Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

Segways in the Bible

Here’s an idea for a marketing concept for the Segway from Ezekiel 1.

15 Now as I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them. 16 As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl. And the four had the same likeness, their appearance and construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel. 17When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went. 18And their rims were tall and awesome, and the rims of all four were full of eyes all around. 19And when the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them; and when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. 20 Wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 21 When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those rose from the earth, the wheels rose along with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

September 10, 2010

Courageous Christianity

The “Friendly Atheist” Hemant Mehta has had a stab at defining “courageous Christianity” while calling for more Christians to act with courage. He’s writing in response to the stupid Qu’ran burning stunt. He thinks it’s easy to condemn the loonies but hard to speak out on unpopular issues.

I think his list is pretty dumb. We already have a definition of courage that I think works pretty well.

Here’s how I reckon the Bible defines courage (from Matthew 10, John 15, 1 John 3)

32“Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. 33But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.

34“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn
” ‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law –
36a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’

37“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

John 15

12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command.15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.

18“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.

And 1 John 3

11This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 14We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

16This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

Here are Hemant’s items:

It takes real courage to:

  • to stand up in your church and say you proudly support same-sex marriage.
  • to tell a group of anti-abortion protesters that you are a Christian who supports a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
  • to tell your campus Bible study that you had pre-marital sex, that it was fun, and that it didn’t ruin your life.
  • to teach others that there’s nothing wrong with masturbation.
  • to fight against abstinence-only sex education.
  • to throw off that “purity ring.”
  • to publicly express doubts about your faith and admit that Christianity doesn’t have all the answers it claims to have.
  • to tell your pastor that he’s completely wrong about Creationism or Intelligent Design and that evolution is supported by all the available evidence. It also takes courage to educate other church members on the matter in defiance of your church’s teachings.
  • to tell street preachers and testifying co-workers that people are tuning them out, not converting to Christianity.
  • to remind any proselytizing superiors in the workplace that they’re out of line and you’ll report them if they continue doing it, even though you share their beliefs.
  • to be the first in line to defend atheists, Muslims, homosexuals, and any other frequently-defamed minority groups when someone in your church spreads lies about them.
  • to let your children decide for themselves what religion (if any) they want to belong to.
  • to admit the Bible is full of glaring inconsistencies.
  • to put your faith under the microscope of logic, reason, and demonstrable evidence, and to admit that if/when the evidence directly contradicts your faith, faith should lose.
  • to apply the same standard of reason and evidence to your religion as you apply to every other religion.
  • to admit that what you once thought was a miracle was really just a coincidence.
  • to realize that Christians are no more moral than people of other faiths or no faith.
  • to say that an atheist won the debate you just watched.
  • to recognize that churches are really businesses.
  • to walk away from a church you’ve gone to your whole life because you no longer agree with what the pastor teaches.

What does courageous atheism look like from a Christian perspective. Here’s my list.

It takes real courage to:

