Don't make me use my handbag!
Monday, May 31, 2004
The Hammer Holds, by Bebo Norman
A shapeless piece of steel, that's all I claim to be
This hammer pounds to give me form, this flame, it melts my dreams
I glow with fire and fury, as I'm twisted like a vine
My final shape, my final form I'm sure I'm bound to find
So dream a little, dream for me in hopes that I'll remain
And cry a little, cry for me so I can bear the flames
And hurt a little, hurt for me my future is untold
But my dreams are not the issue here, for they, the hammer holds
And the water, it cools me gray, and the hurt's subdued somehow
I have my shape, this sharpened point, what is my purpose now?
And the question still remains, what am I to be?
Perhaps some perfect piece of art displayed for all to see
So dream a little, dream for me in hopes that I'll remain
And cry a little, cry for me so I can bear the flames
And hurt a little, hurt for me my future is untold
But my dreams are not the issue here, for they, the hammer holds
The hammer pounds again, but flames I do not feel
This force that drives me, helplessly, through flesh, and wood reveals
A burn that burns much deeper, it's more than I can stand
The reason for my life was to take the life of a guiltless man
So dream a little, dream for me in hopes that I'll remain
And cry a little, cry for me so I can bear the pain
And hurt a little, hurt for me, my future is so bold
But my dreams are not the issue here, for they, the hammer holds
This task before me may seem unclear
But it, my maker holds
Mm, a great song. Sounds real good when I play it on guitar, to me, anyway. And the lyrics are pretty relevant and encouraging. I was reminded of it when I read an e-mail this morning. The idea of being formed for an unknown future, and trusting that it's gonna be an awesome one, well worthy of the pain or uncertainty of the present.
It's my 22nd tomorrow. Wow. 22. I always thought that was pretty old. Age is a strange thing. Like time. And badgers. Anyways, what's going on? Nothing much, really. Haven't even fully started to comprehend the meaning of that song to me right now. Just chilling.
So there's surprisingly little to say. 3 days left of lectures (Friday off) and I still haven't posted my boring daily-routine blog. Maybe next semester. Exams coming up which I'm not stressed about, but I'm going to have to study pretty hard for. Then I have two weeks in
Wellington - doing what, I don't know. I'll find something. Perhaps I'll work out what I'm doing over Summer... working in the orchards with Dave sounds quite appealing. Hehe. I just wrote "Dave sounds quite appealing," which is funny.
Anyways, Carmi's coming down to listen to the theme from Shaft with me in Brendan's room. Don't ask. I'd better split. Tell me what you think about the song!
Hammer Holds, NOT the theme from Shaft!
Unless you really want to.
There's always something cooking at Ol' Joe's Place.
I thought, seeing the massive interest (well, two people commented), that I'd link to the site with all the Reeves and Mortimer lyrics, and the .mp3s for those who want to listen. Highly recommended. :-P
Oh, and I'll blog some time soon. Don't got much to say yet... Spanish Oral in an hour, that's kinda the only thing on my mind. Soz.
Saturday, May 29, 2004
I didn’t blog yesterday!
I ALWAYS blog on Fridays. Weird… must’ve been a little busy. Kinda was. Kinda wasn’t. You know, for a no-lecture day. Speaking of, there’s one week left this semester. That’s just weird. Too. So, post-party, pre-birthday. Annnnd… yes.
I gotta head down to church in half an hour, for a Missions team interview. To see if I’m suitable. I’m not worried about that. But then, neither am I worried about my Spanish oral on Monday. Oh, I should talk about this week. It wasn’t a huge week. Life group on Wed consisted of Justin and I cleaning up Castle Street for about 40 minutes. Which was good, I needed to hang out with him. He seemed quite satisfied with where life group is at… maybe it’s just me. Itchy feet of a sort. But then, that’s me. Not satisfied. Which sounds bad, but I’m really glad for it. Comfort zones are for loozers. Then again, on the other hand, I do spend a lot of time in my comfort zone… but I shouldn’t! Hehe.
What else, what else… not much. Got my assignment in, helped Yogs a bit with the Cutting Edge promo video, which looks great. Can’t think of much else – lots of socializing, which is all great. Friday night was my party (and Matt and Jane’s), which I’m very pleased with. Couldn’t have been better, I don’t think. Got me thinking about how much I’ve changed since I met Dave, Bing and Jay. Back before I was Christian. Something to be uber-thankful for… something I shouldn’t forget.
Okay, so most importantly (to me, but I think some of youse might be keen to hear), my spiritual journey. Well, that passion/hunger/closeness did fade, as we all knew it would. BUT the passion for the closeness didn’t. It’s like, I’ve touched something that I know I can touch again, and I need to touch it again, and I will touch it again, even if it kills me. Which God and I had a laugh about, because, y’know, killing me would get me closer to Him than not killing me. Er, but we didn’t put it like that, ‘cos that sounds twisted. Hehe.
Fact of the matter is, the start of this week is like an anchor for me… I know what life can be like, I know what it feels like to be closer to God than I’ve ever been. And that is what drives me. I’m not going to forget that – I’m going to chase after that. Sure, it was painful, it was hard. It involved sacrifice. But it’s a taste of Life with a capital ‘L’. I don’t mean the magazine here. I think, actually, it’s kinda like emotions. It is easier and safer to live without them, and painful and challenging to live with them, but life is so much richer and deeper with them. In fact, I think that’s an analogy God intentionally created to draw us closer to Him.
One uncomfortable side-effect – it made me question whether anything other than full-time ministry (in the strictly narrow sense) could truly satisfy me…
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Okay, you might be sick of these, but this one's quite relevant. Enjoy!
A True Heart of Thanksgiving
In the message "Praise Him Even More" we considered our command as well as our need to rejoice and praise in order to sustain Spiritual life. A heart that has not been transformed by the Spirit of God cannot truly praise, and a transformed heart that does not praise will surely cease to pump Spiritual life through the body.
Silas had joined Paul on his second missionary journey. Early in the journey, the two men were seized and brought before the authorities: "These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar" (Acts 16:20). For this act they were stripped, beaten and thrown in prison with chains around their feet. However, their hearts continued to praise God and give Him thanks in spite of their conditions.
Acts 16:25
"About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them."
Giving thanks in the form of prayer, praise, song, celebration, or simply as an attitude of thankfulness is mentioned well over one thousand times in the Bible. It's no surprise that having a heart filled with thanksgiving should be an integral part of the Christian walk. We need to see this world and the entirety of our life with new eyes - eyes that see God's hand at work in every moment of every day.
If we believe in the One True God as the Creator of the Universe and accept the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, we should be compelled to give thanks - regardless of our circumstances. We should begin to see the evidence of God all around, and praise Him even for the air we breathe.
A heart without praise and thanksgiving is empty and does not yet understand a sovereign God or His plan. If our surroundings are continually dictating the thankfulness of our heart, we ought to ask if the Spirit of Christ has really come to dwell within us. Yes, God wants to prosper us and see us live a life of peace and contentment - but first and foremost, He desires for us to surrender our life to Him and bring Him glory and honor in ALL we do; only then will we be able to "give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
We cannot produce thanksgiving by simply trying to be more thankful. We only become thankful by taking our heart back to the very origin of our new nature - back to the saving grace of Jesus. Let's return to the point where our life was made new and once again learn to rejoice; once again learn to absolutely trust; once again learn to live with a true heart of thanksgiving.
Steve Troxel
God's Daily Word Ministries
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Because we constantly need to remind ourselves to Praise Him Even More...
I don't recall ever being asked to explain the importance of breathing. It's pretty well accepted that breathing is a good idea and we should do it many times every day; a lack of breathing is definitely bad for our physical health. It's not an exaggeration to say that praise is as important, should become as natural, and occur as often, as our breathing. For if we choose not to live a life of praise, we will just as surely suffocate and spiritually die.
The life of praise requires only a little instruction and a great deal of application. To begin with, we must learn to ALWAYS praise!
Philippians 4:4
"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!"
Notice that rejoicing is so important that Paul decided to repeat himself. If we are living to love and glorify God, He has promised to work ALL things together for the good (Romans 8:28); so why do we wait for what appear to be the proper conditions for praise? If we really understood and believed that God is in control, wouldn't we praise Him regardless of our particular situation? "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). There is never a wrong time to praise God and there are never circumstances which don't deserve our thankfulness.
Job lost absolutely everything he had except his wife. He then developed sores over every part of his body and was so miserable that his wife encouraged him to "Curse God and die!" (Job 2:10). Job was in great pain and heavy sorrow, but he knew all things came from God with a purpose; "Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" (Job 2:10). God is in the good as well as the trouble; we must learn to praise Him in ALL situations!
Our life can become difficult and painful; we may feel bored and unfulfilled, cheated and abused. But if we look at the reasons which keep us from praising, we will find "self" expectations and pride - we will find a life lived according to the desires of the flesh and not according to the fruit of the Spirit. Every portion of our life is to be offered "as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God" (Romans 12:1). As we fix our eyes on the eternal glory we have through Jesus we will find more and more reasons to praise.
Let's never allow our earthly circumstances to direct our praise: "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord" (Psalm 150:6). If we're still breathing, we should still be praising! He has given us eternal life - an eternity of worship in His presence...that's a GREAT gift! Let's look for the hand of God working around us each and every day. Let's praise Him with all our heart - and then let's praise Him even more!
Steve Troxel
God's Daily Word Ministries
http://www.gdwm.org/
Ocean's 12 fans, get ready to laugh...
This is what to expect if you ever embed a $200,000 diamond in a RACING CAR! Morons. :-)
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Update...
Which is weird in itself, but after last night's cliffhanger blog, I thought I wouldn't... er... leave y'all hanging. Firstly, read Abbey's blog - if we had trackback, this is when we'd use it - she goes into a lot of the same stuff. FYI, when I woke this morning, I had lost some of the passion from the night before, as expected... but I held on to what I had with both hands and kept it. And it was good, it was awesome.
So at Launch (CE leaders planning meeting) today - which was the only real noteworthy event today - I did speak out. It was tough, but I did. And I definately wasn't the only one. I felt a little bad about bagging what we'd done, and I kinda exaggerated a little bit ("there are some areas where I think the devil is pretty proud of us" - where did that come from?), but I'm glad I said it. Our comments, which were more critical than positive, encouraged us to look at things in a new perspective. And that's how these things work - it felt mean, but it was needed. And y'know what? Not only am I feeling much less burdened about all this, but I feel we're heading in an awesome, encouraging new direction.
