Baggas’ Blog

Just spotted this great comic at Matt Harmless’ blog

Like all good jokes, it’s funny because it hits so close to home…

I got a letter this week informing me that my name has now been officially entered in the register of Fellows of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. This means not only that I now have the qualification FRACGP to put after my name (in addition to MBBS and DRANZCOG) but more importantly that 12 years of my medical education are officially at an end. Of course the last 6 years I’ve been working full time as well but technically I’ve also been studying most of that time also, first for my exams as part of Surgical training (which was a lot of study), then exams in Obstetrics (considerably less study), and finally the GP exams (study? what’s that?) I think after 12 years I’ve well and truly had my fill of medical education, and although I’ll try and keep up with the latest developments, I think that’s the end of serious medical study for me for the forseeable future. It’s not necessarily the end of tertiary study - in fact I’m quite keen to go back to Uni and do some study in some completely unrelated disciplines at some point in the near future… Just no more medicine please - don’t get me wrong, I love the job - I’m just totally over the text books (other than as an impressive sight on my bookshelves - lol)

Discovered another cool plugin this morning, which uses Google to translate this blog into a variety of languages. So if you hail from France, Portugal, Spain, China, Korea, Italy and others you now may be able to read it in your native tongue. Very cool. Just click the flags in the top right corner.

The only initial qualm I had about it, which is a problem I have with a lot of websites and software (and which relates to a discussion I was having with Rodney a few days back) is that the default flag representing the English language was the USA flag. Fortunately I was able to change it to the UK one but it still bugged me a bit. It’s the same with lots of software programs - when you install them and there is a list of languages, the one for English will most often say “English (US).” Another example of Americocentrism. The English language comes from England so therefore should be represented by an English flag, not an American one. It would be equally as stupid to have an Australian or Canadian flag representing English. You don’t see the French language represented by the flag of Algieria, or Chad or some other ex-French colony that still speaks the language, so why should English be represented by an ex-colony like the USA rather than the flag of the country where the language originated? Anyway thanks for letting me get that off my chest - enjoy the translation. It works for the links to so you can check out Rodney’s or ob1’s blogs or others in the language of your choice - I found Mark’s About page inPortugeuse to be quite amusing for some reason.

A few weeks down the track and I’m still loving this Wordpress blogging system. Thanks to the plugin archtecture and drag and drop sidebar ‘widgets’ I can quickly and easily make customisations to the blog and adjust the layout. Just a few of the new features I’ve added over the last week or two which you may or may not have noticed include :

• Recent itunes (Left sidebar) - list of the most recent tracks played in iTunes
• Current albums (L) - the current CDs I have on rotation
• Scripture (R) - daily Bible readings, taken from the Warnbro Church site via RSS.
• Stats (L) - Daily and total stats (although this plugin is a bit unreliable)
• Weather (R) - shows the current weather conditions for Perth
• Recent Comments (R) - more detailed recent comments section
• Ancient History (R) - shows posts from 1,2 & 3 years ago today (if they exist). I like this one!
• Plugins list (L) - Lists all the wordpress plugins I currently have active

The other thing to note about Wordpress is it’s flawless (to-date) performance in stopping spam comments and trackbacks. The ‘Akismet’ plugin has so far stopped 601 spams without a single error, and no tweaking or training required! It’s excellent.

Beatles’ words of wisdom spoken at Messiah church | The News-Press: North Fort Myers

As a big Beatles fan, and a member of our church worship team, this is an idea that naturally has a big appeal to me.

Parishioners at Messiah Lutheran Church will take a trip back to the time when the British band grabbed international attention for uptempo tunes with memorable lyrics. The church is inviting the community to its second “Worship With the Beatles” at 5 p.m. Saturday.

Parishioners will sing Beatles hits including “Eight Days a Week,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” and “Let It Be.”

The church first brought the rock icons into worship services in February as part of its “exploring worship” series, which allows the church to experiment with different types of music.

This year, the church also tried gospel and big band music for the special program, which began in January.

Not sure if this is a bit too tacky or gimmicky, but I do like the “exploring worship” idea, mixing it up a little in the worship services with different styles of music. I love the music we do at our church but  I do think it’s a good thing to try new and different approaches on a regular basis, to keep things interesting and unpredictable. I’m sure there’s a lot of different, and valid, views on this but my personal preference is for things to not get too repetitive or comfortable  - that’s when it’s easy to get into a rut or just go through the motions of worship. But then again some people are blessed by a familiar liturgy so it’s not a one-size-fits-all thing.

I wonder what other Beatles’ songs you could use. How about “Hey Jude,” “Lady Madonna,” or “Here Comes the Sun.” Anyone else got any suggestions??

 [HT : Haydn Nelson]

I’m not normally not much of a gamer, but in the last week I’ve discovered a great free game which you can get from TrackmaniaNations.com (I actually found it on a CD that came with a recent computer mag) It’s basically a formula 1 style car racing game in which you compete online against racers from around the world, the trick being that the tracks are more like something you would find in a toy racing set, with tracks going high up above the ground, loop the loops, jumps and plenty of other challenging features. As well as online racing it also has a range of “training” tracks so you can hone your skills. The graphics and sound are brilliant for a free game. I’ve had a great time playing this game with Owen watching and helping over the last week or so, though I think the boys get more fun out of it when I crash spectacularly than when I do well. Anyway check it out. Warning though, it’s addictive….

