Mark Driscoll likes to criticise people’s “zen” Jesus – the hippy who runs around making pithy statements.
I wonder what he’d say about this Venn Jesus.
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.
How to not get caught cheating
It’s a sad indictment on the state of our cultural morality that most techblogs I subscribe to are using the Tiger Woods infidelity story as an opportunity to help their readers not get caught cheating*. Because, you know, it’s so much harder these days with all the avenues of monitoring people. What if a photo gets put on Facebook? What if you forget to delete incriminating messages.
Here’s how to not get caught cheating in one easy step.
Step 1. Don’t cheat.
It’s that simple. It also works for not getting caught doing all sorts of wrong things. “Do not commit adultery” is one of the Ten Commandments for a reason. It’s not a nice thing to do. You probably shouldn’t. If by chance you’ve googled “how to not get caught cheating” and arrived here – think twice. If you’ve googled it, and arrived here, and you’ve already cheated, go to step 2.
The best way to avoid the surrounding furore, in the event that you fail in achieving step 1 is to take step 2…
Step 2. If you do cheat, confess.
That way the media/everyone you know doesn’t have a field day at your expense. And they don’t feel like they have to dig through your dirty laundry. Full disclosure is the best PR policy.
*I won’t link to the articles – they’re dumb and I don’t want to help anybody in this pursuit – unless you’re cheating at cards… I’m ok with that… unless it’s for money…
When to use your iPhone
We all know that iPhones are the world’s most awesome piece of technology. They’re proof that God exists and wants good things for his creation. We don’t need the Large Hadron Collider. Shut it down now. Actually, wouldn’t the LHC be cool if it was controlled by iPhone. We had an Ergon person speak at a function recently and he told us they use an iPhone app to control and monitor substations in remote areas. How cool is that?
Anyway…
Here’s Gizmodo’s helpful iPhone usage flowchart.
Peddling Townsville
Given that I’ve only got another month or so of official duties “peddling” Townsville to the world, I think it’s a good idea to get out and enjoy the scenery while we can.
Robyn and I bought bikes a couple of months ago.
Yesterday we took to the streets (and parks) of Townsville in time to take some sunset photos at Aplin’s Weir.
World’s easiest scrambled eggs
I made the fabled “Espresso Machine Eggs” last night. Well, they’re not fabled. I’d been reading about people’s scrambled egg making exploits for some time. I thought I’d give it a burl.
Here are the steps involved.
- Buy an expensive coffee machine (one with good steam pressure)
- Put eggs (four) and milk (a dash) into your milk jug – I used my big one because I wasn’t sure how much egg spray there’d be. Give it a whisk.
- Steam the eggs like you’d steam milk.
- Serve with steak for the perfect lazy Sunday night dinner.
They were very fluffy. I’ll do it again.
Here are the photos…
Vampires and Mormons
Here’s an interesting article suggesting that Twilight is basically an apologetic for Mormon theology.
“Twilight is essentially .an allegory of one gentile seeker’s coming to the fullness of Latter-day Saint faith and life. Bella, though, as Mrs. Meyer’s stand-in, is also a modern American woman who struggles with Edward’s patronizing misogyny and over-protectiveness. Her mind is the only one in the book not open to him, which serves both as an indication of her reverential reserve towards him as God or prophet and her resistance to being totally subject to him. Though devoted to and in love with him, she sounds notes throughout the series that reflect something like feminism.”
Here’s an example of Mormon theology appearing in one of the books.
“A core genealogical belief of Mormons is that Native Americans are the descendants of Abraham through the children of Lehi. But in several articles written in 2002 and 2003, LDS anthropologist Thomas W. Murphy has argued that DNA studies show “no intimate genetic link . . . between ancient Israelites and the indigenous peoples of the Americas—much less within the time frame suggested by the BoMor [Book of Mormon].”
Mrs. Meyer’s answer to this scientific challenge to her faith comes in the climax of Breaking Dawn. The Volturi have come to the Cullens’ Mountain Meadow for a showdown with the “vegetarians” and their allies, and it looks very bad for the latter. What saves them from the vampire-papists is an inversion of the genetics argument against the Book of Mormon revelation: The Cullens are saved by the ex machina appearance of a South American aborigine whose DNA proves that the Mormon vampires are telling the truth. Genetics isn’t the enemy; it’s the savior.”
I suspect Mormon evangelism would work better if they bit their prey and infected them with some sort of terrible disease.
I can’t understand how the religion gains traction anywhere but in the United States where I think it can be explained as a case of misplaced patriotism.
Anyway, here’s a little picture I drew of a Mormon missionary Twilight style. Anybody got a number for Blade?
Anna blogs LOTR
Anna at Goannatree sat through a Lord of the Rings marathon yesterday. She blogged it.
Check out the series. It’s good.
I propose a Godfather marathon before we leave Townsville – anyone interested?
