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Wombat Rock13 augustus The Mt Isa RodeoHi everyone,
Well I got to Isa safely on friday and have since settled in nicely. It has been great to see the rest of my group again and to catch up with them all. Today we went to the famous Mt Isa rodeo (its the largest rodeo in the southern hemisphere you know). It has been on all weekend, but today we actually got in amongst the dust and dirt for a real cultural experience.
The rodeo ordinarily costs $25 to enter, which I think is personally a massive rip off, but we got in for free because we were volunteering to help out at a fish and chips stall that was raising money for leukaemia. So we worked there for our 4 hour shift and then experienced some of the other festivities. Rodeos are strange places, probably more because of the people in them than the activities themselves. I have never seen more flannel and denim concentrated in one place in my entire life. Not to mention the leather boots, akubra hats and belts with buckles so large you would probably drown if you fell into water. Not that drowning is a problem out here of course. Its so dry that in the last 2 days my skin has completely dried out to the point where I have to use moisturiser. I'm not a moisturiser kind of guy.
As for the rodeo riders themselves, they must be an interesting bunch. For the uninitiated I will describe. You put a crazy man on a very angry 1 tonne bull with nothing but a rope around it so you can hold on (but your only allowed to hold on with one hand) then you release the bull from its stall whilst simultaneously shocking it in its nether regions with a tazer. This makes that angry bull start to buck in an attempt to throw his only slightly cumbersome onto the ground. The rules are simple. If the crazy man stays on the bull for 8 seconds, the man wins. If the bull throws the crazy man off in under 8 seconds, the bull wins. If the crazy man wins he gets points for the quality of his ride and for how hard the bull tried to buck him off, and the crazy man with the most number of points at the end of the day wins. I think the rules have to be simple because you would have to be a pretty simple minded fellow to think "Hey, that 1 tonne beast with massive sharp horns looks angry enough to kill me. I think I'll jump on its back, zap it in the balls and try and hold on! Look mum, one hand!"
Whats more, these bulls are actually bred and raised specifically to be rodeo bulls. I don't know exactly how they do that, but I think they are fed on a diet of small children and broken glass.
One such bull is a legend, nay, a demi-god of rodeo riding. Or so the locals would have you believe. His name was "Chainsaw." Apparently in his career spanning many years no one was able to stay on him for the 8 seconds. The locals speak about him with such pride! When I inquired as to what happened to him, the mood changed instantly from one of fond memories to one of total sobriety. "He died," they said, sounding almost half surprised that such an animal could actually die, then added "but all is not lost. They got some good sperm off him." Oh, good, I thought. The legend of Chainsaw will live on with his grandson, Band saw!
But enough of the local items of idol worship; by far my favourite part of the day was the rodeo clowns. Now, continuing the lesson from beforehand, when the rider eventually comes off, the bull is understandably still rather unhappy, and proceeds to attempt serious bodily harm to its previous cargo. Sometimes the bulls succeed, which is when rodeos get really exciting for me (cos I go to the ED :)). But it is the job of the rodeo clown to distract the bull from the rider and to come after them instead. I wondered to myself, how does one get into this line of work? How much do they get paid? How many times did they get kicked in the head by a bull before they decided to take this as a career path? All interesting questions, none of which i found the answer to. But alas, if ever one is feeling down about their lack of intellectual ability, refer them to a rodeo. They will no doubt return feeling much better after seeing people who are clearly much stupider than they. I mean seriously, every creature on earth has the sense to get out of the way of a very angry animal 10 times their size (except kangaroos on outback roads; see previous blogs), and here they are trying to get the bulls attention. The whole process boggles the mind.
Now call me boring, but I really can't think of much I would less rather with my sunday afternoon do than sit in the red dirt in the hot dry sun and watch some idiot ride an animal that has been trained to throw him off. Why would somebody do that? It appears, as I have always suspected, that Einsteins quote rings true:
"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former." 10 augustus Isa boundHello my little chicken eggs, how are we all today?