[click the images above for screenshots … or for more cool screenshots go here]

BloggersFuel.com powered by Boca Java

Stumbled across this interesting site today. It’s a program where bloggers get free coffee from Boca Java to review on their blog site. I’m not entirely sure if they accept registrations from Australia but I signed up anyway so we’ll see what happened. Would be cool to get some coffee to review when I get my new espresso machine. I doubt it’ll be as good as 5 senses but I’m happy to give it a try. If you’re a blogger and you love coffee (as most do I’m sure) then check it out.

Recently I stumbled into a (fairly uncharitable) discussion on a Christian blog and one of the tangential subjects was Jesus Scholar Marcus Borg, one of the key members of the so-called Jesus Seminar. Since I had on my shelf a book that Borg co-authored, The Meaning of Jesus : Two Visions (with N.T. Wright) I thought I’d pop it open and see what Borg had to say.

Firstly, let me say that Borg seems genuine and nice. He regards himself as not just a scholar but also as a commited Christian who “loves Jesus.” The book is written in an amiable tone as Borg and Wright debate the central issues about Jesus - the gospel accounts, his vocation, death, resurrection, divinity, and birth.

The problems with Borg’s approach though are many. Admittedly I come to the book with a pre-existing bias against Borg’s “liberal” ideas, but even if I try and set that aside there just seem to be far too many holes in his arguments. I will mention a few. Firstly, although Borg professes to take Jesus’ Jewish context seriously, it seems to me that he gives it little more than lip service. Rather than trying to fit Jesus within first century Jewish categories, he delves into comparative religion and tries to fit Jesus into the same mould as other great religious teachers like the Buddha, seeing him as a “Spirit person” who had ecstatic experiences which can be seen in other figures in many different cultures.

Secondly, (and perhaps most crucially) Borg seems to constantly approach Jesus in terms of his own views on what Jesus should be like, and what qualities are attractive or unattractive to his own 20th century mindset. Anything that seems unnattractive to him, he dismisses as a likely invention by the early Christians and throws out - the real Jesus couldn’t have been like that. For example he sees the thought that Jesus saw his death as being a central part of his vocation, and hence spoke of it and moved purposefully towards is as “an unattractive notion to attribute to Jesus. I don’t want Jesus to have seen his own death as having the significance Tom gives it. As a Christian, I want Jesus to be an attractive figure.” (p82) Similarly, when discussing whether or not Jesus thought of himself as being the Messiah, Borg sees it as an unnattractive prospect that Jesus could have envisaged himself in such exalted terms, saying that “thinking that Jesus thought about himself in such grand terms raises serious questions about the mental health of Jesus” and more bluntly ”if you think you are the light of the world, you’re not. That is, perceiving oneself in such grand terms is a fairly good indicator that you’re off base.” (p146) Once again this argument rings true from the perspective of modern psychiatry where deluded people make such claims all the time. But, as C.S. Lewis pointed out many years ago, there is one instance where making such a claim, or believing such a thing about oneself, would not be a sign of insanity - that is if it were actually true. Doesn’t it seem likely that if a person were actually God’s Messiah, that God would actually communicate it to that person and give them a clear sense of that vocation. Borg goes on from there to discuss how “saints and Spirit persons .. typically don’t think of themselves in grandiose terms. I don’t think that people like Jesus have an exalted perception of themselves.” (p147) Once again Borg betrays himself by trying to lump Jesus into a category or stereotype of “religious figures” - if this were true then such generalizations might apply, but not if Jesus is the unique, once in history person that Christians have always believed him to be.

Ultimately, the point at which Borg’s views fall flat again and again is the way in which he chooses to read the gospels. He views a large portion of the gospel material as “history metaphorized” seeing them as stories with symbolic meaning but little or no factual basis. For example regarding the birth stories he says “I do not think they are historically factual, but I think they are profoundly true in another and more important sense.” This kind of oxymoronic ‘not true but true’ is typical of Borg’s attitude to most of the gospel material including the birth and resurrection of Jesus (though for some reason he chooses to affirm the historicity of Jesus’ healings) In many ways it takes more faith to believe Borg’s theories about the construction and genesis of the gospel stories than it does to believe that perhaps they do represent the essential gist of what happened, written down by the gospel authors from passed down oral tradition. For me just reading the gospels they do not read as “history metaphorized” or some kind of allegory - they come across as intending to convey history/biography (albeit with an intentional theological signifance.) The authors knew the difference between history and metaphor, as we can see from their retellings of the parables - the stories of Jesus himself just don’t come across that way.

