If this wasn't an ad for a phone and it was just a public service announcement, it'd probably be perfect.

As is my sometimes tradition, let me tell you my pick for the Melbourne Cup. I think I might be in staff meeting tomorrow during the Cup. Perhaps we'll stop for the race that stops the nation. Or maybe we'll ignore it. Perhaps I'll suggest we pay attention as a matter of OH&S. I found out today that at every staff meeting there should be a time set aside for OH&S, I'm pretty sure that's the time for watching a horse race.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted.

This year I recommend: Shocking

I know everyone's believing in So You Think, but Shocking is gonna bring it home for trainer Michael Rodd. In my view Rodds having an excellent year, and So You Think's recent form leaves me questioning whether there's anything left for a Cup victory. The smart money goes with Shocking.

You just watch. I'm an expert. I know what I'm talking about.

I saw a car with these stickers on it today. And usually when I see these stickers they annoy me. I think because I get this feeling the family is going "Oh look we're a family". And it reduces your family to a statement like "Hands off our hospitals", "Real Aussies drive Utes" and "I'd rather push my Holden than drive your Ford".

But I hadn't really explored that feeling, it was just this gut response that I didn't like it.

Today I thought about it a little more and decided I liked it. If you're a family with young kids, the young kids are going to feel pretty awesome having thier own sticker on the back of the car. And it's actually nice for a family to make a statement, "We're a family and proud to be a family."

The only problem I see is that if the parents split you've got this embarrassing sticker representation of you family on your car. People should really think that through. Perhaps the stickers have kept families together. You know, couples sticking it out for the sake of stickers. That'd be nice.

As a single man, my sticker collection would be quite small. But I am thinking about perhaps getting something like this on my car:



I'm pretty sure that suits my image.

We sang a song at church tonight which I can't remember. But there was a line in it that said something about "as the waters cover the sea". And I thought to myself "Bah, another dumb lyric. Why are worship songs always full of dumb lyrics? Of course the waters cover the sea. A sea needs water to exist as sea. If there was no water there would be no sea. It'd be just a valley. I'm going go home and blog about that."

Except I got home and realised that that dumb lyric is from Habakkuk 2:14 which says: "For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." I'm not so sure I feel ready to criticise God's lyrics yet.

Still, if I ever remember when we're hanging out in the new creation, I may politely ask what his definition of sea is, and if it's possible to have sea without water? And if it is not possible to have a sea without water, then why Habbakkuk 2:14? But I'll do all this very respectfully, and I shall probably only get around to it after I've finished asking him about creation, predestination, angels, miracles, babies that die, the virgin birth, who made God, dating, Harold Holt and what would happen, hypothetically, if Jesus was an identical twin.

To live is Christ, to die is to pwn Wikipedia.

The talk I blogged about writing, is now up. You can go here to read about it or you can just listen to it here. Alternatively you can go search for Tom French in iTunes and subscribe to the podcast. Or you could do nothing at all. The options are yours people.

Last night I was out to dinner with the Ma, Pa, and the step-Grandma, and I ordered a steak. The gave it to me with a soft-shelled crab on top. The legs were all floppy. It felt like I was eating a spider. I didn't like it. I thought it might hurt me.

Spiders suck, even when they're actually crabs.

- Australia dominates colonies and the mother land, proving that criminals make the best athletes.
- Making fun of Indians is still rather acceptable, just don't call them monkeys.
- Robert De Castella has gotten fat, and good on him, he deserves it.
- Empty stadiums make me sad.
- Sally Pearson has a disqualification, a gold medal, and quite the set of abs.

My friend Graham Baldock blogs. And because famous bloggers sometimes guest blog on each other's blogs, we thought we'd do it too.

So here is his special guestage (if you want to read mine go here):

The school chaplains should have beaten me to death with the chairs they were sitting on. They were plunging daggers into me with their eyes.

Why?

I simply wondered aloud “Why don’t you just do Chapel services that don’t suck?”

Was it gentle and showered in grace? No. Was it amazingly blunt and cringe worthy to reminisce about publicly? Yes.

As a Youth Pastor I’ve wondered about religious schools a bit (my church is heavily connected to one). I wonder if they actually do more long-term harm than good.

Disclaimer (every outlandish statement must be followed up with a disclaimer): Those who work in schools are folks who genuinely love Jesus, want to see the Kingdom of God advance, work really hard and are phenomenal people.

AND if done well, as I have seen it done, it is an amazing opportunity. Weekly, kids are presented the life-changing message of Christ.

But, if it is not done well, does it place the youth in a worse position to respond to the gospel? Do they become deadened to the message? Are they hardened by mediocrity?

The same question can be asked for scripture in schools, children’s and youth ministry. Is crappy kids’ stuff on a Sunday morning really better than no kids program? Can we say that bad ministry experiences early in life make it harder for people to respond later on?

Bottom line… Do we think we are reaching kids with the gospel when we are actually inoculating them against it?

Thank you Failbook

Last month Andreana wrote a piece on her blog about how the doctrine of original sin makes people feel terrible about themselves. Then last week I was talking to one of my friends who told me they felt pretty much the same way. They didn’t like that there is this central belief within Christianity that you are basically evil. It’s bad for self-esteem and locks people into seeing themselves only as terrible people, incapable of good.

So I’ve been thinking about this for a while and had some thoughts. What follows is kinda the extended edition of a comment I left on Andreana’s blog.

I guess firstly any discussion of original sin needs a definition, so I’ll tell you what I know. Original sin is the doctrine that through the actions of Adam all humanity have inherited a sinful nature. In conservative evangelical thought, this means that humanity, as descendants of Adam, are born under judgement for Adam’s sin and with a built in predisposition for sin.

Probably the main reason why I believe in original sin is because I think it's biblical.

Obviously the biblical texts are open to interpretation, and need to be understood in the context of the literature, but as far as original sin goes I think there is biblical evidence for it, particularly in Romans 5:12-19. I am unclear as to what extent all people are guilty in Adam or how that works, I am sure that all of us have inherited our sinful nature, and are unable to live righteous lives without the direct intervention of God.

Perhaps the other lesser reason I am inclined to believe in original sin is that I see it in humanity. Kids aren’t taught to sin, they seem to have it built in. No one teaches a kid to snatch, punch, bite, kick, yet they all seem to figure it out for themselves. And if you watch kids interact, they are pretty horrid creatures. Sure they’re cute and precious, and funny, and fun. But they’re also mean, and selfish, and childish. If an adult behaved like a child we wouldn’t say “Oh how innocent they are” we’d say “Oh how horrible they are.” I think we learn civility because we learn that our deviant ways don’t get us what we want.

So I think I’m happy to see humanity as essentially sinful, both from what I read in the Bible and what I see in the world. I’m not saying that humanity is entirely sinful, or that babies, kids or adults are incapable of good, or love, just that I think that all people have a predisposition towards sin. I think sinfulness is built in since the fall, it’s not learned.

Obviously this isn’t a particularly cheery doctrine. I understand if a person accepts this on its own it certainly doesn’t give a person cause to feel excited about being a human or hopeful that they will be able to achieve anything more than evil, or hope that they will be able to move beyond their sin. However if they accept it, it should drive them to Christ. And if it drives them to Christ and they are willing to accept Christ’s work for them on the cross, then they no longer need to worry about their sinfulness, because in Christ they have been given all the righteousness of Christ. They are sinless before God. And they have the Holy Spirit living in them who enables them to live good, loving, godly lives, every day becoming more like Jesus.

The book of Romans seems to be a meditation on this idea. After spending many chapters thinking about the plight of humanity and the grace of God, Paul writes his famous segment in chapter 7 lamenting his inability to live the way he wants to and get rid of his sinful life. He climaxes the chapter with the cry “I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:23-24). It’s certainly a feeling that knowing that you are unable to escape sin’s effects or influence would bring about in you.

But Paul doesn’t stop there. He knows that this feeling shouldn’t drive him to despair, but to Jesus. He goes on to say this: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do... God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.” (Romans 7:25-8:3)

Paul is saying that his need to sin forces him to turn to Jesus. Only because of Jesus’ death, in our place, for our sins, do we get saved. And what a glorious rescue it is. If there was not original sin, if we did not have an awareness of our own love of evil, would we really feel like we needed Jesus?

Original sin may not make us feel good, but it makes the love of God all the more sweeter, because we know that in that is everything we need, and the only thing we can hope in.