  • actually try to grasp what it is the people you deride believe before deriding their beliefs. Engage with the philosophy and theology of your opponents before writing it off as “a pile of woo.”
  • accept that Christians believe something that effects how they are to live and their sexual ethics and definitions of sexual morality.
  • allow Christians the freedom to participate in public debate on the basis of their convictions – provided they are not suggesting that you also be governed by convictions based purely on a faith you do not share.
  • acknowledge that your beliefs or lack thereof about the best way to understand the world is based on presuppositions taken on “faith” in your own personal observations.
  • acknowledge the good that religion does for the world, don’t just focus on what you perceive are negatives.
  • encourage religious friends, before trying to deconvert them, to live their lives as Jesus did – sacrificially serving others out of love.
  • find tangible ways to support the good work of church groups and charities without having to distance yourself from the institutions.
  • admit that it is possible to arrive at a position of religious faith using reason and logic (just not naturalism) and that fundamentally it’s a question of approaching the question of our existence from different presuppositions, both valid.
  • limit your definition of religions – like Christianity and Islam – by how they define themselves, not by how people who claim to follow them define themselves. It might be enough to be born in Scotland to make one a Scotsman, it’s not enough just to call yourself a Christian to make you a Christian (you actually have to follow Christ, which means following his teachings).
  • try to understand, with particular reference to Christianity and the Bible, that what you see as “contradictions” can usually be acceptably explained by theological thought from Jesus’ own mouth, the teachings of the New Testament, and Christians throughout the last 2,000 years. Your “contradictions” aren’t new. They’re your misunderstanding of the Bible not ours.
  • admit that some of the voices of the “new atheism” are insubstantial and filled with bilious ad hominem attacks that have no place in civil debate.
  • admit that atheism, in and of itself, does not contribute to one’s morality but that those convictions are often culturally inherited, and often this is an inheritance that can be traced to a Christian framework.
  • try to understand the things you disagree with – like being against the termination of unborn children – as a moral call based on legitimate concerns and presuppositions.
  • try to understand that for those of faith that faith has a role in shaping behaviour and moral frameworks, and that it is natural to want to share that faith.
  • accept that evangelism is part and parcel of most religions (and even atheism) and see discussions in the public sphere or workplace as something you can opt out of rather than something that shouldn’t happen. Participate in the discussion with your point of view by all means – but don’t push questions of significance to the fringes for your own comfort.
  • To affirm the freedom of Christians to disagree about your definition of concepts and constructions like marriage and morality – while rightly upholding the separation of church and state.

September 10, 2010

Church Marketing on the Gruen Transfer

The Gruen Transfer last night (or tonight if you caught it on ABC 2) had a segment on how religion uses advertising.

They looked at the Jesus: All About Life TV ad from last year.

Todd Samson reckons the Jesus is cool, the church is bad thing was based on sound research – but that the church is let down by the “retail experience” which is church. He reckons Hillsong has done this well.

Russel Howcroft said the ads worked, and numbers increased.

One of the other panelists made a point that preaching to the converted is a valid and necessary function of advertising.

The next ad was a Scientology spot. “Know yourself, know life” – it was, in the words of one of the panelists “pure motivational speech,” and it didn’t feature any ugly people.

Todd says religions have traditionally been about community. And the scientology ad tries to capture that.

The next spot was a Scientology ad featuring Tom Cruise – for people within the cult. Russel calls Tom Cruise a total “brain smashing” advantage for the converted Scientology people. He says “aspiration is so important in branding” and celebrity endorsements are a key part of that. Todd says it’s “influencing the influencers.”

The Mormons had a really weird ad that tapped into familial guilt. A little girl asks her mum to go rollerskating with her, she says no, the precocious kid reminds her that she’ll grow up to be a disconnected teenager. One of the Gruen panellists said the whole thing looked plastic, was horribly out of touch, and that it was pretty awful.

Then my favourite. Answers in Genesis. With the kid in a singlet with a pistol. Wil Anderson quips “Are you feeling Godly Punk?” – “will scaring people into religion help?” Todd quips “I thought that’s what Hell was for.”

Todd says religious advertising is run most often in tough times. Todd has an impressive grasp of the argument Answers in Genesis is making about evolution and morality. He calls it an awful piece of communication. They are preaching to the converted. Fear is good at keeping people in, but not attracting people in.

If you missed the episode check out this advert for Australian Christian television:

September 9, 2010

Play the Bible

My friend Mika, who is awesome for many reasons, including, but not limited to, sending me cool blog fodder, tipped me off with this link to the Bible as a MMORPG. That means a big online game. It’s an acronym.

September 9, 2010

Ending the quest for the Holy Grail

Most guides to better writing include, somewhere in the top ten tips, something about avoiding hackneyed cliches. Hackneyed cliches like describing the search for something special as a “quest for the Holy Grail.”

Here’s how bad it is.

