Blogging a Dead Horse

curse your branches

2012-01-13T07:04:00.000-08:00

first up, music.

David Bazan has truly been dominating my music listening time lately. This video specifically begins by showing Bazan playing a house show at what (I perceived anyway) as being quite a middle class christian hipster home. We see David Bazan at the end of his faith still joking away and being received positively, kind of breaking the enchantment that follows him in his music of him perhaps not baring a grudge but having lost a part of himself. Again, this might be how I perceived him, not how he actually is. While he's playing images of a tired looking crowd who seem focussed on the words he's singing. Words that they really can relate to, they can relate to them because they've had these questions and not had answers.

(This was originally posted as a response to a friends' facebook call for opinions on the video. I admit now, twenty minutes after posting it, that I may be harsh in the statement. I will say though that the distinction on the definition is irrelevant, as they both lead to a very similar conclusion, bad art. Admittedly though, i have read several responses from agnostic friends describing it as being 'refreshing' and 'spot on'. It upsets me that they saw this and not other videos that captured it better. An interesting article, if not completely agreeable, may be found patrol mag here)

‎"The word itself [religion] has been dreived from two similaar Latin words 'religere', to execute painstakingly by means of repeated effort, and 'religare', to bind together, as a bond of 'piety'' - Herbert Aptheker

Bethke is obviously speaking about the hypocrisy of religious christians against those who 'have a relationship with jesus' (a term commonly adopted by non-denominational evangelicals). It's still theologically incorrect on many levels though.

If we adopt the above then regardless of which model we take be, the institutionalised christian or the non-denominational evangelical, the notion of religion as being a struggle and a unity still applies. What can be taken from the poem is this: it's bad. If a poem needs such extreme language such as 'hate' towards something that has been speculated over so extremely (how much exegesis has gone into Bethke's notion of religion on facebook in the past week?) it's evidently poorly written. I'll meet people half way, the artist doesn't have an absolute duty to be completely theologically correct in their language, but in a mode such as poetry, which only relies on language you'd hope to be at least 60% right.

Oh and it's a really poor version of I'm sorry I'm a Christian.

xox

jesus > religion

2012-01-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

many things can be said.

i will get things wrong. i'm currently going through this quite famous poem and making my mind up on the matter.

xox

girl in oslo

2011-10-19T16:32:00.000-07:00

apparently there's this really famous song in norway called 'prettiest girl in oslo' that they sing in every bar in oslo.

i didn't hear it once. yes, i'm disappointed.

i saw great things, i met lovely people (who i gave the wrong email address to by accident), saw really cool animals and drank overpriced beer. anyway.

i'm growing up and moving out. exciting times.

xox

2011-09-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

firstly, music.

i saw them at Truck a few weeks ago and was blown away. at the merch tent i foolishly only bought a t shirt instead of their whole back catalogue (which is now unavailable). Long story short, my friend at work James mentioned that he was going to End of the Road festival where he then bought me two of their cds and got one of them signed by the band, who are not only lovely but emailed back wishing me well and asking me to say hello if i see them again.

what lovely folk, the band and James.

Ok, music talk aside.

I recently found myself speaking to a friend that i'd met at L'abri, who for all practical purposes loves so indiscriminately and now works in kenya with street children. i asked what i now realise is the most strange question to ask anyone. i find myself, as many people know, being calluous and cruel, being amusing at the costs of others, being cynical about motives of others so i asked her; 'how do you find yourself being so loving to all?'

She didn't quite get it.

In hindsight, i don't blame her. For all that I banged on about shift happening, and how the transforming power of an i-thou relationship with our creator, i had failed to learn from Him. i had read books that depersonalised the infinite personal God.

Reading 1 John 4:7-8 i recognised the root of the problem. i have to know and learn about God as He is. That inspires people to love beyond measure. Earlier a great statement was made in church regarding the epistemology of Divinity. We can only know that which is revealed to us. Revelation based exclusively on nature will excite our imaginations and cause wonder, that's why God spoke in His word too.

So the plan is to smother myself in His word and to develop understanding through that in conjunction with reasoning.

Night.

xox

jon.

2011-07-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

songs

xox

2011-05-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

It's odd because even those who are evil, we are called to love.

This Christianity thing is not what i signed up for.

Justice and mercy.

It's funny because everyone, regardless of if they want to, will glorify God when they die. Be it in worshipful relationship or justice being served.

So Bin Laden is currently glorifying God.

xox

Darling, you may have missed the point.

2011-02-13T03:10:00.000-08:00

Hi.

First off, music.

This is a genuinely great band whose harmonies take a dump on Fleet Foxes (not to say that I don't like them, but seriously, they can't compete with that)

I recently stumbled across an album for sale by Amanda Palmer, the singer/songwriter for the band The Dresden Dolls. Now, I've never really been overly interested in the band, but a certain controversy did strike my intrigue.

Long story short, Amanda had produced a song called "Oasis" (video available here). Ben Folds helped produce the song and tried to present the issues in the song as lightheartedly/wryly as possible. The controversy began when British music video channels refused to play the video as it had not been overly sensitive towards rape, abortion and religion. What is interesting is that the emphasis wasn't just on the video but also the audio.

In response to this Amanda produced a very much rambling blogpost in response which might be best summarised here.

I am not going to allow this to descend into another abortion debate, but my focus will be on one quote from that blogpost.

"think about it. if they heard the same lyrics against the backdrop of a very sad and liliting piano, maybe with some tear-jerking strings thrown in for good measure, would they take issue?"

I honestly cannot bring myself to believe that this is being considered as a valid point by a thirty-something artist and not a fourteen year old kid debating their favouritist bands in the lunch hall.

Let me explain why. Tone is a big part of art. The lines, shapes and colours in a picture represent the attitude towards the subject being conveyed in the picture. Compare, Titian's Rape of Europa to Picasso's Guernica(see below).

They both depict a scene whilst making a moral statement about what is happening. Likewise with Amanda Palmer's song. Guernica presents a damning verdict towards those involved in the bombing of the Basque country by presenting the images in dark tones with sharp edges to the lines. To summarise in Wittgensteinian terms; he recognises the reaction that is expected to express grief to a certain situation and does so in ways understood in the artistic world.

Amanda Palmer's song does quite the opposite and responds by making a joke out of the situation, thus avoiding any moral integrity that might be contained in the song. I'm not saying that art that has no moral intergrity cannot be good, refer to Triumph of the Will for example, I am saying though that it damages the message and seriousness of the situation being portrayed, an important cognitive function that has been honed and developed over such a long time.

Palmer does suggest that the song is written in irony. There are two outcomes frmo this argument:
1) Palmer doesn't understand irony.
2) The girl is actually deeply hurting in the situation ('the song isn’t even so much ABOUT those topics, it’s about denial, it’s about a girl who can’t find it in herself to take her situation seriously. that girl exists, everywhere. you probably know her. you’ve probably met her. you might be her.' - this is possible)

Although I'm hoping it's the second point, I am somewhat doubtful as she vents this anger half-way through the post as a minor point standing next to her main premise, that without humour and artistic freedom we fuel evil in the world.

Within evolutionary aesthetics there exists the theory that certain situations call for certain reactions necessarily because of a cognitively developed survival instinct. Because of this Palmer's song is inviting us to oppose our gut reaction which has been developed by evolution. Alternatively, if we want to reject that view we could say that the song desensitises us to situations that call for a certain reaction. In Schindler's List there is a scene that involves a jew about to be shot. The gun fails and so the soldier asks for another, which again, fails. For him to have start hitting him was not slapstick comedy but rather produced a very different reaction in the people watching it.

For us to have laughed in that situation shows clearly that we are not understanding the context and the solemnity of the situation. This desensitivisation is what is most painful about the song, even if it is hoping to bring a deeper message (which I doubt considering the comments of Palmer "the song is not a lecture. the song is a SONG. it’s a reflection, a character sketch.")

I suppose if you're wanting to skip a lot of reading just read this:

Yes, Amanda, presentation does make a big impact on the moral integrity of a song. Even if you are making a sad statement about certain members of society and most listeners don't pick up on that point without due explanation then that makes it bad art.

xox

jon.

In Stitches

2010-12-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

¹⁷Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. (James 4:17, King James Version)

Sh*t.

L'Abri Commentaries

2010-11-19T17:01:00.001-08:00

"Why do you want to study philosophy? ...You remind me of Eeyore"

things i can handle...

2010-09-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

if this lady was to break up with me.

i think i could handle it as long as she wrote songs like this:

if she couldn't i'd be f***ed.

xox

Post #100

2010-07-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

What if i get it wrong? What if i lead people astray and it causes more damage than it cures?

'Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"'

Wow. Long time no post.

2010-06-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

As always, music first.

Love this band. And cue jokes about the bp oil problem...

Ok, now i can finally be cocky about various grades i think i'll give a brief explanation of a paper that i had to do for Classic Papers. i decided (somewhat typically for a Christian) to cover Alston's paper on beliefs based on religious experience.
The paper aims to review the epistemic status of both the practice of gaining beliefs based on perceptual experience (Perceptual Practice or PP) and the practice of gaining beliefs based on religious experience (Christian Practice or CP). It's important to note instantly that there is a fact of the matter in both cases, just because it's a belief does not mean that it's immune from having a truth value. If i believe there to be a cup of coffee in front of me it's a fact of the matter that there either is or isn't; and likewise with religious beliefs based on religious experience. If i believe that God has spoken to me, there is a fact of the matter.

Now, how might we consider something to be justified? An intuitive notion is to say that we are justified in believing something when we have a reason to believe that such a practice is sound. This is considered to be the stronger notion of justification (Jns). Typically, this is the stance adopted by people approaching the topic with a preset agenda (i might be biased here) to exclude one type of practice over another. Atheists and "agnostics" typically reject the CP for the reason that it has no reason supporting it, Alston brings up the point though that the advocates of such action have no reason to endorse PP without it being circular. Let's go back to the coffee example. i see a mug of coffee in front of me and so based on that perception i base the belief that there is a cup of coffee in front of me. If we apply the standard though to this belief i have to provide more reasoning, it seems however that when asked to provide more reasoning supporting my belief i always appeal to the same practice, the perceptual practice (pp). i might smell the coffee, scald my hand in the coffee, taste the coffee but i'll always be appealing to the same method.
It seems then that the only non-problematic way of dealing with this is adopting a weak notion of justification (Jnw), a point that Alston is keen to point out most philosophers would adopt this position. This position basically means that the practice is to be considered sound until decent reason is given to reject it. Simplistically said, it's an innocent until proven guilty.

Alston is wise enough to assume that there may be some objections from quite a lot of people if we left it there, after all the two methods are radically different. So consequently he tries to present some reasoning that we might find for them being so different. He proposes four ways that PP is unique from CP:

1. There are standard methods of verifying the accuracy of a perceptual belief based on PP.

2. Participation in PP allows us to discover patterns in behaviour of objects observed and because of this we may predict future events.

3. The ability to practice and the actual performance of PP is found in every normal adult human being

4. The same conceptual scheme in objectifying their perceptual experience is used by every normal adult human being regardless of their culture.
[edit note: i got lazy here onwards and copied and pasted a lot from my essay]
Now in light of these things Alston asks that since CP connects us with something vastly different than that which PP connects us with, being the external environment, why can’t the method of practice also be drastically different? So Alston’s task then becomes providing a possible state of affairs whereby CP has the same epistemic status as PP and yet lacks the characteristics listed above (1-4). Alston comes up with the following state of affairs consisting of three parts:

a) God is so different from Humans that we’re unable to grasp His behaviour.
b) Because of this we’re only able to get the “faintest, sketchiest, and most insecure grasp” of how He actually is.
c) Finally, whatever knowledge we do have of God’s presence is ordained to be such that it is clear and unmistakable but only when certain “special and difficult conditions are satisfied”

If we agree to these points then we should not want CP to fit the criteria set out by 1-4. 1 (standards of checking belief) and 2 (regularities of object observed allow predictions in future cases) are both excluded because of the first point, God has such an “otherness” about Him that prevents us from being able of to predict His behaviour. Because of b we’re able to reject 4 (every normal adult human being uses the same conceptual scheme to objectify sense experience) as God’s otherness prevents us from having a full picture of who God is. And finally in this state of affairs, because the unmistakable experience of God has been ordained under certain conditions the third suggestion (that every person is able to practice PP) is to be rejected as well. Perhaps we could argue against these points? Alston claims that a and b are commonly held in many religions and c is a premise that is a basic theme in Christianity (and some other religions). If we choose to accept these premises of CP then it seems that Alston has produced a state of affairs where it’s unsurprising that CP does not satisfy the conditions 1-4.
Following from a-c we’re able to indirectly discover these truths:

Religious Experience is the genuine awareness of the divine.
Articulation of the experience may be mistaken to a greater or lesser extent. Despite not being entirely accurate the articulations will, mostly, contain some truth and will constitute a useful approximation of the truth.
God’s designs allow for correction and improvement therefore increasing the accuracy of beliefs from religious experience. So, as one develops in their spiritual life they become more accurate and discriminating; simply put their spiritual “sight” becomes clearer.

These further points are things that are fairly uncontroversial in the religious circles and the opponent would be quite hard pressed to object against them.
Alston argues that since CP has not had sufficient reasoning proposed to reject it then it is able to enjoy the same epistemic status as PP. He reaches this conclusion by claiming that from within CP, it is Jnw; a fact that the Perceptual Practitioner must also recognise to be true. PP also is from within itself Jnw, another fact that the Perceptual Practitioner must also hold, consequently the two practices must be recognised to have the same epistemic status.

