The Biggest Contradiction in the Bible?

2 Samuel 24:1 (Good News) – The LORD was angry with Israel once more, and he made David bring trouble on them. The LORD said to him, “Go and count the people of Israel and Judah.”

1 Chronicles 21:1 (Good News) – Satan wanted to bring trouble on the people of Israel, so he made David decide to take a census.

Forty Years of The Three Ronnies

This’ll take about seven minutes, so indulge me here.

The clown who’s always eating hamburgers is, let’s be honest, an easy target, so I make no apology for what follows. And anyway, his evolution from a clown clone into an icon who is recognised by an incredible 96% of American kids really is nothing short of fascinating. Now thanks to the miracle of YouTube, it’s possible to travel back in time and see for ourselves exactly how he first started…



"Wow. That is one creepy clown. His face is made of trash. Did you wonder if that VW Beetle was trying to run him over at the end?"


Thank you Herschel – our resident clown expert on today’s show.

Yes, it’s easy to snigger at the over-friendly style, but let’s not forget that this was 1963, when things were different. People lived differently then, and did different things. For example, just watch this next one from the same era, and ask yourself honestly whether it would ever be allowed on television today…


Have you watched it? Have you? Good. Then I don’t need to put into words here what you’re thinking. Yes THAT thing. Just like the White Witch in C S Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, the friendly clown appears to be luring the kids in with food before whisking them away to his own cold nightmarish world:


Really – we have to wonder what’s going into those burgers. (sigh) I miss those more innocent days when clowns could be trusted with children.

“Errrghhhh, me too.”






Clearly someone in the 70s balked at what was going on however, and suddenly it was time for a brand new image. By the 80s Ronald was out on his clown-nose, and ad execs were left scratching their heads trying to find a new icon. They needed someone clean-cut and genuine, who would retain the image of trust and sincerity, and whose integrity was as solid as a Bible. So they picked… George Costanza???



"This is something only George Costanza could possibly bumble into. I wish Kramer had appeared as one of those dancers, knocking the others out the way to get to the front/camera."

And finally to this decade, and Japan has actually found a way of making the same viewers – now all grown up - want to be taken away by a clown and fed. They’ve made Ronald sexy. Heck, they’ve even gone as far as making him female.



"Wow! She looks good enough to eat! What was she advertising again?"

(related post here)

The Internet Is Still God

You know the Bible 100%!

 

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

(This was a fluke - I must have been as jammy as digital TV)

(I am somewhat less shocked with regards to the following...)

Which Doctor Who are you? Your Result: You are the Third Doctor! A gentleman of class, but you're trapped. You do occasionally escape, but you don't have the knowledge to stay there. You also love fast cars and gadgets.
You are the First Doctor!
You are the Fourth Doctor!
You are the Seventh Doctor!
You are the Sixth Doctor!
You are the Fifth Doctor!
You are the Eighth Doctor!
You are the Second Doctor!
Which Doctor Who are you?

What Kind Of Whovian Are You? Your Result: Good natured jumper wearer   when two fans get chatting in the line for autographs at a convention, youre the one that flinches when the other swears. you own a cat called sutekh.
Frothing fanboy
Classic series n00b
Hard Living Demon Fan
New series n00b
Laddyfan
What Kind Of Whovian Are You? Make a Quiz

Pen Friends

On the 21st of February this year, I got off the bus (at the stop pictured above) and found a pen.

It was a biro, just lying there on the pavement by the bus stop, as though it had been left there deliberately for me to find. I picked it up. It had “PAKURANGA COLLEGE” written on the side, and wrote in red, just as teachers traditionally do. So I took it with me to the school where I work.

That afternoon, another teacher was running late, so I dropped into his class to chat in English to his only student until he arrived.

The student’s name was Elynn, and as I fished for conversation material, she told me that she was also attending Pakuranga College. Ah! I instantly weilded the biro that was already in my hand at her! Once her real teacher had arrived, I headed off, and wondered whether on some Goddish level the pen actually had been left at the bus stop for me to find.

As the days became weeks, and the weeks became months, that pen became my best friend. At last I could mark work in red. Fairly soon I started filling-out my lesson plans in red too, and my timesheets. My new pen and I were inseperable. We went everywhere together.


On March 10th, my pen and I went to see “Weird Al” Yankovic in concert together, and afterwards Al met us and signed his autograph for me, using my favourite pen.

But I was aware that I was developing a dangerous emotional attachment to my biro. Deep inside, I knew that one day, sooner or later, and who knows the reason why, all pens must ultimately leave their fellow stationary behind, and quietly strike out on their own for adventures new. Still, now was not the time to dwell on such world-shaking inevitability.

When I got a new contract at the school the following term, sure enough I signed it in exactly the same red. Scribbling notes at church, signing cards, and beavering away during planning meetings.


Yesterday for example we were taking some Elementary English class photos, and as ever I had my beloved red biro behind my right ear. Afterwards as usual I wrote up my lesson plan and timesheet, and headed out to Countdown buy some lunch.

