing that got me thinking, particularly as I work on my Old Testament adventure game, is how the medium always shapes the message. Since television is all about entertainment (and the shows that fail to entertain, nobody watches) it is impossible for it to portray subjects such as religion without ultimately distorting them into something entertaining. A religion that makes demands of you - such as Jesus' description of the Christian life as the way of the cross, with the daily need to die to self - simply doesn't play well on television. It's too easy just to change the channel. It's no surprise then that the importance of theology and of making actual truth claims about the nature of God and man has waned, and loud and showy rock concert-style church services has risen instead. It's really given me pause for thought about what I'm at risk of communicating in a video game based on Old Testament passages - not that it's impossible to do it faithfully, but just that there will be real challenges involved, since the very fact that it's being presented in a different medium means that the message will be heard differently.

Is Neil Postman just a grumpy old curmudgeon? I don't know. Maybe he does overstate his case at times. But I think his aim is simply to make people aware of the effects of television and not to be blind to them, and in that I think he definitely succeeds. There's a lot of great food for thought, and being more aware of the quality of the air you're breathing can't be a bad thing.

I'm not going to bother writing an all-out review of "The Adjustment Bureau" - I'm sure many people have already done a better job of that than I ever could. But in summary: as somebody who finds it very easy to enjoy even the worst of films, I rather liked it! Yes, the script was a bit shoddy in places, and yes, the final chase was perhaps a bit lacklustre.

But at the end of the day, what I enjoyed about it was that it's a film that makes you think. It's a film that none-too-subtly explores some favourite themes of mine - the meaning of free will, human choice & responsibility, the sovereignty of God, etc. - and in the process reveals a lot about what our culture believes and cherishes on these issues. Here's a great quote from Russell Moore's theological ruminations on the film:

"This film might, though, prompt us to see in our neighbors a sense of helplessness, a sense of captivity, and a rage that, just maybe, is misdirected toward God. And, perhaps, the film will spur us to wonder whether our neighbors are feeling something of what is true for all of us, apart from the liberating power of the devil-defeating Cross: We are being chased."

I'm not sure the film was really good enough to actually make me feel any of that. But what I did feel, after seeing the film, was profoundly thankful: thankful that the God of the Bible is nothing like The Chairman. God would beat The Chairman in a fight without even breaking a sweat. Let me explain why (warning: spoilers ahead)

First, consider for a moment the nature of the Chairman:

• The Chairman exists in a deistic universe - the kind of "clockwork universe" that by and large works itself out according to the laws of chance. Every now and again the Bureau has to make a little nudge to adjust its course and make sure that things stick to The Plan, but as far as possible they allow it to take care of itself.
• The Chairman has to constantly revise his plan in the light of new data - he's constantly at risk of being outwitted and having his plan overturned by pesky humans, and his minions seem pretty inept at preventing this from happening. He seems to have aspirations for how he hopes things will turn out rather than sovereign authority to make sure that they do.
• The Chairman thinks we'd be better off without him - this is the ultimate message of the film: rather like training wheels on a bike, The Chairman's influence is designed to be only temporary. He'd much prefer it if humanity was able to take responsibility for itself and its choices, and indeed seems confident that we'd be better off if we could. He only reluctantly steps in when it seems that we're making poor use of the privilege of free will.

In this way, The Chairman is, of course, a product of our age - a profound confidence in the innate goodness of humanity if only we would be true to the potential within ourselves; and free will and the right to choose as the most cherished possessions we have. As Norris says in one of his early campaign speeches: "the most important thing is the choices we make". Within this worldview, for God to impose his will on us would be cruel and inhumane - making us paramount to slaves.

But this could not be more different from the God of the Bible:

• The God of the Bible sustains and upholds the universe every minute of every day - without his constant intervention the sun would not rise in the morning, nor the moon by night. The early scientists were given confidence to trust that the laws of physics would stay constant from day to day because they trusted in a sovereign God who never changed and who was able to sustain the movement of the planets and the spinning of the atom. There is nothing "hands off" about the way God runs his universe.
• The God of the Bible cannot be thwarted - contrary to the assertions of Open Theists, the Bible teaches that there is no Plan B: what God has purposed always comes to pass. "I declare the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose'" (Isaiah 46:10). The real decisions that we make every moment of the day are all part of his plan, not in opposition to it.
• The God of the Bible knows how much I need him - the Bible says that to be rid of God's influence in my life is not to be free but to be desperately lost without hope. By nature I am a slave to sin, following the futile desires of my darkened heart and mind. Thank God that he doesn't step back and leave me to it! And thank God that his involvement in my life isn't some temporary state of affairs that might be revoked at any moment - it's painfully obvious to me that without God's constant moment-by-moment intervention in my life, even when I least deserve it, I would be utterly ruined.

As finite human beings existing in a single moment of time, we can only see one minuscule portion of the picture. What's more, even if I could know what the best choice in any given situation was, I'm far from rational - we constantly choose the things that are against our own best interests based on misplaced affections and sinful desires. Now, I need God's intervention in my life. I hope I come to depend on his direction more as time goes by, not kid myself into thinking that I can do without it. To surrender to his sovereign will, even when it seems directly opposed to the things I would have chosen for myself - now that's true freedom.