That last post was number 900. This is 901. Seems like only yesterday I was pointing out number 600. 1000 should be up sometime next week. It’s probably a cause for celebration.
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.
Doubt fired
While introducing myself to the iMonk website I came across this great essay on doubt. Particularly Christian doubt. It’s helpful, I think.
A couple of quotes:
These doubts have made me respect my honest, unbelieving friends. To many of them, it isn’t so much the content of Christianity that is ridiculous. It’s the idea that Christians are so certain; so doubtless. They find it untenable that anyone could bury their own doubts so deep that you are as certain as Christians appear to be. Our television and radio preachers, our musicians and booksellers, the glowing testimonial at church, the zealous fanatic at the break table at work–they all say that Christians no longer have the doubts and questions of other people. Only certainties. And for many thoughtful unbelievers, that appears to be lying or delusion, and they would prefer to avoid both.
So do I. I profoundly dislike the unspoken requirement among Christians that we either bury all our doubts out in back of the church, or we restrict them to a list of specific religious questions that can be handled in polite conversations dispensing tidy, palatable answers. Mega-doubts. Nightmarish doubts. “I’m wasting my whole life” doubts are signs one may not be a Christian, and you’ve just made it to the prayer list.
My doubts exist alongside my appetite for God. I believe no one has put forward a more cogent and persuasive critique of theism than Sigmund Freud. Freud’s contention that human beings create a God in the sky out of their longings for a perfect father and their fear of death has the virtue of common sense and realism. As a Christian, I do not doubt that vast tracts of human religiosity can be explained by Freud’s analysis. Yet, Freud is wrong. The Biblical God is not wishful thinking, but the center of the spiritual “appetite” of human beings. Billions of human beings would prefer no God exist. Billions of human beings would like to make God in the image of Santa or Oprah. Yet, Christianity, Judaism (and even Islam) persistently put forward a God who is terrifying to who we are. A just, holy God of judgment. A God of heaven and hell. Not the God of the wishful thinkers, but the God who is a consuming fire.
And it is this God that we long to know. This God who repulses us and damns us. This God who demands the purity of thought and action. A God who demands that we love Him with all that we are and love our fellow persons as His creations. It is this God that we long to know in intimacy. It is this God we long to be accepted by, to trust and to praise. This God is the source of all the notions of beauty, truth and goodness that we find in this universe. C.S. Lewis said that appetite could not prove the existence of food, but I don’t think that speaks for the experience of the starving person.
Requiem for a theme
I’ve just finished reading through the condensed summary of this series by the Internet Monk on the death of the evangelical movement. It was printed/posted by the Christian Science Monitor (which has not much to do with science if you’ve never been there before). And then discussed by Justin Moffat and the Pyromaniacs.
“Theme” doesn’t really completely capture the nature of evangelicalism – it’s more a theological framework – but that didn’t rhyme with dream – which was essential for the title.
The original piece is interesting. The commentary too. Worth a read. Feel free to discuss here.
Periodic table for nerdy nerds
Robyn and I had a fairly long discussion last night over whether or not I’m a nerd. I think I’m a geek, but not a nerd. She thinks I’m a nerd. This post may well decide it. I give you the periodic table of video game characters. Which I think is clever. Nerd? Maybe.
Foetal position
Ben just sent me a link to this ABC story where Tony Abbott attacked Kevin Rudd for allowing changes to Australia’s aid policy and aid money being used to fund abortions.
The comments thread is telling. These discussions always bring out the rabid atheists who want to accuse Christianity of “holding back society”… I do like it when they put together a coherent argument.
Like this:
“Lets not forget that the bible tells the story of how god drowned every living person except Jonah and his family because he was annoyed with them. So to say the bible condemns murder is a very selective interpretation.”
Sadly comments are closed. So I couldn’t point out that Jonah was the guy eaten by a whale and people were saved at the end of the Jonah story because they repented. Anyway. There’s a lot of stupid Christians in the debate too. But Coloru seems to be a pretty rabid atheist, he says:
“Wakeup! If you cant find god in your own heart and mind then it doesnt exist. The bible isnt going to help.*”
*lack of apostrophes his own.
This again highlights the atheist’s fundamental misunderstanding of the place of the bible in Christian faith. It’s central – not an afterthought. It’s the way we find God. And hands up Christians who can find God in their own heart and mind…
Driscollisms
I’m about to break an unofficial rule – and post something about Mark Driscoll. If you’ve never heard of him – look him up on wikipedia – or check out his blog at his church’s website.
I’ve mentioned him a couple of times – but I know that he doesn’t really like bloggers. Unless they’re flattering. I also don’t want to appear to be a fan boy. I think he’s good – but not the second coming.
Will Henderson is a pressy guy in the US learning about Church Planting. That pretty much means hanging around as many Mark Driscoll fanboys as possible and learning from them.
He’s just posted a list of quotable quotes from a recent talk Driscoll gave. Here are my favourites:
“If ALL you are into is NEW you will end up a heretic. God call us to contend & Contextualise.”
“Preaching the gospel? There will be critics everywhere online permanent. Turn them into coaches. Never engage on their terms. In your anger do not sin. Avoid email.”