Arriving back, my pen didn’t seem to be in either pocket of my rucksack. I ignored this, and pressed on with my afternoon class. There was a knock on the door – it was Elynn. She had come to say goodbye as she was preparing to return to China tomorrow.

After class, I retraced my footsteps, but to no avail. It wasn’t in my morning classroom, my afternoon classroom, or the staffroom. Or the corridor, or the kitchen, or the toilet. I rummaged through my rucksack again. I followed my exact steps across the car park and into Countdown. And then finally, like a defeated destroyed man in denial, I desperately returned to the bus stop whence I had first found it three months ago, as though by some impossible allignment of consequence it might be back there again.

It wasn’t.


This is what my biro looked like when I last saw it. It may have aged a little since then. If you find it, please give me a call, even if only to tell me that it is safe. I know it has other tasks to write for someone new now, but it’s the waiting, the not-knowing that silently kills me inside.
(93 days)

Click To Enlarge

Someone crossing Pakuranga Road: (no, not him, in the centre :) )


Streetlights arguing over whether it's day or night:

Invasion Of "The Body" Snatchers

All right, it looks a bit like a scene from a zombie movie, but in fact this is Rhett being prayed for just before delivering his inaugural sermon as a Lay Pastor at Cession Church tonight...


And here he is commanding all the other zombies to rise up and overcome their puny human enemies. Full transcript here.

Joking aside, I am looking forward to hearing more of Rhett's words in the future. He tells some good stories, and is funny. In real life he is also always full of encouragement.

Rhett also runs a highly readable and rather popular discussion blog over at http://www.rhettspect.blogspot.com, although I personally only give it another 87 days.

Handel's Messiah

This afternoon I went with landlady Pauline (flatmate Dave's auntie) to see Handel's Messiah being performed at All Saints Anglican Church here in Howick.


After all the sheep cards that I played last night at The Settlers Of Catan, here everyone's singing about the same subject. The bass singer (seated centre, wearing a tux) was beyond great - positively bursting with enthusiasm.

The Settlers Of Creation

About a week ago flatmate Dave’s modem of three years standing suddenly blew-out. The same evening the toilet got blocked. Coincidence?

Last night the heater for flatmate Nicola’s fish-tank mysteriously went down. Cold fish. An hour or so later, the mains lead for Dave’s new modem gave up, just as I was attempting to do some work on a highly important letter.

Electrical things go wrong for someone somewhere in the world nearly every second, including the one in which you're reading this now. So statistically speaking, there are probably going to be times in your life when several things go wrong at once. That’s just the law of probability.

Of course "probability" could equally just be the word that we use to describe whatever God (or whoever) does, and always has done. I mean if God silently intervened in our lives several times a day, every day, we would have to call those unexplained things "normal". Or even "probable". What other normality, or probability, could we compare them with?

So how can we possibly detect if God’s actually done something? If you believe that God made you bump into an old friend in the street, doesn’t that take away both your and their free will to choose whether or not to walk down that street? At that exact moment? What about your free will leading up to that moment – all your choices about whether to dawdle in a shop beforehand? Whether to walk or take the bus? Whether to go out at all? If we’ve got free will, surely that must mean that God hasn’t got our will. If we’re talking in terms of 100% anyway.

But then, God would only need 51%…

Today, 10 minutes before the end of my lesson, my mobile rang – and it was Nigel.

So I told him to ring back in 10 minutes.

10 minutes later he didn’t, so I extended the lesson by another 10 minutes, because we’d already started 10 minutes late.

After that, I went into Food Town to do my shopping, and emerged just too late to catch my bus. Dang, if only I’d been a moment quicker.

It would be a while until the next bus, so I decided to return to the school and use the toilet. Then I remembered that there was a nearer one in Highland Park shopping centre, so I used that instead. Now I would get to the bus stop earlier.

Except I didn’t, as Nigel chose that moment to ring back again. Talking to him whilst doing everything else slowed me down again, and accidentally setting-off the automatic hand-drier so that I couldn’t hear him just made matters worse.

He was in the City, and wanted me to come join him. After all, I still had his shades to give back from Johnny B’s wedding.

I declined. The shades were at home, I had all this frozen food I’d just bought, and he was disrupting my plans to go home, do a work-out and prepare this important letter. I invited him to drive out my way, but I could tell he wasn’t interested.

Hanging-up, I went to cross the road to the bus-stop. Before I could however, a bus going the other way to the city pulled-up right in front of me.


Fig.1: Not the actual bus, but pretty close.

It was sunny. People were taking forever to get on. I had no cash on me, but a massive $20.00 on my bus-pass – easily enough to get to the city and back. But did God want me to go to the city today? No, I had all this frozen food with me now, which would surely defrost. Mind you, I could always stash that safely in the freezer at ACB…

I looked at the bus. I imagined all the great things that might happen if I got on it and went to the city. Maybe God needed me to go.

