trail of breadcrumbs

What is your brain really for?

2011-11-17T02:35:00.001+10:00

Seriously fascinating.

Modern history

2011-11-07T19:30:00.000+10:00

A Wordle of recent crumbs.

a day of rest

2011-10-30T23:06:00.000+10:00

Just finished up our first ever 'day of rest' for Night Church.

The plan was for a Clayton's church camp. There was no costly accommodation, no uncomfortable beds (unless you chose to 'sleep' over a friend's place on the floor), very little organisation work for the members of the congregation and it didn't take up the entirety of the weekend.

We took the very Hebrew chronology of dusk Sat to dusk Sun.

Saturday evening began with chicken wraps* and drinks under a member's house. We just hung out for a while, and later we kicked into hearing God's word with the first of our talks in Deuteronomy from Danny Mitchell. Moses says that God's instruction - his torah - is for our good that we may live long in his place. Sweet.

Afterwards, we took home-made cold rock out to the campfire, sung a couple of songs to guitar, prayed and shared some things God had been doing in our lives. We then skedaddled (apparently there is a correct spelling of that word) to our chosen 'sleeping' locations.**

----placeholder for photo----

Sunday morning started at 8am at the lovely Pelican's Nautical Treasures (got to get a better name for that, Matt!) in its 'upper room'. Grabbed a tall cappuccino, that came in a pink mug.*** Then, came breakfast, which was fruit salad with side-dishes of meusli, honey and Greek yoghurt for me, and eggs benedict, massive scrambled eggs and bacon, etc for others.****

Next up, was more of God's word. Danny opened up Deuteronomy 6 to us, where God tells us to love him with everything we've got. We then took a half hour to go for a stroll with one other person by the bay. We spent some time in the fresh air, sharing and chatting about what things incite us to forget God and how not to let them. We then came back together for our final talk from Deuteronomy 30. Moses exhorted us to choose to follow God and no other, and in so doing choose life for ourselves. Awesome.

Bassie and I got a game of chess in, while Daniel filled in some time by powering up and summoning a spirit bomb, Goku style.

By this point, we're starting to feel like our massive brekkies have started to digest. Just. So we headed out to Wellington Point to have a BBQ, paddle some kayaks, climb trees, throw ice at each other out of said trees, kick a ball, run into some old friends and generally enjoy God's creation with thanks. This continued for some time. :)

Overall vibe: An awesome 24 hours. Cheers to everyone who came, particularly those who helped out.

Constructive self-criticism: If a couple of things hadn't "come up" unexpectedly we could've had more time dedicated to reflecting on God and his word. Aside from that, and the fact that more people couldn't make it, I was well chuffed with the day.

*	The hummus was divine. Apparently, no garlic in it either. Who'd've thought?
**	'Sleeping' may include glad-wrapping other members' cars or removing a tyre in revenge.
***	They know my colour.
****	I was trying to make up for eating a whole packet of twisties while watching Arsenal v Chelsea the night before.*****
*****	Which Arsenal won 5-3. Sweet.

Psalm 50 Illustrated

2011-10-27T10:21:00.000+10:00

I was on the QTC chapel preaching roster this Tuesday, and was asked to preach on a Psalm. I ended up picking Psalm 50, as it seemed pretty cool on first read. It's awesome. Read Paul's Areopagus speech in Acts 17 and tell me that Gamaliel hadn't set him an assignment on Psalm 50 when he was in Pharisee school. Awesome use of the Old Testament applied to the gospel era.

Anyways, I stewed on it all week, but found it hard to write. I ended up grabbing some scrap paper the day before and trying to re-write it out with my own indentation to try to 'get' the meaning better. On attempting to write it out in words, this is what ended up coming out.

I'm not sure what you call it, but my mind was thinking in the style of those videos that have someone illustrating the concepts of a talk while someone's talking over the top. Kinda like this video. You know the style I mean? In my head, I was doing a video like that.

So my question is, did it flow so well because that medium matches the way that I think and so the internal could be expressed on paper very easily? Or has the way that I think been altered by watching so many videos like that?

Edit: Or is it just a Psalms/poetry thing?

Minus-green Floyd

2011-10-24T14:05:00.000+10:00

Comfortable in your masculinity? It may be non-existent...

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Merchant of Souls

2011-10-23T14:18:00.003+10:00

Came across this from a friend (cheers Luke) the other day. Haven't seen it yet, but apparently there's a screening at Citipointe church, Mansfield on November 5th. (I hear $10pp with proceeds going to aid work amongst sex trade victims)

Apparently it's got an R rating, so is probably going to be pretty intense. This trailer isn't graphic though, so definitely check it out.

Nefarious: Merchant of Souls Official Trailer from Exodus Cry on Vimeo.

Definitely an issue worth praying about and increasing public awareness of.

Best. Header. Ever.

2011-09-26T18:50:00.000+10:00

Well, I've got to have some football to watch that isn't Arsenal losing.

School of Theology - Sesh #13 - Q&A

2011-09-15T15:21:00.001+10:00

Q: What would you say to rationality oriented ministers?
A: In one case, I suggested that he needed to read some novels. He needed to gain some imagination.

Q: Relatedly, @David Peterson, You talked about using powerful words in moving people, is there a theology of language to back that up for our preaching practise?
A: It seems that God uses significant words to us, justification, love, joy, etc. So God uses powerful words, towards us.
Q: In terms of the way words are used, what about a model for the way words are used.
A: There is a model in the bible. Things like parallelism, and use to persuade people. We need to look at that carefully.

Q: In charismatic tradition, there's an emphasis on the personal response. The evangelical tradition it's more on what God has done. What are the dangers and what's the balance.
A: Have a balance. Also, have a mixture of 'we' songs and 'I' songs.

Q: Given that language is powerful and words have content, Jesus says 'today, you'll be with me in paradise', what did he intend the thief to hear.
A: It's helpful for us to think about what words MEAN but also what words DO. When we unpack the meaning of the promise, TODAY has strong biblical overtones, and Luke is massively speaking with salvation-historical overtones, so could that today perhaps be a reference to the Day of the Lord.

Q: Passion v affections and moral evaluations of those things. Is there a way of morally evaluating those things? Are we able to make distinctions at both levels of higher and lower emotions?
A: Gibbo This where the cognitive thing in the last 20 years comes into play. Someone's angry, but who are they angry at, why, to what degree, etc. In the Bible, it seems that envy is the only emotion that there's not possible positive expression for.

Q: When is tapping into the emotions manipulation?
A: Rhys Bezzant: you need to help people to understand what you're actually doing.
A: Peter Bolt - manipulation can be positive. If you're doing it to align people to the word of God then it's a good thing.

Q: @Peter Bolt. Can you give us some tips at reading the Bible to help the congregation hear narrative well? (public reading in the congregation)
A: Clifford Warne's book, "How to Read the Bible Out Loud" is still the best one I've read for that.
A: Rhys. It's at bettergatherings.com

Q: Do you have comments on the way we use songs in our meetings and do we have the right kinds of songs to use? (Sometimes can't find the right ones.)
A: Rob Smith. Blessing of our day is that there are so many options out there, but it takes time to find the right one and then the congregation may not know it! The song selectors really need to just work hard to find the right resources. Sometimes the song itself doesn't work as the bridge, so you have to provide the link yourself.
A: David Peterson: someone needs to build a website to do it. Also, if there's no song that's suitable, then don't put one in. use a psalm, or pray instead.

Q: (Michael Jensen) @Richard Gibson - Does God have feelings?
A: Do you really want me to answer that?
Q: Yes.
A: Reading the bible it certainly seems to be so. It does too much violence to Scripture for me to have systematics be enough to mute that. The huge creedal statements God expresses his emotions, even as he says that he is a god and not a man. In terms of immutability and impassibility, I recognise that we need to protect the transcendence of God, but perhaps these are clumsy tools with which to do it. If you look at where the assumptions come from it's from Hellenistic philosophy as opposed to Biblical presuppositions. These opinions are personal (though come to through pain and heartache) and aren't necessarily the opinions of the management.

Q: Though we have a responsibility to care for the whole person (seems more like counselling), how is that to be balanced with helping people to be godly and have joy in their circumstances.
A: It's not that we go in and heal emotions, but that we do care for the whole person, of which that is a part.
A: Rhys: We need to have a little bit of modesty in what we can do as pastors is helpful.

Q: What is the management position on Richard's comments?
A: Not sure *looks around* who you think here represents management...
Q: So are there any dangers to the position that Richard outlined, could anyone speak to that?
A: David Peterson - keep the conversation between systematics and biblical scholars going. I'd love to have a discussion with Gerald about the way he handled the Hebrews material in terms of Jesus as sympathetic high priest.

Q: how do you not turn a narrative into a lecture?
A: Peter Bolt - What I was trying to get at is that preaching involves communicating the emotional and affective elements of the text, and working out how to effectively get that across. What experiences that the hearers have had connect with what's going on in the text, because emotions cross over from experiences to others.

Q: Not wanting to demonise the congregation, but in all of us there's a tendency to distance ourselves from God because he's threatening. Thus, I've tried for novelty as a way of cutting through. How do you get past people's defenses when we want to disengage our emotions to stay comfortable.
A: Having a service where the elements varied is helpful, but requires skilful service leaders to know how to do that. Quite useful though. Abruptness can provoke, might dislodge, but you want to be cultivating a long-term pattern of healthy habits.
A: David Peterson - let the bible do the work. Resist the temptation to invent new, non-gospel tricks. Thoughtful reflection on how we use the Bible.

School of Theology - Sesh #12 - "Music, singing and emotions. Exploring the Connections" with Rob Smith

2011-09-15T14:41:00.000+10:00

For the sake of this talk, I'll be using 'music' to refer to instrumental music and 'song' to refer to the spoken word in music. (I hope he'll be consistent in that, otherwise my blogging may also be)

Music's power to arouse certain emotions or resemble them by a simple structural similarity. Eg, a weeping willow looks like a person bent over in anguish.

Is there an objective component to it though the subjective response of each listener is necessarily distinct and different?

Music, however, is never heard on its own. it's a part of a range of affective factors that influence its perception.

In fact, music can affect levels of hormone in the body. Can increase melatonin or reduce cortisol (not sure if I got those chemicals right).

Music has a number of possible healing effects, in both acute and long-term settings.

What about when we add the human voice into things?

"Each of these basic emotions has a characteristic vocal acoustic signature and an acoustic profile that is associated with a strong characteristic emotional state." Graham Welch.

So even if we don't understand the words a person is using, we can generally understand which of these emotions is being expressed by the acoustic signature.

"Words make you think a thought; music makes you feel a feeling; a song makes you feel a thought." - Yip Harburg

Neuro-imaging studies have shown that while the sensory-moto processes of speaking and singing are largely the same, singing engages parts of your brain that speaking alone doesn't.

People who've experienced emotional trauma often find it difficult to sing. They shut down their emotional processes in order to protect themselves, and singing would threaten to arouse that. This is entirely understandable. And yet, singing could perhaps be a part of the process by which healing could occur.

Singing truth helps us to engage with the emotional significance of reality. To help us bridge the rational and emotional knowledges. (instance of allowing one to feel a thought)

Soundings from the word that God has spoken

a) The OT

Miriam's song in Exodus 15. Sings the song of salvation.

Isaiah 12:1-6 "sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously" (*kutz* Also an emphasis on singing as proclamation to the world in this passage)

Where there is salvation, there is joy. And where there is joy, there is singing.

These follow each other as night follows day.

Psalm 98 "Sing to the lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things..."

Yet, not only joy, but also grief, sadness and lament.

"Our common experience is not one of well-being and equilibrium, but a churning disruptive experience of dislocation and relocation." Walter Brueggeman.

And these too are also meant to be sung! A number of lament psalms are 13, 22, 51, 88, etc... are all addressed "to the choirmaster".

The importance of the vocalisation of the laments is that it aids in moving from disorientation to reorientation. The purpose of acknowledging our emotional and situational realities is to aid in dealing with the pain that's brought about by such distress and to bring us to the point of healing and finally, praise.

"As paradigms of faith and piety, the Psalms champion the affective dimension of devotion to and trust in God as elicited by the story of God's care for Israel." Karl Kuhn

b) The NT

Topic: the emotional elements of the positive work of the spirit, what elements of the fruit of the spirit are emotional? There are certainly some.

And if learning to bear some of these fruits are to grow in the image of Christ, then I take it that growing up emotionally is a part of that.

"Through the Spirit, we are given the priceless opportunity of - ... "Jeremy Begbie

"It is perhaps in worship and prayer, when we engage with God directly and consciously that this will be most evident"

"Music is particularly well suited to be a vehicle of emotional renewal in worship, a potent instrument through which the Holy Spirit can remake..." (too slow at typing... :-( )

Ephesians 5:18-21

One active verb "be filled by the spirit" along with 5 participles, "addressing, making melody, singing, submitting and giving thanks"

So, are these 'result' participles, whereby if you are filled with the Spirit then you'll do the rest?

I'll suggest that they are 'means' participles. The means by which the Spirit fills the church with the fulness of Christ (or something like that.). Thus, they are essentially a part of the command.

"To grow up into Christ is to grow up emotionally as much as anything else, and carefully chosen music in worship may have a larger part to play than we have yet imagined." Jeremey Begbie

Nervous nellies (or great ones with cautious concerns)

Augustine quotes.

On how music, when sung, actually aids in devotion to God, as well as warming the heart.

Also, on how he feared that if the music moves him more than the subject of the song that there's a real problem.

Calvin - same sort of twin appreciation and concern.

Firstly, that evil words can infect us easier with music

and also that the melody can more stick in the minds of people than the words.