So if I was to sum up my thoughts I’d say this, the issue with original sin making people feel crappy is not that it goes too far, but that it doesn’t go far enough. The gospel focused Christian should not let their friend wallow in their own guilt, but they should point them to the fact they are in fact guiltless. Our sinfulness is not an end point for how we understand ourselves, it’s a starting point; Jesus is the end point.

If you believe in original sin, you should also believe that through faith a person becomes a new creation in Jesus, and so all the effects of the fall are taken care of, either now, or at the resurrection. Anyone who teaches original sin without teaching redemption through Christ teaches an unbiblical message. And anyone who encourages guilt instead of encouraging people to turn to Jesus for forgiveness and new life, forgets that the gospel is not about the sin of humanity but the glory of God.

And those are my thoughts on original sin.

So I've been thinking, after reading a question in some Christian youth publication, what movies can you think of where you see a married couple having sex? I'm not asking because I'm looking for raunchy sex scenes, only because almost all sex scenes are between couples who are not married.

But actually now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that's not because Hollywood says married sex is not sexy, but that when sex is generally shown in a film is either because it's a significant moment in a characters journey or it's a bit of character exposition and within married sex isn't generally significant for either of these.

For instance, if there is a sex scene often it's the culmination of a relationship. When two characters have sex they have reached a particular high or low point in their relationship. From there things either plateau or bottom out, depending on whether the sex is seen as a good thing or a bad thing. I'd name some examples but it's in almost every movie. For a married couple this is going to be rare, because sex is going to be a given. The thing which gets commented on will be a couple's lack of sex, which of course cannot be shown through a sex scene (American Beauty may be an exception).

If on the other hand the sex is about character development it's almost always bad or neutral. It says "this character likes sleeping around" (eg the early hot tub scene in Charlie Wilson's War telling us the Mr Wilson has rather loose morals) or "this character has sex" (Havoc's early sex scene perhaps), or "this character has sex and is about to die" (any horror movie in the 80s which was perhaps Hollywood's sex-ed for teens regarding the AIDS crisis).

TV shows on the other hand tend to use sex a little differently. I think you're more likely to have implied sex (eg the pre-sex flirt) between a married couple, usually to show the resolution of whatever issue was between them in that particular story. But they still use sex in much the same way as movies both in plot points and character exposition/development.

From what I can tell in all this Hollywood isn't out to undermine married sex, they are out to tell a story, and show stories that we're interested in. Sex between a married couple just isn't vital enough to story or character in Hollywood to give it screen time. Sex outside of marriage is rarely frowned upon, unless it's adultery but even that is often glamourised. The sin of Hollywood, in my view, is not that it sets out to promote bad sexual behaviour, it just gives us what we want. And we, the public, want interesting sex and married sex just isn't good enough.

That said, some movies and TV shows that I can think of which have married sex as a plot point:

300 - Leonidas and his wife make love before he goes out to battle.
Mad Men - Don and Betty sometimes make love, although we're pretty much always aware that Don is cheating on Betty so it's never a really positive moment.
Friday Night Lights - Coach Taylor and Tami often talk about it and flirt with each other and it's always positive. On the flipside there is a whole episode in season one about their daughter Julie not losing her virginity. It's quite the morally conscious show.

That's all I can think of. But to tell you the truth, I generally try and avoid the films which have heaps of sex in them, and the ones I do see with sex in them, I tend to forget the sex, so I'm sure there are much better examples out there.

Can you think of others?

It's been a big week or so for preaching. 2 sermons and 4 kids talks in 8 days.

The first sermon I did was last Sunday. I did it back at my old church. If you want to read about the actual sermon you can read about it here and you can download the sermon here.

It was fun to be back at my old church. I do always enjoy being back. It was my first time in the morning service, and I had a little bit of trouble remembering names of some of the older memebers of the congregation, which was embarrassing. But I got there in the end. Or just mumbled my way through.

I met my old Year Advisor at church. He'd started going to church there about 6 months after I left. It was a little odd, but he's a good guy. I'm pretty sure my year got the best year advisor in the school. In fact I think I would have quite liked having him at church when I was there. Although I may have been more self concious about all my sermon illustrations about school.

One of the families from the church had me over to lunch afterwards and invited some of the youth and young adults around to join us. It was really nice. I do love that bunch. In some ways it's a bit sad catching up with that crew, especially people who were in my youth group, because their life goes on and I don't get to be a part of it anymore.

On the other hand my life goes on too, and there is much richness here. Saying "Yes" to one thing is saying "No" to another, that's what they say. If only we weren't finite. Or we were just ever expanding like the universe.

Maybe we are ever expanding like the universe but so is everything else at the same rate, so we'd never know.

I should think about that some more.

I was driving home from Bible Study on Monday night with my new British friend, Ant, and as we drove past a telegraph pole in Hornsby, I looked up and saw a bright light. I said to Ant "Look there's someone welding, on top of the pole, all by themselves." I thought it was odd that there would be a person on top of a telegraph pole at 10:30pm doing some welding. But then when I looked further, I saw there was no person up there, just the bright light. I realised that this was electricity, burning brightly where it shouldn't be burning brightly, coming out of the top of a telegraph pole.

This was an exciting discovery for me, this meant it was an emergency. So I said dramatically "We're going to have to call emergency services!" I put on my hazards and did a u-turn to get a better look, used my iPhone GPS to figure out exactly where it was, then dialed triple-0. I reported that there was a telegraph pole on fire, and I think the lady on the other end was happy to have taken such an pivotal call in the safety of the nation and our fight against terrorism and stuff.

Once that was done we parked and wandered a little closer to watch this sparking electrical brilliance. At times is grew very bright, bright like a thousand suns (minus 999.9999 of them) and made a noise some what resembling battle involving multiple lightsabers. We didn't stand too close, as we thought it might explode. That was certainly my hope.

The Fireys and the Cops arrived about 3 minutes after I called. They parked right opposite the sparking thing, so it seemed they weren't too worried about explosions.

I was then hoping to see some action as the fireys set about putting it out but everyone just stood around staring at it. They informed us that you can't really put the fire out, you just have to turn off the electricity.

So it was less exciting than I'd hoped. But still more exciting than a normal drive home.

As it turned out, one of the fire fighters was my friend Wayne who I used to think was awesome when I was a kid, and who I got lost in a canyon with when we all went canyoning with Keith. It was a nice moment.

When we realised nothing more was going to happen, we left. Our work was done, Hornsby was safe in the hands of the NSW Fire Brigade.

I am Australia's Next Top Model!

No... wait... sorry... hold on... I'm feeling a bit sick about this... actually, it's Amanda.

Damn it.

Sometimes I wish I had a girlfriend so we could share our Google Calendars.

Do what you must do to find yourself
Wear another shoe

Paint my shelf



- Damien Rice

After the City 2 Surf Jem, Gem and I got all excited to run the Bridge Run, a 9km run across the Harbour Bridge. I was going to train hard and be awesome.

Alas...

I ran once, a few days after the City 2 Surf and didn't run again. Gem and Jem run only once too.

Today was race day, and we ran. None of us died. In fact we all found it way too easy.

We've decided to do the half marathon.

We're going to train hard and be awesome.

Last night at youth group I was speaking on Evangelism as a value for our youth group. I talked about our need to share the good news of Jesus. This gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about our love of sharing dumb videos and to show two of the most watched videos on YouTube this week.

Seeing as I love YouTube, this was perfect.

First I showed this one, because I think it's brilliant:



Then I showed this one because it seemed to have been the biggest thing on YouTube in the previous 24 hours. I'm not normally a fan of people getting hurt videos. Actually I am, but I try not to be. But I showed this not to laugh but to make a point about the uselessness of the things we share. Still, I may have laughed a bit:



Anyway, the talk itself seemed to go ok. I gave the kids an opportunity to become Christians and what was great is that two of them indicated that they wanted to become Christians! So in hindsight, the talk went brilliantly.

But despite the kingdom success I didn't feel all that good about the talk. I came home thinking I spoke too long, that it wasn't interesting enough and it was a bit of a mess. One of the leaders told me they found my gospel presentation "interesting". They clarified that it wasn't wrong or heretical, just interesting. I didn't quite know what this meant, so I worried then about my presentation of the gospel too.

So I came home feeling a little depressed. Which is highly dumb. I'm sure it was partly due to the fact that I was coming off the back of another big week of Bible talk preparing and giving, so I wasn't feeling real happy.

Still, it was dumb. Here I am, two kids have believed the Gospel for the first time and prayed to become a Christian, and I'm worrying about whether my talk was good enough. How full of pride I am that my primary response after my talk is not "How amazing God is that people gave their life to Jesus!" but "Oh dear, I don't think my talk was good/funny/interesting/short enough."

