I've not bloged in about a decade. Deal with it. I have something in my head that needs to come out.
"I am am evil homer, I am evil Homer!!" Youtube it.
Right, done, let's move on ;)
Nah, I want to have a go at middle class people (which apparently includes myself as I have letters after my name, too bad.). Middle class people ask questions, LOTS of questions, that's fine. However when meeting new people, they really do have to interrogate, find out if they have anything in common before they can be friends.
Now I'm terrible at asking questions in the middles-class interrogating way, I've had endless feedback... but here's one worth over fifty of your structured and organized interrogation quizzes. "Do friends need a common denominator?" No. No they do not. Or perhaps "Do you really need to know this much information about someone in the first five minutes of knowing them?" Again no.Talk about something else, do something or ...be funny! Anything to spare someone's first memories of you being an interrogator. If you indeed have a connection and don't seem to annoy one another then there's plenty of time to get to know the ins and out of them, so here's my advise. Don't ask all at once, cherish.
That all said, the interrogation process is indeed an excepted one amongst native middle class people. Hehe, yes natives. So this rant is mostly in vain. However, if anyone actually reads this; please don't be offended if I don't ask you enough questions. I work differently, I'm not comfortable enough to ask lots of personal questions yet, whereas you haven't asked enough questions to feel comfortable enough. Sometimes leaving a void of uncomfortable 'I'm annoying them'
Maybe this is the reason I have recently decided fork lift truck driving is a better direction than administration. It's true, there's no place like home, but you natives...why not suck it and see? The alternative that is.
P.s. did you know that Leadmill is the place that the glowing globe photograph on the cover of parachutes was taken?
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Sunday 13 February 2011
Getting around the motions?
Going through the motions is basically playing 'pretend'; or for you Christian know it all's, legalism. And for you not-know- it-all's; religion. Believe it or not, Jesus came to save the world from religion - I have to add this somewhere - ' Religion is dead, Jesus nailed it' Boo yar? Hell's yeah!
Unfortunately nobody is perfect, and I for one REALLY struggle with playing pretend, to the extent of a wing nut really. I'm insane, but there we go, God loves the useless, so I'm in a good place.
A word of knowledge:
Towards the beginning of January 2011 I received a word of knowledge - this is where some stranger comes and tells you about your life - sometimes vague, sometimes wrong, but this time detailed and very accurate (though not 100%); it's scary having people know you like that!
Anyway here's a little snippet from 'the bloke that spoke' as I have named that particular conversation in my life:
Bloke: There was some sort of horror film that has 'scarred you for life'
Moi: Not horror by genre but by my standards yes, The Trueman show (Though I didn't think of this till later)
Bloke: Well, it and other things have left you feeling badly cracked or broken
Moi: *nods*
and so on...
The bloke that spoke - who's name is Rich btw, but Bloke seems better as I met a different Rich whilst there...it's just easier this way; - well, he then told me what the next chapter of life had in store for me. He explained that I am currently in a transitional stage, not feeling great, but progress is coming, it's a long haul of a journey, but it heads upward; and I have to say there have been times since then where I've never felt better, literally like I'm on the mend; but also that there have been times where I haven't felt worse, I even doubted god for the first time ever as a Christian... roller coaster doesn't even cover it. Moving boulders up and down mountains might though; or even just 'tiring'. Anyway that's pretty much that conversation covered.
So there we go; I just want to have a little journal of this 'transitional stage'; if it's anything like my previous blog, then the whole thing is doomed to neglect. People could legally stop me from having children with that poor thing...
Unfortunately nobody is perfect, and I for one REALLY struggle with playing pretend, to the extent of a wing nut really. I'm insane, but there we go, God loves the useless, so I'm in a good place.
A word of knowledge:
Towards the beginning of January 2011 I received a word of knowledge - this is where some stranger comes and tells you about your life - sometimes vague, sometimes wrong, but this time detailed and very accurate (though not 100%); it's scary having people know you like that!