Okay, a lot of that doesn't make heaps of sense. Thing is, I'm generally the kind of person who doesn't like to make a stir, prefers to give encouragement. So this was big for me. And I thank God He gave me the boldness I needed.
Anyways, where are we heading? I guess in a simpler direction. We're putting more action in the areas of Outreach ("Comm-pact" :-) ) and Prayer, which is good - there's a lot of energy and nowhere to direct it right now. But also, and significantly, we're focusing on being faithful with the life groupies we've been given, and bringing it back to the simple concept of 'love'. Not numbers, not missionaries, but love. And this is a good new direction.
All that's a little concepty and vague, so I won't go any further, but we'll see it's fruit later. I'll keep you updated. But now, I reckon it's time to rip through some ol' comments.
Phyntosia - did you ever go to http://badgerbadgerbadger.com? If you did, you might understand... beware, it'll rot your brain. Hehe.
Kate - liked that article, thanks! For those who missed it, Time magazine ran an article about Christianity and pop-culture. It wasn't very in-depth, but it's better than nothing.
Becs - really excited about your blog, hope you can keep it up! Fixed the link, by the way.
Also, Mel posted a rather nice update today, check that out. And Ruth's was kinda cool. 'Course, I posted a huge comment which got deleted... I kinda just agreed with Jeremy's comment therein. Hehe. I just said therein. I've always wanted to say that.
Seriously now, I want to talk to my life groupies a whole lot more, as individuals. Adress their needs and all. I also got the crash-bang revelation that I can talk over the phone for the purposes of socialising/ministry - not just ORGANISING socialising or ministry. Which saves time. But it's also challenging, because for some reason, I dislike talking on the phone. That's weird. Even my various tele-marketing/surveying jobs didn't help that. Ah, well.
I think that's about it... oh, doing Castle Street Clean-Up tomorrow, for no apparent reason. It's instead of life group. It may be just me and Justin, I'm not sure. But I'm doing it, and I think that's right. It'll be a good gauge for when it 'officially'
starts next semester. And that'll do for now. Rock hard, sleep well, and God bless you all. And don't forget my (our!) birthday party on Friday!
Two crazy links...
For anyone worried about their health... and their dress sense...
And what's this? Dinosaurs discovered inhabiting a remote New Zealand volcano?
God Rulez O.K.
I really don’t know what I’m going to talk about right now. But I’m sure God wants me to blog. And, uh, I am. I don’t usually blog this late on a weekend day unless I have something really important to say. That’s because a) it’s late, and b) I’ll end up checking my daily websites and blogs which will give me nothing to do in the morning. So this is special.
Okay, bit of background info here… Steve Foss is an American speaker who came over to preach this weekend, Saturday night, Sunday morning and night, and Monday night at our Church. I also heard him teach last year (mentioned it briefly in my blog, in early November), which was also awesome, but that’s different from preaching. Now, I’m not keen on discussing prophecies or politics or power or anointing or being hit with the paralyzing power of the Spirit or tithing or whatnot – course, I might end up discussing it. I guess I’ve come away from too many speakers wanting to write about what they spoke of.
But this time it seemed like what he spoke was more of a roadmap. That it was more of a “this is where you are, this is where you need to be” and a little help getting there. Fact is, I’m feeling very close to God. And I know it’s still a long way off, but it’s incredible. And it’s encouraging to know that I’m GETTING CLOSER. I actually came home feeling pretty weird… feeling… uncomfortable? Then Dave asked me what I was doing tomorrow. I wasn’t sure – I wanted to do something different, something impacting… something non-routine. Because routine is feeling so dead right now, I need to go beyond that. So I mentioned (I don’t have any huge time to do anything Funky-Cool) 1 o’clock prayer and realised that I was angry with it. No, not angry, Angry.
I’m angry that people are ignoring it. I’m angry that people – ESPECIALLY people with responsibility and authority – are not treating it with the seriousness and urgency that God does. And not just 1PM, but outreachy things. Like Castle-Street Clean-Up. And my first reaction was naturally a “who am I to judge, when I’m so hopeless at doing many things?” But we are called upon to rebuke as well as exhort, we are called to slap people in the face as well as pick them up. And boy, did/do I want to do some slapping. I WANT to stand up during the leaders planning meeting tomorrow and have the boldness to tell people that they are failing – that they are letting us all down, especially those in their life groups.
Breathe.
I don’t know if I will. Firstly, I need the nod from Dan and Abbey to say something like that, I think. From Dan, because he is our leader (although I can guarantee he’ll say yes, I need to ask); and from Abbey because she is our communal prayer leader. I have a feeling (a hope?) Abbey will say something anyway. But even if I pass that hurdle, it would take a supernatural boldness to say something as harsh as I would like to people I look up to and love.
But I suppose my biggest worry is that I won’t feel like this in the morning. Worse – that I won’t feel this close to God in the morning, and that I won’t be able to get back here any time soon. That thought makes me not want to go to sleep. Which is another reason to blog, I guess. Just this hunger for… I don’t know, what is this? Perhaps it’s anger against apathy, or against not taking this (life? Cutting Edge? Christianity? Christ?) seriously. That seems right. Anyway, this hunger for righteousness or whatever is something I don’t want to lose. And I’ve prayed that I won’t.
Even more… this closeness to God, this passion (which is more accurately like a mourning for the state we’re in) seems right. As in, it seems like me, like a call – the call? – for me. Which is incredibly difficult to grasp. And this isn’t a one-off, I’ve felt this way before, just not like this. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or how this puzzle piece fits in. My strongest thought right now is that I think God probably wants me in Cutting Edge next year, which I can only assume means Dunedin (although I’m not closing my mind to CE Wellington – but then I’d probably need to be a student, which I don’t see happening in Wellington).
It’s funny. Ironic. Me, Sam, the one who struggles with prayer, the one who needs to be pushed into outreach, is being filled with the passion and the hunger to encourage others to do it. More broadly – me of little action wants to tell others to be active. In some senses, it could be worse – I turn up to prayer, even though I struggle praying. And I also think the lack of general interest in corporate prayer has negatively impacted my desire to do so too. But I praise God that it is such a change, because that’s a big, powerful thing.
On that note, I also think we – that’s Cutting Edge, I guess – are comparing ourselves to others. And we shouldn’t. We should compare ourselves to Jesus. So much of our problem (or at least, so much of my problem, for sure) is us saying – ‘well, x doesn’t go to prayer, so it’s not too bad if I skip it.’ But that’s such a lie. God values prayer incredibly much more than we do – and we NEED to value it much more too.
I’ve always been skeptical of preachers who say that this is the final generation, or that we are on the verge of revival. I’m sure most of us have. I don’t know about the first, but my hope in the second is renewed – we just need to get our acts together first. And authority! That’s another thing that was impressed on me – the need to recognize and respect authority. In terms of the church, that is. That’s why I said what I said about Dan and Abbey just before. Us leaders have been appointed as leaders – not by Dan, but by God. Thus we have power and responsibility over those under us – also from God. Steve Foss said – and I’m inclined to agree – that faith, and the anointing, are all intertwined with the idea of authority. We need to learn to submit and to lead (servant-like).
I feel like letting out a mighty yell, I’m getting quite passionate about this. Which is all weird. How is writing this down going to help, for once? I suppose it’ll help in some small ways, but I want – I need – to do more. God I hope I feel like this in the morning.
Monday, May 24, 2004
WFTV.com - Slideshow
Okay, while I'me here... there're a lot of weird pictures here (including Shrek!), but some of them are pretty funny. Like number 8 - the world's biggest sandwich!
Friday, May 21, 2004
National Nude day has been and gone…
Thankfully. Unfortunately, I spent last night with the police as part of a law paper, and so I saw a bit too much. But, aside from that, the night was awfully quiet. Which is strange, considering their day started with a murder-suicide, a hanging and a car-crash. Oh yeah, I got to see the crime scene of the murder-suicide, which was… anticlimactic, but cool. While it didn’t make me want to be a cop (for starters, the 7pm-3am shift is a crazy-hard routine to get into!), it did show me that whatever job I get, one of the prereqs is variety – not knowing what the day was going to bring. One of the cops also mentioned that he liked the job because it was so real – getting in there, being such an important part of life. So, film-making fulfils one of those, but definitely not the other. Don’t mention reality-TV. But that’s all right, I guess… Hmm. I’m glad I went.
Did anyone watch The Insider’s Guide to Happiness last night? It’s that series I was working on over Summer… it looked very Kiwi, but that’s okay. I haven’t watched it yet, but I don’t expect anything supercool. Still, it’s good to be part of it. Wonder if I’m in the credits…
What’s new, pussycats? Not much here… Angel’s just screened the final episode in the U.S., and rumours of TV-movies have proved to be unfounded. So that’s a big shame, like when Buffy finished. But in a way, it’s quite relieving to get it finished with. Which I can’t explain, but that’s cool. Still got, what, 7 episodes to download and watch here? Mmm.
Not much else. Might end up watching The Princess Bride with Abbey and some others tonight – but then, might not. I’ll try to get it. Might try to go to the 24-hour Book Sale for once, but then, might not. Got a combined life-group thing tomorrow afternoon, off to play laser-force. I have no idea how many people will turn up, but I’ll be a happy chappy if it’s in the 20s. Or even 30s. More would be pushing it, but that won’t happen. It’ll be a pain if everyone has to pay by EFTPOS though. J
Oh yeah, bit of a rough day yesterday… I’ve got one week left on this Evidence assignment, and my computer’s playing up – as in, not even turning on. After a bit of fiddling, it seems to work, lets hope it stays that way. I know what the problem is (worn ‘on’ button). Also, bought a jacket (and jersey and gloves) yesterday, but have to take it back today – the shop woman left the magnetic tag on! Hah! She’d desensitised it so it wouldn’t beep, but left it on. And my sunglasses are cracked, but they’re still wearable. There was other annoying stuff, but I can’t remember it. So it’s all good. Hehe.