Now initially we might object to the criteria that Alston produces as the list of traits unique to PP that CP lacks. It might be said that although these are all true of the PP, it’s not exactly the list that we might first think up of. In response to this I think that an advocate for Alston’s view might respond in saying that any trait that we mention such as communal confirmation of perceptual experiences is recognised in the list by one of the points and that Alston’s aim was to preemptively cover every possible trait unique to PP so that the Perceptual Practitioner may not be able to object to his conclusion.
It might also be argued that there are only two forms of normative justifications, the strong and the weak sense when in reality there might be more than just those forms. It seems impossible though for there to be a middle sense that would apply to one and not the other. As well as that I think that anyone that was perhaps able to show another sense would probably be approaching the paper with their own presuppositions about religious beliefs and would be wanting to discriminate against CP on that basis.

In conclusion I think that Alston has put forward a fairly convincing argument for us accepting CP as being on the same epistemic status as PP on the condition that we believe that there are no other forms of normative justification other than the weak and strong senses. If however there is a middle sense that applies to PP only then the perceptual practitioner might have a better argument, since though we cannot just stumble upon another sense without bias that easily it seems sensible to restrict ourselves to either strong or weak normative justification.

xox

jon.

It's Suzzy like Fuzzy not Floozy...

2010-05-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

...this isn't some Joanna Newsom song after all (Bonus pretentious-douchebaggery points to anyone that got that reference!)

Oxfam, one pound ninety nine pence, yes please, deal. See below for music.

xox

jon.

Bible Study Time.

2010-05-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

First off, music:

There's two videos here because i love the Pomplamoose covers a lot but then i remembered i had watched "Later with Jules..." a few weeks previously with Mal, Neil and Gemma and one of the women i will one day marry came on. Andy Samburg needs to stop bothering her first.

That aside.

This isn't one of my most intense Bible Studies as 1) i'm not a theological heavyweight, 2) it's getting late and 3) i've not been reading the Bible as often as i'd like/should be.

That aside lately i have been making my way through the book of 2 Chronicles. Most recently there have been two stories that have struck me most.
2 Chronicles 18 brings up a story about King Ahab (the pretty crap king of Israel(?)) and Jehoshapat (the King of Judah, doing a great job) making a pact in war as allies, Jehoshapat is convicted though to seek the heart of God first. Ahab throws together a group of 400 prophets who will tell them what to do and they're all very conclusive that they ought to go to battle. Jehoshapat points out that there is a prophet that he's neglected that is very in tune with God. Ahab responds that he always is a bit of a killjoy and that he wasn't gong to. Long story short, they consult him and he has quite a damning message. It was simply that if we go to war you will die. Anyway, King Ahab dies in battle because he didn't listen.

What lessons can be taken from this story?

A very clear one is surrounding listening to God and how receptive we are to what He has to say to us and how we have to be willing to change our lives even if it results in us doing something that perhaps we'd rather not be doing.
Going one step further than this, i feel that the story is highlighting the importance of approaching God's word with a blank slate. The technical phrase is exegetically, as opposed to approaching it with philosophies or ideas pre-set. For a really great explanation of the exegetic and eisegetic distinction this link is a great resource. It may seem that i'm just repeating what i said earlier but i'm hoping that this'll be a stronger version with stronger implications.
When the gospel tells us to love all [i'm not linking that to any scripture-if you need a reference for that then you're delibrately reading the writings of Jesus with the intention of not loving all] you have to love all. It's one of the most spoken of parts of the New Testament. When James writes that omissions of good is sinning so you fail to stand up for the oppressed then you are sinning. In this case i'd like to point our attention to Uganda, where churches have been involved in the criminalization of homosexual activity to the point whereby they may soon face the death penalty [read the full story here]. Now we brought the great news to them yet we've only taught them Diet Christianity, the sort where we teach them the news of salvation for the individual and yet ignore the effects of love that this ought to have on their lives. In other words Exclusive Salvation Theology. i will never be able to forgive myself or the church around me if we're remembered as the church generation that didn't lead the way on civil liberties because we found it icky, or because we found them "bigger sinners" than us. i truly long to see the Church stand up against this injustice and fight alongside homosexuals to gain the rights that the deserve as humans. Otherwise we're eisegetically using God's word to justify our homophobia.

xox

jon.

Post exam Plan.

2010-05-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

View Larger Map
Has anyone got a tent i could borrow?

An album i could not live without

2010-05-14T17:09:00.001-07:00

Never has any other album ever made me laugh and provoke such deep introspection as this album, applying the songs to my own life. It's genuinely an album i love.

The nailing of beliefs by Luther, shooting of Franz Ferdinand, demanding of Rosa Parks to stand up and every other significant historical event was significant because of the strife leading up that moment, the inner battle between the two opposites. >Dialectics we call it most formally. Anyway. i shaved tonight.

I’ve heard you say many times
That you’re better ’n no one
And no one is better ’n you
If you really believe that
You know you got
Nothing to win and nothing to lose

xox

jon.

Gee, what would happen if i wordled this blog...

2010-05-12T17:27:00.001-07:00

...yeh, i'm about two years behind all the latest internet fads.
[credit to www.wordle.com]

xox

jon.

Sense Reference/Language Games

2010-05-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Q. To begin with, could you describe this work?

A. Yes, of course. What I've done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water.

Q. The accidents?

A. Yes. The colour, feel, weight, size ...

Q. Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree?

A. No. It's not a symbol. I've changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree.

Q. It looks like a glass of water.

A. Of course it does. I didn't change its appearance. But it's not a glass of water, it's an oak tree.

Q. Can you prove what you've claimed to have done?

A. Well, yes and no. I claim to have maintained the physical form of the glass of water and, as you can see, I have. However, as one normally looks for evidence of physical change in terms of altered form, no such proof exists.

Q. Haven't you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?

A. Absolutely not. It is not a glass of water anymore. I have changed its actual substance. It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree.

Q. Isn't this just a case of the emperor's new clothes?

A. No. With the emperor's new clothes people claimed to see something that wasn't there because they felt they should. I would be very surprised if anyone told me they saw an oak tree.

Q. Was it difficult to effect the change?

A. No effort at all. But it took me years of work before I realised I could do it.

Q. When precisely did the glass of water become an oak tree?

A. When I put the water in the glass.

Q. Does this happen every time you fill a glass with water?

A. No, of course not. Only when I intend to change it into an oak tree.

Q. Then intention causes the change?

A. I would say it precipitates the change.

Q. You don't know how you do it?

A. It contradicts what I feel I know about cause and effect.

Q. It seems to me that you are claiming to have worked a miracle. Isn't that the case?

A. I'm flattered that you think so.

Q. But aren't you the only person who can do something like this?

A. How could I know?

Q. Could you teach others to do it?

A. No, it's not something one can teach.

Q. Do you consider that changing the glass of water into an oak tree constitutes an art work?

A. Yes.

Q. What precisely is the art work? The glass of water?

A. There is no glass of water anymore.

Q. The process of change?

A. There is no process involved in the change.

Q. The oak tree?

A. Yes. The oak tree.

Q. But the oak tree only exists in the mind.

A. No. The actual oak tree is physically present but in the form of the glass of water. As the glass of water was a particular glass of water, the oak tree is also a particular oak tree. To conceive the category 'oak tree' or to picture a particular oak tree is not to understand and experience what appears to be a glass of water as an oak tree. Just as it is imperceivable it also inconceivable.

Q. Did the particular oak tree exist somewhere else before it took the form of a glass of water?

A. No. This particular oak tree did not exist previously. I should also point out that it does not and will not ever have any other form than that of a glass of water.

Q. How long will it continue to be an oak tree?

A. Until I change it.

Cheap advice is like cheap food, tastes good but makes you fat.

2010-05-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday involved me doing something i was genuinely petrified by and it was so stupid. It was ridiculous. i was asked to speak in front of a room full of people about my university experience and how CU may or may not have helped.
There was quite a lot i could have said and quite a lot that i didn't, i kept it short and sweet. This i hope will be an extended version of the things i was not nearly brave enough to say out loud.

In second year i developed this insane breed of Christianity that ought to be cut off at the root and killed. It was this stupid notion of guilt tripping myself for everything that i did and allowing it to hang over my head despite my knowledge that i'd been forgiven. This notion of guilt tripping combined with a desire to become a social recluse led me to harvesting this terrible, guilt ridden Christianity that focussed on introversion and exclusion above everything else. I was almost cultivating autism in my own bedroom.
Third year was a year that taught me so much, through people such as Dan Rudman and Chad Donoghue I really learnt the importance of learning your Bible as well as thinking about how it fits in collectively within itself and the rest of creation. The Vermont guys taught me how important community was, accepting others into your group and investing time with each other Biblically, praying with each other, talking with each other, sharing with each other and extending that to others beyond the group. i learnt a lot that year, and i'm forever grateful to 99% of the people i met out there. If i didn't mention you here does not by any means signify that i don't care for you at all.
And then i came home, having to start anew. There were some unhealthy habits still lingering. i realised most of the problems with the church aren't uncontrollables. It's our duties to change ourselves. Anyway.

The biggest things i have learnt can be summarised very simply. Sometimes you don't need to say good advice as i'll use the words of a good friend Justin Puch to say it for me (i've excluded one that i don't necessarily agree with, the rest is all genuine brilliance):

Tell girls they're beautiful.

Read you're [sic] Bible.

Do chores.

Take chances.

Go to church.

Wear Sunscreen.

love. light. melody.

That is possibly the best advice you'll hear.

xox

jon.

Conceivability and Possibility.

2010-04-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

Music:

2312/3000 words.

It's a fairly interesting topic, i'll try and outline it very briefly.

We have two types of knowledge, modal and actual knowledge. The modal surrounds how things could have been/how things could be, how things must be and how things cannot be. The actual knowledge surrounds how things actual stand in the world.

It's weird because we seem able to have modal knowledge and yet not always be able to explain how we've acquired that knowledge. There are in contrast obvious cases whereby we know modal propositions. Van Inwagen in his paper Modal Epistemology claims that there are three ways of uncovering non-mysterious modal knowledge.

Firstly analytic truths-truths that are true by their very conceptual meaning. We know that it's impossible for a bachelor to be married because of the definition of bachelors.
Secondly, necessary truths-truths that apply no matter how things may have been. For example Pythagoras' Theorem applies no matter how things could have been.
Finally, truths built up from basic modal knowledge. A bit more complicated but imagine deriving a modal statement from solidly established modal statements.

We also know some modal knowledge because of what actually is the case. Imagine saying "It's possible that I'm drinking water" I can turn that possibility into an actuality and thus making it true.

Now there's a problem in that we seem able to make modal statements such as "John F Kennedy could have died of natural causes" and yet we're completely unable to explain how we've reached this knowledge. That modal fact is not derived from any of the previously mentioned cases and yet we know it to be true.

Long story short, Van Inwagen adopts a view that he labels Modal Skepticism; the view that we don't know how we know local mysterious modal knowledge. There are some modal propositions though that we cannot possibly know. These are those that are remote and our mere imagining of it doesn't constitute a possibility. So, for example abstract arguments for and against the existence of God, the immortality of the soul etc seem pointless as we cannot know as these involve modal premises that we cannot possibly know.

This seems to me to be quite intuitive and an idea that i'd like to subscribe to, whether or not i hold the rest of Van Inwagen's paper to be correct is another issue, but this one particularly i'd like to think about some more. It means that when partaking in apologetics we are unable to make bold claims (such as the ontological argument) that we're unable to prove. Instead we can make the claims that we're prima facie justified in our belief. This, fitting in with reformed epistemology and a weaker reading of Kierkegaard's leap of faith, actually seems to fit in with Christian apologetics. Instead of saying that we can deductively prove the existence of God, we make the claim that we can inductively prove the existence of God. The distinction is vital. And instead of us having to prescribe to a blind leap of faith, we only have to adhere to a weaker inductive leap, one that involves faith and reason co-existing. To summarise, trying to deductively prove the existence of God will only lead to complete circular reasoning relying on modal premises that cannot be fully justified, inductive however is able to combine faith and reason.

That probably made very little sense. Ah well.

xox

jon.

i don't like Irn Bru but...

2010-04-24T05:34:00.001-07:00

...their adverts are awesome.

Actions speak louder than words, especially if you're Jesus.

2010-04-23T14:32:00.000-07:00

Music first:

i genuinely love this band. They played with Elbow when i saw them in Glasgow and then went to the Isle of Arran, one of the loveliest weekends of my life.

Second Bible study time.

We've been covering places in the Bible where Jesus doesn't come out and fully admit who He is but where He says very secretly. It got me thinking, because the emphasis was mostly on Him being the Son, and it really got me thinking about how little emphasis we seem to put on Him also being the Spirit.

So i looked in my Bible and my notes and pondered a little. This is one thing that i stumbled across.