Anyway here's a little snippet from 'the bloke that spoke' as I have named that particular conversation in my life:
Bloke: There was some sort of horror film that has 'scarred you for life'
Moi: Not horror by genre but by my standards yes, The Trueman show (Though I didn't think of this till later)
Bloke: Well, it and other things have left you feeling badly cracked or broken
Moi: *nods*
and so on...
The bloke that spoke - who's name is Rich btw, but Bloke seems better as I met a different Rich whilst there...it's just easier this way; - well, he then told me what the next chapter of life had in store for me. He explained that I am currently in a transitional stage, not feeling great, but progress is coming, it's a long haul of a journey, but it heads upward; and I have to say there have been times since then where I've never felt better, literally like I'm on the mend; but also that there have been times where I haven't felt worse, I even doubted god for the first time ever as a Christian... roller coaster doesn't even cover it. Moving boulders up and down mountains might though; or even just 'tiring'. Anyway that's pretty much that conversation covered.
So there we go; I just want to have a little journal of this 'transitional stage'; if it's anything like my previous blog, then the whole thing is doomed to neglect. People could legally stop me from having children with that poor thing...
A Revelational Start.
Yes the real word for 'revelational' would be revealed; but it didn't hold the irony.
Anyway, it would be good to write something of why I am to blog the blog. But I won't, so there. I recently wrote an essay on Genesis 1 and thought it would be a logical starting point. Why the revelation nonsense? Well creation had bugged me for many a year (2) and somewhere in the second I came to the conclusion that I didn't care, then somewhere in the third I did again, so I read, and I wrote an essay on what I would consider a revelation! (Essay is part of my Frontier Project Impact; and not just for the sake of it!) Here it is. Enjoy.
2. JANE WILLIAMS: GUARDIAN ARTICLE – THE BOOK OF GENESIS, PART 1: GOD CREATED (Monday 13 December 2010 12.00 GMT)
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/13/book-genesis-god-created)
I agree, my essay writing skills are not exactly 'boo yar' but I think the point I'm trying to make is...
Anyway, it would be good to write something of why I am to blog the blog. But I won't, so there. I recently wrote an essay on Genesis 1 and thought it would be a logical starting point. Why the revelation nonsense? Well creation had bugged me for many a year (2) and somewhere in the second I came to the conclusion that I didn't care, then somewhere in the third I did again, so I read, and I wrote an essay on what I would consider a revelation! (Essay is part of my Frontier Project Impact; and not just for the sake of it!) Here it is. Enjoy.
Genesis 1* How would this passage have been understood by the original readers? What meaning does it have for us in 2010?
(*Genesis 1-2v3)
The Bible is the most speculated and debated of holy books. One of the most controversial topics within the Bible is found on the first page. Charles Darwin, even as a child was interested in natural history; he was brought up a liberal Christian – in that God’s law was important and authoritative, not however the supernatural element of the New testament, Old Testament or even God. Proverbs 21:16, talks about the necessity of understanding who God is. Therefore it was the lack of faith in the power of God and the life and deity of Jesus that lead him and many others to leave his Church and fully embrace science.
Creation can be a stumbling block for all. The fact that someone breathed life into man, and ‘also made the stars’, caused light to shine into the darkness before creating the sun, and created the full diversity of the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. All this he did by the power emitted from his vocal chords; it’s out of this world, unimaginable, unbelievable!
In 1Peter3:15 Peter tells us to be prepared to give reasons for the faith we have in Christ. Christians who believe in a literal 6 day creation, as given in Genesis 1 have the worldly wise questions of and around evolution. Christians who do not take Genesis 1 as literal would be asked why they take other aspects of the Bible literal. Thus Genesis 1 is certainly something that Peter would be thinking about if speaking in 2010. When confronted with these questions we can certainly get down cast if we appear to be ‘losing the argument.’
