pondering grace.

Today I read an article in the Briefing on the “princess” phenomenon. The idea of the princess has never been more popular, writes Kerrie Newmarch, particularly when it comes to the idea of “princess-hood” embraced by various churches.

Newmarch gives some helpful insights into the princess lingo, pointing out that it fosters a belief that women are the sole focus of creation, when in fact creation is designed to bring glory to God. A more appropriate response, she writes “would be to praise God rather than self after gazing upon his handiwork. Such instances should humble us as we realise God’s goodness in choosing us and bestowing his grace upon us, not because his creation was lacking but because he is good.”

There are a few niggling questions that bother me.

Does focusing on the glory of God mean completely eradicating any sense of self that we have? How do we balance the coalescing of identities with the Psalms, which says God knows us and the number of hairs on our head, that we are beautifully and wonderfully made? Is heaven made up of individual people or a million carbon copies of Jesus?

Sometimes, we want so much to destroy the idol of self-worship that we go to complete lengths to call us unworthy, unloved and repulsive, save the grace of Christ. While this is true (how Paul’s own words of his own sorry state without Christ echo in my own heart!), there is little said about how realisation of this truth gives birth to joy, security and feelings of worth. To put it in another way, we are great at beating ourselves up about our sin, but offer little guidance on how the grace of God leads to contentment with who we are.

When we lose ourselves to Christ, we find who we really are, that is, our true sense of identity. This leads to joy, peace, satisfaction in God’s approval (won through Christ), contentment with ourselves. Christians aren’t to hate themselves; we aren’t called to continually flagellate ourselves over our sins.

Yet, I think there is sometimes a gap in our teaching that leads people to feel burdened and guilty in their walk with God. It’s like we feel the weight of our unworthiness, the measure of Christ’s grace, the freedom of being saved....but our theological teaching stops there. We miss out on the renewing power of the Spirit, the continual grace that fills our journey as Christians, the gifts that God bestows on individual people (as outlined in 1 Corinthians – surely that shows we are individuals?). Women in particular feel the brunt of this, they can feel inadequate, guilty, burdened, unable to say no, needing to please others, hating the way they look (and then, hating the fact that they hate the way they look, as they should be "focusing on their inner beauty").

We know we are saved by grace, but do we understand what it means to live by grace?

The church in Acts 2

We've just been thinking in a lecture about a Paper written by Tim Keller called "The Church Planter Manual". In it he spends a lot of time thinking about the model of church in Acts, especially Acts 2:42-43. At one level he has some helpful thoughts and is obviously trying to make the Bible his authority, but having read Justin's post on Acts 2, I couldn't shake a wariness of trying to achieve Acts 2-like churches in our contexts. I'm going to mull over this for a while.

Away for the weekend

It's our church weekend away this weekend. We're heading to Stanwell Tops conference centre. Should be great! The content for the weekend is going to be shaped around the Pierced for our Transgressions book which has come out recently(ish) - which means a weekend considering the atonement.
Will post some reflections on it next week - along with some more thoughts on Broughton Knox's biography - which I've almost finished reading.

pictures of you.

I have never cried in a television commercial, until I saw this one.

What a brilliant campaign.

internet-based research.

I think Google will one day be my downfall.

I've been using the Internet a lot lately as a research tool. Normally I don't rely too heavily on the Internet (and I never use it for the bulk of my research), but when I'm strapped for time it's so much easier to Google something rather than call the appropriate person, leave a message on their voicemail, wait for them to get back to me, etc.

So this week, when I had to check a particular condition for a medicolegal case I'm writing about, I searched on the net and came up with "acute stomatitis", only to be corrected by a doctor that it was in fact "acute cholecystitis". Oops.

I'm also in the habit of checking name spellings by using Google and doing the "three hits" test (as in if the spelling comes up in three different links, it must be the right spelling), but I've still managed to get names and titles wrong. Good thing none of these have gone to print.

My biggest rebuke came from Crossfire last sunday. I had done a search under "prophecy" to find some examples of outlandish and funny predictions that have been made in the last hundred years - just to illustrate a point I was making. After giving some examples, the youngest member of the group put up his hand and said, "my teacher says you shouldn't believe everything on the Internet".

Haha. He got me.

Guthers has a new blog

Love the title. Go and say gday to him.

Swimming.

I've finally found the form of exercise that works for me.

Perhaps I should have realised this earlier (since I spent a good 10 years in squads while at school), but I'm just slow to work things out. It's swimming.

Over the last few years I've tried weights, running, fitness routines, and a few others, but none ever worked or lasted for me. Until now.