In Luke, Jesus sends out seventy two. In Numbers we see a story where people are (understandably) getting a little pissed at Moses because they've been walking about without proper food for the last 40 years and were beginning to get cravings for meat. Moses is told by God to bring some of the elders together. Immediately in the tent where the elders have met the Spirit of God manifests itself on them and they prophesy one at a time. It's amazing because two of the elders, Eldad and Medad, didn't show up but the Spirit still annoited them and they also began prophesising. One of Moses' helpers gets annoyed and tells Moses to make them stop, to which Moses says "Are you jealous for me? I wish all the Lord's people could prophesy. I wish the Lord would give His Spirit to all of them!".
As if you've not guessed, the two are interconnected in the fact that in both of them the number of people being filled up is seventy two. In some Greek editions of the Bible it only said seventy, perhaps because they had not recognised the significance of Jesus' claim. This was Jesus' bold statement, that He was in the Father and the Father was in Him and that He was in the Spirit and the Spirit was in Him. In the case involving Moses, he desires all to have the Spirit of God on them and likewise in the case of Jesus; Jesus was sending out the seventy two with the intention of them spreading the news unto all of the earth.

xox

jon.

Places i want to visit.

2010-04-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

Nunavut

Nunavut is in Canada, which instantly makes it at least 20% cool. It is huge. It's bigger than Washington and Alaska put together and yet only 30,000 people live there. The coat of arms is pretty sweet too. When you visit you can go hiking, camping, kayaking and hunting so i'd really like to go.

It's nice to have my parents over at the moment, i told them about a farm i'd like to own one day in similar fashion to River Cottage. i don't think i'll ever be rich enough to do it properly though. oh well.

xox

jon.

This was supposed to be a brief post. Ooops.

2010-04-09T03:43:00.000-07:00

i love this video for two reasons. One it's a great song and two Paul Simon totally interrupts that kid. Brilliant.

In other news i will be presenting a paper at the philosophy weekend away (that way i go for free!) on the subject of individual essences. It was originally done as an essay that goes into a bit more detail than the paper that i'll be presenting. You can download the original paper here. Or the draft presentation here (It might change!). If you have any problems downloading it let me know and i'm sure i can fire it on over to you via email or something.

And the final thing i would like to bring up is this following clip. The whole sermon is incredible and i'd truly recommend watching it but the part i really wanted to highlight was at 5:32. The part where he makes fun out of the unhealthy way of seeing relationships.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves who we are and what expectations we have of our partners. If i don't have everything worked out then what makes me think that some union with a girl is going to fix everything? It's an unhealthy and unfair expectation. If you genuinely think that at no point you'll have disagreements then you're completely delusional. The Christian relationship is something that you could potentially do an entire book series on (i'm quite certain it's been done already). i think i can summarise what a whole book series says on the topic (although Jon Acuff did a great job somewhere on his blog-it's all really good so it's not like you're wasting time by trawling through it). It's ok to be in love, and when Christians are they become one flesh which means as one body they ought to be seeking the mission of Christ. No matter how adorably they do so, if they fail then their relationship has become co-dependent and no longer dependent upon God. Walt Whitman wrote a great poem called Assimilations (similar traits are found in the film The Thin Red Line) the message is simply the child becomes immortal through becoming all that he sees in his surroundings. i can never quite understand though, why would you become the finite which will in due time fade away instead of the infinite? Instead of investing his time in Christ he turned to the finite things surrounding him. Likewise was the case with most of the characters in the Thin Red Line, they either invested themselves in their partners (Bell), nature (Witt) or nothingness (Welsh). But at the end of the day their partners cheated on them, everything comes to an end and they realised there's more to it. Either way, investing solely on one finite thing seems silly. And likewise in our relationships, being "lost in each other" is a great thing so long as it then points the glory onto God. If it fails that task then you were better of alone.

xox

jon.

i stole a lot of this from Bill Platt

2010-04-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

First things first, here's a music video to chuh-eck out

Easter sunday was lovely.
It consisted of an easter egg hunt in the back garden. My sister gets really excited about it, she's twenty three. Secretly, i think, my Dad gets excited by it too and enjoys hiding the eggs everywhere. It was fun, i won't lie.

There's a Kierkegaardian quote that is frequently mentioned but not in it's entirity, which is sad. Anyway this is it:

Life can only be explained after it has been lived, just as Christ only began to interpret the Scriptures and show how they applied to him-after His resurrection.

14th April 1838

Throughout the New Testament Jesus says things that the disciples, his own family and religious officials fail to understand. And most of these surround prophecies about what will happen to Jesus/what is being fulfilled through Him.

After an essay on Wittgenstein's concept of understanding, i really didn't see myself typing anything further on the topic of understanding at all/ever.

There's this common theme, that the entirety of the Old Testament is leading up to this moment and that without the explanation demonstrated through Jesus we'll never get it. It's also a subtle reminder of what Kierkegaard brings up in Philosophical Fragments, that Jesus acts in a similar manner to Socrates. In Meno Socrates is exploring the concept of virtue as an innate intuition within a person and how he acts as bringing about the notion of virtue within a person, as a midwife brings about the child from a mother. Philosophical Fragments is the text Kierkegaard suggests that Jesus acts in the same way bringing truth to the nations. Jesus speaks with Nicodemus about Himself, and Nicodemus leaves almost more confused than before, especially when we see in verse 14 a comparison between Jesus and a bronze snake. What's interesting though is that it's not all that we hear of the high Pharisee in the Gospel of John, in fact Nicodemus was responsible for Jesus' burial. How strange it must have been to have seen all of this unfold and for it not to have been fully completed as Kierkegaard rightly mentioned, the Scriptures become clear in context of Jesus' resurrection.

xox

jon.

Something really serious.

2010-03-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

It's normally pretty obvious when i have a presentation/essay/homework/reading/something to do as i'll be posting on here too regularly. Like an annoyingly large amount.
As well as that you can tell when i've got one of the above to do as my thinking will be anywhere but where it ought to be.

Recently i've been a bit heavy on here so i thought that this would hopefully be a bit more cheerful.

My friend and i are like two schoolgirls. We develop a crush and then play that game where you count out the letters in "LOVES" between the two names involved (The BBC has it's own version here). Since we're both over 21 you'd think we'd got over this, but no. We're sad.

i thought i'd spice it up a bit last night and did this...
God LOVES Jon Price-this one only equalled 75%, a little disappointing as it was God after all
Yahweh LOVES Jon Price-an improvement 88%, but still not quite there...
Jehovah LOVES Jon Price-even worse 44%.

Rebecca suggested that i maybe tried "Jesus Christ"

Jesus Christ LOVES Jon Price-better but still a measily 61%

Desperate times called for desperate measures so i went for "The Holy Trinity"

The Holy Trinity LOVES Jon Price-A whopping 98%! That's a new record involving me!

So what theological issues can be learnt from this experience?
i really need to get out more.

xox

jon.

barr humbug.

2010-03-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

i had one of these bad boys earlier. It actually hurts to be this retro.

In other news, i may have received an offer from St Andrews today regarding what i might be doing next year.

Does anyone have ten grand they could lend me?

xox

jon.

I'm a dead dog sinner and a man too scared to try

2010-03-26T15:26:00.000-07:00

Truth be told i am quite often wrong. And this blog is filled with errors and proud, opinionated writings; that's why it's essential for you to approach any of man very critically. Most recently i found myself arguing with a very well intentioned person about the message of a text (more than publicly, over a matter or taste not anything fundamental). This quite frankly does make me a dick. Sorry to that person, if you're reading this then know that i'm proud and that i shouldn't be arguing over such petty matters.

Anyway, with that aside...

Fragments of my life.

Heroes

i really love Jellaby a lot.

Music

AA Bondy-Rapture (Sweet Rapture)

xox

jon.

A serious man.

2010-03-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

i am currently somewhat in love with the film A Serious Man, the new Coen brothers film. It brings up some really interesting points, and interestingly enough Ethan Coen apparently did his undergrad dissertation at Princeton on the later Wittgenstein (which i have given up doing an essay on tonight-on appropriately, meaning and understanding).

Without giving too much away the film surrounds the story of a college professor who's life is falling apart and he is seeking meaning to it all. This clip seems to fit in quite nicely here. [Since embedding is forbidden, click HERE]

Schrodinger's Cat and a lovely little fable involving Polish peasants really highlights the essence of what is being said, in the words of Clive's father: Please. Accept the mystery.

It seems that the film is saying; the cat is both alive and dead, the peasant is both a person and a dybbuk, the money was left there and wasn't left there, the "religious" experiences both have meaning and are meaningless. At the end of the day, as he says in the clip earlier, we aren't owed by God explanations, we owe them to God. And that's where religious existentialism kicks in.

[disclaimer]
i do not advocate this view, it's merely topical and really interesting.

We are faced with a world of uncertainty, we have [correction: we have two options, despair or acceptance-which actually fits in better in the context of the film.] three options: either slide into despair as we see Larry Gopnik doing, accept/embrace the mystery as we see the rabbis and Mr Park doing or we can take the leap of faith (which in a funny way we see no character doing).

i think that's all i want to say on Christian Existentialism just now, i think it'll be saved for another time (ha).

xox

jon.

Meditations on James 5:13-15

2010-03-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

i'm not entirely sure if i'll be abandoning the proposed idea in the last post or not, either way i feel that this is a bit more interesting and fresh in my mind at the moment.

Here's a lovely song for you to listen to, if we're friends in a non-facebook way i may even give you the whole album (it's really good).

So let's turn to James 5:13-15. Now James here is discussing the significance of prayer something that, myself included, we tend to be terrible at. Anyway, here he's dealing with three situations; when we're afflicted, when we're joyful and finally when we're sick.

Let's deal with the first type. James says that if you're afflicted then you ought to pray. Now within this passage the word afflicted really shouldn't surprise you; it simple means to be troubled. What is interesting about this first case is the use of the verb "pray". In Greek there are four tenses; the aorist (a singular act in the present), Imperfect (a continuous act in progress and continuing), Future (as it says on the tin) and Present tense (continuous act that is in progress at the present time). Although three of these tenses refer to what is presently happening only one is being used when James instructs the church to pray. In this case it's the present tense and understandably so. In saying "pray" James is meaning for this to be an act that continues onwards forever. There's good reason here for it. If you've ever met anyone that is afflicted, depressed, addicted or troubled then you'll know for certain that one prayer is not quite enough. Instead the act of continuous prayer of the person is required. Constantly seeking God in these situations ultimately safeguards the person praying if it's done continuously, whilst as a single act is less likely to have a constant effect of protection.

Nothing overly special can really be highlighted about the next part, praising if your joyful. It's an interesting point though that in these situations of joy or pain (as it was in the preceding part) it's a very direct connection with God. There's no interceding parties, just straight in tere dealing with the problem/blessing as it is. i like that idea a lot. Another point about these two parts being coupled together is that it suggests that there is no quick-fix solution. There was a mini-debate at my homegroup last night about methods of dealing with emotions of various types. In contrast with the view that we can listen to worship music to focus ourselves on God, i put forward the view that i felt was being advocated here in this passage; that if you're troubled you ought to approach God for help. Praise is certainly appropriate in certain conditions but in the case of affliction it seems that it's an inappropriate response. i wish i was strong enough to turn to God and shout out "Blessed be Your name", but in reality i am a proud boy whose heart is not entirely resting upon God. James calls us to praise if we're joyful and to pray if we're troubled.

Now an interesting thing about the next part is that anyone sick is called to be annoited. The word used here is "ἀσθενεῖ" meaning, well, sick (surprise). But when we look at the type of sickness ascribed to it in lexicons there is always one common word: weakness. Other words include "needy" and "poor" as well as "powerless". It seems that this passage isn't necessarily referring to the type of sickness that we find the Daily Mail speaking of. Instead it's almost as if the sickness being suggested is the sickness unto death.
Donald brought up a fascinating point regarding the use of the word "heal". Although the word means heal, the word "σώσει" also has another meaning; to deliver from evil. [The KJV really highlights this point by using the word "save" instead of heal"] This seems to fit in perfectly with the interpretation of sickness that i've adopted above and then it leads on into the final verse, that forgiveness is available.
The act of annointing, interestingly enough, is of the aorist tense in the passage thus meaning that only a singluar present action is required. (That's mildly irrelevant but i got excited by it).

God, i know i need healing.

xox

jon.

I carved a map in the back of my arm.

2010-03-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

Hello,
Tonight a friend mentioned he'd seen my blog, which was both flattering and scary. It seems that i need to remember that this blog is accessible to both a secular and a christian crowd.
The thing is that, quite frankly, i've never been entirely sure what to write. i've always tried to allow it to reflect thoughts of the time, and hopefully these thoughts should reflect a belief that Christians ought to aim to become.

Kierkegaard wrote a terrific philosophical/theological text entitled "The Sickness unto Death" in which he explored the nature of despair (not as we'd associate with normal disorders but with a denial of whom one is called to become). I remain firmly standing by this point; that although Kierkegaard jumped between pseudonyms, there are some facts that we know about about him. One of these happens to be that a few moments prior to the publication of the said book he ran in to change the authorship from Soren Kierkegaard to Johannes Anti-Climacus, as he did not consider himself to be enough of an ideal Christian to present such ideals, instead Anti-Climacus (Progressing up a ladder is possibly the best brief explanation) was best fitted to present such ideas. That was an explicit dig at Phil. I am right, you are wrong.

So that given where am I going with this?

I firmly believe that Christians are called to justify their beliefs and come to understand how it is so.

