'Why I am an abortion doctor'

Abortion is a highly contested and emotive issue, and particularly so among Christians.

In the Methodist Church of Southern Africa we have adopted the position that abortion is not part of God's perfect will. However, there may be some necessary health concerns that will necessitate an abortion (at certain very early stages of pregnancy). These cases could be considered to be part of God's permissive will (in other words in a perfect world God would not choose it, but, in some circumstances God will make some allowances).

I have personally had opportunities to work with women who are filled with remorse and sorrow at having an abortion, and others who have expressed gratitude and thanks to God for saving their lives (such as women with ectopic pregnancy).

If you're interested to read why one abortion doctor chooses to place himself at the centre of this heated and contested issue please read this report. It made me think... If one were to outlaw all abortions that would have grave and serious consequences (forcing some persons to take routes that are both dangerous to themselves, and even more unethical).

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

So, why do men shave!? Interesting facts, history, and insight...

I hate shaving! But, I do it every day (well, once a year a take a few days off and grow a beard, much to Megie's disgust!) I HATE SHAVING! I have to shave twice on a Sunday (once in the morning when I am preaching and once in the evening when I am preaching).

I shave because my wife prefers me clean shaven... It also makes me look neat... Why do some of the other guys out there shave (and ladies, why do you want your significant other to shave)?

Here's the story:

I don’t know about you, but every morning I see my boy friend shave. It’s a ritual — shower, comb hair, shav­e, brush teeth, dress. For some unknown reason I once asked him why does he shave? “Why? I don’t know, Youthfulness, shaving presents a clean face to the onlooker, conversant.”

Showering is easy to understand. If you don’t shower, you start to stink. Combing the hair is easy to understand too, because it would be a mess if you didn’t comb it. If you don’t brush your teeth, they rot and fall out. And dressing, obviously, is a necessity.

Shaving is the removal of body hair, using a sharp blade known as a razor or with any other kind of bladed implement, to slice it down to the level of the skin. Shaving is most commonly used by men to remove their facial hair, and a man is called clean shaven if he has had his removed totally.

Men have been shaving forever. Cavemen probably shaved with stone knives, and there’s some suggestion that they may even have trimmed their hair with fire. Beards can be uncomfortable, and they easily get nasty because they trap food.

But why is it that, for a majority of men, all facial hair must be removed? There certainly isn’t any health reason to shave it off. Why would we spend the time and money to go through this ritual each and every day?

Among the many reasons I found while doing some research men began shaving in Stone Age times were:

- To reduce the breeding grounds for lice, fleas and small rodents.
- To eliminate the beard as a place for an enemy to hang on during combat.
- To make it easier to eat.
- Superstition associated a heavily bearded man with old age and death, in addition to the superstitious belief of spirits which entered the body through hairs on the head.

“The word “barber” comes from the Latin word “barba,” meaning beard. It may surprise you to know that the earliest records of barbers show that they were the foremost men of their tribe. Medicine men and the priests. But primitive man was very superstitious and the early tribes believed that both good and bad spirits, which entered the body through the hairs on the head, inhabited every individual.

Alexander the Great never lost a battle, not to the Persians or to anyone else. But he did order his men shaved so that their beards could not be grabbed in battle. Same for the Romans.

Yet you find many men who support a beard and I am sure there are a variety of reasons for that too, but I am not getting into that right now. I must admit though that a beard or a moustache alone on some men look very graceful.

Now its your turn to talk, why do you shave guys?

Teaching the Bible... Well, maybe not. Early 20th century charts and visual aids for teaching the Bible.

Here are some amazing, and extremely interesting, charts and visual aids that reflect how early 20th century Biblical teachers (not necessarily Biblical scholars) sought to teach their understanding of the content and message of the Bible.

In the early 1900s, Baptist pastor Clarence Larkin (1850-1924) created large wall charts to help teach the Bible. He called these charts "Prophetic Truth." The topics range from "The Seven Thousand Years of Human History" to "The Failure of Man" to "The (Spiritual) Underworld," seen above. Link (Thanks, Mike Love!)

Technorati tags: Bible teaching, visual aids, 19th Century Baptist, weird, History of Biblical teaching

The sacrament of Holy Communion as an act of radical protest and subversion!

This morning, as we do at the seminary every Tuesday morning, we celebrated the sacrament of holy communion. Among Methodists this sacrament is regarded as a tool of creating a visible reminder of the Lord who died, and of the Kingdom that he desires for all persons.