Just thought I would give you the update of life. Today is my last day in Longreach - I'm leaving tomorrow for Mt Isa...hoorah! Longreach has been a really good experience but I'm definately ready for a change and also to catch up with the rest of the group who are currently there. But alas, where I really want to be is home in Townsville (hence the double-meaning in the title, I'm bound FOR Isa but I'm also bound TO Isa...I'm just so clever). I will be in Isa for 3 weeks which I'm assuming will feel like a really long time because I'm looking forward to coming home. But I guess I will try and make the most of it.
Anyway If you're a Townsvillian you can look forward to my return on the 1st of september, but if not I don't suppose you care much where I am becuase I'm a long way from where you are anyway! Hope to see you all soon; if I have more interesting travel experiences tomorrow I will be sure to fill you in. 31 juli Roman CatholicismThis is not a post to incite debate but rather to see the way prodestant christians (or roman catholics, if there are any reading) view the Roman Catholic church. This has been an issue for me over quite a while, trying to decide if I should include the Roman Catholic church in the body of Christ. Let me explain.
The bible is quite clear about what makes someone a Christian. It says that If you confess Jesus with your mouth and Believe in your Heart that God raised Him from the dead, then you will be saved. As Christians, we submit to the Lordship of Christ and accept that His sacrifice alone can atone for our sins before a righteous yet loving God. There is no other way to achieve salvation.
So I guess the question is does the Roman Catholic church follow Jesus alone? Do they accept His sacrifice for their sins? Do they believe that God raised Him from the dead? Do they confess Him with their mouths? If so, then surely we must accept them in the body of Christ despite disagreeing over certain peripheral issues. However, if this is not the case then we must treat them as we treat other non-christians...with love, as evangelistic opportunities, but nonetheless not as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Now I do happen to think that the Catholic church and a catholic person may be completely different. I know people who claim to be catholic who are certainly not christians, despite the fact that they claim to be. I know people who are catholic who certainly are christians, despite the fact that I disagree with some of their doctrine. However this is not a discussion over individuals but on a global level. Are the doctines of the catholic church Christian doctrines, and are they on a wide level adhered to? This is the question that I put to you. I would love for you to be forthcoming with your opinions. Any antagonistic, predjudiced or just downright stupid comments will be deleted, so don't waste your time. Let me know what you think. 28 juli Art therapy?Evening all. This would make 3 blogs in about 2 weeks, I must be bored or procrastinating.
Anyway, I thought I would write about an interesting new form of psychological therapy that I came across today at a Breakfast meeting with the Longreach Dr's. Its called "Art therapy" and it happens when someone with a low-grade psychiatric illness goes to see an "Art therapist" (one came into the meeting to explain this to us) to paint and draw their emotions to their hearts content and then explain them.
Now, this is interesting. Those of you who know me know that I'm a pretty straight down the line kind of fellow. I have no tolerance for airy-fairy rubbish. I say things how they are and do things that will accomplish goals. As you can probably tell, art therapy doesn't sit very well with me.
I'm not saying that art therapy won't do anything to help anyone. There are some people out there who express themselves in this manner, and that is fine. If this helps you to express your emotions, good for you. My problem is that there are a very small percentage of the population who think like this, people who think like this by and large are already artists. Its a very abstract and lateral way of thinking that most of the population just don't get.
However, Q health in all their wisdom has decided to make this "art therapist" one of the allied health workers working for the RFDS out of longreach. The RFDS! Dr's and nurses who fly to remote places for medical emergencies or people who need medical attention. I can just imagine the call out: "Quick, to the plane! Someone in Doomagee needs some art therapy, stat!" What a joke. These people have real mental illnesses and getting them to draw stuff isn't going to help.