For a good month now, I've been hitting the pool up to 3 times a week and am feeling great. Today on the way home from the pool I was wondering what it was about swimming that made it just right for me. This is what I came up with:

1. You don't get all hot and sweaty (at least you don't feel all hot and sweaty).
2. It's low impact - my knees and ankles get all sore when I've run lately.
3. It's cheap. And even cheaper now that I've got a student card.

There's only one problem. When I go running I can think about all sorts of things, processing, conceiving and arranging ideas in my head. But while swimming I can't think of anything except: "Okay this is lap one........ still lap one..... almost over... yes - lap one down... Now for lap two... and so on up to 25. This is all that went through my mind for 40 minutes this afternoon!

Nothing is perfect it seems!

self esteem and the christian.

In less than a month’s time, I’ll be giving a seminar Self Image and the Christian (or something to that effect). I’ve been told that the seminar is for women, but other than that it’s a pretty broad canvas, which is daunting.

I had some spare time today at work, so I started mapping out all the different issues and questions that surround the concept of self esteem for women:

· How can we put our value on the inside rather than external beauty when society often encourages us to do the opposite?
· What is the right and godly way to see ourselves? What exactly is a healthy sense of self esteem?
· If we belong to Christ and our identity is found in Him, is there such a thing as “self esteem”?
· What does the Bible have to say about self-image, other than telling us not to “think ourselves more highly than we ought”?
· How can we reconcile knowing that we’re sinful, yet being “happy” or “content” with who we are? Does acknowledging that we’re sinful mean detesting ourselves, as God detests sin?
· How do we have a healthy view of ourselves when our sin causes us to despair?
· How does our self-esteem affect the way we view others (often, girls with really low esteem compensate by putting others down, boasting, jealousy, etc)
· How can we overcome low self esteem when it is brought on by other people/situations? (e.g. being bullied, past sexual abuse, negative parents, verbal abuse from a partner)
· The Bible says a woman’s glory comes from the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit – what if you’re not a particularly quiet person?
· What do we like about ourselves? What do you we put our confidence in? Intelligence? Beauty? Talent? Riches? (a good way of asking this is, “if I lost my ability to ……. Then would I still feel like a complete person?)
· How much is our own self-esteem dependent on how others view us? Do we rely on other people to make us feel important?
· How do you view your identity when our identity is found in Christ?


That’s just to start off with!

Some of these I have some inkling of the answer; others I have absolutely no idea. Most of these I still struggle with on a personal level.

Does anyone have any ideas, books, passages, studies or thoughts on where to start? Any issues I haven’t covered?

eat this root.

Hehe. Found this quote while researching a story. It made me laugh.

2000 B.C. - "Here, eat this root."
1000 B.C. - "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."
1940 A.D. - "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."
1985 A.D. - "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."
2000 A.D. - "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root."

-Author Unknown

glossy porn

Every week, all sorts of Australian magazines are sent to my office at work. Part of my job is to be up-to-date with the latest offerings, so I’ve flipped through most of the titles, which include garden magazines, lifestyle titles, men’s interests, fashion and celebrity gossip rags. The ones I like to take home with me are the up-market women’s magazines, food and fashion/design titles, in particular Marie Claire, Vogue, Vogue Living, In Style, Delicious, Taste, Shop ‘Till You Drop and Grazia (a weekly fashion title to be launched in Australia later this year).

A disclaimer: I really like magazines as an overall medium. One of my dream jobs would be to work on a high circulation consumer title as a features writer or editor. I also think there are a lot of great things about magazines; they can be inspiring, creative and a format for some of the best writing I’ve ever read. But that’s not what this post is about.

When I read magazines like Vogue, my thought-process goes like this:

1. ooh, cute designer jacket.
2. That would look really great with my black dress.
3. Hmm…I’ll just check how much it is.
4. $2999. And moving on. (this same pattern goes for homewares, furniture and designer houses)

Are magazines just another form of porn, these glossy pages that cause my eyes to lust and my heart to desire over beautiful things I can’t have?

Titles like the Shop ‘Till You Drop normalise mass-consumerism, to the point where women think it’s normal to have a wardrobe bigger than your bedroom, to go out and buy three pairs of shoes just because they’ve had a bad day at work. “I dress to impress” boasted one sassy fashion PR, who was featured in a special article on dress style. Another boldly claimed she “dressed to fit in with the girls”. “I dress for the boys” said another (my curves drive them wild!), while the fourth dressed for herself only. Sure, it’s a fashion and shopping magazine, but it was like being transported back to the 50s, where a woman’s best asset was only what you could see on the outside.

Now that the Bulletin has gone under, even magazines with great content - like The Good Weekend or the Australian magazine - promote a way of living defined by beautiful houses, luxury goods and expensive holidays (all eco-friendly, of course). The people profiled are the rich, beautiful and powerful. If Sydney is a city known for its plastic glitz and glamour, then Sydney Magazine is its biggest billboard ad.