It is holy because it takes ordinary elements of creation, bread and wine, and setting them aside from common use for this act of gracious memory.

The American Methodist theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, speaks of this sacrament as an act of radical protest. Sharing in communion together is indeed an act of radical protest! It is a protest against the exclusion of the world, since at Christ's table all persons are welcome, young, old, black, white, male, female, straight, gay, rich, and poor. All are equaly part of God's gracious Kingdom, under God's gracious rule, and open to God's tranforming grace. None is excluded. All are welcome... The invitation to the table that we used to says...

... Come, not because you can, but because you must. Not because you are worthy, but because you are invited. Come not because you are righteous, but because you desire to be true disciples of Jesus. Come, not because you are strong, but because you are weak; not because you have any claim on heaven's reward, but because in your frailty and sin you stand in constant need of God's mercy and help.

This is radical! It subverts the dominant culture of our age. It confronts self sufficiency, individualism, arrogance, pride, power, wealth, prejudice and many other false values.

So, today we engaged in an act of Radical protest, we recalled that God's Kingdom is a Kingdom of God's mercy and grace! We recalled what reality informs and shapes our choices, our very lives.

Thanks be to God for God's grace!

So, what computer do you think evolutionary biologist (aka 'The God delusion') Richard Dawkins uses?

Richard Dawkins' MacBook Pro!
Originally uploaded by hellochris.

Blogged from Flickr:

Richard Dawkins, the famed evolutionary biologist, spoke this week at the University of Hawaii at Manoa!

Professor Dawkins had some problems setting up his presentation on the projector....which afforded me a look at the messy desktop of a scientific super-genius!

Here's what I have ascertained:

(1) Dock is always visible, on left side of screen!
(2) No special background image for the desktop!
(3) Installed OmniPage Pro for the Mac!
(4) Downloaded Installer for Windows Media Player
(5) Professor Dawkins is a Mac user, but then, we knew that!

Comments:

hellochris Pro User says:

From the lecture, Richard Dawkins' reply to a question on the potential that computers may one day replace humans:

"...You have a new hardware device such as the mouse which opens up new software possibilities. As soon as you've got a mouse you can redesign the whole of your software to use resizable windows and pull down menus and all of the things that we now find indispensable. And I suppose once that software advance occurs, that then that triggers a new possibility for hardware advances, which would have never had occured without the software advance being made in the first place.

And so one can imagine an escalating...'arms race' is not quite the right word...co-evolution of software and hardware in the computer world to parallel that in the biological world that I speculated might have fed the blowing up like a balloon of the human brain. And I think what your asking for is some kind of co-evolution - a third wave co-evolution - between biology and silicon technology, including software.

And yes, I mean, I think we're seeing something of it. One can interpret the internet as a sort of beginning of that. One can imagine, in a science fiction mode, a future in which us soft, squishy biological things become pretty redundant and a silicon form of life takes over. Even perhaps, in a far distant future, looks back on the dawn of history and speculates that once upon a time, before the world of silicon, that there might have been some other kind of life, that was perhaps based on carbon. Who knows what happened in those far off, dawn ages?"
Posted 12 months ago.

sennmen says:

Richard Dawkins in an article on Apple: www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1131129,00.html

The stuff of dreams... Praise the lord and pass the twostroke!

52
Originally uploaded by Bella_modernist.

Yup, this is the stuff of dreams! I am CERTAIN that there will a 1952 Vespa just like this one when I get to heaven!

My good friend Dr Bentley bought me a model of this EXACT Vespa the other day! It is on my desk.

Lovely!

Mildly profane... BUT true nonetheless....

Whether you love President Bush, hate him, or are somewhere in between, you have to appreciate the, shall we say, effectiveness of this particular placard.

(Photo by Fred Melmoth).

Sorry, I couldn't resist (this comes from here).

I have given back my Doctorate... I realised it was useless. I need one of these...

Yes, I have realized the error of my ways...

Years of study, late nights, early mornings. Typing until my fingers were nothing more than bloody little stumps, and what for!? It is all in vain! All those years of labour are worthless. After all, the only thing that I could do as a Doctor is to help a person whose one leg is 450 something pages shorter than the other to stand up straight by putting my thesis under the shorter leg ;-)

I never realized have grave my situation was until I saw this sing speaking of the wonders that Dr Juma (no that's NOT Jacob Zuma) can perform!