More positive

Luther

Music is next to God, pretty much.

But not music in itself, but music as a vehicle for communicating about God and proclaiming God. For Luther, singing is word ministry. Not a substitute for the preached word, but a complement to it. unlike the preached word, it has this emotional component to it, an additional power.

"Music is a vehicle for proclaiming the Word of God The gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to man to let him know that he should praise God..." too slow again.

Edwards

"'Tis plain from Scripture that it is the tendency of true grace to cause persons very much to delight in such religious exercises." Jonathan Edwards

"The ends of [singing] are two; to excite religious and holy affection, and secondly to manifest it."

The only reason to sing, rather than simply speak, is that this has a tendency to move our affections.

Conclusions

Personally

You are not the only saint who enjoys the goodness of expressing the truth of God in song, and to find that helpful! There have been many more through the centuries.

Make use of music. Learn to be blessed by it. Avail yourself of every gift of God to draw near to him. Particularly learn to use your voice, in singing to the Lord and singing of the Lord.

For church life

While music and singing are not essential, they are of the well-being of the church. Not the main game, but are for the health. We'd be mad to neglect them, when they are so beneficial and stir the affections. Hence, we must also guard and protect them.

Singing with other people engages you with them, it connects you and allows you to be sympathetic with them, as you sing the same content.

Questions:

Q: Surrounded in our world by so much commercially recorded music, that's the context in which we hear music in church, so some will be angered by the fact that our musicians aren't up to that standards, so the music may end up working at cross-purposes to its intention.

A: Well, people do need to be mature and have reasonable expectations. Secondarily, just acknowledge where we're at, and recognise the gifts that God has given us. We're not meant to sound like the CD, that's not the purpose. It's to sing together.

Q: Also, dichotomy between over-produced music, and the stuff made for more simple things.

A: It does also put on people like myself who produce music to produce stuff that is more copy-able.

Q: Why do we only sing certain sentiments, and should we move past that, and hwo can we?

A: We should do it! Write more lament songs, sing more of them, etc.

Q: Congregationaly, because it's not the same for everyone.

A: Put aside our individualism, and be mature and grow into the things in the song and recognise that it may minister to others.

Q: Are we lacking something in our culture because we don't seem to burst out into song?

A: Maybe, but we may be gaining something too. Each culture has its pluses and minuses.

School of Theology - Sesh #11 - "Touching God's Emotions. Preaching the Gospels for Divine Effects" with Peter Bolt

2011-09-15T12:35:00.001+10:00

Narrative Power and Gospel Engagement
1: Emotional Power of Narrative Form
The gospels are narrative. And it has become almost universally axiomatic that narrative is so effective because it engages with our emotions.

Similes, metaphors, etc speak directly to the emotional mind because it connects with pre-existing ideas and memories.

Emotional content then is essential if we want our people to learn. Some people are more attuned to them than others.

Not everyone, however, is not well-connected to their emotional mind.

2: Emotional problems encountered by the preacher
As we preach the gospel narratives, those narratives will not always be heard by emotionally healthy people. Many people will be damaged, regardless of whether the psych department declares them within the bounds of 'normal'.

Some are normal.
Some overfeel and lives are chaos.
Others are scared and threatened by emotions.
Some of them attack others because of this fear.
Some who've suffered trauma can have emotions diminished.
Some just aren't connected emotionally, naturally.

This is your congregation.

And, of course, you're not immune yourself. :)

3: Narrative in therapy
While narrative works best with an emotionally healthy person, it also has a role in helping those who are not. We now have even something called 'narrative therapy'.

We all tell ourselves a story of our lives, complete with things that help or hinder us from moving forward. When the story told is not a positive one, the therapist helps the person re-story their history and thus re-story their future. This recognises the power of the narrative to help and affect people.

4: Healing through Gospels preaching
The narratives themselves hold the key to solve the problems that themselves make the narratives hard to grasp. As the spirit makes new, it does so emotionally too.

The preacher models how to perceive the narratives in order to have it rightly order the emotions.

(He's doing so much, not sure I can blog this right now, sorry, or I'll miss it all myself!)

Narratives entangle people.
The discourse is 'what's in front of you'. Pay attention to it, and you'll see how a narrative works its narrative power.

What you want is for the actual reader to become the implied reader. For the reader to become the person for whom the text was written. And it's the preacher's job to help this.

Emotions have a significant role in the reading experience, because the narrative uses them to entangle the reader. Why are we revolted by the pharisees? Because the text makes them revolting. (Not sure what he said in that last sentence. it's not what I just wrote,though, I'm pretty sure. But you kinda get the idea. I hope)

Of course it's good to use the narrative study tools to analyse the gospels as narrative, and yet they're far too complex to be categorised by simple schemata.

Nope, brain fried. Just listening for a bit.

Narrative studies recognise that the affective elements of a text are key in helping the reader to comprehend the text and make the text meaningful. The emotions are not simply an 'after effect' of the text, but they are intimately involved in the exercise of comprehension itself. It's also predictive. It helps the reader to anticipate an outcome well before the actual thinking or encountering of it takes place.

Narratives work by producing an affective impact. They don't only address the cognitive mind, but work by engaging, affecting and manipulating (in a positive sense) the emotions of the reader towards a certain goal.

But towards what?

The gospels, generally, move people towards following Jesus, the Son of God.

yet, complex narratives show a high degree of indeterminacy, so that the goal can be different for different readers so that their responses become more or less unique to them. We're nervous about diffferent meanings for different people here.

But what I'm suggesting is that there is a clear forward movement of the narrative itself, but there are individual outcomes by the person who is affected by it.

When we talk about application, therefore, we need to leave a large degree of room for the Spirit and text to do its individual work on the individual hearer?

It this is so, what is emotional exegesis?

Well, because a text will rub up against the previous emotional experiences of the reader, emotional exegesis will anticipate this interface and help and aid it.

A suggestion is that the sympathy that readers are designed to feel helps to make them a better human being, thus to become more empathetic.

EE won't read a book as a flat text, but as an emotional landscape, with movements and shift and change.

A case study in Emotional Exegesis
Luke 23:55-24:8

Two explicit emotions.

Perplexity
Fear

What is the effect on the reader when emotions are explicitly mentioned? The reader will map the even that they're seeing to an event where they've experienced the same emotion themselves. So you may never have discovered an empty tomb, yet you'll have had their feeling of perplexity before, and so can enter into that. Same with angel-induced fear.

Because we, the readers, know what it is to be afraid and to be afraid of death, we are drawn into the text and with them waiting for the next thing to happen.

As we hear the angel's words to the women, we are enabled to hear that speaking coming into our own experiences of perplexity and fear. "He is not here. He is risen."

(again, masses of gold I can't get down quick enough. Ie, the presence of women softens the scene for us. The presence of the spices tells us we're in the place of grief. etc...)

The thick presence of death, in the stench of rot and the sweetness of spices, enlivens the feelings of death that hangs over us all as a sentence. Death is the stench in the text.

And so everything that we're expecting, and that the characters are expecting, is the opposite of what they find. What they find is so foreign to all the elements being set up so far that the perplexity is given a much fuller sense for the narrative reader.

...

The effects
The affective elements of the text help us to move to a different world than that with which we are familiar. "He is not here, he is risen." This sentence now stands against the reality in which we stood, which is under the shadow of death. The same world that we live in is the same world in which a man rose from the dead.

Emotional Exegesis: A Preacher's Checklist

Who are the Characters and How are they Related?
What emotions are explicitly mentioned?
What emotional nuances lie behind the words?
How does the text use language of the senses?
What is the direction the passage moves its reader towards?
What outcomes might be provoked, but perhaps not prescribed?
And so on...

Preaching the gospels for divine effects

Preach the gospels in the way they come to us. Touch on the emotions in the text, such that they touch the emotions of those we are preaching to.

Questions:

Q: Any comments about how our congregations are so familiar with the gospel stories and so we lose the disfamiliarity part of the the process and skip it and so lose the effect.

A: With a well-told story, we can still cherish it. It's a bit hard to actually be a first-time reader.

School of Theology - Sesh #10 - "Together, with feeling: Corporate Worship and Emotions" with David Peterson

2011-09-15T11:35:00.000+10:00

Hebrews 10:25-25

Gospel focussed gatherings
If we're convinced that worship is about:

All of life
motivated out of thankfulness
to be conducted with respect and awe

Surely this, then, should shape how our Christian meetings should happen.

It's a bit silly, then, to get caught up in not using worship for a church service, because it is a special part of the whole of life and so certainly falls under the category of worship.

In context, Hebrews 13:15 is talking about a sacrifice of praise as primarily one done outside the camp, as it were.

Corporate worship should be appealing to the whole person. Don't ignore any one aspect.

Exhortation for change

It is, in Scripture, designed to have a life-transforming outcome.

Exhortation is the antidote to apostasy.

Hebrews 5, everybody should be moving towards the point where they are able to participate in the ministry of exhortation.

Defn from Paul: An appeal on the basis of instruction. (David's synthesised understanding from all of Paul, not an argument from a single verse) Ie, "I beseech you, based on the mercies of God, to ...".

Three elements to Christian communication:

Proclamation, expounding the truths.
Teaching, relating that to our Christian life.
Appeal, if this is not there, then we're not teaching in a NT way.

Easy for appeal to be disconnected from teaching, but also easy for teaching to be unapplied.

Should we use illustration in sermons? Well, if you ask Paul what appeal is, he'd say paraklesis, it's ramming the message home and getting people on board with something.

How does Paul engage in exhortation? Romans 15:30, appeal to you by LJC and the love of the Spirit, etc

He appeals on the basis of some aspect of the character of God in his mercy towards us. It's the meek Christ who's appealing to you, not just me, Paul.

1 Corinthians 2 has often been misunderstood as saying that Paul never used any rhetoric.

Emotional engagement

Romans 12:9-15. Several of these commands involve emotional content. Very strongly so. We are to 'burn' or 'boil' for the lord. (zeon).

Spirit-directed prophecy or preaching, will stir up the body of Christ.

Romans 12:15, simple but covers the highs and lows of life. We're encouraged to be empathetic, being with people in all cases. Does our congregational life make it difficult for us to follow these commands? How well do we know each other? Is our culture so intellectualised that emotion is discouraged? Is there room for testimony and personal reflection. Do we have enough pastoral contact to know if the preaching is getting through and relating?

I remember hearing at Barney's Broadway a person giving a testimony about having an ingrown toenail, and thinking, "why are we giving time to this?!?!?!". But as time went on it became clear how this had overtaken this person's life, and that they wanted to give thanks to God for bringing them out of it.

Unavoidable public grief or joy

How did they handle the fact that someone had died overnight, when they had chapel the next morning?

Leading such events appropriately is difficult, because you can be overwhelmed by strong emotions.

I saw a minister leaving, giving his final sermon, and the preacher spent the whole message sobbing and crying. At first good, allowing the congregation to express their emotion too, but after that it became distracting because though the congregation had grieved, he'd not finished yet. It made the message unclear and made people think about the minister instead of the message.

Planned public grief or joy

Sermons or whole services designed to move people to repentance over something!

Obviously not contrived or manipulative, but Paul's 3rd letter to the Corinthians was designed to encourage godly grief, which might lead to the salvation of many. And even godly grief will only last for a while, because it's not the end in itself, but it's the practical repentence. Ie, what do people go out and do after this?

Or perhaps to elicit joy?

Joy is an understanding of existence that covers elation and depression, because one is able to see past particular events and see them in the context of a God who stands above all events, and behind them.

Words and music

BK - people fear emotions, instead of over-emotionalism.

Emotions give no indication of the heart's commitment. (*Pete* really? I thought we were saying they're a part of the mix? But I take the point. Someone can be excited and not actually end up doing the thing they're excited about.)

Expressing biblical truth together

The poetry of prayer. How we talk to God. God has given us a way of talking to him that's not simply prosaic.

The epistles also engage your emotions, not just the gospels (that Peter Bolt is about to speak on).

The Psalms as enabling us to express difficult and the full-range of emotions to God. Why don't we use the Psalms for this? Why not use the words God has given us to help us in this? Why have we abandoned it altogether?

We rely massively on songs to teach theology. Songs have completely replaced the practise of reciting of biblical texts together. (he didn't yell this, just thought it was an interesting point so I bolded it.)

Are we abandoning Biblical resources and categories in our prayers and liturgy?

*reads out a Puritan prayer* (Wow, that was pretty amazing.)

We live in a prosaic culture. We're supposed to be plain, unemotional and non-rhetorical. As well as losing biblical content from our services, we're losing its emotion. Public prayers are often bland and predictable.

Experiencing God's Spirit together

It's the Holy Spirit's task to make possible an experience of God's love. The Spirit works in every area of our personality. Love is key, to both our relationship with God and with others. This is holisticly true and connected. It should encompass our whole person.

Worshipping without emotion is not the offering of our whole self to Christ that the New Testament envisions and commands.

Questions:

A: Some Bible translations are bland because they're seeking to make things simple and easy to understand.

Q: What makes your critique of modern church simply a feature of your grey hair? (Asked with apologies and grace)

A: I want people to pray the Bible!! And what I hear in services is so insipid!

Q: I want that too! But I'm picking up your critique of the blandness, and seeing some difference there. Eminem is the master of words!

A: We're saying get hyped up on words, and music is a vehicle for that. (Sorry, this was a convoluted discussion with lots of interjections and I'm not sure any of us understood everything that each contributor was getting at exactly)

Q: Is "emotion as an end in itself" the wrong thing to be scared of? What's the problem with emotionalism?

A: We should all ask ourselves, 'what are we scared of' what are we trying to avoid'? A good end to work to is 'love one another with a brotherly affection'.

