Hand off it Liam

Matt Birney (WA Lib leader) gets pulled over by the cops and tests at .04 on the breathalyser, after an initial .05 reading was rechecked. The limit is .05. He is legal.

The bloke had two beers and ok to drive, according to our laws.

This morning as I drive to Albany listening to the ABC I hear Liam Bartlett speaking about him as if he were a common criminal… only to later admit that he has also driven after ‘having a few drinks’.

There is no argument that to drive while under the influence is foolish, but Birney didn’t do that… Simple as that.

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I don’t really care much for Matt Birney, but the poor bloke has been caned all weekend for no good reason.

Perspective

Last night’s news:

The Schapelle Corby case = about 5 minutes of deeply emotive air time

The 2 million refugees in Darfur = about 30 seconds of bland ‘factual’ reporting

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Life is tough for Corby whether she is innocent or guilty (how will we ever know the truth?…), but somehow we seem to have lost perspective.

I find myself feeling more for her than I do for the refugees…

Such is the power of the media to shape our attitudes.

Pretty sad really…

Southern Comfort

I’ve been spending the last few days tripping around the south west with family in tow visiting churches and youth workers in my role as the coach for Baptist Youth Ministries.

I’ve met some great people and really enjoyed it so far, but I am also reminded that the city folks and country folks do have some significant differences.

We each see the world from a different perspective – which of course is what makes life interesting!

I had a preach today at Katanning Baptist Church and tried to flesh out some of my rantings over the last few weeks on what I am seeing discipleship as. I hope it made sense…

Tomorrow I leave Danelle and kids for a few days and spend some time on my own. I’ll stop in Mt Barker to catch up with Gerge and Hilary befoe hitting Albany.

On the road again…

Its been a really good few days with Phil, but as of tomorrow we hit the road for another 6 days, this time to visit and coach youth pastors in the south west.

Danelle and kids are coming and we will be spending two days in Busselton, two in Katanning and then I will go to Albany for the final two days alone, partly so we don’t have to move the kids and partly so I can get some writing done.

Its not a holiday so you may hear from me over the next week if I have net access…

What’s the Deal Here?

In one of my coaching conversations today we were talking about a church that had ‘lost its saltiness’.

As we spoke we both then said ‘so what does this mean’?

(Mat 5:13 NIV) "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

What the Bleep was that all about?

Today I had a 2 hour gap in the day, the good ole Luna cinema has $6.00 Wednesday and I needed a break.

So I thought I’d go see ‘What the Bleep Do We Know’, a much talked about movie that looks at how we determine what is real, where we come from, where we are going etc.

I had heard a lot about it and thought that even though I’d only get to see half of it before my next meeting, it’d still be worth the effort.

I fell asleep.

Its not to say I didn’t get some of the point :), but it was far from inspiring and a much bigger disappointment than I had expected. i won’t try and explain it all here, but the guts of it has to do with an understanding of qantum physics as a prism thru which to view this life and our experience of it.

I feel so shallow falling asleep in a movie everyone is talking about as deeply spiritual and vital to our understanding of what makes us tick…

I’ll get over it!

Here’s a review from the site I linked to above for anyone interested:

What the Bleep Do We Know!? is a unique cinematic creation – really three films in one, interwoven like a DNA helix, into an original tapestry.

It’s a documentary. It’s a story. It has mind-blowing special effects. These three elements combine to bring about a film experience that will rock your mind and lift your soul! It’s a new genre about a New Worldview for a new audience.

This outrageous film plunges you into a world where quantum uncertainty is demonstrated – where neurological processes, and perceptual shifts are engaged and lived by its protagonist – where everything is alive, and reality is changed by every thought.

It has been called by some theater goers The Handbook to The Matrix. Like The Matrix it shows you a greater reality behind the one we all accept as true, and you have the ability to create absolutely anything from your own thought while laughing all the way!

The difference between this film and that movie is that this isn’t science fiction. It’s even stranger. It’s real. And it’s the first film to say it. And it does so boldly and with a BLEEP of a lot of humor. And it’s being proven every day by minds like these.

Swimming Upstream – The Core of The Problem

In church we often speak of ‘the great commission’.

We think we know the great commission pretty well. Do you?…

Just try and recite it now… "Go into all the w…

Over the last week I have asked people to tell me Matt 28:18-20, not trying to be a smartarse, but just to see what comes out. No one has got it right and invariably it is something like this I hear:

"go into all the world and make disciples, baptising and teaching them and surely I am with you always"

Now, maybe its become incredibly obvious to me because I am seeing it as a problem everywhere at the moment, but did anyone pick the key two words that are missing from that rendering of those verses?

In case you are wondering the missing words need to be inserted after teaching and they are ‘to obey’. I am starting to realise more and more that in evangelicalism we have been very obsessed with teaching, but not so concerned with obedience. We pack people’s heads with knowledge and call that discipleship, when in reality if we are not teaching people to actually do what Jesus says then its all just a waste of time.

Its one of the problems we have with sermons. We preach new ones every week, and the poor buggers in the pews haven’t got round to doing last week’s sermon let alone having the energy to ‘do’ another sermon.

Perhaps it begs a whole new way of approaching discipleship?

Maybe we need to go a bit slower and actually start to do more and be less concerned with how much we pack into the brain?

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Not rocket science, but still this is what I reckon has been at the core of the problem for the church in the west. We have some of the best educated non-disicples in the world in our churches. If we are going to swim upstream then its got to be about what we do not what we know…

Theodicy…

Today I learnt a new word. Theodicy is the study of how a good God can co-exist with evil.

As Danelle and I were talking yesterday this issue came up and it got me intrigued. I am particularly curious about the origins of evil – the ‘first cause’ so to speak.

I had a crazy day lined up today, but all my appointments from 10.00-3.00 cancelled so i wandered down to the library and waded thru about 20 different theology text books to try and uncover some insights into this subject.

It was valuable and I was at least able to come to grips with the different philosphical options that exist (Alvin Plantinga is like reading a maths text book!) even if I don’t have a decent answer yet.

The problem with so much of the stuff written is that you need a philosophy degree to be able to read it. Its heavy going, relies on logic and prior assumptions etc etc.

And you know what?…

Its way to difficult to summarise in a blog post…

Sorreee.