Flappy bird - game over

On February 9th, the creator of Flappy Bird, a Vietnamese 29 year old, Dong Nguyen announced on Twitter "I am sorry Flappy Bird users, 22 hours from now, I take Flappy Bird down, I cannot take this any more." He went ahead with his threat and deleted the game despite earning £30,000 a day. The game had been downloaded 50 million times. Apparently it took him two to three days to make the game, so thats an incredible return on investment and he was set up for life. Why on earth did he remove the game?

When Nguyen was interviewed by the press on his reasons for deleting the game he told them "Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.....but it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem." Apparently he felt he was selling the equivalent of drugs, and that bothered him. He even received death threats from paranoid Flappy Bird users which simply reinforced his view that the game was destructive rather than positive. Wow! Here's a programmer who has hit jack pot with a game making £30,000 a day yet for ETHICAL reasons he takes the game down.

This week former Essex cricketer, Mervyn Westfield, was found guilty of taking a bribe of £6000 from a betting syndicate. According to the Independent newspaper he was caught when he "unguardedly" confessed to a fellow player. He now travels around speaking to young sportsmen warning them of the consequences of bad choices. This is a classic example of the human conscience, we each have a part of us that knows right from wrong, and it is like a voice that speaks to us from within. Clearly Mervyn felt the weight of his wrong choices and made amends.

A Polish proverb says "the conscience is the voice of the soul." In my opinion this is one argument for the existence of God, often called The Moral Argument. In every culture throughout history people know some things are right and some are wrong. Atheists might tell us its just social conditioning but we all know murder and rape are morally wrong. Even when cultures lose track of their moral compass (think Nazi Germany and the Holocaust) we all agree that they became deaf to their conscience. When I speak to teens about this, they all accept it as fact and say things like "I knew it was wrong but just did it anyway!" Why do we do this? Why is there a wrestling match between the angel on one shoulder and devil on the other? Could it be that we are in a fight between good and evil, and each soul has a decision to make about which voice to listen to? It was John Henry Newman, a catholic bishop who said conscience is “the voice of God in the heart of man that needs training and experience for its strength, growth and due formation.”

And where is God in all this, is he at a distance just waiting on us to slip up? Surely he cares about the decisions we make? In fact there is nothing more he can do to help us, he has provided the most hands on, powerful and guaranteed solution to the problem. The conscience may feel at times like its in a wrestling match but God has unfairly changed the odds totally in our favour. What am I talking about? Jesus of course! He came as the ultimate warrior in the fight against the manipulation of evil.

In the bible it says that in Jesus "we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). That's a cool trick, tempted but no sin. How did he do that because there is a lot of temptation out there? The simple answer is Jesus was God but he was also human, so what made the difference? What was his secret weapon? The short answer is, he was close to his Father and empowered by the Spirit. That means we have the same potential to shape our life around the same priorities as Jesus. Does this sound impossible? Its not, if a Vietnamese game maker can listen to their conscience and give up £30,000 a day, you can (with God's help) face your moral decisions with the same conviction. And when you and I fail, we have the goodness of God to lead us back to where we want to live. Of course, we are not meant to face things alone, so my advice would be, find a community to belong to where you watch out for each other, and believe the best in each other.

Airing your dirty laundry in public is a bad idea

This post is not aimed at anyone I know, so please dont be paranoid! But honestly airing our dirty laundry in public is a bad idea. Who does it really hurt (probably yourself) or who does it really help? Can we please make available a TMI (too much information) filter? Like an APP that shows a warning before we post anything! Alert, alert TMI! I am aware that people think TMI is meant to be cleansing, like getting it out of your system. Alert, alert....its getting it out of your system and onto the whole worlds system called the internet. Is that really the place to expose all our frustrations, regrets, sexual conquests, hate or jealousy?

Why do we plaster painful relationships all over social media? Who taught us this was a healthy thing to do other than the Jeremy Kyle show? It seems to me that venting online has turned into an internet version of road rage. The crazy thing is that at least road rage is private. Social media is the polar opposite, it's connected to the world and is forever in the system. Do we not realise that social media is our voice on the Internet? What does that voice say about you? Think about it, once a person reads your rage or sees your photograph of a rebound one night stand, what voice does that give you? Is that how you want to be known? Do you want this image following you around in social media hell?

According to a 2012 study in the US, 27% of college admissions officers routinely do Google searches on applicants and 26% check Facebook. 35% found posts and pictures that reflected poorly on those prospective students. I suspect employers probably do the same. How much control do you have over your "personal brand?" Not much if Facebook is a diary of regrets and rants! Do you want to be labelled like this? I doubt it. I would suggest that if we treated our posts as our personal brand we would guard what we look like online. If we really believed an employer, a college or even a court judge was going to use our online identity as a character assessment how different would our posts be?