School of Theology - Sesh #9 - "From sad and mad to glad: The Pilgrim's Passion"

2011-09-15T10:03:00.000+10:00

I was told: "The Christian life is like a train. The engine of the train is the facts. The main carriage of the train is faith, facts pulls faith. The caboose is the feelings. They must come last. Any other order and you crash your locomotion."

This lecture is going to be an exercise in pastoral theology. I want us to think about emotions as a positive feature of living as a Christian, particularly how we care for our and others' emotions, and place this is a broader theology of God.

Isaiah 51:11 - sad and mad may be today, but one day we can be sure that we will know gladness forever.

A Gift, a Given.
Part of our lives
'fearfully and wonderfully made' (Ps 139:14) - emotions are a part of who we are created to be. So it saddens me when so many people relegate the emotions to an added extra, a 'leisure pursuit'. A marginal feature of our Christian existence.

Pastors can easily avoid strong emotions, in themselves or in those for whom they are responsible. A pandora's box that we don't want to open lest it distract us from ministry and soak up our time. Or perhaps we think of them as stronger than God, and if we rouse them we may never be able to put them back in their place again.

Part of our ministries
People are scared of ground wars, where emotions may make things more complicated, we prefer to fire shots from afar. (the pulpit?)

Driscoll's model of leadership: prophet, king, priest
But my problem with this, though having some regard for gift mix stuff, is that by using the word priest we bias the sample. Ezra the priest made his audience cry, he didn't comfort.

Emotions: A Christian Gift
Emotions are noble endowments
God graciously granted the Philippians suffering.

Would suggest not a hierarchy of rationality, will and emotions, but that they are a complex mix that function together.
Edwards against the faculty psychology of his forbears. Instead held that our emotions and our thoughts together form this bundle that he called 'the affections'. And that these have a gravitational pull either towards or away from God.

Edwards fought on two fronts. The extreme rationalists and the extreme revivalists with their 'manifestations of the spirit'. This involved book burnings and nudie runs through New London, apparently.

Edwards argues that "the affections are that bundle of me that is either attracted towards God or repelled from him". 'The Religious Affections' is ambitious, trying to write philosophically, pastorally and theologically (and something else I missed) all at the same time.

Assertion that emotions should be ridden and felt in all their power. Recognition that emotions need to be retrained or unpacked. They are a gift from God, and so we do need to receive them, train them and unpack them in order that we honour that gift. In a number of ways, we don't leave emotions where we find them.

With the help of a pastor or friend
Through the structure of liturgy

We can use it to take people through the highs of praise, the lows of confession, etc...

despite physiological/biochemical contributions

A new type of therapy being advocated, known as ACT.

The purpose of the gift is to enable us to engage better with the reality with which we face, the environment in which God has placed us. Even a depressive mood can flag for us something that needs to be owned or addressed.

An example of interpreting feeling: Bonhoeffer's letters and poems

Two angels from God. the first is pain. But because that one must be overcome afresh each time, there is a greater angel, joy in God.

Who am I? They often tell me that I am... ... Whoever I am, my God. Thou knowest me. I, lord, am thine.

We must relate all our gifts to the giver.
Emotions and the Glorious Giver

Answerable to the Giver: Every perfect gift is from above (James 1:17)

Renewing teleological framework for moral formation. We must realise that we don't have only duties, but an end to which we work towards.
Emotions aid spiritual integrity: immune system and boundary-riders. We as pastors have the job to help people to know how to do their own work of handling their emotions.
Godly expression: we need to be giving people examples of safe methods of dealing with emotion. An example of honesty in recognising and sharing our emotions. An example of skilled coaches, in knowing when to push, when to pull back, when to listen, etc...
For evangelistic opportunities to connect the emotional life to God.

Pastoral care is a theological opportunity to prepare for the City of God.

Questions:
Q: Why don't people feel that our churches are safe places to share emotion.
A: Could be lots of things, many of them are subtle (even furniture arrangement). Do we feel that church is a schoolroom, not a hospital, etc... (I missed lots of a good answer)

Q: How do we deal with the average emotionally disengaged Australian male? Do we try to retrain them emotionally?
A: Yes, we do need to retrain our emotions a bit. The manner, of course, will be difficult and slow. Perhaps an extreme experience of someone else's strong emotion could actually be a good thing. The debrief from that experience then could be the most helpful part of the process then.

Q: Given that we often think we have to be shiny happy people, how do you think that the emotional state in the new heaven will be and how do we step towards that?
A: Avoid glib happiness, but we do want people to be moving towards a healthy emotional state. I do want to see movement, some emotional dynamism. Case by case this will look different. Be realistic about what's achievable.

Q: Thoughts or suggestions on the place of Scripture in pastoral care re emotions?
A: At one level the Scriptural story is a powerful antidote in itself, the movement to the new heavens and new earth. A place for actually using the texts. But don't just flip the Gideon's 'fear' section if someone says they're scared. Be careful how you use, make sure it applies to that particular situation.

School of Theology - Sesh #8 - "On Being Moved: A theological anthropology of the emotions" with Michael Jensen

2011-09-14T20:06:00.000+10:00

When I choked up and cried while giving the eulogy for my mother-in-law, I was very surprised. I had no control over the sobs. The my will and choice was to do the opposite, it was I who was sobbing, no one else. How do I make sense of the problem with agency, with my body whence these emotions must have come and my reason.

Two problems in the traditional theological account of human being
1: the imago dei

If we take the imago dei as being a capacity that we share with God, then it makes sense that the capacity for rational thought is what has been thought of as the sense in which we are in his image.

2: body and soul

While rejecting a platonic view of soul and body as individual and distinct entities, the early fathers held to a psychosomatic duality, a body and soul which were both created good, but were still in essence distinct.

For Descartes, however, the mind and the soul are completely independent of the body.

This raises the question of how medical science is able to demonstrate the reliance of the mind upon the physical brain. So, though it modified it, the church's acceptance of platonic dualism seems, perhaps, to not be necessary.

The human being as a whole being
1: The Aristotelian dualism of Thomas Aquinas

While the person is not reducible to the physical atoms that make up a body, what is encountered in interacting with a person is not other than that found in that body. The idea does not exist without its expression.

2. the imago dei as the whole being addressed by God

the imago dei must be seen in the way in which the second Adam redeems the image, and enables the regeneration and creation of the new self, which we put on as being renewed after the image of its creator.

Human image in genesis is given in the context of rule. And as given to rule, the being is created with the capacities to do so. It is with the whole being that the person is to respond in love to God, ala Deuteronomy.

For the task of ordering and caring for, humans have been given remarkable abilities, including the ability to think. It not only recognises order, but also able participants in bringing order to it!

Yet we are not called to merely a dominion over the world, but a dominion within it. 1) Our emotions alert us to our community and collective task. 2) We are to be affected by it, as well as affecting it.

The image is not so much a metaphysical one, but a historico-narrative one. We have a job to do, working with the God who gave it to us.

Thus our capacities reflect the job we've been given, and the image takes in everything about us as human.

3. beyond body-soul dualism

Man does not have a nephesh, he is a nephesh. - Hans Volfffff (unsure whether it starts with W or V and how many f's are at the end.)(Linden says it's Wolff. W and two ff's.)

Our 'with-Christness' consists in his love. (ie, our life with Christ is not a bit of our soul that got caught up to heaven)

Our capacity for emotion is a part of our full body, as human, but also as a sign of our limitedness as finite creations. Very good. But as corrupted as the rest.

On Being Moved

1: 'responsive agency'
We are affected by the world around us, and also are pushed around by emotions inside us.
Feeling revulsion when we are intending to sin which stops us from doing so, is a point at which emotions serve us well. Suppressing emotion at that point is a consequence of the sinful nature.

Jesus' emotions condition his agency in his encounters with crowds, etc. Our emotions tell us a truth about the world and our experience in it.

2: bodily feelings
We can't experience anything outside of our bodies, even our dreams.

Our bodies belong to us as an aspect of our whole being. There's no experience that we have that happens outside of or apart from our body.

There's no non-material part of us which more readily is sanctified or may commune with God. Paul prays wholisticly, for mind, body and soul for the Philippians.

3: thinking and feeling as components of knowing
Turning concepts into substantives, we rationally separate ourselves from ourselves. Compartmentalising actually disintegrates us. These nouns could perhaps be talked about as verbs, thinking and feeling. These are activities carried out by a person.

What we call our subjectivity is vital for us to gain knowledge. A judge's objectivity is a reorientation of our subjectivity to a particular person.

Questions:
Q: What about those with disabilities, if our ability to speech is a part of the image?
A: The speech ability is not the image, but is the equipment given by God because a person is in the image. Their dignity is derived from the fact that they're addressed by God and called on by God.

Q: Some people have tried to use a tripartite division to explain humanity, thoughts?
A: Soul and spirit are generally pretty much synonymous, so the question becomes what is

Q: If there's no body-soul dualism, then can you give an account of ghosts.
A: No, I can't. But I know you have a different view of this. Zombies I'd be more able to explain.

Q: Jesus said to the thief, today you'll be with me in paradise, what does it mean?
A: Well, whatever happened on that day, the today was when Jesus went into the tomb. So the today wasn't necessarily literal in that sense. Hard to make ontological conclusions based on a promise to this guy, that's not the point.

Q: Will we still have emotions in our resurrected body? Ie, anger, etc.
A: There's no need for mourning. We're created for a responsive agency, so we'll encounter things and be moved by them. That would suit our finite, created being. But I'd imagine a completely reconditioned emotional life. Miroslav Volf has talked about how we'll be able to have joy despite knowledge of the past.

Q: Are our faculties also analogous to God's nature, or simply given by God as the task only.
A: No, the image is the task, not the capacity. So we create, but we create from stuff not nothing.
Q: So can we say that from you would say that God feels?
A: There is some analogy from our being to God's. Yet I am hesitant to ascribe exactly our feelings to God. The analogy has to have some content to it, but I don't want to say exactly how much.

Q:
A:

School of Theology - Sesh #7 - "He rejoiced in the Spirit - The Spirit's Perfecting Work on the Emotions" with David Hohne

2011-09-14T17:36:00.001+10:00

Describing the outworking of the Spirit in the general life of humans, in order to get at the outworking of the Spirit in terms of affections and emotions.

Two approaches to knowledge:

In the red corner, the romantics. The reconciliation of opposites is a central idea for them.

In the blue corner, the sceptics. Preferring to suspend judgement entirely should insufficient evidence be available. Their default position is to doubt everything. Strict use of Aristotelian logic over metaphor.

Both are deeply devoted to freedom for the individual conscience.

Charismatics tend towards the romantic perspective on reality.

Evangelicals have a bias towards scepticism. (Evidentialist vs presuppositionalist apologetics) We are the sceptics with street-wise readings of Genesis, loosely held views on Revelation.

Jesus challenges both views.
God shows limits to the human imagination in Jesus. God addresses us only in Him.
God himself in Jesus demonstrates a lack of reliance upon the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction.

Interaction between the divine life and creaturely experience

Basil describes the Spirit as working as perfecting/completing the works of God. It inherently holds in it an idea of eschatology. A goal towards which things are being moved.
Calvin, on the other hand, describes the Spirit in a more static, sustaining role. Calvin saw that the power of the Spirit was necessary to sustain the world. Yet there is some evidence of a more nuanced description. 3 things: sustaining providentially, a particular aspect of that for humans and this is most clearly seen in the elect. (The Spirit is the one who affects the ordered disposition of things.)

Does it by the Spirit, but through the son. What does that mean?

Calvin felt free to say that any/all wisdom we need is found in God's spirit.

Some observations:
There is a distinction between God the Spirit and the 'livingness' of things that is mediated to them by the Spirit. Neoplatonist.

The Spirit is not the best of creation. A division has been removed between creation and the Spirit.

Calvin observes that there is a distinction between receiving a gift of the Spirit and using that gift in the service of Him who gave it.

Summary: Calvin says that the Spirit is the agent by which God providentially cares for creation, Basil adds its eschatalogical movement towards completion and Owen said that the Spirit is the one by which the humanity of Jesus is perfected.

Colossians 1:15-25. In Jesus, God meets creation in a way that nothing else does.

The gospel sees Jesus as the spirit-empowered servant.

School of Theology - Sesh #6 - Michael Jensen with special expert guests

2011-09-14T16:20:00.002+10:00

Guest #1 - A counsellor lady

Essentially, she's encouraging people to be with that person in their emotions, and reflect back what that person is feeling to them. This allows the patient to feel listened to, something that they may never experience anywhere else. She's encouraging us that this is important and whether or not you feel qualified to help, just doing this can make a huge difference.

Q: Do you use medications in our practice?

A: As a GP, I do prescribe medications because I've seen how powerfully they can help people to be able to act in more healthy ways when they're completely unable to do so without that aid.

New Guest: a pain management dude, a doctor too.

Q: What is pain?

A: Not just a sensation. It is both a biological and a psychological phenomenon. It is an emotion in the sense that it also demands a response.

Q: What happens in the human brain when we experience pain?

A: You may expect to see a single area as the 'pain area' of the brain, but heaps of areas of the brain light up. Some of them are ones that try to perceive where the pain's coming from, but most of them are areas that we associate with emotions.

When you see someone else who looks like they're in pain, your own brain's pain areas light up too. That empathy has a brain activity reality.

Q: What of this is uniquely human?

A: We share a lot with any organism. The difference with us is a lot of the cognitive areas, probably language. The areas that look at the future, "what's going to happen if this keeps on going?".

Q: What things does pain produce in people, and how do you help them?

