Yep, I'm still busy

Yesterday I described it to our minister, whom I'd managed to insult by a combination of my own inattention and stupidity, as feeling like I'm going under for the first time though thankfully not the third (also thankfully, he was gracious enough to be more concerned than annoyed). This was in the course of apologizing, something I've had to do a bit of lately.

In the middle of it all we will likely try to bid on a house this Saturday. It would be just terrific for the family and for ministry, but who knows whether it will be affordable.

Anyway, further apologies to all those out there in blog land who know me personally and have felt the fallout of this busy-ness. I don't think it's through bad choices on my part, though once I come up for a gasp of air during the Easter break I will look carefully at that question. Seriously, I have never been this busy in my entire life.

In the meantime I keep waking up each morning and reading the Psalms, which I am loving. So seeing as how I don't seem to have much of value to say just at the moment, have a go at this:

19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
5 which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
6 Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

7 The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
8 the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
9 the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.

12 Who can discern his errors?
Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
13 Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;
let them not have dominion over me!
Then I shall be blameless,
and innocent of great transgression.

14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

In my case, especially now, that last verse is a great prayer to cling to.

Scriptural inerrancy

Pay attention, if you don't want to sign up to the doctrine of inerrancy:

The claim of inerrancy is that “in all their real affirmations these books are without error.”

It's from this very useful post by Justin Taylor.

Emily Bear, 8 y.o pianist and composer plays Mozart

I put this on facebook but some of you aren't my friends yet!



She was 8 when she performed this, Mozart's 23rd piano concerto.

Getting Things Done

Here's the summarized method:

Here’s the basic formula that I’ve developed using the tools from Getting Things Done:

1) Anything that I need to do or want to think about ends up in one of three inboxes. I have a physical inbox in my office, my e-mail inbox, and my evernote inbox (I also have voice mail, but I don’t really get a lot of messages that way). What these inboxes do is serve as hoppers for me to store information, or tasks until I can get around to dealing with them.

2) Each day I process my inboxes by dealing with each item and deciding what to do with it. If something is in my inbox there are only two things that it can be there for. It’s either for reference or for me to do something with. If it’s for reference I can look it over and decide whether to throw it away or to keep it for later reference. If it needs an action associated with it I will either do the action (if it takes less than 2 minutes), or put it on a list that I review every day and get to it when I can.

3) In conjunction with my calendar, each day I review my action list and my project list to see what needs to get done and I do it.

4) There are a few other steps like reminders for items that I want to get to later, weekly reviews, etc. but this is the basic system.

I know this sounds incredibly simplistic and that’s really the beauty of the whole system. Because I know that all of my work responsibilities have been captured in this system, I can approach each day with a clear mind and a sense of confidence that nothing has slipped through the cracks.

Getting Things Done won’t improve your spiritual life, help your relationship with your kids, or give you a better marriage (that’s what the Bible is for), but it is an excellent tool for clearing your mind from all of the clutter of day to day life and helping you to focus more intently on the things in life that really do matter. I highly recommend it.

It's from here, via the invariably useful Matt Perman.

Noisy librarians

Oh and another thing. The librarians in this library, and the last library I was in also, are not only bossy but noisy. But aren't librarians the ones who are supposed to say 'shhhh!'? It feels wrong to reverse the natural order of things.

Going to the Community Centre in North Ryde.

So yesterday was fantastic, turned up, ran a group with a bunch of fun Medical Radiation dudes, then spoke at Lunchtime Bible Talks. 125 people were there; we knew because we ran out of outlines at 120, we took some away from those who had them.

So today a bit exhausted, did the usual get the girls to school in the morning, Fifi off to a Bible study, then felt like I needed to get out the door so I did.

Fronted at North Ryde Community Centre, leftovers in a plastic bag, realized the centre was locked. Went downstairs to the library, I said hello I'm a member of the community and wanted to know if I could use the community centre. Nice lady gave me a brochure and sent me away, I went away and after a little wander came back and said I'm sorry to be problematic, I really just wanted to use a microwave to warm up my leftovers, to which she said no, to which I wandered into the shopping centre, and just sat, ate my leftovers out of a plastic bag, tried not to stare at the lady in the Robyn Hunter Clothes Shop who may or may not have been staring at me, and had dyed hair, and felt generally like a homeless person until I picked up my bag, picked up my plastic bag, dropped it into the bin the plastic bag not the bag, wandered back into the library and found a seat, saw the lady who didn't know how I could use the community centre or the community centre microwave, or even if there was one, and now just sitting here typing this.