I could go on and on - on almost every page Borg makes claims which are tantamount to a leap of skepticism, choosing to believe a complicated convoluted explanation for which there seems to be little evidence rather than the most simple and elegant explanation that “gets in all the data” as Tom would say - ie. that the gospel accounts are fundamentally historical. Wright does a fantastic job of debunking many of Borg’s points (whilst remaining civil and courteous at all times) but there were so many more holes in Borg’s ideas that he just didn’t have the space to touch upon whilst presenting his own case.I haven’t really touched much here upon what Wright has written (even though half of the book is his) but in addition to thoroughly challenging Borg’s ideas, he also manages to give a great summary of the main lines of thought in much of his other work. In fact if you wanted a good introduction to Tom’s thinking, reading his chapters in this book would be a great start. You could skip Marcus’ chapters if that were your goal but I’d recommend them anyway, to get an idea of how much modern scholarship views Jesus, and just how complicated and far-fetched it sounds.

PM canes ‘rubbish’ postmodern teaching | News | The Australian

Just on my way home from work, but thought I’d make note on this interesting news piece with John Howard weighing in to some of the current debates on the “dumbing down” of education. I’m not fully up-to-speed on the issues involved but broadly from what I’ve heard this whole “Outcomes Based” education system is a major worry. Current pieces of pop-culture such as comic books, popular movies, music videos etc are studied along with (or more worringly, in place of) classic literature, questions in a physics exam ask students about the “ethics” of the problem and don’t test their actual understanding or ability in physics or maths. It’s a few years now since I was in high school but even then I thought our literature course had too much modern authors like Bruce Dawe and Randolph Stowe, and not enough classics (we did study a bit of Sophocles and Shakespeare but that was about it). I don’t know if Howard is right in claiming that this educational approach is a negative effect of more general post-modern thought - he may well be, but either way it’s a serious concern. It’ll never happen but I still think returning to a more “classical education” including classical history, literature, languages, philosophy etc like they had in the old days wouldn’t be a bad thing. I sure wish I was better educated in these things.

Two things about me - One is that I hate being disorganized, two is that I’m rather prone to disorganization (at least I feel like I am). I am convinced that disorganization wastes time and productivity and ultimate breeds lethargy and laziness. There’s a challenging discussion currently going on over at lowercase about some characteristics of successful business leaders and to what extent we can/should apply these ideas to Christian life, specifically church leadership. If nothing else this has inspired me that I should be making better use of the time that I have, aiming to honour God more fully in every sphere of my life. And for me, the first step in this has to be getting organized. Cleaning my desks (at work and home), emptying my filing trays, throwing out clutter, organizing my computer use better (making more efficient use of RSS amongst other things), and better discipline in using my home time effectively.

Funnily enough, as I was writing this one of the nurses was complaining to me about how messy some of the other doctor’s rooms are, and how mine was not too bad. This was very surprising to me as I thought my room was a bit of a tip. Not sure if I’m brave enough to see how bad the others’ rooms are…

Got an email this morning saying I am approaching my monthly bandwidth limit for this webpage, which surprised me. When I signed up a little under a month ago I chose a free hosting package with a monthly transfer limit of 3 Gigabytes, which I thought would be plenty for my humble blog. It probably is, but only just - my current usage after 3 weeks is 2461.34Mb.

I’d love to look on the bright side and claim that this is because of the wild popularity of my blog, but looking a bit closer at the statistics, it seems that this isn’t the case. 793.47 MB of my transfers have been rung up by 3295 unique visitors, but then another 1.54 Gb of traffic has been generated by robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes. So two thirds of my traffic is non-human. Now the other issue is that a fair proportion of my traffic is still to hits on archived pages from my old blog, which I copied onto my new host (eg Aaron Sorkin) I think perhaps I should delete these old pages now and just let the Spiders work on my new blog since all the posts have been transferred into wordpress anyway. That just might mean that links from search engines might not work for a while. Not sure what to do about that. What I am going to do though is upgrade to a slightly less free package which has 15 Gb a month transfers, which should give me ample breathing room.

Gillespie dizzy with delight - Cricket - Fox Sports

Awoke this morning to read this great story about Australian fast-bowler Jason Gillespie scoring his first test century in Bangladesh. For a guy whose career looked like it was over after being dumped from the team recently, it’s a pretty impressive effort, even if it is just against minnows Bangladesh (I love the way they call these weak teams minnows!) Have a read of the article - Gillespie’s comments are hilarious.

It’s been all over the media, and the blogosphere, of late - the discovery of the Gospel of Judas a gnostic gospel dating from a couple of hundred years after Christ, which portrays the disciple Judas in a more positive light. As far as I’ve seen it’s all a bit of a non-story - just the media trying to cash in on the religious controversy of the Da Vinci Code with another similaly “shocking revelation” about Jesus. It’s been pretty well hammered out all over the net. Father Roderick for one gave a good discussion about it on his podcast, and many other blogs have done the same. One good new (for me) blog I discovered which discussed it a bit was the Confessing Evangelical (an evangelical Lutheran guy who seems to write an awful lot about Anglicans..) He quotes from both Archbishop Rowan Williams and Bishop Tom Wright on the subject of Judas. In case you hadn’t noticed I’m a bit of a fan of Wright’s, and as usual he’s right on the money here. This is some of what he had to say in his Maundy Thursday sermon…

First, as a historian I want every scrap of information about the ancient world, every coin, every inscription, every papyrus. I am delighted at every new find and publication. But, precisely as a historian, I have to say that this ‘Gospel of Judas’ has no historical worth at all. It tells us nothing about the true Jesus, or for that matter about the true Judas. It breathes a totally different air from that of early first-century Palestine. It’s like finding a document purporting to be about Napoleon and his senior advisors, and discovering that they’re talking about nuclear submarines and B52 bombers. It is that crass.