A: Depression, anger and fear. Chronic pain is an incredibly depressing experience. People often have a very deep hole that's difficult to fill and you often get very involved in that. Some people are worried that in 5 years they'll end up in a wheelchair. Anger is very common, often targetted at the medical sector.

Q: how do you help them?

A: A lot of it is medication, but massively increasing is the cognitive therapies. This is now the most common way of treating pain. Some are moving beyond that, and some people are looking into spiritual aspects.

Q: How are you reacting to talking about spirituality in this area while in a secular environment?

A: There are lots of people interested in it. Having said that, it's very hard to pin down what people think it means by it. The question ends up being, "What is your meaning, your purpose, and how has that been affected by pain?" Even from this loose sort of view, it does seem to tap in.

Q: What do evolutionary biologists make of the phenomenon of chronic pain?

A: Acute pain makes evolutionary sense, but chronic pain and particularly phantom pain makes no sense. it throws up quite a few conundrums from that point of view.

Q: How do you think about the papers that map the brain for the areas that respond to religious experience and use it to say that this means it's all in the mind, especially things that

A: I don't see how recognising what receptors get turned on demonstrates the reality

New girl, a 3rd year PhD student.

Q: What is meta-ethics?

Q: What are philosophers in your area saying about emotions?

A: In moral psychology, they look at the relationship of reasoning with emotions, how emotions help or hinder them. Jonathon Height(sp?) has done experiments that say that emotions are unhelpful in ethical reasoning. Other things such as virtue ethics say that the reasoning behind your action is what defines the morality of the action.

Q: How do emotions connect with virtue ethics?

A: When we think of virtues, we think of courage, or compassion, etc. We usually associate these with a certain emotion that is going on in the display of that virtue.

Q: What's problematic with virtue ethics?

A: Not so much a problem with virtues as concepts. Useful to talk about in moral philosophy. The problem is if it's seen as the primary concept in determining what's ethical. Yet, deontic ethicists will purely look at the act itself to determine its ethical value.

Q: how is an objective basis for morality possible, given our inherent subjectivity as humans?

A: If you think that objective values exist, and are perceivable, then they must in some way perceivable via our emotions. You can't tell by your eyes that a painting is beautiful, it's the emotion where you'll find the criteria based.

Q (Andrew Cameron): Is 'mental anguish' pain in the sense that physically sensed pain is?

A: (Phil - pain dude) - It's hard to tell. Even from the brain scans. I'd say it's a false distinction and there aren't many differences between them.

Q: How do you deal with people who suffocate their pain and don't acknowledge it? (you know they've experienced it because it comes out in all sorts of harmful behavioural cycles)

A: A key is allowing them to understand that there's something going on back there, so ...

Ran out of puff. No more blogging for a bit...

School of Theology - Sesh #5 - "Whose tears? Jesus and his emotional life" with Richard Gibson

2011-09-14T15:03:00.001+10:00

Do you notice that (assuming Mark wrote first and that Luke used him as one of his sources) Luke removes almost every reference of Jesus having a personal emotional response where Mark explicitly attributes them to Jesus.

It wasn't a particular type of emotion being removed (only the negatives, or only the angry ones), both negative and tender-hearted emotional responses alike have been excised.

All evidence points towards this being a systematic removal on Luke's part.

Richard doesn't have a really good explanation, so he says, of why Luke does it. On the other hand, he does demonstrate that Luke is far more concerned with the emotional response of the people Jesus talks to than Jesus' response.

A survey of Jesus' emotional responses in the gospels moves us towards an understanding that his responses are those of Yhwh God, and not simply the human nature of the incarnate Son.

Weinandy's attack on Moltmann and others are rendered inert. A suffering God can save us from our suffering. It's only our Western logic that makes this tension an unresolvable one.

School of Theology - Sesh #4 - "Does God have feelings?" with Gerald Bray

2011-09-14T12:54:00.000+10:00

The thirty-nine articles starts out with an 'almost' word for word quote from the Augsburg confession.

Cranmer created a new triad, of 'body, parts and passions'. What was for Cranmer a stylistic addition, has now become on of the most controversial parts of classical theism!

In the world when everyone discussed their deities in terms of human form, the Mosaic prohibition against a graven image was enough to let everyone know that the anthropomorphic descriptions of God as having an eye, hand, etc were figures of speech.

The 'divine attributes' called into question by God suffering.

Transcendence.
Perfection. (/immutability)
Sovereignty.

It can be argued that suffering and feeling are not identical, so perhaps God could still have feelings.

aesthesis and pathos, as two different things. Yet, can these be distinguished in the NT? Ie, Hebrews use of aesthesis for Jesus in temptation.

What does sympathetic mean in that text? Not emotional, but it's because he's not their substitute, it means he can't feel their pain. So we shouldn't read that text as saying that the OT priest was an uncaring cad.

Ie, would a father cut his own finger to help a crying child know that he understands what the child is going through? Not the point of the text.

Using Abraham as an example in order to understand God's feelings is problematic in that Abraham's personal emotions are unknown to us. The purpose of the example is a case of faith trumping personal feeling.

With Absalom, it is difficult because Absalom wasn't like Jesus. Absalom wasn't a volunteer, and David was disapproving of the death.

Is there a confusion in Gerald's argument in that he is relating only to God the father in the thing?

Are we misunderstanding these things because we've shifted the definition of sympathy and hence the meaning of the text?

The impact of the Son's incarnation
How could the divine impassible God suffer as a part of creation? It's not surprising, therefore, that the two great 4th C heresies were related to this question: Arianism and Nestorianism.

To explain their Christology, the church created the concept of 'personhood'. As a person, Jesus was divine and not human.

The early church worked out that the only way the relation of the divine to the human could be explained is in personal terms. As a modern person, I'm more interested in the quality of the human relationship than in the compatibility of our respective beings.

Animals can certainly suffer and die, but do they have feelings? A controversial subject.

As a man, Jesus could suffer and die, which he came to do and why he came in the first place? Did Jesus acquire his ability to have feelings in the incarnation, or did he have them before? If before, then presumably the other members of the trinity have them as well. He would also express them in his divine person too, and so would the other members of the trinity.

Post chalcedon people wouldn't answer this way though. Doctrine of anhypostasia. So the divine second person of the trinity did not die on the cross?!?!?!?!

The Father can forgive me because of his son's sacrifice without having to experience that sacrifice himself. The Spirit, likewise, can do his work without needing to have experience what the incarnate son did.

The post-chalcedon fathers wouldn't have thought of the Son as having feelings towards the divine.
Emotions are present in human love because our relationships are imperfect. But God's love is realised. God's love is so perfectly realised that their love cannot be expressed within the God-head but outside of it. When it comes to personal relationships between God and man. God didn't have to become a man to relate to human beings, even if it did change the nature of it.

So, are the feelings of Jesus human feelings or divine?

Modern questions
A generation ago, people rejected the impassibility of God because of the horrors of the holocaust. Reshaped their view of God in the image of the cross. The purpose of the atoning sacrifice was pushed out of the picture.

If doctors and aid workers are suffering from the same thing that they're curing, they're not much good. God must have immunity to our problem in order to help us out of it. A suffering God would be of no help to us. Not just because he'd be powerless to deal with the problem of suffering, but also because that God's suffering would also be so far removed from our suffering as to have no applicability to us.

Can't blog this. Too heavy. Will try to provide reflections later after chatting with others.

...

What humans want to know is that if God makes a difference in our lives, do we make a difference to his? We can't imagine having a relationship with an emotionally void being. If God is our father, we don't want him to resemble the Victorian pater familias, but a relational adult in whom we can confide.

Relationships demand feelings, which is the basis for the argument that God must have feelings.

Firstly, if there are feelings within God, they must exists at the level of the divine person. Yet they are unknowable to us.

Immutability and feelings are not the same issue, because we can have feelings without experiencing pain from an external source.

How does Jesus' personal relationship with us affect his personal relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit?

Eternity is the issue. What could an emotion look like in eternity?

Questions:
Comment: You can define something without limiting it! The sign infinity is an example!
A: Well, I don't know about that. That is the issue, can you define something without limiting it?

Q: Do I understand you rightly in saying that the emotions are mutable and passable and so they are
A: Yes, so the question is in what sense is the analogy able to be extended to God. We aren't able to extend what we experience into the infinite.

We have an element of the divine, that makes it possible for us to have a relationship with God. To be a human person means to be more than just finite. After we die, I will be the same person, but not the same body. Personhood is the link to the infinite, and the image of God is linked to that.

School of Theology - Sesh #3 - "The Puritans, Theological Anthropology and Emotions" with Keith Condie

2011-09-14T11:07:00.001+10:00

Puritans
Yes, says Keith, it IS a meaningful term.
Defined by a particular mode of piety - theology as scientia affectiva practica.

Why are we talking about them?
A fairly similar theological pedigree to those in this room.
Yet, lived in a very different century than ours.

This, then, provides very helpful perspective for us as we're so enmeshed within our own culture.

Also, have a very good understanding of what makes people tick, and have very sophisticated pastoral technique. They granted a very prominent place to the emotions. For them, unless you engage the emotional part of the human brain people were not going to do what you wanted them to do.

Secondly, because they've had a significant ongoing influence. Ie, J. I. Packer, Banner of Truth reprinting their works, John Piper's debt to Jonathon Edwards, Tim Keller, etc...

Essentially, they were 'warm hearted, without being wacko'. *chuckles in the room*

Part 1: Puritan theological anthropology
Worth recognising their Augustinian and medieval heritage to begin with. Particularly they drew on Aristotelian faculty psychology + the Bible. Combined the science of the day with Biblical truth.

But, of course, we do that too. (ie, reading 'mind' and 'heart' as if the bible means by them the same things that we mean by them. It doesn't.)

Baxter on anthropology:
Three general faculties of the human soul:

Mental or Rational soul - only in humans
Sensitive soul - also in animals
Vegetative or Igneous soul - also in plants and animals

The three distinctive faculties of the rational soul:

vital active power - it does things. It achieves purposes. Firstly, it kicks the will and intellect into action. Secondly, it does what the intellect and will tell it to do.
intellect (understanding)
will

The passions are located in category two, the sensitive soul. The part shared by animals. A lower part of the human being. Thus, the puritans are wary of it and aware of its capacity to distort things away from what God would have.

Though Fenner disagreed, and located them in the rational part of the being. Edwards also locates the affections in the 'vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul'.

The corruption of the soul's workings due to sin

Baxter took the task of humanity as not to behave like an animal. Milton took the same view in Paradise Lost. 'When our passions take over, that is the loss of human freedom, according to the Puritans.' God's work of sanctification is to allow a right government of the body. Keep all this dangerous bodily and emotional stuff in check.

The soul's relationship to the body

The Puritans had a very literal mapping of each element to a particular area of the body. There could be a literal 'blockage' between your head and your heart!

Also, related to the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. The Puritans said that these bodily humors affect your soul. You have to care for your body, lest these bodily humors affect your soul.

Kutz note to self: how heavily does my anthropology (the one i've simply 'inherited' and could be completely rejected in 100 years) affect my application of theology? Good ways? Bad ways?

Part 2: The Puritans and 'emotions'

A breadth of terminology
The Puritans would, as per Augustine, hold that there was a moral content to emotions, but mainly in terms of what they were in response to and how they were directed, again as per Augustine.

Affections central to authentic spiritual life
"The affections are the Soul's horses, that draw her as it were in a coach to the thing that she affects: a man is moved by his affections." William Fenner, A Treatise of the Affections, sig. B2.
Also, Baxter, Sibbs, Edwards.

Puritans figure that you always do what you want. Our affections show us what we are in terms of our religious life.

Edwards: These are located in minds, not body. Recognises that holisticly our body and mind are connected and that they affect each other, yet the proper seat of affections is in the mind. Ie, our spirit. The spirit is capable of affections even when not connected to the body.

Part 3: The pastoral implications
Is the distinction between passions and affections helpful?

If they are all in the mind, then do they function as helpfully in being alarm bells for us? (not sure why this means they can't be that :s )

While the Spirit is at work to re-order our emotional lives, yet our emotional broken-ness, in the context of the gospel, has to be ok at a certain level. Not loving God enough is not a fatal error in our condition. (Wow. Very interesting for me personally.)

Preaching and other pastoral work
Can't tell someone just to stop sinning. They have a love of sin. Must win the heart to a higher love.

Emotional states and spiritual health
You have to take joy in God and love him with all your affections.
So does this lead to judging the quality of someone's spiritual life by the quality of their affections? Does this lead to a mis-judging of someone's emotional state too?

Also, does the experience of down-times in affections leave one a slave to emotions? (Well, Edwards would perhaps have a more nuanced view that would deal with this.)

If people simply hear 'do this, be this', then there will be problems pastorally.

Division between head and heart?
Edwards charts a helpful course between these two extremes. Affirms the unity of our functioning as human persons. Moves past some of the earlier Puritans.

Conclusion

In our world, feelings really matter. Puritans don't have all the answers, but perhaps they are right in drawing a distinction between passions and affections. Placing emotions within a moral framework. Perhaps wrong in anthropology, in locating things in particular parts of the body, which marginalises the role of the body. (?)

They remind us that our great need to know God. not acquaintance or notional knowledge, but to see God as he really is with the eyes of faith.

Their view of faith is deeply emotional, we ought to live as if the truth about God were really true.

Questions:
Q: What would they think of modern anti-depressants, etc ?
A: I think they would have acknowledged the place of medicine and science if it were helpful to deal with the bodily part of our functioning.

Q:
A: Edwards' final mark, however, the greatest one, was actiona dnwhether you were obeying God's will.

