Its time. Enough pontificating, enough tentative toe dipping, enough doubt.
I am going to write a book.
I’ve decided, after lots of encouragement, that my (badly named) fictional blog Diary of an Old Fart might be worth a punt. I must be honest though, I don’t quite believe it.
Still, nothing ventured…
No matter how hard you try, you can’t baptize cats.
When your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her brush your hair.
If your sister hits you, don’t hit her back.
They always catch the second person.
Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
You can’t trust dogs to watch your food.
Reading what people write on desks can teach you a lot.
Don’t sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
Puppies still have bad breath even after eating a tic tac.
Never hold a dustbuster and a cat at the same time.
School lunches stick to the wall.
You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
Don’t wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
The best place to be when you are sad is in Grandma’s lap.
It’s hard to unlearn a bad word.
Ask Why until you understand.
It’s easier to see the mistakes on someone else’s paper.
A pencil without an eraser may as well just be a pen.
It’s only fun to play school when you’re the teacher.
Sometimes the best one in the play has the fewest lines.
Twelve is a lot older than eight.
Sometimes your best move is blocked by your own checkers.
Some nights it’s not worth fighting over who gets the top bunk.
Don’t expect your friends to be as excited about your “100″ as you are.
Don’t say that the “Last One is a Rotten Egg” unless you’re absolutely sure there’s a slow kid behind you.
If you don’t like the birthday girl, don’t go to the party.
Crawling still gets you there.
If you want a kitten, start out by asking for a horse.
Your room gets smaller as you get bigger.
You can’t start over just because you’re losing the game When you’re dressed up like a princess, it’s easier to act like one.
If a tree had apples last year, don’t expect pears this year.
One drop of black paint from the brush clouds the whole cup of water.
You can’t be everyone’s best friend.
A snow day is more fun than a vacation day.
All libraries smell the same.
Say grace.
If you want someone to listen to you, whisper it.
Sometimes you have to take the test before you’ve finished studying.
Silence can be an answer.
Ask where things come from.
If you throw a ball at someone, they’ll probably throw it back.
Don’t nod on the phone.
Knicked from Sue, who’s blogs are definitely worth a visit.
My wife and I argued yesterday. It was very unpleasant and I’m still reeling from it. I was attacked (unjustly I thought) and retaliated. Words were said which are now regretted.
On the train this morning, listening to music on my ipod, I had opportunity to dwell on the argument in my mind, and found myself spiralling downwards towards anger and resentment again. Fortunately I caught myself doing this and just stopped those thoughts. They were not helpful and had no place in my solitude, so I banished them.
It is that easy. The mind is a wonderful thing and we are much more in control of how we react to our circumstances than we like to admit.
Thanks to Sheri for my first Mulled Madness award. Here it is:
“These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”
The bad news is that I have to pass this on to 8, yes 8, deserving writers. The problem is despite my sense of humour, I am a bit introverted, and a man of few friends, so 8 it is a large number if I’m to do this properly.
Deep breath… here goes:
Adullamite – this time there is no question that you deserve this, you miserable bar steward.
Walking With The Father
Raging Rev
Sailing By Starlight
My Road As I Travel It
Silly Go Lucky
Word And Verse
This I Do
Actually that was surprisingly easy.
I’m reading Lee Strobel’s Case For Faith at the moment. I picked it up quite by “chance” in my Pastor’s library the other day as he was discussing football with my companion and I lost interest so looked at his library instead. It piqued my interest because I’ve read his other book Case For Christ which is one of the more satisfying books on Christian apologetics I’ve encountered.
I had gone off apologetics for a little while, mostly because I find that very often the discussions with atheists are too emotionally charged and end up being more abusive than truth seeking, and anyway I have enough to do just trying to be like Jesus in a practical sense. However, my recent encounter with Matt, who is now an atheist (of the less vehement sort) but used to be a believer, stirred things up a little.
So I thought I’d take a look at Hell as a gentle warmup. 
The objection is simply stated: How can the concept of Hell be reconciled with a supposedly loving God?
In other words, if God is loving, how can he have created a place so awful as Hell and punish for eternity a finite number of sins? There are other related questions but I’ll focus on these for now.
An awful place?