Now what really gets me is that this "art therapist" as far as I can tell has no qualifications other than being an artist. She just gets people to draw and then explain their emotions. A 4 year old can do that. They have psychologists here for real mental health cases who can help people with their emotional problems. If art is one way that people do that, then the psychologist can help with that. Surely we don't need our tax payer dollars going to an unqualified fruitcake who's mind never progressed on from that last high she had in 1969. Well, thats probably a bit unfair, but you catch my drift. She did seem a bit...airy up there.
Medically, there are many problems with this. Firstly, purely from a level of clinical evidencel, there is none. No studies have been completed or even attempted. And there aren't any plans for any either that I'm aware of. That makes me mad. Dr's are supposed to be referring patients with real mental illnesses to a totally untried and unfounded therapy. Its a joke.
Secondly, the psychological principles that it works off are flawed. It works on the idea of expression of emotion, which is important, but that is where it stops. Effective emotional and cognitive behavioural therapy operates not merely by the expression of emotion but by the reflection on those emotions and the coping mechanisms given to deal with these emotions. It's not an exact science, noone is claiming that it is, but at least it has a lot more scientific backing than this.
I've only just scraped the surface of this mental illness stuff, there is way more to it as you can well imagine, but to me this is just another slide of the health system into a post-modern rut that will take a long time to get out of. When we start breeding health care professionals to think this way, the health of the people in this country will take a dive. Convential psychiatric therapy isn't great, I know, and it needs to be looked at. But at least we are thinking about it in the right way. 23 juli Kangaroo - Australia's only cullable national emblemMore travelling adventures from the chronicles of Joel. I hope you're excited.
This weekend's adventure was from Longreach to rockhampton and back for the wedding of the lovely couple Brooke and Jon Miegel. More about that later.
My journies began 5:30 yesterday (saturday) morning in Longreach with less than a 1/4 tank of petrol, which was signifcant because it was only then that I realised that Longreach has no 24 hour service station. If I was going to make it to rocky on time for the wedding, I had to leave then. So I just hoped and prayed that I would make it to Barcoldine and that a servo would be open there by the time I got there, because I wasn't going to make it any further. However, the 106 km trip to Barcoldine (or "Barky," as the locals refer to it) had its own problems. Because it was dark, the roos were out in force. (For my foreign readers, "roo" is Australian slang for "kangaroo.") In that short journey there must have been at least 200 kangaroos that I saw, and that is no exaggeration. And at least 30 of them jumped across the road in front of me. It was no small miracle that at least one of them didn't end up plastered to the front of my car. I like double negatives, leave me alone. So the trip that should have taken me about 55 minutes during the day actually took closer to 90 minutes in the early morning. Not a good start to the trip. At least I found an open service station Barky.
The only thing that surpassed the amount of live kangaroos was the amount of dead ones. On the trip back, I must have seen at least 300 of those. They were everywhere. I also saw some other dead native australian and imported wildlife. The count was 2 echidnas, 1 sheep, 1 koala (I think, it was pretty messed up), several foxes, a wild boar and the odd goat. One of the roos was still kinda twitching when I drove past. I thought about turning around to put it out of its misery, but then thoughts of Charlie and Irene from the movie "Me, myself and Irene" trying to put daisy, the prize cow, out of her misery filled my mind and I decided against it.
Just as an aside, if someone could find a way to market some cost-effective divice to keep kanagoos and other wildlife off the sides of the roads, they would become an overnight millionaire. Everyone would be happy. The Government would be happy because it would reduce the road toll (Not sure on the exact figures, but at least a few deaths a year must be attributed to hitting kangaroos at 100km/h), the RSPCA and greens would be happy because it would reduce the kangaroo road toll (apparently thats over 250000 roos a year just in NSW!), the truckies would be happy because they wouldn't have to clean their bull-bars (which really should be called roo-bars, i didn't see ANY dead bovines) as much, and I would be happy because I would make millions from my brilliant invention. I guess the only people who wouldn't be happy are those employed by main roads to clean up the roadkill. Although, I can't imagine that being a very satisfying job, so maybe they would be happy too.