I suppose at the heart of this issue is anger, which is a normal human emotion but can go so horribly wrong. Jesus was radical in this department. He said "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." The Message translation of the bible says in Ephesians 4:26 "Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life." This pretty much sums it up. Be angry, bad stuff has happened to you, people have abused you. But don't let it rule or ruin your life! And don't advertise your anger to the world to stay out there for all to see (people who don't know what your really like).

Would you rather be known as a lover or a hater, a person who forgives or one who holds onto anger so long it makes them bitter and twisted? The choice really is ours to make. We have free will, God made us that way. So what are you going to do, blame everyone else for your actions? Airing our dirty laundry is bad for the soul, its bad for our personal brand, its bad for our present and future identity which all can see for the next 100 years. Imagine your child aged sixteen, they Google YOU. What do you want them to see? Its that simple! Take charge of your present and future life now! Shape your own personal brand by downloading an in built personal TMI app.

Mentoring that led to Olympic gold

Lizzy Yarnold has won Britain's first Olympic gold on Valentines Day in Sochi, Russia. She told the world's press ""My mum and dad and my sisters are here and I couldn't have done it without them or the Team GB team." This is mentoring at its best. It creates a culture of confidence. Lizzy told the press "I believed in myself and put in the hard work and dedication before we came here. My advice to anyone watching is follow your dreams and never limit yourself to what you can achieve." This is good advice but remember that success is a team sport, it takes a team to raise a champion.

What makes this an incredible story is that Lizzy only began in winter sports six years ago. Four years ago she was ranked the 54th best shot putter in the UK! How did she move from mediocre athlete to Olympic champion? The answer is twofold. First its all about mindset (how you see yourself) and second its all about environment (the people and opportunities that surround you). Lizzy placed herself around people who believed in her and who nurtured a 'can do' attitude. At 19 she had people who saw her raw talent, and (no pun intended) saw the gold in her. This is something we all need, to be believed in and encouraged to develop who we really are, to take raw ability and encourage it.

Amy Williams (gold medallist from the previous Winter Olympics) describes Lizzy as having something "different within her psychologically." This mindset shaped her future but it took being spotted by a talent scout from Girls4Gold (a mentoring project to discover and develop sporting talent). Yarnold admitted to BBC Sport: "At the Girls4Gold selection, I desperately wanted to be picked for modern pentathlon. But they said I'd be more suited to skeleton instead. I must admit I'd never heard of it but I've never looked back since." This is the goal of mentoring, to uncover/discover your God given gifts and breathe life into them.

What does this amazing story of success tell us? It shows that people have raw talent, sometimes in areas they didnt even know existed (like a winter sport called skeleton which meant throwing yourself down a death defying slide on a sled). It shows that being believed in (whether family, friends, or coaches like Amy Williams) makes all the difference. Add to that a strong dose of self belief and focus, and you have the makings of a champion. But imagine if Girls4Gold had not existed? Imagine that Lizzy's family were cynical or even resistant. Where might she be now? Would her strength of mind, her determined character have flourished? I doubt it. When Lizzy was 19, one individual, a man called Mervyn Sugden, an insurance underwriter from Surrey donated money towards her sports training to buy the equipment she needed. He clearly saw some raw talent and took a risk with his time and cash. Lizzy has now nicknamed her sled Mervyn in his honour.

This story of Olympic gold is a modern parable (a story with a deeper meaning for life). If each of us could find someone and believe in them, what a difference it would make. If you are a teenager with raw ability, how would you feel to have a sponsor like Mervyn? I am personally choosing to believe in this next generation. They will not all be Olympic gold medalists but each person is gold to God, each person has raw talent, everyone flourishes with praise. Imagine a generation like this, one placed in good healthy soil so that they grow strong (in body, soul and spirit) and believing in themselves, becoming all that God meant them to be.

Philip Seymour Hoffman - a talent needlessly lost

Valentino, the Italian fashion brand have been heavily criticised for using the funeral of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman as a PR stunt to promote one of their handbags. This is a sad reflection on the world of fashion and celebrity where product placement is more important than giving dignity and respect to a world class actor. Hoffman died aged forty six, of a drugs overdose. According to the Telegraph newspaper Hoffman's alleged drug dealer has said the actor injected twice as much heroin a day as a typical addict. Seventy three packets of heroin were found near his dead body. What a tragedy and waste of a hugely talented man.