From the previous viewpoint we are looking at just how amazing creation is and the wonder of the way in which it came into being. If however, we could fully grasp how much power could come from those vocal chords, or even that God himself is power, is originality, is love; and just, is. If we could fully grasp all that and more, then the fact that God breathed life into man, also made the stars and caused light to shine into the darkness; it wouldn’t be all that amazing. And as we have but a tiny glimpse of God, for us in him, it’s certainly not unbelievable! And thus we must always bring these conversations back to how glorious our God is, even if only for ourselves, to be reminded or to show that the world or mans mind could never contain God in our image.
The original author of Genesis 1 is doing just this; he is clearly a man of God and whether he writes it as a textbook or a poem, he is no doubt caught up in praises to God. He is a citizen of Mesopotamia; when in history is unknown. It is known however that Mesopotamia had many circulating creation stories. Many of which had similar Biblical themes; light without the sun, darkness and chaos over ‘the deep’, separations of water, man living in harmony with nature in a naive innocence, and beyond creation, a serpent misleading man out of immortality, and accounts of a great flood. Throughout all of these creation accounts, the gods pre-exist along with matter, or were made by other chief gods. In other words a world, usually of water or mud was just there, and always had been.
A man who knew his true creator, could not have been anything but frustrated with these surrounding creation myths and related rituals and idols. Rm1:18-23 claims that what there was to know about God, he knew it. He knew about God’s eternal power and divine nature. People outside the bride of Christ often get frustrated with ‘illogical’, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘mindless’ statements made by Christians when trying to have a logical and intellectual debate about genesis 1. These mindless statements are outbursts of praise to God in the frustration of explaining a colour to a person born blind. If the author of Genesis 1 is crying out in frustration, would it not be logical that the Christians of today cry out in the same frustration of ‘I don’t know! I can’t explain, you have to see God!’ The author of genesis 1 and debating Christians of the 21stC know how to glorify God, because we have seen a glimpse of him and have not imagined or reasoned what God could be like.
The creation myths around the Mesopotamian at the time are like current theories today. Obviously they are completely different in content but in context, they are a more plausible account of creation than, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...’. No other creation account had grasped the idea of there being a beginning of everything except God; in fact most have the opposite idea. This must have been a massive encouragement to the people of God in that day and culture. Much as is today the uniqueness of the incarnation, substitution, and grace shown in Jesus Christ, was the refreshing words of sheer creation, sustenance, provision and relationship with God to Mesopotamians.
Today we have the same problems as Charles Darwin and the author Genesis 1. Science has clearly shown that the birds of the air have evolved from the fish of the sea over millions of years; they were not created simultaneously. We also know that the moon is not a light but bears the reflection of the sun, and so simply appearing that way. What the Bible says does not weigh up with natural history and what we can see. One of the main things that the secular media likes to portray of the church is examples of hypocrisy, and contradiction - It would be fairly accurate to say that the church experiences persecution in this way. Many people accept the persecution against the account of creation as a necessary part of the Christian life. Paul, in 2Timothy 1&2 emphasises the joy and hope in which he has in his chains, all because of the promises of God and the glory yet to come; yet many will defend literal creation fiercely or argue against it fiercely in the name of Jesus - the creator of rational beings; neither is right done fiercely, but either could be when fixing our eyes upon Jesus. Losing sight of who God is for the sake of logic is simply what Darwin, his family and countless others have done; glimpsed at the created and not the creator. Genesis1 is a frustrated outcry to the ungodly world around, and the centuries of debate over Genesis 1 is a frustrated outcry at the fact that it makes no sense. The former is crying out to look at God, the latter crying out to look at what God created; two very different matters.
REFERENCES
1. 1. DAVID ATKINSON: THE MESSAGE OF GENESIS 1-11 THE BIBLE SPEAKS TODAY
2. JANE WILLIAMS: GUARDIAN ARTICLE – THE BOOK OF GENESIS, PART 1: GOD CREATED (Monday 13 December 2010 12.00 GMT)
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/13/book-genesis-god-created)
3. 3, STEFAN STANUDD: ENUMA ELISH – THE BABALONIAN CREATION MYTH (http://www.stenudd.com/myth/enumaelish/enumaelish-6.htm)
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