Less of me. More of Him.

I'm writing a talk at the moment on work and laziness in the book of Proverbs. It's for a school. I was asked to do it. I didn't realise I could have picked another topic. This is a shame because work and laziness are not very exciting ideas. I'm not passionate about people working hard. I especially don't want to be the guy who turns up to school and says "Work hard and you'll achieve stuff", I hated those speeches at school. And the "Don't waste your education" speeches, I hated them too. I don't want to be that guy. I want to stand there and say "Don't open your HSC. Don't stress. Go out late at night. Only do the homework you want to do. You are not your education." Though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get invited back.

I might try and find the middle way. I might tell them all to become plumbers, cause plumbers are awesome.

I went to the launch of the Sovereign Grace Sydney on Sunday. I was there because both my housemates are part of the core planting team and I wanted to cheer them on. I also wanted to see how it'd all go down. I've never been to a church launch before.

It was a very enjoyable experience. The service was smooth (except perhaps for the tempremental keyboard at the end). The music was good. The preaching engaging. The people welcoming. It was a well executed first service. It felt very much like they'd been preparing for months and now they finally got the chance to pull it off, which I guess was the case.

Dave Taylor, the pastor, gave a good message on keeping the gospel central. He was passionate, Jesus focused, and he had the ability to keep everyone engaged for the whole message. Most importantly it moved me to love Jesus more.

I did really enjoy the sung worship. We spent half an hour singing four songs. It was the kind of charismatic-esque worship I don't get to do much of these days.

At one point I was sitting there thinking, "If I was a little more flaky, I'd quit my church and come here." Not because I don't like my church, I love my church, but because they did everything really well in a way I really liked. My guess it's not too hard to do everything well. They're the first plant in Australia from a large, successful US based ministry. They can pick a quality pastor from their worldwide network to come out and plant the church, and then, because of their reputation they can attract a good core of people for their core team, and they can pick a bunch of the most talented, highly functional Christians to do the plant with. If they weren't doing things well there'd be something wrong.

Anyway, none of this is a bad thing. I was impressed, and tempted toward church lust. I wonder if it's a similar feeling that married men get when they see a young, hot lady pass by and know they can't have her. That said, I'm not dissatisfied with my church, but I know the issues of my church, I don't know the issues of Sov Grace, all I see is the shiny, alluring, first day, launch specialness. If we're still going with the marriage metaphor, Sov Grace had on it's wedding night lingerie on Sunday while I'm pretty sure I'm at the stage with my church where they're not embarrassed to wear the grandma undies in front of me.

Hmmm, I should probably end this metaphor now.

All this to say, I'm sure Sov Grace will grow quickly and I pray they do and they fill up with people meeting Jesus for the first time and people coming back to Jesus after some "time off". They're going to be a good gospel witness in Sydney. I'm not going to quit my church for them, but I will cheer them on from the sideline. For my church I'll pray that we'll also can be a good gospel witness and that we too can look hot in some ecclesiastical lingerie.

Well I'm pretty pleased we have a government now. That was, however, a very enjoyable 17 days.

I think Rob Oakeshott is a bit of a dude.

I was amused that right after Oakeshott and Windsor announced their intentions my Facebook feed filled up with people proclaiming the imminent ruin of Australia. I'm pretty sure, whoever they sided with, Australia wouldn't get ruined. As far as I can tell neither Labor or the Liberals would set about turning Australia into a police state, or legislating forced abortions, euthanasia and gay marriage. Neither of them are going start burning books or merging Australia with North Korea. They're just going to plod along making good decisions and bad decisions none of which will immediately send Australia into Zimbabwean territory. We're rather blessed to live in a country where we can survive in a country where we have no government for 17 days and there are no riots, no military coups, no assassinations, we just keep going on our way and make amusing websites.

I was similarly amused by the article on SMH that said that Rob Oakeshott "held Australia hostage" because he took 15 minutes to tell the press conference that he was siding with Labor. Giving the man 15 minutes after he's spent the last 17 days trying to sort out the next three years of Australian government for the country is a small ask. I'm very thankful for the diligence and care that Katter, Windsor and Oakeshott put into their decision. I don't think anyone should accuse them of taking their role lightly, though I'm sure they will.

What has interested me in all this is the vast difference of opinion that Christians can have in politics. You can get a bunch of Christians together who all have basically the same views on the Bible, on persona morality, on their theology - but then you get them to talk about politics, and they'll be people all over the political spectrum.

In my house there are three of us, we are all pretty much of the same view of things in our faith, we all believe in the authority of the Bible, we're all pretty much reformed in our theology, as far as the churches practice and message goes we probably all have the same view on abortion, gay marriage, care for the poor, etc. But I think we each voted Liberal, Labor and Greens or maybe one of them should be changed to Family First. This makes me happy. I love that loving Jesus doesn't make you vote one way or the other. And I love that it's rare that people will question your faith just because of who you choose to vote for.

I'm thankful for democracy. I'm thankful for politics. And I'm still thankful for Mike Kelly's moustache.

Yesterday I had a work event on and there was a guy there who I went on camp with last year. I was the speaker and he was on of the leaders, he came up to me to say "Hello" but I couldn't for the life of me remember his name. It was the old "Hey Tom, how you going?" "Heeeyyyy, not too bad, how are you?"

I thought he must have been one of the directors of the camp because there was a camp directors' weekend on there at the time. As we talked I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what his name was and what else I knew about him. Then I remembered that both the directors were studying medicine, or were doctors or something. I thought, "Great, I'll ask how that's going and it'll be clear from the question that I remember who he is" and that could make up for the obvious fact that I completely forgot his name.

So I said "How's your studies?"

And he replied "I finished last year, I'm working now."

Me: "Oh so are you saving people's lives?"

Him: "I'm not sure you save many lives in the media."

Damn! Now it's freakin' obvious you have no idea who he is, dig up! Dig up!

Me: "Well... you know... Jack Bauer, he saves people's lives, and he's in the media, sort of, well, he's a fictional character, portrayed in the media, who's saving people's lives... actually he kinda kills more people...yeah..."

Idiot!

I sometimes worry that my acts of love and kindness are motivated not by love and kindness but rather by pride. I'm not so concerned for other people, as I am that other people will think I'm a loving, kind person. I do good so that people will think I'm good. And I don't do bad, because I want people to think I'm good.

This isn't so good.

A lot of people have been asking me how the video went down so I thought I should share.

The teachers liked it and the students seemed to warm to it. I showed it at the beginning of the talk and the students looked like that couldn't figure out what to make of it for the first minute or so. But after that they started laughing a bit. Which is probably about as much as you can hope for from a high school group. High school doesn't generally make teenagers enthusiastic and excited about anything coming from the front.

At very least, it wasn't an major disaster, so I'm thankful for that.

I'm speaking at a school on Thursday in a series they're doing called "Life According to YouTube". This is an excellent idea. They asked me to speak on spiritual gifts, and I couldn't find any videos on YouTube that would work, so I decided to make my own. I'm really hoping the 200 high school students get the joke.

Special thanks to Howie for being Director of Photography and lending all his technical equipment to the cause.

I'm really looking forward to a hung parliament. That would be the perfect outcome. Two good election results in row. I hope so.

Mike Kelly has an awesome moustache. If only I could have voted for him.

I had a really good time voting today. I almost numbered 1-84 below the line for the Senate, but I wasn't inspired enough this year. I went with Gem and Jem. We voted at the RSL so rewarded ourselves with lunch. We met Lesley in the line to vote so she joined us for the celebratory lunch.

Now I'm settling in now for a night of election coverage with Jem and Lesley with Gem joining us latert. From what's been a pretty unimpressive election lead up from both major parties, it means that the election will be close. I'm excited because I like a close election. I may be unhappy with both the major parties, but I'm quite happy to watch a battle of the mediocres. Plus I'm hoping for something new to happen, like a hung Parliament, or perhaps the Greens to take Government by some freak voting event. I'd love a freak voting event. Maybe even the Sex Party will hold the balance of power in the Senate. I really doubt it, but wouldn't that be good for a laugh?

I love elections.

I'm kinda enjoying this song at the moment. Perhaps enjoying is not the word. I'm glad there's a song on the radio that's about more than sex. Plus it is a good song.