I'm tempted to say that we've lost our sense of community but it has to be said that I am here, in the North Ryde library, typing this. On my own laptop yes I know that, but I'm sure the nice lady would have let me use the library computer if I'd asked. And I saw a friend, hi Alan. So does that count as community?

Propositional revelation

Mark Thompson's posts are so long that vague thinkers would think that they are woolly, not recognizing that if the same thing were taken and written down in a book, people would be sitting there going Zap! Pow! Wham! Ugh! Ya got me!

So in the interests of preserving just one of those moments, I present to you:

Another way of approaching this is to insist that a simple equation of revelation and presence or self-manifestation (an equation often found in contemporary theology) is a little too slick. The biblical view of revelation certainly has at its core God's self-revelation. God makes himself known. He doesn't just give us truth about himself from a distance. He gives himself. But powerfully reassuring and savingly effective as God's presence and activity among us is, it is not necessarily —in and of itself — revelatory.

This is presumably why God does not leave this presence and activity unexplained. Ahead of Jesus' incarnation, death and resurrection, God provided the categories to understand it all through the prophetic utterances of the Old Testament (including God's own explanation of what was happening at the time of the Exodus and the divinely inspired poetic prophecy of the Isaianic servant songs).

In the time of his earthly ministry Jesus' own words accompanied his works, providing an authoritative explanation of what he had been doing and why. Finally, the commissioned witnesses of the resurrection, moved by the Spirit as they were, provided God's own viewpoint on the events of Nazareth and Calvary. There is considerable warrant for concluding that in fact it is this verbal accompaniment of God's presence and action in Christ that constitutes the revelation. God did not stand mute before us during the earthly life and death and resurrection of Jesus. He himself expounds the truth about himself and his purposes to which these things are pointing.

Jesus is our redeemer and Lord, but he is also our teacher.

I inserted three paragraph breaks because, as a vague and woolly thinker myself, the 90% chocolate that Mark is offering here was too much for one bite.

Saturday morning video

For those who love gadgets:



Thanks Nathan.

Still blogging

Things have been intensely busy, but I'm continuing to blog, just a bit less frequently. You can probably work out that Saturdays are my regular day off just by checking when the posts each week kick in. In the meantime, if you're reading this on RSS or via facebook, click through and check 'Gordon's shared items' in the right hand column.

Economics in one picture from Greg Mankiw's blog is worth 5 seconds of your time, plus another 5 or so seconds to see the point.

Nice.

Marlow and Frances Cowan play the piano.

Today's 'do' list

5. Write Sunday’s kids’ talk, including phoning Gary.


The apostrophes. I ask you. I even amazed myself.

Sunday night at the movies: Always look on the bright side of life.

Don't click through if offended by pretend crucifixions. Also has one swear word.

Oddly disappointed

A longstanding family friend gave up smoking.

He's in his 70s.

Always used to enjoy our smoke-wreathed conversations at family BBQs.

Just a kiss

(K.D. Lang)

U2

Don't like 'em. Never have.

"Please let me commandeer your church meeting so I can make a video in which people look at me".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X7QGCmIZl0

Those of you who enjoy them, enjoy.

Cumbo

Yep, cranking up. Got to write a talk or three.

2:1 And Hannah prayed and said,

“My heart exults in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in the Lord.
My mouth derides my enemies,
because I rejoice in your salvation.

2 “There is none holy like the Lord;
there is none besides you;
there is no rock like our God.
3 Talk no more so very proudly,
let not arrogance come from your mouth;
for the Lord is a God of knowledge,
and by him actions are weighed.
4 The bows of the mighty are broken,
but the feeble bind on strength.
5 Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger.
The barren has borne seven,
but she who has many children is forlorn.
6 The Lord kills and brings to life;
he brings down to Sheol and raises up.
7 The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
he brings low and he exalts.
8 He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honor.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's,
and on them he has set the world.