Anyway, enough about that. The rest of the trip was really quite nice, despite finding another blaring misnomer (these rural towns like naming things wrongly, I think they're a bit slow aye) in the town of Emerald, who in fact mainly mine sapphiers. Go figure. The wedding was very nice, Brooke looked like a princess and they were very happy together. Much fun was had and I got to catch up with a few old friends who I hadn't seen in a while. I also got to stay out on the coast at yeppon, which was very nice. Seeing the ocean again after 2 weeks in the outback was so very nice. I'm definately a coastal kid.
Despite all my humourous observations about the outback (well, I thought they were humourous at least, and yes I also laugh at my own jokes), its still quite an amazing place. Although it is predominantly flat, dry and in most other ways completely unremarkable, the monotony still has a strange beauty about it that I can't quite explain. Just driving home today, there was a cloud front coming through just as the sun was going down, and it made for a spectacular picture. The rays of sunshine broke through the cloud in stunning rays seeming to display the majesty of the One who made it. It was really quite incredible, so I stopped and took a picture, though I doubt that it will do it justice. The other amazing thing out here is the stars in the clear night sky. With no smog and not much light out here just makes the stars appear that much brighter, its incredible.
Well, thats me done. I bid you good day. 17 juli Travel DiaryI know I haven't blogged in a long time, but I wrote this for a friend then figured I would post it here for all to read. My travels of late have been very interesting, so have a read.
4:30am on Monday of last week I arose to begin my long journey to Mt Isa for the start of my 8 weeks of prac. 4 adjectives would describe that drive – long, flat, straight and long. It wasn’t until I got to Cloncurry that I had to remember what the steering wheel was used for, so when I got there I put it to good use.
This is in great contrast to my recent escapades through New Zealand, where the snow capped mountains rose up through the clouds to the heavens as you looked up from your car window. As you looked down you saw the expansive lakes that were so clear yet so blue it seemed almost paradoxical. Looking to the sides you saw the thick green rainforest with the waterfalls and ice crystals with beauty that defied imagination. The magnificence of Creation in all its wonder and majesty, proclaiming the Sovereignty of God.
And then there is Outback Queensland. Brown planes for as far as the eye can see. And then some. Dead kangaroos and other various livestock (or dead stock, if you will) littered the roadside. 60m road trains speeding past with the 5th trailer fishtailing onto your side of the road. Oh, the tranquillity.
Upon opening the door in Mt Isa, I was greeted with the lovely smell of sulphur hanging thick in the air. The drinking water the colour of bottle blue due to the high amounts of copper makes the thirsty road-tripper reach for the trusty water bottle carrying water from good old Townsville. But not to worry, I’m assured that all the really bad stuff (like Uranium) is heavy enough to sink to the bottom of the water supply. What a relief.
Now, Mt Isa is a bit of a misnomer. It is as such because there is no actual mountain there. At least, not any more there isn’t. Apparently there used to be, but it has been so extensively and meticulously blown up and mined that what was Mt Isa is now a hole in the ground. So yes, Mt Isa is, both literally and metaphorically, a hole. After a week on “Isa time,” I began to realise that my plans for an expedient escape to Townsville for the weekend weddings was slightly optimistic. My plans to leave by 11am on Friday turned out to be 1pm, so I didn’t see the bright lights of Townsville until 10:30pm on Friday night (through much rain, mind you. Yes, rain, in outback Queensland in the winter. Just for me to drive in.)
But alas, the trip was well worth it, much fun was had, wine was drunk and dances were danced. Church was fantastic in both services, and I realised how much I really do love Townsville and, in particular, the Baptist Church there. I very much want to stay for the next two years, but it’s entirely possible that I will get balloted to Mackay for 2 years, but His will, not mine.
