my life and my doctrine

In preparing for Reformation Sunday this week at church, I’ve been looking in detail at the Second English Prayer Book from 1552. There is an exhortation prior to confession and the Lord’s Supper. It’s quite full on. It’s a reminder of the need to acknowledge that we are sinners, that only God in his mercy can forgive us and this only through the death of his Son Jesus Christ.

I’ve edited it so that it not sound quite as quaint.

Dearly beloved in the Lord: you that mind to come to the Holy Communion of the body and blood of our Saviour Christ, must consider what St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, how he exhorts all people diligently to try and examine themselves, before they presume to eat of that bread, and drink of that cup: for as the benefit is great, if with a truly penitent heart and lively faith, we receive that holy sacrament (for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink his blood, then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us, we be one with Christ, and Christ with us;) so is the danger great, if we receive the same unworthily. For then we be guilty of the body and blood of Christ our saviour. We eat and drink our own damnation, not considering the Lord’s body. We kindle God’s wrath against us, we provoke him to plague us with diverse diseases, and various kinds of death.

Therefore, if any of you be a blasphemer of God, a hinderer or slanderer of his word, an adulterer, or be in malice or envy, or in any other grievous crime, lament your sins, and come not to this holy table; so that after taking of the holy Sacrament, the Devil enter into you, as he entered in to Judas, and fill you full of all iniquities, and bring you to destruction, both of body and soul. Judge therefore yourselves that you not be judged by the Lord. Repent you truly for your sins past, have a strong and steadfast faith in Christ our Saviour. Amend your lives, and be in perfect charity with all men, so shall you be proper sharers of these holy mysteries.

And above all things you must give most humble and hearty thanks to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for the redemption of the world by the death and passion of our Saviour Christ, both God and man, who did humble himself, even to the death upon the cross, for us miserable sinners, which lay in darkness and shadow of death, that he might make us the children of God, and exalt us to everlasting life.

And to the end that we should alway remember the exceeding great love of our Master, and only Saviour Jesus Christ, thus dying for us, and the innumerable benefits, (which by his precious blood-shedding) he has obtained to us, he has instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, and continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort. To him therefore, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, let us give continual thanks: submitting ourselves wholly to his holy will and pleasure, and studying to serve him in true holiness and righteousness, all the days of our life. Amen.

So, now that I’ve got an HTC Desire, what’s important as I set it up?

Obviously, I’ll work out how to sync things to my computers (a home desktop and work laptop). However, I want to describe two things that I hope will keep it a tool serving me, not my master.

Firstly, the ‘scenes’ feature of an HTC.

My phone has seven ‘panels’, in which I can drop in links to programs/apps, shortcuts to files/contacts and even application widgets. Together, they are considered a ‘scene’. Better than that, it has the ability to store different scenes. At the moment, I’ve got a home and a work scene. The home scene includes a front panel with links to mail, people/contacts, messages (SMS), Bible software (I’ll write another post about this), to do list, cardio trainer (for my bike rides) and foursquare. Other panels are for social networking (Facebook, Twitter, blog reader), SMS messages, diary, games and Friend Stream (an HTC thing that combines Facebook and Twitter. I’m not sure about this yet).

My work scene has on the home panel my diary, Bible app, to do list and people/contacts. Other panels have my work email and fuller diary widget. I can’t get to my Facebook or Twitter or games without more of a deliberate choice. I know myself, and know that I need to do this to prevent procrastinating.

Over time, I imagine these different scenes will settle down as I stop adding apps and get on with life. I plan to tweak the ‘home’ scene for when I’m on holiday, with more restricted access to email, Facebook and SMS etc.

Secondly, while it’s great to have a big data plan so I don’t have to worry about downloading too much, I still want to be in control of when I get notified about things. It’s great that my phone can be always on, always connected, always tethered, but I don’t want it to run my life. So, I’ve had to play with how it set up my email. I’ve got three email accounts – one for home, one for work and a Gmail one for putting into websites and all other stuff. My phone came with two email apps, one called Mail and one GMail.

The Mail app was like any email client that I could set up with multiple accounts and it would download mail when I started the app. The GMail app was, not surprisingly for an Android phone, more tightly integrated with GMail online. In particular, if I read an email on my phone, it would be marked read online and vice versa. Truly integrated. The problem I found was that it would notify me everytime I got an email. I’ve since discovered that turning off the ‘sync with Gmail’ feature refers to the automatic syncing of email, not the link between my phone and the website. Perfect.

Now, what about my other email addresses? Well, both my work and home ones are managed through Google domain apps. Which means the web interface for these emails is identical to Gmail and, even better, the Gmail app can access them in the same way.