9 “He will guard the feet of his faithful ones,
but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness,
for not by might shall a man prevail.
10 The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces;
against them he will thunder in heaven.
The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;
he will give strength to his king
and exalt the power of his anointed.”

Well, that's my prayer. Hannah is, for better or worse, my role model.

My goodness again.

My goodness I say some stupid things.

Frequently, and regularly.

No, no need to ask, if you do I'll just say it again in which case we'll have tears before bedtime.

Busy busy busy

But doing what I love! In this case, having a day off. Might go out with Fifi. Might stay home with Fifi. Might go out.

I've got to think!

Meeting first years

What a great time! At Cumbo campus meeting first years, and asking them if they wanted to join us in reading the Bible.

The vibe was good, the sausages were cheap, campus security moved us from a reasonable spot to a better spot (I don't know if they meant to do that), and about 30 first years had given us their contact details by morning tea time.

So now we get on with doing our thing. Which in this case is Tuesday at 12, Luke 1:-4.

1:1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Genuine certainty is a rare thing.

Jailbreak!

My goodness I've been busy.

I feel pressed in on every side.

I'm going to have to make a ... jailbreak!

There was a friend of mine on murder
And the judge's gavel fell
Jury found him guilty
Gave him sixteen years in hell
He said "I ain't spending my life here
I ain't living alone
Ain't breaking no rocks on the chain gang
I'm breakin' out and headin' home

Gonna make a jailbreak
And I'm lookin' towards the sky
I'm gonna make a jailbreak
Oh, how I wish that I could fly

All in the name of liberty
All in the name of liberty
Got to be free

Jailbreak, let me out of here
Jailbreak, sixteen years
Jailbreak, had more than I can take
Jailbreak, yeah"

He said he'd seen his lady being fooled with
By another man
She was down and he was up
He had a gun in his hand
Bullets started flying everywhere
And people started to scream
Big man lying on the ground
With a hole in his body
Where his life had been
But it was -

All in the name of liberty
All in the name of liberty
I got to be free

Jailbreak, jailbreak
I got to break out
Out of here

Heartbeats they were racin'
Freedom he was chasin'
Spotlights, sirens, rifles firing
But he made it out
With a bullet in his back!

See this poem as it was meant to be performed, here.

What predicts success in a school teacher?

Not the sort of things you'd think—like maybe charisma, the ability to perform in public, or even a caring attitude:

What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record. In the interview process, Teach for America now asks applicants to talk about overcoming challenges in their lives—and ranks their perseverance based on their answers. Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her colleagues have actually quantified the value of perseverance. In a study published in TheJournal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)

But another trait seemed to matter even more. Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction”—reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues. These teachers “may be more adept at engaging their pupils, and their zest and enthusiasm may spread to their students,” the study suggested.

In general, though, Teach for America’s staffers have discovered that past performance—especially the kind you can measure—is the best predictor of future performance.

Here's the full article by Amanda Ripley in the Jan-Feb 2010 Atlantic.

Be interesting to start measuring the communication effectiveness of clergy with their congregations.

Global warming and Sola panels

I can't believe it! The subject of Global Warming has invaded even one of my favourite blogs, the Sola Panel!


In the comments, one reader wanted to link up the Christian attitude to global warming with the Christian attitude to apartheid:

I hope this following comparison isn’t too emotive. I do think we need to heed the warning of the experience of CESA - our evangelical friends in South Africa. They chose a path of political quietism during the apartheid years.

Read the rest somewhere here.

Left a comment as well, which I'll try to rescue from blog comment oblivion, with typos removed, by posting here:

...[T]he comparison with apartheid may or may not be emotive, but it's hard to see how it's relevant.

Discrimination on the basis of skin colour is a sin, the only exception being the positive discrimination associated with the attractive and slightly olive coloured skin of me and my daughters.

By contrast, refusal to be persuaded about whether we've heated the world, and are continuing to do so, is not a 'sin' under almost any meaning of that word. Sure, it may well be silly to fail to be so persuaded. But being silly remains allowable even in these enlightened times, and not being at the top of the class is never singled out as being problematic—not by the Bible, and not even by the Roman Catholic church.

