Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

I forgot that Jesus is coming back.

I’ve been reading some stuff lately that’s been challenging me, making me question certain beliefs of mine (or rather, question some deliberately nebulous beliefs).  For a long time I’ve been dissatisfied with people for whom the gospel is solely about social justice: “Jesus doesn’t care who you’re sleeping/living with or what kind of language you use, He just wants you to feed the hungry!”  They’ve had a point, but have missed something.

I’ve also been dissatisfied with people for whom personal piety is the only game in town.  “Never mind the poor, they’re dirty sinners and while we’re on the topic, you’re a dirty sinner too!  Jesus wants you to clean up your act!”  They have something, but have missed the point.

Of course these are both caricatures but like all caricatures they have an element of truth.  My stance has been somewhere in between them, probably slightly more in the first camp, although believing that piety has a place.  Until now.  I’ve been reading a lot about worldview lately and struggling to reconcile everything.  I’ve had a sort of constant headache while I tried to process all this stuff and so today I turned to prayer.  Sad that I go there as a last resort but at least I can work on fixing that.  I was praying that God would help me sort it all out and unlock it when a random thought (or was it providence?) popped into my head:

“Jesus is coming back”.

And with that, things started to fall into place.  I’ve had a disconnect in my brain between earthly Jesus and heavenly Jesus.  I’ve separated earthly Jesus, who walked around in Israel and Palestine about 2,000 years ago, from heavenly Jesus, who was raised from the dead and is now in heaven with God… wherever that is.  The only problem with separating them is that they’re the same bloke.  Jesus the man and Jesus the God are the same, and the same Jesus who lived and breathed was bodily resurrected and will return and once more set foot on Earth.  He is concerned with sin (after all, he died because of it) and told people to repent from it and to change their ways.  The great commission in Matthew 28 says “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  Not just to obey the bits that you like about helping others and feeling good, but the bits about going and sinning no more.  The justice and the personal piety go together, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with correcting another believer if you think they’re straying.  Don’t hammer them about it, but let them know, even if only for your own conscience.

This stuff is starting to make me revisit the doctrine of creation, too.  It’s not as if I’ve ever doubted that God created everything through Jesus, but some of that evolutionary worldview had crept in and so I was seeing the future pan out in the geological timescale of billions of years, when who knew what would have become of humans by then but we are sure at least that the sun will one day engulf the Earth.  It’s a little bit empty, a little bit lonely, a little bit hopeless.  When I remembered that Jesus will return a joy welled up within me.  He (probably) won’t let the sun destroy the Earth, because he’ll be back by then and will make all things new.  Our God is a God of creation and restoration.  In Jesus He created, in Jesus He restored us to Himself and in Jesus He will restore the Earth to the glory it was designed for.  Am I a literal Genesis, six day creationist now?  No, I don’t think so.  I’m a step back from being a theistic evolutionist, though.  Is it possible that the evidence for evolution is being misinterpreted?  I’m back from “I think God probably used evolution as His creation engine” to “I don’t know how He did it but I know He did”.  Part of the doctrine of creation must be the sustaining of things by God.  I believe the whole universe is only here because God allows it to be.  He made it and He sustains it.  He ‘sponsors’ it if you will, and if He were to withdraw His sponsorship everything would cease to be.

Have I been a deist?  Have I believed that God is distant and other and that He’s not coming back?  How sad for me.  I’m fixed now, though, praise God!

I need to read the entire bible.  I have never really read that much of it, probably because of a lack of interest, a bit of arrogance (I know the basics), a lot of ignorance (the old testament is pretty much useless) and a lack of encouragement from any quarter.  Now, though, I’m beginning to understand that a biblical worldview will help me get closer to God and the only way to get that worldview is to read the bible.  Broken down into tiny units for study, or preaching, or proof-texting, the over-arching story can be missed or confused.  I want to see the themes unfold as I read and study.

Finally, to explain the title and first line of this post, that’s (obviously) a scripture reference, and one that I think describes the process that God has started in me.

God bless you all.

Wow, I just went to do a new post and finally decided I’d been nagged enough by WordPress about updating.  I clicked on the “Update WordPress” button, it asked for my ftp username and password, I entered it and seconds later here I am, fully updated.  Painless!