But, second and more important, the ‘gospel of Judas’ and the worldview it represents are deeply, dangerously, damagingly opposed to the goodness of creation and the call of Israel, which of course go together. The whole scripture, and with it all mainline Jewish and Christian thought, is based on the belief that there is one God who made the world, who made it good, and who will put it to rights at the last. Gnosticism declares, very explicitly in the ‘gospel of Judas’, that the world was made by a lesser, low-grade divinity, and that the thing to do is to find the way to escape, to get rid of this human nature which is bottling up the divine spark within us. That’s why the ‘gospel of Judas’ declares that it was Judas who truly understood Jesus, the ‘Jesus’ reinvented in the gnostic imagination, the ‘Jesus’ who wanted to be killed so that he could get rid of his body and live as a pure spirit. This has been touted as an appropriate answer to the church’s use of the figure of Judas as a stick to beat the Jewish people with, but that is ridiculous: the ‘gospel of Judas’ is deeply, structurally anti-Jewish in every line.

… third, it cuts the nerve of working for God’s kingdom in the real world. Who cares about speaking the truth to power if the real task is to escape? Why bother feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, why worry about global debt or global warming or the madness of global warfare, if the main thing to do is to follow your own star and discover your true spiritual identity? Why bother following the real Jesus and standing defenceless before the powers of the world if you can invent a fake Jesus who panders to your inner desires? Let’s be quite clear: despite the sneers of so many who say that the New Testament was written, edited and then chosen out of a much larger collection of books in order to sustain the church’s political power and prestige, the truth is that in the second and third century, long before anyone thought of the Constantinian settlement, it was the people who were reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Acts, Romans and the rest who were being thrown to the lions, burned at the stake, beaten and bullied and beheaded. Why would Caesar worry about ‘Thomas’, ‘Judas’ and the other pseudo-gospels? The rulers of this world are not bothered when yet another little group invents a new form of private spirituality. What makes Caesar shiver in his shoes is if people start to believe that whereas the Gentile rulers do it one way, God does it a different way, that there is a different way of power, a different form of rulership, and that Jesus has inaugurated and modelled it in his servanthood and suffering, and that the community that hails him as the only true Lord is going out into the world to live that way, and to celebrate it, as we do today, in sacrament and vocation and healing.

Just finished reading the brief novel Barabbas by Nobel Prize winning Swedish writer Par Lagerkvist. It’s a very powerful, albeit sparingly written, tale of the man who was freed in the place of Jesus. Although the movie which was based on it has several significant plot differences, most to increase the amount of action scenes, the overall gist is the same. I found it quite thought provoking in a number of ways, not only for the glimpse in gives us into Barabbas’ unique experience and psyche, but also for the seemingly accurate picture it paints of what it must have been like to be one of the early Christians in the Roman world under Nero. The following is one of the key passages in the story, and it shows just how politically and personally risky the gospel was. Christianity wasn’t just a ‘personal decision’ of one religion among many. Being a Christian meant you were radically different from everyone else. And proclaiming the gospel was no small matter. If you said, as Paul did many times in his letters, that “Jesus is Lord” then the obvious (though unspoken) corollary to that was “…and Caesar isn’t.” Dangerous talk in those times - this was “anything but a harmless doctrine.”

Going up to Sahak, he took hold of his slave’s disk, looked at the stamp on it and asked if he knew what it meant. Sahak replied that it was the stamp of the Roman State. The governor said with a nod that that was quite right, and that it therefore showed that Sahak belonged to the State. Then turning the metal disk over, he looked with evident interest, but with no sign of surprise, at the secret inscription on the back. “Christos lesus” . . . he read, and both Sahak and Barabbas were filled with wonder that he could read the signs, decipher God’s holy name.

— Who is that? he asked.

— It is my god, Sahak answered with a slight tremor in his voice.

— Aha. It is a name I cannot remember having heard before. But then there are so many gods, one can’t keep track of them all. Is it the god of your native province?

— No, Sahak answered. It is everybody’s god.

— Everybody’s? You don’t say so? That’s not at all bad. And I have never even heard of him. He keeps his renown somewhat secret, if I may say so.

— Yes, said Sahak.

— Everybody’s god. In that case he must have more than a little power. What does he base it on?

— On love.

— Love? . . . Well, why not. Anyway, it’s no concern of mine, you may believe as you like about it. But tell me, why do you bear his name on your slave’s disk?