Sex aside, there are a number of similarities between pornography and our favourite glossies. They both display pretty things in an artificial fashion. They both say “look, but don’t touch”. They make your own life seem drab in comparison to a hyped-up reality. Like Carrie’s fantastical wardrobe in Sex in the City, they cause you to desire things that you cannot have, that no real woman ever has.

And if magazines are like porn, what does that make me?

Am I the one who reads it “only for the articles”?

reading on the train.

We’re only up to February and I’ve already achieved something spectacular for the year: I’ve learnt how to read on the train.

I realised my problem was that I’m an extremely fast reader, so reading at my normal pace while on a moving train was making me dizzy. When I slowed down to about half my normal pace, I felt fine.

Now one-and-a-half hours every day, time previously spent staring out of the window, trying to remember if there’s basil in the fridge or eavesdropping on other people’s conversation, can be spent absorbed in a book.

Last month, I finished Atonement on the train and truly loved it – such a beautiful story and so well written, with wonderful interlocking themes (if you’ve read it, I really like how Briony’s desire for forgiveness leads her to mirror the journey Robbie goes through in France, plus the cool little ironies slipped into the text, like how Robbie and Cecilia often make assumptions despite blaming Briony for the same thing. The ending was also quite clever as a concept, but I don’t think he pulled it off completely as it seemed a bit abrupt and out of place). I savoured every word, especially one that goes something like “he ran through his memories of her until they were bleached dry from overuse”. I wish I could write like that.

I’ve also just finished reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (read that one on the plane) and finally read the last few chapters of Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy.

sunday night.

Haven't been writing in a while. It's not because I've been busy, but because I've been feeling tired and uninspired lately. I was chatting with my Dad after Kevin Rudd's "sorry speech" and he asked me why I hadn't written anything about it on the fountainside. I admitted it was because my mind has been on the small and everyday lately. There is nothing wrong with the little things - life is often significant because of the small and everyday - but it doesn't make for very interesting reading.

Church was thought-provoking tonight. Dominic gave lots of insights into Genesis 34 and the rape of Dinah, which I've always a difficult passage to grasp. I loved how he spoke of fathers taking care of their daughters and how by not listening to God and going straight to Bethel, Jacob falls into the path of sin. After showing us how weak and indifferent Jacob, his violent sons Levi and Simeon, perverted Shechem and scheming Hamor are not examples for us to follow, he took us to Hebrews 12 and spoke of how who are to fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who is the complete opposite of these characters (not to mention myself). I think I had tears in my eyes at this point.

Now it's nearly 11pm and I'm staring down the barrell of another week, hoping I'll get all my work done before our church's weekend away next saturday. I've decided, after some careful thinking, that I'm not going to do any more freelance work this year. Even though I enjoy it, the money helps and it apparently will help further my career, I hate seeing the things that really matter to me become compromised because of all this work I'm doing. I want time to see more of my friends, family and other people in my life. Add to that the things I really want to be pouring a good amount of energy into outside of my job - Crossfire, bible-reading and prayer, a talk on self-image I'm giving at the CCC Houseparty over Easter, some editing stuff for church which I still - eek - haven't started, dance classes (Bonnie if you're reading this, when is ballet starting? I'm still keen!) and excercise...

Reading: An enigmatic Life.

I've been getting through this book rather quickly this weekend. My parents gave it to me earlier this year but I haven't had a moment to look at it until yesterday. I'm 100 pages in, and finding it fascinating, despite it's clunky writing style.
There have been so many tit-bits of history and trivia about Sydney and the Sydney diocese that I have enjoyed discovering.
For example - the But-Har-Gra property in Croydon (still owned by the diocese and used these days to house Moore College families) was at one stage intended to be used as a "Bible School". It was hoped that prior to studying in the academic environment of Bible college, students might try their hand at ministry in a more practical manner at the school. Broughton Knox's father David was to be the founder and principal of the school, but it never got off the ground due to some diocesan and academic politics.

The writing style is disappointingly awkward and at times a little confusing. In particular, the style of the anecdotes, (many of which are humorous or insightful) just haven't quite captured my imagination in a way I can see they might have.
But on the whole I'm finding DB Knox's story an engaging read - will post some final reflections when I finish off the book.

Restaurant Review

Tonight Soph is reviewing a restaurant in Chatswood. I love these nights, because I get to tag along as her date. We did a couple of these last year, and had some great nights out!

Basically it's a chance to go out for a free date, eat the most expensive stuff you can find on the menu, drink beer and wine, have dessert and get the best service a place can offer. And all it costs is 400 to 500 words.