Now, what was I going to blog about?  Oh yeah, a good evening.  Carla picked me up from work and asked if I’d like to go shopping.  I always like to go shopping, so off to the mall we went.  Well, it was great!  We got cheeseburgers for dinner, we bought Carla some new clothes, we bought Rabbids Go Home for the Wii, we bought Pride & Prejudice (BBC production) on Blu-Ray, we bought Cranford & Return to Cranford on DVD, and finally I bought Carla a lovely necklace & pendant for her birthday.  She had to help me pick, I’d have been lost without her.  I’m hiding it now, though, and she’s not getting it until her birthday.

All this expenditure comes on top of my ordering a new video card today so I can properly enjoy Civ 5 when it’s released next month.  Woohoo!

Now it’s late and I’m repairing my youngest brother’s PC before the weekend when he’ll be down (I think).  Ash hasn’t seen our place yet, so that’ll be nice.  We saw him and Carly at the weekend when we had dinner with them on Friday night and watched the first half of the Melbourne vs Richmond game at the Camelia Grove Hotel in Erskineville.  Poor Ashley, his Tigers let him down again.  Carla was barracking for them for him, but Jonathan, Carly and I barracked for the Demons.

Oh well.  Ash’s PC is still going so I’ll go and watch some Civ 5 ads

With this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Once again, to assist the lazy among you, I will reproduce it here:

Australia can have stronger borders and a bigger heart

I have been reading the Sweet Poison Quit Plan all day, and Carla and I are ready to begin our sugar free lives.  It begins with the purge, and we have thrown away a great deal of what we had on our shelves.  Carla was a bit horrified to hear that I was planning this seriously, and that we wouldn’t be needing the biscuits for when we’d kicked the addiction and could have them in moderation.  If all goes according to plan, I won’t be eating sugar again.

So my blood test showed I have elevated sugar and liver function, so I’m going to try to break my sugar addiction and lose 10 kilos then will have the tests redone.

It’s lucky I don’t have high blood pressure, though, because PM Julia Gillard is engaged in a race to the right with Tony Abbott on asylum seekers that makes me so mad I want to yell and cry and punch people.  Julian Burnside QC wrote an informative piece in The Age which I think is so good I’m going to reproduce it here to make it easier for you to read it:

Comfort all who flee fear

We do not need to be protected from asylum seekers: they need to be protected from their persecutors.

Julia Gillard wants an open debate about refugee policy. Good thing, but let the debate start with the facts. So far this year, just 3500 people seeking asylum have arrived by boat in Australia. That is a very small number. If it keeps up at this rate, it would take about 20 years to fill the MCG with boat arrivals. We receive about 240,000 migrants each year, so one year of asylum seekers arriving by boat is equivalent to about one week of new migrants. We aren’t being flooded.

”Border protection” is a misleading term. We do not need to be protected from asylum seekers: they need to be protected from their persecutors.

Border control is a legitimate concern, but is irrelevant to the discussion. About 4 million people arrive in Australia each year by orthodox means: they come for business, holidays, study and so on. If 5000 a year arrive without prior authority, it is absurd to suggest that we have ”lost control” of our borders. Our borders are close to watertight.

Asylum seekers do not commit any offence by coming here. Under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights every person has the right to seek asylum in any territory they can reach.

Recent arrivals are mostly Hazaras from Afghanistan and Tamils from Sri Lanka. They are fleeing persecution. The Tamils from Sri Lanka are fleeing genocide.

The Hazaras are an ethnic minority who have been persecuted in Afghanistan for several centuries. They are Shiite Muslims. The Taliban are Sunni Muslims. In the past few weeks, Hazaras have been summarily executed in the streets by members of the Taliban. The Karzai government is either unwilling or unable to control the Taliban: that is why our troops are there.

When she was voted leader of the government, Julia Gillard said that she could understand anxiety in the public about boat arrivals. Given the scaremongering that Tony Abbott had been engaged in, she made a fair point. Once the facts are recognised, it is less easy to understand that anxiety.

