Banana Cake

Yes, I'm afraid its come to this. My 3 or so months of unemployment have driven me insane. I'm due to start my new job on Tuesday, but its too late. I am alone at home, my wife in South Africa for a little break, and what do I do with my spare time?

Guess.

Nope, not guitar, not reading, not walking, not blogging or taking pics.

Baking.

As I sit here, a banana cake rises to perfection in the oven. My first every baking effort.

And do you know what the best thing about being mad and alone is?

You get to lick both the spoon and the bowl!! ;-)

Getting into you

Another favourite...

Hallowed

One of my many favourites...

Wild at heart

Perhaps you've seen some of those "Just for Christian Men" type books, .e.g. Wild At Heart, Fight Like A Man. They address the basic issue that the church seems to be made up primarily of women and children, and those men that are there are often emasculated wimps.

I've read some of these books, generally written by Americans, and whilst its difficult to stomach quite a lot of it, the fundamental message rings true: that men are fundamentally wild at heart, and don't do well tamed. We are taught that Jesus was loving and gentle, we sing "Jesus is my boyfriend" type songs, we are soft and without passion, apathetic.

Yet Jesus was a fierce, rugged carpenter, with sufficient presence to drive people out of the Temple with a whip! I'd like to see a blue-eyed, milk-faced sop try that on. Jesus was a Man, a man's man, full of courage and strength, whilst gentle and loving. His love was not sickly sweet, but deeply passionate and committed to the extent that He surrendered without a word to probably the most severe punishment devised by man. The word excruciating literally means "out of the cross".

This Jesus is my master, worthy of my unconditional allegiance and devotion. I would say love too, but that word has largely been hijacked by the wimp brigade and sticks a little in my throat.

So having said all of that, I was sitting in the lounge chatting to my wife about why I like pictures of lush greenery as well as harsh desert landscapes. She came up with several theories, but I reckon the green landscapes represent the tame part of my life, full of responsibilities and duties, whilst the desert represents a deep unrequieted desire to be free, to go hunting with other men and make fire.

Please don't tell me my wife. If she finds out I have spare time she'll make me do the dishes! ;-)

Threat

What do you think the biggest threat to the Church in the UK is? I reckon its neither Atheism, nor Pluralism, nor Islam, but APATHY. Its a nasty disease that is harder to fight because it offers no tangible target. Its a bit like walking in sludge - it just soaks up your effort and eventually drags you down.

But what is surprising is that the apathy is not just external to the Church. Measure the percentage of church members who pitch up regularly to prayer meetings. I bet its less than 10%. The Church in the UK appears lukewarm, ineffective, dying, apathetic. We offer a confused, diluted Gospel that lacks power to contend with the dogmatic assertions of Atheism and Islam, and we are too frightened to suggest in our pluralistic society that we have THE TRUTH lest we cause offense.

“In the late 1800’s there was a great evangelist named Gypsy Smith. He had traveled the world twice, preaching in every Continent, in many countries. Wherever he preached, revival broke out. One day a delegation of people from a certain community came to Gipsy and said, “We so desperately want to see revival in our area. It’s so dry and dead. What can we do to see revival?” Gipsy said, “I’ll tell you exactly how it will come about. You go home. Lock yourself in your bedroom. Take a piece of chalk. Put a circle on the floor of your bedroom. Kneel in that circle and pray fervently and brokenly that God will start revival in that circle.”

Faith

It occurs to me that we all live by faith, even those of us who claim not to believe in anything. Faith is trust in something that is unproven. Now before you shoot me down, let me clarify.

Systems of logic rely on axioms (things that are assumed to be true) and rules of deduction whereby further truths are derived from our initial set of axioms.
However the difficulty with making assumptions is that they might be wrong, so axioms need to be questioned when the deductions they result in are contradictory.

Everybody makes assumptions. Even scientists rely on the work of other scientists - its just not possible for a person to work out everything himself from first principles. Even if it were, that person would be assuming he could do the work correctly, thus requiring faith in something unprovable.

For example, the atheist assumes there is no God. This assumption means that in some cases otherwise unrivaled historical documentary evidence to the man Jesus is dismissed as being deeply flawed because the testimony is made by people who believe in the supernatural.

Faith must not be blind. As I said earlier, you look for consistency in your deductions to validate your assumptions. This "reasonable" approach should methinks be no different for a believer or an unbeliever.

What is the basis for your faith? An experience of your emotions or something more concrete?

The problem with one's emotions, senses and even mind is that they can be quite unreliable. Someone close to me has Bipolar Disorder - from her I learned that the mind, one's sense of what is real, is very fragile, and one should seek confirmation from other sources before assuming something is real.

My faith in Jesus is primarily based on reason. This has to some extent been confirmed by my experiences over the years, but I have also had very many difficult experiences which are more troubling on the surface and could destroy a faith that is based only on warm fuzzy feelings.

Job!

I have accepted a job offer and hope to start May 5th. It was a very tough decision because it wasn't quite what I was looking for, a case of is the bird in the hand better than two that are perhaps hiding in the bush? I prayed for wisdom and then made my decision. I did briefly consider praying and then flipping a coin similarly to what the disciples did when they selected Matthias but didn't have enough confidence in the theology to do it. ;-)

Times are hard in the financial sector. My old company laid off another 100 people and I've heard rumblings of other companies in London doing similar things because of the credit crunch, so its a good time to have a job, imperfect or otherwise.