Hell is usually imagined to be a place of fire and brimstone, full of vile, cackling demons with pitch forks torturing screaming victims. Some of this imagery is also in the New Testament, but I think it is fair to say that these are images, figures of speech, not necessarily a reflection of the underlying reality. For example, the term for Hell often used in the New Testament is Gehenna, which was the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, a place of fire, smoke, stench, filth and worms. Can you image the affect of this image on the jews of the day? Hell is also described as a place of darkness, which cannot be if its permanently lit up with flames.
So if it is not like this then what sort of place is it? Is it even a place? I don’t know, but what is clear is that it will be separated from God, both by His choice and by the choices of those who didn’t want Him in the first place – a realm of evil without any of His restraint, any of His love. God has to by nature maintain a separation between pure good and evil. How could an infinitely holy God tolerate the presence of evil? The reason that Hell is so bad is that it is all that God isn’t. But in many senses this is a self-made Hell. If you don’t want God, He grants you your wish. Does He like Hell? No, definitely not. Did He create it? Yes, but probably as a result of the fall, not the original creation which He declared was “good”. Hell is a sad but necessary consequence of Free Will.
As for those who are genuinely misguided in their beliefs I think there is enough circumstancial evidence in the Bible to grant that at worst their suffering will be diminished, but at best that God will grant mercy to the innocent.
Excessive?
Is eternity in Hell for a finite number of sins unjust? The argument usually presented here is as follows:
Punishment for wrong is just, so no problems there. Punishment for wrong against an infinitely good God is infinitely bad, so infinite punishment follows. This combined with the above view that Hell is more a place of our making than a place of active punishment, resolves things enough for me.
I’ll leave it there for now. The book is excellent and to be recommended if you want a more detailed (and vastly improved) treatment of this subject than I can offer here.
However this unfairness would seem to extend to salvation too. If you think about it, its clear that not everyone in this world is given equal information about God, nor are people able to understand or even accept that information in the same way because of genetic or social limitations. Check out the Scriptures: God chooses as he likes.
All of this would be vaguely palatable if the consequences of not being amongst the chosen were less dire. Let’s say those who didn’t believe just ceased to exist, whilst the faithful were given eternal life? That wouldn’t be so bad right? However, this view (”Annihilationism”), which has some high profile advocates like John Stott, has to do some fairly fancy footwork with the passages about hell and eternal torment, so I’m not sure it holds water. Others, like C.S.Lewis, hold that Hell is not a place of active punishment by God, but a self-made place by those who don’t want God. In other words, God removes Himself and His love and controls over evil, and leaves the wicked to it. Can you imagine such a place?? Not sure its more palatable than fire and brimstone.
So is this unfair?
There are some good articles on this subject, but its a difficult subject.
This may be my last post if she finds out…
On another note, and since I have nothing much to say today, head over to Wayfarerjon for some soul stirring.
Have a great weekend!
“A man was once walking along the promenade in Brighton with his little grandson. They met an older minister. The old man was sadly disgruntled. Nothing in this world was right; everything and everybody was all wrong, and to make matters worse he was suffering from a slight touch of sunstroke.
The little grandson had been silently listening. When they had left the gloom-stricken old man and had walked on for a short distance, the little grandson said, “Grand-dad, I hope you never suffer from a sunset.” (William Barclay)
From the mouths of babes, eh?
As one gets older and wiser its very easy to settle into a general cynicism, self-centredness and crotchetiness that is frankly not very pleasant to anyone else, and even more frankly such people are more use as worm food. (Mental note: make sure they bury me with lots of garlic.)
On a lighter note, this morning I was in a world of my own as I walked to the train station and got onto my train. There was someone in “my” seat but I didn’t bother too much about that and, being the flexible sort that I am, I moved to the next seat. Then I noticed that the train was busier than usual, and that my usual fellow passengers were absent. Finally it dawned on me … and I sprinted for the door to get off the wrong train!
Mind you a day on the beach in Margate might not have been too bad, despite the cold. 
Its a beautiful day here in Kent, as my train trundles through dew-drenched, verdant fields of stupid sheep. All is well with the world after a very upsetting day yesterday when my daughter failed to make the 11+ cut for grammar school entry. Fortunately we are surrounded by good comprehensive alternatives so its not the end of the world, but it was her first big disappointment. We went through a gamut of emotions: guilt for perhaps not having done enough to prepare her, anger at a system that puts little children through such things, and mostly sorrow for our little ‘un. But God does comfort and I think one of the sheep just winked at me…