Therefore given this i feel that it is my task to rule out the Christian beliefs, and how they relate to the modern man. This is quite frankly more for my own benefit than for yours. Speaking to my friend reminded me that i'd placed a great stress on the significance of sin, which is a big thing in Christian beliefs. It should not be all that dominates Christian thinking. So i hope the following series will state Christian beliefs and how the modern man is called to respond. As well as that along the way i hope i'll reveal how i've survived thus far in a secular teaching environment and how these have truly helped me.

xox

jon.

(p.s. i hate when people speak to me about my beliefs when i'm not in the condition to speak about them, as it reminds me that i ought to be in a suitable condition, and for that reason i could not possibly love you any more)

Wittgenstein vs Orr Ewing. A possible response.

2010-03-03T07:59:00.000-08:00

At the moment I'm reading quite a lot of Wittgenstein, the great philosopher of the 20th Century. It's very interesting to hear what he has to say regarding the meaning of words in context. This has provoked some christian thinkers, such as Amy Orr-Ewing to protest against a subjectivity in reading as perhaps proposed.

This is a possible response, I'm not done yet.

In her book Is the Bible...(page 18-19) Orr-Ewing proposes that Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations claims that the meaning of words is not an objective matter but one that is contextual to the scenario in place (Note I am choosing not to say that they are subjective, that has different connotations). Consequently when approaching texts such as the Bible Orr-Ewing claims that this perspective means that there is no unification by rule application or meaning of words between cultures or people reading it as within the language game used changes depending on the person reading it (and therefore so do the rules being applied within the language game).

I have no problem with how she has presented Wittgenstein's view of language as a game that has it's rules and meanings rooted in the context, the problem though is in seeing the Bible as a two-way language game. The Bible itself is not a language game that applies individually to every person that's ever existed, it is a communication from God which means that the meanings and rules within it can still be fixed within a game. In this case I see God as having a language game with me, both personally and collectively, as well as with the rest of humanity. The difference here is that I am being addressed personally through this form of revelation and as is the rest of humanity. The meaning remain fixed. The reason that I call the Bible a one-way language game is that there is still the possibility of a response from myself to God.

Let's look at this example of a language game that displays meaning rooted in the context:
I go into a pizzeria and ask if the oven is hot, the oven is at 170 degrees (celcius).
In the first context I arrive with a pizza for cooking, in which case the meaning of hot may be found in the context. The chef will correctly answer no.
In the second context I arrive with cleaning equipment and rubber gloves on ready to scrub off the muck, in which case the meaning of the word hot again is found in the context. The chef will correctly tell me yes, it's hot. Don't do it, you'll burn yourself.

In both times the contextual interpretation is essential to the two-way language game. In the case of the Bible there is no context necessary (perhaps the notion of sin and the falling of man, but that might not even be entirely necessary). It's God speaking to the people and them then responding to this. The listener doesn't dictate the author's meaning in any language game, but the author does in accordance to the language game itself.
In this case the listener's response is subjective, and it's a wonderful trait of the Bible. The meaning remains fixed though as every person in humanity finds themselves under the same preconditions.

I don't know if that made much sense, I kind of hope not though because I need to spend a bit more time thinking it all through.

xox

jon.

trust.

2010-03-01T13:18:00.000-08:00

Everytime i tried to write a new post i could never finish it. There were lots of ideas and words but i could never write them.
So this will do for now, and i think that's fine.

xox

jon.

trust.

2010-03-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

Firstly, music:

[This was one of the many things that i typed about in this topic]

Times like these spur on big questions. i'm coming to an end of my undergraduate career and my little brother is choosing options/deciding on careers. Either way, it's a daunting time.

My parents see me see me as fairly laid back and i can understand why, they've even created a phrase about it. But truth be told i do occasionally find myself awake at night because i am nervous about what faces me. Sometimes when we read the Bible we need to spend a serious amount of time thinking about what has been said. Take for example Acts 10, Peter has a vision about a bunch of unclean foods coming from heaven and him being told to eat. Sure enough Peter denies it. Later on in the same chapter Cornelius, a gentile, is saved. The dream that Peter has is a metaphor surrounding God saving the non-jewish people. It's not so apparent there that there is such a metaphor, and the passage needs to be approached with a serious, pensive heart. Thankfully Jesus was very blunt about the stress that all of us face.

In Christ we find direction on almost every area of life, unfortunately He's not a careers advisor.

Chatting to a friend the other night made me realise a few things that quite frankly i think i'd crumble over if it weren't for Christ. That sounds cheesey. i know it is. After watching a few too many episodes of Ed as a teenager when i felt ill (and also perhaps too many viewings of "She's all That"). If i am the man i sincerely hope that i am, that has fewer worries than the birds in the sky then maybe i'm happy being single for the rest of my life. As a teenager (and still now) i enjoy fulfilling the dreams of the rockstar life in my bedroom singing songs loudly with my guitar, but i'm ok with not ever being famous or maybe no person even hearing the songs i write. i swam a lot and did well here and there, breaking records and getting medals. At the end of the day though can anyone tell me who won the bronze at the island games in 1995 at 200 Breastroke (you either know it or you don't-there's no point guessing)? Man's achievements will come to pass, and we'll leave the world as we came.
It might be a similar message i mentioned last time, that we ought not to invest too heavily in the finite but in that which endures, that's true immortality. And i really hope that i'm sensitive to the world and it's brokeness and yet still immune to it. That may have sounded contradictory. i genuinely do think that it's the message that's brought forth in every conversation with Jesus, epistle and acts of the disciples; that here is not to be considered as the end and that realising this ought to result in a new passion and joy.

xox

jon.

Good guilt versus bad guilt always wins hands down.

2010-02-21T12:45:00.000-08:00

I love the song above at the moment. Listen to it.

Ok today I'm going to write a little a devotional that's very relevent to recent events. It's based off the passage found in 2 Corinthians 7:10-13. To set the scene Paul had sent a letter to the church in Corinth between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians and it's understood that in the letter Paul was calling for a changing of behaviour within the Corinth church. Anyway, so in this letter Paul is applauding the good work of them repenting, in this specific section he's reviewing two types of guilt; Godly guilt and worldly guilt. They're both forms of guilt, feelings of disgust surroundings actions that the subject has done but there is a very profound difference in (a) the reason why and (b) the effects that it has on the subjects' life. Let me illustrate this with an example: "I sincerely regret getting drunk last night as my head is killing me, I've got loads to clean up, I cheated on my wife making her leave me and now I won't see my kids and I got in one little fight and my mum got scared she said 'you're moving in with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air'" In this fine example (you may want to ignore from the "I got in one little fight..." part onwards) it shows how the person responds in a guiltful mind. The person feels a deep sense of regret doing these things and wishes that they hadn't done them, an obvious pre-requisite of any form of guilt. However the reason for the guilt is based in what Paul would label in his letter to Corinthians as being Earthly guilt, guilt that is based on reasons that may be found in earthly things.
All of these things are bad reasons to feel terrible about something, as Paul points out they can only lead to death. Death being in the situation a spiritual death, one that is caused because of selfishness and wickedness.

David awoke one night to walk along his palace roof and saw Bathseba bathing on her own roof, alone whilst her husband was in battle. They had an affair, Bathseba was pregnant and in the hope of no-one finding out David calls Uriah (her husband) home so that he'll get drunk and then well you can see where this is going (they didn't have Jeremy Kyle to fill them in back then). Uriah refuses to sleep with his wife until the battle that he'd been taken from has been won. David enraged at this prospect sends the command to not only send him back to war but to put him on the frontline where Uriah will surely die. Uriah died and David comforts Bathsheba by marrying her, problem solved. Nathan, being very wise, poses a problem to David. David agrees with what Nathan expected him to say and then reveals that David is the subject of his own hypocrisy confronting David with the fact that he had an affair, tried to hide it, murdered the husband and was too proud to admit any of this. And this is the point of the whole story so far in the context of 2 Corinthians 7: David breaks down and says "I have sinned against the Lord". The Godly guilt can be captured in this story and some others. Take the example of Joseph when confronted with the possibility of having an affair with Potiphar's wife says "how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?". The main point of Godly guilt is this, that we are hurting God; our sin is in conflict with what He wishes. And so consequently the Godly guilt is looking at you own life and saying "God, I'm sorry for what I've done not because of it's effects on my life but because it's conflicted with what You've told me".
One attitude of guilt breeds selfishness whilst the other is admitting sin to God and will lead onto a life driven by hope of seeing His glory.

xox

jon.

Daily Devotional.

2010-02-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

Today I'd like to focus on Romans 7:18. I truly love this passage as it fits in so perfectly into the whole picture of the Bible. Man falls from God and consequently his nature is tainted. So Paul is writing in this letter to the church in Rome, saying in this passage that although he longs to do what is right his tainted self cannot bring himself to actually do it. It's interesting because obviously Paul has to do something right eventually, right? What Paul isn't saying here is that he cannot ever do anything right but this perhaps the greatest plea of a humble heart.
The book of Acts for example is littered with examples of getting things right in his ministry. So what I think Paul is saying here is that none of that, or anything good may be attributed to him. Instead he looks at anything good in his own life and gives the credit to the grace of God. It's important though for us to realise this major point in Christian thought and the implications that it has on every area of our life.
Anything good in my life, any aspect of me that shows self-restraint, any characteristic that's worth pointing at has nothing to do with who I am, but is because of what God has done. Throughout the book of Romans, Galations and Ephesians (and probably a lot more-these were just examples) Paul is obsessed with reminding us that the grace of God, whether it is as I've mentioned above to do with personality or to do with saving grace, that this grace has nothing to do with our holiness. Of course it has nothing to do with our holiness or obedience to God's law, as Paul writes in his letter to Ephesians we've all served the will of our bodies over the will of God, and it brings us beautifully back to the words of Jesus in Matthew; that we are in serious moral debt to God.

So what impact should this have on our lives as Christians (assuming we are)? It ought to mean that we are in no position to judge anyone. For if it weren't for the grace of God we could either be in their position or a worse one. It reminds me of Jesus' recommendations on judging others, that we are all morally bankrupt without the grace of God. Praise be to God.

The beauty of the gospel isn't that we suddenly begin living moral lives (we don't and when we do it's merely a symptom of conversion) but it's that all in our lives that is broken made new. That we realise that everything that we have is because of God.

xox

jon.

my name is jon.

2010-02-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

and this is a photo of me with a new poster that i acquired. i put it over the instructions of what to do in case of a fire. fortunately there are no fires in my chalet.

As you can see by my good pointing, it's a cat looking at a bird.

Today I got back from Aviemore which is a wonderful place in Scotland. Google map it.

Reading Martyn Lloyd Jones' book (or here for free!) has really had me thinking about a lot of stuff. Most significantly the need for doctrine and acceptance of grace alone and coming to terms with what this means. One interesting insight that he brings up in the book that I've not really considered is the metaphorical nature behind Jesus' miracles. By this I don't mean to say that they didn't happen but that entangled in the miracles that happened were unlying messages. The example that Dr Lloyd Jones uses is that found in Mark whereby a man unable to see is brought to sight using a miracle of Jesus, but prior to being able to see completely is able to see "men as trees walking", so to paraphrase; now able to see but still not able to see. Jesus fixes the problem and is on His way.
It's very easy to overlook these or to look at them and be mystified by whatever has happened. Quite frankly I wish I had the gift the Dr Lloyd Jones had of being able to extract so much from such a small story. And this is the beauty of the scriptures. As Chad Donohoe points out far too often, the Gospel is "shallow enough for a child to paddle in and deep enough for an elephant to drown in".

xox

jon.

Idle hands

2010-02-09T14:11:00.000-08:00

I've had a bit of a contrast lately going from complete busy-ness to now almost having too little to do. And it's been wonderful to have such juxtaposition.
Usually when I go quiet on here it's a bad sign, meaning that I've not had time to think and fit God in, or worse still I've had too much time and have turned so far from God that I don't want to think or comment about Him.

So I travelled a bit and stuff was wonderful, I owe a lot of thank you's to a lot of people including; Lindsey Goff, Aaron Knott and all of the Vermonts, The Rudmans, Doug Kiene and Amanda Gordon, Aaron Fahey and literally every single person who attends CRU. I really appreciated seeing you all and am forever in debt to you all for your kindness.

Originally I had two ideas for a post and then I slowly decided against them both whilst writing them. The first one I felt that my friend Justin had settled too well in his own blog post on the topic (found here) and the other was using a far too personal example and saying the same old things. Consequently I would really like to know if there's anything I can pray for you, the readers (I may flattering myself there). Whether or not you're a christian I don't care, I'd genuinely really love to hear about anything.

Anyway, I hope you're all doing brilliantly.

xox

jon.

An End Has a Start

2010-01-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

hello.
I have been talking a lot lately about shift happening and was wondering could I honestly live by that? In the words of Matt Chandler, when I was preaching it everything was going fine but could I still say the same things when things maybe aren't going my way?

God owes me nothing. I owe God everything. John Piper made this terrific video whereby he presents what a beautiful sight for Jesus is. It's here at 1:24. God's holiness, God's beauty, God's sovereignty is in jeopardy because I had a good or bad day. It is not contingent on whether or not I strove towards perfection, it is not based on what the earth would consider a good or bad day. Heaven's focus is on did I humbly approach God praising Him?

God, You are so much more than anything I can ever know.
I want to trust You, I want to be trained in holiness.
God, please teach me to be okay, not because Your way works best or Your way leads to prosperity but exclusively because Your way is the way I have been called to live.
Amen

xox

jon.