So now all my email is accessible on my phone. I refresh when I hit refresh, and my phone already knows if I’ve read it online.

I recently got a new HTC Desire and want to reflect on what difference it’s made to my past week or two. However, I want to be transparent about the buying process, because that was a rather interesting experience.

I’m a very price sensitive shopper, so did a lot of research (read, big spreadsheet analysing 6 mths phone usage) and decided that Telstra had the best plan for this phone. $49/mth with $400 cap value and 200mb data. Sign up before 1 December and I’d get 500mb, for the life of the plan.

The sales guy makes me feel like we hit it off. He asks me if I have an ABN. ie could I get a business plan? No, sorry.

Later on, after I’d already committed to buying he said, “Tell you what, I’ll put you on the business plan. You’ll get 700mb data and if your wife ever swaps over to Telstra you can get x minutes calls to each other free.”

What would you say?

As I now reflect on it, I had three options:

1. Take the money and run. Don’t say anything, except thanks.
2. Reject the offer because it seems dodgy. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
3. Remind him I don’t have an ABN, but leave it up to him. “It’s your call”.

What would you say?

I went with option 3. “I just want to remind you that I don’t have an ABN.” His response, with a cheeky smile, “I didn’t hear you say that.”

I’ve since regretted not being firmer in rejecting a good offer. In two years time, maybe I’ll use that much data? The  majority of my phone use I expect will be for work. What I did was abdicated my responsibility to do the right thing, leaving the decision to the sales guy, so I could blame him if it all blew up.

I didn’t want an iPhone, to be different. I was concerned about the worldliness of a smartphone, to be different. In the end, I was happy to be different for difference’s sake, but not for what I believe. I’m reminded of 1 Peter 2:11-12:

11  Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.  12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

I mentioned recently in a sermon on 1 Timothy 6, my personal struggle with a desire to get a new smartphone. In particular, the aptly named HTC Desire. My concern was centred around how do I apply verse 17:

17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

Was my desire for a Desire demonstrating a love for this world and its toys? Did I just want something new because my old phone was described as an ‘old-school Blackberry’? Was I coveting something of this world? Making a phone an idol?

Or was it a recognition that God in his generous grace has placed me in a time and situation in which I could use it as something provided by God to enjoy? Would it be a useful tool for ministry? Not essential, but useful.

In the end, I got one. Did I change my mind? Did I succumb to temptation? It’s impossible to have only one motive, and a pure one at that. Our motives for action are always mixed up. One thing that tipped the balance was a comment made at our recent Moore College reunion by our speaker. We as a younger generation of pastors, ministers and mature Christians, who can understand the changing communications in our world, need to work out how to speak the gospel into this age, and the years to come.

So, I want to reflect on what has changed in my life and ministry because of my phone. More than that, I hope to be transparent in the good and bad impacts it’s had on my life. Why? To be accountable. Also, so that others may see my progress, or regress.

I recently read Albert Mohler asking Why aren’t ‘Emerging Adults’ emerging as adults?

But is it really a big deal? How much of his concern is a shift in societal expectations compared to a real and legitimate concern about personal maturity? He says:

In 1960, the vast majority of young adults had, by the time they reached 30, accomplished the five standard milestones used to measure adult status. These milestones include completing school, leaving home, getting married, having a child, and establishing financial independence. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, less than one-half of all young women reached these milestones by age 30 in 2000. Even more concerning — less than one third of all young men did.

Part of his conclusion is:

The extension of adolescence (itself a dubious and problematic life stage) means further delay in accepting the kinds of roles and responsibilities that make for mature Christians.

I’d love to hear what ‘emerging adults’ think about this.

I’ve recently been following many, generally painful and non-constructive, discussions on the SRE on trial page of Facebook. I don’t want to rehash the arguments here, but question an assumption of those who promote the ethics course. My bugbear is when people claim secular ethics as worldview-neutral and therefore isn’t a challenge to organised, for want of a better term, religion. If that were the case, how can it be considered for the SRE time slot? (However, I would like to add that this is more constructive than discussions about the appropriateness of SRE in schools at all. From what I understand, that’s not up for debate.)

This struck me as I heard about the recent French vote, in the lower house, to ban the burka.

Justice minister Michele Alliot-Marie says the approval was a success for French republican values of liberty, equality, fraternity and secularism.

I am yet to work out how it is a win for liberty. How a ban on public religious practise equals freedom. It seems to me, from a possibly ill-informed outsider looking in, that the desire for secularism is greater than the right to personal self-expression. In the end, it gives me the impression that secularism sits in judgment over religion and wants to push what it thinks is good or bad for an individual. Equality becomes less about equality, but uniformity. No longer the right the choose, but the assumption that all will choose the same.

Why did this particularly strike me this week?