Actually, life group on Wednesday… it was good, but… yeah. I just don’t see that we’re getting anywhere. I mean, I’m sure it’s all good and edifying, but there seems to be little growth – not only in the individual members (although they definitely are growing generally, just not sure I’m helping much), but also in the numbers. Not sure what to do. Kinda tempted to go do Castle Street clean-up by ourselves, but not sure why. What would it do? Shouldn’t I wait until it’s ‘officially’ re-launched? Decisions. I should really talk to the boys individually, especially because I need to see if they want to plant. Although, with only 4 or 5 of us, is planting really feasible? Sure they’re capable, but do we have the numbers? It’s strange, life group started so well, but it seems like we’re up against a wall now.
Unlike the rest of the year. Where it seemed like we were up against a wall, individually and as Cutting Edge. We seem to have broken through that now, as of last weekend, I think. I think. I mean, I know I have. I’m doing really good, and I’m much stronger than when I left last year. The fruit of that remains to be seen… Yah, anyways. Let’s rip into some comments.
Louise – I think my blog IS taking longer to load. I’m not certain, but I think it might be those daily quotes – especially the weird ‘This day in history’ one. So now I have to decide whether it’s worth keeping… Thoughts, people? I have high-speed access, and it’s still quite slow – how bad is it on your end?
Abbey – I was thinking about the couple wanting to have babies, and yeah, I reckon it’s fully possible. Sure, they probably knew what sex was, but I’d presume they thought it was solely for pleasure and thus a bad thing. And if they’re in an exclusive church/religion/cult, they wouldn’t have heaps of input on the matter, that’s for sure! Oh, and your name was in italics. It was also originally a few font sizes larger, but that didn’t translate from Word to Blogspot (like smilies – hence why I write ‘Hehe’ these days). It was because you mentioned (half[?]-seriously) that you scanned my blogs for your name. Hehe (smiley).
Jello-boy (Jeremy) – ‘Scuse that. Blah blah blah aha! Most logical worldview. What did I mean? Well… My dictionary defines logical as ‘rational’, so I could just say that. But it’s more than that. It’s more than internally logical too. I guess I meant it in the way that yeah, it’s internally consistent and rational, but it’s also the worldview that most fits in with what we know about the world (/universe/existence/life). And thus it’s most logical that we would take that worldview. Does that make sense?
Mel – Ah, you rock. Every year I’ve been here (well, okay, the last two), there’ve been some first years that I’ve really got on with and valued as good friends. Like Rach and Katie last year, for example .You and Jane (um, individually) are the 2004 intake into my friend-list. Be proud. Hehe. Nah seriously, it’s cool knowing you guys, inspiring and being inspired by you, and all that. Plus you’ve got an awesome blog (so does Jane, when she updates…)
Arright, dats dat. What more can I say? Not much. I was kinda not too keen to blog because I feel quite busy (lucky today’s a Friday – a no-lecture-day !)… so I’d better log off with this blog-off. Oh, but while I’m here, let’s end on another Reeves and Mortimer classic…
GIRLS
Hello, we’re a couple of girls,
hello, lipstick and curls,
we read Women’s Own,
tidy up ‘round the home,
and brass was used for coins in Roman Britain.
Vic: I’m Julie, I’m the one with a limp,
Bob: I’m Carol, and I too have a limp,
Both: We read Marie Claire,
shop at Fine Fare,
and the Dutch have no concept of rust.
Vic: I’m married to a guy with one lung,
Bob: I’m shacked up to a man with one plumb,
Both: We watch Neighbours at one and then again at half five,
and the Cornish industry of tin is sadly now defunct.
Hello, we’re a couple of girls,
hello, lipstick and curls,
we read Women’s Own,
tidy up ‘round the home,
and brass was used for coins in Roman Britain,
and brass was used for coins in Roman Britain,
and brass was used for coins in Roman Britain.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Speaking of Hollywood...
I must post this chart-topping single by the inimitable and gorgeous Reeves and Mortimer, they who forged the original Handbags of Doom. I don't expect any comments on this one, for you will all be in awe and aghast of the inherent wit, skill and beauty of the words, whose power is not diminished by the absence of the tune. For your pleasure:
Bob: I am gonna to Hollywood,
I am, I'm gonna be a big star,
my name in lights and stretched limosine,
a house in Beverly Hills you know what I mean,
I'm gonna be a great big movie star.
Vic: You are talking out of your arse son,
you can't appeal to anyone,
you sit around in your grubby little pants,
with your packet of biscuits and a pen in your hands,
that is when your hand isn't down your grubby little pants.
Bob: You'll see, nobody can stop me,
my name is going down in history.
Vic: You write all your letters to MGM,
on your exercise book with your booky's pen,
nobody in Hollywood will be receiving them.
Bob: Why has nobody been receiving them?
Has someone, someone been diverting them?
Vic: Yes it was me, I broke into your flat,
and nicked all your letters from your Scooby Doo bag,
then buried them under a pile of farmyard sh**e.
More available upon request... INCLUDING such Mulligan and O'Hare classics as 'Plate Fungus' and 'Gérard Depardieu'.
And where you are... is where He promised to be. This is real life baby - ain't no Hollywood dream!
Well… you know those resolutiony things I set in my last blog (ignoring the more recent two not-blogs)? I’ve actually been working on those (not perfectly, mind) and lemme say that they were good goals. I haven’t felt this fulfilled in ages. Though that’s not the goals themselves as much as where I’m at, and how they help that. I guess they dissolve down to three areas – closeness to God, more focused (!) social times, and living right (study, thought life). And those – especially the first – really must be ‘purposes’ for me. Now, okay, I still know that my life-purpose (the larger picture) isn’t revealed to me, but either it will or it won’t (duh) – and if it won’t, I’ll learn to deal with that, because the smaller picture is being revealed step by step.
More on that closer to God thing. Goal number 2. – don’t be anxious – is helping there, because anxiety surely points away from God. But the main one is the numero uno, the quiet time one. It’s been so long since I’ve had good regular quiet times. Some time toward the end of last year I switched to prayer times, which is distinctly different – and no wonder it failed! I don’t have the strength (yet?) to do it like that – and I though that’s what I was supposed to be doing. But just lying or sitting or standing and being with God… that’s a different story. And there’s not much use in explaining it, because people who haven’t experienced it will be like ‘Oh yeah, that’s what everyone says’, but people who have and do will be like ‘Yeah, that’s so true!’ Fact is, it’s peaceful, it’s revelatory, it’s important, it’s… I guess I’m finally seeing that it also has an incredibly important place in daily life, preferably in the mornings. Because you focus on the Right Thing, you get direction, your heart gets in the Right Place, and from experience, it makes my day a whole lot better.
On that note, I promised I’d only blog now (Thursday morning) while I was finishing breakfast, so I’m going to go and have my quiet time now. I’ll come back to this later, probably this afternoon, and write some more…
Hang on, no. I’m posting this now. This is a blog. A small blog, but a blog nonetheless. It’ll bide me over. But before I go, a couple of people have e-mailed me saying that they’re not sure how to comment… you need to click on the blue writing straight below the current blog. It’ll say either something about a tumbleweed, a brave soul, or ham murdering. That’ll open up a pop-up window that you can write in. And please, please please, if you’ve never done so, at least leave a “Hi! I’m reading your blog! Bye!” because that’s alllll good. That’s about all for now… I’ll leave the comments ‘til next time, I think there’s a couple of replies in there. Laterz.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Friday 28th May.
Before I go underground (i.e. go into proxy mode and focus on studying), I should mention this. Any of you reading this in Dunedin whose e-mail I don't have (Reuben, etc...) are invited to my Birthday party on that Friday, at 8pm. It's a birthday party in the loosest sense - no presents, no nothing. In fact, there're two other birthdayees, making it a combined-60th. Guys bring drink, girls drink food. Aaaand it's at my place. E-mail if you don't know where that is.
For those of you not anywhere near Dunedin (e.g., um, Texas), make sure you think of me and smile on that day. Please.
Ta!
Stupid word, that. Ta. Ta. Ta ta ta ta ta ta. Nope, just gets stupider.
So does this website. Keeps getting dumber.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Awwww maaaaan.
Now that’s what I call a weekend. Phew! Y’know, I came home from church and I wasn’t anywhere near bed-mood yet. So I procrastinated. But there wasn’t enough to do. So here I am! And good, ‘cos this weekend was worth talking about!
Okay, man, where do I start. Comments LAST. Start on Friday. Blogged at midday, what then, what then… oh yeah! Joe and Justin came over shortly after to practice our skit for Saturday night. That went pretty well, so we cruised on down to church to listen to Pastor Mickey “Speedy” Gonzales talk about Chile and missions for an hour or so. We three were the only people who hadn’t been to Chile, but that was cool. He’s a great guy, by the way. Went to the New Satay Noodle House (staple Cutting Edge meal) and hung out, that was cool. The others went to take Mickey on a Tikki tour (that rhymes!) of Dunedin (even though the weather was grrroottty… it’s getting freezing. More later). I went home. I was tired/still feeling pretty bad spiritually.
Okay, let me clarify. It’s not good to just say ‘feeling pretty bad spiritually’, cos that happens to me so much (what, half the time? Nah… a quarter. Half the time I’m good, the remaining quarter is in between. Lukewarm. Ug.) But for once, this was due to my own personal intellectual doubts about my faith. Which is weird for me, because that’s always been a strong point. There were just some things I couldn’t understand. And to be honest, I think a lot of this problem arose due to the fact that I had been so vigorously defending the watertight logical truth of Christianity. I’m not sure whether this issue arose as spiritual opposition, psychological re-balancing or what, but it happened.
Anyways, I got over it. That’s key. I can’t remember how, exactly. Unfortunately. All I remember was a lot of praying, arguing, warfaring, and whatever. I wasn’t perfect by the time I got home, but I’d prayed all I could. It’s like… hmm, analogy time. It’s like there was a rock buried under the sand, and I dug and dug and finally got it out, but there was still a hole there, and I couldn’t fill it myself. Anyways, it filled as the night went on, and I soon felt whole again. I don’t think it had anything to do with my surprise victory in Risk, but that was nice too. J Then we watched two episodes of Angel… and man were they funny! Angel got turned into a muppet in the second one, that was just bizarre… and he looked perfect, too! I was kinda looking forward to some of the others (Lorne?) suffering the same fate, but I suppose that could have been overkill. A very fun night.
I can’t for the life of me remember what I did during Saturday day… which is pretty bad. I talked to my parents in the afternoon… I must have gone out. Did I? I know I tried studying…. I don’t know. Anyways, we went out to church for our Combined Cell Group Mission night. Funny story, by the way. Reuben pulled this thing out of his pocket at church, and I thought it was his cell phone. And I was all like “Hey, is that your…” and I so nearly said ‘life phone’. ‘Cos we’ve changed ‘cell groups’ to ‘life groups’ this year. Ahh, guess you had to be there.