New decade, same things.

2010-01-01T17:29:00.000-08:00

I can't sleep tonight. My mind is wondering everywhere, like just now I properly freaked out because I couldn't find a certain postcard/letter from someone. I found it just now.

xox

jon.

I forgot

2009-12-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention something really interesting (in my opinion anyway). I've recently been making my way through the Bible's letters and I thought this really well summarised what Matt Chandler said in the first video, and what his behaviour showed in the second video.

The first sentence of Ephesians 2:14 is really interesting. It's simple but the understanding of the word "peace" is probably one of the most fascinating things I've seen. ειρηνη is the word used, meaning peace. One reading of this word is this (and I could not put it any better than the lexicon that I read this in) "The tranquil state of a soul assured of salvation through Christ therefore unfearing and content with life". Perfect. That's what we accept upon becoming Christians. That's what we ought to be.

xox

jon.

Self Portrait Tuesday/Self Analysis December

2009-12-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

Matt Chandler is currently my hero. He's the guy in the moving box above. I recently listened to one of his most amazing speeches and it can be best summarised I think in the counter-example he uses to "debt is dumb". This is when we see how Godly this man is. That sounds weird. Let me re-phrase; we now see him act in accordance to his preaching. See the video below.

Here Matt is saying that he's got a pretty important brain surgery a few days later. God has a plan. We don't know what it is. We need to trust him. The present is nothing compared to the eternal. I think the reason I'm pounding this point on this blog is that I need to work on it myself. I need to grasp the fact that everythign else comes second to God and eternity, and I need to understand that even if it's at the cost of my own life, my hopes and my lusts.

xox

jon

Poke.

2009-12-07T15:41:00.000-08:00

It kind of sucks that you don't reply and that's there no proof that we were even friends at some point. I don't know. Either way, I still care.

When I reveal my personal life I keep it unclear and when I pray I keep it short.

xox

jon.

Hosanna? Really?

2009-12-04T15:34:00.000-08:00

In the book of Luke I think I find the most sobering part of the gospel for me. It's this part whereby a humble tax collector is placed in contrast with a self loving Pharisee. It's sobering because I look at my own experiences of Church and of my own Pride.

How often can I honestly say that I've been this shaken up by my own sin or injustice? Why is it I'm not nearly as upset about my sin as the tax collector appears to be? I've walked past homeless people at times pretending they're not there and then gone to a pub and spent money on alcohol, I've lusted after girls, I've insulted people behind their backs and only been truly sorry when they've found out. In James we're told that failing to do what you know is right is a sin and yet I'm not torn apart when I fail to tell others about the good news. Look at the story of Noah, it says "...it grieved Him at His heart". Here's the problem that I face, when I survey my own life, my own failures, my own ommissions why is it I don't hurt? How can I possibly claim to love God and then hurt Him by my sinning?

I suppose all of this can be summarised in this part: it's easy to sing words like "break my heart for what breaks yours" and not think truly about what is being said. You'd better be willing to be aching over every injustice (no matter how small it may seem), every sin that you commit (yes, even gossiping and lusting after girls), every ommission that you fail in (no matter how you justify it-at least buy him a f***ing sandwhich from subway).

xox

jon

Self Portrait Tuesday

2009-12-03T09:39:00.001-08:00

Two days late, thus making it Self Portrait Thursday!

xox

jon.

And amongst other things.

2009-11-28T16:37:00.000-08:00

Anna Karenina. Why did they bother? To try and create a film based on a very psychologically based novel is a great attempt that will only fail. To then try and make the film without any russian accents is a crime; I heard a cockney accent followed by a french one, terrible. The biggest crime of all is having the quote, the highlight of the book uttered quickly, impassionately by Sophie Marceau just after a sex scene. Then dedicating none of the film to Levin (he deserves more than that!), very little to Mr Karenin's character of hypocrisy and none to the build up of the relationship between Vronsky and Anna. She comes across as the villain!

I don't think I will ever forgive any of the actors, directors etc for being involved in this film. It's terrible.

The best advice ever received.

2009-11-24T16:48:00.000-08:00

I was maybe 13 and this was single handedly the best advice I have ever been given: Read your Bible. I was a little frustrated to say the least, as I thought wise words ought to always sound like something said on Dawson's Creek or found in fortune cookies. Thankfully, I've grown a little older and a little wiser (how ironic) and have realised that this is the best advice I've ever been given.

I was on a worship leader's forum earlier because, quite frankly, I love watching worship leaders interact with each other. "I love your song, it's so personal and musically progressive" says one worship leader to the worship leader who just wrote a song in a minor key. That aside. It genuinely concerned me when there was a discussion about what books people were reading and on 8 pages of dialogue only 4 people commented on what books in the Bible they had been reading. This is a disgustingly sobering thought. Admittedly, some may not have mentioned what books in the Bible were being read and some may have just chosen to not mention delibrately, afterall this is a personal journey not one to be shared in front of strangers.

Is that really what we want though?
I mean, why is it we're more excited by the latest publishing from Zondervan than by what God has delibrately spoken unto us? Something seems to have gone wrong. Anyway reason number one that the Bible cannot and should not be substituted at any point: It is God's word for us. Even the most seemingly irrelevent of parts can still be utilised by God to bring us truth and practicality. That should be enough reasoning but it's always motivating enough.

Reason number two that the Bible cannot and should not ever be substituted: The Genesis story reveals the nature of man. In Genesis 3 we see man's falling. This reveals two things: one, man is liable to be corrupt and two, man is finite and consequently will screw up. Because of this substituting the word of God with a book by a preacher or a theology textbook regardless of how acclaimed they might be they'll not always get it right.

Reason number three that the Bible cannot and should not ever be substituted: When we read the Bible we feel change occurring in our lives. The Bible motivates us to live Holy lives, the Bible fuels the flame. To be the most effective witness we need the Bible.

Reason number four that the Bible cannot and should not ever be substituted: Kind of related to number two but still; I frequently get in my head scepticism of whether or not God is telling me to do something. The Bible is fairly clear on this; God is telling you to do something.

Reason number five (and the last one I promise before I go to sleep) that the Bible cannot and should not ever be substituted: If you want to learn about God or really challenge yourself academically the Bible is the best way of doing so. It involves a holistic theology that needs to be systematic, it's unsatisfied with particles but with the whole thing.

xox

jon.

Self Portrait Tuesday

2009-11-24T09:29:00.000-08:00

This is how I look today:

I bought a poster earlier, you can see it on the door. Heather said it looked bleak. I told Heather to shut up.

This is the 60th post on this blog apparently.

xox

jon.

What now?

2009-11-21T14:18:00.000-08:00

Quite often I've screwed up in life and sinned. I know, it's surprising right?
But what should we do now? Well I've tried to make a definitive list:

First of all, I think prior to even seeking forgiveness you need to tell yourself that you need God more than ever. Quite often I've avoided the concept of God quite simply because I don't feel worthy (I've got news for you, you'll never feel worthy but that's not a reason to not seek Him diligantly).

Secondly apologise. It says in the Bible that God cried when He saw the sin that man had committed on earth. Now apologise for the pain that you've caused Him and for doing the act itself. Once you've found atonement with God, apologise to anyone that you amy have hurt. Extra clause to this is if it's something that you're ashamed of don't hide the truth just admit to people.

Thirdly pray that healing comes.

Fourthly get your head stuck in the Bible, you're less likely to screw up again if you're looking for God.

Finally, don't give up. You'll get knocked down, most often because of yourself but pick yourself up, dust yourself down and get to know God more intimately than ever. A day turns into a week, which turns into a month if you don't seek Him.

xox

jon.

[Shift Happens] (Again)

2009-11-20T13:44:00.000-08:00

Focus on forever.

I really wanted to focus on the change that occurs upon becoming Christian, well the change that ought to occur.

Look at 1 Thessalonians 1:8-9. It's an interesting passage where we see the simple action of a changed heart do the simplest of things and yet it speaks to everyone surrounding them. It's a beautiful message, it's a statement that says "Your act is reaching others". It's the kind that reminds me of the wisdom that we're told about in James. This sort of wisdom is a kind that comes from above because once we accept God in our lives, the Holy Spirit blesses us with a new perspective; one that is focussing on forever not just the temporal.

Through the simplest acts by focussing on the eternal we're able to evangelise in some of the most powerful ways. Take for example just knowing when to stop drinking (not everyone's strongest points, myself included) or standing up against injustice in whatever form it takes whether it's a homeless person or an attacking in the street. My point is that when we focus on the temporal we turn into these hedonistic machines determined to get the best out of now, whilst when our focus is set on the eternal our hearts have a shift. The material belongings of today yield to the glory that awaits. It's a paradox and Paul highlights this amazingly in his letter to the church in Corinth. In the temporal eyes they're worthless, unknown, blameworthy, liars, dying, sorrowful, poor, nothing but then contrast this with the eyes of eternity; honour, goodness, truth, famous, living, elation, rich in faith, they are everything.
It's a paradox that can't fully be comprehended. When we stop being things of the earth, we become things in the earth with heavenly spectacles. And this is something that is essential to the Christian faith, we can't remain unphased by the biggest choice of our lives. Everything must change. Our worldview can no longer be attached to how society see things but how God sees things, that's the focus on forever.

I don't quite know what more to say on this topic, I'm just really glad I broke the silence.

xox

jon.

More Lady related advice for Alex

2009-11-02T16:15:00.000-08:00

Hey studly
So I'm sure you're a per-lay-ah (player) after my last set of advice but this series of advice will make the ladies swoon. Either way, as Jay from the Inbetweeners she'll be "[censored]".

Earlier me and some friends were at the pub. One of my friends acquired a pink fluffy neck thing. For some time this was great amusement then he threw it onto one of the girls sitting at a neighbouring table. She turned and giggled.
Advice 1) Make sure your friend is either stunningly good looking, in which case he entices her into conversation and then you subtly lower her self esteem (be real subtle like comments like "No, I like girls with a bit of meat on the bones" or "there's more to love" or "you're fat"). That way she'll realise that your friend is out of her league and she'll settle for someone significantly lower. Or make sure your friend isn't too good looking otherwise you'll look liuke the hunchback of notre dame.

I sparked up a witty comment being this: "Oh it really suits you, it brings out the colour in your eyes" You see Alexo, this is funny because her eyes aren't pink. If you've noticed that and make a witty remark like that then she'll know that your focus has always been on her eyes and not any other areas. Like her arms.

The bad thing about this story is that she was a heffasaurus so we ended the conversation before she could make one. It's not bullying. Honest because we didn't mean to make her cry. And it's not like it's shallow either. If I reject a girl because she's an ugo but has a great personality then to compensate I'd go for it with a girl who had no personality but was hot. That's justice right there.

xox

jon.

Sin, Repent, Repeat

2009-10-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

The passage I previously mentioned perhaps doesn't quite do the poor man justice. We have a man that's desperately hoping and a Christ who's desperately repairing. What can be taken from this experience?

He says a key phrase απιστια. It's a phrase which can be best explained through words associated with philosophy. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, how we can come to know something, and the πιστια is the part of the word that hints that it's a form of knowledge that the man is referring to. Now when we think of the word atheism we think of the counter to theism, that's the "a" acting in the word to create the negation of the root. And likewise here, the word απιστια is a negation of knowing. The man is saying "I believe. Help me with my not knowing"

I'm not claiming to know much about this God fellow and I don't want to fit Him into a tiny little conceptual box just as the Pharisees did with their legalistic box. What I'm getting at here is that God has spoken through the Bible and although it's not exhaustive, it's the best, most reliable source of knowledge that we have on the topic. There tends to be a problem, of which I am constantly apart of, of making God a vacuous phrase by talking as if He were a concept. For that I am truly sorry. The Christian should not and cannot become lazy in their faith claiming that the more dettached from God they are in their thought the closer they'll be brought. Thats a rant for another time maybe.

Anyway, what would I know?

xox

jon.

me, you, everyone.

2009-10-06T17:32:00.000-07:00

Mark 9:24

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

xox

God.

Speechless

2009-10-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

There are certain times in life when you don't know what to say. Frankly I've been addressed with the same issue twice within twenty four hours and I still can't quite find the words to say it.

So tonight as was the same as yesterday I heard someone tell me that they've a close relative that has cancer. I heard someone elses voice tremble as they spoke of their own experiences and my mind brought back it's own memories. I'm not going to pretend that I know what the people are going through and I'm not going to presuppose that this is the right answer to anything but I prayed a simple prayer that was based off a sermon given by a guy named Paul Burkhart. The sermon itself surrounded this part of Ecclesiates

The amazing part of this is the acceptance, the same perserverance and patience that we find mentioned in James. It's beautiful it truly is. In Ecclesiates the writer looks at life and notices these prearranged seasons; seasons to live, die, damage, heal, break down, build up, weep, laugh, mourn etc. Either way there seems to be these pre-determined times (verse 11), so why bother longing for any of these things since we'll only receive them when the season is fitting. Likewise with suffering. We look at cancer, we look at our own depression, our own struggles and ask "But why?" Why is it happening?
The writer doesn't leave the reader longing though, if we continue to read into verse 11 we notice that he mentions that God has "set the world in our hearts" In other translations (such as the NKJV) this is translated as "He has put eternity in our hearts". God has taken this idea of the perfect world, the kingdom that He's working toward and has placed that image in our hearts. It's God's way of saying "This is what is coming" and we delight in the idea of a world without suffering, we yearn for a world lacking sin.