What worries me however is that girls in dysfunctional relationships will hear it, it'll resonate and they'll think "Yeah, that's my life" but guys in dysfunctional relationships will hear it and say "Yeah if she ever does try and leave me again I will tie her to the bed and set the house on fire. Good idea, thanks Eminem." I'd really like the song to end with Eminem saying "If you beat up on your girlfriend, you suck" or something equally non-ambiguous. But I guess there's a difference between art and social service announcements. I just hope people who suck understand art.

I love Wednesday nights. It's all politics on the ABC, and one of the programs is even funny (Thank you Gruen Nation). It's good because this election has been pretty dull. Since my last post on the election the only really interesting thing that has happened is the Libs absurd broadband plan. Actually it's not totally absurd, it's just mediocraty, spun as a good idea. "Our answer to a high quality but expensive plan, is a low quality but cheap plan." It's like everyone was thinking we were going to get a new car and now the Liberals want us to get excited about 1984 Datsun.

Not that I'm too worried, because I don't think the Libs will win, and even if they did I don't think their broadband plan is sustainable in the long term, it'll only be viable for a little while before Australia is forced to catch to the rest of the developed world.

And I really enjoyed seeing Tony Abbott getting schooled by Kerry O'Brian on the 730 Report.

Other than that I guess Latham has been mildly entertaining but he hasn't really been part of the campaign, just part of the side show. And I did enjoy seeing Julia getting asked lots if questions from loyal Kevinists at the People's Forum in Brisband tonight even if her answers were as dull as concrete. Actually duller than concrete, sorry Dad.

I still don't know who to vote for. I have noticed that if I donkey vote in my electorate Joe Hockey will get my vote and I'd like to avoid that. Maybe I'll do a reverse donkey. That sounds vaguely rude, but it's not, you've all just got dirty minds.

I think I heard what could be the greatest youth group advertisment ever today. I was at a school speaking in their chapel and this plucky little year 6 girl got up to do an announcement and proceed to tell us everything about her youth group. I found out that year fives aren't allowed to attend but year 6, 7 and 8 are. Year 7 and 8 should attend because they need some fun in their life, they always look so bored in chapel. I found out that at youth group the girls have dance parties, go bowling and go to the movies and the boys just eat chips and wrestle. I found out that there's no food at youth group because the boys would eat it all. I found out that the boys always win Minute to Win It, except last week the girls won because girls are the best (at this point she commanded the girls to scream, which one half-heartedly did). Last week they played throwing ping pong balls at toast covered in peanut butter. They got to eat the toast afterwards. I also found out the name of every female youth leader in the youth group, but none of the male leaders (presumably because, as I also found out, boys suck). I found out that the youth group runs across the road from the Bi-Lo. The end.

Like I said, probably the greatest youth group ad ever.

Yesterday I did a visit to a school as I was doing a talk in their infants chapel about kindness and goodness. I had never done an infants chapel before, so I thought I might do a bit of puppetry. So I went and found my old friend Ron. Ron is a friendly, blue puppet who's been in our family for a very long time. I decided to do it ventriloquist style, rather than say, to have him whisper in my ear. The upside is that Ron can say funnier things. The downside is that it's much easier to stuff up. I love puppets, but I was pretty scared of doing this. I'd never done ventriloquism in front of an audience before.

I had decided to give Ron an Irish accent so as to differentiate his voice from mine. On the way down in the car, it worked perfectly. Ron was sounding like a Dublin native. It was brilliant. Unfortunately, I wasn't performing on the way down in the car. When it came time for me to stand up in front of the kids, I'd completely forgotten how to do an Irish accent. I stood up there and all that would come out was this demented Ernie-voice. And while I could have gotten away with that, the first thing I did when Ron came out of the bag is have Ron tell everyone that he was from Ireland. Dumb. And while the kids probably had no idea my accent wasn't anything like anyone from anywhere, the parents and teachers in the room could definitely tell that I was doing what was probably the worst Irish accent they had ever heard. It was a little embarrassing.

Oh, well you know, as Jesus said: "Those who suck at puppetry are sometimes competent in other areas." Or perhaps that was fake-Jesus. Thanks fake-Jesus, you minister to my wounded heart.

I'm not sure if I'll ever post this, but I thought I might write it because sometimes I think about it. Obviously, if you're reading this, I posted it.


I'm twenty-seven years old.

I'm single.

I'm happy.

I'm worried I won't be.

I'm worried that one day I'm going to wake up, I'll be forty, single, creepy, childless and lonely. All my friends will be married and have kids and I'll have no one to hang out with on a Saturday night. The issue is, while I see this as a possibility, my current contentment with my situation gives me very little impetus to do something to change it.

Generally my life has gone like this: Be single and content, find a girl I like, like her for way too long, ask her out, get a "No", feel depressed and analyse what I did wrong, eventually I stop liking the girl, then I be single and content again. At least that's the general process, it doesn't always go like that but it's always been variations on the same theme - unrequited love and a general lack of wooing skills.

So singleness rather than being a curse I must bear, is a blessed relief from the angst and disappointment of long term attraction. And in the positive, I love being single. I love being free to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I love having time to devote to whatever takes my fancy. I love not having to consider the needs of someone else a lot of the time. And most of the time, I don't feel any great need to be in a relationship.

The goodness of this is that when my friends get engaged, I get excited. When they get married, I love it. When they have babies, I think it's awesome. These significant life moments don't make me feel depressed about the lack of ladies and babies in my own life. What they do do, however, is give me this sense of being a somewhat late developer. Like somehow I'm stuck in the happy bachelorhood of an early-20s bloke, and everyone else is off being adults. It does make me feel like I'm immature. Maturity becomes not about age but life experience. And the experience of almost an entire life of singleness seems far less impressive or valuable than a couple of years of relationship, or marriage, or parenthood.

The other day someone close to me who loves me and who I love and respect a lot, challenged me on my contentedness, they told me that if I think God is calling me to be single I should be pretty darn sure God is calling me to be single. They said that by not being overly pro-active in relationship pursuing I'm depriving a girl of the chance to have a relationship that they may desperately want, and more than that, I'm missing out on all the joy, and happiness, and growth that being in a relationship brings. They implied that my love of romance and marriage and love stories, is hypocritical in the light of my lack of action on the romance front.

Of course, I'm not sure God is calling me to singleness. I'm sure that right now I have the opportunity to use my singleness to be free to do God's work. Right now, singleness is a gift from God. And I really like being single - totally free to do God's work. I'm probably selfish too and happy being selfish, independent and unchallenged.

The thing is that intellectually all this makes sense. I see the sense in putting the effort in to find a relationship so that my love of love isn't mealy theoretical. I know that I may be depriving someone of a life with me and I could be depriving myself of an excellent life with them. I understand that out-there there are probably many girls I could be very happy with. I understand that I may one day end up bald, sad, lonely and unhappy.

But what I understand in my head, and what I know in my heart are two different things. I may be in the middle of my own personal climate crisis. And while I say "Peace, peace" the oceans are rising, and soon I'll find that I'm treading water, searching for dry land, because I didn't do anything about it when the time was right. I am Al Gore's polar bear. I am Al Gore's unconcerned citizen.

But this isn't about my head, it's about my heart. I feel disinclined to pursue people just because they're single, Christian and female. I can't be bothered putting myself or anyone else through the awkwardness of date asking, coffee drinking, emotional ambiguity, engineered situations and strange relationship defining conversations if I'm not really committed to the idea of having a relationship with them. I don't want to hurt them or get hurt if I have just gone through the motions because I'm intellectually committed to the idea of relationships, or desirous of a relationship just not one with that particular girl.

That said, I know that my past experience of dates and hanging out with girls, while having had their disasters have also, at other times, been greatly beneficial and enjoyable. And I'm sure I have good friends now that I wouldn't have if it wasn't for doing a bit of awkwardness and flirting.

I guess what I'm waiting for is for a girl to come along, who I fall totally in-love with, who I really want a relationship with, and who I pursue, and who somehow, by the grace of God, is attracted to me and wants a relationship with me, maybe because of my excellent wooing skills, or maybe just because God predestined it that way. And while liking girls in the past has generally only caused me pain, I'm totally willing to do it again. I'm committed enough to love that I'll make myself vulnerable once more and I'll take the risk that my love is unrequited once again if it's for the girl. As long as I'm longing for her, I'll endure anything.

But as for anything else, as for pursing girls because I don't want to become old and lonely. Or seeking out a relationship because I have read that "it is not good for man to be alone." I don't know. It makes sense, but my heart's not in it, and I could be wrong, but it just seems to me that this is one area where you need your heart on board.

But maybe not. Maybe the times are changing, and my heart needs to catch up.