Q: Did I hear you endorsing the distinction between passions and affections? Because it can go either way in a lot of parts of Scripture. Is that distinction really a helpful one?
A: Not sure. Because even Puritans would say that not all passions are bad. Passions enable us to do stuff. The problem is that they want to get out of hand. I take Andrew's point that they want to give some moral content to feeling states. Perhaps those two words are not the way to do that.

Comment: This helps, because when I ask 'why' they don't know. When I ask about the emotional reasoning, then things start to tumble out.

School of Theology - Sesh #2 - "What is at stake: a cultural overview of the emotions" with Andrew Cameron

2011-09-14T09:41:00.001+10:00

How to get our bearings?

An experience of completely involuntary protection of his baby daughter when he saw a dog coming towards her out of the corner of his eye. No thought, just emotion. What was that? A thought? No. Emotion, yes. Good? Christian?

"We should beware of the misleading assumption that there is a single, orderly, naturla class of phenomena that is simply designated by different labels in different languages at different times. The language of 'passion' and 'emotion' has a history in which various feelings, desires, sentimaents, moods, attitudes and more explosive responses enter and from which they exit, depending not on arbitrary philosophical stipulation but on an extensive network of social, moral, cultural and psychological factors. R. C. Solomon.

Evans and Griffiths:

more innate: basic emotions (Evans); autonomic bodily reflexes (Griffiths)
somewhat innate: higher cognitive emotions (Evans); strongly expressed personal concerns (Griffiths)
less innate: culturally specific emotions (Evans); social performances (Griffiths)

This range shows us that the word 'emotion' itself is a wrong word, as these three categories are so different as to resist being bucketed together. Semantic range of the word is unhelpfully large. Talking about different things and end up talking past each other. (Griffiths)

Recent History

Now, all sciences seek to study emotions in their various connections.

But, previously, there was a Cartesian view that emotions were animal spirits running through your body.

Moved to a Freudian view of a hydraulic model of emotions as a strong force pushing up against a valve, reflected in words like repression, contain, etc... This model has some problems.

But then, James-Lange:

sdfa

Emotions arrive from their physiological reactions. The mind responds to the body's reactions and interprets it as emotion.
Women who've had their eyebrows botoxed apparently feel less empathy, according to a study. :P

Behaviourism came next - F. Skinner "The 'emotions' are excellent examples of the fictional causes to which we commonly attribute behaviour."

'Evaluative judgements', but no less than a feeling - the cognitive view

We might resist emotions as simply cognitive, as just thoughts, yet thinking and feeling work together and each emotion is an evaluative judgement of the reality which we face. A cognitive theory.

Something about emotions are 'thinkable'. "I will kill that dog if it comes near my baby." Emotions have their own logic. Scripture seems to at some level assume this cognitive approach.

Matthew Elliott: "Rightly understood, our emotions are connected to what we focus on, what we know, what we value, and what we believe. What we think and how we feel work together to point us to the truth".

James 4:1-x as an example of emotions as involving cognition, the higher-level emotions articulated there.

You can have a commitment to a cognitive view of emotions and still see them as feelings.

Mistaken syllogism of many preachers:
A feeling can't be commanded.
But love is commanded.
Therefore love is not a feeling. (And I won't tell people to change their emotions or strive after certain emotions.)

So if you only give a fact, and then expect it to trickle down to emotions but don't push to help that happen, Elliott says that there's a problem there.

'Emotion', passion or affection

a moral (and social) contextualisation of the passions and affections;

Passion - thought of as that which drives anti-social bahaviours

Affections - thought of as that which drives us toward others

Yet, we've moved toward 'amoral' emotions. Emotions aren't bad or good, they just are. We feel that that makes no sense. More the younger generation, while some of the older generation probably still hold to some of the hydraulic view.

Cameron is sympathetic to the passion and affection view, but the Bible has a more nuanced view again of how these things work. Virtues and vices are helpful categories with which to divide up our human experience.

Elliott's proposal

Much to recommend Elliott's work.

Cameron wants to say that we can have some, indirect, affect on how we feel about things.

Not so sure about this four-fold thing. Likes the fact that he says we are able to affect some indirect level of control. This is his four-fold toolbox.

focus
know
value
believe

Why do I think it's shaky? Because it looks past a deeper theological truth, that we can be helpless, and completely beyond the ability to pull ourselves out of certain emotions. (Psalm 88) (Romans 5:5) By the Spirit a new capacity to love and to change is brought upon us.

Does Elliott's strategem fall into the problem of his own critique of the 'trickle-down' approach in that it requires a level of thinking that would be beyond many?

Augustine vs the Stoics
For Augustine, our deepest longing is related to our telos. And our emotions are connected to what we love as a result. It is through the work of the Spirit that we are re-aligned to our proper telos.

Whether emotion is good or bad depends on how it is directed. It is used well when it aligns us toward our proper telos, and is harmful when it moves us away from our proper telos.

Hits the Stoics hard when they say that the emotions are all bad, even human compassion.

Emotions area good gift of creation, but they can be demonised depending on the love or telos that they are directed towards.

So, was Andrew's feeling to the dog good?
We'd have to know something of the telos of me, the dog and the baby. The stoic would say that you shouldn't have had the feeling, you lost your apatheia, your cool. The evolutionary biologist would have said that it's neither here nor their, you're engineered to pass on your genetics and the reality of what you felt, just is. No meaning.

Augustine would ask how that emotion was directed. The wrong thing would have been to feel nothing, and to let the dog hurt the baby.

Question time:
Q: Would you distinguish between instinct (the dog incident) and emotion?
A: We've got two roads, that serve us in different ways, a low and high road. Looking over from a distance, or diving in.

Q: How would we tweak Elliott's project?
A:

Q: Back to the two-tiered thing (instinct/emotion), are you suggesting that we can address both roads? The higher centres and the more basic emotions too?
A: A bit hard to know how to address the more basic ones, because of their nature, happening at such an instantaneous level. But we should talk about them, discuss them. Give us space to debrief.

Re-Q: Do you try to stir up some of those basic emotions within preaching itself? (Eg. Get a person angry when preaching about the right anger of God, etc.)
A: Yes, a good thing. There's been concern about doing it and whipping people up to a mob, but probably not a real danger of that in our context.

Then some more I missed, got a phone call...

School of Theology - Sesh #1 - Sermon on Phil 1 by Richard Gibson

2011-09-14T09:37:00.001+10:00

The talk is based on Philippians 1:8

For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

After the EI (Emotional Intelligence) boom, should we crave emotional intelligence? Is there something that we've missed.

Yearn - an intense desire with the implication of need. The word Peter uses to describe a baby's craving for its mother's milk.

Phi 1:8 is an expression that, despite being secure in being loved, Richard says he doesn't hear people say to him too often. Very expressive.

"with the viscera of Christ Jesus" - the heart, the entrails, the bowels (not as good on a birthday card). Paul's emotions are shaped by Christ Jesus. The phrase is instrumental, describing by what means Paul yearns for them.

Not just for the Philippians

1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:10 - Such great joy and feeling for those who had stuck with him through thick and thin
2 Corinthians 1:23-2:11 - Such is his feeling of grief over those with whom his relationship is difficult and whose faith is troubled.
2 Corinthians 11:28-29 - Not just to those with whom he's shared the extremes of emotion, good and bad, but he has a similar emotional burden for all the churches.
Romans 9:1-5 - similarly, for his national brothers, Israel.

Paul expresses this publicly as a model for his hearers

Philippians 2:1-2 - Paul appeals to us to be transformed by the reality of the affections of Christ. Should thus Philippians 2 be thought of as a hymn to Jesus' splagkna? Humility, sure, but would Jesus

So, do we need EI? (many say the Sydney diocese does!)

Seems a bit like a fad. Can't deal with things like anguish and other similar emotions.

But I know I want to be like Paul. The affections of Christ brought to him the afflictions of Christ. Paul was content to have death working in him, and life working in those he worked for.

Want to be more like Paul in the way he genuinely loved and longed for people, burdened to pray for them. I want his tender heart. To genuinely love deeply and so also genuinely serve.

I want to be conformed to the image of His Son. The tender-hearted mercies of the father and the compassion of the Son came up with the incarnation, not sure EI could do so. The deep longing, in the gut, the entrails, of God spilled out in the gospel of the cross of Christ.

The garden of gethsemane shows that you can't have Christ's affections, without Christ's afflictions.

Warning: Theology ahead!

2011-09-12T21:49:00.000+10:00

On Wednesday and Thursday I'll be heading down to the annual Moore College School of Theology. The topic this year is "True Feelings: emotions in Christian life and ministry". Should be good.

I'll be live-blogging most sessions, I imagine, and posting an 'index' to all my posts at the end for your easy reference.

Wednesday is:

A sermon on the affections of Christ - Richard Gibson
What is at stake: a cultural overview of the emotions - Andrew Cameron
The Puritans, Theological Anthropology and Emotions - Keith Condie
Am I a man? The passions of God - Gerald Bray (really looking forward to this one)
Whose tears? Jesus and his emotional life - Richard Gibson
"He rejoiced in the Spirit" The Spirit's Perfecting work on the emotions - David Hohne
Theological Anthropology and the emotions - Michael Jensen

Thursday is:

From sad and mad to glad: The Pilgrim's Passions - Rhys Bezzant
Together, with Feeling: corporate worship and the emotions - David Peterson
Preaching, the Gospel and emotions - Peter Bolt
Music, singing and the emotions - Rob Smith

Phew! That's going to be intense. Definitely going to need a trip to The Local Taphouse in there.

A non-frequent privilege

2011-09-08T09:00:00.001+10:00

Being witness to people being humble and repenting is a beautiful privilege.

The problem with envy and jealousy...

2011-09-06T17:19:00.006+10:00

... is that they take a dissatisfaction with God and the circumstances that he's placed you in and project them onto a (often innocent) third party.

They turn love to hate. (Genesis 4, 1 Sam 18:6-9)
They distract disciples from following. (John 21:18-22)

Cain's problem wasn't Abel, Saul's problem wasn't David and Peter's problem wasn't John. Their problem was with God, and simply focussed on someone else.

Nasty, nasty stuff that, by the above definition, crouches at the door just when you're most down.

Summary of the 3-part gospel cure:

When we're dissatisfied or in trouble, the gospel says come to God directly to lodge your complaint. Let God have it (in both senses), don't take it out on someone else.
The gospel teaches us that God owes us nothing, but has given us grace upon grace upon grace. He doesn't owe us, he owns us.
The gospel is the message of a pearl more valuable than anything you've ever known. A person you'd sell everything you own in order to know. In a heartbeat and with a smile on your face.

If you know Jesus, you've got the pearl. Why be jealous of someone holding a bag of rubbish? (Philippians 3:7-8)

But Lord!

2011-09-02T00:13:00.002+10:00

18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

20 Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) 21 When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”

22 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You, follow me.”

In case you weren't sure if Dennis Bergkamp was good at football

2011-08-30T22:36:00.001+10:00

Watch the whole thing. It's worth it.

What does godliness look like?

2011-08-29T17:10:00.002+10:00

If I had to answer right now, I'd say humility.

John Piper on Preaching - An index

2011-08-26T11:33:00.002+10:00

Many of us were greatly blessed by God yesterday as John Piper shared with us what he's learned about preaching. It was awesome. Far better then even his evening address.

Here's some introductory comments that he made on the topic of preaching.

He then gave us his thoughts on 5 key areas of preaching. Its aim, its content, the manner of your preaching, preparation for preaching and the act of preaching.

These are just notes and at times fail to capture the depth and significance of each of the points that he made. Mulling over them and their depth may well be very beneficial. A quick scan will likely miss much of the significance of his address.

Piper #6 - The act

2011-08-25T11:51:00.001+10:00

What does it mean to 'serve in the strength that God supplies'? 1 Peter 4:10-11.

APTAT is how you preach in the power of the Holy Spirit.

A - Admit that you can do nothing. There is nothing that I can do without you.

P - Pray for help. Luke 11. "If then you who are evil, know how to give good things to your children...

T - Trust a specific promise. Taken from my daily reading.

A - Act. Just get up there and do it. You were made to do it. Work out your salvation, for God is at work in you.

T - Thank him.

Piper #5 - Preparation

2011-08-25T11:41:00.005+10:00

2 Timothy 2:7 --> God's command is to think over what Paul has said. I'm spending all my time in preparation thinking.

The great compliment:

As soon as I think I've got a problem with what you've said, you raise the problem and go over it.

This isn't against the concept of the inner workings of the Spirit. "Think, because in and through that sanctified thinking God will show you." Thinking doesn't deny the work of the Spirit, the Spirit works in and through that thinking.

Pray. Continue to pray. Help me, help me, help me. In every aspect of the prep, at every moment of the prep.

John's prayer: IOUS.

I - Incline my heart to your testimonies - Sometimes I don't feel like reading the Bible, so please...
O - Open my eyes. I'm reading the word and just seeing black marks on a page, so please...
U - Unite my hear to fear your name. Psalm 86:11. Don't have two of you: one does it and one watches. If the one watching likes it, he gets proud. If he doesn't, he gets down, does a bad job, etc... (Please give us the blessing of self-forgetfulness)
S - Please give me satisfaction in the God that I preach. May it never be that I don't love the message that I'm preaching.

Piper #4 - The manner

2011-08-25T11:36:00.002+10:00

What is the manner of talking that honours Christ, and that is kerusso.

This is not just teaching.

Having small emotions for Jesus is blasphemy.

It is so out of step with who he is and his value, and preaching is supposed to be the thing that brings together right thinking and right emotions about Him.

Preaching is expository exultation.

His job is to expose what is here and to exult over it.

Doing worship in the pulpit. I'm trying to speak this content to you in such a way that has some resemblance to its massive value.