Australia has signed the Refugees Convention. Indonesia has not. Asylum seekers who get to Indonesia live in perpetual fear of detection. In Indonesia, asylum seekers who are assessed as refugees may wait 10 or 15 years before they are offered a place in a third country. In the meantime they cannot get jobs and their children cannot go to school.

Not surprisingly, some of them – those with initiative and courage – place themselves in the hands of people smugglers and end up in Australia.

So the question is, what should Australia do with people who arrive here by boat seeking asylum? If we are to have an open debate on the matter, let people declare their positions. Recent responses range from shooting them out of the water as they approach, to welcoming them in with no questions asked.

I prefer a middle position. It is reasonable that they should be detained initially for identity, health and security checks. After that, they should be released into the community on conditions that will ensure that they remain available for processing and (if necessary) removal. They should be brought to the mainland. As recent experience in Leonora shows, there are plenty of regional and rural towns that are willing to receive them and stand to benefit from their arrival.

This approach is decent, humane, and consistent with our obligations under the Refugees Convention.

There are suggestions that the Gillard government will return Afghan asylum seekers to Afghanistan, with promises from the Karzai government to protect them. It is clear that the Karzai government cannot control the Taliban, and neither can America. Sending Hazaras back to Afghanistan would be tantamount to murder.

It is easy to forget that the Fraser government received about 25,000 Indochinese ”boat people” each year, without a murmur from the community. A generation on, I doubt that many Australians would doubt the wisdom and decency of that policy. The main difference is that Fraser had bipartisan support. Unfortunately, Tony Abbott is willing to play political games with the lives of desperate, terrified people who have had the courage to flee for safety.

A consistent line of attack from Abbott is that every boat arrival reflects a failure of policy. In Abbott’s world view, a perfect policy would keep refugees out of Australia. But that is in conflict with the purpose of the convention, which is to share the burden of refugees among all countries, rather than leaving them as a problem for countries next door to the trouble spots.

Some people reading this will think: ”Well, they should wait their turn.” But what would you do?

If the roles were reversed, and you and your family faced persecution at the hands of the Taliban, would you queue up in Kabul for a decade or so waiting for another country to offer you protection?

Or would you run for your life, and do whatever it took to get to safety? I know I would run for safety. And if I got to a convention country, I would ask for protection.

Would you do any different? Can you blame others who run for their lives and ask for our help?

Julian Burnside is a barrister and a human rights advocate.

I was talking to my excellent friend Garth about my weight, and the need to do something new to fight it.  I mentioned having seen this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, and despairing about the minefield of ‘health food’ in our processed food society.  Garth mentioned that he’d recently heard an interview on the ABC’s Conversation Hour that was on this topic and was fascinating.

I listened to David Gillespie’s interview and then checked out his website and blog.  I have ordered his two books (Sweet Poison and the Sweet Poison Quit Guide) and am preparing to break my sugar addiction.  I’m excited about this, because so much of what I read on David’s sites resonates with me.  I can relate, and I know what he’s talking about.  I do eat when I’m not hungry, I have known for ages that my love affair with sugar was a problem and (and this is the kicker) after my blood tests last week my doctor wants to discuss the results with me.

I’m going to the doctor on Tuesday and will hopefully be told that it’s not too late.  With luck I’ll have the books by then and can begin my sugar-free life sooner rather than later.

Forgive me if I’m cranky for a little while, and wish me luck!

Is it just me or does this name chill the blood and evoke thoughts of the Final Solution?

It appears that Coalition leader Tony Abbott has decided to revive this failed policy of the Howard Government’s.  Australia has enshrined in law its obligations under the UN refugee convention, that anybody coming to our borders and making an asylum claim is to be sheltered while their claim is processed and if it’s found to be legit they’re granted asylum and if it’s not they’re deported.  The idea that anybody can arrive illegally is completely stupid and it makes my blood boil that the media, some politicians and the great unwashed masses of Australian dickheadery still think it’s illegal to arrive here by boat.

The Howard Government’s excision of migration zones stinks of the Pharisees who interpreted the law to suit themselves and the Rabbis who came later and made ruling after ruling to determine what was and wasn’t OK under the law.  “Can I rescue my donkey on the sabbath if he falls into a pit?  Yes, but only if it’s less than an eighth of a mile to the pit or else that’s work…” becomes “We have to protect these people if they come to Australia, but what if we change what counts as Australia?!“  I can imagine the orgy of self-congratulation they engaged in on being so bloody clever.