So average people like me still haven't been completely convinced that the world is being heated to perdition, not unlike the biro I stuck on the bunsen burner back in Year 9, and remains fused (AFAIK) to the tripod Mr Boddy took away from me and into the Science staffroom for closer inspection.

And if the right wingers are to be believed, (and even the left wingers, according to this right winger), the climate-change consensus is collapsing anyway.

Whatever the case, those who kept on with their rather foolish and simplistic gospel message will keep doing so whatever the barometer outside the building is telling them.

But those who wanted Christians to switch to the gospel of global warming are in trouble, if the promised warming fails to materialize. They will need to find another clever thing to scare us with.

And let's not even begin to ask how many lives could have been saved if the 'let's stop global warming' money had actually been spent on something that is currently killing people, like malnutrition.

In the meantime, I'm not worried about any of this temperature nonsense. I'm worried about gospel preaching. And what's more, I'm worried about Peak Lithium, really I am. When the supplies of this important metal run out, where am I going to buy my rechargeable batteries?

And so on.

Sunday night at the movies.

School league tables and School Scripture

So around NSW we are all—those of us with kids—eagerly checking onto the myschool website to see how my school compares with yours (It goes without saying that mine's better, but if yours is better, there must be a reason ;) )

That's not a bad thing, but it may not be a good thing either.

My own thought was that it would be well worth the while of someone who had the time to check out the correlation between schools that allowed and welcomed school scripture, and those that don't. I don't know whether results would be good, bad or ugly. But if results were good, it would be a help to those who are struggling with getting Scripture, Religious Instruction, or what have you, included as part of their curriculum.

If the results were bad, we would feel disappointed and carry on teaching children that good or bad, the Lord Jesus judges us not according to our merits but because he is good, kind, faithful and gave all he has for us.

Global warming farce

You can feel the tide turning on this, or the wall crashing down, or the 'what' entering the 'whatever' (whichever metaphor grabs your fancy).

It's not so much that Paul Sheehan has written a somewhat sceptical article, it's the fact that it appeared in the SMH, until quite recently an unashamed promoter of the ideology that not only is global warming happening, we must all pay lots of money to stop it.

Here are 10 anti-commandments, 10 selected facts about global warming which have been largely ignored amid the orthodoxies to which we are subjected every day. All these anti-commandments are either true or backed by scientific opinion. All can also be hotly contested.

Sheehan then goes on to provide a random grab-bag of things that are most likely true and most certainly underreported—the polar bear population is increasing, Barack Obama wants nuclear power stations to multiply, the scientific consensus on global warming is a myth, etc etc.

The two from Sheehan's article that, if true, ought to make Christian bandwagoners on global warming ashamed:

6. The politicisation of science leads to a heavy price being paid in poor countries.

After Western environmentalists succeeded in banning or suppressing the use of the pesticide DDT, the rate of death by malaria rose into the millions. Some scholars estimate the death toll at 20 million or more, most of them children.

7. The biofuels industry has exacerbated world hunger.

Diverting huge amounts of grain crops (as distinct from sugar cane) to biofuels has contributed to a rise in world food prices, felt acutely in the poorest nations.

Those who have used the global warming momentum to push Christians (and others) to take costly action now (though the exact actions are frequently vague in nature, imprecise in application and uncertain in effect) have by and large remained silent on the real, current impact of a Western world largely sold on the reality of the still uncertain phenomenon of anthropogenic global warming.

The greater and possibly less visible sin of Christian apologists for global warming is not about how money and effort has been mis-spent, however, but how it's worked to distract some from the true end-time scenario; that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead.

Facing cancer

An AP report on Matt Chandler's brain cancer is here.

From the report:

Chandler never thought such a trial would shake his faith. But until now, that was just hope in the abstract.

"This has not surprised God," Chandler says on the drive home. "He is not in a panic right now trying to figure out what to do with me or this disease. Those things have been warm blankets, man."

Chandler has, however, wrestled with the tension between belief in an all-powerful God and what he, as a mere mortal, can do about his situation. He believes he has responsibilities: to use his brain, to take advantage of technology, to walk in faith and hope, to pray for healing and then "see what God wants to do."