— Because I belong to him, Sahak said, again with a slight tremor.

— Indeed? Belong to him? How can you do that? Do you not belong to the State, just as this stamp signifies? Are you not a State slave?

Sahak made no reply. He merely stood looking down at the floor. At last the Roman said, but not at all unkindly:

— You must answer this. We must be quite clear on this point, don’t you see? Do you belong to the State? Tell me now.

— I belong to the Lord my God, said Sahak, without looking up.

The governor stood regarding him. Then he lifted Sahak’s head and looked into his burnt-up face, the face that had been at the smelting-furnaces. He said nothing, and after a time, when he had seen what he wanted, he let go the other man’s chin. Then he went and stood in front of Barabbas, and as he turned over his slave’s disk in the same way he asked:

— And you? Do you also believe in this loving god? Barabbas made no reply.

— Tell me. Do you?

Barabbas shook his head.

— You don’t? Why do you bear his name on your disk then?

Barabbas was silent as before.

— Is he not your god? Isn’t that what the inscription means?

— I have no god, Barabbas answered at last, so softly that it could hardly be heard. But Sahak and the Roman both heard it. And Sahak gave him a look so full of despair, pain and amazement at his incredible words

that Barabbas felt it pass right through him, right into his inmost being, even though he did not meet the other’s eyes.The Roman too seemed surprised.

— But I don’t understand, he said. Why then do you bear this “Christos lesus” carved on your disk?

— Because I want to believe, Barabbas said, without looking up at either of them.

The Roman looked at him, at his ravaged face and the gash under the eye; at the hard, coarse mouth, which still retained much of its strength. There was no expression in the face and he was not sure that he would find any there even if he lifted up the head as he had done with the other. Besides, it would never have occurred to him to do so with this man. Why? He didn’t know. He turned again to Sahak.

— Do you grasp fully the implication of what you have said? That it means you are setting yourself up against Caesar? Do you not know that he too is a god and that it is to him you belong, his stamp you bear on your disk? And you say that you belong to another, unknown god, whose name you have carved on your disk to show that you are not Caesar’s but his. Is that not so?

— Yes, Sahak answered in a shaking voice, but it did not tremble as much as before.

— And you stick to this?

— Yes.

— But don’t you understand what you are letting yourself in for by doing so?

— Yes. I understand.

The Roman paused, thinking of this slave’s god, whom as a matter of fact he had heard spoken of quite a lot recently, this madman in Jerusalem who had himself died a slave’s death. “Loose all chains” . . . “God’s own slave, whom …he will set free” Anything but a harmless doctrine, in fact. . . And faces such as that slave’s had no appeal for a slave-owner. . . .

— If you renounce your faith no harm shall come to you, he said. Will you do it?

— I cannot, Sahak replied.

— Why not!

— I cannot deny my God.

— Extraordinary man . . . Surely you must be aware of the punishment you force me to sentence you to. Are you really so brave that you can die for your faith?

— That is not for me to decide, said Sahak quietly.

— That doesn’t sound so very brave. Is life not dear to you?

— Yes, answered Sahak. It is.

— But if you do not forswear this god of yours, nothing can save you. You will lose your life.

— I cannot lose the Lord my God.

The Roman shrugged his shoulders.

One thing I forgot to consider when changing my blog lately, was that a number of people may have accessed it purely via their RSS feeds, in which case they would not have realised that things had changed, and would have missed all new posts, since the feed URL is different. I’ve now edited the old feeds so hopefully people will get the message and update their RSS reader. If that is you, then welcome back! I’m sorry to have missed you these last few weeks. For anyone who hasn’t updated their feed, the new URL you need is http://www.baggas.com/feed/ (Thanks to ob1 for bringing this to my attention)

Every year I scan the TV guide to see what the networks are offering at Easter. I remember as a kid coming home from church on Friday and Sunday at noon and having our choice of at least two religious epics on different channels, often followed by another one, and then more religious movies in prime time. Unfortunately, to look at today’s television, you’d hardly know it was Easter. Channel 7 does best - they at least are showing The Passion of the Christ tonight (and commercial free too, which I applaud. It just wouldn’t seem right to interrupt that movie with adverts), followed by A Story of David at 11:55pm, and they have an “Easter Celebration” on in the morning, but unfortunately their midday movie is just A Passage to India. Anyway at least they get part-marks (7/10). Channel 9 do poorly - a half hour religious show called Easter Glory at 10:30am and then nothing all day. Instead of a midday movie they have Dr Phil and Days of our Lives, and for the evening it’s the Super Nanny USA and the movie The Out-Of-Towners (2/10) The ABC have their normal children’s TV all day, no Easter content whatsoever. They do at least have a religious documentary at 7:30 about a “maverick priest” in Redfern but that’s a pretty poor effort since it’s not specifically Easter-related (0.5/10). The other two stations, Channel Ten and SBS, are similarly poor. Ten has a show called “Celebrate Easter” at 6am but for most people who wouldn’t get up that early on a public holiday there’s diddly squat - their evening movie is EdTV (0.5/10). SBS has something called “A quest for the true cross” at 2pm for which I’ll give them half a mark also although I have no idea what it is - for all I know it may be a ‘Jesus seminar’ style program (0.5/10). Overall a very poor effort indeed. Let’s hope they all do better on Sunday.