So yah, Combined Cell. I taped most of it with my camera. But it was a really fun night, and really funny. Great food, great times. We didn’t win, but everyone really loved our Chile song (go Paul!) and our dancing Llamas. Oh, and my South America jokes. And if you want a good evening, get high on puppy chow, that’ll make everyone craaazzzzy! So, great night, in many ways. It was social, good food, and I reckon people got much more interested in missions. Awesome. Then we came home (late) and sung a song with our drunk neighbour, and had a wee chat. Then Brendan won Risk. Seriously, that game is so… addictive. No, that’s not right. We play it because it’s fun, and social, and… aah, it’s just a blessing to us all. J
Sunday, bleedin’ Sunday. School of Leaders at 9am – Integrity & the Bible. Which were really good, even though our flat was really tired (and late!). 10:45 service… well, you could read Dave’s blog about that. It was just really good, no sermon! I got amazingly into the worship, even though I was asleep on my feet (although, the three coffees I’d had before the service might have helped). Even better was the altar call. It was a pretty general one, for anyone who needed anything. I wanted to go up, but felt God saying I didn’t need to. No matter how many times I asked Him. Which I thought was weird because, hey, struggling. But then I realised – no, no I’m not. Not any more. It’s as if I’d just been loosed from all those issues. God was 100% on the throne, I acknowledged that. My prayers for deliverance from my situation had been fully answered, in the perfect time.
Okay, side-note. Most of the issues I struggle with are internal. Usually emotional or unfulfilled purposey(or doubt, or fear, although not recently). So I’m always quite apprehensive about those, because they’re not problems I can point to and say, look, see! And worse, they come from me – so if there’s a recurring problem, it’s me, right? And shame ensues, blah blah blah. But I’m coming to accept, finally, that these problems are problems just like everyone else faces, and they’re not any worse than anyone else’s. I have a melancholic temperament, it’s to be expected. Yes, I feel foolish often coming to boy’s prayer with the same problem every week. Although it’s not usually the same one, actually. But that’s me, and I’m trying to learn to accept that that’s okay – that doesn’t disqualify me from the race, that’s no red card. That’s just one of my main weaknesses. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus (thanks for reminding me of that, boys).
Back to the main. The altar call. I didn’t go up… but I couldn’t worship. There were so many people crying – a bunch of them were my friends. So I helped in what little way I can (giving them tissues and encouraging them to go up and get prayer), and then… strange. I was so hungry to pray. Mmm, you heard right, folks. Mister ‘couldn’t pray on his own initiative if his friend’s souls were in danger’ started to pray. Now, clearly it wasn’t of my own initiative, but I’m almost… proud of that. I probably shouldn’t mention that I was praying because, y’know, reward in heaven (so please don’t reward me now, think bad things about me, quick! Hehe), but it’s important to me. God turned the tables from an intellectual faith that struggled with prayer, to a praying faith that struggled with the intellect. Okay, that’s actually not true at all, but I couldn’t resist the parallel. To be frank, I’m not 100% sure that that episode (same thing happened in the night service, though…) of prayer means that my prayer life will be strengthened. But I’m gonna try. And also, as for the intellectual thing, I stand by my assertion that Christianity is the only fully logical worldview. And my faith in that hasn’t wavered at all, save the few days leading up to Friday. In retrospect, I’ve lost nothing, just come out stronger.
Funny, I thought that might happen.
In other news, came home and went shopping with Brendan after church. Then power-napped. I never power-napped. Went to Soup Sunday (leader’s meeting) at 5, which was really cool. Prayed with Brendan, Bjorn and Matt, and Pastor Mickey. Man, we have such an awesome student leadership team. And some awesome non-leaders too. I’m going to miss that unity. Until I either find or create it around me, which I’m bloody well gonna do!
Then, surprisingly to me, I went to the 7pm service. Which was pretty cool. The last Chile team chatted about the struggles they faced in Chile, and that was strangely encouraging to many people – I reckon a lot of people are much more hungry for missions than before today, that’s for sure! Great service, great worship – except for the post-sermon worship, ‘cos I was wasted. Oh, and I applied to go to Chile.
Also, mentioning for my own sake (let’s not go into this again), Pastor Mickey mentioned a few things in prayer. 1. Something along the lines of “take your time” – which I found really encouraging, because I’ve been getting uncharacteristically anxious about the way I’m living and the way I’m going lately. I mean, there’s a balance, sure, but I needed to hear that. And Mum, if you’re reading this, I don’t consider I’m procrastinating about the future, and I’m sorry if I make you anxious in that. 2. Something about a wall between me and God… and me and other people? Not quite sure what that meant, or if it applies. How much more open can I get? Still, I’m praying about it. It’s a good thing to keep in mind. 3. An encouragement to use my gifts. Which is something I always get. “You’ve been given so many gifts, you should use them!” And yeah, I should. But how? Which? When? Where? With whom? Is this like the gift of encouragement, or the gift of film-making? The gift of prophecy or the gift of “social lubrication” (thanks, Dave P.!) That one’s always confused me.
But on that note, I’m realising more and more the value of a regular quiet time – emphasis on quiet, as in, not trying to pray. So far, that seems to give me more direction than I’ve gotten without. Which totally reminds, in School of Leaders, Mike mentioned a survey of the 160-something (260? I dunno) pastors who ‘fell from grace’ (i.e. got kicked out) over a certain period, and the common denominator was that not one of them had a regular quiet time. Very worth thinking about.
Finalmente, in regard to this, I’m thinking about my life group at the moment. There’s me, Paul, Joe, Justin and Steve. And Chris, when he gets back. I’ve been encouraging the boys to invite new people, but we haven’t had any turn up. Joe and Justin are going to School of Leaders, so I find it a little tough to teach them anything new. So I’m not really sure where I’m going with it. I guess we’ve only got two or three left this semester anyway, so we can’t do anything big. And maybe we’ll plant in July. So I’ll see how God leads me. I’d love to have a greater impact than I am, I’m just not sure how. Top idea I got today was personally laying hands on and praying for them as individuals… reckon that could be powerful, especially as a means of imparting vision. Will consider that more prayerfully later.
Does everybody know what time it is? COMMENT-TIME!
Pause…
No, there’s none that need replies. Well, that’s weird. I suppose I could mention to Angus that sub-headings don’t fit with my style of writing, or to Aunt Donnave that I like the way she put what she said. But no, I won’t. Well, apart from that which I just did. That what I just done. Look, sometimes I like to speak wit’ bad grammar, okay? Deal.
I wonder what this coming week holds. Which is pretty pointless. I guess more to the point, I wonder how I’m going to take what I learned from this weekend (c.f. the rest of this bleeding blog!) and apply it to my life. Well, number 1 is to keep up the regular quiet times. Number 2. is to not be anxious for anything. Number 3… I actually have kinda been reminded that the smallest thing – washing dishes at church, as Carmi mentioned – is building the Kingdom of God: so, valuing (and doing) the little things. Number 4. Eek, I need to do some more study. I actually put a lot of effort into it last week, and it was very very unproductive. Gutting.
Numero Cinquo. Still making an effort to hang out with some people. This week, I’m going to try to go shopping with Mel, hang with Abbey (or something else?)… I was going to continue, but let’s be realistic. I still owe Rachael Barnes a coffee, Rachael Brown a jam, Beth a chat (if she ever replies to my e-mail), plus I should hang out with my life groupies. Garn, there goes my me-time… which is good, actually. I mean, I reckon I’m overloading on it a bit. What else can Sam do… humm… not sure. That’ll do for now. Actually, I’m going to write those on my white-board, right NOW!
Done! Ooh, I’ve got a Spanish Test on Tuesday. And I’m hanging with the police on Thursday night, for my ‘Criminal Justice’ paper. Oh, I’m also keen to have a small party on Saturday the 29th (two days before my birthday) at my place, I should invite people. Can anyone think if it clashes with anything? This’ll be a strictly low-key affair (after my last two birthdays in Dunedin!!!), just hanging out. Unless anyone wants to, say, go play Laser-Force. This may not even happen, but I’d love to gauge interest. That’s not this Saturday, but the next. Oh, Stephen Fosse is speaking on this Saturday, he rocked last year. And Gus gets back on Friday, yay Gus! We missed ya!
Man, whatever happened to my ‘short-blog’ idea… hah, not likely!
God Bless y’all!
Friday, May 14, 2004
Blog-wrestling
Firstly, I'm just gonna mention that I've gone through this post and made the key words from most paragraphs in bold... hopefully that'll aid in reading. I'd love to hear comments about it, because I'm not sure about it. Suh-weet.
I should have written this yesterday. Because it might be a long one. Which isn’t a bad thing, right? Right? Right. Where do I start… I’m tempted to start with the comments, because that’s a guaranteed collection of replyable material. But I’d like to keep that to the end, for a change. Which makes it a little tough to work out how to begin. I know – back to the Old Skool way. What have I done since Tuesday?
It’s remarkable how difficult that is to answer. Is that because I’m getting older, because nothing’s happening right now, or because all my student days are merging into one? Ah, who knows. Well, Life Group on Wednesday. How was that? Funny… I had stuff organized, and, again, that went out of the window. Justifiably, this time, because Joe and Paul had important assignments to get to. But I’m a little worried that LG’s getting to be too unstructured. But then, I can’t for the life of me work out what to do about it. And we’ve still not got any more members. It’s all a little discouraging, actually. Could be worse, though, yeah? Actually, it’s almost a reflection of life – Cutting Edge? – in general this year… no matter how hard we try, or how much we rely on God, we always get opposition. Discouraging opposition. Opposition that we have yet to overcome. And it takes various forms – currently I’d suggest it’s tiredness/weariness. Interesting thought. Input?