Many of the people involved in this scam (more on that soon) claim themselves Christian.  Well, what of welcoming the stranger? What of the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25?  Tony Abbott says today that he doesn’t want to punish desperate people in search of a better life, but rather Kevin Rudd.  That’s an admission that his policy will punish people who’ve done nothing wrong.  I wonder if I should believe him, is that comment ‘gospel-truth’ or is it not one of his carefully considered, scripted remarks?

As for the scam, boat arrivals in Australia didn’t actually fall under Howard’s policy.  The boats were intercepted and the people sent to Nauru for processing at a cost of some $500,000 per detainee.  Despite this fact Mr Abbott is trumpeting something about “illegal boat arrivals” (wrong again, Tony, stop saying it) costing us $82,000 each.  $82,000 per boat?  Compared to your half a million dollars per person?  Do you even know how to argue?  The financial cost is nothing compared to the cost to people’s health (esp. mental health), both of detainees and the guards who worked there.  And so how many of these master criminals were turned away?  Very few.  90% of them were eventually proven to be genuine refugees and brought to Australia anyway.  HOW MUCH BLOODY MONEY could we have saved, not to mention creating jobs in Australia for processing staff, not to mention NOT irreparably damaging our nation’s soul, if we’d just brought the people here in the first place and treated them humanely and expedited the investigations into their claims.  No, we had to hide them overseas, languishing in a hell-hole for years in some cases, paying blood money to corrupt foreign governments to maintain the pretense that “we will control who comes here and on what terms”.  History check, Liberals: WHITE ANGLO SAXONS WERE THE FIRST BOAT PEOPLE!  Perhaps there’s good reason to fear the boat people, as look what we did to the traditional owners…

I am sick to death of being told to fear and loathe these poor desperate people who are coming here for our help and protection.  If you want illegal immigrants, go to Bondi and find the poms, New Zealanders* and other lazy white boys and girls who’ve overstayed their student and holiday visas.  People who can afford to go home, and who don’t face death and other retribution if they do.  Some facts about asylum seekers.  Read them.  READ THEM!

It’s not all bad in the Liberal party, despite the best efforts of the mad monk.  Petro Georgiou, Judith Troeth and Russell Broadbent all oppose the plan, and if you do too you should let them know that you support them.

I’m so angry about this stupid, stupid policy.  Angry!  The Liberal Party needs a few more years in opposition yet.

*Edit 28/5/2010 – Meags points out that New Zealanders have every right to be here, just as we can freely go there.

Blogging is so time consuming and difficult to do from my phone.  So I’ve joined Twitter and will be ‘tweeting’ as the mood strikes.  Don’t look for anything too deep, that’ll probably remain here.

In the meantime, look me up here.

From my wife in her comment on my last post has prompted this one.

Yes, that one was quite boring, but I was at work and pushed for time.

Carla and I are having a little break after our first shift of babysitting, we’ve got until 4pm Sunday before the kids are in our care again.  They’re going pretty well considering their strange family situation.  Mairead’s fairly hard work but Hamish makes it all seem easy.  This morning he was playing with the toy lizard I gave him for Christmas and I noticed that its legs were missing.  I asked him where they were and he replied “He grew out of them”.  I laughed and laughed.

Carla’s come down with something so I put her to bed after tea and have been watching Ashes to Ashes which is back on now.  I’ve downloaded the first five episodes and am playing catch-up.

Riding my bike last Friday night I couldn’t properly see where I was going (due to my craptacular front light) and ended up riding through a drain that flattened both my tyres.  I’ve invested now in a pair of Ay-Up lights, which are essentially like a headlight for the bike.  They’re very bright and I shouldn’t have any more problems riding at night

We’re off to Narellan tomorrow night for dinner for mothers’ day.  It’ll be the first real visit we’ve had there since we married so that’ll be nice.  Next weekend we’re going to Canberra for the footy and to visit the Axelbys, which will be good too.

Oh well, that’ll have to do this for now.

I mean really, who has the time?