“In 2008, Guardian columnist Tim Radford wrote: “British journalists have invoked the holy grail more than 1,000 times in the last 12 months. I have, almost certainly, evoked the same divinely-touched chalice, rightly celebrated in Arthurian legend, in some inappropriate context. We are all guilty… Grail imagery occurs with astonishing frequency in the scholarly press. Somewhere in the medical literature, I suspect, lurks a paper about the holy grail of hip replacement.”

This is a good story on the Holy Grail pandemic. Unless you’re actually searching for the cup Jesus allegedly drank out of on the cross, King Arthur style, then you should find a better phrase.

“Ten years later [in 1978], Stephen J. Lippard, then at Columbia University but currently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put the first holy grail into a research article in an ACS journal when he wrote a paper on how platinum antitumor complexes interact with polynucleotides and kill cancer cells. “As with the Holy Grail of medieval legend, the joy thus far has been in the searching,” Lippard wrote.

Since then, holy grails in chemical research have been steadily on the rise. Including Lippard’s, three holy grails appeared in ACS journals in the 1970s, and five could be found in the 1980s. During the 1990s, 39 research articles in ACS journals made mention of a holy grail, and since 2000, 169 research articles invoked the sacred goblet. A SciFinder search shows this trend of chemists gravitating toward grails holds true for non-ACS journals as well.”

September 9, 2010

How to play with zombies

Zombies get a bad wrap. They’re just misunderstood. It’s hard wandering around craving brains. Society gives vampires like Edward Cullen, and our politicians, a pass on blood sucking behaviour, and it should be no different when it comes to the undead.

Should you be in a position to play fun games with a zombie in your neighbourhood this book may come in handy.

September 8, 2010

Say “R” for your kiddies

I confess, I enjoy some R Rated movies. As a mafia junkie how can I not? But how does one share such poignant stories with one’s children? Perhaps Golden Book style with Movies R Fun.

September 8, 2010

Say “I love you” with Tetris

To me, this Tetris love letter is a little bit unclear.

It could be interpreted as: “Your love is like a row of blocks that I am going to clear” or “I am going to claim you and remove any traces of your former identity.”

But I like the sentiment.

From FailBlog.

September 8, 2010

How not to disprove evolution

There is a certain strand of Christianity, particularly in America, who think the solution to the “science v religion” debate is to write letters to the editor trying to engage with the science they are questioning.

Please, brethren, if that is you, at least try to get the science right. We Christians get angry at the way atheists caricaturise Christianity and misunderstand religion. We’d like them to try to understand that we can believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and not see a need to throw rocks at homosexuals or disobedient children. Please extend those in the scientific community the same courtesy – and don’t write letters like this:

Via Geekologie.

September 8, 2010

How to make playing the trombone cool

Just add flames.

Here it is in video glory. But I haven’t watched it yet so apologies if there is swearing or you can actually still hear the trombone.

Via Geekologie.

September 8, 2010

Comic Book Philosophy

Robyn and I have been working our way through Spooks, known in the UK as MI-5, a television series that takes you inside Section D of the British Intelligence Service. It’s a utilitarian political handbook – all decisions are made on the basis of the “greater good” many decisions are bad actions taken for good outcomes. Some of them make my stomach churn a little. While I’m all for utilitarian frameworks I think I’d redefine my view as achieving the best outcomes with whatever means possible (rather than necessary). And I’d rule out a bunch of actions as “impossible” based on my theology. Anyway. Long intro. Check Spooks out. But that’s not the point.

Philosophy and ethics classes in the US are increasingly turning to comic book characters to frame ethical debates. And I reckon that’s pretty awesome. There are even books being published with titles like “Batman and Philosophy” and “X-Men and Philosophy.”

Some quotes from a BBC story:

Christopher Bartel, an assistant professor of philosophy at Appalachian State University, asks students to read the graphic novel Watchmen in order to explore questions about metaphysics and epistemology.

In one class, he uses the character of Dr Manhattan, who claims that everything – including people’s psychology – is predetermined through all the causal laws of physics.