I don't know.

Singleness may be something you only really understand when it's over.



So if I stumble
And if I fall
And if I slip now
And lose it all
And if I can't be all that I could be
Will you, will you wait for me? - Alexi Murdoch

On Thursday The Expendables came out in cinemas and I was pretty freakin' excited. This is an action film with Sylvester Stallone, Jason Stratham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews and Mickey Rourke in it, and cameos from Bruce Willis and Arnold Swartznegger. How could any self-respecting action fan not be excited?

So I saw it on Thursday night and it was pretty awesome. It's like they got all the greatness of 80s action movies, all the over the top violence, all the explosions, all the big men punching each other, all the evil Military Generals, all the over sized guns, and mixed it all together and pretended Jason Bourne never turned action into a small man's, small gunned, smart hero's game. While James Bond responded to Bourne by imitating him, Stallone has respond by telling Jason Bourne to go...um... I can't finish that sentence on my blog.

The story is about a group of mercenaries who go and blow up a small, Latin American country that is being ruled by an evil military dictator, who is in turn the puppet of a corrupt-CIA guy. That's pretty much all there is to the plot. It's not exactly heavy on story.

The film really is just an 80s action dream come true. There a plenty of dumb, smart-ass lines whenever someone does something cool. There is a beautiful woman whose only job is to be rescued, there are hundreds of henchmen whose only job it to get blown up by an exploding shot gun. And to have some of the greatest (and not so greatest) action heroes of all time doing it, it's brilliant.

The film isn't perfect. I would have loved to have seen Willis and Swartznegger doing some actual fighting but I guess they were busy. I think Wesley Snipes and Kurt Russell would have made awesome additions to the team. I didn't really think anybody did any good acting in the entire film, but then, you don't watch films like this for their action. I mean, Randy Couture is from the UFC, he's famous for beating people up, not for acting.

I know action movies will never be like they were in the 80s, and I'm not sad about that. But this film, this to me is their last hurrah, this is the 80s action flick going out with a bang. There will be no more Rockys, Rambos, Predators, Commandos, Terminators or Die Hards. Actually there will be, but they won't be like they were in the 80s. The 80s were a special time for action movies, but the world has moved on. Hong Kong, John Woo, Jason Bourne, The Matrix, Christopher Nolan, Kung-Fu and Brian Singer have come to town, and they're all awesome. The Expendables is a fine and fitting farewell to a genre that will probably never be back. At least until the sequel comes out.

But for now, I feel like I need to watch Die Hard as soon as possible, because that is probably the greatest action movie of all time.

I was reading a document one of my housemates left lying around the house on pride. It my have been deliberate.

One of the things it said is that we have to be continually waring against pride and putting on humility, and I thought to myself "But if I get rid of pride I won't appreciate how awesome I am, and then what will I have to enjoy?"

It probably was deliberate.

I'm sure you're all on the edge of your seat wanting to know my City2Surf results. After coming with me these past two weeks for all the highs and the lows, the big day finally came.

Well... let's just preface this by saying, it's not about the time. It's not about whether you win or lose it's about having a go.

Yeah, that's what losers say. Winners say "I'm freakin' awesome, losers!"

Well I wasn't a winner today, in any book. But didn't I have a good time! And I had a go.

My time was 1h 21mins 03secs, or there abouts. So it was no where near the 60mins, 11mins of the 70mins, and a minute into Your Body is a Wonderland territory.

That said, I really did enjoy myself. I wasn't too concerned about my time because it's not very easy to go fast when you're in the back group with lots of walkers and joggers. There are so many people to dodge, I rarely felt like I was pushing myself. There are times you get slowed to a walk because there is just no way around the people in front of you.

So I'm not too concerned. It's pretty exciting to be going for a run with 80,000 other people. And it's fun taking cups of water off the volunteers on the side of the road. It's was enjoyable hanging out with Jem and Gem before and after the race. And it's a pretty nice run too. It's just a shame there are too many people.

The other great thing is that, next year I will probably get a better time.

All I had a good day. I want to do it again, in about 10 weeks when I could train better, but hey, now I've got a year.

Next run though is the 9km Brigde Run on 19th September. Unless I get really excited and I'll do the Half-Marathon, but that'd probably be dumb.

Oh and Thank you to everyone who donated to Jesus: All About Life. You've been very generous. If you still want to donate you can do so but going here.

As you may have noticed I'm running the City2Surf tomorrow. I'm doing it for Jesus: All About Life. If you dig the Bible, please sponsor me by going here; you can help raise money to get Bibles in Public Schools and celebrate that I'm going to sweat a lot tomorrow.

The Bible is probably the better motivation.

End of money pitch.

Well tomorrow is the day all my inspirational training will pay off... perhaps. I ran about 15km yesterday as a final preparation run. I did it in 80 minutes. I think I'd like to do much better tomorrow, I'd really like to do this run in under 70mins. It's a small possibility as I haven't been pushing myself for speed at all these past two weeks, only distance. But cutting 5 minutes off my time (considering I'm running about 5'30"/km). Next year I want to do under 60mins, but that's probably dreaming.

I'm currently making my City 2 Surf playlist. Here's what I've got:



If things were going great, I'd finish at the end of I Like it Like That. Hopefully I'll finish by Gonna Fly Now (Theme from "Rocky") - that's my power song. If I don't finish before John Mayer and John Paul Young, I'll be very disappointed. Knowing their songs are lurking at the end there is motivation to run faster.

I would like to say that this only a small reflection of my musical tastes. Some I like and enjoy running to - Battle Without Honor or Humanity, Feel Good Drag, some I've got because they amuse me - U Can't Touch This, one I have for Hamish and Andy - Far From Over. Whatever the case, I'm pretty happy with the play list.

I am doing this whole thing because Dan asked me to run for Jesus: All About Life. It's to raise money for getting Bibles into public schools. I like Bibles, so I'm happy to run for that. If you want to sponsor me click here and donate lots of money. If you click there now you may notice that no one has sponsored me, as of now. I'm not a very good fundraiser. I'm going to write the above too so people don't ignore the long post.

Have you ever had a dream where you turn up to do something, like give a speech, but your totally unprepared? I have.

Today that happened to me in real life. I was at a school, I did a talk in their chapel, went to the staff room, and then one of the chaplains stood up and said "Right, it's almost time to go to chapel."

I spent a little while trying to work out what chapel this was they were talking about. I had no memory of going to another chapel today. I had a feeling it was a primary school chapel seeing as I had just done the high school. So I asked and the Chaplain said "Yes, this is primary school, and you're speaking. You didn't know?"

I had no idea it was about to happen. I thought the chapel was on Thursday and so I'd done no preparation for it at all. I don't know who had stuffed up, it could have been the chaplain's lack of communication, but I think it's more likely I just clean forgot. I do so much teaching when I visit this school, it's hard to remember everything.

Anyway I literally had 10 minutes to figure out what I was going to do, while having to hold a conversation with the chaplain about the schools upcoming holiday club. Happily, unlike the dreams where the moment where your realise you have to do a talk and you have nothing prepared streaches on for hours, till you wake up or find yourself on a train with your year 5 teacher, in real life it's not nearly so terrible. I adjusted my talk from the morning as the chapel was on the same topic and rejoiced that I just reduced my preparation load significantly. I don't think it was my best talk ever, but it did the job, and I'm happy to see that those dreams aren't so bad in real life.

We have air freshener in our bathroom. We used to have Orange Power which eliminated any unwanted odours by totally over-powering them with the smell of orange. It smelt like an orange had exploded. It was like citrus flavoured chemical warfare. The problem was whenever you went in there it made you associate poo and oranges, and that's no good, because I like to eat oranges but I don't like to eat poo. So the orange bomb went.

Now we have just the usual flowery stuff you get. It's pretty useless. The bathroom just smells of poo and flowers. Like someone's eaten a bunch of magnolia and cherry blossom and then shot it out the back end. Poo and flowers don't really go together. If you got given a bouquet of flowers and poo you probably wouldn't be all that impressed, which is why I'm not all that impressed with the smell of our toilet. I think I want the orange bomb back.

Last night I went to a trivia night. My team won. I think that's the first time I've ever been on a winning team at trivia.

I did, by the way, learn that Kiwi fruit is native to China. Those sneaky Kiwis stealing from the Chinese and calling it their own. Now I don't feel so bad about us stealing everything of theirs that's successful and calling it Australian. Pavlova anyone?

Speaking of Kiwis, I heard Mel Gibson originally came from New Zealand...

