Rules of engagement

If I went in for wordy rules of engagement on blog comments (and I don't), these from Triablogue are absolutely the best I've seen.

What matters matter?

Because I'm on leave and because I want to use the time on leave well, I've made up a list of seventeen review questions about my own life. The aim is to make reasonable progress on all seventeen, in discussion with some of those closest to me, and to come back to them from time to time to see how the answers are changing (or staying the same).

Galatians 2:20 is preamble:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Here are the 17 questions:

1. What glorifies God?
2. What relationships has God placed me in?
3. Which of these relationships take priority?
4. What roles flow out of those relationships?
5. What activities flow out of those roles?
6. What causes stress?
7. What gives enjoyment?
8. What has significance?
9. What strengths do I/we have?
10. What weaknesses do I we/have?
11. What opportunities do I/we have?
12. What threats do I/we face?
13. Review existing personal mission statement.
14. What is important enough to schedule daily?
15. What is important enough to schedule weekly?
16. What is important enough to schedule monthly?
17. What is important enough to schedule annually?

I'm trying to apply Galatians 2:20 by looking at these questions in the context of daily prayer and Bible reading. Unlike a lot of the good secular advice out there, I want to start with the assumption that Jesus is Lord of all, that I am a helpless sinner in need of his forgiveness, and therefore that any progress I might make in answering big questions about life revolve around Jesus' work as the Lord who has bought me by his death, and is now changing me by his Spirit.

For some reason, and unfortunately, I'm now thinking of George and Step 9. Once I get past that feeling, I'll return to the 17 questions.

Ruby's work

Ruby's teacher started a class blog and put some students' work on it. Here's Ruby's effort:

I think tomatoes don't taste very nice but I think they look COOL!!
They have a deep, brightish colour and a sprout of green on top like a bunch of grass placed right at the top of a grassy, green hill. Maybe if a baby saw a tomato it might think it's a ball and start kicking it around.

As I said on the blog, 'Yay Rubes!'

Getting organized—Dropbox

One of the things I'm doing while on leave is just trying to take a few baby steps towards getting organized. Anyone who has worked with me or had to live with me will be quietly applauding right about now.

Along these lines one of the things that has caused me the greatest joy during the last week or two has been the discovery of this extremely nifty site called Dropbox, which I got onto via Productivity501, which I think I got onto via Unclutterer, which I got onto because I am (half) Swedish and am constitutionally attracted to neatness and order, even if I am not personally capable of achieving it.

Dropbox is totally excellent (so far), and has allowed me to sync *all* my important files (and many unimportant ones) between my laptop and my desktop—and then keep them synched without my needing to pay any attention whatsoever, as well as giving me 2.2+ gig of storage on the internet for free. As far as I can tell they make their profit by me, or people like me deciding that it is too valuable to do without, and so wanting to buy extra storage space. I'm not there yet, but if I decide to get serious about photo and video storage I can see the day coming.

What's more, the other day I was around at my Dad's doing a bit of work for him and realized that I'd forgotten the powercord to my laptop. No problem! I logged onto his computer, found my Dropbox files and was able to work on them over the internet. When I got home and powered up my desktop and laptop, they synched the files I'd been working on with no difficulty whatsoever.

It's a pretty teensy-weensy thing to get excited about in the big scheme of things, but excited I am. Give it a shot yourself, here.

Thankfulness.

Those of you who are prayer supporters of the work at Cumbo ECU will know that I'm current on leave for stress and depression. Things are going well, thanks, God is gracious and the people at AFES have been extraordinarily generous in allowing me an indefinite amount of time to recover; likewise my good buddies at Cumbo ECU have been wonderfully patient and kind both now, and, as you can imagine, in the period leading up to when I went on leave. Not to mention the eternally patient Fifi and the rest of my family—including the church family at St Paul's Carlingford.

I really believe that the way God shows his grace most normally is not through remarkable extra-biblical revelation, nor through astonishing miracles that run against the course of nature, but just through the regular stuff that happens and the people that God chooses to surround us with.

