Mulled Vine

I have not been blogging for long so perhaps I’ve missed the fundamental point but here goes…

I sometimes receive requests to exchange links or add others as friends or favourites on some blogging community. The idea seems to be to generate traffic and I guess for many … some income via their blogs.

I don’t blog for income, so my links to other websites are ones that I actually visit, and my friends are actually bloggers I like the look of or have something in common with. Surely if one exchanges links and friendship willy-nilly does this not lower the real value of those links and friendship?

I don’t get it.

I have just spent a long weekend in Belfast with a bunch of blokes. No, it wasn’t a drinking weekend, though they do some fine Guiness and Irish Stew up in Northern Ireland!. It was a Christian men’s conference called The Mandate and the “blokes” were 40 or so men from my church.

It was superb. Robin Mark leading 4000+ men in worship is enough to blow anyone away and I certainly was. And that’s before the excellent teaching had even started!

What follows is a list of random things that really struck me – my spiritual “take aways” if you like. You might want to beat your chest in a manly manner whilst reading them!

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Don’t let life waft over you like a series of uncontrolled events. Choosing is an extraordinary spiritual activity. Your choices, not your circumstances, define your life. Engage (with Christ, Family, Church and Work)! Take the initiative and believe that God will meet your challenges. What we do in life echoes in eternity. Be passionate about life!

Learn to live in uncertainty and risk. The greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The statement “the safest place is in the centre of the will of God” is false – Jesus’ disciples are not safe in the wordly sense of the word.

Measure your life by what you do, not by what you don’t do (i.e. sin).

Two voices cry for your attention: the Crowd and the Cross – which will you listen to?

God is the source of all beauty. We have become used to pig swill. Jesus has come to give us life. Be alive! Be extraordinary! God makes our tragedy beautiful in its time. Are you too afraid of the tragedy to experience the beauty? Trust your life to Jesus and He will make everything beautiful in its time.

Don’t live in the misty lowlands of mediocrity – fly like an eagle.

Your life should be like that of a child on a flight of stairs leaping into thin air into the arms of his father.

Who’s life are you going to touch this week?

Man needs: a cause to die for, a challenge to embrace, loved ones to protect. Be a soldier of the cross, a man after God’s own heart. Our battle cry should be like that of the gladiators of old: “Strengh and Honour!”

A man after God’s own heart:

• lives his life for an audience of One (we’re under new management, ouposts in alien territory, citizens in a different kingdom)
• acts on his beliefs
• is obedient
• prepares for conflict
• studies the Word
• guards his heart, not just his behaviour
• lays his life on the line – engage in the journey and let God set the destination.
• makes a stand
• serves and protects his loves ones – try outserving your wife for a month for NO expected return
• focuses on what’s important
• leans into his fears. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the absence of self.
• finishes well

The antartic explorer Ernest Shackleton is alleged to have posted the following ad in the newspaper:

“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”

I was over at Sailing By Starlight this morning and saw a wonderful post on Childhood.

I’ve copied two of the quotes here:

Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows. ~John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells

I’d give all wealth that years have piled, The slow result of Life’s decay, To be once more a little child For one bright summer day. ~Lewis Carroll, “Solitude”

Jesus has much to say on this too.

I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. (Matthew 11:25)

And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)

Sailing By Starlight’s post really spoke to me. My constant doubt and questioning are indeed part of my “dark hour of reason”, and I long to have Faith like a child, if only for one “bright summer’s day.”

In the news this morning, “Conservative leader David Cameron is expected to call for the law to be tightened to ensure that more men charged with rape are convicted.” and is quoted to have said “To my mind, this is an example of moral collapse.”

I don’t understand how a secular society can speak about morality in this way, for the simple reason that secular society defines its own morality. When you ditch religion the way the UK has you can’t complain that morality is declining because you have ditched the absolute moral framework required to do any comparisons at all.

A secular society’s morality just is. Its neither good nor bad, just a reflection of what the majority believes.

Cameron is by implication appealing to a higher law, a law that is outside the opinion of society, a law that can only exist outside of time and space, in the hands of an absolute Law Giver.

I was doing some clearing out this morning and found the following. Those of you who have been following my musings will find that this sums up my views on how we should approach talking about Truth very nicely.

Ground Rules for Dialogue

• We will respect each other’s thoughts and ideas.
• We will avoid judging each other’s motives, intelligence, and integrity. We will set aside our urge to label each other. While being hard on problems and issues, we will be gentle with people.
• We will expect everyone to say what is believed to be true, realizing that cynical mistrust is the major dynamic behind all failed communication. Since most opinions have at least a bit of merit, we know we best communicate with each other when we really listen to what the other person is saying.
• We will resist the temptation to be absolutely right. We will often be tentative and reflective so that just maybe we can move from “cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty.”
• We will be patient and kind, not boastful, arrogant, or rude. We will avoid speaking in a judgmental voice that implies superiority and rejection.
• We will speak for ourselves without apology and use I-statements to let others know what we see, hear, think, and feel.
• We will look for points of agreement as well as notice places of disagreement and we will avoid implying or saying to each other, “you are wrong.”
• We will accept disagreement as okay. We will be patient with the process of change in our own thinking and behavior and with the thinking and behavior of others.
• We will listen carefully and occasionally pause before we respond so that we can say back in fresh words what we have heard another saying. We will attempt to understand what others are meaning to say.
• We will seek to be open and growing persons, sensitive and flexible enough to be touched by the thinking and actions of others.

