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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Hooray for Music

While we’re on the subject of talented people I know – Todd the photographer used to be in a band with Phil the guitar player from Brisbane’s preeminent comedy band Hooray for Everything.

Here are some YouTube clips.

Life lessons from the movies

A lot of good movies have a lot of bad messages at their heart. Subtext is everything. At least that is what the Twilight furore has taught me.

GeekDad has a list of ten harmful lessons we can learn from popular movies


The Little Mermaid

It’s OK to completely change your physical appearance and way of life for the person you love, even if he makes no sacrifices at all (from The Little Mermaid). This movie has the single most appalling ending of any Disney movie ever made, which is a shame because, apart from that, it’s a great film. I just cannot comprehend how anyone could make a movie in the late 1980s with this message, which is not exactly subtle: Ariel gives up her home, her family, and BEING A MERMAID because she loves Eric so. And he gives up … nothing. Yeah, that marriage is off to a great start.

Have you got any bad life lessons that aren’t there? Other than the standard “crime pays” message that comes from a rollicking gangster comedy, or the “always side with the underdog alien robots because they’ll triumph against the odds” message that comes from both Transformers movies.

How to mow a hedge

New Zealand has crazy hedges. They were one of the first things I noticed when we flew in last year. Keeping those hedges neat and tidy must present a real issue. Lucky there are a bunch of enterprising kiwis out there on the case.

With a crane and a ride on lawn mower.

Rags to Riches

Any bets on how much the movie rights to this story will go for?

“Two penniless brothers who live in a cave outside Budapest are to inherit most of a reported £4 billion ($7 billion) after an astonishing twist in their family fortunes.”

These guys also know that despite what the Beatles say – money can buy you love (unless you’re Paul McCartney who knows only too well that it can’t…).

“If this all works out it will certainly make up for the life we have had until now – all we really had was each other – no women would look at us living in a cave.”

How to man hug

Man hugs are pretty awesome. I’ve just been thinking about the furore surrounding the Poe’s Law breach that occured with that Christian Side Hug rap video. It turns out the video was serious – but the origin of the concept was satire.

It used to be that in order for heterosexual males to demonstrate man to man affection they had to engage in play fighting or wrestling. This was a little too subtle. The key to a good, unambiguous piece of man to man affection is to send the right signals during the hug.

This is accomplished using the obligatory three taps, or firm pats, on the back of both parties to the hug. In a group hug – say the hug that comes when celebrating a goal in soccer – these pats are not necessary.

The three pats are said to be non verbal communication for “I’m not gay”… but they are in fact an act of manly testosterone fueled but properly directed aggression.

Here is the rule for hugging expressed in haiku.

Remember fellas
For a successful man hug
Just back slap three times

This easy Japanese poem is the key to more expressive man to man relationships.

That is all.