I saw Troy last night. I should comment on that. First up, I was really looking forward to it, and yeah, it was real good. Long, but worth it. But more importantly to me, it got me thinking about some of the themes. It, like Lord of the Rings, and various other movies at the moment, demonstrated a return to old-school virtues, like nobility. In our society, things have become so relativistic and egocentric that people struggle to look above themselves to see the greater virtues. I’m not just talking about my own beliefs, here, by the way. But I think we may be seeing the start of the (predicted) awakening to the realization that this current outlook just doesn’t satisfy, because it’s incomplete. That’s why people are longing for the values of old. That’s one of the reasons Christianity is being seen more and more as a favourable option – but more on that later. And recent events, such as the torture photographs, are showing people that yeah, morality has decayed beyond a reasonable point. Even in so-called Christian America, I admit. Although that’s not quite fair. I could go on, and actually would really enjoy that, but I feel like I should leave that at that, at least for now.
One more comment-worthy thing, before I comment on the worthy comments. Abbey and Brendan, and their blogs, have once again brought to my attention the painful fact that they’re not going to be in Dunedin next year. Which really challenged me. In fact, if you’ll excuse the Lim-ism, it really really really really challenged me. Especially Abbey’s point (my paraphraseJ that what I do next year shouldn’t depend on anything but God’s will. Which makes a lot of difference. I’m finally confronting the fact that my thoughts about staying in Dunedin for another year are largely based on fear. Fear of losing the student stability/comfort zone; fear of leaving home and my family. And apologies to my real family about that last one – I still love ya! It’s just that this really has become my family away from home. Wellington home. So where to from here? From here I’m praying – a lot – that God would bring me to a place where I can put the decision in His hands and then accept His solution with thanksgiving. I’ve been seeing Philippians 4:6-7 a lot lately.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Which makes me think of something else. Up until I became a Christian, I’d come to look so cynically upon the ‘romantic’ idea of the heart being anything more than an organ that pumps blood. And I mean, I still think it’s not more than that, but that our ‘heart’ in contexts like the above verses refers to that idea. That that’s where our emotions and will and stuff emanate from. Not the actual organ. I’m not explaining this well at all. Oh well!
Back to me and my walk. And my struggles, because I love talking about those. That was tongue-in-cheek: I’m not that happy with revealing my weaknesses, but I think it’s very important. “Cause oh, we are not as strong as we think we are.” This year has actually been such a big test of my faith and strength. It’s been really hard, to be honest. And yeah, I’m not strong. I’m not. Even now, I confess, I’m worried about the future – will I be able to stand at all? Let me try that again – I’m not really worried (so you shouldn’t be), but it’s a challenge to my thinking. And not one of those “OoooOH! A challenge! I love challenges!” but an “oh… my… God…” I have faith that God will be faithful to catch me if I fall – although that’s hard, because that’s never been tested to me. So yeah, struggling in a lot of areas. But I don’t want people to worry – and not just because I don’t like people worrying about me. I don’t want people to worry because it’s nothing special – it’s life. Everyone struggles. I’ll get through this one way or another. Or maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll struggle with all this until my death bed. Either way, that’s fine. I’m confident that life goes on. God’s still on the throne. I just have to really believe that.
Glad that’s off my chest. Or am I? I just know it’s going to be misconstrued because of my pooey writing. Oh well, that happens too, yeah? Oh, one thing I forgot to mention – I’m not unhappy with where my life is. That’s important. I mean, sometimes I’m unhappy in generally (who isn’t?), but I love this life, I love the struggles too, on the whole.
Gooood.
So, I experimented with that blogspot commenting system, but have decided against it. Haloscan’s too good. It’s not perfect, but that’s the decision I had to make.
Oh yeah, The Butterfly Effect. It’s an interesting concept (a very old one, but interesting nonetheless). But I agree with Abbey that it’s ‘horrible’. In fact, when I was watching that, it made me think of something like what I mentioned up in the ‘Troy’ paragraph – there’s so much moral depravity within this movie. It’s not a light movie. And it’s not on anymore, sorry.
All right, the 14-comment one. Let’s take this on. OoooOH! A challenge! I love challenges! Hehe.
Anonymous - I agreed with most of what you said. Except the last part. “If you don’t do works… then you’re not a Christian.” I think that’s misleading. I think it’s very difficult (impossible?) for someone who has been saved to not do works, but that sentence implied that works are an essential element of salvation. Then again, the word ‘Christian’… well, it’s hard to say what that means other than ‘follower of Christ’. And you can’t follow Christ and not do works.
Kate – Ah. You’re right, that’d be a very interesting article. The New Zealand Idol guy, like the Aussie one, is a Christian. Saying Van Helsing is Christian is pushing it – besides, the Vatican hunting monsters is a horror genre staple. As for why, I’d say that some of the stuff I mentioned in the ‘Troy’ paragraph is relevant – people are dissatisfied with the humanistic, relativistic worldview and are looking for something a little more… transcendent. That’s one way of looking at it. I’m not quite sure about where Buddhism fits in, though. Christianity is also finally coming to terms with the mass media, and popular culture in general, and beginning to use its influence. Such as The Passion.
But yes, there’s definitely a bigger presence there than there used to be. It’s also an arguable point that, as Brooke Fraser said on the 20/20 segment about Kiwi Christian rock music: “’cause there’s something going o-o-on…!” The music’s definitely having a big impact too, what with the Parachute Festival, and the growing number of non-compromising Christian musicians.
Is it a good thing? Yes… but with caution. Christianity has always thrived when persecuted (as in China, right now – a very interesting situation over there!), and always gone downhill when ‘pampered’ – as in, when it was the state religion. I think one of the more attractive parts of Christianity is its lack of compromise. As long as that message doesn’t get watered down, yeah, revival is certainly a possibility.
I could write much more, but that’s a quick snippet of my views.
Reuben – I respect the fact that you can (and do!) do moral things. I’m still struggling with understanding why they are moral, to you. Like you said, it’s relativistic – which always comes up against lots of strife in philosophical arguments. And that argument usually involves the words “Hitler” and “death camps”. That might sound a little… um… antagonistic of me. If so, sorry. But the fact remains, I consider moral relativism a terribly difficult belief to a) justify and b) live by. And I know that what you describe isn’t really moral relativism… and yet, it kinda is.
And you say that one of its main benefits is its flexibility/fluidity. I’d certainly say that’s one of its main downfalls. I’m very tempted to go hunt the net for proper points I could make to enhance my limited understanding, but not now. You can feel free. Hehe.
Phyntosia – Happy birthday, again. People aren’t black and white, no. But why does everyone think that’s a good thing? I think there surely is a line, especially relating to salvation. As for your example of the accident 5-seconds before salvation, I don’t think it would happen. Or, if it would, God would have been in control and fully aware of what would have happened 5 seconds later – and would presumably make an allowance for that. I don’t think this issue is really worth discussing, though. Even if we knew the answer, we couldn’t do anything about it. Any postulation would just be an expression of our own assumptions at best.
I also don’t want to say ‘you’re going to hell unless you pass this line’, for many reasons. It’s my personal belief, though, that most of those who say they’re Christian in censuses are not. How many have a personal relationship with Jesus, and how many have rejected that same relationship? That’s where I believe the line is drawn. Once again, that’s not something I think is worth arguing about.
As for the context, I believe the Holy Spirit inspired Paul’s writings – and thus, they were intended to be read for millennia. Confessing with your mouth is an issue today – in China, as I mentioned, hundreds of confessing Christians get killed every day. Also, you know that it’s not an easy thing to do when your reputation or whatever is at stake. The point is that “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Confession with the mouth is an outward expression of the relationship your heart recognises.
Once again, I don’t think works are important in terms of salvation. I do think they have great value and importance in terms of a) helping people on earth, b) proving [hopefully only to yourself] that you are saved, c) heavenly rewards. Like you mentioned.
Jeremy – Stop bloody apologising! Just say it! We won’t bite. I’d say that yes, the ultimate result in terms of destination is black and white. There’s more (in terms of different degrees of heavenly rewards and punishment in hell), but that’s it for salvation. I don’t believe that when judgment occurs we will be considered good or bad. I strongly believe that we will all be considered bad. Because we are. Nothing we do can get us into heaven.
I think the point Donnave was making was that we humans are grey, but salvation is black and white. The grey will be – and is being – forced to decide.
All right, there’re the comments.
Well, that took a while. I’ve run out of stuff to say. Saying stuff. What now? Well, I have people coming over in three hours, and then I’m heading to church, so I’ve got three hours to do stuff in. What can I do? I’m still challenged by that thought, from my last blog, about purpose. I don’t view getting a 90% on a test as being more important or valuable than a 75%. I don’t know if anything I do is having any important impact on anyone. I do value social interaction, to whatever extent. Even this blog, I place some importance on. But it’s a challenge, it’s a perception issue. Which relates to Mel’s blog. I don't think its necessarily an insecurity, or pride, thing.
See, this is odd, that I’m dealing with so many big personal changes and struggles. On the inside (as in, nobody would know about it if I didn’t tell them, which is interesting in itself). All at once. My issue is why am I facing this stuff, and why now? I’d like to say ‘it’s an attack, from The Devil!!~!’ but I can’t. For starters – I’m not threatening him right now. I guess it must be God working in me, purifying me. And I suppose its as good a time as any for it.
Hehe. Living takes courage. I like that.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Must... stop... laughing...
Heh...heh... enjoy! Forgive some of the language, though...
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Titles aren't always easy to create...
This'll be a short one. It's a reply blog. I'm feeling quite tired - tiredness/overworkedness is going around at the moment. Although I definitely fall in the camp of the former. Feeling a little out of the loop - but that's more to do with specific groups (Cutting Edge, friends) that a general dissonance within myself.
Interestingly, there is one thing worth commenting on. By the way, I'm very happy - just tired. :-) But I was thinking, before one o'clock prayer (which we're going to have to rename 'One o'clock boys prayer' one of these days), about something I'd said. I've been discussing how I've felt purposeless quite a lot lately. And a friend of mine mentioned that that was one of my key spiritual needs being unmet - because a purpose was one of the more important blessings I obtained from becoming a Christian.
But that's wrong - it is being met. How? Well, some may not appreciate this, but I do like the "Purpose Driven Life" way of looking at it. As a whole, my life is fulfilling a great purpose, and I can - and actually do - take great comfort in that. Of course, I knew this far before the book mentioned it, but that'll help others understand it. So what was I going on about? I felt less purposive on a short-term basis. Like, why am I studying, who am I impacting, is my life-group doing any good, what'll I do next year... I have a sufficient (for now) grasp on the bigger picture, but it's the day-to-day-stuff that I'm a little concerned about.