I went for another run today. It was my first run since last Saturday. I've been hobbling around on sore arches for a week, so I figured I should give them time to recover.

But today I went for a 9km run from my place down to Middle Harbour and back. At least it would have been a 9lm run had I not gotten lost and found myself stumbling through the bush. The running gets pretty slow when you're clambering over rocks and roots and trying not to fall into creeks. Still I probably ran 8 of the 9km.

Anyway, all this is to say, my plans last week, of running 17km today, were a little too optimistic. I doubt I'm going to run 14km in one run before this City to Surf comes around.

Maybe I'll count this all as training for next year.

By the way, is anyone here a Nike+ user? If you are be my friend in Nike+ land. My name's Thomasw. I want some people to have competitions with.

I was just going through my old blog posts and making them more template friendly, and I found this post which I never posted. I wrote it during the time when we'd just lost our senior minister at my old church where I was the Youth Minister. So if you want to see a post that till now has been hidden, go click on the link. To save you the time though, it's just me musing on church law and the significance of paid staff so I can't imagine many of you would be that interested.

I love elections. Too bad this one's boring.

At least it was boring but all these Labor leaks are spicing things up. I'm not feeling all that compassionate. If you stab your people in the back, you can't expect them to behave while you live of their demise. Labor came out looking strong when they dumped Rudd. Now it's all looking like a bit of a shambles. The Libs are looking good, because Labor is just falling apart.

I kinda hope Labor don't win, just to punish them for their selfish dumping of their leader that brought them to power. Their fear of losing the election, is now manifesting itself all over the place as they just seem to be playing everyone's fear and prejudices. They're going right on immigration, refugees, gay marriage. They're ignoring mental health needs. No one is talking about the war. And they're trying to impress everyone with their balanced budget. None of this sounds like strong moral leadership, it seems to be playing to conservative agenda.

It seems particularly absurd that they have an openly gay Senator who has to speak out about her opposition to gay marriage. That doesn't make the party look united, it just makes them look like their stomping on the individual beliefs and convictions of their people.

I guess all this means that I'm not really finding this boring at all. I'm just finding it uninspiring. At least uninspiring is less likely to let me down.

I was sitting at work today, diligently looking at photos on istock of backpacks (it was pretty inspiring) when I realised I couldn't see things that I was looking at. I could see everything around what I was looking at, but in the centre of my vision I had a white spot like I'd been looking at a light, except I hadn't.

My immediate thought was "I'm going blind." Then I thought "If that's true I can probably take a day off work tomorrow." My third thought was "If I go blind, I'll be able to do an inspirational preaching tour." My fourth thought was "I hope, if I go blind, I don't start dressing like a blind person, unless it's Stevie Wonder."

Generally, if ever I find a problem with my health and the diagnosis is not immediately apparent to me, I jump first to worst case scenario and then to the inspirational preaching tour. "Maybe I've got cancer... Inspirational preaching tour", "Maybe I've got a rare degenerative disease... Inspirational preaching tour.", "Maybe I'm going bald... Inspirational preaching tour." Actually I'm planning the tour for my balding testimony now. I just need the hairline to recede a little more.

Anyway, the blind spot moved from being in the middle of my vision, to the left-side of my vision so I lost all my peripheral vision on the left. I realised than that I wasn't going blind I was just getting a migraine. I was a little disappointed that the preaching tour was off the cards, but I did still harbour a small hope that I could still take the day off work tomorrow and watch DVDs or something. I did at the very least start planning how I was going to get home with no peripheral vision. I thought driving would be a touch unsafe.

But, as it happens, the vision cleared up and the migraine never appeared. I got a tiny little headache and I felt sleepy during the news tonight, that's it. I've only ever gotten one migraine in my life, and I'm pretty sure I can't call what I had today a migraine. It was a poor excuse for a migraine. It was a failgraine. If I could capture it on a digital camera, I'd send it in to Fail Blog for everyone to laugh at.

But I'm not complaining. Even though I won't get to stay home and watch DVDs tomorrow, I am happy I'm not lying in a dark room with a throbbing head, feeling like I'm birthing a garden gnome out of my skull. And for all those of you who do get migraines, I wish this migraine on you from now on. You'll probably enjoy it compared to your usual torment. This one just kinda tickles.

Respect.

I didn't watch the debate or MasterChef. I went to church.

If you're wondering, Jesus won.

I went to see Inception yesterday. I think it's probably one of the best executed films I've seen in years. Conceptually it's original. The idea of doing a heist movie and setting most of the action inside people's dreams is pretty huge. Dream sequences in film are usually rather lackluster. Either they're too absurd, or too inconsequential to the plot. Yet this film manages to pull off huge parts of the film in dreams, without them either becoming etherial and meaningless, or undream like. While you could be tempted not to worry about danger in a dream because "it's all a dream", Nolan manages to to make the audience genuinely care about the outcome of events without resorting to cheap Fredy Kruger tricks.

Christopher Nolan's direction is amazing. He keeps such a tight reign on what could be an extremely confusing story, that it comes off seamlessly. While it would be easy for a viewer to get lost in the film, it's made in such a way that you always know where you are unless you shouldn't know where you are. Some films which are so highly reliant on mind bending concepts mean that the viewer spends a lot of time saying "What's going on here? Where are they know?", yet this film is so cleanly done, the viewer can see three different scenes, in three different places, using the same characters in the space of 10 seconds and know exactly where they are and what's going on the whole time. The final half hour is some of the most tense, well edited, film making I have ever seen. Particularly worth watching is the zero gravity fight scene, which is so beautifully put together, amazingly choreographed, and fun to watch, it's probably the best fight scene in the past few years.

I know I'm not actually saying much about the plot, or themes, or characters, but I don't really want to. You really should see this film. It's not worth explaining, because it's too hard to explain well. Just go see it, because I said so.

I saw myself in the mirror today and realised what I'd look like if I were bald. I'm pretty sure my head is exactly the same shape as my Dad's - just less full of fatherly goodness.

So I didn't quite get that run done that I was planning on doing. Well at least not at the time I was planning to do it.

I woke up this morning, ten to six, and it was raining, and I couldn't find my earphones, and my iPod was in the car, and the car was in the garage. So I went back to bed.

But when I got home from work, I did that run. And you'll all be very inspired. I ran 7km in 42min. Which means were that the actually City to Surf I'd have a lazy 18 minutes to run the remaining 7km. Or to put it another way a little under 2 minutes per km off my pace tonight to beat 60mins. Easy.

If I beat this goal, they're gonna make a movie about me. The only way I can be more inspiring is if I was in a wheel chair. Or perhaps if my Dad was in a wheel chair and I was a quadrupal amputee, and I carried my Dad the whole 14km to fufill his dream of running the City to Surf before he died of some shrapnel that was slowly working it's way into his heart, after saving a baby during September 11.

The sad thing about this run was, my Nike+ sensor died because I hadn't used it in a year and three months. So I can't record the run on the internet. It won't make it into the snazzy graph, and it'll hurt my currently amazing stats. And the play list wasn't so impressive. Though I did run to MC Hammer for about a km which was inspirational. "You can't touch this."

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm not actually going to do 14km in 60mins. It's just always been a dream of mine. But I really do want to do it in less that 70mins. That was my time last time I ran the City to Surf, only 11 years ago. You only get better with age don't you?

by Saho Fuji from The Lion and the Mouse

I haven't read the book but I really like the picture.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting up at 6am to begin training for the City to Surf. I have two and a half weeks to get fit enough to run 14kms in under 60 minutes. That's the goal. If I actually try and achieve that goal these next two and a half weeks are going to be like a freakin' Rocky montage. Prepare to be inspired people.

My blog is getting a few visits from my work colleagues. This means I'll have to stop writing rude things about them here. Darn. The dream had to end some time.

I've noticed that some blog readers who don't see a lot of me in real life don't know where I work. This is because I have deliberately not told anyone. It could be because I work for the Government. But that would be too obvious. Because everyone knows that if you do something secret you work for the government.

No, I work for a Christian ministry organisation, which is a front for a government organisation, which is in itself a front for the R&D division of a dummy corporation set up by a charity run by wolves. Real wolves, that live the forest, hunt in packs, and organise to get tax-exempt status for their charitable works, those kind of wolves.