"Knowing that if God is outside time and I am inside time, that puts some severe limitations on my ability to crack all the codes," he says. "The more I've studied, the more I go, 'Yes, God is sovereign, and he does ask us to pray ... and he does change his mind.' How all that will work is in some aspects a mystery."

Since falling ill, Chandler has gotten letters from the governor and pastors in Sudan. He has tried to steer attention to others, including a 6-year-old Arizona girl with cancer.

Work

One of my favourite blogs, frequently linked in the sidebar here, is Matt Perman's What's best next. It's great for organized people, and even better for disorganized people like me, especially at this 'getting organized' time of year. Matt is senior director of strategy at Desiring God ministries (led by John Piper), so when he talks about organization, you know it is going to be worth sitting up and taking notice.

A couple of days ago he blogged Studs Terkel's 1972 book Work, including this quote:

Work is about daily meaning as well as daily bread. For recognition as well as cash; for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. We have a right to ask of work that it include meaning, recognition, astonishment, and life.

I commented on the post that Terkel's view was attractive but idolatrous, expecting from work what we ought rather expect from God. Here's my elaboration on the notion that work (in this world) ought to be meaningful or astonishing, as opposed to meaningless and boring:

To work and find satisfaction is a gift of God. But work is afflicted with meaninglessness and boredom, unavoidably so. This problem will be fixed in the new creation and not before.

Those who can find satisfaction in work should thank God for his unexpected kindness, neither taking it for granted nor treating it as a right.

Evangelicals who undercut hell?

Al Mohler gives a portrait of what it looks like:

“I regret to tell you that the doctrine of hell is taught in the Bible. I believe it. I believe it because it is revealed in the Bible. It is not up for renegotiation. We just have to receive it and believe it. I do believe it. I wish it could be otherwise but it is not.”

Statements like this reveal a very great deal. The authority of the Bible is clearly affirmed. The speaker affirms what the Bible reveals and rejects accommodation. So far, so good. The problem is in how the affirmation is introduced and explained. In an apologetic gesture, the doctrine is essentially lamented.

What does this say about God? What does this imply about God’s truth? Can a truth clearly revealed in the Bible be anything less than good for us?

Yes, I linked this essay before but it repays another look. Let's pray and preach the reality of hell with sober joy in God's righteousness.

Firing up for 2010

Here's a post I wrote that reminds me why I keep doing what I'm doing, namely, telling people at the campus I'm working at something they don't want to hear.

Andrew Moody made this comment on the post:

the major problem with teens is that they are stuffed full of guilt feelings over stuff that is either secondary (pleasing parents, relationships with friends) or just stupid (weight-issues, popularity). ISTM that the trick is to preach a gospel that resists the gospel of the devil (=“you are worthless”) and replaces it with the gospel of Christ (=“you are incredibly valuable - AND a sinner in utter need of redemption”).

Thanks Andrew for the reminder!

Racism and Indians

A fine letter in today's SMH, and a reminder to pray for Christians in India:

I was born in India and still love that country, but its attitude is puzzling (''India could warn students to avoid Australia'', January 21).

Indians in a particular minority group are regularly beaten up in their own country without any furore in the media. In fact, last year Indian churchgoers suffered three violent attacks a week.

December was a particularly bad time for Indian Christians and there is a real sense of fear among this minority group in India.

This is a very good time for the media in India to look back and remember the response of the Australian missionary Gladys Staines to the Indian nation after her husband, Graham, and their two young sons were burnt alive by extremist Indians on January 22, 1999.

Graham's sacrificial work among India's poorest, especially those with leprosy, and Gladys's outstanding example of forgiveness after the loss of her husband and sons stand for all time as a monument to tolerance and forgiveness between nations.

India, please remember.

I don't recall our then prime minister asking for a guarantee that all Australians would be protected or tourism to India would cease. We've just seen the opposite of this with the Sydney Festival highlighting Indian culture and cuisine.

Irene Voysey, Saratoga

The public reporting of racism against Indians in Australia has been disappointing. It's not that there is no racism, because at heart all people are racist. It's rather that there has been so little analysis of a broader, wider picture.

This letter brings in two quite different dimensions. One is that Christians in India are currently living in fear of attack by other Indians, and the matter goes unremarked. The other is that Australian Christians, under attack, have shown grace, mercy and forgiveness.