(Kutz note: So the spirit-filled preacher is responding to the word that he is speaking in the pulpit. Emotionally what is true of his response to the word is there.)

Piper #3 - The content of preaching

2011-08-25T11:19:00.007+10:00

So what do I say in order to do that?

Preach the riches of Christ

2 Cor 3:18-4:6 --- "beholding the glory of the Lord they are being transformed". My simple principle is that seeing Jesus, my people are transformed. So put up Jesus before your people. In all his glory. In as many aspects as you can.

Where is that glory seen most clearly? 2 Cor 4:4 says the devil is trying to stop people from seeing the gospel so that they don't change. So ministry must be centred on the glory of Christ and the gospel.

The gospel in 6: (needs every piece to be the true gospel!)

The gospel is planned -> according to the Scriptures, pre-planned
The gospel is in history, it happened -> take that away, no gospel
He accomplished something at that moment when he died. -> before it ever affected you.
The free offer of the gospel. By grace, for faith alone, not works.
Applied to you. Take that away, you're going to hell, there's no gospel! Justified, reconciled,

When I sin against someone, I wreck the relationship with someone. Why would I want forgiveness with that person? To restore the relationship!!! Not just so I don't have a guilty conscience, but so that we are restored in our relationship with God.

1 Peter 3:18. --> "to bring you to God". Just to have God himself. Not just to avoid hell. But to treasure Christ himself. To have that relationship, not just to feel better about oneself.

It would be perverse for a person to want their spouse to forgive them for a harsh word said, but only wanting to assuage their conscience and not caring about fixing the relationship.

Don't cut the gospel short of that final point.

Piper #2 - The Aim of preaching

2011-08-25T11:10:00.001+10:00

The Aim (Point 1 of 5)

A deeper faith

Wants us to consider deeply the nature of saving faith. What is the nature of faith? What is the 'main' feature of a saving faith?

Not simply intellectual recognition, else we share that saving faith with the devil...

To 'receive him as your lord and saviour'? Doesn't do enough. The question is, what drives people?

What's their treasure.

Phi 3:8 "everything else is garbage compared to God". That's what I want to awaken in my people. It is then that they are believing him, receiving him for who he is.

So, the aim?

A Spirit-given treasuring of Christ as supremely (above all else) valuable

Piper #1 - Introductory comments

2011-08-25T10:56:00.002+10:00

The topic of John's address is the proclamation of the word about Christ.

He opened with a recognition of the necessity of the work of the Spirit in the proclamation of the Word. A helpful turn of phrase was: “I cannot make happen the one thing that I want to make happen.”

So the extended title is: "The preaching of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit"

The nature of the working of Preaching
Does the work that only God can do happen by works of law? Or only by hearing the word with faith? (Gal 3:1-3) Miracles in the lives of people come from people hearing the Word with the Spirit that awakens faith in those who hear it.

These together enable our people to crucify sin and magnify Christ.

How the Spirit and word work together
John 14:16:

The Holy Spirit is not interested in empowering anything but Christ. So if you preach and magnify Christ, then he is right there with you. Like a wingman, a jet in formation. Because his purpose is to magnify the Son.

When you preach Christ, he's there to put boosters behind it all the time.

How we fight temptation 'by the Spirit'
Romans 8:13

We want our people to kill sin. So how do they do it? What does 'by the Spirit put sin to death' mean?

John understands that to mean wielding the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. When faced with temptation, remind yourself of a truth of the glory of Christ by which that temptation is killed. And so we need to be teaching them the word well so that they have a sword with which to kill sin when temptation arises.

A tough day

2011-08-11T12:54:00.001+10:00

Off to preach at my grandfather's funeral. Here's my text.

26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Doug Moo on translation - compiled

2011-08-05T22:21:00.004+10:00

QTC has had the pleasure of hosting New Testament scholar Douglas Moo over the last few days. While probably not the most fruitful of his lectures to have live-blogged, I did take some notes from the exclusive ACT lecture that he did today on his experiences as a member and now head of the NIV translation committee.

You can find them, in order, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

And for those visual learners, here's a snap of Doug with QTC's professional fanboi, Joseph Wee.

Questions for Moo

2011-08-05T12:21:00.001+10:00

Wez: Why are there less conjunctions in English NIV than in the Greek?

Doug: They use more conjunctions in Greek than in English, we take into account what it adds to meaning and then put that into the way we translate it.

Ian: Do you take a particular perspective on tense/aspect in Greek, which is the basis of the language? (Or in Hebrew?)

Doug: No particular stance. Waltke is on the committee, so his stances do have a significant bearing on how we see Hebrew things.

Kutz: Any bits where you didn't get your way?

Doug: Any bit that you don't like, that's a vote I lost.

Kutz: Do you kick the Hebrew guys out of the room when translating the NT bits?

Doug: No, we work together as a single committee for everything. No sub-committees or separate work. This is actually really valuable as most of the time is spent on working out not so much what the original language means, but on how to render it in English.

Q: Do you employ an English stylist?

Doug: No. The NIV committee doesn't. The NLT committee did. Not always to the satisfaction of the NIV committee.

Doug: A totally new study Bible is coming, with Carson as the editor.

Jeremy: How is it decided who is on the committee?

Doug: A brief doctrinal statement, similar to NA evangelical association one. Have to sign up to that, have to be an expert in Greek or Hebrew, but after that it's the committee's choice as to who to invite. Try to keep a variety of English spoken, nationality, experts on different parts of Scripture, culture, etc.

Translation: things Doug Moo has learned #6

2011-08-05T11:57:00.006+10:00

To be wary of 'Biblisch'.

"Daughter of Zion" but Zion IS the daughter. "Daughter Zion"

"Blessed is the one... who does not stand in the way of sinners" ("ie, the way sinners do things, not standing in front of them to block them")

ESV - "Understandable English"
NIV - "Natural English"
NLT - "Easy English"

Metaphors

Live vs. Dead metaphors. Do you continue to use the metaphor, or do you substitute the word for the idea.

Examples:

"Cut off" meaning "destroy"
"walk" meaning "live," "direct one's life"
"sleep" meaning "die" (Not enough evidence that this is a dead metaphor. So using 'sleep 'in death' may help.)

The difficulty of the varieties of English used today

This gives some license for the translator to use different expressions to translate the same underlying word.

Wez: But surely you should try to preserve the same rendering for a word within the same author?

Doug: Well, not so much just within the one author, but where we think the author is trying to make a link between the two usages.

Gender: Third Person Singular Generics

A problem not of understanding the Greek, but of understanding the English that you're translating into.

ESV keeps third-singular forms

Luke 9:23 - "And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross..." (over 'literal' assumptions?)

NLT moves to second-person forms

"Then he said to the crowd, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must ..." (but what do you lose here?)

CEB uses plurals

"All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross ..."

NIV often uses the so-called 'singular' they

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross ..."

But, is that correct English?

NIV commissioned a study by the Collins Dictionaries, who own the Bank of English. (4.4 billion words)

Problem, then, is the different 'idiolects' that you find all over the world. What English are you translating into?

The database primarily filled the blank in "Every citizen was sent a ballot so that ____ could vote" with "they". This then is used as a snapshot of spoken English around the world. So the question is whether the lack of masculine focus in the original that would be present in the English by using 'his' is actually helpful.

Translation: things Doug Moo has learned #5

2011-08-05T11:48:00.002+10:00

Some more tough texts:

Hebrews 2:6-9. Where do the pronouns become referent of Jesus?

We do not see all things subjected to humanity, but we do see Jesus, the representative human.

We do not see all things subjected to the son of man, Jesus, but we do see him now crowned with glory and honour.

Translation: things Doug Moo has learned #4

2011-08-05T10:59:00.003+10:00

To make tough choices

The Italian proverb: Translators are traitors. True. You simply cannot bring across all the rhetoric, meaning, nuance and form of one language across to another.

So, again with sarx, some options:

Translate in a way that approximates the sense for an English reader? - "sinful nature"

Translate less interpretively, treating the word as a "technical" word that a reader will have to figure out? - "flesh" (Such as a novel about sailing. At first, you may not understand all or any of the technical terms, but eventually you'll get a 'feel' for it from the usage and context.)

So, the question is, do I think that my English speaking audience has the interest and the capacity to do the sort of work required to come to understand the technical term in its fullness and nuance.

Proverb: Never watch sausage or translations being made.

Interesting fact: Now more people who speak English as a second language than people who speak it as a first language.

The Hebrew of Proverbs 31:10

"Woman of strength"? - too physical?
"Woman of noble character"? - too ethical
"Woman of excellence"? - OK, but... (went with this one)
Kutz (But what about 'woman of nous' ?)

Translation: things Doug Moo has learned #3

2011-08-05T10:38:00.001+10:00

Syntax and 'literal' translation

Col. 2:11 "te peritome tou xristou"

Circumcised 'of' Christ, or circumcised 'by' Christ?

Some seem to think that 'of' is the literal rendering of a Greek genitive. This isn't true. There is no 'literal' or default rendering of a genitive, simply a number of options.

A principle of Metzger
"As literal as possible, as free as necessary"

But this leaves questions, says Moo. Particularly, "as necessary" to accomplish what?

In practise: Colossians 4:5

Form, but no concern for meaning
In wisdom walk toward the outside the time buying up

Form over Meaning
Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the beset use of the time. (ESV)

Form and Meaning (NIV :P) (Doug is head of NIV translation committee)
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity

Meaning, but less concern for form (NLT)
Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity.

Moo's point: All of these texts have made translation choices. None could be rightly called literal.

Things Doug Moo has learned #2

2011-08-05T10:22:00.000+10:00

To detest the word "literal".

How most people think translation works:

You apply a code that translates each word from its Greek or Hebrew original to its English equivalent.

Ie, a greek word that menas "X" = English word

How translation really works:

There is no single, default 'meaning' of a word. Instead, words have a semantic domain. A semantic range. A word's meaning within its semantic range is determined by its context.

There may not actually be an English word that is equivalent or even has a similar semantic range.

An Illustration: the Greek word sarx

One possible translation option -> "a person"
Another translation option -> "sinful nature" (NIV 1984 & NLT) or "flesh" (NIV 2010)

There is no translation that seeks to always use the same word to translate sarx. To do so would be to betray the meaning of the Greek.

How you translate the word 'bit' into another language would depend greatly upon whether you were talking about horses or computers.

We should ban all talk such as "this word literally means..."

Moo on translation #1

2011-08-05T10:14:00.004+10:00

Current bibles being read

KJV: 31% (old KJV: 18% and NKJV is 13%)
(T)NIV 30%
NLT 12%
ESV 7%
Others 20%

A very nice implementation

2011-07-13T09:46:00.009+10:00

You're looking to solve the problem of world hunger, but there are some problems. Faced with the immensity of the problem, people don't feel they can make a difference and don't 'see' what difference they do make. Corporations have little motivation to get on board without getting significant exposure for their involvement.

Enter wefeedback.org.
It encourages people to 'feed back' their favourite food to someone who doesn't have it. What actually happens, though, is that you donate the cash value of that food, and end up giving 50 people (or however much that money can buy) a meal.

The genius is that it shows you just how many people giving up that coffee can feed (Cost of one cheeseburger = 40 children fed), and then tracks the number of people that you've fed. Also, it encourages you to bring others into the scheme and add them to your 'network'. If you click the image, you should be able to see there that you can not only see how many people you've fed, but also how many people your network has fed. And, of course, it's got all sorts of options for linking this fact in with your social media.

There are a few other really nice things about this that I'll let you discover on your own. But essentially they've found a way to make it cool to feed people who're hungry. I think they've given themselves a decent chance to popularise philanthropy.

There's a cool video that explains it all better than this, but you only see it after you sign up and I can't find it on YouTube. I just signed up. Sign up, check it out, feed some kids.

Not sure how some Christians will react, not wanting to advertise how much they're giving and all, but I guess you just don't connect it up to your social networks then.

Anyways, here's a video I could find, but more on the general work of the World Food Program than on the We Feed Back project.

Don't try this at home. I'm a professional Russian.

2011-06-26T16:35:00.003+10:00

Love this guy. He's pretty good at shooting stuff:

A language warning on this one.

Definitely don't try this one at home. Even if you're Russian.

And sometimes, even Russians don't quite get it right...

Ah, a shame he's not really Russian...

Promise it's not a rickroll...

2011-06-10T22:36:00.006+10:00

Who'd've thought that Julia would be so into Fridays?

What is the good?

2011-06-09T14:35:00.003+10:00

In preaching, there are a number of goals that a preacher is trying to achieve. In this post, however, I'm focussing in not on content, but rather on communication.

What is the chief value that a communicator ought to strive for? Retention of information? Affecting the hearer? Mirroring the rhetorical method employed by the text?

I'd love to hear some thoughts.

I wonder ...

2011-06-05T19:43:00.001+10:00

... why as humans we are so good at ignoring warnings, even ones we know are true?

Disturbingly brilliant

2011-06-02T14:28:00.001+10:00

Tell me what you think.

For fear of being phobic

2011-06-02T13:49:00.004+10:00

This is a top post from a good friend about assumptions on how Christians and progressive social groups must relate in the public sphere.

It's been sparked by the recent controversy and counter-controversy of Adshel's decision to take down posters from the Rip & Roll campaign, and its subsequent decision to reinstate the posters. The decisions were made in response to public outcry and then to the public outcry to the public outcry.

Very helpful.

As for the poster itself, I have to say it's not particularly racy compared to most heterosexual stuff on billboards. That said, those protesting against the Rip & Roll ads are also campaigning against the heterosexual racy stuff so some of the charges of hypocrisy are poorly aimed. It's just that they've been less 'successful' in those campaigns. Probably due to the dollars behind them, I suspect.