Hoffman was one of the best character actors on the planet, he was a master at being somebody else. Was he a master at being someone else because he was so at odds with his true self? On screen he made us believe he really was that person, whether Hamlet or a drag queen. In an interview he said ""I think deep down inside, people understand how flawed they are. I think the more benign you make somebody, the less truthful it is." He clearly knew about the dark side of life despite his success. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 2005 biographical film Capote, was nominated three times for Best Supporting Actor and also received three Tony Award nominations for his work in theater.

In many of his films he chose to play characters with troubled pasts (creeps and freaks), or deep character flaws like the lead role in Owning Mahowny where he plays a bank employee who embezzles money to feed his gambling addiction, or as unscrupulous arms dealer, Owen Davian, in Mission Impossible 3. Each of these characters came to life on screen as Hoffman seemed to embrace and expose the destructive side of human nature. Clearly he was tapping into deep and dark experiences of his own. How could someone so gifted, successful and admired be drawn into the black hole of drug addiction? Despite having supposedly everything the world could offer including a long term relationship of 15 years with Mimi O'Donnell and two daughters and a son (all less than 10 years old) he still managed to fall into hell on earth, chasing heroin highs on a daily habit (trying to stay clean then falling back into addiction). What drives someone to live there despite fame, acclaim, wealth and a loving family? What demons did he wrestle that needed heroin to dull the ache in his soul? Where were the angels when the demons seemed so strong?

Russel Brand himself a recovering addict insightfully comments "in spite of all the loving friends and family, there is a predominant voice in the mind of an addict that supersedes all reason and that voice wants you dead. This voice is the unrelenting echo of an unfulfillable void." This for me sums up why Jesus is the most important person who ever lived, he came to earth to meet people in their place of unfillable void. That black hole is a spirit in need of a saviour that no drug, money, fame or even family can fill. It is a spiritual vacuum that can only be filled fully (fulfilled) by a spiritual solution.

In the Message translation of the bible it says in Colossians "You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything." Brian Welch, also a former heroin addict and lead guitarist of Korn maps out his own journey through hell but his story ends differently. He accepts his emptiness and addiction and accepts Jesus as the spiritual solution. Welch like Hoffman lived on the wild side, danced with the devil and courted death. Why did one survive and the other die? I dont know? But this I do know, if you place your trust in Christ, the emptiness of the universe is removed, His power extends as far as our own inner world, as dark as that may be, and brings light, powerful enough to remove every demon or addiction. The stories of Hoffman, Brand and Welch all speak the same message, the allure of wealth, sex, beauty, fame, drugs and celebrity is an empty one. They are short lived and under deliver on their promises. Dont be fooled, listen to those who have gone before you and revealed the lie. Instead let truth set you free!

12 years a slave - time for rebellion?

I just watched the movie "12 years a slave." As the final credits rolled people sat stunned. It was hard to believe that people could legally and biblically justify such horrific treatment of another human being. The movie is based on the true story of Solomon Northrup who in the 1840's was kidnapped in Washington and sold into slavery in Georgia. This was despite his legally free status, high intellect and incredible ability as a musician.

It made me wonder "how do we know who we really are?" Solomon had to pretend to be someone else, taking on a slave name (Platt), slave talk (pretending to be uneducated) and slave attitudes to the owners (subservient, never looking them in the eye). He changed in order to survive and it made me think that many people live like this today, putting on a false person over the top of their true self. How many of us change around different people, talking different, maybe changing our accent, dumbing down or even using words we don't normally use?

In a celebrity culture full of wannabees projecting an image that's not really who they are, how do we stay true to our self? How do we avoid falling into the trap of imitating a false image, like white Londoners talking in gangster rap? Or like a reality tv show full of people putting on a false personality for the cameras? I once met the winner of Big Brother 2003. Cameron Stout from Orkney is a Christian, he received 1.9 million votes, 500,000 more than runner-up Ray Shah. He won because he was true to him self, no false image.

Despite his strong christian convictions (he said on BB that he believed in no sex before marriage) he won over the British voters. He went on to co-present Teen Commandments with Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman. No-one would have put a bet on Cameron Stout, a christian from Orkney winning, so how did it happen? I think we are drawn to genuine people who are true to their convictions, even if they are not popular. In an age of celebrity gossip, unstable relationships and casual sex, here was a guy who was unashamed of his principles and faith, and people liked it. It was refreshing, counter cultural, a mini-rebellion against what was expected.

Is it time to become rebels with a cause. Is it time for a youth movement that says "I refuse to live as a slave to this celebrity culture." Solomon Northrup returned home and started campaigning against the corruption of treating people like property to be bought and sold. Should we speak out against the toxic influences that surround teens? Solomon had his identity stolen. It took a free man (in the movie the part was played by Brad Pitt) to take a risk, and put the wheels in motion for his freedom to come. A revolution begins with one person willing to resist, is that person you?