These thoughts, and those following, occurred in one of those rapid, clear revelationy moments only God can provide. Next I started thinking about prioritising, and how Brendan had been talking about the four quadrants (a punnet square of 'urgent' and 'important'), and wondering how to categorise things... and I realised. My problem is... I don't see what I'm doing as important! To me, to others, to God (er, in the other order, of course). So it's a perspective thing, really. More on that later, I went a little deeper, but I wanted to get that down. It's also one of the two reasons I'm not jumping at accepting responsibilities (the other being laziness) - I want to keep free in case something (more?) important came along. Which, yeah, not cool. So there's an FYI for eff-why-oh-you. That's something I'm thinking about, and I should be praying about it. Soon, precious.
What else, what else's been going on? Nothing, really. Lots of birthdays this week, and I don't think I'll be buying any presents or cards or anything. Which I'd love to be able to do. No biggie. One day I'll be able to bless people in that way. Or just in another way, I dunno.
Oh, Blogger. Yeah, it's gone all updatey, and I've been fiddling. Made some minor changes - may end up changing the colour scheme, if I can be bothered. I'd have to do a lot of work, saving things, moving them around... when I have time, I guess. Also considering whether to use Blogger's new commenting option... it's not as cool, and I'd lose the comments I have, but there's a safety in keeping them with my blog. I can also get an e-mail everytime someone comments - or I can automatically e-mail my blog to someone. So many options! It's tough, isn't it? Eh, Abbey? I saw that you'd changed it, I saw! I bet you noticed the comments had gone and then decided to change back... :-)
And big props to both Abbey for her long blog and her anniversary blog, and to Jane for her long and long-awaited blog. I've re-linked to you. Hehe.
Comments:
Angus - quite seriously considering the Bioethics Masters (your scenario truly did encourage me - and challenge me. FYI, I'm no longer that sure about where I stand on that abortion issue at all...!) - it's probably my strongest option at the moment. So you may be stuck with me for another year.
Reuben: The Wager (which I'm defending not because I think it's necessarily a strong argument, but that it's a very useful and important way of examining one's choices) - Firstly, your point may be very valid - in which case, perhaps the wager is an argument as to why atheism is the worst choice. Agnosticism would be a valid choice, based solely on this argument. But I still insist that it can be a reasonable, practical (yet ultimately fear-based) argument, if not a logic-proof one.
Doctrinal differences: I think they're much less important than they're considered to be. I have been wondering lately about the salvation thing. Because, in a nutshell, we Christians (warning - generalisation!) believe that a relationship with God is the goal of life... that we were created for this purpose, Adam and Eve screwed it up and cursed us to a crappy life followed by eternal damnation, Jesus came to fix it all by taking our curse for us. We need to respond by repenting (admitting we were wrong), believing in Jesus, and committing our life to Him. Romans 10:9 - "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved."
So that's all that's required for salvation. But I've been wondering how the line is drawn? JWs and Mormons, for example... or even Buddhists, who may believe in 'Jesus'. I mean, I'd love for them to be saved too, but it just feels... incorrect. I guess the argument would go that they don't believe in the Jesus that the Bible reveals. And that's a fair argument. But on that note, what place do 'works' occupy? Is salvation based solely on faith, or are works required to some extent? Or, as I contend, are they just fruit that will naturally spring from faith? Some people have said that there is an underemphasis on works... I guess I disagree with that. They're important ("faith without works is dead") but I don't think complicating the salvation message with that is helpful. Thoughts, anyone?
Death penalty: Yeah, I didn't mean to offend you. That's not what I was implying at all. My suggestion that "opposition to the death penalty is related to a fear of being there" was based on something Brendan mentioned to that effect earlier, as well as my own personal pre-Christian beliefs. You just happened to be who I was commenting in at the time. But I'm still keen to hear what your moral belief in that area (sanctity of life, I guess) is based upon. Is it the existential consciousness thing that Jeremy (?) mentioned earlier? Oh wait, you discuss that... well, yes, it's an ineffective deterrent - but that shouldn't affect one's ethical standpoint. Yeah, you say the same as Jeremy - you value human life because you have it. I'm not so sure that's a stable position... do monkeys value monkey life? Should we consider monkeys as having all our human rights? As for your gut reaction to deliberate killing, well, er, yeah. There's a very nice Biblical explanation for that. :-)
Oh yeah, and I meant the Nuremburg trials, not Hindenburg. Those darn Weird Facts of the Day messed me up my talking about the Hindenburg disaster.
Actually, I'm not quite sure about your statement that you derive your morality from practical experience. Is that morality or utilitarianism? This could just be my confusion here...
Mercy vs. forgiveness - this is based on my own limited understanding, but mercy relates to the giver's actions - e.g. not punishing. Forgiveness relates to the giver's... um... feelings - e.g. not condemning, getting angry. So with the death penalty example, mercy would involve less or no punishment, forgiveness would depend on the authority of the forgiver (if the state forgiveness, probably no punishment; if the victim forgiveness, there'll probably still be punishment).
I'm not 100% on my position of state forgiveness, either. The state is given the power "to wield a sword" - i.e. to judge. While I'm personally all for forgiveness, I'm not sure how a (democratic) Christian government ought to deal with it. Obviously it has a duty to judge, and protect, as well as to extend forgiveness. I'm going to hold my verdict on that, because a) I don't know if/when it'll ever happen, and b) it doesn't interest me much.
Plust this is longer than I thought. Ciao! :-)
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Chocolate After Satay
That’s the name of our life-group band. Based on Steve’s idea of an ideal meal. Or something like that. It has a nice ring to it. Speaking of nice rings, I haven’t worn one for ages. Then again, the only one I do have is an engraved one from my ex, which makes it quite odd to wear. Hehe. Hey, it’s Mother’s day! I wonder when the first Mother’s Day was. Is it a big thing in other countries? Heck, is it big here? I dunno, we always down-play the ‘Days’ in our family.
Here’s something interesting – I don’t think I’ve mentioned any of my papers on this blog this year, except perhaps Spanish. And mooting, way back when. Which is crazy, when you think about it. I should do a dull/daily-routine blog at some stage, get it out of the way. Maybe.
Well, since I can’t think of what to write, and I’m multitasking, and I’m expecting to be interrupted (to go out to dinner, speaking of satay) any time now, I think I’ll start replying to the comments. But I’ll keep it brief, for those of you with a short attention span (not naming any names here… nope… never…). :-)
Ruby ruby reuben – the wager. Yeah, the multi-god argument has always been a good one. But I guess I feel that that brings the wager into an overly-theoretical framework. Because the fact is, if you’re actually considering the wager, you’re not going to be thinking about infinite possible deities with differing agendas. I mean, yeah, it’s a good point. But if you go that far, we can also adjust the probability of there being the Christian God compared to there being a hypothetical antichristian god. That is, examining this practically, there are a strictly limited number of deities worth considering, right? You wouldn’t consider worshipping Zeus (usually), but there are factors leading to the Christian God being strongly considered above most (I’d say all) other gods.
All of which, I realize, takes this entirely out of the original wager – as does the fact that I’m semi-ignoring the ‘infinity’ multipliers. Basically, I reduced it to a cost-benefit analysis rather than a philosophical dilemma. Because economics will always triumph over philosophy. Which is why America is stronger than Europe. Wait, that’s a complete and utter lie. Strike that from the record. My point remains, though, a reasonable (in the sense of what a reasonable, unbiased person would conclude – legal jargon) person would probably rule in favour of faith in taking a cost-benefit analysis. I don’t actually know Anslem’s proof, though. Although it doesn’t really interest me, but feel free to mention it.
As for forgiveness and the death penalty… firstly, the government clearly does derive many of its laws from religion – that much is obvious. Not just historically, either. But I don’t think a government enforced system of forgiveness would a) work or b) be any good. You’re mistaking forgiveness with mercy – or perhaps patience. And also, should fear of making mistakes be a good reason for not using a penalty that has been the backbone of most criminal justice systems until very recently? Surely not – if anything, we make less mistakes nowadays. You were closer to the mark with the sanctity of life claim (or perhaps less prejudicially, the ‘right to life’ claim). Do you, Reuben, have something to personally base this value on? Personally, I think a lot of people’s complaints about the death penalty system (although I reiterate that I’m against it too) boil down to a plain and simple fear of being in that situation oneself. Because perhaps if anything, this last century (Hindenburg trials…?) has taught us that crime is something we’re all capable of – it’s not a sickness. Which is very interesting. Who’s brave enough to disagree with that?
Angie – I mean, er, Gus. ChCh was randomly a no-go, for reasons I’ll probably explain soon enough. I enjoyed Van Helsing for what it was – a cheesy dream of a monster movie. I’m glad I saw it, and glad I saw it at the cinema. Was it a good film? No. Would I recommend it? Only to those who knew what to expect from it. Yeah.
Abortion scenario. Well, in the situation you gave me, if we weighed the possible outcomes, it’s either the mother and baby die, or the baby die. Using that, it’s very difficult to justify refusing the abortion pill. But I think your scenario was perhaps aiming at a different, more difficult solution. If it came down to me giving the pill or the mother killing the baby/aborting the fetus (man, you can’t say anything without a bias these days!) at great risk to herself, that would be more tough. Obviously there would be laws and regulations about this, but assuming I’m ignorant – and assuming I can’t call to a nearby town to get someone else to give the pill (which I would do if possible), if it came down to the basic scenario, yes, I’d probably give her the pill. I’d also strongly encourage counseling and stuff, but basically, if she has decided to get rid of the baby, and if I don’t help her there’ll be potential injury, it wouldn’t be loving (I believe) to stand on my ethics and refuse. But see, this itself is because of a conflict of ethics, in which case the strongest ethical viewpoint – in this scenario, the need to love and protect others – wins out. This isn’t the case of ethics being superseded by practicality, or anything.
Of course, going back to the original scenario, what if I were highly doubtful that she would commit suicide, for some (hypothetical) reason? Well, I’d opt for more consultation, and more counseling, but if worst comes to worst, I’d still give her the pill. For the same reasoning as above. Maybe… is one definite killing worse than two possible killings? Who can say? And it doesn’t help to say that I’d be more responsible for the definite killing that for the possible killings.
But thank you for that challenge, I’m sure that question would arise were I to do my Bioethics Masters next year. In fact, that could well be a thesis topic. :-) P.S. – your comment was not too harsh, don’t fret my friend.