(See Ps 19, Ruth, Job 38-42, Matt 5:45, Acts 8:29 come immediately to mind.)

More thoughts as they come.

Should we apologize for the Crusades?

Justin Taylor links to an interview with Rodney Stark. Justin was interested in the bit where Stark talks about how the US left doesn't seem to make headway amongst evangelical Christians (which Stark qualifies very helpfully), but I was more interested in the bits where he talks about Muslims and the Crusades, for example:

Because the Crusades are often understood within a larger framework that says that Islam is the gentle faith and Christianity the violent one. Karen Armstrong would have us believe that Muhammad was a pacifist. Take Major Nidal Hassan, the man responsible for the Fort Hood massacre. Had an evangelical Christian of the nutty sort gotten up in front of Army psychiatrists and talked about how much he respected people who shot abortionists, he would have been out of the Army an hour later. But everybody tiptoes around the issue of Islam.

Several months after 9/11, former President Clinton gave a speech at Georgetown University in which he apologized for the Crusades. He said we had much to be sorry about, and we bore some of the guilt for sending those airplanes plunging into the Twin Towers. Now, Clinton isn't a nut. He's not an anti-American. He's just been miseducated. He's been told a whole lot of nonsense about the Crusades.

The interview itself is from Patheos.

Ethics classes in schools

Polly Seidler gets a letter in the SMH:

I'm all for competition between SRE and a secularist alternative, but please let the competition be fair.

For each course, let there be the same level of advertising from the school, accurate labelling of the philosophical or religious framework (for example, humanist or secularist ethics), and penalties for misleading claims such as the St James Ethics Centre's (Simon Longstaff's) claim that the ethics pilot would be offered only to children who have opted out of SRE, when in fact it was offered to those on the SRE roll, which forms the crux of SRE providers' complaint.

Polly Seidler, Darlinghurst

(SRE = Special Religious Education, which by law needs to be allowed for in the timetables of public schools in NSW)

Not all miracles

Not all miracles are good miracles:

An 83-year-old Indian holy man who says he has spent seven decades without food or water has astounded a team of military doctors who studied him during a two-week observation period.

From today's Sydney Morning Herald. The man in question says that 'he was blessed by a goddess at a young age, which gave him special powers.'

"23 Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand." (Matt 23)

Gordon's quick and easy 5-step recipe book

Gordon's quick and easy 5-step recipe book:

1. Look in fridge.
2. Google fridge contents.
3. If you are reading this in Australia, click on first recipe website with '.au' suffix. Otherwise, just click first recipe website.
4. For Asian food, add word 'Asian' at step 2.
5. Cook.

Special offer!: If you have been helped by this recipe book, please send $35 to my account via Paypal (normally $50!), and I will send you a suggestion for a cover photo you may like to use if you end up printing it out.

Ultrasound before abortion

Oklahoma has passed laws to ensure that women about to have an abortion must see an ultrasound of their baby an hour before the operation.

Here's the New York Times report.

The arguments against include the idea that such a move is unconstitutional because it infringes the physician's right to free speech if he is required to describe the foetus. Which seems a bit desperate, to say the least.

Seems to me the mother is being forced to confront the human identity of the one about to die by her decision, which is no bad thing.

The best thing would be to outlaw abortion altogether, but the current view of the US Supreme Court is that this can't be done.

Marriage license revoked?

Belinda Luscombe wrote a great article for Time magazine on marriage, and taking away people's license to marry for multiple infractions:

In no other area of life can grown people flame out so often and so badly and still get official permission to go ahead and do the same thing again. If your driving is hazardous to those around you, your license is suspended. Fail too many courses at college, and you'll get kicked out. You can lose your medical or law license for a single infraction. Stock analyst Henry Blodgett was prohibited from trading securities forever for publicly saying things he knew weren't true. So why do people who are committed vows abusers keep getting handed marriage licenses at city hall? If batters and violent offenders get only three strikes, why should bad spouses get more?