Manlyness
It’s obviously a pretty difficult time to be a Manly supporter – what with guys who punch fathers of attractive girls who dare to interfere in their advances and alleged sexual assaulters named to turn out for the team on Friday.
The NRL has just suspended Stewart for five rounds.
It makes me feel sick.
I don’t even want to trot out the “innocent until proven guilty” line in their defense. Or mention that the Gold Coast Titans played a player all year who was facing a charge for the same offence.
What’s worse than the media circus surrounding the upcoming court case is the fact that everyone feels compelled to weigh in on the debate. The NRL has forced a club not to play a player (for ruining their ad campaign bringing the game into disrepute, a former test rugby player and SMH columnist wants them to sack him, a group of prominent women associated with the club have come out saying the player is a gentleman, and a former League player from another club is now calling on Manly to drop the player for this weekend. Then all the politicians had to have their say on the issue.
Calling on a player to stand down while the charge is investigated is fair enough – or would be if the investigation took only a matter of weeks – but they often don’t. The Titans player mentioned previously played a whole season before being found not guilty. If he’d been forced to sit out that would have cost him a year’s wages in case where he was found innocent.
YouSB 2.0
On Sunday I made what I thought was a flippant reference to a completely improbable idea – the idea of including a USB in your prosthetic digital replacement. Turns out it’s been done. In real life. By this cyborg guy:
Wow. Found on Hackaday.
Man faces prison for posting swinger video
I like a good sensationalised heading. Did you happen to catch the YouTube video doing the rounds a few months back of a guy swinging a baby around in an aerobatic manner? It was on the Today Show and picked up all over the place. I won’t post it here – because doing so might land me in jail.
“Chelsea Emery, of Ryan and Bosscher Lawyers in Maroochydore, represents Chris Illingworth, who was charged with accessing and uploading child abuse material.
Illingworth, 61, published the three-minute clip on Liveleak, a site similar to YouTube but focused on news and current events.
Illingworth has uploaded hundreds of videos to the website. The one he was charged over, thought to have been created by a Russian circus performer, had already been published widely across the internet and shown on US TV news shows.”
That’s so incredibly stupid. Who on earth made the decision to pursue that prosecution.
Ad value
Tim Challies is one of the world’s preeminent Christian bloggers. Today he wrote about advertising and the church – mostly advertising but this was a great quote about his approach to ads:
“I guard against this because I’ve seen what happens to churches when they adopt a marketing mindset. Every church markets; the moment a church places a sign outside or puts an advertisement in the phone book or the local newspaper, it is marketing. But some churches go far further, adopting a kind of marketing mindset that makes the church functionally not much different than a business. After a while every decision comes back to the bottom line, whether that is a dollar figure or an attendance figure. This quickly sends churches into a tailspin, a downward spiral that draws them further and further from the Bible. It is inevitable, really.”
I’m still not sure where I sit on the issue of church marketing. I’m not as sold on it as churchmarketingsucks.com – who despite the name actually encourage churches to do better.
Challies also asks a question about whether or not we should ethically watch ads when consuming content – and thus whether ad blocking is immoral.
Apologetics accepted
One of the things I do in order to increase my levels of frustration is read annoying things written by atheists who feel intellectually superior to us “unenlightened Christians”.
I spend a lot of time arguing with three of my friends – two of whom are declared atheists – one is a notorious fence sitter.
I often ask myself why I bother. They’re smart guys and as set in their beliefs as I am in mine. I don’t think we’re going to change each other’s minds. I guess there are a few reasons. I like them – so I’d like to see them change their minds – believing as I do that hell is real. I would like to not be scoffed at for having “an imaginary friend”. And I guess there’s the fact that I love an argument. But I think one of the key reasons I do it is to refine and define my thoughts on the criticisms atheism throws at any form of theism – but particularly Christianity. It’s an exercise in apologetics – in defending the faith.
I guess in the face of militant atheism, being championed as it is by leaders with evangelistic zeal, Christians need to make sure they’re putting up a fight for the hearts, minds and souls of the great unreached – the agnostics. Those who haven’t picked a side yet. Those people are being bombarded with teachings from both sides – and I feel like I need to mount a compelling, rational defence of Christianity.
That was all a pretty long preamble to a great reminder that the real “apologetic” winner is relational not rational. The reminder comes courtesy of Tim Chester at the Resurgence.
Lawn of the dead
If like me you spent your formative years mutilating plastic soldiers and scattering them all over the yard then this new set of toys is for you. They even come in different colours of zombie. Although it would be cheaper just to melt your own plastic toys into deformed zombie positions. That’s how we did it in the good old days.
Ninjaroo
Turns out I was wrong. The platypus may not be the ninja of the animal world after all. I feel like I’m a little behind the times only posting this now – I saw it on the Today Show this morning. A kangaroo broke into a house in Canberra and the owner had to take it down wrasslin’ style in just his undies.
“My initial thought when I was half awake was [that] it’s a lunatic ninja coming through the window,” Mr Ettlin told The Associated Press.
Written by man…
According to GenderAnalyzer my blog is written by a man. You probably knew that already.
I guess my predilection for toilet humour probably gives it away. The uncertainty in the result probably comes from my deep, emotionally charged insights. Thanks to Simone and Ben (Vanishing Point) for the link.
“We think http://nathanintownsville.com is written by a man (62%).”