As for me, I have my Easter viewing already selected. I’ve had waiting on my shelf for a few months a DVD copy of Barabbas, the 1962 movie starring Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine and others, which would have to be one of my favourite religious epics. It’s an excellent, powerful film and I’d encourage you to watch it if you get the chance (if they ever show it on TV again). I’ve also got a copy of the Nobel prize winning novel on which the movie was based, which I’ll be starting in the next few days.

EDIT : Well Channel 9 loses marks. I got home from church and switched on their only offering Easter Glory which I was disappointed to discover was a series of antiquated hymns from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They only put one Easter show on and it’s not even Christian! (0.5/10 for them)

Good Friday. At a simple level, giving it a brief thought, it’s a bit of a silly name. How can this Friday be good? The name is as paradoxical, as nonsensical, as the events of the day itself. How can the execution of an innocent man be a positive thing? How can a crucified man be the Messiah? The answers to these questions may seem straighforward to us who live in the world after Sunday, but put yourself in the position of the people of Jerusalem that day, especially the followers of Jesus - to them the day would be anything but ‘good.’ Indeed, put yourself in the shoes of someone in that world hearing the gospel message for the first time - it would sound completely crazy. Utter foolishness! (1 Cor 1:21-25)

We’re so used to the day being “good” it sometimes helps to remember just how “bad” it must have felt that first day. So many times I’ve heard it spoken that “We don’t need to be sad today remembering the crucifixion. We don’t need to be sombre and quiet, because we know the secret of what happens next. We know what happens on Sunday. Therefore, even though today is Good Friday, we can still celebrate the risen Jesus!” Now that’s all true but I think that approach misses something, something that the historic church with it’s liturgical calendar etc still appreciates. It doesn’t hurt to be sad on Good Friday. In fact it’s probably a healthy thing for us to try and appreciate just how serious, how awful, how painful and tragic this day really was. Remember the disappointment and brokenness of the disciples - their leader betrayed and murdered, their dreams shattered. Remember Mary, at the foot of the cross, her own heart pierced watching her son suffer. And remember the physical, emotional, and spiritual anguish of Jesus, forsaken by men and by God. Sure, we know the good news that comes after, the joy of the resurrection, but it helps to remember part of why that news is so good, and part of that is the contrast with the badness of Friday. So there’s nothing wrong today with a little dose of sorrow, brokenness and mourning (which I can relate to following the funeral of my grandfather this week) Good Friday is a day of power, a day of change, a day of fulfillment. I hope that many people stop and remember that today.

Pride at one’s own humility is one of the last hiding-places of the tempter.

~ Tom Wright : The Scriptures, the Cross & the Power of God p45

I’m off to see my accountant this afternoon. Don’t know why that makes me so nervous. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been so disorganized with my finances this last year or so and I’m afraid she’ll be cross at me. Or maybe it’s because I’m worried I’ve made a big miscalculation somewhere and might end up owing even more than I think I do. We’ll see what happens. I’m still kinda hoping I’ve made a miscalculation in the other direction and I’ll come out in front, in which case I may be able to mount an argument that we can afford that coffee machine I want for my birthday… Anyway, wish me luck.

Occaisionally I’m a sucker for these quizzes, so here’s the first one for the new blog - Which theologian are you?

You scored as Jorgen Moltmann. The problem of evil is central to your thought, and only a crucified God can show that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Christian discipleship means identifying with suffering but also anticipating the new creation of all things that God will bring about. J�rgen Moltmann 80% Anselm 60% Charles Finney 60% John Calvin 60% Augustine 53% Friedrich Schleiermacher 53% Martin Luther 47% Karl Barth 47% Paul Tillich 27% Jonathan Edwards 27% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

At least doing this quiz has been a little educational - I’d never really heard much about Moltmann before. On a quick skim through his entry on the Boston Encylopaedia of Western Theology I can’t find anything I strongly disagree with so I’m happy enough with the result. I’ll have a more detailed read of the article later, but in the meantime do the quiz and see what result you get…

After the last post, here’s a completely different sort of Easter message. According to today’s West Australian newspaper, the Cancer Council of WA is calling for supersized 1.2kg Easter eggs to be banned, and for parents to buy no more than a single 100g egg for a child.

I agree that those massive eggs are over the top, but limiting your child to just a single egg seems a bit harsh. One of the things I loved about Easter as a kid (and still do) was ending up with a huge collection of eggs of various types and sizes, which I would then work my way through over the following week or two, which was usually the school holidays. In general, allowing (most) kids to over-eat on chocolate once a year is not going to seriously harm their health, aside from the odd tummy-ache if they eat them all in one go.