Of course, a lot of people will say this is nobody's business but the bride and groom's. Plus, it's natural. Evolution favors the alpha-male serial monogamist who bonds with a mate until she gets old and is replaced by a more fertile one. Other primates change partners all the time. But other primates also practice infanticide and poop throwing, and we're not about to sanction either of those. So why are we complicit in allowing people to make big public promises they have demonstrated a chronic inability to keep?

The whole article is here.

Man lies dying, ignored.

Awful story:

People ignored the dying man for nearly two hours as he lay in a street in Queens after saving a woman from being mugged.

CCTV footage showed Hugo Tale-Yax, a homeless man, collapsing with stab wounds on a pavement shortly after stopping the mugger, who had been armed with a knife.

From SMH.

God's gonna cut you down (Cash)

Johnny Cash. True it is.

Homosexuality

Quoting the friend of a friend: "With so many gorgeous women about, you'd have to be nuts to be a homosexual."

I don't think it was meant to be anti-gay so much as pro-women.

God's impassibility and your pain

Does God feel your pain?

Does Jesus retreat to impassibility when he ascends to heaven?

If you want to see how brainiac theology of the first order issues forth in deep pastoral comfort, read Mark Baddeley's extraordinary post at the Sola Panel, right here.

If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)

All my lovin'

Arranged for ukulele.

The Pope versus Polanski

I'm no great fan of popes, but here is a fascinating (because true) article by Dominic Lawson comparing the treatment of the Pope over assumed knowledge of sex abuse, with the treatment of Roman Polanski over actual rape.

From the article:

Last weekend I went to see a new film by a child-abuser. Very good it was, too. Roman Polanski's The Ghost shows no diminution in the artistic powers of one of cinema's most enduring talents: I can understand why the reviewers have been unstinting in their praise. Yet Polanski has not been doing the usual TV interviews that accompany critical acclaim. He is under house arrest in his Swiss chalet, fighting the attempts of a California court to extradite him for the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer, in 1977.

The world of film – indeed, of art in general – regards this (Polanski's arrest, that is, not his abuse of a 13-year-old girl) as a scandal. This attitude was most clearly evident in the remark of the Hollywood actress Whoopi Goldberg, who last year defended him with the observation, "I know it wasn't rape-rape". With this remarkable neologism, Goldberg gave a new gloss to the old line (usually uttered by men) of "she said no, but she meant yes".

Richard Dawkins gets (dis)honourable mention too.

Too much Cross of Christ?

I originally posted this on The Sola Panel.

Is it possible to be too focused on the cross of Christ?

The answer has to be no. In fact, the nastiest pieces of theological misguidance that I've come across have lost any sense that the cross of Christ is where we find everything—our sin, God's love, his judgement, our salvation, and the mystery of Trinitarian theology working itself out in a place beyond our comprehension.

However John Stott brought me up short with this:

… if we dare to call our Judge our Father we must beware of presuming on him. It must even be said that our evangelical emphasis on the atonement is dangerous if we come to it too quickly. We learn to appreciate the access to God which Christ has won for us only after we have first seen God's inaccessibility to sinners. We can cry ‘Hallelujah’ with authenticity only after we have first cried ‘Woe is me, for I am lost’.

That's from The Cross of Christ (p. 109). After Basic Christianity, it is Stott's most useful book.

Translated into English from the English, Stott is saying, “Preach the cross as much as you like. But it is just a piece of stupidity in a distant historical context unless we understand why it is there. It's as ridiculous as taking a pill the doctor offers, without understanding that I'm sick—no, really sick.”

Until I understand that I am a sinner, that God really hates me for it, and that I really am going to the place where the fire burns without being extinguished and the worm does not die, I can't begin understand the love he showed me when his Son died in my place for my sins, bearing the full weight of his Father's wrath against me.

Reasons to be cheerful, part 3

We all know the song by Ian Dury, of course:



But not everyone understands all the reasons why we should be cheerful, so the BBC has helpfully put out this glossary.

Reasons to be cheerful, 1 2 3.

The Bad Man nails it on impassibility and language

Mark Baddeley absolutely nails it with this deconstruction opposing the non-impossibility of using passible language of an impassible God.