So why does all of that happen though, if it's predetermined why is it occuring and why does it hurt so damn much?

At the very end of verse 11 the writer says this: no-one can find out the work God does from beginning to end.When we see one person getting a promotion and another getting a disease our hearts long for the just world that awaits us but God is working through these. And that hurts. We won't be able to understand it and that's good. It means we are unable to fit God into an equation. It means we can't dumb Him down to our level. We can't insult Him by our comparisons. He remains forever glorious untarnished by our blemishes of "intellect".

This is one intriguing idea anyway.

xox

jon.

This is directed at certain people who'll never read it

2009-09-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

I am cynical, occassionally pessimistic and may even have a "grinch heart".
These are things I sometimes struggle with and I'd really rather if I wasn't portrayed as being a grumpy old man even though it is appropriate quite a lot of the time.

xox

jon.

I'm a reasonable man, get off my case.

2009-09-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

I complain a lot, that I can happily admit. I often come out with cute sayings such as "I love it too much to see this continue" when in truth I'm just a bit of a dickhead that loves to moan. That aside tonight I thought I'm write down everything that I love the most/complain about the most. The Christian Church. I thought I'd write down the top things that piss me off but then explain why. I realised that this was the height of douchebaggery and that nothing good could come of the situation unless I then also explained why it might be that we have a habit of doing these annoying things. I also thought that as part of the Church if I see something wrong with it then I am obliged to get involved and make change.

I've decided to exclude reasons for hating them and what I could do and all of the stuff but here is the list that I made:
Commercial Worship music
Welcomers
Cliqueness
Cliches
Distractedness
Judgmental attitudes
Culture of Wankerism
The Christian Mind
Volunteering

So there we have it. Each one though made me realise something; as much as I hated it I could not honestly say that I'd nearly done enough to change it or my attitudes towards it. My point is a simple one, change in a community is because of the individual recognising the need for change. Most if not all of them required me to change my interaction with other people to be more like Jesus. Most if not all of them called for honesty. Most if not all of them called for me to be a hell of a lot less autistic.

I'd really recommend that we not only particpate in the exercise but also realise our place within the community, which is an effect not a cause.

xox

jon.

There is something/There is nothing

2009-09-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

Ok to explain how this links into evangelism (one day I'll throw everything together and paraphrase it in a way that makes it a hell of a lot easier to understand) I'll tell a very brief story. Whilst eating toasties with an agnostic he made the bold claim that there only exists what there is in the world. That includes facts about the world.

His entire ontology was, like Wittgenstein, only based on facts about the world.

I struggled and probably did a terrible job of showing him why that was not so.
I should have argued this though:
This table is brown. How do we know this? We know this is a fact because when we look at the table we realse that the fact corresponds with the state of the table and it's browness.
This table can break. How do we know this? Unless the table is broken we are unable to make any claim about how the table could potentially be. To say that all the facts are contained within the world is wrong, there are truths beyond the world. The world contains truths and even if we wrote all of these truths down it still would fail to be exhaustive. It would tell us how things are but it wouldn't give us all the truths we may be seeking.

ta-dah. And that's why the claim that all facts can be acquired from the world is wrong.

xox

jon.

Eagerly anticipating the impossible

2009-09-16T06:11:00.000-07:00

A while ago (literally just a few days ago) I wrote a prayer to God. To summarise it: Am I to sacrifice obediently or actively seek? This seems like a retarded question and that's because it kind of is. So in a very Kierkegaardian way I will explain something that's come up lately in my Ancient Greek lessons.

When we look at Matthew 7:7 we read this passage that tells us to ask and it shall be given and to knock and the door shall be opened. It's a lovely verse as it clearly tells us that if we ask then God will provide. Looking at the Greek words those we find a bit more depth to these words that probably isn't apparent.

Aiteite is the Greek word for ask in this passage. We have to understand though that in Greek tenses are not a relation to do with time but a state of the action itself. The word aiteite has a present tense which means that the verb is done constantly. So when Jesus tells us to ask in this context it's not just a one-off occasion but a continuous state of asking until that thing is given.

Likewise the word for seek is zhteite which also is in the present tense therefore meaning that the act of seeking isn't a singular activity but a constant thing; effectively what Jesus is saying is "Keep on seeking"

The rest of the text is fairly similiar to the translation mentioned but the introduction of the greek tenses shift the potential connotations. Essentially what Jesus is saying is "Keep on asking and it shall be given to you; keep on seeking and you shall find; keep on reverently knocking and the door shall be opened to you" The focus of the passage is on a continuous searching and longing which will be satisfied.

xox

jon.

My old teacher is cooler than yours

2009-09-15T09:00:00.001-07:00

For real.

John Bricke told me that Wilco played in Kansas and my head exploded with awesomeness.

I'm a bit of turd...

2009-09-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

...and sat in my room trying to eat as quietly as possible so not to wake one of my sleeping roomies (I'm a in hostel at the mo). I found out afterwards that no-one was there, I'm just mildly retarded.

Ah sh** yo I'm in Dublin!

Many, many thanks to the Lonies (they're not reading this but they're amazing)

xox

jon.

I lied, this is more than a blog title.

2009-09-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

First things first, I actually try at times to put effort into the smallest of details of this blog such as the blog post title. So the last title, although missing a vital "you" was trying to highlight that my pride is something that I am in a constant battle with.

That aside. This is a lovely song written by Noah and the Whale.

I've been thinking a bit about the story of Zacchaeus.

Above is a picture of Zacchaeus and Jesus (the colour is missing so if you want to print it and colour it in with crayons then that's fine).

So I think this is a really important message regarding how we ought to conduct evangelism and how Jesus did it.

For those who couldn't be arsed clicking on the link to the story of Zacchaeus, I'll explain it. Jesus is walking through Jericho and Zacchaeus, a tax collector sees the crowds of people and Jesus walking by and really wants to meet with Him but realises that he won't be able to even see Jesus nevermind hang out with Him. So Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore tree and hopes for the best. Jesus calls him by name and then asks to go to his house for dinner where Zacchaeus then declares he no longer wants to cheat people of their money and will return what he owes plus more. A terrific conversion.

What I took from this story was starting with this:
1) Zacchaeus reveals human nature brilliantly in his desire to desperately have a relationship with God incarnate.
By this I mean that man was created to desire a relationship with God. In the story of the fall of man Adam loses the direct relationship that is immanent and has to settle for one that transcends instead. The problem is that if we don't have a relationship with Him we still desire Him, we still desire the transcendence. Consequently man looks elsewhere for this transcending experience, through drugs, sex, psychedelia, alcohol etc. When man fails to find God in these places it leads simply to either denial or despair. Zacchaeus sat in the tree desperately seeking God and found Him. Lesson number one is that all humans are in the same condition, desperately seeking God and as Christians it is our obligation to point them in the right direction.

2) Jesus met with Zacchaeus where he was.
Jesus didn't take Zacchaeus to the temple, or to a pious place or even a Christian coffee shop, He went back to Zacchaeus' house, where he was and interacted with him there. If we genuinely expect non-Christians to come to church without invitation we're more delusional than Dawkins could ever suggest. The lesson to be learnt here is that we need to go where people are and interact with them there.

I've been recently trying "evangelical gigging" through the medium of long open mic nights and singing songs that are about doubt and faith, about screwing up and forgiveness. I've been trying to put as much passion into what I'm doing and I've noticed that it's probably caused more of a reaction than standing in church singing Blessed be Your name ever has (Perhaps I'm wrong and am just flattering myself here). There's one song that I've been working on lately and there's just two lines that summarise what I'm trying to say here. They're cheesy and a bit crap but here's the message:

"If the gospel belongs only amungst the pews
Then we've not been listening to The King of the Jews"

What I mean here is that if the church monopolises the message of Jesus then we're not listening to what Jesus said or did. The message of Jesus belongs in whorehouses, in nightclubs, in drug dens, at parties, at festivals, at gigs, at bars, on the football pitch, at the pub watching the football. It belongs to all of these places.

Now challenge yourself and take it there.

xox

jon.

You and You and You and me, but mainly me.

2009-09-01T16:57:00.000-07:00

I owe so many apologies to so many people that it's borderline stupid, sometimes I cannot bring myself to understand why anyone would want to be friends with me. I must clearly be doing something right somewhere, either that or out of necessity I still have companions. Tonight really drilled this home to me.

There's a guy who I've been incredibly judgmental towards in the past and tonight I got talking to, mixed in with just pissing about and I realised that he was never the dickhead that I thought he was, I always was. Although he's not going to be reading this, and probably never will do, I am incredibly sorry for in my head bitching about you. I think it's out of jealousy because you are an incredibly gifted guy. Sorry.

I think that I owe a lot more apologies to a lot more people but I think that this one especially needed to come to light, as quite frankly I am a dick.

I don't know exactly where I was going with this. But there you go. And as promised, hello to Bryony, I realise that this is no longer a blog to reassure my parents that I'm alive and I really hope someone (if not plural) takes something from it.

xox

jon.

Unemployment = More blog posts.

2009-08-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

First things first, I've set the comments so that if you want to leave one you don't have to sign up for anything. It's also got the option of being anonymous, if this is abused then I will remove the comments.

The main thing that I wanted to blog about today is Christian art. When using this phrase I'm extending it out to music, literature, film. You name it, it's (as long as it can be considered beautiful) included.
Prior to Soul Survivor me and my little brother drove through various cities and we ended up in Bristol with a few hours to kill. When walking through the city centre we noticed this huge cathedral and we decided to go in and take a peek.
Truth be told I'm not big into my cathedrals at all, so walking around was humbling in many ways. There was a genuine "wow" factor whilst walking around. The sheer size of the place, the intricate chippings in stone, the vast amounts of colours featured on a square foot of a window, the tiles that occupied the floor, the statues that looked over. The beauty was breath taking. I couldn't bring myself to speak at times.
As we walked through various questions rang in my head but the one that I'd like to draw focus to was this one "Why don't we do stuff like this any more?". A huge-ass cathedral in comparison to modern day Christian art seems terrifying. My thoughts progressed from architecture onto music, Bach as well had written stunning music and reflected theology in his compositions and yet Christian art to this day seems absent if not failing to lead the way in art.

Perhaps I'm being overly harsh, the 20th century did not have a slow moving evolution for music. Music itself regularly changed spectacularly over the course of a single decade and that was just the genre, new instruments were constantly being discovered and developed whilst old instruments had new effects or techniques being harvested. So in defence of the current state of Christian art (especially music) if the leaders of the christian music industry (and yes, it is an industry) sound a little bit too much Joshua Tree (still) then it's because music has progressed too fast and too soon.
Somehow I find this challenging, if not unworthy of a response to what I'm saying. Christians have gone from pioneers and brave geniuses of art to copying music from twenty years ago. To all those Christian artists out there that are trying to challenge the current state of art, that are using their art as a tool to speak to others about the gospel then good for you, may God bless you. We genuinely need more people like you.

To summarise: Christians need to be creative and in doing so need to not settle for anything less than perfect. They need to strive to create a new beautiful noise that others in the future will refer to as the turning point

En Gallop

2009-08-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

Not knowing hurts. Ask any philosophy student.

It beats me but I do not know.

xox

jon.

You are this special but you're not THAT special.

2009-08-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

I sat in a seminar and a woman got up and spoke about how as a teenager she would regularly cry at her own self value and try and come to terms with the fact that God could not possibly value her as much as it's written. I really associated with this (except for the crying part-that's gay [irony]) and could really related to this thought.
She explained how one night she was at youth group and was in tears at the evaluation of herself and having to come before the holy presence of God yet again in her broken state and that it quite frankly was humiliating and that there was no way God could love her. She approached a lady who she thought would comfort her and remind her of all of the promises written in the Bible. The lady said to her "Honey, you're not THAT special".

Understandably she was shocked.

The lady explained herself. The Bible writes of unconditional love provided to all that accept it, it calls all of us to be disciples, it calls all of us to be a tool for miracles. In saying "God can't love me" or "God can't work through me" we're in fact saying "God can love everyone else but not me" or "God can work through everyone but me". The message that the lady was bringing to this young girl was you're not so special that God loves everyone but you. You've not repelled Him enough, people have done worse and He still loved them.

I was talking to someone recently and they claimed that they weren't sure if God could love them after all they'd said about Him. To that person I say He's not done loving you yet, sure you've said some things in the past but it's not too late. He wants to have a relationship with you. If you're in that place then I want you to know I've been and will continue to pray for you.

Objective/Subjective

2009-08-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

There's two forms of truth that we must all come to terms with- the subjective and the objective. The objective is true in all situations for all people; what is true for me is likewise true for you, it's not necessarily true though but that's a whole different conversation in and of itself. The subjective is what's true for the subject and therefore varies depending on the statement and the subject itself.

Christianity is the ultimate subjective truth.

Don't mistake what I mean here.

I don't mean that the objective truths that are contained within the doctrines of Christianity vary in truth depending on the person. The objective truths that are claimed (e.g. Jesus as Son of God, God existing...) by Christianity are true for every person. However what is of ultimate importance for every person that has existed is how they relate to these truths. So when the objective statement "God loves you" is made the subjective question kicks in and is of even more significance; what relation do you have with the statement? Do you respond to the love offered or is it in vain? The reason is that subjectivity is so important is that all the objective facts can be offered to a person and they still don't accept them, then they are not even at square one with regards to the objectivity. Objectivity becomes meaningless.