Having said that, it wouldn’t hurt for some adults to take heed of this Easter warning. According to Curtin university nutrtion experts, “to burn the kilojoules in a 100g chocolate egg and not put on weight, you would have to do more than an hour of push-ups and sit-ups or medium level aerobics or walk for 140 minutes.” That’s sure a lot of hard work to compensate for just a small amount of delight.

How is the King achieving this? How is he delivering his people from their bondage? How is he being God’s agent in the redemption and renewal of Israel and the world? What the crowds could not hear in the cry from the cross was the voice of desolation, of God-forsakenness, wrung from the very soul of one who was being wounded for their transgressions, not his own; bruised for their iniquities, not his own. Upon him was the punishment that brought them peace; with his stripes they were being healed. They, and we with them, were lost sheep without a shepherd: and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. And Jesus, in that hour, experienced the darkness and the horror from which he, even he, had shrunk in Gethsemane, from which not only Satan, not only Judas, not only Peter, but also all his natural inclinations, all his love of his own people, had done their best to turn him aside. In identifying totally with the sin of the world, he became cut off from the presence of God. At the very moment when he was most fully embodying the love of God, he found himself totally separated from the love of God, the love which he had known in precious intimacy ever since childhood.

This, then, was the end of the road which he had begun to tread in his baptism by John, the Elijah who had indeed come: identifying with sinners, so that sinners could be saved. This was where it had all led. The road ended not only in the bitterness of apparent failure, not only in the physical torment of a cruel and gruesome death, but in the spiritual darkness of separation from God, bearing upon himself the sins of the world. That is how the world was redeemed: not by Elijah and the Messiah coming and ridding Israel of her political foes, calling down fire to burn up all opposition, but by Jesus, commissioned by John in the spirit and power of Elijah, ridding Israel and the world of her true enemies. Just as Elijah challenged the powers of darkness to that great contest, in which the god who answered by fire was to be God, so now Jesus takes on the rulers of the world: the might of Rome, the law of Israel, and behind both the usurping and destroying power of Satan. And this time the rules of the contest are: the god who answers by love, let him be God.

~ N T Wright - The Crown and the Fire pp44-45 (discussing Matt 27:45-50)

It’s often said that in answer to prayer, God will give answers along the lines of “yes”, “no”, and “wait.” Yet sometimes he might also give us the things we ask for, even if they are things that are not really good for us. An answer along the lines of “well I think this is a bad idea, but here you go - if it’s what you really want…” (Parents, does that sound familiar?)

Reading the last few days in 1 Samuel 8-10, there’s a great example of this very thing. The people of Israel are crying out for a king like all the other nations, despite God’s repeated warnings that this is not what is best for them. And so God gives them exactly what they ask for, an impressive, tall dark and handsome king who also happens to be an airhead and a coward. It’s a pretty comical story. When we first meet Saul he is out unsuccesfully hunting down some lost donkeys (he never does find them - God sends them home for him) and needs to be pushed every step of the way by his resourceful servant. This guy seems to have no initiative or leadership skills whatsoever. Next up, when the ballots select Saul as king (as he had already been foretold that they would) where is he? Hiding amongst the baggage! What a wuss. But they found him and crowned him king anyway. The most you could say for Saul is that he was humble at least, but even this quality didn’t last very long. So God gave the people what they asked for - an impressive good looking king like all the other nations. But not only did they get what they asked for, they also got what they deserved. In the ensuing chapters (and indeed the whole of the books of Samuel and Kings, with a few notable exceptions) you can almost hear the echo of the words of God hanging in the background - a great big “I told you so!” So be careful what you pray for - you just might get it!

I have a significant birthday coming up later this year (as much as I would rather ignore it) and after a long time of not knowing what I wanted, I’ve finally set my heart upon the perfect gift. It’s this - an Italian professional espresso coffee machine from Isomac. A friend of ours imports these from Italy - he also produces excellent coffee. The problem is I’m not sure if it can fit within the budget. Things are relatively tight at the moment as I still have to make up for the money spent (and lost earnings) from our recent holiday. Also we have a TV that is threatening to finally die (after many attempts over the years) and I think the globe on our LCD projector is about to bite the bullet soon as well. We’ve only been in the house a few months but the thing is 3 years old and has seen a lot of use. The colours are now starting to fade a lot when watching. If they both die we’ll be left with just the kids little TV (a faithful small LG that has a great picture and has lasted years).

Anyway I’m seeing my accountant later this week to do my tax, and I guess I’ll have a better picture of our financial position then. Hopefully the news will be positive, as I’d really really like that beautiful machine.

Still fiddling around with this blog - there sure are heaps of cool plugins available for Wordpress.

The newest one I’ve installed is the Scripturizer, which automatically creates links of any Bible references in posts, to the translation of your choice (and they have a huge number to choose from). Just to test it out here’s a few (random) verses :

• Romans 12:2
• Rom 4:9
• 1 Sam 9
• Isa 55:4-12
• Jude 7
• 2 Chr 7:11
• Matt 12-15
• Rev 12:3,11

I’m enjoying this Wordpress blog software - it’s generally very smooth and easy to configure. I’m not sure if it’s ultimately as powerful as Movable Type, but at least to start off with it’s allowing me to do a lot of things with a minimum of fuss. Plugins are easy to install, and they have this great new feature called sidebar Widgets, which allow you to drag and drop elements in and out of the sidebars, such as the Now Reading plugin I’ve now got working. Shifting things around the sidebars is as simple as dragging a few boxes around.