Is Bieber breaking bad?

In my last blog I spoke about zombies and The Walking Dead. This time i wonder if Justin Bieber is playing out the other huge american TV series Breaking Bad? The young Canadian rapidly rose to fame at age 13 when an agent spotted him on YouTube, now he has 49 million twitter followers, has a reported personal fortune of £70 million (notice pounds not dollars), and is one of the most recognisable teenage faces on the planet. Yet for the last year he seems to be turning from clean cut kid next door to a bad boy. Is this a marketing strategy? Or is he genuinely breaking bad as a result of all the toxic influences surrounding him? Last week he was been arrested in Miami for driving under the influence (alcohol or drugs we don't know). And according to some news reports, he is taking anti anxiety drug Xanex (his mom is apparently the source of this news). What has happened to him? Can we really believe this is a healthy direction for his life?

I cant help compare Justin Bieber with Miley Cyrus who has also courted a lot of controversy over her highly sexual new image and antics. This is not a new thought as you can tell from the photograph mixing their faces up. But lets be real here! How healthy is it for a teenager to be exposed to massive wealth, worldwide fame and an entourage of people who make money off them? And where are the people in their life giving them solid healthy advice? Are the people surrounding them in their direct pay or living on the gravy train that is brand Bieber?

Apparently Justin's dad was with them in Miami at the drag race. I don't think its fair that people judge him as a father, we dont know the situation, or the pressures the family are under. All I can suggest is that adults and teens need a mentor in their life, as John Donne famously said "no man is an island." His dad, Jeremy seems pretty close to him, and that's good, but parents are as vulnerable to toxic influences as their teenagers. There is a generational lack of mentors in the world. This is not a new problem, its as old as humanity itself.

In the bible, the apostle Paul saw this problem in his own generation. He wrote to the Corinthian church and told them "you have many teachers but not many fathers." In Paul's time wealthy families employed tutors to instruct boys (sorry girls you were often neglected at this time) to teach them about morals and philosophy. However, these were paid staff whose job it was to nurture a child. Many tutors were good men but they could never replace a healthy father figure.

The apostle Paul called himself a spiritual father, a dad figure who guided others towards a deeper more meaningful life with Jesus as the centre. I wonder if Justin Bieber and even his dad, Jeremy simply prove how necessary this is today for our time and our culture which is reproducing spiritual orphans who in turn produce a fatherless generation? Can we find ways to break this destructive cycle? Is it possible you are called to this, even if you are a teenager? Lets start a revolution of mentors, who are spiritual guides to a new generation.

Why are zombies such a big hit?

What makes us human? is the strap line from the huge TV drama 'the walking dead.' It stars Andrew Lincoln as sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who awakens from a coma to find a post-apocalyptic world dominated by flesh-eating zombies.The drama started in 2010 and is now on its fifth series with an estimated $1 million spent per episode and has won a Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series. The writer, Robert Kirkman has said publicly that his goal in life was to be paid for doing something he loved to do, and in his case it is telling stories.

As an aside his first comic book was called Battle Pope which featured Jesus fighting demons released on the earth, an overpowered Lucifer and God who comes in at the end to save the world. The story finishes with the Pope and Jesus becoming room mates. This shows that Kirkman had strong biblical influences in his writing at the start. The usual themes are there, good versus evil with evil looking like its going to win, a supposedly distant God, good wins at the end. Much of Kirkman's life at the time of his first publication was epitomised by struggles with debt, dead end jobs, and pressure from family to grow up past comic books (ironic when it became a huge moneymaker).But why is the The Walking Dead so popular? Surely zombie stories have a short shelf life? Kirkman admits his comic book stories are dark and reflect his own inner fears. As a married man with two kids he has hopes for the future and he accepts he has no control over his circumstances.

Perhaps that's why the series is jam packed full of heroes, people who take control of their situation. Like Bob Marley said we are all looking for stories of redemption, and in The Walking Dead, the whole saga is about being driven to overcome impossible odds, joining forces with people you would normally avoid, watching out for each other, and believing that good can overcome evil. There is a deep seated belief that finally we can reach a promised land of some kind, a place of safety, a place where disease and death no longer have power over us and we can rest.

This is really the deep seated story of all humanity. The zombies are really just a bit of blood and gore to provide action and drama, and every good story needs a protagonist, a baddie, someone to fear who gets defeated. I find it fascinating that alongside zombies, the story of the bible is making a comeback on our tv screens. I suppose the bible is full of the walking dead (zombie jesus) and redemption is the big idea, fighting against sin, sickness and satan, with God winning in the end.