I turned and walked away down the road to the crossing. I was running my life. Sure I follow God, but that’s hardly the same thing as following easy circumstances. I wanted to go home.

At the crossing, the bus again pulled-up at the lights and taunted me, its folding doors a mere foot or so away for the achingly-long minutes that it took for both of us to get our signal.

Still I declined. Eventually it got its green light and I watched it sheepishly haul itself away from me towards the city, the same way a sad bloodhound gives up on convincing his owner to come outside and play ball.

Home. Freezer. Change shoes for workout. Phone warbles that there’s a text message from Nigel.

From: Nigel
Sent: 19-May-2007
14:33:44
we r at bk in syvia pk. What is yr address?

Still the veiled belly-dancer of fate boogied in front of me with her translucent scarves of destiny.

From: Steve Goble
Sent:19-May-2007
43 Uxbridge Road, Howick. Just starting my workout. Any chance we can get together 4pm? If it needs to be earlier, that’s okay.

So I did the workout, and Nigel showed up with his mate Paul a whole half-an-hour early just as I was getting in the shower. Still I made them wait, while I showered, treated my feet for athlete’s foot and read my Bible.

Finally I gave Nigel his shades back and hit it off with Paul reasonably well.

Paul’s from Canada, and has had his own important letters to write of late, mainly because he broke his foot recently.

After looking through photos, they both seemed quite keen that I should come back to the North Shore (on the far side of the city) with them to play a board game. Well, I had been going to get on with this rather important letter, but by this stage I was easily won over. I still stalled that I wanted to eat first (they’d both had a BK meal after all) but after that we were on our way.

Arriving at the Catholic Discipleship College (where Nigel lives) we briefly met the Bishop of Auckland before heading upstairs for Paul to proudly unpack his favourite game in the world - The Settlers Of Catan.


He explained the rules, thinking that they were all very complicated. I smiled inwardly – he had obviously never played The Star Wars Interactive Video Game.

In Settlers Of Catan, players have to build settlements and towns on an island, by throwing dice and playing various combinations of ore, wheat, brick, wood and sheep cards. (yes, sheep) The winner is the first player to successfully complete a city.

Paul’s move first – and here’s the thing. For a seasoned player, he just sat there for minutes figuring out where on the board to lay his first settlement and road. I didn’t get that, and challenged him on it. Surely he should have worked-out the most advantageous first move years ago, and now always open with this?

And then I realised – the whole game was scramblable.


The board was made up of about 50 hexagonal tesellating cards, arranged in a random order. Most cards had a small disc on them containing a different dice-total – these had been positioned randomly too. And then there was the random throw of the dice, and our individual decisions. Every game truly was different, balanced by both randomness and the free-will of the players.

I had to wonder if this was how God saw the world – forever rearranging the apparently random (to us) circumstances in order to coax us into making any of the right choices. If we planned something that he disagreed with, then he could make us throw only a 2, or maybe a 12 if he preferred to confront us with the results of our decision. Either way, we’d still have a choice about whether to continue or not.


After our second game, I set-up the camera to take a photo of us on timer, immediately following which it fell off its stand and crashed onto the floor. The flashbulb appeared to be broken, but turned out to be okay.

Faced with driving both of us home, Nigel first tried to drop me off at Newmarket, where another set of traffic-lights caused us to watch my bus fly by and away from us, well out of sight. We made chase and eventually I caught it at Greenlane.

Once back home I wondered what the whole day had been about. If God had been trying to get me together with those guys for the evening, what on Earth had it been for? To give me a break from my stressful life? To show me a game that would fire my imagination by breaking my preconceptions of board-games? Or to teach me something about the universe? Or for all of these?

Or just because?

I didn’t know why. As I went to bed tonight, without having written my letter, all I knew was that my battery-operated toothbrush was mysteriously drained of all power.

Ordinary Everyday Life

As previously mentioned, I quite like taking photos.


Flatmates and others: Me, Nicola, Dave, Yuanyuan (aka Cathy), Smokey the cat, Tim downstairs, Pramilla and Jeff.


Elementary English class: Lee, Graham, Sophia, Frank, Steve, Jeff and Betty.


Where I live: Howick overlooking Waiheke Island.

And now, 2006 again:


On the 10th of December last year at Cession Church, in a service on joy, we let off party-poppers to the 1812 overture. (above)

Tonight Brett, during his sermon, referred back to the aforementioned service, and lo and behold actually used my photo of the event by way of a flashback...


And not only that, he gave out some more party-poppers too:

No Sleep 'Til Bedtime

This morning I dreamt that I was extremely tired and trying to get to bed. Alas, a whole line of obstacles conspired to keep me from my slumber. Flatmate Dave kept texting me. Flatmate Dave’s brother Jeff told me that Roger Corman’s unreleased movie The Fantastic Four was showing on TV. And that guy who keeps sending me spam in real life, who I keep on blocking, had decided to instead write it all out and give it to me on paper.