So, I have decided to send back my doctoral degree and work towards one of these!

PS. notice (both from the sign's appearance, and what he advertises) that spelling and sign writing are not among his specialties.... Perhaps we could offer him some assistance in that regard?

Does religion REALLY matter!? A debate on blasphemy between Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens

The story at the end of this post gave me some cause for concern. It was Arcbishop Desmond Tutu who once commented that the problem with us 'religious' types is that we tend to give answers to questions that people aren't asking!

Heck, I have certainly been in a few service where I heard someone preach and asked the question "now what the heck was that about!?" Yup, it is a sad reality of 'naval gazing', we do tend to get so caught up in our own worlds that we forget that there are 'other worlds' out there that on a completely different track!

Of course, as I think about it, the very best of Church leaders, and Christ followers, are those who bring God's love, grace, justice, and mercy to bear on the real concerns and struggles of secular humanity. It's not that secular society sets our pace (as if our pace is something truly different from what the rest of the world is having to deal with). Rather, it is that [and here's the bit that may surprise some of us Christians] God actually cares MORE about the needs and concerns of the world than God may care about the Church!!!! (for those who need to proof text this idea please see Jesus own parable of the lost sheep - , Matthew 18:12-14 and Luke 15:3-7 , Jesus leaves the 99 'found' sheep to go and find the one 'lost' sheep).

Yes, it just may be that God is more concerned about starving children, abusive systems of government, people who are dying of diseases that are treatable because they cannot afford medicine... And a myriad of other concerns. And, that God is less concerned about whether gay people are allowed in Church, and whether only men should preach..... Sadly, some of the most VOCAL 'answerers' in the Church are also those who embarrass us most... Take a look at this guy... Parking his Christian construction company truck outside the adult bookstore, I wonder what Adult, XXX, porn DVD he wanted to view (of course as a source to inform his prayers...) ... Mmmmm.... Sad really.

Brian Mclaren tells of a magnificent realization that he encountered when leading a Youth camp. He was asked to lead a camp for a group of evangelical youth... They expected him to deliver a 'pep rally' of feel good messages... However, what he did was he got them to work in groups and list some of the world's major crises, struggles, and problems on large pieces of paper.... Then he got them to list the things that THEIR Church of faith community was most concerned about.

Amazingly he discovered that they teens had an awareness of things like global hunger, human rights abuses, inequity in global economics, the effects of consumerism on the environment, the devastation of dissease... (the list goes one). Yet, when they listed the concerns that occupied their Church's agenda it had to do with things such as what type of Music God preferred (hymns or contemporary music - as if God has a preferential taste!) Their Church was concerned about fellowship meetings and Church growth...

Mclaren asks the question 'which church would you rather have your children belong to? The Church that seeks to address what the world most needs, or the Church that is simply looking after itself and its own innane concerns?' [this is a rough summary by the way, so please don't quote him on this!]

Well, I can tell you which Church I long to belong to! I want to belong to a Church that answers the questions that the world is asking... NOT because the world should set the Church's agenda BUT BECAUSE the world IS GOD'S agenda, and so should be the agenda of the Church...

Does that make sense!?

Anyway, what got me thinking about this was a rather offensive, and telling debate, between two prominent public figures on blasphemy (please be warned that this contains profanity). However, their need to become to vile, beligerent, and dismissive of religion (and to tackle the subject of blasphemy) my just be because WE ARE SO BLASPHEMOUS! We blaspheme against the God who cares about the world and its needs when we get so caught up on our own little agendas...

Here's the story:

Listen to Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debating blasphemy at last year’s Guardian Hay Festival - blogs.guardian.co.uk: One of the most talked-about events at last year’s Guardian Hay Festival was the Blasphemy Debate, chaired by Joan Bakewell and inspired by the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill, which had been announced in the Queen’s Speech the previous month. The speakers at the debate were the actor and writer Stephen Fry and the journalist Christopher Hitchens, and their frequently heated discussion covered issues of freedom of speech, religious tolerance, multiculturalism and orthodoxy. It was a fascinating, though-provoking and - as you’d expect from two such consummate orators - extremely entertaining event, and as a warm-up to this year’s Hay Festival, the good people at Radio Hay, the festival’s online broadcaster, have kindly allowed us to offer you the chance to hear it for yourself. Click here to listen to the debate on your computer (MP3; 78mins).