Perhaps not meaningless, but temporarily it becomes meaningless to that individual.

Christianity has become very irrelevent by creating pamplets that state the objective facts but miss out the personal subjective dialogue that is needed and promoted by Jesus the simple "Where do you stand in relation to me?".

So the big question that I want to know is where do you stand in relation to God? And I want to hear your answers. So just email me or facebook chat me or something and I'll listen.

xox

jon.

self is synthesis

2009-07-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

There's a prominent idea within secular thought that we are just atoms and so in this post I wanted to explore what this would result in if it were true.

Firstly it would contain very deterministic results. By this I mean that the secular thinker would have to concede that because of the natural laws free will could not exist. By this I mean that assuming all we are is atoms that have come together because of previous events we cannot possibly be free but instead just reacting to previous events, both physically and psychologically. There seems to be a huge problem here; if we lived consistently with such a worldview then not only would we be not free but we would not be responsible, only previous events would dictate future events, not us. We cannot live consistently with this as to be consistent would be to look at every agent as being passive to preceding events and consequently no-one is responsible; no act is praiseworthy and no act is blameworthy, Michael Phelps' 8 golds are just as good as Hitler's 6 million, they both were only reacting not acting.

The next problem is that it's a denial of the self to say that there is nothing but atoms there. By the self I mean to say the subject of every sensation or propositional attitude, it's the "I". When we say there is nothing but atoms we're saying there is no "I", there is nothing there. Perhaps the secular thinker might argue that it's a mistake in language, there is nothing there, it's just us trying to personalise the atoms. There's a big problem here in that when I say "I" and when you say "Jon" or "The author of this blog" we're referring to something. It's not a vacuous term that doesn't exist, there's genuinely something there that's being referred to. It's the subject of the predicates, the thing that experiences the sensations, that has descriptions surrounding it; to say that there is nothing there when we strip it of all of the features mentioned is a fallacy. To say that "I" is a non-referent is extremely flawed.

That's a brief introduction into my thoughts regarding the self. Further reading: S.Kripke-Naming and Necessity (lecture 3). When it's conceded that a self exists this has dramatic consequences on other areas of philosophy and demands a readjusting of worldviews from an externalist viewpoint.

An interesting little fact.

2009-07-23T02:42:00.000-07:00

The NIV is the world's most popular version of the Bible. The NIV is copyrighted by Zondervan which is owned by HarperRow Collins Publishing. Which is owned by News Corporation. Which is owned by Mr Rupert Murdoch.

So everytime you buy a little NIV Bible remember you're giving Rupert Murdoch your money.

evpatoria project.

2009-07-12T17:19:00.000-07:00

It's kind of strange, I've been trying to harvest some thoughts on the topic of evangelism and how relevant the church is. The solution (according to the emerging church movement) seems to be to change not only how the church operates, e.g. how we're led in worship; but also how we perceive Christianity (This was the nicest way of saying "Heresy/changing the fundamental doctrines of Christianity").

Anyway, I'm not here to bitch about how "they're" doing it. It's not about that and should never be about that.

Firstly there's this genuine issue with the church that I noticed earlier and that the very wise pastor Bill Platt pointed out; we're not called to attack non-christians with butterfly nets and drag them to church. That's not how it's done. It's never how's it to be done. Every act of evangelism in the New Testament involves people going out to make disciples of the world. The disciples and Jesus went out to the world and had conversations, performed wonders and challenged the status quo and showed the inconsistency. Likewise I'm excited when I hear of bands playing at bars that have lyrics that challenge people (Check out Manchester Orchestra as a primary example, maybe Mewithoutyou as well). Waiting for people to come to church is a pointless task. My friend Aaron is perhaps the greatest example of a person that goes out into the clubs and simply exists. He's going and existing as a christian and people notice. In noticing him people also see the inconsistencies in their own lives provoked by friendly conversation. I hate to use myself as example, God knows I've f***ed up too many times, but in the swimming environment I hope that people may be able to talk to me about their own beliefs.

That doesn't mean an absolute abolition of church though, it just means that we need to change how we go about being relevant to the rest of our culture. Our churches can be a refuge in some ways. I looked at a person at church earlier pouring their heart out to some cheesy lyrics and thought "this is kitsch...but this is the make or break for that person, this could be exactly what they need spiritually" If that's so then who am I to be a pompous musical nazi informing them that the music and lyrics are irrelevant to the surrounding culture? I have somewhat admiration for those that ignore dickheads like me that complain and don't allow the complaints interrupt their worship. In Christian fellowship (the church) we may need moments of utter aesthetic shite to clear the air of what we're used to when evangelising.

I've not exactly strung any of these thoughts together, instead I thought I'd spew words onto a page and hope for the best.

xox

jon.

Strange Form of Life

2009-06-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

It's a remarkable world really, although fallen it's none the less remarkable. We've been designed to have a relationship that is transcendent, one that isn't imminent like science and our nature. There's a beautiful longing for the transcendent because we've been designed to glorify God.

It's amazing because when we try and take God away from it we need to seek a transcendent experience elsewhere: in drugs, art, sex, etc. So if we try and separate God from it there's a sense of arrogance that we can see in Genesis 2 when the snake says "You can be like God, you can know all of these things". These things we can only truly appreciate in the presence of God. Wittgenstein's Tractatus was an attempt to remove anything transcendent at all from the world so all we're left with is facts. It was noted by many, including Russell, that there was a hint of mysticism in the last few chapters. What can be said of this? Man cannot imagine existence without transcendence, Wittgenstein failed his worldview. The topics of art, morality, freedom, God were all pushed aside by Wittgenstein and ignored as they involved a mystical element. They required the intervention of God, something that cannot be achieved through empirical experiments. Instead Wittgenstein tried to escape it but he couldn't escape his own nature, desiring the transcendent.

It's a strange thing that's so beautiful I don't think that we can ever truly appreciate it, nevermind comprehend it.

xox

jon.

[shift] happens

2009-06-19T15:13:00.000-07:00

I've been interested in this idea of transformation lately. It's an obsession that is surrounding the topic of faith. How exactly are we transformed? I think it's something that we all need to address and although I don't agree with him here I think it's worth viewing this video of Brian McLaren as he faces the topic:

Anyway. He begins by saying that the Lords prayer may need to be adjusted accordingly to what we seem to be the purpose of Jesus. I can understand why he's saying what he is saying; Christianity and the people that it harvests don't seem affected by the huge transformation that should have occurred in their lives. It seems too often that we convert to Christianity feel great for a while because we've realised that we've been "saved". The purpose of Jesus coming (Contrary to what McLaren is saying in the video) is so that we may have a relationship with God for eternity. This however does not mean that we remain the same. Upon turning Christian every must change. By this I mean our worldview, how we treat each other, perspectives on the world, it all has to change. If we claim to love God we must change our perspective on everything. Suddenly we have a reason to seek justice, we can see the infinite dignity behind every person, a great reason to preserve the earth. What I'm getting at here is that in James (2:20) when it says "faith without deeds is dead" it's referring to a change that has occurred in our hearts, a desiring to serve God which reflects our faith.

When we look at the Lord's Prayer we have to comprehend who it's being told to. It's not a prayer being taught to those completely separate from faith. These are the disciples who are already Christian, who have already been saved. When teaching them this prayer Jesus is reminding them: this is a constant struggle; this is something that you've got to keep doing; this has to be a reflection of transformation, of a shift in thinking and believing.

To wrap it up, being Christian is about being saved but our salvation calls for something from us, a transformation. We cannot live consistently with our beliefs if we accept Christ as our saviour and then remain the same. Our hearts change and from that our acts must reflect our faith.

xox

jon.

Oh high King of Heaven

2009-06-06T18:07:00.000-07:00

"Come down! Saturate this group! We used to be a group of five dedicated to you. Now where have you gone? Fear and doubt floods our hearts. My skin has become harder. Come down, Hosanna! We've f***ed up too many times, please, God. Please help us up again. We need to get up again"

Religion originates from two latin phrases; religere which meant to have a repeated struggle, and religare to be bonded, perhaps in a "bond of piety". There's beauty in here. This word symbolises the juxtaposition that is the Christian lifestyle. A few years ago I promised a few guys that I wouldn't give up on them, that I'd help them in their times of struggles and to be frank, I've neglected this role far too much. That aside. The worship I argued for earlier on in the car is what I'm trying to compose at the moment. The crying out to God in times of desperation without having someone else telling me how to do it. I was yelling out "Hosanna" and rightly so, it's original meaning being hebrew for "God, save us now" there was urgency in those words and there's some in them now.

I love you guys too much to let anyone of us slip; I know we have been. So here it is, a renewal of a pact that we somewhat ignored. I'm a brother in Christ and you're David. For eff's sake this is too important to lose.

xox

jon.

I cannot comprehend

2009-05-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

"Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day."

...became...

"Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
Mount of God's unchanging love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I'm come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above."

How? How could they possibly miss out some of the most beautiful lyrics of the whole song? How could they skip the part that captures human nature so perfectly? How could they possibly take the most hopeful words in the whole song and remove it? The last verse is staggering, when I sat down and thought about it I was almost breathless. Here we have a person having a true glimpse of the Kingdom of God and how this world is not as it ought to be. How could we possibly take that, censor it and then try and deliver it?

I'm doing everything I can to avoid studying.

xox

jon.

JC/JP/Hurt.

2009-04-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

I've said the word a million times to different people; sometimes sincerely, other times with pride and shame for saying it, oh such great juxtaposition. Anyway this time you can be certain I mean it because I'm too proud and not enough of a man to say it to your face.

Sorry.

You all know who you are.

Jon.

Synthetic Symphony.

2009-04-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

This has been told to me so many times that I think it's really important to share with others. I think that it's really important as it reveals a part of God's heart to us.

So Jesus finds out that Lazarus has died. John 11:33 puts it like this:

"When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled."

When we briefly read through this we can appreciate that Jesus was upset but by skimming we ignore that Jesus was pissed. ενεβριμησατο τω πνευματ (meaning deeply moved in the spirit) is the phrase used, which means to snort almost like a horse in anger. The second phrase of interest is εταραξεν εαυτον translated in this passage as "troubled", it's meaning being agitation, one of disturbance. Here we see that Jesus is genuinely angry and disturbed by the prospect of sin and suffering entering into the world; these things entering the world because of the fall of man.

I think that to the Christian reading this everything has to change. Suddenly when we see sufferings in the world we realise that these aren't "tests" provided to us but things that is the enemy. As well as this we look to the future that awaits us and we ought to get excited. We can't imagine the glories that will await us in heaven (Romans 8:18) but we know it will involve a transformation of our own hearts, a cleansing of our souls preparing them for the kingdom of God and a kingdom that is not that we can imagine here on earth as we're too well acquainted with sorrow.

That's something to get excited about, but it means it's a change in our lives right now too. We ought to be excited to show people about the glories that await them too.

Just thought a quick post was in order. Goodnight.

God's favourites.

2009-03-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to lie; I'm genuinely concerned with the thought process that suggests that God has favourites. Ideologies such as the liberation theology as well as black theology suggest that God always favours the poor over the strong or the "N*****" over the upper class white man. A theologian visiting Eastern College claimed that Jesus was a n*****. The reason being that he was not a black man, but a man that had endured hardship and had to carry his own cross. We too are being called to be n*****s.

I find this scary. Firstly thousands of years ago Xenophanes points out that man was responsible of shaping his gods to however he was. Basically God doesn't make man in His image but that man makes God in his image. Likewise again, we're guilty of making God into our image and we'll never be taken seriously if we do so. There are also because of this train of thought theologies that are known as Gay Theology or Asian Theology. We are called by God when studying Him not to approach with our own lens and study Him and His creation but to approach with His lens for the world, that is the core difference between a Christian theology and any other theology. We are to look at God how He is, not how we are. We are the fallen beings afterall.

Another problem with saying that Jesus was a n***** is that it's undermining the real suffering of the cross. A friend very wisely pointed out the most painful part for Jesus wasn't when He was whipped, carried His own cross, or was nailed to it. It was when The God-Man hung on the tree and asked why The Father had forsaken Him. If we look at the life of Jesus and call Him a n***** we're exclusively looking at the physical or social sufferings.

Now with Liberation Theology we're playing God. We start to look at the world and decide what is the focus of it. It's a type of humanism in so far as we're putting man above God. We're deciding who God prefers. We're no different, nor better, than those who said God prefers the rich as look at the earthly wealth He gave them! These people who claim God is on the poor's side are no different than those who say God is on their side when invading other countries. Bob Dylan said it perfectly when he sang "With God on our side" with the situations that showed that God was on our side but that didn't give us justification for attacking other countries, killing natives, participating in wars. One of the chief points supporting the liberation theology is that when on earth Jesus spoke with the poor. Oh how solid a base! He spoke with the rich too, with the oppressing regimes (Think of the Roman Centurion), the rich (think of the tax collectors). If we are to learn anything, God has time for the rich, the poor, the oppressors and the slaves.

The moment we try to capture God with our earthly based knowledge we're bound to fail. The word is what needs to be the basis of our teaching not how we think social justice ought to be directed. I think it's really degrading and somewhat insulting for any Christian to compare Jesus to their own worldly experiences. For me to compare Jesus to the step down into a white, middle class, young man's situation (such is my own) is frankly spitting in the King of Heaven's face. That step down was enough humiliation for Him once, for me to claim He is a white, middle class man is spitting in His face again.