Anyway, this morning I left at 7 for Longreach. Half of this trip was back out the same road to Isa, and then making the trip south once I hit Hughenden. The trip south was an interesting one. You see, the road between Hughenden and Winton is termed a “development road,” which, I can assure you, is another misnomer. It is such because development implies that there is active work occurring, and I’m quite sure that no development has been done on that road since Edmond Barton realised that Outback Queensland just wasn’t a worthy investment, and that Australia becoming a federation was in fact much more important. (I’m fully aware that cars weren’t actually invented when Edmond Barton was in power, but don’t let logic get in the way of a good rambling).
Folks in Winton are a bit strange, especially their farmers. Fences are, it seems, a foreign concept to them. There are many cows just lazing around on the side of the road; no fence, no farmer, not even a dog. Just cows. Many, many cows. Perhaps farmers in this region just share their cows. It wouldn’t surprise me. They are all very kind out here. Every driver you go past (and there isn’t that many) waves to you as if you were a recent acquaintance of his or hers. I quite like this. It’s a nice change from the hand signals you get in the city, the heritage of which lies in the French revolution (ask me about that later if you don’t understand, its an interesting story).
And as I sit, I have arrived in Longreach and have done all the settling-in things one has to do when staying in one place for a month. Gone grocery shopping, met the doctors and kicked my shin into the rock garden conveniently placed in the middle of our lounge room. It feels very much like home now.
However, my travels are far from over! This weekend I will embark on a two day round trip to Rockhampton for yet another wedding. “I love weddings, drinks all round!” - Jack Sparrow. Despite the obvious long kilometres and harsh terrain, I am quite enjoying myself. A little too much, in fact. Study has taken a back seat like never before, but hopefully all this spare time I will have in Longreach will be put to good use instead of annoying you with my life story.
So there you have it. If you made it to then end, I commend you. You clearly have either way too much study to do and are procrastinating or you are bored out of your mind. 09 februari Lethal humourAs I'm sure you are all aware, there have been some recently publish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed (the top dog in Islam) as a terrorist. These cartoons were made by some Danish writers and were, apparently, quite funny (I haven't seen them) because newspapers all over the world thought it pertinent to publish them too.
Now I am fully aware of the sensitive nature of this topic, however some things go to far. Muslims all over the world have been rioting etc because of 12 little boxes containing a meant-to-be-humourous comic. It is probably in poor taste, granted, but its not worth burning the dutch embassy in Iran over. Nor it is worth muslim nations cutting off Denmark from trade and practically declaring Gihad on them.
Now there are two major problems that I have with this. Firstly, its a complete overreaction. Turn on the television and you don't have to go far to find someone depicting the Lord Jesus as, well, anything really. Comedy Inc comes to mind, every episode they have a 5 minute segment insulting the Person of Christ. Personally, I hate it. But there are right and wrong ways to go about things. As a Christian I will write a letter to channel 9 and take it from there, not go and burn down channel 9 studios.
Secondly, Muslims really aren't doing much to help their cause here. The defend the fact that their leader is depicted as a terrorist by performing terrorist acts. Hmmmm. I think that tells us something, don't you? At a time when Islam was starting to regain a bit of respect in society after 9/11, they have done more to ruin that now than they could with any terrorist act in my opinion, because the reaction is so irrational.
Now I am not saying that the cartoons should be printed. It probably falls under religious vilification or some crap like that. My point is that 1. its an irrational overreaction that has done so much more to harm Islam than the cartoons have in themselves and 2. if in fact it is wrong to print cartoons like that then I want the heresy about Jesus taken off the tv as well, not because I'm going to blow someone up about it, but because its the right thing to do from societies point of view.
"Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with Good." Romans 12:21 07 februari Time for another oneOk, so here I am, sitting at home, and I have just started uni this week. And I'm sitting here thinking, what is worthy of a blog? Well, I found something. Muffins. Muffins are just awesome, they are tasty and they make me fatty happy :). In fact, I think I want one right now. Just a pitty that I dont have one. Oh well. A scone would go down equally well. With Jam and fresh cream. MMMMmmmmmmmm. But I dont have one of those either. The closes thing I have is bread, which is decidedly less exciting. Well now that you have all seen just how bored I am, I'm going to go. Do do do do do. Do do dooooo do do do do. Ok I'm really going now. 03 januari Breaking the silence for a worth cause.Yesterday I heard on the news that the labor party and the greens of Byron Bay have combined to pass a law to outlaw the flying of the Australian flag at the beach of Byron Bay. The reason for this is that they are worried that the Australian flag will incite racial violence and perpetuate the local gang wars between Lebonese and Anglo-Saxon Australians. Now, I'm not the most patriotic person going around, but I do love my country and I must say that this ruling makes me sick.
Firstly, we are living in Australia. To outlaw the flying of the Australian flag in ANY place for ANY reason is absolutely unacceptable. We are a nation in our own right, and a people who love our country. Our flag is the representation of our great land and the great nation that is Australia.
Secondly, if our flag is going to incite racial hatred IN OUR OWN COUNTRY, then whoever doesn't like it (our flag, that is) can leave. Better yet, they should be exiled. If you hate our flag, then you hate our country since our flag represents our country. So get out of our country. Ill even lend you my boot up your backside to give you a bit of momentum to help you out.
Thirdly, I suspect that the flag has nothing to do with the racial violence (if it does, see the above point), but the spineless politicians in power in Sydney somehow think that by laying down their own patriotism they will help the situation. This is absurd. It all comes back to the age old attitude that Australia is a "multi-cultural society". Now, I have no problem with experiencing other cultures in Australia. I think those cultures make Australia a very rich place. But the idea of multi-culturalism has so destroyed our own culture that most people are now too frightened to suggest that we even HAVE our own culture. Well I have news for you. We DO have our own culture, and we need to rescue it from the clutches of spineless do-gooders who seek to destroy it in the name of keeping the peace. We need to stand up for own country and the ideals that our country was founded on. I think this event really displays how much of a post-modern disaster the attitude of this country has become. Our founding fathers would weep.
Matthew 5:9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." I'm a firm believer that peace has to be MADE, not KEPT. Peace is not something that happens naturally, it has to be worked towards, and once we have it, we have to work to keep it. Rolling over and taking down our flag is NOT working for peace, its compromising on something we should never compromise on because we dont want to put in the hard yards and make the hard decisions to make the peace. Now before those of you out there who aren't Christians have a go at me for involving God in a political statement, I have news for you too. Australia was built on Christian foundations, and God is part of our culture. This isn't some far our religious statement, its a fact. Our National motto is "In God we trust." And if you dont like that, then you have the right to leave too. 30 juni what is a blog anyway?Hi all Im really tired at the moment and in a random mood...much to random to blog about anything deep and or meaningful. So instead I will put this question to you...what exactly is a blog anyway? First lets just mull over the word blog, thinking about it for a while. Blog. What a crap word. I mean seriously, blog. Who the hell though of that, Blog. What the blog. That blogs me off. Blog. Pft.
However in my searches I've discovered that this little word isnt made up by our friends at MSN as i suspected it would be. In fact it is a new word in the english language created entirely for this pupose. An online dictionary described a blog as:
This is interesting. I never knew that this blogging was an established pastime. But apparently in the new age of technology and online geekiness blogging is the new....well i cant think of anything that blogging has taken the place of, rather its just a new tool of procrastination. And I for one say hoorah! If this world doesnt have enough of one thing its things with which to procrastinate. So heres to blogging. And to procrastination. And internet geeks. And cows.