Warning! coarse language.

Technorati tags: irrelevant religion, Desmond Tutu, What God cares about, debate on blasphemy, lost sheep

Lectures by Prof Klaus Nurnberger on Faith and Science (Lectures in Pretoria)

Dear friends,

I received email notification of these lectures today. I know Klaus well, and these are sure to be magnificent, insightful, and challenging!

Here are the details:

Faith and Science

All interested parties, including students, are cordially invited to a series of three seminars and one service on faith and science, Sundays from 6.00-8.00 pm at the Lutheran Church corner of Skinner and vd Walt Streets, central Pretoria. There is parking just next to the church in Skinner Street on the Unisa premises.

Many Christians find it difficult to come to terms with the relation between the biblical faith and modern scientific insight.

How did God create the world – through a series of divine decrees or through a long process of evolution?

Is death the consequence of human sin or an essential characteristic of organic life?

If God has the power and the will to redeem, how can he allow so much sin, suffering and futility on earth?

Each session will have two sections of one hour each. In the first a natural scientist will present the scientific point of view.

In the second section the theologian will present the faith point of view. There will be time for discussion in both sections.

Bring you problems, your points of view, your critique of other positions. Let us see whether we can find a way forward.

10 February 2008 18-20 hrs

1. How did the universe come into being? From the Big Bang to the formation of the earth.

2. The message of the biblical creation stories.

17 February 2008 18-20 hrs

1. History of the earth and of life on earth.

2. The evolution of the biblical tradition.

24 February 2008 18-20 hrs

1. The evolution of species. In which ways are human beings different from other mammals?

2. The human being as a person and the personal God.

2 March 2008 (during the normal Service at 8.30)

1. Challenges that science poses to faith.

2. God as creative power and redeeming love.

(On this Sunday the format will be a worship service, but the liturgy, readings, sermon and prayers will focus on the topic of the series.)

For more details please send me an email.

Facing pressure? I know someone who understands, and who can help you!

I know that many persons come to a Monday morning with fear and trepidation. When your todo list is longer than the day, when the expectations placed upon you are heavy, and when you feel that you cannot cope - know that you are not alone!

This is week marks the start of Lent - On Wednesday Christians throughout the world will celebrate the start of Lent (many of them with an Ash Wednesday service that reminds one of one's mortality, and that life is limited and so needs to be lived with a sense of urgency, doing things that bring honour to God).

Lent and Easter are a time of great encouragement for me. I am reminded that the God of the Universe faced struggle just like me, just like us...

In the New Testament the Greek word for struggle and trouble is the world thlipsis (see John 16:33). It is a word that comes from the Oliver presses of the Ancient Near East. It means to be placed under pressure, to be crushed and hard pressed. Of course Christ himself faced just such pressure to win our salvation. That is the one thing that the English word does not capture as well as the Greek word... thlipsis has the intention of producing something good, pure, and wortwhile as a result of the pressure (i.e., olive oil from bitter olives).

So, this week as you face pressure know that you have a God who understands what you are going through. He has suffered himself.

I shall be praying for you. Please pray for me.

A classic example of poor visual communication - what's wrong with this picture?

Take a look at the picture on the left. It is a poster for the Manchester City Metroshuttle.

The poster was clearly commissioned by the City to help publicise the work that the Metroshuttle is doing in helping to ease congestion and get people to their destinations with greater ease.

In that sense, the message was intended to communicate (visually) 'We're making the city work better by making all the parts work together'

Not a bad poster for that message is it? OR, is it!? Take another look...

What's wrong with this picture.... Well, a simple understanding of physics would tell you that if cog 1 turned cog 2, cog 3 would be shredded and destroyed! You see if cog 1 goes clockwise, cog 2 goes anti clockwise, but since cog 3 is connected to BOTH cog 1 (clockwise) and cog 2 (anticlockwise) it will be stressed from both directions and simply destroy the mechanism....

So, perhaps the slogan should read 'Destroying the way the city SHOULD work together'...

Another classic example of poor visual communication.... Now, I'm sure many of you are saying 'So what', 'most people won't even notice the anomaly!' Well, I did! And all it takes is one person to post a picture to their blog, have it spread throughout the internet and.... Well, you get the picture (sorry for the pun)!