disturbing, saddening, maddening...

Please, please, brothers and sisters... just what are we doing?

Perhaps it's because we live amongst a culture of popularity, where pin-ups are gods and the rich and famous are household names. Perhaps it's because we live amongst a culture of intellectualism, where those who are smart (or those who sound smart) are elevated above us, by us, onto our own shoulders. Or perhaps it's because we live in a culture of blindness, where you have to look very, very hard to see through the endlessly-propagating spin to the truth. Whatever it is, we have no excuses as Christians for living in these same ways - God alone is to be our all-in-all, and we are to be His holy people.

Why then, when we are called to be holy - separate, distinct, set apart for God - do we treat some preachers as celebrities? Why, when we know that God's word can be spoken powerfully through an ass, do we flock to gifted biblical orators as though God's word spoke more powerfully through them than through the rest? Why do we malign the good, godly, Spirit-enacted ministries of these orators by idolising them?

Seriously, if you are a fan of Mark Driscoll, ask yourself why. Is it because he is your brother in Christ and you support his ministry, or because you are in awe of him as a preacher? Or more subtly: is it because he expounds the word of God faithfully, or because he expounds the word of God faithfully and in a clearer manner than your minister at church? I want to suggest to you that the second of each of these is idolatry.

Or similarly, ask yourself this: Am I going to Burn Your Plastic Jesus and taking my friend because my friend needs to hear the gospel, or am I going because I think my friend could get a lot out of Mark Driscoll preaching the gospel and I would get a lot out of it too...? Or likewise: Do I go to Barneys for the community of believers God has placed me in, or do I go because sometimes I get to hear Ian Powell preach and he's really good? Do I go because the word of God is taught faithfully at Barneys, or do I go because the word of God is taught faithfully at Barneys by Ian Powell or Malcolm Gill or Mike Paget? Again, the second of each of these is idolatry.

I will never say a word against the faith in Christ or against the work of God in the lives of Mark Driscoll, Ian Powell or any other solidly biblical preacher you may name. The fruit borne of their ministries is enough to convince me that God works through them and in them. This word is against myself for being an idolater - for holding up Ian Powell and others as preachers par excellence and failing to give the glory to God. And this word is against you, if you too have idolised your preacher.

I'm writing this principally in response to the celebrity of Mark Driscoll, spurred on by the 20-minute sell-out of Engage with Don Carson and Mark Driscoll headlining. Again, nothing against these men - everything against treating them as stars. Brothers and sisters, they proclaim Jesus!!! Who on Earth are we to take them and lift them up as they seek to hold Him up? If they will be glorified (and they will), let them be glorified by God, and not by our hands. We are the temples of the Holy Spirit, not of Driscoll and Carson - let our hands be sanctified for the glorification of God, not dirtied by idolatry. And furthermore, Driscoll and Carson are temples of the Holy Spirit. Do not worship the temple, but the One who lives inside. Do not worship the talk, but the One the talk is about. Do not worship the image - worship the Creator.

I am angered by this. My anger isn't righteous, I know, because I have sinned here too. I am fairly certain, though, that I'm not just sprouting hot air. We have sinned, and we are sinning, and God has called us out of it. I myself have refused to go to a Mark Driscoll talk or to even listen to his talks simply because of the hype surrounding him. I would listen, because everything I have heard from him or about him has been solid, but the hype is too great. I think this hype is the most obvious example of this sin today, but that it is symptomatic, like many of our problems as evangelicals, of deeper sin - perhaps of the pride we take in our good preachers and theologians, perhaps in the shame we hold for our boring ones. May God help us out of it, and to God be the glory.

interesting

So I've noticed a few interesting things today...

1. There's a vaccine available for chickenpox.

2. They're making an Australian version of human tetris. It's gonna be called Hole in the Wall, and it's coming on soon. Australian television has reached a new low.

3. Usain Bolt is amazing!

4. Walking is a sport for weeds. I think I also saw the Aussie bronze medalist grinning as the Russian anthem was played. Maybe he watched The Hunt for Red October when he was younger and remembers a submarine full of Soviet men singing it.