Parental units

2011-04-21T13:24:00.004+10:00

Thought this article discussing the responsibility of parents in resisting the sexualisation of pre-teen fashion for girls was tops.

Are you serious?

2011-04-04T12:33:00.001+10:00

I just can't believe this. Sure, corporal punishment by anyone other than a family member isn't on, but this?

Under the draft version of the Educational and Care Services National Act, you can no longer separate a child from the body of the group.

Supervisors must "ensure that a child being educated and cared for by the service is not separated from other children for any reason other than illness or an accident", the regulations state.

Wow. Are we so evil that we are unable to conceive of power ever being used for the good of children but only to abuse them?

Guess so.

From John 9

2011-03-18T01:05:00.007+10:00

Sin didn't cause the man to be born blind. But sin does cause blindness.

It's like putting on glasses with someone else's prescription and paint stains on them. The information coming in via photons of light is correct, but it gets distorted on its way in. 'The Jews' didn't reject Jesus because of poor education or lack of information. Their sinful heart distorted how they saw things. In their sin they decided they were good.

No thanks Jesus, I can see quite fine without you. I don't need your light. I don't need anyone to teach me.

Yet the man born blind...

Do you believe in the Son of Man?

I don't know Jesus. No idea. But you've opened my eyes. You tell me what to believe, and I'll believe it. What should I believe? Who do I believe in?

I want the faith of a man born blind.

Snippets from Rob Bell's interview

2011-03-17T14:00:00.005+10:00

In response to the question "Is heaven a real place?", Rob Bell says that it is. He does on to discuss the peace that a dying man had in his final moments as his body is about to give out, and describes his experience of being with that man as 'rubbing up against' the reality of heaven.

He essentially says (about as close as he ever seems to go to actually saying anything concretely) that heaven is a reality that is experienced by humans in the here and now. That man's peace as his body was about to give out, was him being in heaven.

Of Jesus, he says:

As opposed to 'how do we get there?', his interest is more about 'how do we get 'there' to be here?'.

A bold typeface

2011-03-11T23:13:00.003+10:00

Thought various members of the Campbell and Richardson families would like this:

Story magazine nearly foundered for a lack of Ws. The publishers, Whit Burnett and Martha Foley, lived on Majorca, and their Spanish printer’s character set could not accommodate their English prose.

They bought some supplementary Ws from a Madrid foundry, but the new type was distractingly sharp on the page. So the printer advised them to “make those new letters old.”

“We sandpapered those Ws,” wrote Foley, “we stamped on them, we hammered them and hurled them around to give them in an hour all the wear and tear the printer’s other type had endured for many years. We finally subdued them so that they lost most of their prominence. But I have been W-conscious ever since.”

Courtesy of the futility closet.

Facebook status comment

2011-02-20T00:33:00.005+10:00

I was discussing the recent publicity stunt/crude joke by Belinda Heggen on Facebook today when Peter B posted a link to it. One of the comments, by a certain gentleman (worthy of the title) named Francis, went like this:

remember those reporters had an affair, and one critisised their spouse on air, they got the sack, about 3 years ago?

on anther note; Kutz, what would you say is the biggest division, between the conservative calvanist right wing Church and the lefty hyppie emerging church. ( I use generalizations here, many people fit in between, no offence to anybody) AND, how would you bridge these two communities.

The shift in topic surprised and to certain degree fascinated me. Being me, I could hardly resist the opportunity to gives my (entirely off the cuff) thoughts when asked.

Kutz Kutuzov ‎@Francis: Dude. So you want me to have a crack at that in an off-topic comment on Facebook? Sure. Afterwards I'll send you a text with the solution to the problems faced by indigenous Australian communities. (smiley face demonstrating that my tongue is in my cheek and joking without implying that the aforementioned is a laughing matter. You know, that kind of face.)

Seriously though, if you asked me to have a guess, I'd go for something like:
Post-modernism rejects the idea of an over-arching metanarrative due to its view of truth claims as means of controlling people. I can understand why this is, particularly from the perspective of those who've suffered hurt from churches where this has been the case. Most of the major leaders of the emergent church movement have come out of fundamentalist churches, often the minister's son.

Certain conservatives (remembering the massive generalisation stuff you were referring to earlier) have left behind their Christology and theology of the incarnation, forgetting that the truth was a person and personal (even before he become a human person) and want to defend abstract truths without reference to the person to which they testify. As a result, phariseeism and a lack of love can result, with little resemblance to Jesus' habit of connecting with the 'sinners'.

For me, the challenge for the emergent guys is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't throw out objective truth claims simply because these have been abused by some. Even if that abuse hurt you. I want to be there for you in that hurt and to be a part of the healing and growth that comes from being a part of the body of Christ.

In this, though, I don't want you to think that someone's abuse of the Word of God makes God's word always harmful. It's not the fault of the truth, it's the fault of those who used Scripture to control and get power for themselves. (I'm preaching on John 5 tomorrow where Jesus tells the Jews they're using the Scriptures to get glory for self, not to love God. That didn't make the truth wrong, it meant that they were abusing the truth instead of believing in it.)

So my plea to my emergent brothers and sisters is to love in both word and deed, not deed only. Because it's by speaking that we know each other, and by God's speaking to us that we know about the loving thing he did for us on the cross. God doesn't just love us, he wants us to know we're loved.

My plea to my conservative brothers and sisters would be not to take yourselves or your religion too seriously, but instead be willing to love people enough to give up your culture of religion so that people from other cultures will be able to connect with Christ as people from their own culture. They need to convert to Christ, not to middle-class anglo-saxon norms.

Well, that was all shooting from the hip. What do you reckon, bro? Not sure I solved any problems there, just outlining a few of the things I've seen happening. Did that even make sense?

Uncolouring between the lines

2011-02-19T17:15:00.003+10:00

I really like some of these. Which is your favourite?

negative freedom

2011-02-08T22:56:00.003+10:00

A really interesting quote from an interesting article linked to by Arthur on facebook.

Multiculturalism in the West operates under the rubric of the fundamental contemporary right not to be irritated by difference.

The article is titled "The Middle East, the West and feelings of democracy".

Methodology

2011-02-08T13:27:00.003+10:00

If you had a situation where you were leading a Bible study group and you had to trade off two things, what balance would you settle on?

Let's say you were in a situation where you'd have to balance (a) ability to control how much people were helped to be engaged with the text and (b) how much freedom there was to discuss and throw around ideas from the text and allow everyone to share their thoughts.

Now I know that this almost never needs to be a trade-off, it's only in some particularly unique situations where it might be the case. Don't get some weird ideas about me from this hypothetical.

But, if you had to, within the bounds of this hypothetical, what would you do?

What's in a name?

2011-02-06T21:03:00.002+10:00

I reckon I've uncovered evidence that the use of budgie smugglers was alive and well in patriarchal times.

Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan.

That's one tan line you really don't need to see.

Ridiculous thoughts

2011-02-05T23:09:00.004+10:00

I've been married for 6 years. Crazy talk.

The wifey arranged for a couple nights at Currumbin. It was pretty sweet. Gee the water was nice.

Same cause, opposite response

2011-02-05T22:49:00.003+10:00

Haven't looked up an commentaries yet, but does anyone here have a helpful understanding of what's going on in God's head when he says that:

20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[a] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

I mean, isn't that why he decided to send the flood in the first place?

Particularly interesting to me is how the pleasing aroma of the sacrifice enters into it.

Typical Noah

2011-02-02T14:27:00.004+10:00

Have a read of Genesis 6-9 again before reading on.

---

Does anyone else see Noah's family being saved based on Noah's personal relationship with God? Any implications for how we view the whole event?

Just seeing if anyone's got any insights to help me out.

Colourful vernacular

2011-02-02T14:12:00.005+10:00

I wonder how long it'll be until tradies, storemen and the like will be referred to as 'fleuro-collar workers'.

Will executives ever become 'hands-free collar' or the like? Tips on a new name?

Back. A little

2011-02-01T23:55:00.002+10:00

Haven't blogged much since the start of the insanity period at the end of last year's college calendar. You'll quite possibly be seeing more from me here soon, however.

Having started recently as the assistant minister at The Redlands Presbyterian Church, I'm sure I'll be having plenty of reflections on theology and how it works out in practice in church life. I'll be having plenty of thinking to do in my new role, that's for sure.

Any tips on being an assistant minister, by the way? I'm pretty blessed with my senior dude, Linden's tops.

Kutz, signing out.

Aesthetics serving their purpose, beautifully.

2011-02-01T14:16:00.004+10:00

How awesome is Clayton? It's difficult to adequately relate, as many will tell you. Still, as a picture tells a thousand words, I'd like to draw people's attention to these logos that Clayton did for our church's creche and kids' church programs. Each one represents a different age group: creche, cubs and lions.

I especially love the cubs one (middle). What do you reckon?

A real trip

2010-12-15T11:12:00.002+10:00

Check out the NYC messenger riders cruising the streets. This is almost a spiritual experience.

Got it from Kloky on FB.

STIR 2011 - the promo vid

2010-12-14T01:25:00.005+10:00

What do you reckon, did we do a decent job? Think it'll promote the event well?

By the way, if you're 16-27, then consider registering and getting along to STIR 2011, 21st-23rd of January. It's a conference for youth and young adults to be stirred up to serve Jesus in your local church for the year. Great time of fellowship, challenge, fun and encouragement.

Kutz: Dad or Cad?

2010-12-04T05:25:00.003+10:00

Which of the early church fathers are you? Apparently...

You’re Tertullian!

You possess many gifts, but patience isn’t one of them. You’re tough on yourself — and on others. You’re independent, too, and you don’t like to be told what to do. You wish the Church would be a little tighter in discipline. As for the pagans, you’ve pretty much written them off. Sometimes you think the Church would be a better place if you were in charge.

Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

Recommended retirement age

2010-11-18T11:09:00.002+10:00

An awesome quote I read this morning, despite being from a man who has raised my ire on more than one occasion. Beautifully put by none other than Sir Alex Ferguson:

Retirement is for young people. I’m too old to retire.

The real St. Eutychus?

2010-11-15T22:10:00.002+10:00

Was Paul truly boring? I've got a new theory. Perhaps he was a bit more like Driscoll. In fact, perhaps he was better! Maybe he was really funny and interesting. I mean, why else would people listen to him preach all night? I bet he had heaps of hilarious stories from the baths that would keep the gentiles entertained for hours.

All things to all men, does that sound like someone who doesn't know how to hold an audience to you? Chris Rock has nothing on old St. Paul.

How can you reconcile this now-proven reality with the data contained in Acts 20:9 where Eutychus 'fell asleep' while Paul was preaching? Did he have no sense of humour? Was he just a really young 'young man' and needed a nap? Was he narcoleptic?

I would like to suggest that perhaps a psychosynopticising reading of the text may provide the answer. And so, I present to you my alternative reading of Acts 20:9:

lachschlaganfall
n. a condition in which a person falls unconscious due to violent laughter

A perhaps confusing conclusion to an inadequate essay

2010-11-13T23:08:00.001+10:00

Having looked at history through the eyes of Barth, it seems that he understood his great battle to be with prolegomena to Scripture. His view of revelation and his Christology were driven by his attempt to escape from the epistemological presuppositions of his time and to establish a pure way of allowing God to speak. McCormack rightly makes the point that while Schleiermacher was concerned to establish the independence and absoluteness of religion, Barth was seeking to establish the independence of revelation. In this, the two men find both their similarity and their difference. In his desire to remove God’s Word from underneath the scalpel of historical criticism, Barth separated the Word of God from the Bible and located it in an experience of the Bible instead. In this, Barth was unable to himself escape from a philosophical prolegomena which he himself had inherited from Kierkegaard, despite distinguishing himself from some aspects of it. Having charged others with the crime of the possession of a theological prolegomena, Barth himself is not immune to the charge.

Telos

2010-11-07T17:20:00.003+10:00

The purpose of this blog was to help me capture certain thoughts before they run away. My thoughts tend to do this. Here one week, gone another. My memory is less than stellar. And less than Stella.

And so, in a conversation the other night, I heard someone say something cool and said, "That's cool. I'm going to put it on my blog."

But I've now forgotten it.

I've also forgotten who said it to me, though I think I've got an inkling of that.

What was it that was so cool but I've now forgotten? Was it you who was talking to me? What did you say?*

*Not actually being the person or having even said anything cool to me in the last 48 hours ought not to be an impediment to offering suggestions.

Control freaks

2010-11-05T16:24:00.002+10:00

This is interesting/amusing:

In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the “close door” button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003.

Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. “You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat,” said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. “Guess what? They quit calling you.”

In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 “walk” buttons in New York intersections do nothing. “The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on.”

From here.

Seeing as you're all addicts

2010-11-03T16:10:00.005+10:00

Why don't I have a competition too?

You have to email me a drawing of your most 'elegant' Venn diagram that comprises of four regions. Ie, a diagram which most elegantly allows you to diagrammatically represent the possible combinations of four sets.

Ie, if this diagram is an elegant representation of the combinations of 3 sets:

then what would be one for four?

Rule #1: You don't talk about fight club.
Rule #2: No research. This has to come from your own head only. Google and wikipedia aren't your friends this time.

Best directions ever

2010-11-03T13:55:00.002+10:00

Can I suggest using google maps to get directions to China from Japan? Check out direction number 43.

Sometimes losing is a win

2010-11-03T11:28:00.006+10:00

The guy who scores the first goal (a minute or so in) in this video, Emmanuel Garcia, is one of the better roller hockey players on the planet. We also became good friends over in Colombia during the 1999 schoolboys' world championships.