Here is the brilliant insight that unlocks what is going on:

But I'd suggest that this concern plays neatly into the hands of one of the bigger conceptual presuppositions behind a lot of modern atheism: good old Kant. The presupposition is that human language just cannot speak about something that is not part of our space-time system, and human reason can't reason about it either.

I freely admit I am too darn lazy to explain, just at the moment, why this is so astonishingly good. Maybe read a bit of Kant, or at least a potted summary, to start on the road here, and then head to the first post in this subseries.

Please note though that Mark is answering a second-level objection to a first-order point, and exactly what that point is (the impassibility of God) you can start reading here and keep reading here and here.

Spend time on it, folks, I urge you! This is theology as it should be done, and it is worth sweating a few bullets as you get past a little bit of the high falutin' language, enjoy the Star Trek references, to the point where you can enjoy just being thankful that God has granted Mark the ability to cut through dangerous sidetracks and errors with such conciseness (yes! conciseness! they are long posts but with good reason) and leading us back to a scripturally

(of course, for how could it be otherwise)

based understanding of God as he reveals himself to be.

Tetris lovers, abandon all hope

This is fully sick, in the older sense of that term.

Thanks Nathan.

Prayer prayed today

In church.

On the roster was confession, sick people, and the 9 am congregation at St Paul's:

Most Merciful God. We humbly admit that we need your help. We confess that we have wandered from your way. We have done wrong and we have failed to do what is right. You alone can save us. Wipe out our sins and teach us to forgive others. Bring forth in us the fruit of the Spirit that we may live as disciples of Christ. This we ask in the name of Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

Dear Father, we pray indeed that you will forgive our sins.

We pray for 9am church - Gary, Evan; those who serve in various ways - welcomers; those who serve morning tea; collectors; prayer; leaders; bible readers.

Please Lord forgive our sins, and guide those who teach us in your word to preach to us as forgiven sinners, desiring to see the coming of your kingdom. We pray for all of us, Father, as we serve in this church, that you will cause us to do so for your glory and in hope of your coming Kingdom, not for our own desire to be recognized. We pray that we will always be ready to explain the hope that we have in you, and that we will do that with love and faithfulness so that those who don’t know you, both in our congregation and in our community, will bring honour to you and serve Jesus as Lord.

We remember and bring before you all those in our congregation who are sick or in sorrow, suffering, need or any other kind of trouble. We remember B— having surgery on 14 April for ligament damage to her right knee. We also remember C—, recovering from surgery, and we also pray for the families of sick people we know. We think of those suffering work and financial pressures, or other family anxieties.

We pray heavenly Father for patience and perseverance in this life, and above all that you will fill us with the hope of your heavenly Kingdom and the joy of seeing you face to face.

We pray for the children of our congregation members as well, dear Lord, thanking you for the teachers who remind them of your word each week here at church, and we pray you will grant them a living faith and ground them firmly in the hope of your eternal kingdom and glory. Please give the children also the opportunity to witness to the risen Lord Jesus.

We pray all these things in Jesus name.

Amen.

After which we prayed for our gospel partners in Kyrgyzstan, where they've just suffered a violent change of government.

Psalm 27

Here in all its glory.

I love the way that so often in Psalms, the end returns you to the beginning.

So the end of Psalm 27:

13 I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
14 Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

reminds us of the beginning, where the basis for the Psalmist's confidence is stated:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

The basis for our optimism about the future ("Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage") is not just positive thinking, but the very character of God himself, who is both 'light' and 'salvation'.

I'm looking at ways of changing and lightening my load for the next few weeks, partly in response to the wisdom of friends and family who have sensed or seen that I'm sinking more than I'm swimming; struggling with a feeling of depression and its consequences. One of the things that I find so comforting about the hope that the Psalmists offer is that the hope is only and ever in God himself, the one who sustains us when we can't sustain ourselves.

From Requiem by Anna Akhmatova

A poem about the women waiting outside Stalin's prison in Leningrad. We sang it last night at the Opera House, to music composed by Moya Henderson.