Phyntosia – I’m not against contraception, because I believe (again, tentatively) that life is formed at conception. Thus I’d be ‘against’ the abortive, and not against the contraceptive morning-after pill. But, uh, surely a morning-after pill, by definition, is not a contraceptive…
Done and done. Unless someone’s commented since I started, again. Nope! Suh-weet. Never would have thought I’d be happy at a lack of comments. Hehe. I shouldn’t type long, because hey, class tomorrow. And it’s an icky 9 o’clock. So to get 8 hours, I’d need to fall asleep in… 10 minutes! Hah! Not gonna happen. Ah, it doesn’t matter. I’d say ‘sleep is overrated’, but a) that’s a cliché and b) no, it’s not. Especially not with me. I can’t be chirpy-Sam without a good sleep. Unless I have lots of coffee. But if I do, you don’t want to see me when it wears off at 3:30… ZONK!
Hey, check it, I breached the 1,000 visitors mark! Give yourselves a round of applause. I don’t know why I’m posting now, Sunday/Monday is always a very slow day. Thursday/Friday’s the best day to blog. When do you non-regular readers read my blog? As in, those of you who don’t read it…
EVERY DAY!
CLAP CLAP!!!
Interestingly enough, Site Meter predicts that I will get 26 visits tomorrow. Which, if you think about it, ain’t bad. Let’s say 20, because some might check it more than once. Let’s say 10 of you are regular readers/sometime commenters. That leaves 10 people who either read but never comment, or happen to read my page randomly. Which is cool! Course, I’d love to break that 26-comment-record one day, but I ain’t gonna push for that. It’ll just happen.
FYI, this is a perfect blog to trackback to, because tomorrow’s a very special day for one of our blog-family… you’ll have to wait and see who! Let’s hope that person’s got something at least slightly-special planned…
Hey, which reminds, it’s my birthday in three weeks. What would you call that, a twentyon-ight? Because, y’know, ‘fortnight’. Doesn’t work, does it? Oh well.
Darn it, I was going to make sure the majority of this blog wasn’t me replying to comments, because, hello, dull! Well, for some of us. I actually enjoy it. Although it’s not the kind of thing you want to write about every day.
CLAP CLAP!!!
Darn it, I’ll get you clapping along eventually, just you wait and SEE! Or more like, HEAR! So hey, since I’m in a talk-show-host-style mood… what do you want to see more of in my blog? Seriously, have a think about it… I know you won’t! But yeah, hit me, it could work.
Now, when I said ‘hit me’ back then, I didn’t actually mean, y’know. Thwack. I meant tell me what you’d like to see on my blog. Especially all you other bloggers, ‘cos you know I’d tell you if you asked. And especially all you commenters, because you know you’re an essential part of this blog. And especially all you lurkers, because you’re important too, and you really do want to comment, especially if you’ve never met me. G’wan!
I think I covered everyone there… hehe. I’m just gonna wait for the comments to rooooooollllllll on in…….
Friday, May 07, 2004
It's funny...
This... feeling inside. Ah, Moulin Rouge. Wonderful movie. One of the best arguments for seeing a movie on opening night in a packed cinema. I wonder if I'll ever have an experience like that again. Where was I? Funny. Yeah, funny. I was talking about the comments. I was waiting for more, but yep, tired of waiting. Hehe. It's good to know, though, longer blogs doesn't mean more interest. In fact, Abbey's short daily blogs seem to be the best reinforcement schedule that I know of. I'm quite outstandified about her consistency. 'Course, I was also quite hurt when she said she didn't read my entire blog and expressed doubt as to whether anyone else did, but that was a much-needed wake-up call. This blog shouldn't be about what you guys think about it. Well, it should, but not like that. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I don't need to, cos it's Friday and I don't have any lectures. Except it might come in handy for that essay on rape complaints. We do such friendly stuff in law.
Off to Christchurch tomorrow morning. At 7am. Garn! With a guy I've never met, for a party of a girl I don't know very well. Then I'll come home at some time I'm not sure of with I'm-not-sure-who. Y'know, I almost backed out of doing this whole expedition, but when I put it that way, I reckon it's gonna be exciting! :-) The guy, Dan, who I'm going up with, wants to mess around in ChCh for a few hours beforehand, so I dunno what I'll do. I could go to the party way early (unannounced) or, more preferably, hang around in town. I do have a good friend up there, but he's busy this entire weekend. Man, I should get some money if I'm going to be hanging in town for ages. I'm not sure whether I'll leave at 9pm (party starts at 4), or the next morning. I guess it depends on how good it is. I'll probably be missing School of Leaders and morning church, by the way. If anyone cares.
"I'm such a hungry man that I BEG you over and over and over... I might, might, might I might TAKE any highway to be there with you..."
We haven't had Boys Prayer (Dave, Bing and I) for 10 days+, we should do that. Maybe not tonight, 'cos we're probably going to see Godspell at a local highschool. Can't miss out on my musical fix, oh no. Actually, I've got some things I need to pray about. Or do I? I dunno. Hehe. Y'know, I've been having the craziest dreams lately. I woke up about 12 times last night, and looked at my clock every time... I wonder if that's why. Whatever the reason, I realised that my dreams have finally become more interesting than my life. I dunno if that's happened before. It's like I'm bored, but not quite. More... stagnant. Am I 'comfort zoning'? Am I done with Uni? What's up? What should I be doing? Am I at the end of a certain stage in my life? Then again... am I really the only person feeling like this? Maybe it's a 2004 thing. Maybe it's a End-of-Degree thing. Maybe a 4-years-in-Dunedin-is-too-long thing. I'm getting restless, which is odd, 'cos I like my rest as much as any other man. True story.
So, yeah. Heh. Guess I do have stuff to pray about. Although maybe that's a 'me, myself, and I' prayer. Interesting.
Replies:
Phyntosia: I forgive ya. Grace/Justice - I dealt with that (briefly) in my recent e-mail to you. How do we know God won't change His mind ('again')? Well, He will, it's called the Second Coming. It's been foretold as much as Jesus was to the OT Jews. But I don't (can't?) think of it as Him changing His mind. To be honest, your problem with God's standard-changing does trouble me. I can't think of any great argument for it off the top of my head. Although perhaps the idea is that His grace was always there, within His judgments, only not as blatant and extraordinary as in the NT. As in, in the OT, His grace was shown (e.g. in the amount of forgiveness He gave the Israelites), but if He had demonstrated it as He did with Jesus, things wouldn't have worked out. Because to understand grace, you must first understand ungrace. C.f. Adam and Eve, who lived with grace but rejected it because they couldn't understand its true value. Hey, that all makes sense, actually. Doesn't it? In this scenario, God doesn't change at all, and it all makes sense. Huh.
Jeremy: If I recall correctly, I was quite surprised at your argument. Firstly, solipsism, which you discount because it's pointless... because it doesn't fit with your assumption. Which I guess is fine, but not very philsophical. As for the abortion issue, you're arguing from your conception (pun not intended) of when life exists, using that to support your arbitrary line, and then using that line to support your original designation of life. Which is entirely circular. Personally, I don't have a problem with contraception. I'm - currently, and not wholeheartedly - of the view that life begins at fertilisation, when the DNAs combine. In which case, I suppose I'm against the morning-after pill. But yeah, I'm not 100% sure about that. I guess this all comes down to one's definition of life, and yeah, consciousness.
Reubs: For everyone else, I've responded to some of what he commented on in person. As for the Pascal's Wager thing, I think I know what your talking about, but if you could elucidate, then I can respond properly. Forgiveness vs. Justice... yeah, that is interesting. I was talking about governmental justice, not personal or divine justice. And the government is primarily a tool of justice, not of forgiveness. Especially if they don't explicitly recognise God as the source of their authority. So yeah, my comment still stands in that context.
All right, I'd better end this here. Gotta go and... um... what do I have to do? I suppose I could do some more study... or play guitar... or... no, that's about it. I could read. Ooh, I could read some more Les Mis! Good plan. Ciao!
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
What’s more painful that a three+ page blog that suddenly gets deleted?
MAN-CAMP! Everything else pales in comparison. Wait, no, everything just pales. You know, and goes grey. Yeah, in a GOOD losing-consciousness-type-way! Woo yah. Awesome times were had by all, and although a little disappointed by lack of numbers, that was quickly turned into thankfulness after having half of them tackle me and try to break either my wrist or the string tied around it. And the awesome conversations and spirit of unity were NOT to be missed, no sir. Anyone remember Ren and Stimpy? “Hmmm… No sir, I don’t like it!” Ah, childhood memories. And odours, don’t forget the odours. Of childhood, I mean. And Man-Camp, come to think. Blood, sweat, no tears (not that real men don’t cry, or anything), diesel, charred t-shirt, eggs, bacon, grass, smoke… makes you proud to have a nose, really.
So I’m writing this the morning after man-camp, which I obviously enjoyed, and also just before a very busy Sunday. School of Leaders at 9am, followed by the morning service, followed by lunch at Steve and Indra’s (which you KNOW will go past 4…), Soup Sunday at 5 (leaders’ meeting at church)… and I think it’d be forgiven me if I skipped the night service. And y’know, I’m stoked. Today’s gonna rock!
So it really doesn’t bother me that I wrote some incredibly lengthy, well thought-out replies to the comments to the last blog, and accidentally deleted them with a click of a button. To tell the truth, I’m still not actually sure which button, and ah, maybe that’s the downside of a new mouse-wave capable browser. But that’s cool. I’m writing this in Word, for handy cut and pasting later, because I’ve got to go get ready in 2 minutes. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t finish this today. Unless I go hard on it this evening. But I do really need to crash early tonight… well, I’m assuming, actually. I feel pretty darn wide awake right now, and I still can’t see 8am coming ‘round the mountain when it comes.
YEE-HA!
Everybody, now!
It’s funny, actually, I went into man-camp hoping for some breakthrough, because I haven’t been in the most faith-filled place of late. And I’m not sure if I got it. If I did, it was a covert break-through. All camouflaged and all. Because I didn’t get any great revelations, I didn’t even get prayer, but I have a sense of peace and satisfaction that I didn’t have going into it. Perhaps… perhaps it’s because I’m excited about today. Perhaps it’s because today is busy. Perhaps that was God telling me to study harder – not because I need it to pass, but because I need to for fulfilment. Perhaps. I certainly wouldn’t put it past Him. Perhaps I’m encouraged about Cutting Edge, student ministries and the Christian battle in general for once, rather than seeing what seem to be insurmountable obstacles. As to the last, reading “How now shall we live?” has given me great hope that Christianity is relevant and very needed by the people of our generation, whether they know it or not. Lord, forgive me for doubting.