We had to lose to Argentina by less than 10 goals in order to go through to the next round. After a few minutes Emmanuel had scored 3 and we were looking like we were in trouble. I came on and marked him for the rest of the game. He only scored one more goal that game. We lost 6-0 and made it through.

Using a machette to cut through red tape

2010-11-02T12:30:00.003+10:00

Richard Clarke, just check your pacemaker before reading this one.

Courtesy of xkcd.

Lovin' it

2010-11-01T11:27:00.005+10:00

So I was 'reliably' informed the other day that the word 'love' was not in fact a verb (Newsboys, you got a lotta splainin' to do) and had not been used participially before the advent of the McDonald's "I'm Lovin' it" advertising campaign run by Haye & Partner since September 2, 2003 (in German) and Septemer 25, 2003 (in English).

To this, I present:

IRVING BERLIN WROTE "I'LL BE LOVING YOU, ALWAYS" IN 1925. JOSEPHINE BAKER MADE THE FIRST RECORDING IN 1926.

FRANK SINATRA RECORDED THE SONG IN 1942. THAT SAME YEAR, THE SONG BECAME THE THEME MUSIC FOR "PRIDE OF THE YANKEES", THE STORY ABOUT LOU GEHRIG.

THE MOVIE STARRED GARY COOPER, TERESA WRIGHT, AND WALTER BRENNAN. IT WAS NOMINATED FOR ELEVEN ACADEMY AWARDS.

Source.

If in doubt, always check your language settings

2010-10-30T20:48:00.002+10:00

On a scale from one to awesome

2010-10-19T20:38:00.003+10:00

Check out these bboys. Freakin' amazing.

2010-10-18T15:51:00.005+10:00

This oughtta make Simone happy... :s

What do you think about engagement with the occult in popular culture? Especially in relation to children? Have you had to take a position in it yet?

The thing that annoys me here is that Mark doesn't actually take the time to make any reasoned argument from Scripture. He harps on about being discerning, but then doesn't take any time to carefully discuss what discernment might mean.

In the words of a funny man, "That's not an argument! That's just contradiction!".

Strictly speaking

2010-10-16T10:58:00.006+10:00

Check this out. The third (current at time of posting) episode is really interesting. The two brothers are quite erudite, thoughtful, nuanced and intelligent. And, so it would seem, Christians.

I found myself wishing that I had the freedom of the younger brother (Joe) where it seemed persuading you was more important than his hang-ups. But I found myself, a tad saddeningly, feeling more similar to the older brother (Nat) who was more stilted by his own self awareness.

Implications for preaching anyone?

2010-10-16T00:15:00.003+10:00

This blog has become a noose around my neck. A crowd to please. An expectation to live up to.

If I write a blog which contains only that which I really want to write, at the rate which I want to write it, who would read it? Would it create the type of hub that I'd hoped for, with people gathering to offer helpful thoughts on my posts and help me to learn and think more? Or would it mean that those few things I did post were simply words for the wind? Letters being delivered so rarely that no-one bothers to check the mailbox.

Thus the noose is of my own making. Desiring to create something which I have not the desire nor ability to maintain. Deciding to win a gold medal in synchronised swimming routine that never ends.

I choose to take my head from the noose. I can stand without.

I now own a piece of rope. There's just enough of it. But I don't have to use it if I don't want to.

Ill-incepted

2010-10-10T13:56:00.003+10:00

I went to see Inception last night (I know, I'm behind the times) and only then because a 2 for 1 ticket that I had expired yesterday. I really enjoyed it.

***Spoiler warning!***

My brother told me that he thought I'd pick the twist. By half an hour in I thought I had, got annoyed at how boring that twist was and then settled in to enjoy the rest of the movie. With 20 minutes (or so) left I realised that my proposed twist wasn't right, and then watched as their really was no twist, just a slow revealing of secrets.

The tension that had to be resolved to make things right was Cobb (DiCaprio) needed to finally deal with his grief, let go of his residual-memory version of his wife and allow himself to be forgiven of the guilt of his role in his wife's suicide. It was one heck of a therapy session though, mixed up in industrial espionage, matrix-like alternate reality combat and storming a snowy stronghold. Better than a couch, any day.

On the way out, my wife remarked that it wasn't what she'd expected after having read a review of the movie in Eternity. The review slated the Cobb character as preferring the dream to reality. It further attacked him as promoting the idea of seeking happiness in whatever virtual realm you can find it and avoiding the truth.

Which is a tad strange, given that the whole point of the movie is Cobb moving towards the final moment where he DOES embrace the truth, deal with reality and face his fears, thus returning to reality. The whole point of the tension in the final scene of the movie was the exact opposite of what the reviewer claimed.

Did anyone else read that review and get really ticked off?

We had an agreement!

2010-10-07T16:47:00.005+10:00

Apparently, at his wife’s behest, in 1954 vice president Richard Nixon wrote down on paper:

“I promise to Patricia Ryan Nixon that I will not again seek public office.”

He wrote the date on the slip, folded it up, and stored it in his wallet.

Six years later he ran for president.

Sucker love is heaven sent

2010-10-07T16:47:00.004+10:00

On the joys of sugar:

A placebo has no pharmaceutical properties; if it works, it works only because of my own belief in its efficacy.

If I know that I’m taking a placebo, it will be ineffective.

So while the placebo cures me only because I believe it will, I can’t believe that it will cure me only because I believe it will.

Peter Cave

Local sports clubs the new local church?

2010-10-07T15:41:00.004+10:00

This was an interesting article. Firstly because of the requests being made, but secondly for the social analysis made towards the end of the article.

Cam Butler (Chaplain of the AFL Melbourne Football Club in the AFL and National Director of SCA) is claiming not only that the role of church has been usurped by sport (a tension long felt by those dealing with Kids' sport on Sundays), but also that spiritual guidance has shifted from the cathedral to the locker room.

"May I suggest that the closest thing to a pastor for most young Australians is their local club coach. The closest thing to a church, or refuge from life’s ills, for most Australians, is not the church, but rather their local sports club."

An area of struggle for many local churches is to be able to meaningfully engage with their community as a church entity. Perhaps the local sporting club is an avenue which could bear fruit for the gospel.

Our generation

2010-10-07T15:07:00.004+10:00

Cool guys aren't passionate fighters anymore. The more bored you look when blocking the enemy's roundhouse kick while sweeping his standing leg, the cooler you are.

See?

Ok, so this could just as easily be Keanu acting very excited. Bad example.

Still, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has taken bored-fighting to an entirely new level. Even this image can't capture it. You have to watch the movie to feel his sheer boredom during the fight.

What would you answer? pt 1

2010-10-06T14:58:00.003+10:00

I was a subject for a documentary being done by an old friend from uni. He's putting together a mini-doco on 'Devotion' and I'm one of three participants who answered a few of his questions about devotion. I was chosen for my alleged devotion to Christianity, another guy for his devotion to his child and a third for his devotion to Stargate.

I thought I'd post some of the questions Pat asked me, to see what you guys would say under the same circumstances. Just a few at a time.

1 . What were you doing five years ago?

2 . What are you doing with your life at the moment?

3 . What are the five great loves of your life? What are you passionate about?

4 . When did your devotion to God begin?

5 . How would you describe your relationship with God?

6 . How long did it take you to form this relationship?

Ecclesiastes: what some other people reckon

2010-10-03T22:42:00.003+10:00

These aren't the perspectives that I promised would be analysed in detail, but just some summaries from commentators.

St Jerome (c. 347 – 420)

Saw the book as a call to embrace the ascetic life in order to escape the vanities of this world. Strangely, he also says "the Hebrews says that ... this book ought to be obliterated, because it asserts that all the creatures of God are vain, and regards the whole thing as nothing, and prefers eating and drinking and transient pleasures before all things." Weird

Crenshaw (1987)

"life is profitless; totally absurd. The world is meaningless. Virtue doesn't bring reward. The deity stands distant, abandoning humanity to chance and death."

Ogden (1987)

"The book's thesis ... is that life under God must be taken and enjoyed in all its mystery."

Like any of these? Why not?

Inappropriate

2010-10-01T15:56:00.004+10:00

My wife yesterday:

(Excitedly) 'Apt' is such a fitting word!

Fear and loathing

2010-09-30T11:35:00.005+10:00

Sometimes I'm not motivated to get into a particular task. Often, that's because I don't think I'll have the time or energy to do it really well. It won't be up to the standards that I hold up others' work to. I never felt scared, but fear in a way has removed motivation. Fear of my work being pathetic.

Or, I could obey God's word, instead of just reading it.

I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

Ecclesiastes: what do you reckon?

2010-09-28T15:37:00.004+10:00

Over the next few weeks I'm going to post a few thoughts on Ecclesiastes. Particularly, I'll be using two or three different approaches from different commentators and seeing how they hold up. Which has the best explanatory power for the material found in a book at once so easy to relate to and at the same time so difficult to understand?

I've found Ecclesiastes to have be far better represented in the 'favourite book of the Bible' stakes than the 1/66 chance which probability would afford it. In fact, I've heard more people quote it as their favourite than any other. And all have a strong opinion on its message. And most of them conflicting.

Thus it will be interesting, not to claim to know the answer, but to post thoughts to provoke those who're interested in this multi-faceted book.

So, to kick off, what do you think is the main point of the Teacher?

Is it normal to... #1

2010-09-28T15:17:00.004+10:00

I'm trying to work out whether some of my responses to everyday situations are normal or complete over-reactions. What do you think? Would you be just the same?

Would you:

Be minorly-moderately annoyed if someone grabs your arm and moves it from where it was happily resting on the table while you're involved in conversation elsewhere? But here's the kicker: What if the person who moved it was your spouse?

Kutuzov family history

2010-09-26T14:12:00.004+10:00

I've been doing a little bit of delving into my family history over the last year or so, and it's yielded some interesting results. Tales of Communist v Tzarist battles, Cossack warlords, indigenous Australian history and even apparently some French blood. :o

Firstly, I thought I'd start with the Kutuzov side, and some easy background. My dad is Russian from Harbin (North-eastern China). My babushka (grandmother) is alive, but my dyedushka (grandfather) died when I was about 2. Here's my dyedushka with my dad:

And here's my babushka in her first ball gown:

Subsequent history posts will have amusing stories too. Don't fear this will become an exercise in slide-show-death-by-blog.

The agony of choice

2010-09-21T16:06:00.005+10:00

Back from mission, but no blogging impetus to speak of. I'm completely wrecked after a week of firstly being nervous about a kids' talk that went well and then worrying about an evangelistic talk which didn't go so well.

The kids' talk was made considerably easier by the fact that I used one of the excellent Kidswise talks by Sandy Galea and some awesome props made by my wife.

The sermon on the other hand, was agony!

The loose theme we'd been given was 'Life Matters'. I had initially wanted to do a talk about the tension between life and death in Ecclesiastes. The tension is created by death's ending of life and thus frustrating and cutting off all humanity's work and relationships. Hence, they are in vain. The talk would finish in 1 Corinthians 15 with the resurrection and its result: your labour in the Lord is not in vain.

The problem, though, is that I wanted to explore some different ways of dealing with this tension between life and death. Options such as denial, religiosity and acceptance. After a couple of weeks agonising over preparing this kind of talk, I gave in. I can't do a talk like that well enough yet. To be able to connect that philosophical stuff to real life in an engaging way in a 15 minute evangelistic talk to your average person from the street was a bridge too far.

So I decided to do an exegetical talk on John 11 (Lazarus' resurrection). But by then I only had a couple of days to prepare, and I wasn't really 'feeling' the passage as an evangelistic talk. So it wasn't so crash hot.

I'm not sure if any non-Christians were there. Very few people at church at all on that rainy day.

Still, it was good to stretch myself. Now I've got some thoughts about my limitations as a preacher to explore.

A break in transmission

2010-09-17T15:18:00.004+10:00

Sorry. Can't blog. Missioning.

Still, Some bits of my preaching prep for Sunday morning. Prayers appreciated.

- - -

John 11

The two different responses to Jesus.
You can see the miracles themselves, even believe that they’re real, and still not believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The issue isn't believing the miracle. The issue is: "having seen the miracle, would you believe that Jesus was the Son of God?".

The bloke who wrote this down was there. He saw it happen. He saw Jesus do heaps of amazing things. But why did he write this episode down? Why was this one recorded?

He tells us. Right at the end of his book he tells us why he chose this particular sign to record. “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

John wrote down what happened that day for you. In fact he wrote the whole book hoping and praying that you would believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Why? Because he wants you to have life. He doesn’t want death to be the end for you.

Just when you thought the job was done

2010-09-13T23:01:00.003+10:00

Just so you know, this is NOT what it looked like when Nathan's goalkeeping performance won us the Grand Final (yes, it is Worthy of Capital Letters) on Saturday.

Christian terrorism

2010-09-10T11:30:00.007+10:00

Now thankfully, ~~pastor~~ Terry Jones has called off his threat to burn copies of the Qur'an. Yet, the article which reports this good news has failed to fill me with any joy.

In it, Jones claims that he's made a deal with the Imam of the proposed Ground Zero mosque, with the result that

"has agreed to move the location."

Now, I doubt that this is true. But, if it is, then what is this but a successful act of terrorism? Someone is doing something perfectly legal which someone else doesn't want them to, so they threaten to destroy something valuable which the other person value very highly in order to blackmail them into giving up their original project. Manipulation is not God-honouring, Mr Jones.

"The American people do not want the mosque there, and, of course, Muslims do not want us to burn the Koran."

Nine years later, phenomenally different in scale, but how much different in principle?

Eagle in flight

2010-09-07T17:19:00.004+10:00

How cool is this pic of the Eagle nebula?

That one and heaps more here. The Transter was where I was linked to it from.