As a brief clarification on my previous post…

I believe the Bible teaches that sex outside a heterosexual marriage union is wrong. This is regardless of whether you’re a horny heterosexual, a frustrated husband, or a lovely homosexual. All cry: “Unfair! I was made like this, how can it be wrong?”, but God’s boundary remains.

I have been on holiday at home for a few days and was treated to some fine daytime televison. One of the chat shows raised the following news item about a couple who despite an unblemished record of fostering almost 30 children have had a child taken away from them because they, as Christians, refused to sign new sexual equality regulations. Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages.

One of the remarks on the chat show was that this sort of anti-gay attitude was contrary to Jesus’ teachings about love.

What annoys me about this sort of statement is the usual complete misunderstanding of the relationship between Love and Justice. If someone does wrong, then they should be punished appropriately, regardless of whether we’re meant to love our neighbour or not. In other words, loving our neighbour does not imply a complete tolerance of any sort of behaviour on their part. When my children do wrong, then I discipline them in love. A failure to set any boundaries on their behaviour, or to enforce those boundaries, would be a failure of my love. Children need boundaries. We need boundaries.

The issue here is that the boundaries set by the couple conflict with society’s view of what’s appropriate, and in this case even to the extent of breaking the law. Our God-given boundaries are being eroded by a society that is becoming more and more God-less, and who’s laws (which reflect the conscensus of that society) are starting to be at odds with what we Christians fundamentally believe to be true.

Are my children to be taken away from me because I raise them in the Christian Faith??

I’m an individual and am deeply suspicious of personality tests like Myers Briggs that place you in type buckets.

However, I saw a post by Prudent Musings (which by the way is an excellent blog) and thought I’d have another go.

The Myers Briggs system classifies people in terms of the following pairs:

• Extroverted-Introverted
• INtuitive-Sensing
• Thinking-Feeling
• Judging-Perceiving

So for example I am an INTP, though this has changed over the years which is interesting.

The thing about being placed in a bucket is that when you read the descriptions of what people in the bucket are like, you realise that you’re not weird, that there are others like you, and discover things about yourself that were perhaps not immediately apparent. So in my case, some of the descriptions from here are very enlightening:

INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.

INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to almost anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves.

Mathematics is a system where many INTPs love to play, similarly languages, computer systems. Understanding, exploring, mastering, and manipulating systems can overtake the INTP’s conscious thought. This fascination for logical wholes and their inner workings is often expressed in a detachment from the environment, a concentration where time is forgotten and extraneous stimuli are held at bay. Accomplishing a task or goal with this knowledge is secondary.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one’s conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition. In this way INTPs are markedly different from INTJs, who are much more confident in their competence and willing to act on their convictions.

Thanks for bearing with me, I’m getting to my point. This last type characteristic says much about my perspective on the truth. I have difficulty stating with conviction that I have THE TRUTH, whereas others of you don’t seem to have any difficulty in this matter. I’ve always thought my faith was faulty in some respect since it lacked that 100% conviction. Perhaps, though, I’m just being what God made me to be.

If you fancy doing a test yourself, this one is free, though I’d advise that you read some type descriptions as well since tests are fallible. If you’re a regular reader, feel free to let us know what type you are.

This weekend we went to IKEA.

If you’re a British husband, this 4 letter word can strike fear into your heart.

Why did we go? Because my youngest daughter needs a new bed and contrary to what you might think, only IKEA seems to have the right beds. In my opinion they have very nice beds at the local Furniture Village 2 miles away, but no, it has to be to IKEA.

Our “local” IKEA is 30 miles away, a part of a huge shopping complex that serves as a Retail Mecca for millions. It provides hours of “fun”: queuing on the roads, endless browsing, queuing for bite to eat, more browsing, queuing at the tills, and finally, with the day mostly over, the long drive home with thousands of fellow shoppers. And then to add insult to injury, there awaits the hours of frustration as I try to assemble my purchases from the very compact flat packs with obscure instructions that seem to be for completely different products!

So why do I regale you with my tale of woe? Because something unusual happened.

In preparation for our pilgrimage and the anticipated purchase of a fine, and dare I say it, unique IKEA bed, I had to put the roof bars on our car and look for our binding straps. I have a wonderful collection of such straps, accumulated over the years because I constantly misplace them and have to buy new ones. Yet, once again, the blessed straps were missing.

I searched “everywhere” in our garage, through heaps and heaps of chaos. Eventually I gave up in disgust, resigned myself to yet another strap purchase, and turned to exit the garage. As I turned, there was an almighty crash behind me as a basket tumbled from the top of one of our chaotic heaps to the ground. I turned around patiently, thanked God for giving me the opportunity to grow, bent to pick the basket up, only to find it full of my missing straps!

Now you would be within your rights to attribute this to blind chance, as improbable as it is, but I would like today to thank my God for the little things in life.

I don’t normally read self-improvement books, apart from the Bible that is, which by the way I can highly recommend – its a best seller! But I digress. Last year I read one of Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits” books. Its an excellent book, full of thoroughly Christian principles.

The most memorable of these is this one:

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

This line is worth reflecting on and stapling to your heart so you don’t forget it. Its not just a guiding principle for communicating, but for relating to people in general. We are so quick to judge and inflict our views on others, without first understanding fully where people are coming from.