Heh, imagine if Jesus read my blog. And commented. Of course He’d comment, because not commenting is surely a sin. J
Man, I need to go get ready. I’ve gotta shower again. I still can’t get that wretched stench of the Oil of Shame out of my hair. It wasn’t really my fault I dropped the Bad Bear, it wasn’t! I blame the Monkeys! CHEEKY MONKEY’S, CHEEKY, BAD, NAUGHTY MONKEY’S!
It’s now 8:20 at night, and I’m feeling pah-retty wasted. Indeed. Very good day, though. I can’t really remember too much of it, though. But I don’t have to, not right now. I’m too tired to think about blogging properly, so I’m gonna write this only. But I’m not going to post it yet, because I need to reply to the comments that I replied to before I deleted them. Whoops. Hehe.
Monday the 3rd of May, 5pm. Groan, this is taking ages… oh well! J I won’t finish it now, either. Probably tonight, though, after dinner. Which I’m cooking. Which means it’ll taste gooood… J Naah, y’others cook good too. Having a good day, definitely. One or two things I’ve been challenged about, which I can’t be bothered talking about. Largely because I’ve given ‘em to God, and I’m not taking them back. This time. Hehe.
Alllllllllllll righty then! Comment-Time!
Kirk – Kirk made some challenging remarks about the afterlife. Why did I say “the Bible merely provides scraps of info about heaven”? Well, partly because there’s little we can imagine from the descriptions. There’s ideas and thoughts, but no structure in what’s written. There’s probably a darn good reason for that, too. But I also said this because I was frustrated that I couldn’t answer this question with some nifty verse references. Which was wrong, I concede.
I won’t concede my point, though, which is that it’s entirely feasible, from what we know, to infer an understanding of heaven that includes fellowship. Firstly, Kirk’s points. “Biblically, we are made to honour and worship God.” I’d agree, but with an addendum that honouring and worshipping Him isn’t as simple as it sounds. It’s funny, because when I first wrote this, I included examples of non-standard worship, such as being an athlete or earning money. And then, less than three hours after accidentally deleting it, I hear a morning sermon saying exactly the same thing. So yeah, worship ain’t just standing in His presence and going “aah”. It’s life. And it includes fellowship. You can see where I’m going with this.
Kirk next argued from experience (not sure whether it was his own) of earthly worship, wherein it is hardly possibly to do anything but stand in His presence and go “aah”. Which I’d also concede. And concede that it’d be even harder when in Heaven, as His presence would be more, er, present. And even allowing for our vastly, vastly increased conciousness and mental capacity in our transformed bodies, this could pose a challenge. But the fact is, descriptions of heaven do show us worshipping in other ways than going “aah” or singing. For example, the divine government of disciples over cities and tribes. Which could be related to the millennial kingdom, but lets not go into that. Or the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Or the cloud of witnesses. Eternity does not seem likely to be a continuous, paralytic state of awe.
So, my contestation is that analogies from various imagery and types in the Bible could lead us to infer an element of wor(fellow)ship in heaven. For example, Adam and Eve and God. Or life in general. Or Jesus and the disciples. Or the church. Or the image of the body. Sure, there’s no direct evidence for it, but we can’t conclusively say yea or nay. Then again, I seem to have convinced myself on my own point more than yours, which doesn’t mean heaps. As for your statement that “heaven would be rather boring, as you wouldn't do anything there except worship God, so much so, that you would pretty much cease to notice that you existed,” I think this is simply based on a complete misapprehension of what it’s actually going to be like. I know I used to believe that myself. Surely you can accept that if it’s as you describe, you wouldn’t get bored. And especially not if it’s like I describe. Also, minor point, I don’t think worship is logically possible without some element of self-recognition.
Pascal’s Wager – this was my original reason for my (vague) belief in God at age 14. However, the reason for my salvation, my surrender to Jesus, at age 20 was entirely different, and based on various strong needs. However, I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong for a Christianity based on fear of hell, except in that it is likely to be a shallow, unfulfilling Christianity, with minimal relating to God. Of course, it’s entirely possible to grow from this original foundation into a much fuller relationship.
Okay, next. Phyntosia. Firstly, please don’t be so snarky. Just because you think you know why some of us believe in something, doesn’t make it true. As for the death penalty in the Bible, it is anything but clear. Unless you think the Bible promotes slavery. The recognition of such punishment in the NT is simply because it existed. It was not condoning it, it was condoning obedience to the legal system (for the most part). As for the OT, you know very well that a Christian is not under those laws any more, we are under grace – and grace and capital punishment don’t mix very well. Of course, there are exceptions to that (i.e. divine justice).
Note here, for both replies, and probably those to come, there are some things I’m not going into heaps of detail about, partly to encourage more discussion, partly to encourage people to think for themselves. Not that I think anyone reading here doesn’t, but it’s a good habit to get into (encouraging that, that is). Also I’m being quite… tenacious on some issues, so people’ll talk back. J
By the way, while I’m here, here’s a shout-out to those of you in Texas who read my blog when Abbey hasn’t updated… hope you enjoy it! And also a shout out to Jess and Michelle, who I haven’t seen commenting in a while. Still here, ladies? And as a side-note, it seems like my sister’s deleted her journal. Could well have something to do with her job-offer to be editor of Pulp magazine – and well done her! Clap clap clap!
B.I.N.G. – Capital punishment. You admit that you’re answering this from the perspective of a criminal, that opportunity for repentance should be the answer. Firstly, what about justice? That ought to transcend any individual’s right for forgiveness. Secondly, who says a criminal (say a murderer) ought to have more opportunities? Could it not be argued that they gave up that right or whatever once they committed that crime? Otherwise, where do you draw the line between re-offenders or dangerous people and the rest? And where does God fit into it? Or for a non-Christian, where does this requirement of mercy come from, apart from a fear of it happening to you?
So it’s 9pm now, and I’m on Brendan’s computer. Which is having some problems. Like not loading comments. Actually, that’s Haloscan’s fault. So I can’t reply to the rest of them. So what can I talk about while I’m waiting for all that? Ooh, e-mail! From… from Abbey! What’s it say? Blah blah blah… marriage proposal… blah blah blah… hehe, I’m kidding.
Okay, BORED now! C’mon, Haloscan, load! Guess it’s actually DOWN down (rather than up down all around). Man, typing on Brendan’s keyboard is hard. I’m so used to my pretty one. “Your keyboard? Pretty keyboard.”
And if I were, well, I’d have to cock a snook at you anyway.
One person gets that. Feel special?
11:41 and Haloscan’s back up and running! As am I, running out of time to post this 2,000-words-and-counting baby. Plus I oughta sleep, some time. So straight to the comments, without more than a passing mention of tonight’s visit to Rachael in her pajamas…
Back to Bing – who, strangely, next comments to Phyntosia about the idea of mercy inherent in the death penalty. Which seemingly contradicts his plea for mercy for criminals in the previous comment (against the death penalty). So, yeah. I think he’s righter (?!) on this point than his last., although I’m still not fully sure of his reasoning.
J-to-the-Lo – “Sanctity of life”. He admits he believes in this rather arbitrarily, by introspective reasoning. He has a consciousness, and thus he thinks no-one institutionally ought to take his life. His morality, in other words, is based upon his existence. There are numerous issues I have with this. Firstly, although not incredibly seriously, he assumes against solipsism – the idea that he is the only real person with consciousness. Which is extreme, but my point is that he bases his morality on something he can never do more than assume. Secondly, there seems to be no reason to exclude animals and insects from this equation, with obvious logical consequences. Thirdly… why? Why consciousness? Why should that be protected at the cost of everything else? As he says, it’s arbitrary. Is that ever a good basis for a belief?
On that note, and on the abortion line, he states that “I regard a growing embryo as a human in potentia, rather than as an actual human. It does not yet have an experiential basis.” Says who? The Silent Scream shows a fetus of abortive age (11 weeks? Maybe 9?) violently reacting (apparently screaming) against the intrusive abortive instrument. Whatever you may think, this is clearly an experience. Even if you say it’s not, again, where do you draw the line? I can’t remember being 2 – should we be allowed to ‘abort’ 2-year-olds? Why is that repugnant to us?
And as for that link, I have no idea which bit you’re meaning… the PETA people? The crabs?
Abbey – Ooh, good idea. We do need to chat. As you well know. And as I mentioned just after you e-mailed. As for when… well, I’d love to do it tomorrow afternoon, if you’re free. I don’t like booking things (which is strange, actually. It’s because my mood changes, I guess, and I don’t want to have to talk to people when I’m not in a talky mood. That’s something I really need to work on), but I can make an exception. J I’ll give you a call then.
Mel – I don’t want to douse your thoughts here, but it wouldn’t be fair not to here. When I read that bit in the Bible about the household being saved once one person is, I read it (as did my commentary) as being “blessed” or something similar. Could you remind me where that is, so I can look at it again? Thanks! And trust me, neither boils, camels nor housewives are going to get near me, especially without a buttery, buttery pastry.
Gustav – Sanctity of life – no right or wrong answer. That’s relativism for you. I firmly believe there is a right answer. Of course, in saying that, I’m portraying myself as exclusionary and intolerant, but I believe in absolute truth. One absolute truth. One God. One Way. Some people find that hard to handle, and I find it hard not to compromise on that issue, but I won’t, God willing. Thanks for the abortion info, 22 weeks… wow. And the reason for it is also interesting – it’s alive once it’s no longer completely dependent on the mother. Very interesting. Let me know if Firefox ever gets stabler, yeah? J
And THAT’S IT. No more! Nada! No more comments to reply to! Not that that’s such a great thing, but it means this now-2,600+ word blog can be posted. And it better be worth it. J I love arguing this stuff. Actually, completely off-topic, I was looking at a map at Rach’s place just now when I got really hungry to travel more. I wonder if that’ll be more emphasised later… it certainly encourages me to do a mission trip more.
I feel like I could keep writing, but, well, yeah. As it is, I should have warned you at the beginning that you should have had some food by the computer. I’m not liable for any malnutrition caused by the length of this blog. Mmm. Hungry. Midnight snack?
RESIST IT, SAM, RESIST IT!