Of course I pretend I don't mention what organisation I work for just in case I say something that the people in the marketing division don't like ("Hello Marketing Division!"). Like for instance if I said that at work we regularly door knock the area and abuse people pretending to be from another religion, hoping people will join our religion because the other religion we were pretending to be was so horrible to them. We don't do that, but that might be the kind of thing that the marketing department would not like me saying on the internet if it was, in fact, true and I actually worked for an organisation which not just a front, for a front, for a dummy corporation of a K9ish charity. Really I'm just terrified of being hunted down and killed by a pack of wolves.

Anyway, I just wanted to say "Hello" to all my work mates and friends in the animal kingdom.

I feel like Lesley's comment was such a good and challenging comment, that it needs a post of it's own. Down below she wrote:

I wonder why comedy in preaching seems so important for many preachers? Let me be clear - this is a general statement to anyone who preaches, not Tom in particular. The sermons I remember best are those where I'm challenged to change. Not quite on the scale of fire and brimstone, but challenged nonetheless. Yes, a well-placed laugh can be effective, but jokes can also make for lazy, self-conscious preaching. I hunger for intelligent, thought provoking sermons. Raise the bar, I say. How do you want to be remembered? As a funny preacher? Or something more than that? Here's a challenge: Can you can deliver a sermon without cracking a joke? ... Let the flaming begin.

I must say this is something that I've thought about a lot. Obviously if you've heard me preach, or read my blog, you'll know that comedy is an important part of my preaching. I think there are quite a few reasons for having jokes in a sermon but I certainly don't think they're vital. You can preach an excellent sermon without one joke, Piper and Stott are both key examples of this. And you can preach a useless sermon which is plenty funny. I won't give you an example of that.

Pilavachi*, in a seminar, once said that there are three types of people giving extended monologues in secular society these days, politicians, lecturers and stand-up comics. Of those, stand-up comics seem to be the once who people are most likely to listen to.

While obviously that's a generalisation I think there is a lot of truth to the statement. The best stand-up comics are making a serious comment on society in a way that is more likely to be heard. Politicians should be the ones doing it, but we're all so jaded with their self-serving, narrowly focused rhetoric we've stopped listening long ago. It takes someone with truly great oratory skills, like Obama, to make people sit up and actually want to listen.

Comics, on the other hand, can demolish pretences and prejudice just by highlighting the absurdity of people's stupid behaviour and ideas. Good comics will make you laugh and make you pay attention to the world at the same time. Driscoll once said that the best lesson he ever got on preaching was going to see Chris Rock do stand up.

Now as far as preaching goes, I feel like comedy serves many different purposes.

Positively, and in it's most basic form, comedy relaxes and focuses a congregation. A few jokes early on can help people feel pleased to be listening to the sermon. A joke or two during some of the more theological bits of a sermon will keep people focused when they might be tempted to drift off.

Another useful tool of comedy in preaching is that you can use it to highlight sin without people getting defensive. In my experience, highlighting your own sin with a self-deprecating story frees people up to laugh at you, identify with you, and realise that they too are sinful the the same way. Often we laugh because it rings true.

Also in the context of self-deprecation, is when you use humorous stories about yourself to "un-sanctify" the preacher. Preachers can seem like spiritual giants when they preach. Sometimes this is because they use the sermon to highlight their spiritual strength or to give the impression of spiritual maturity. Or because, through no fault of their own, the preacher preaches well about spiritual matters and gives the impression they are accomplished in everything they're encouraging their congregation to do.

A self-deprecating story can go a long way in putting the preacher on the level of the listener, and hopefully, by contrast, show Christ to be the hero of the sermon.

Thirdly, humour will help hard truths go down easier. As Mary Poppins said "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Biblical preaching necessarily touches on some of the most painful parts of human existence. To tell people that they are sinners, deserving of God's judgement, is not an easy thing to do, and to be told you are an object of God's wrath, is not a nice thing to hear. A little humour, without diminishing the gravity of the truth can make things a little easier to hear, and give people a bit more good-will so they are more likely to listen.

Mostly I just use humour because it helps make listening to sermons a more enjoyable experience. While I sincerely believe that the greatest enjoyment in preaching is not in laughing but in seeing the beauty of Jesus, and the most valuable moments of preaching are not when people smile, but when their heart is broken by God convicting them, I do not think the process loses value or meaning if people are amused along the way.

However this is not to say that humour isn't used for unhelpful reasons either.

Negatively I use jokes to help with my insecurity about a message. I might feel like a sermon or talk isn't very good, so I'll add jokes to cover up the perceived lack of content or weight. Obviously this is a bad use of humour. It elevates my insecurity over my trust in God's word to be powerful, relevant and life-giving beyond the skills of the preacher. Plus it shows my laziness. It is an inadequate response to a deficient message. The answer is not to make more jokes, but to work harder to find God's voice for his people in the message he has given me to preach.

Also I use humour because it makes me feel good about myself. However high myself esteem is, it can always get higher. To have 100 people laughing at one of your jokes feel pretty good. And so the temptation is to make more jokes, so that more people laugh, more people think you're funny and you feel better about yourself. Comedy feeds my pride.

That's not to say that a sermon devoid of jokes cannot feed a preacher's pride too. The preacher will always be wrestling with pride and insecurity when they preach. They will always go to the pulpit with mixed motives. I think the task of any preacher is not to remove anything in a sermon which might make the preacher look good, or feel good about themselves, but to constantly seek the Holy Spirit to change their heart so that they recognise their own sin, and that it is only God's graciousness that they are gifted with any skills to preach at all. I think it's also a matter of praying that God might give you new desires, not to glorify yourself but to glorify him through your words.


Obviously, comedy is only a tool in preaching. It has its strengths and its weaknesses. The strengths are seen in funny preaching that is enjoyable, dynamic, insightful and God glorifying. The dangers of making jokes are that people will be more interested in having a laugh than in hearing God's word, and the preacher will be more interested in looking good, then showing how good God looks. When it comes down to it, I feel like the preacher should use the tools available to them as best they can. If you're good at being funny, then use it, for God's glory, to help preach his word. If you're not funny, don't be, because it makes everyone awkward and doesn't serve God, you or your congregation at all.

I try and use comedy only to help me preach. I try hard not to trivialise God, God's word or God's work. I try hard to help the congregation pay attention as much as possible so that they might be listening to God's truth. I know I've got it wrong in the past, and I will again. But I am sure that for me, at this time, the ability to make jokes is a gift God has given me to use, and I need to put it to service for him.

As far as Lesley's challenge to preach without making any jokes, I did it once. You can read about it and listen to it here. I might do it again. I probably will at some stage. If I do I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, that's my opinion on comedy in preaching. I know there's a good bunch of you out there who are both preachers and regular preaching listeners, what are your thoughts?

*Speaking of Pilavachi, this is one of his funniest sermons, it also serves as a great example of preaching that is both funny and important. It takes a little while to get started, but it's a good one none the less.

I just read this blog post from Justin Taylor about finding a Christian ethic of cremation and burial. The post talks about the need for Christians to consider the ethics for cremation, because it's something that more people are interested in. From what I can tell from the article it seems like it's generally a given in the States that Christians get buried. I assume this is because Christians have a hope for bodily resurrection, so burning a body is not really demonstrating that hope.

It was interesting to read, mainly because it's an issue I haven't really thought about before. The only time I've thought about the ethics of cremation vs burial is environmentally. I saw a video once about it (which I can't find now) saying that cremation is way more environmentally friendly than burial. So I've always just thought, "Hey, cremation sounds fine." But this article suggests that burial is the most Christian way to deal with a body.

I actually don't feel like it's a big deal. But what I do find interesting is that it's an issue where the assumption is made that most people will be buried. In Australia the majority of bodies seem to be cremated, and no one really talks about the biblical ethics of cremation. It's just not on our radar. It's one of the cultural things which has never really occurred to me, except perhaps when I've noticed in American movies that almost everyone is buried, but I figured it was just because grave-side funerals, in the rain with black umbrellas, are a whole lot more visually striking than a coffin going behind a curtain by some mechanical magic.

Anyway, I was just intrigued by just one more way we are culturally different from the US, which no one really talks about.

Then again, I'm basing all this on one blog post and a handful of scenes in movies, so I could be way off. Any American readers (if there are any) care to comment?

One thing I can say about the ethics of cremation vs burial, if there is a zombie outbreak, Australia will be totally safer to live in, because I'm pretty sure cremated bodies don't get infected by the zombie virus.

Photo by: Drewwh

Ryan and I went to see Predators the other night. It was pretty cool. It has spec ops guys and girls (well one girl), some criminals and a Japanese gangster, all stuck on an alien planet, being hunted for sport. How is that not going to be a fun movie? Especially when the Predator has a habit or ripping peoples' spines out.