"God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in trouble." Psalm 46:1. 24 juni Post-modernism...Todays religionHi again all,
Todays lesson will be on post moderism. For those of you who dont know what post modernism is, its the thing that comes after moderism. More specifically, its a particular way of thinking that dominates western society. This "there are no absolute truths, everything is relative, if it works for you then it works for you but not for me, you cant tell me that Im wrong its my opinion" type thinking. My purpose today is to show the stupidity of this thinking. First of all, post-modernism by its very nature cannot exist because it breaks its own fundamental rule - there is no absolute truth and everything is relative. You see, a post modernist will use this all the time to say that "you cant force your opinion on me." The problem with this is that by saying that what they are essentially saying is that "I can force my post modernist opinion on you but you cant put yours on me." Let me show you what I mean. In order for post modernism to work, you need to accept that there IS a fundamental truth, that everything is relative. But post-modernism by its very nature rejects this claim and says that everything is relative. So post-modernism only works if everyone is a post-modernist and operates on this point of view. As soon as someone disagrees, they are told that they are wrong because they dont believe this only fundamental truth. Who, I ask, came up with this fundamental truth? Even if you can manage to get past this utter stupidity and continue in post-modern thought, I am going to show you now that there are in fact absolute truths. The idea that there isnt is ridiculous. You walk across a street, and there is a bus coming towards you. Either the bus is there or it isnt. You can believe all you want that the bus isnt there but its still going to hit you. Its there. Its real. Its absolute. The same thing happens with God. Either He is there or He isnt. Either Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to earth as a sacrifice for sin and is now the Lord of all or He isnt. The amount of times I've heard someone say "well that works for you but it doesnt work for me" is crazy. It works for everyone because it is true. You can reject that truth if you so choose but you cant say that its right for someone but not for someone else. Its absolute. At the same time then there must be moral absolutes. Either Killing someone is wrong or it isnt. It doesnt matter if someone was rasied to say that its ok to kill someone. Its still wrong. Just like lying, stealing and lust are wrong. These are absolute truths because God is an absolute truth. The reason that post-modernism even came about in the first place is because of the idea of tolerance. We need to tolerate people no matter what they think or do. Im gonna make a statement that will probably get me a few nasty comments. Tolerance is a stupid idea and the sooner we get rid of it the better. I dont want to be tolerated, I want to be loved. The world says "I have to tolerate you, so I will ignore our differences by saying that they dont exist because everything is relative." God says "What you are doing is wrong, but I am going to love you anyway." This is the attitude that we should have, and its the attitude that I strive to have. There is nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade and saying that something is wrong when it is. I think that looking at pornography is wrong and I will say it, but it doesnt mean that Im not going to love you as someone that God has made. Lastly, just a quick point on opinions. Of course someones opinion can be wrong. Like I said, either God exists or He doesnt, regardless of your opinion. Oh and one more thing. Post modernism isnt a new discovery. It was the primary attitude in roman culture in the first and second century. So get off your high horse and stop thinking that we have found the new and correct way around accepting God. Verse for today is Romans 3:23-24: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." This is absolute. Everyone has sinned. Everyone can be redeemed by accepting Jesus Christ. It works for everyone and can work for you. You need it. Just accept it, its free.
17 juni Breaking my blog virginityhi all, Being that this is my fist blog and all I have decided to write something light hearted, but mainly because Im in a fantastic mood so I dont have any gripes about the left wing secular society that comprises university. You will hear much more about that later. On a more important topic, I have discovered a very exciting game. Its called toilet door tennis. I discovered this whilst sitting on a toilet at university sifting through the obscenely stupid political comments written on the door and walls (my goodness some people need to get a life). Anyway, back to toilet door tennis. On the door in front of my was written "toilet door tennis - look left". Being the obedient type I looked left only to find in big letters "Look right". That could keep one entertained for hours, especially a simple minded soul like myself :P. Anyway enough of that. I've decided I'm going to write a bible verse in each one of my blogs. If you want to ask me about any of them please do. Verse for today is John 10:10 "The thief [satan] does not come but to kill and to destroy. I [Jesus] have come that they [you] might have life, and have it more abundantly." What this verse is saying is that Christ came to this world so that we may live life the way it was intended to be, in submission to God. There and only there will you find fullness of Joy. Dont go looking for it elsewhere. You wont find it.
I hope you enjoyed my blog. I shall try to keep them coming regularly, after all I am a terrible procrastinator :P.
Joel |
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