Fear and loathing

Sometimes I'm not motivated to get into a particular task. Often, that's because I don't think I'll have the time or energy to do it really well. It won't be up to the standards that I hold up others' work to. I never felt scared, but fear in a way has removed motivation. Fear of my work being pathetic.

Or, I could obey God's word, instead of just reading it.

I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

Ecclesiastes: what do you reckon?

Over the next few weeks I'm going to post a few thoughts on Ecclesiastes. Particularly, I'll be using two or three different approaches from different commentators and seeing how they hold up. Which has the best explanatory power for the material found in a book at once so easy to relate to and at the same time so difficult to understand?

I've found Ecclesiastes to have be far better represented in the 'favourite book of the Bible' stakes than the 1/66 chance which probability would afford it. In fact, I've heard more people quote it as their favourite than any other. And all have a strong opinion on its message. And most of them conflicting.

Thus it will be interesting, not to claim to know the answer, but to post thoughts to provoke those who're interested in this multi-faceted book.

So, to kick off, what do you think is the main point of the Teacher?

Is it normal to... #1

I'm trying to work out whether some of my responses to everyday situations are normal or complete over-reactions. What do you think? Would you be just the same?

Would you:

Be minorly-moderately annoyed if someone grabs your arm and moves it from where it was happily resting on the table while you're involved in conversation elsewhere? But here's the kicker: What if the person who moved it was your spouse?

Kutuzov family history

I've been doing a little bit of delving into my family history over the last year or so, and it's yielded some interesting results. Tales of Communist v Tzarist battles, Cossack warlords, indigenous Australian history and even apparently some French blood. :o

Firstly, I thought I'd start with the Kutuzov side, and some easy background. My dad is Russian from Harbin (North-eastern China). My babushka (grandmother) is alive, but my dyedushka (grandfather) died when I was about 2. Here's my dyedushka with my dad:



And here's my babushka in her first ball gown:



Subsequent history posts will have amusing stories too. Don't fear this will become an exercise in slide-show-death-by-blog.

The agony of choice

Back from mission, but no blogging impetus to speak of. I'm completely wrecked after a week of firstly being nervous about a kids' talk that went well and then worrying about an evangelistic talk which didn't go so well.

The kids' talk was made considerably easier by the fact that I used one of the excellent Kidswise talks by Sandy Galea and some awesome props made by my wife.

The sermon on the other hand, was agony!

The loose theme we'd been given was 'Life Matters'. I had initially wanted to do a talk about the tension between life and death in Ecclesiastes. The tension is created by death's ending of life and thus frustrating and cutting off all humanity's work and relationships. Hence, they are in vain. The talk would finish in 1 Corinthians 15 with the resurrection and its result: your labour in the Lord is not in vain.

The problem, though, is that I wanted to explore some different ways of dealing with this tension between life and death. Options such as denial, religiosity and acceptance. After a couple of weeks agonising over preparing this kind of talk, I gave in. I can't do a talk like that well enough yet. To be able to connect that philosophical stuff to real life in an engaging way in a 15 minute evangelistic talk to your average person from the street was a bridge too far.

So I decided to do an exegetical talk on John 11 (Lazarus' resurrection). But by then I only had a couple of days to prepare, and I wasn't really 'feeling' the passage as an evangelistic talk. So it wasn't so crash hot.

I'm not sure if any non-Christians were there. Very few people at church at all on that rainy day.

Still, it was good to stretch myself. Now I've got some thoughts about my limitations as a preacher to explore.

A break in transmission

Sorry. Can't blog. Missioning.

Still, Some bits of my preaching prep for Sunday morning. Prayers appreciated.

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John 11

The two different responses to Jesus.
You can see the miracles themselves, even believe that they’re real, and still not believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The issue isn't believing the miracle. The issue is: "having seen the miracle, would you believe that Jesus was the Son of God?".

The bloke who wrote this down was there. He saw it happen. He saw Jesus do heaps of amazing things. But why did he write this episode down? Why was this one recorded?

He tells us. Right at the end of his book he tells us why he chose this particular sign to record. “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

John wrote down what happened that day for you. In fact he wrote the whole book hoping and praying that you would believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Why? Because he wants you to have life. He doesn’t want death to be the end for you.

Just when you thought the job was done

Just so you know, this is NOT what it looked like when Nathan's goalkeeping performance won us the Grand Final (yes, it is Worthy of Capital Letters) on Saturday.

Christian terrorism

Now thankfully, pastor Terry Jones has called off his threat to burn copies of the Qur'an. Yet, the article which reports this good news has failed to fill me with any joy.