Some of the next jobs to be done include playing around with the colour scheme, possibly getting some kind of graphical banner going again (a la Derek & the Dominos), getting some stats happening, and may a music plugin similar to the reading one (if such a thing exists?) In the meantime, the current albums on my stereo(s) are :

• Ben Harper - Both Sides of the Gun
• Bruce Cockburn -  High Winds, White Sky; Humans; Speechless
• The Whitlams - Little Cloud
• Hillsong United - United We Stand

This is the launchpad for the specifically Chriistian way of life. That way of life isn’t a matter simply of getting in touch with our inner depths. It is certainly not about keeping the commands of a distant deity. Rather, it is the new way of being human, the Jesus-shaped way of being human, the cross-and-resurrection way of life, the Spirit-led pathway. It is the way which anticipates, in the present, the full, rich, glad human existence which will one day be ours when God makes all things new. Christian ethics is not a matter of discovering what’s going on in the world and getting in tune with it. It isn’t a matter of doing things to earn God’s favour. It is not about trying to obey dusty rulebooks from long ago or far away. It is about practising, in the present, the tunes we shall sing in God’s new world.

This is a quote from Bishop N. T. Wright’s latest book, Simply Christian. This book is in the tradition of books such as C.S Lewis’ Mere Christianity in providing a synopsis of Christianity which attempts to describe “why Christianity makes sense” as the answer to the deep questions of the human soul, the longing for justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty. It begins by looking at the human condition in general, and how these universal longings may be “echoes of a voice” that speaks to us and within us of something even more foundational. Wright then goes on to demonstrate how the Christian God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is in fact the answer, the voice of which these longings are but weak echoes. He summarises the Biblical narrative which reaches it’s climax in Jesus, and helps us see our place in the continuing story of God’s work in the world. As he goes along he manages to effortlessly incorporate quite a lot of central Christian theology, but in a manner that does not feel stale or boring - rather it is a breath of fresh air showing how these deep truths really do speak to us at the level of the heart, and not just the mind. He finishes by bringing in some of the essentials of living a Christian life such as Worship, Prayer, the Bible (including a brilliant chapter on Biblical authority which makes the same points as his recent book The Last Word, only much more succinctly and clearly) and the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. 

This book is simply amazing. It provides a clear refreshing picture of the gospel which will help those of us who are Christians to rediscover what it’s all about, and hopefully encourage non-believers to see that Jesus is the answer to the deepest needs and questions of their heart. It is not a reasoned apologetic aiming to provide “proofs” that the gospel is true. It does not seek to argue or defend, rather it aims to connect with people at a more fundamental level. To those who are familiar with Tom Wright’s other books, the depth of his scholarship and the overall coherence of his thought as a whole once again shine through here, and his usual emphases are evident. Yet this is a book that just about anyone could read, Christian or not. It is not full of technical jargon or difficult concepts, yet neither is it “dumbed down” This would have to be one of the best books I have ever read. Hopefully this book will become for the 21st century what Mere Christianity was in the 20th - only let it reach an even greater audience of those both within the Church and those as yet outside it.

Next up, since we are approaching Easter, I’m going to tackle another of N.T. Wright’s books The Resurrection of the Son of God. Regarded by many as perhaps his Magnum opus, this book engages the question of the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus on a scholarly level, leaving no stone unturned (or un-rolled) in it’s 800 pages plus. It’s still a bit heavy going as in this book he doesn’t skimp on the technical language, but I’m finding myself getting more familiar with the concepts and questions involved and it’s much easier for me to handle than the earlier two volumes in this Christian Origins and the Question of God series. If only I could afford to give up medicine and go back to university and study this sort of thing full time (sighs?)

EDIT : I’ve also decided this week to read Wright’s, The Crown and the Fire, which is a series of meditations for Holy Week, concentrating initially on the words spoken to Jesus on the cross. Very appropriate for the current season, yet in a completely different genre again from the other two books I’ve just discussed.

Over the last week or two, since returing from our holidays, my old blog seemed to be progressively disintegrating before my eyes. Initially I couldn’t get commenting to work, finally I couldn’t login to work on it at all.

Unsure if it was some sort of hacking, or a problem with my server I have decided to move to a new web host, and at the same time setup a completely new blog using Word Press software instead of the Movable Type I was using before. Just felt like a change, exploring something new. So here you have it. Obviously the layout needs sprucing up, and I’ll endeavour to import my old material from the old blog also. So watch this space…

Just a quick note to anyone who was an @ baggas . com email address (mostly my family members) - the change of server means the old forwarding addresses are not all currently operational. I’ll work on getting them all restored tonight. Also if you like you now have the option of proper POP email instead of just a forwarder. If you are interested in this then let me know.