Here are the links and intro paragraphs as they appear in the final post.
Seeing Lord of the Rings in a new light
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The hearts of men are easily corrupted History became legend, and legend became mythOn this inimical Scottish day, with seven others, I have embarked on a Lord of the Rings maratho…more |
Lord of the Rings Marathon Post #2
For those who have asked – we are watching the British extended edition. Apparently the only difference to the US version are the Easter eggs (the UK version doesn’t contain the Jack Black parody f…more
Lord of the Rings Marathon Post #3: On Saruman v Voldemort
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So things are getting really interesting – 1.5 movies down! We are halfway through Two Towers. There have been walking trees and lots of ugly folk and the people (like Frodo and Gandalf) who die bu…more |
Lord of the Rings Marathon Post # 4: The Logic of Merry
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The closer I am to danger the further I am from harmThis is one of Merry’s aphorisms in Two Towers. It is a corker and it’s strange logic is worth teasing out. The harm of which Merry speaks cannot…more |
Lord of the Rings Marathon #5: The endurance of the battle and a little humour
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My marathon enduring abilities are somewhat less than they used to be but I am hanging in there – proud to say that I’ve seen all thus far.A friend informed me that he has not only done a LOTR mara…more |
Adoration: 6 great ads
Here are 40 pretty funny adverts and here are 45 more (with some double ups).
Here are some of my favourites.
Snack attack
Bigger is better. Especially in the case of popular snacks. Like Cadbury Cream Eggs or Iced Vovos. Which is why it’s my pleasure to draw your attention to Pimp that Snack. Where common snacks become uncommon.
The Idea Killers
Here’s a cool little series of ads. Nothing kills good ideas quicker than some of these things.
Idea sent by email
Client thinks he/she is creative
Legal department recommendations
Here’s the Flickr set.
Shirt of the Day: Happy v Sad
This is a bittersweet design. I likes it a lot.
On blogger envy
I have a confession. Whilst I encourage lots of friends to join me in the blogosphere, I also feel threatened when they do that with moderate, or better, success.
So while I commend Izaac’s UniChurch through Chairs series to you, and direct you to his first column on the Geneva Push website, I do so feeling sinfully envious.
But, I can also finally announce that I have a little column in the Eternity newspaper – and a link on its homepage.
That makes me feel moderately better. I do love how they have a disclaimer.
How to annoy your designer
One day everybody will read The Oatmeal and I won’t be compelled to keep linking to their comics.
Until that day comes here’s the frustration that designers feel on any projects – it’s not amplified when you’re the middle man between designer and those wishing to have input – but I can relate.
Here are some of the many highlights.
That’s not a camera phone, this is a camera phone…
Not content with the Flight of the Conchords style camera phone depicted in this shirt design, a cool engineering type has figured out how to fix an SLR lens to his iPhone. Awesome right?
Here’s the type of photo it produces…
The Phone-O-Scope produces fuzzy, Holga-like images. I think a lot of the image artifacts (strong chromatic aberration, bizarro lens distortion) are down to the extreme magnifier stack. However, I’ve tested it with a few Canon EF lenses now and it does seem to work reasonably well with every one. At the very least, it seems to work like a telescope for the iPhone, and it is fun to shoot with (not to mention the odd looks I get when I’m using it :)
Via lifehacker.
Has John Piper ruined Twitter?
John Piper ruined Twitter.
This blogger thinks so. He blames Piper for the rise in cringeworthy Christian status updates – particularly on Twitter.
I like the cut of his jib. Piper can get away with it. If you’re following Piper you expect to encounter the real, passionate man that he is. If you’re not that man (or woman) don’t pretend to be.
But then I lost all my normal “friends” on Twitter.
They all turned into little John Pipers. I used to see real tweets from people. Some would talk about their latest blog posts or posts they found interesting. Others would talk about their recent studies in Scripture or what books they were reading. Many of them were fun and humorous.
Now many of them are just pretentious and therefore obnoxious.
Once the nature and style of Piper’s 140 characters or less were released, people started to mimic him. Gone are the “fruitless” tweets about how their toddlers did something cute or about the interesting things that happen day-to-day. It has been replaced with numerous (and annoying) pithy statements and faux-holiness. How do I know these are “faux?” Because most of you changed over-night. While it takes a lifetime to be sanctified, it only took your Twitter accounts 24 hours.
Amen brother.
But I’ll balance this critique of all the wannabe Pipers with a critique from Piper that made me think a little… When Abraham Piper (John Piper’s son) asked what he should say to a room full of Christian bloggers his father replied:
Tell them that it takes relentless intentionality to keep a Christ-exalting blog from become a clever blog. The temptation to entertain is almost irresistible.
Now. I started this out as a clever blog – being a Christ-exalting blog hasn’t really been my “intention”. Maybe it should be. Though then it would lose its place as an outlet for my cleverness.
John Piper ruined my blog.