In it, Jones claims that he's made a deal with the Imam of the proposed Ground Zero mosque, with the result that

"has agreed to move the location."

Now, I doubt that this is true. But, if it is, then what is this but a successful act of terrorism? Someone is doing something perfectly legal which someone else doesn't want them to, so they threaten to destroy something valuable which the other person value very highly in order to blackmail them into giving up their original project. Manipulation is not God-honouring, Mr Jones.

"The American people do not want the mosque there, and, of course, Muslims do not want us to burn the Koran."

Nine years later, phenomenally different in scale, but how much different in principle?

Eagle in flight

How cool is this pic of the Eagle nebula?



That one and heaps more here. The Transter was where I was linked to it from.

Unity and Distinction, but not Balance

Unity and Distinction: some helpful thought tools. Here's the guts of it, from Graeme Goldsworthy:

Everything in existence has some point of unity with every other thing. Every thing in existence has some point of distinction from everything else. Unity and distinction form the structure of reality, and it is so because that is the ontological essence of God and the way he has made all things. This enlightens us about all aspects of reality as we try to understand relationships. The examination of the biblical data in their salvation-historical progression leads us to concerns about the relationship of the parts to the whole, including the relationship of the OT to the NT. Unity and distinction, along with their perichoretic relationship, also points us to the relationship of biblical, systematic, and historical theology.

/End simple bit.

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For you hardcore theology nerds out there, an excerpt from this article by Graeme Goldsworthy over at Beginning with Moses.

The article is a response to Carl Trueman's article, which somewhat blames the dominance(?) of biblical theology for the paucity of doctrine in protestant churches.

The payoff, however, isn't so much in their discussion of that issue, but in the helpfulness of Graeme's thinking. He suggests that in theological discussion, thinking of balance between issues such as God's sovereignty and human responsibility is unhelpful. He suggests that unity and distinction are better categories to use.

I haven't just quoted it because it's saying what I've been saying for a bit, but because I think the whole paradigm of thinking that he uses is so much more helpful than the alternatives.

To return to the Trinity, perichoresis is a term used to describe the fact that we cannot assert the unity of God without also asserting the distinctions of the persons of the Godhead. Thus, Christian theism is neither a modalistic-monistic theism, nor a co-operative tritheism. In the words of Cornelius Van Til, unity and distinction are equally ultimate. I would add that to assert equal ultimacy is not served by balance as well as it is by coinherence or perichoresis. We can see the ravages of balance when we look at the Trinitarian and Christological heresies that led to so much systematic formulation in the early church. Balance suggests an interchangability that, in the end, produces modalism. The insight of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 was that, in the matter of the two natures of Christ, balance does not suffice. It was the nature of heresy to try to balance the two natures. Both Ebionism and Docetism said balance could never be achieved under any circumstances and, therefore, one or other nature had to be eliminated. Apollinarianism attempted to balance by removing the spirit of man from Jesus so that the Spirit of God had somewhere to fit in. The ultimate balancing act was Nestorianism, which asserted that the two natures of Jesus could only mean that he was also two people 'glued together' (as it were).

The Christian theistic understanding of the ontological Trinity, then, directs us to the way ahead in the question of all relationships.

As it is in the Trinity, says Graeme, so it is in all of reality. Unity and Distinction.

Theologised history

Karl Barth can be great for a pithy quote at times. His view of Enlightenment man is fairly underwhelming.

Upon discovering that the earth was not the centre of the universe, humanity didn't feel more humbled that he was on a small speck of dust on the edge of the cosmos. Instead, he declared himself to be the master of the infinite new space which he had discovered. Barth's summary:

He moved from a geocentric view of the universe to an anthropocentric one.

Faith

What is it, eh? Is it being a trusting enough person? It can almost seem like a work in itself. And if the Paul isn't arguing about Jewish legalism but about Jewish exclusivism, then how does Romans 4 fit in?

(That was just to get your mind whirring. The important (and less confusing) bit is below)

I've been wondering whether there's enough in Romans 4 for me to argue that faith there is particularly the 'throwing your fate upon Jesus' kind. It uses the Greek word 'upon' instead in 'in' when it says that we're saved by 'faith in Jesus', so do you think that the immediate context gives you enough to say that this isn't just about believing in God, but about putting your lot in with Jesus and relying on his faithfulness to bring you through?

Disappointing day

After a massively stressful day on Friday, today Gunther (our car) overheated on the way up to Brisbane from the farm. By the time RACQ got there, the towing had happened, worked out Gunther wouldn't restart and Dad had driven down to Ormeau from Brisbane to pick us up, I got to our football semi-final just after half-time. Unbeknownst to me, there's a rule in our league that you have to have signed the card by the end of half-time in order to play any part in the match. Found that out rudely when I got there.