Thanks for your prayers.

P.S. My pointless has a particularly good post at the moment.

Hyssop

Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. (Ex 12:21-23)

They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst. (Ps 69:21)

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (Jn 1:29)

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (Jn 19:28-20)

I have nothing to add, because I am on my knees.

Inspiration

The 2 Timothy 3:16 "All Scripture is God-breathed" has always bothered me a tad, particularly when people use that to say all of the Bible is inspired by God. For one, was Paul including his own letters in "All Scripture" and if so, why does he feel the need to sometimes distinguish between something he is saying, and something God is saying through him?

Today as I was reading a bit about inspiration and inerrancy in "Evidence that demands a verdict" I found out something that surprised me.

Inerrancy apparently does not require multiple accounts of the same incident to be be identical including quoted speech. Now its fair enough that witness accounts differ since testimony that is too similar smacks of collusion, but I would have expected inspired reporting of quoted speech to be identical. Yet compare for example Peter's confession of Christ in Mt 16:15 "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" and Lk 9:20 "The Christ of God". Same meaning but different words. The authors, it would seem, were free to write as they saw fit, even taking making grammatical errors in some instances, as long as the inspired meaning was preserved.

Well I never.....

Godly decision making?

I was reading Acts 1 the other day and it struck once again what an odd way of discerning God's will drawing lots is. To save you looking up the passage, Peter says that they need to replace Judas, so they ask God to show who He wants, and then draw lots. Matthias is chosen.

Following this logic, if I want to know God's will on something in my life such as whether I should accept a job offer, all I have to do is pray for God to tell me and then toss a coin?

I think not.

So whence cometh Peter's confidence that it would be ok to do this?

God must have told him to do this I guess or perhaps the fact that we never hear anything of Matthias after that might be saying something. ;-)

Some good things

Having no job is giving me lots of time with the kids, my wife, my guitars and especially lots of good books. I have just finished Lee Strobel's "Case for Christ" which is superb in my humble opinion. I've read a fair number of apologetics books but this one does a very good job of presenting as solid a case for the historical Jesus as ever I've seen. I've also started reading the latest edition of Josh McDowell's "Evidence That Demands A Verdict" and am currently ploughing through the Messianic prophecies - quite an astounding collection indeed.

I have several job irons in the fire, but they move oh so slowly, and its hard not to panic and start applying for everything under the sun. Yesterday I heard of thousands of planned layoffs in the City because of the credit crunch. Just what I need. :-( So I've started looking at contracting too, because that quite often picks up in a volatile market when companies don't want to commit to a fixed work force size.

I even sent an email to the company that offered me a consulting role with lots of travel... not sure if that is panic or seeing sense.

I ask God for guidance and wisdom and open or closed doors, but stuff just seems to happen regardless and I have very little sense of His will in anything.

But I'm rambling now... and its time to cook our dinner. :-/

Oh, but before I go, did you know that 1 Cor 15:3-7 is widely believed by scholars to be a direct quote of an early church "creed", in other words a Pauline reference to an even earlier belief by the early Christians in the resurrection of Christ. So even if the Gospels were written as late as many atheists claim (which they weren't), and hence potentially include mythical additions (which they don't), here we have a recorded statement made only some years after Jesus died from a church that believed in his resurrection, a church consisting of people that were there at the time and had a lot to lose for saying this sort of thing.

"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles," then Paul adds that Jesus appeared to him also, adding further witness to the resurrection.

I love this sort of stuff.

Definitely still no job!

The offer is no more. The role has been withdrawn since the project has been canceled in view of the ongoing credit crunch. Not a good time to be job hunting in the financial sector.

Now my wife wants to fly to South Africa next month for a reunion and of course the question of whether we can afford it came up. At least, I asked the question. Its interesting how often in couples one partner is the saver whilst the other is the spender. The thing is that in our case, being Christians, I get the "you need to have more faith" line, which is just plain unfair!!

So what's the difference between financial prudence and a lack of trust in God to provide?

If you know, tell me so I can win the next argument! ;-)

Still no job!

Here I am, still without a job. My "offer" has stalled in the approval queue because some banks have introduced a recruitment freeze because of the ongoing debt crisis. The agent assures me tomorrow it'll be finalised for sure, but I've heard that before, so this week I started the job hunt again. Very discouraging indeed.

Puppy?

That's a puppy??? Caucasian mountain dog.

Yawn...

Our new puppy, Tess, decided she didn't like it alone downstairs and let the whole world know in the middle of the night. I had severe second thoughts about getting her, but seeing the kids play fetch with her this morning in their pyjamas made it all worth while. One of the reasons we got the dog was to drag the kids away from the various screens in our house. So far Disney Channel and Online Gaming have had a lovely long break! Yippee!!

Josie, my youngest, donated one of her cuddly toys to Tess - it looks just like Tess' Mum.

Meet Tess

Tess is an 11 week old cross Golden Retriever and Poodle and joined our family today. Or menagerie now consists of two cats, a hamster, and Tess. Bye-bye life. ;-)