I’ve been preparing sermons on 1 Timothy for later this year and have been dwelling on this very bold, very absolute, very modernist statement:

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all (1 Tim 2:5-6)

Paul doesn’t have any sense of diplomacy or tact as he states the truth. Regardless of what the prevailing view might have been in the cosmopolitan Ephesus, regardless of the culture of the day, there is one God. And there is only one God. And the only mediation between God and humanity. Jesus Christ who died, that we might know this one God.

It is bad enough when you gossip or slander or lie in a room or a hallway or at a restaurant table  with only another person or two around, but with a medium like Facebook these sins of speech go global.

Doug Phillips

I’ve often been challenged in how to think about Facebook and how to use it as a tool to build and develop relationships. The more I think about it, the more I realise that it seeks to be an online medium for relationships. Therefore, we need to be careful and even deliberate in how we present ourselves and how we relate to others. Doug Phillips, a guest poster on Kevin de Young’s blog, thinks through the importance of online sins of speech, motivated by Ephesians 4:29.

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Eph. 4:29 ESV)

One of the few blogs I regularly read is by Kevin de Young. He recently wrote about humility, in particular, humility in action.

There are hundreds of ways to love and a myriad of ways to demonstrate humility. But one of the most effective ways to accomplish both is to simply ask questions. True, it’s possible to be nothing but a smooth talking salesmen who cares little for the actual person across the table. But every virtue can be faked from time to time. So let’s not let that deter us from giving others the gift of our curiosity.

His post is worth reading in full.

I was preaching last night on Ecclesiastes 4 and looking at various aspects of relationships ‘under the sun’.

• Oppression (v1-3)
• Envy (v4-6)
• Loneliness (v7-12)
• Bad leadership (v13-16)

I made a passing comment when looking at loneliness that I didn’t think the three fold cord of verse 12 was about marriage, nor the trinity. I’ve since realised I should have substantiated that comment.

Verses 7 and 8 are about the futility, the vanity of not having an heir to all the rewards of your toil. Verse 9 starts a different train of thought with the proverbial statement:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. (Eccl 4.9)

Like a lot of Ecclesiastes, the writer (who I  refer to as Qohelet – a story for another day), makes a bold statement up front. He presents his conclusion and then goes on to justify it. It’s like a teacher who tells us the main point of the lesson at the beginning and then fleshes out what they mean by it.

What follows in v10-12 are three illustrations to support the main point of v9.

Three times Qohelet demonstrates that two are better than one. Maybe they are all illustrations of a road trip. As they travel and one falls, as they try to keep warm at night, or as they are set upon by another, it is better for there to be two rather than one. Maybe they are relating to the journey of life.

What does this have to do with a three fold cord?

Qohelet is talking about friendship, companionship or mateship. I don’t think this is referring in particular to a marriage situation. So I don’t think a three fold cord is two people plus God. There seems to be nothing in the context of the statement to suggest the particular relationship of marriage all of a sudden.

This is also why I don’t think it is about the trinity. There is no indication that the discussion has shifted to consider the relationships between the three persons of the trinity.

So, what does the statement ‘a threefold cord is not quickly broken’ relate to?

It seems like another proverb. Hence I think it most closely relates to the opening proverb of two being better than one. It builds on the argument that one on its own isn’t as good. Two are better, he says, and, as you know, cords of three aren’t quickly broken. ie a cord is strengthened when there are three. Now, I know nothing about cords and whether or not it is possible to do with four or more. I suspect maybe a mathematician or sailor could argue that any increasing odd number would be better than one. I certainly have never seen a cord of two. I don’t think you can plait two cords, so it wouldn’t make sense to refer to a two fold cord.

In some ways it’s another illustration from what we know of life, that the weight of numbers brings benefit.

I guess I don’t want to read into it, or any part of the Bible, things that aren’t there. Nor do I want to divorce a phrase or sentence from its surrounding context. If I think it makes sense where it belongs, then that’s more often than not, going to be my understanding.

I preached on the last part of Ephesians 6 last Sunday night and was asked a question about what and where are the heavenly places.

I’m still thinking about it and so this is my brief response. I’d love your thoughts on how to flesh this out.

The heavenly places is a description of the spiritual realm. It’s also where Jesus is now. Looking back over Ephesians and we see it mentioned in 1.3; 1.20; 2.6; 3.10 and 6.12. It describes the spiritual realm in which we’ve received spiritual blessings (1.3), where Jesus is now seated (1.20; 2.6) and where the rulers and authorities dwell (3.10; 6.12).

It’s not a place you can find on Google maps, but a real place where real activity takes place. We must make sure we don’t dismiss the spiritual aspect to reality that Paul clearly talks about.