5. Red Rooster's ads playing on how China loves red just make me think "Communists!"

6. I like the smooth water in front of the olympic swimmers.

fifth year

The chairs in half the room have changed,
The other half remain the same...
The same as they've been since they were changed.
Does anything remain the same?

The caf sells Indian now, and wine,
The art has moved with changing times,
Old friends have left, can't hear me whine:
Does anything remain the same?

The street across the road has gone,
And in its place, a spacious throng,
An improvement, but a costly one,
Does anything remain the same?

The people here who sit around
Sit in the place of last year's crowd,
Diff'rent folk the old words sound,
Does anything remain the same?

I ponder, as I plod the race,
A four-year fixture in this place,
The fact that I, even I, have changed.
Does anything remain the same?

-- Iain Hart

lost

It's remarkably easy to lose yourself in work once you get into it. It's a distraction from distractions for a sloth like me. It feels healthy, and maybe it is, but it's unusual.

"Shouldn't I be agonising over something worthless right now?"

Maybe this is just what I need.

"What I want and what I need are two different things... or are they? Maybe they're not so different anymore..."

Maybe I want to change.

"I hate change."

I hate to stagnate.

"I want to rest."

fix

I can fix my car, a bit anyway.

I can fix my computers, both of them.

I can fix bits of my house.

Why can't I fix myself?

here again

I am inspired to question at this moment in time why life is so cyclic.

I am not inspired to question why I am so vague... that I know... I'm a fruitloop.

Could that also be why life is so cyclic?

acrostic

Adam's child, I bore his brand,

Burdened daily, nightly, ever,

Chained by foot and bound by hand,

Death my only true endeavour,

Every move the act of sin,

Following the first man's ways -

Guilty hands stained from within

Have no will themselves to change.

I was helpless, without hope for

Justice must be satisfied -

Kinder men have been condemned -

Life lived well can never end

My sin and leave me justified.

Now my life is freed forever

Of that bondage to decay,

Purified of sin to never

Quake within death's hold again.

Ransomed by Messiah's blood,

Sin-stained hands made sanctified,

Trusting only in my Lord

Until by Him I'm glorified.

Victory in Jesus' Name -

What a treasure, giv'n so free!

Xenophilic God who died,

You who rose to justify, my

Zenith You will ever be.

-- Iain Hart

notes

What I noted today (inadvertently in chronological order):

1. I need a wetsuit for getting to and from uni on my bike on days like this

2. I don't want to to a good job of my last music assignment... I want to do something exceptional

3. French and Spanish oral tests on the same day is generally a bad action plan

4. Wine helps you speak French when you know a fair bit of French, but doesn't really help you speak Spanish when you don't know much Spanish and you've already used it to speak French

5. Harrison's Pharmacy in Broadway is open past 6pm

6. When your laptop's screen keeps turning itself off because it thinks it's closed when it's not, it's hard to blog

blackjack

I saw the new movie 21 tonight. It was quite a decent movie, though it didn't really grip me that much. I think I was put off by the pervasive greed. Still, a well-made and enjoyable movie!

I would love to have a day off tomorrow, but that won't happen. There is a music assignment pressing, a Spanish test to study for, and things to be done in organising a debate for EUSci. I know that I have things pretty light compared to most people I know, but what really makes a difference to how you feel is how light you feel you can handle things to be. I don't feel particularly strong under things at the moment, and so each day is a day with a pack to be shouldered as I wake and shed as I slowly drift into unconsciousness at the day's distant other end.

I wish I knew how I worked... I have a feeling life would be easier that way. I am not and have never been a simple guy. Even twenty-three-and-three-quarter years as my own closest companion haven't taught me every nuance of my psyche. Is this normal? Or is this where the entire discipline of philosophy had its birth?

catharsis

I painted today. It was very cathartic. I painted a gradient of blues, and I'm going to continue the painting/catharsis tomorrow/sometime.

'Connect' tonight was on relationships. It's always fun... there's often a lot of tension in the room because people tend to take it more seriously as a subject, and so jokes go down really well! Not jokes told by me - there aren't many of those. It was also an interesting night, with the usual large amount of food for thought that comes with almost any Connect session.