Mr Bartel uses this to teach theories of determinism and free will, and the moral responsibilities entailed in those world views.

Mr Bartel says his course – Philosophy, Literature, Film and Comics – is a “fantastic recruiting tool”, and that more of its students go on to specialise in philosophy than students in any of his other courses.

“I usually have students read Plato, Aristotle and Hume in introduction to philosophy courses. They often find it interesting, but get scared away by just how hard it is to read the stuff,” Mr Bartel told the BBC.

“Comic books can provide really good illustrations of these philosophical ideas without scaring them off.”

Here’s a sample question:

“Imagine for example, that you are Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) and you have just discovered that you have superpowers. Do you have a moral obligation to use your new-found powers to help others?”

And another awesome quote:

“Shaun Treat, who teaches at the University of North Texas, is not bothered by “highbrow” critics either. For him, the proof is in the pudding: the students lap it up.

After years of teaching traditional debates like Hobbes versus Locke, he says, “it’s amazing how much more the students are interested and engaged when you them put in cape and tights and have them slug it out”.”

September 8, 2010

KFC: Making dreams come true with 11 herbs and spices

Introducing the Skinwich. Apparently being tested in KFCs throughout America. It’s every chicken lover’s dream. Because everybody knows the skin is the best bit of the chicken.

It’s a beautiful case of turning byproducts into products. All those people wanting their “skinless chicken fillets” for “health reasons”…

Via Brain Residue (who gave it a thumbs down)

September 8, 2010

Kanye: The Saviour of Twitter

I confess, yesterday, while sitting in Greek and waiting to hear which way the independents would swing (in favour of democracy or broadband flavoured pork) I was relying on Twitter. Mainstream media is great for fact checking and objectivity – Twitter carries the can for immediacy (you don’t have to have your stuff approved by an editor). Because most of Australia was glued to live coverage anyway the pressure for news sites to post the info first was pretty low. So 1 point for Twitter.

By my count twitter is up 2 points currently – because they boast another scoop on mainstream media – the stream of consciousness rants and thoughts of one K-West. They’re needlessly and pointlessly interesting. In the last couple of days he posted a stream of stream of consciousness (a river of consciousness perhaps) thoughts that cobbled together (let Gizmodo do it for you) amount to a lengthy apology to Taylor Swift for last year’s Grammy interruption, and an apology to his fans who had to leap to his defence as a result.

An excerpt:

“The media has successfully diminished the “receptive” audience of KANYE WEST. Taking a 15 second blip, the media have successfully painted the image of the ANGRY BLACK MAN, The King Kong theory. I’m the guy who at one point could perform the Justin Timberlake on stage and everyone would be sooo happy that I was there.

People tweeted that they wish I was dead… No listen. They wanted me to die, people. I carry that. I smile and take pictures through that. I wear my scars. It’s almost like I have to where a suit to juxtapose my image and I won’t lie: IT WORKS!

I wrote a song for Taylor Swift that’s so beautiful, and I want her to have it. If she won’t take it then I’ll perform it for her. She had nothing to do with my issues with award shows. She had no idea what hit her. She’s just a li’l girl with dreams like the rest of us. She deserves the apology more than anyone.”

Aww. Shucks.

You might remember Tea Party Jesus, words from members of the new “conservative force” in American politics in speech bubbles on pictures of Jesus. Well, Jesus Needs New PR has gone one better. Kanye West Jesus.

Further proof, if required, that Kanye is not the messiah, just a very naughty boy with a palpable messianic complex.

September 8, 2010

Evolution of Batman

The technological sophistication of Batman’s suit is an interesting measure of the technological sophistication each moment in the last 70 years (Batman first hit our screens in 1943).

From here.

September 7, 2010

New Dimensions

The BBC has launched a cool web service called How Big Is It Really that lets you put the area of significant events, places and objects from throughout history on the map. Literally. Wherever you want. It will entertain you for at least five minutes.

September 7, 2010