It's the perfect way to spend the night before my first college exam.

Anyway, the place tonight is called Rocket. It should be lots of fun.

Greek New Testament

As of today, I became the owner of a shiny new Greek New Testament. Despite not being able to read that much of it, (although Mark 1 is slowly becoming pretty familiar) I'm excited!

I'm especially excited because I didn't have to pay for it. It was a gift to all first year students from the Bible Society of NSW - which is pretty generous when you realise that there are over 100 people in first year. In the next few weeks they're going to fix me up with a Hebrew Old Testament too!

Anyway I have my first greek exam this week - better stop writing about it, and start reading it!

working from home.

Over the weekend Sam and I went to Moore College's weekend away. I wasn't sure what to expect (cordial and compulsory fun? sitting with the spouses and yarning about breastfeeding?), but I had such a good time. We met some really lovely, great people and I was so encouraged - maybe even a little relieved - by how normal and down-to-earth most people were. It was fantastic.

The day after, I packed my bags and headed to Auckland for a three day work-trip. This was fun too, but in a different way. I sat in lots of taxis and visited heaps of agencies, design studios and most of the major television networks and publishers in the city. Interviewing people was mostly interesting, boring at one point (I nearly fell asleep) and a little daunting. It's hard enough trying to engage with people in such a complicated industry with so many players and business wheelings and dealings, even harder when the industry is not your own. It was fine when all I had to do was ask insightful questions - usually they involve repeating something someone said and saying, "can you elaborate on that?" - people love having their own opinions reflected back at them. Even harder when they asked me for my opinion. I'd fudge and stall and stumble, while inwardly panicking. For those who have watched Bridget Jones, I felt like she did when her boss - can't remember the name but Hugh Grant's character - mentions the author she has been talking about is in fact dead and an expletive fills the screen!

And now I am working from home (love my flexible boss), along with Sam who is writing his talk for Crossfire and doing Greek homework. We are distracting each other with emails, though. Above is a picture he just sent me.

Crossfire Starts this Sunday

New Venue. New Kids. New Leaders. Same Gospel.

Should be a blast. I'm preaching on Matt 5:13-16 on Sunday morning. Please pray for us as we get going for 2008.

Two untruths.

Sometimes it's difficult to correct a practice until someone puts their finger on the thinking that is driving that practice. Generally it's people who are older and wiser who can do this for you.

Here's two things that I have taken, albeit subconsciously, to be true.

1. "Only the spontaneous is 'real'."
2. "We are smarter than the generations that went before us."

Both are untrue - and quite ridiculous when you think about them for a while. Someone helpfully pointed this out to me today.

But take some time to talk to many Christians today and you'll find that thinking like these two untruths, attained osmotically from our culture, are the governing elements in much of the thinking regarding something as important as church practice.

"Oh I don't like participating in a prayer book service - it doesn't feel real - it's not spontaneous". Or "People will be kept away from the gospel if we use a liturgy - it's outsider unfriendly" - as if no evangelism was accomplished between 1552 and the late 1970's.

I do understand some of the sentiment in both of those examples. But I'm keen to make sure that in my thinking, and throughout the decision making process in a church I'm not governed by generational arrogance or captive to my culture's addiction to pragmatism, spontaneity and immediacy.

Confidence in Scripture

I spent a good part of tonight hanging out with a good friend whom I'm meeting to read the Bible and pray with this year. We've decided to supplement our Bible reading with a chapter or two of Concise Theology by J.I Packer. I did this once before with another friend and it was a great way to get stuck into reading some theology.

Tonight's chapter was about the Scriptures and how we can have confidence in them as the word of God. I was particularly encouraged by the power of God's word. In Psalm 33:6 God creates the universe by his word - the "starry host by the word of his mouth". It's amazing to grasp that it is this same breath that brought into being the scriptures - "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" (2 Tim 3:16). God's breath is powerful to create the world, and to inspire the writers of scripture.

Still here.

Hello faithful readers - if there are any of you still out there.

I've been chided by three people in the last week for not posting anything on thefountainside of late. We'll try and rectify that soon. The main reason for the lack of posts is that 2008 has brought some changes which have made our lives a little busier of late. Soph is working a new job which is somewhat more demanding, as well as taking some freelance work on the side.

For me, I've been finding my feet at Bible college for the last little while - loving it so far, but not quite in the groove of regular life yet. On top of that, Crossfire begins again for 2008 this Sunday, so I am working on a talk and admin for this term as well as trying to fit in some time studying around that.

If you're the praying kind, perhaps you could pray for us in a time of re-adjustment, that we would trust our heavenly Father, know his goodness and delight in him.