You should probably go see it.

I do miss Arnie though.

So whenever I hear Usher's OMG on the radio, my mind gets stuck in an infinite loop. It happens when he sings the line "Honey's got some boobies like wow, oh wow."

The problem is I hear "Wow, oh wow" and I think "If you take the WOW, out of 'Wow, oh wow' you have an acronym for 'Wow, Oh Wow.' And then if you take the first Wow, out of that, you get an acronym for 'Wow, Oh Wow'. And then if you take the first or last WOW out of that..." And then, well, I just get stuck thinking about how in every "Wow, oh wow" there's another "Wow, oh wow" hiding at the beginning and the end of every line. It's like the fractal equivalent of RnB lyrics, it just goes on forever.

Still at least I spend all my time thinking about the infinite rabbit hole of acronyms, rather than about the boobies. But now that I think about it, he does say "boobies" which is pretty funny.

This could be one of the greatest YouTube videos ever!

Week two of preaching is done. Preaching in a new church is interesting. It's nice to have more than one go, and to see people more than once. I felt like the congregation was with me more this time. But it may have just been that I made funnier jokes, and I judge how much people are with me by how much they laugh. I'm totally shallow like that.

I made a joke about teenage girls loving hair straighteners and Taylor Lautner. Someone pointed out to me after the service that it was a rather sexist joke. I thought it was a rather broad, unfair generalisation of teenage girls rather than a blanket dig at their entire gender. It's interesting. While I did feel that maybe I should have been nicer to teenage girls and not painted them in such a shallow light, it didn't cross my mind that women in general might be upset. Funny that. I'll think that one through a little more.

Even though I was preaching on John the Baptist's beheading tonight and Herod's marriage to his niece features prominantly in the story, I was pretty light on the incest jokes. It was hard, but incest jokes while preaching are like digging for comedy gold in a mine field, there's a chance you could strike it rich, but you'll more likely kill yourself and injure many around you.

I'd rather people came out remembering Jesus, rather than remembering the preacher who made jokes about terrible things that happened to them in the past.

To tell you the truth, I didn't even want to make decaptitation jokes in case John the Baptist is sitting in heaven, watching and he's a little touchy on the subject.

If only you could preach and not have to worry about the people who were listening to you.

No one writes about this stuff in preaching books. I don't know why.


That said, I did enjoy preaching, and it felt like it went alright. I'm missing my church though. I haven't been there in weeks. I want to go back. One week left, then I'm back.

I just found a website that will turn my blog into a book. This is a narcissistic dream come true. I've always had secret hopes that people would come across my blog and say "Wow, that's amazing, that should be a book." And then some dedicated editor would go through all 3700 posts and pick the best ones, then make it into a freakin' epic. It'd be awesome. Well, now for a low, low price of $169.65 for the first volume (Dec 2002-Mar 2004) I can have my blog book, with no editing necessary. It's only 460 pages long. Woo!

To tell you the truth, I can't really be bothered making a book of my blog. But feel free to head over to the site and make your own book of my blog. Or in fact, you could just print it all out at home and get it bound at Kinkos. I promise, I'd sign it for you if you did. I mean, it'd be a dream come true.

Levi, the soldier who comes to live with us sometimes, just buzzed our buzzer. He buzzed for about 10 seconds so I assumed it was one of my housemates being lazy. I picked up the phone, said "Would you like to be any clearer?", didn't find out who it was and buzzed him in. I then opened the door to our appartment, walked away and sat on the couch. And in walked Levi, no housemates to be seen. Had he been a serial killer, I'd be dead by now. Or perhaps drugged and tied to the table and a about to have medical experiments done to me.

Happily he's not a serial killer, he's a soldier. And when he turned up, I just let him in. I'm French, what else would you expect from me when a soldier turns up on my doorstep?

Yesterday, on my way to my car to go to church to preach I had an encounter with a man who I have very little relationship with, wielding a shovel, who was very angry. He swore at me, and got in my face. I was pretty sure he was going to hit me, but happily he didn't. While I'm rather unsure as to how I upset him, I do know he really was upset with me. He seemed mostly upset about all the noise I was making disturbing him. Seeing as I had just spent the previous 25 minutes practising my sermon, in doors, in a whisper, I was pretty sure my noise wasn't the direct cause of his anger.

I learnt a few things in the encounter:

• Fight or flight needs a third option like "stand there and look confused as to why you're being attacked", because I took the third option.
• It would be totally disappointing to be murdered because I picked the wrong moment to walk to my car, rather than say, get murdered for my faith, or because I was standing up to a corrupt mafia gang.
• People really do use shovels when angry. This was something I had been pondering just the night before, as I was thinking about putting a joke in my sermon about someone hitting me over the head with a shovel. I thought perhaps it was a little obscure and I should find a more common household implement to be hit over the head with. But I left it in because saucepan sounded a little too Looney Toons. And then, to my small delight, I was vindicated in my decision to leave the shovel in, because as I headed off to preach the sermon with the shovel joke in it, a man came at me with a shovel. I also felt happier to make the joke. in light of my encounter I felt I had more permission to joke about such violence. Like fat people have permission to make jokes about being fat. Although really, for it to be a direct correlation in analogy it'd be potentially fat people making fat jokes, which I think probably isn't PC.

Well, as I mentioned, I went to see Eclipse today. I was going hoping for a massive pile of rubbish that I could smash with my eloquent and witty blog prose. But alas, the film was a whole lot better than I was expecting. It wasn't necessarily good, but it was a vast improvement on the last two films in the "saga", so I was almost enjoying myself.

Let me tell you what was good. The action was vastly improved. There was a training scene, where the vampires were training to fight other vampires which was fun to watch. Then there was a werewolves and vampires vs other vampires war, which wasn't bad, some good punches, throws and slow-mo. Plus there was a small army of vampires walking out of a lake like the undead, which was a cooler undead walk out of the water scene than when the army of the undead come out of the water in Lord of the Rings, or am I thinking of the undead pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean, I get those two bits confused because that undead army on LOTR was probably the dumbest bit of the trilogy and looked just like POTC except glowing green. Anyway, I actually thought the vampires walking out of the water was cool, which is really saying something.

Then there was the humour, which was at times intentionally funny. Like when Edward when confronted with a topless Jacob asks Bella "Doesn't he own a shirt?" It was self-deprecating humour which is certainly something needed for a saga which takes itself way too seriously.

Additionally Edward looked less like a cancer patient with big hair in this film. And it had some good shots. At very least it didn't look like a Celine Dion film clip.

What I didn't like about the film, was the fact that Bella, Edward and Jacob were in it. I still dislike them all. Especially Bella. She's a whiney, selfish, mopey girl. She just spends the whole time depressed about how much she's in love with Edward and how he doesn't want to turn her into a vampire. I'm pretty sure we established he doesn't want to turn Bella in the first film. Why we have to keep dwelling on it I don't know.

Plus she spends the whole time being totally selfish. She'll do highly provocative things in front of her boyfriend, like running away on a motor bike with another boy who is in love with her right in front of Edward. She spends long periods of time hanging out with Jacob just so he can tell her how much he loves her, while she insists she doesn't love him, until she kisses him. Argh! It's not even a film about dumb girlfriends. It's romance porn for teenage girls who want two strong men fighting over who gets to protect them better and show off their big abs and big hair, and Bella is setting a bad example for any teenage girl who might have even a hint of potential for femine self-respect in them.

Once again the film idolises relationships to the degree that Bella's total commitment to Edward to the point of turning her back on all her family and friends and is portrayed as romantic. Had the film been about a girl becoming a Muslim, cutting off her family, moving to Saudi Arabia and wearing a burqua for rest of her life, I'm not sure the film would seem nearly so romantic. Even if the Muslim husband was just as kind and loving as Edward.

As for the other characters, Jacob is annoying and broods as much as Bella mopes. And Edward spends his whole time looking sad and in chronic pain. It must be his cancer playing up again.

So can I recommend this film? No, not really. I still think the whole "Twilight" thing is decidedly unhealthy for the undiscerning (which may or may not include most of its teenage readership). And it has plenty of dumbness. But I am at least happy to concede that this film is vast improvement on the last two. It probably won't be the worst film I watch this year, though there's a good chance it'll make it into the bottom five.

I'm going to see Eclipse today. Considering last time, it promises to be another terrible cinematic outing. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm preaching for the next three weeks at Pennant Hills Baptist and I just noticed on the website they've got a graphic for the series. How exciting. I've never had a graphic before.