It's the horror of oppression without the hope of resurrection.

Epilogue II

Once more the day of remembrance draws near.

I see, I hear, I feel you:



The one they almost had to drag at the end,

And the one who tramps her native land no more,



And the one who, tossing her beautiful head,

Said, “Coming here’s like coming home.”



I’d like to name them all by name,

But the list has been confiscated and is nowhere to

be found.



I have woven a wide mantle for them

From their meager, overheard words.



I will remember them always and everywhere,

I will never forget them no matter what comes.



And if they gag my exhausted mouth

Through which a hundred million scream,



Then may the people remember me

On the eve of my remembrance day.



And if ever in this country

They decide to erect a monument to me,



I consent to that honor

Under these conditions— that it stand



Neither by the sea, where I was born:

My last tie with the sea is broken,



Nor in the tsar’s garden near the cherished pine stump,

Where an inconsolable shade looks for me,



But here, where I stood for three hundred hours,

And where they never unbolted the doors for me.



This, lest in blissful death

I forget the rumbling of the Black Marias,



Forget how that detested door slammed shut

And an old woman howled like a wounded animal.



And may the melting snow stream like tears

From my motionless lids of bronze,



And a prison dove coo in the distance,

And the ships of the Neva sail calmly on.


March 1940


From here. Trans. Judith Hemschemeyer

What I prayed this morning

(at church)

Heavenly Father,

Thank you that the Lord Jesus rose again from the dead, and that you gave him a new body, restored and glorified.

We confess, dear Father, that we don’t think often enough of the resurrection and that when we do, we don’t realize its great and glorious implications.

We thank you that because of the resurrection, Jesus Christ is Lord; that you raised him from death to be the ruler of all creation. We thank you that because of the resurrection, the end of the world is coming; that the Lord Jesus will certainly return to judge the living and the dead. We thank you that because of the resurrection, we who were dead in our sins can look forward to a glorious awakening; that we will be saved from your terrible judgement by the forgiveness of our sins.

We thank you too, heavenly Father, that by the resurrection, we don’t need to grieve when one of us dies, as the pagans do, who have no hope; but that our grief is surrounded about by the knowledge of the comfort that you give in the giving of new life.

We pray, Heavenly Father, for our dear friends and family who don’t know the power of the resurrection and so live without life or hope, and we pause briefly to remember them now silently, by name.

We thank you so much, Father, that despite our unbelief and in cure of our unbelief, you give us the evidence and power of the resurrection, and we thank you that by the power of the resurrection you’ve given those of us who trust in you the power of the Holy Spirit. We pray that you will change us by the power of the Spirit into the likeness of the risen Lord Jesus, so that when we come at last to heaven we will reflect his glory face to face. We pray that you will return soon to raise and comfort everyone who has trusted in the power of the resurrection.

We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

Come down O love divine

Tom Waits and tramp

Jesus' blood never failed me yet.

The covenant

How does God relate to us?

If you can carve out the time, make sure you head over to Lionel Windsor's blog and spend some time on working out 'covenant':

The larger import of this for Paul’s argument with his opponents is that the covenantal obligations laid upon Abraham (circumcision) and his national seed (the law) as a prerequisite for international blessing are not laid upon the nations as a prerequisite for their own blessing.[6] Abraham’s seed has fulfilled the covenantal obligations. The multitude of nations, therefore, are not called to enter this covenant, but to find blessing in the “seed”, to be “immersed” into Christ, to be “clothed” with Christ (Gal 3:27). This comes about by the Spirit and by faith in Christ (Gal 3:14).

I've skim-read, but will be coming back, God willing, to re-read.

The other thing to say about Lionel is that he doesn't always write technically. In fact, here he offers translations for the rest of us.

Choir singing

This week, Wednesday and Saturday my choir is singing. Including Beethoven's 9th.

See the advert here.

O Canada

Translated from the original Canadian, “diversity” means “state-mandated mob-enforced conformity.”

That's a quote from here.

Canada. Weird place. Hope my friends over there are OK.