And no, that's all I'm going to say about it :oP

potential absentee

So it's turned into another late night (seems this would be where my passion has gone...), and I've just re-discovered that I have a meeting at 8am this morning. Dave, this is why I'm not there :oP

weary

I'm so weary... where did my passion go?

experiment

I've decided to carry out a little experiment... Since my other blog is (yet again) unused, I decided to attempt yet another method by which to use it... I've converted it to French, and hope to use it to practice my French writing, thinking and commentary. If you know how to read, write, speak, think, etc. in French, please drop in and comment! As usual, it's at http://mrbiteme.blogspot.com.

In other news, I'm tired and (apparently) a whole lot less creative than I was three years ago!

astounding

I think that some of the most amazing words that Jesus ever spoke were these:

"I tell you the truth ... before Abraham was born, I am!"

 - John 8:58

At the moment, I'm in awe of this man who is God eternal, and grappling with trying to understand those who don't believe He is God. My housemate Darv and I are preparing for a return visit from our local Jehovah's Witnesses, reading up on Jesus' divinity and the Trinity as these were two prominent topics in last week's conversation. Their translation reads something like:

"I tell you the truth ... before Abraham was born, I have been"

...which is very different in meaning, and is actually an incorrect translation. The verb "to be" is the same as is translated into the present tense in many other places in John's gospel, and yet here it is translated into the past tense. In the original Greek, Jesus says "I am", and not "I have been", and so they have changed the Bible - and not just at this point, may I add. This does make me angry, but I'm also filled with compassion to hear that Jehovah's Witnesses are trained not to think for themselves. They accept without question what the Watchtower Society teaches - in fact they are taught to accept it without question. In contrast to the Biblical education I'm receiving through Barneys and the Evangelical Union, which teaches me to both listen to God's Word and to think about it - about what it means and about how to apply it to life - I can see just how poor and lost they are. This has changed my whole outlook on Thursday morning's rendez-vous - I had been going to approach it with fervent declarations of the truth, but now I have been shown that what is needed is for these poor people to begin to think for themselves about the lies they have been taught. Once they question what they have been taught, maybe then we can show them the truth.

This is strange to me... I have spent so much of my life trying to avoid doubts about my faith, and now here I am preparing to sow doubts into someone else's faith. And it occurs to me now that herein lies the importance of thinking about and wrestling with God about one's faith - faith you don't understand in a God you don't know is a perilous, if not outright damaging, place to be. It's sad that so many stop here though, when God so readily gives the truth to those who seek it... to those who seek Him with all their heart.

Please pray for Darv and I, that we wouldn't be arrogant, that we would be loving, that we would be patient, and that we would depend on our Lord Jesus Christ to provide us with answers through the Holy Spirit our Counsellor.

holidays

Ten letters can't possibly do everything justice.

Whenever I sit down to write lately, everything comes to mind all at once. The resulting bottleneck often leads to nothing coming out, or at least in a feeling of apathy when I see what kind of mish-mash I'd have to sort through to get out anything intelligible.

Oh well, I guess that's the way of it.

I saw a movie tonight - No Country for Old Men. It was strange - well-put-together, poignant yet light in parts, and yet it leaves you wondering, "Huh?" at the end. I'm not so sure whether my feeling of confusion was due to incomprehension or disbelief... oh well. It was good, just confusing.

I've been AWOL from the internet lately (not that one needs leave to be away from the internet... pay heed, you facebook addicts!), largely due to the laziness of my holidays, the addictiveness of Oblivion, and the amorous side of life. I didn't really miss facebook all that much... don't worry, dear friends, I did miss you, and still do! I just didn't miss sitting on facebook for three hours in the middle of the night waiting for someone else to come online so I could superpoke them. No, I didn't miss that, and I've been able to do a few useful things in my new-found spare time, like fix things and watch copious amounts of Law and Order... yes, sceptic, it'll be useful if I ever have to go to court :oP hehehee

Oh holidays... parting will be such sweet sweet sorrow...