Absolutely gutted. Day ended up being a big, massive pile of nothing.

The boys did win, so there's a game next week to play in.

Shudder

I just read a blog where a guy was bemoaning the lack of excitement in watching women's sports. Now, there's an extent to which I share this sentiment, but that's about as far as I go in solidarity with this guy's position.

Essentially, the reason that I don't watch women's sport is because I can't handle watching women act like men. Watching ladies compete in any sort of physical competition where they must hurt, hit or use sheer brute force to overcome each other is not my cup of tea. That's why football (soccer), tennis (except when the Williams sisters are playing) and lawn bowls are less distasteful.

But this guy I was reading was exactly the opposite. There wasn't enough competition in women's sport for him. Until, he was transfixed by women's rugby:

For a brief moment last night that changed, when bald headed women ploughed into the ribs of other women and fought with their last drop of sweat to prevent an egg-shaped ball from crossing a line. In one moment an England player punched an Aussie to the floor in self-defence.

Yeah. Great stuff. Really.

Gunning for the future

An interesting quote here from an ex-Arsenal employee. Paul Burgess, former groundsman (the guy who makes sure the playing surface is in top condition) of Arsenal FC has moved on to Real Madrid, and made this interesting comment about the cultures of the two clubs:

"There is a different kind of pressure here compared to Arsenal," he admitted. "There, the club is more about the future whereas at Real Madrid it is all about today. If they don't do well today there is no tomorrow, so winning is everything.

"That transcends down to the groundsman as well. Everyone at the club has to have a winning mentality and if you don't have that, then you aren't part of the make-up of the club."

Interesting to chew on, that.

From the Master's Apprentices to the Animals

This is the third post of a series on Genesis 1-3 which started here, with part 2 here.

Another of Doug Green's thoughts on humanity is that if we were, as is fairly commonly held, that dominion and mastery is at least part of the divine image which we are to fulfill, then the first domain of dominion ought to be ourselves.

That is, if we are made to be Masters of the Universe (TM) under Yhwh, little gods representing the Big God, then the primary arena for that rule to be expressed ought to be our own person.

This, says Doug, is one of the most obvious features that marks us off from the animals. The mark of true humanity is that we exercise appropriate dominion and control over ourselves. And so, after the fall, we end up being humans who are less than human because we do not exercise dominion over ourselves.

He cites the story of Esau as paradigm of fallen humanity. Note how many things present Esau as animal-like. His body was like a hairy garment. He inhabited the open fields. He was a hunter. In order to be like an animal, like Esau, Jacob covers himself in the skins of animals.

Thus, we should not be surprised that Esau lives by instinct. He sells his birthright to satisfy hunger. This is the nature of fallen humanity.

Interestingly, 'beastly' is also how Peter describes a certain set of false teachers, while the ultimate judgement on Nebuchadnezzar for his pride was to become like a beast. (More on 'loss of reason' as a product of the fall in another post)

This is beautiful because it gives a positively glorious perspective on the Christian ethic of self-denial and restraint. Western capitalist culture sees nothing in this ethic other than repression (or oppression?) of natural instincts, the curbing of true humanity. Our age can see no positive virtue in deciding, for example, not to have sex before marriage. Why suppress yourself? Why not be who you are?

Yet Scripture holds the exercising of self-control as a mark of true humanity. We are not utterly beholden to our instincts. Nor should we be. Being re-made in the image of God (back to true humanity) by Holy Spirit includes the fruit of self control! Our age is pretty up on asceticism being stupid, but not so much on unbridled self-expression being stupid.

I'm very glad that Jesus that he did not obey his instincts but was truly human, and set his face towards the cross.

Aesthetic irony

Perhaps this may bring accusations of shallowness, silliness or harshness, but after having caught public transport to and from Toowong train station for nearly 8 years of my life, I've decided finally to ask the hard questions that need to be asked.

How on earth can an institution bearing the name Queensland School of Beauty have uniforms so ugly?

Call me harsh, but after watching otherwise perfectly normal looking purple penguins go off to beauty school for 8 years I've finally had to let it out.

This has to be good!

What to do for my 200th post? This has to be special. It has to stand out in lights. It has to be one of the best things I've ever posted!!

Where's my inspiration? Where's that fascinating insight that's evaded humanity for centuries? Where's that pearl of wisdom, that cure for spiritual cancer that comes second only to the Cross in its power to heal the ills of humanity?

. . .

Drat.

I think this is a little self-indulgently vacuous. Not quite what I was looking for.