Come on Skinny Love

2009-03-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

So I should really mention California here and how great it was and what I got up to.

I won't though.

So I heard that theology ought to be a means to an end and not an end in itself. This really interested me. Think about it that the studying of God isn't like a normal science in that it's nice to know or maybe renders some pretty interesting results but it results in the transformation of the person. When we study it we see changes occurring within us. Our attitudes adapt. So when we approach God willing to learn we leave a completely different person, we become more like Christ and bring the Kingdom of God closer to earth.

My shoulder is a kleenex for you.

2009-02-28T22:35:00.000-08:00

Firstly, thank you to my Dad for always letting me know whats going on in the Isle of Man. It's really cool that my parents do that, even though sometimes I don't reply instantly. This can be a little annoying I'm sure.

Anyway. So happy birthday to many people, one of them was Julia who truly is one of the nicest people I know. We (about 30) went for a meal at an italian place and then reduced numbers went back to hers for a nice birthday cake eating session and then a really fun game of "live mafia" which involves darkness and slitting of necks. Thanks to everyone who was there for a really enjoyable night.

The title of this blog can be interpreted in two ways (Normally I like to be cryptic and it not to make any sense to anyone other than me, but I thought it'd be appropriate to share here)
1. That you can blow your nose on my shoulder (which is wrong)
2. That Justin could cry on my shoulder whilst at the Joshua Radin gig at the bottleneck (which was really good by the way thanks for asking)

It's been a tough few weeks but I've got through them so I'm glad and now I have an enjoyable but challenging few weeks ahead. We'll see how it goes anyway.

One thing that I've been pondering over is the topic of faith; whether or not it's a paradox or completely rational. Instead of seeing water turned to wine is our faith a turning of wine into water? I don't think I'll comprehend the answer even if I was given it on a platter.
Another thing is that when we say "God is love" or "God is justice" we saying one of two things either "God has the property of being love" or "God = love" if we say one then we're led to claim that there is something outside God. If we opt for the other then we're claiming that God is limited to the attributes of love.
The final problem here is that is there any point trying to translate an infinite being (God) into a finite language that is essentially flawed? If we accept defeat should we then see the Bible as being worthless?

Perhaps I'm asking questions that have been answered in the past and just haven't found the people who cover them. But they're my thoughts at the moment.

SELF PORTRAIT SATURDAY!

And everyone needs to listen to Bon Iver's set on www.daytrotter.com especially Alexander Price.

I love you all so much it hurts me.

Jon

Oh gee thanks.

2009-02-21T08:09:00.000-08:00

I'm never grateful enough for things.
-Thanks to Prof Teresa Robertson who spoke to me over the phone whilst at a conference about my essay
-Thanks to The Vermont Lads for a fun time on Thursday which involved a lot of Mountain Dew
-Thanks to Sam for being perhaps the only person beyond my family who reads this
-Thanks to Doug and everyone else at that house for being about to feed me pancakes
-Thanks to Katie for telling me Joshua Radin is playing on Friday

Ok I'm all out of gratitude back to being a grumpy old man.

Someone still loves you Boris Yeltson.

2009-01-29T23:08:00.000-08:00

Ok I don't mean to sound like an a-hole but it's incredibly easy.

SSLYBY played tonight (29/1/09) at the Jackpot. Now they're an incredibly tight band, well tuned and practiced it all flowed really well. They were really good at what they did but to be honest didn't specialise in anything beyond it. So the set was remarkably consistent (which is a good euphemism for lacking any variation of any sort). I don't mean to have a go, they had a good following (which my cynical side points out that most indie bands attached to minor indie record labels have anyway in the neighbouring state) but the following happened to be as annoying as the similiarity between the songs and the striking clone of Michael Cera playing bass. He was basically a mix of Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Cera and a girl. Perhaps I'm being a little too harsh here.
The name was original and stupidly long; which is always a good sign (?). Kudos for mentioning an eastern european politician. I'm fairly sure that the band have no ties to the great motherland except for the bassist who did also look somewhat like a Russian peasant farmer. Again I apologise for laying into them. I did like their music but it lacked any experimentation, as finely tuned as it was it failed to show any emotion (with the exception of the last song) or variation. They did show variation when they all, minus the lead guitarist, switched instruments. During this time the loud, obnoxious, annoying female fan following who had been stumbling around all night had managed to jump onto stage and demonstrate an inside joke with the band which involved a certain degree of sexual harassment.

If I had to summarise the gig the following words would spring to mind; cliched, decent, diplomatic indie rock with little variation.

If this has been depressing then I don't care. But here's a video to cheer you up.

I've got game.

2009-01-21T21:16:00.000-08:00

So Alex (my dear little brother) it's about time I explained how to pick up girls. Tonight was a great example of the stallion (that's me) in action.

So me and Tim were in the lift and three people got in and there was a little awkward silence as always inside lifts so I said something to Tim in my British accent. This only works in America though, so don't try it in Britain because otherwise they'll just think you're another British guy, living in Britain. So the girl opposite me took the bait and said "Hey, I like your sweater" and I went "Oh thanks, I like it too. That's kinda why I bought it" See, Alex, girls like humour and they like it more when a guy states the obvious.
So I looked away and then said back to her "Your hair is colourful" and she thanked me and agreed. This is because girls like it when you remind them of things they already know; it shows you notice girly things like their hair. I realised I had done a great job and turned to my friend Tim and said "I know how to compliment girls" and everyone laughed because I'm clever like that and they all thought I was awesome. I think I'm awesome too which means we have something in common.
Her friend was then all "Where are you from?" and I told him I was British and that I am quite a novelty.

If it weren't for them getting off two floors below us then I so would have pulled. But there's no taming the stallion, remember that.

I hope you all read this in a very ironic, taking the piss a bit way and not taking me seriously.

xox

JON!

Dah, dah, dahdahdah.

2009-01-16T19:09:00.000-08:00

The title was supposed to be sung, like in that song; New York, New York.

Anyway, so I went to Scotland after going home and saw Mal and Val, Pete, Cara, Fre and Di, Bob, Adam and Jane, Matt, Loz (Not Boz), Gemma and Niel. In that order. And it was lovely. So thank you to those people for persevering with me for the past few days, extra credit due to Mal's mum and dad who put me up, gave me food and were fine with me being as socially awkward as ever.

Then I went to NYC.
Night one not much happened other than realising I might be slightly racist. I went to a mexican food place and had a lovely meal and a few beers (TAKE THAT AMERICAN DRINKING LAWS) and went to sleep.
The next day I walked and tubed it all over NYC going to Greenwhich village and Guggenheim Museum and the Met and central park. A few art galleries were shut but that's fine, my feet hurt anyway...
That evening I planned on going to a gig which was over twenty one's only. Bugger.
So I begged the doorman and he agreed to let me in for "my friend's band that I never get to see" so I had stop off at various cafes ad restraunts to fill in time between then and the show. In this time I almost got kicked out of a restraunt and mugged by hobos. But I'm safe mum and dad and that's all that matters.

Weird thing happened the other day, apparently it's not just me who it's happened to. But I opened my laptop and lying there was an advert from Playboy that had been sent through the post. Anyway I felt embarrassed because one of my flatmates put it there (after all it was addressed to me) and must now think I'm subscriber. I don't have a desire to renew a non-existing subscription to playboy. Although I do appreciate their discretion in placing it in my laptop and not on the wall for all to see. So I found that all mildly amusing and I'm sure at this point my parents (who do read this blog, I have at least two viewers) are horrified. Anyway I have no idea how they got my details and have binned the advert. Thanks for the kind offer Hugh but not this year.

Also first class of the semester got cancelled because the teacher was ill. I hope he feels better.

Ok, I think that's about it.

Jon

Blame Canada...

2008-12-21T21:01:00.001-08:00

So I arrived in Toronto last night and have...
eaten
shopped
been to art galleries
been to a brewery
drank

In that order. And done nothing else.

Oh! precious is the flow

2008-12-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

I created a vlog and am uploading it onto youtube but to be perfectly honest I think the internet connection is so poor it won't upload. In case it doesn't here's what I said...

1. Exams-Yes, it's finals week and I've just done one of them. It went ok. I'm not going to do a complete post-mortem on it all. Anyway so I have two left, one tomorrow and one the day after, so hands together and eyes closed that they go well.

2. It's pretty outside-It's been snowing heavily, and it's now a winter wonderland outside. It's amazing, it truly is.

3. Passion-So university is in it's last half for me and it's scary. I don't know what I want to do when I've finished quite yet despite all of these options being available to me. Anyway I've been reading through the Bible and I came across one particular story that really interested me. It was 2 Samuel 6 from about verse 9 onwards. To set the scene David is really passionate for God and wants to bring the Ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. Anyway he screwed up because although his heart was in the right place he hadn't considered the right direction for his passion and it got messy. So David goes and prays to the Lord and asks how he ought to do it. There's two lessons I want to bring from this that I'll learn;
1. That our passion is in correlation to God's will.
And 2. that if our passion isn't in correlation to God's will that we're humble enough to adapt. David looks at how he's screwed up and decides not to just give up on it but instead to take the same passion and move it in accordance to how God wants it to be done.

Now that careers and stuff are in discussion I really want my own passion to be in tune with God's. If that involves me having to change my plans then I pray that I am willing to do so joyfully not reluctantly.

Anyway so those were my recent work avoiding ponderings.

Toodles

Jon

Crunch

2008-12-15T07:56:00.000-08:00

So this has been extremely neglected, I've barely been posting on it at all. Anyway, snow is outside and it's bloody freezing. What else? Hmmme exam period at the moment so the combination of the two equals even more time on facebook...

That aside, I'm going up to Toronto on Saturday and then off back home. So I'll be checking out the Niagara Falls and a brewery next to the CN tower apparently. So that ought to be quite nice. On the way back to the States I'll be in Scotland, oh yes. And then off to New York, but those who are missing me in the states (I know there's some of you out there, somewhere...) I'll be back in January. So everything will be fine and dandy.

And yeh that's about it.

Oh except for this!

WTF?! ANOTHER VLOG?!

2008-10-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, I did.

One of my most favourite Quotes

2008-10-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

My good philosophy teacher was trying to explain how some objects can be more real than others in a Cartesian sense. One very brave boy put up his hand and asked "Sort of like how a tomato is less real of a fruit than pineapple?" Cried with laughter.

Signs in Songs

2008-09-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

I forgot how good this album is.
Today I went to a church in a park, waffles and world views and spoke (very briefly) about logical positivism. I've learnt a few new philosopher names and learnt Checkers is NOT the place to ever buy camembert.

Oooh choices

2008-09-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight-
Someone I don't know's birthday party, V for Vendetta, Motion City Soundtrack...I've already bought a ticket so my mind has been made.

Haskell university is haunted. It's a gift to the indian nations because we killed lots of them so we felt bad and built them a university and offered them free substandard university education. We have sinned but how we've made it all up! White people have been atoned!

Oooh!

2008-09-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

STOP PRESS!

Tim's trial is today in an hour's time.

Verdict pending! Watch this space!

Samoothie!

2008-09-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

Smoothie, Smoothie, smoothie.
I like smoothies.

That's a little song I wrote.

Anyway. I think I know the person who serves me the smoothies, hot chocolates and coffees that I drink whilst at burge union but I can't remember if I know the person or if I think I know person but don't. I think I spoke to her on Friday night at Henry's.

Upon request of my mum:
It takes me this long to get to each place on campus. I'm measuring with length of Godspeed You Black Emperor songs (1GYBE=5 songs by Explosions in the Sky. 1 Explosions in the sky song=2 Average Pop songs) I will be rounding up to the nearest GYBE song.
From My flat (Jayhawker towers) to:
Rec Centre 1 GYBE
Fraser Hall 1 GYBE
Burge Union 1 GYBE
Vermount Street 1 GYBE
The Union 1 GYBE
Wecoe hall 1 GYBE

In other news:
Hmmm there is no other news. It's lovely here and it's wet at home. Yeas.

Lemonade for breakfast.

2008-09-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

Hey kids
I am now slightly weary of writing about Frege's Puzzle. For those really interested I can (but would really rather not have to) explain it to you.
Today I bought tickets to see Santogold when they're in town. As well as that I saw Vampire Weekend, who were remarkably chirpy. After that gig we hit the town for Tim's birthday. It was lovely. We danced like funky white boys for the whole night. It was great fun.

What else has been happening?

Oh a tornado hit last night meaning I had to get out of training because, well frankly I don't understand why but we were sent home. Fact: Haskell's changing rooms for the swimming pool are also able to protect people from Nuclear fallout. True story right there.

Hmmm I think that's about it here.

I borrowing a bike of Geoff at the moment (That's the guy that probably tried to add you as a friend on facebook if we're friends on it-apologies)

Yeh I think that's it. That's everything.

Jon

Aquahawks and Other stuff

2008-09-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I made a lot of stuff up about White Owl, most of it being fictional. I am told that this is truth*; White Owl did marry a twenty year old student this year.

In other news I went training with the Lawrence Aquahawks earlier and now find myself sipping a protein fueled smoothie after many lengths of fly kick underwater and not many press ups (My pecs hurt)

*May not actually be true

I didn't get in.

2008-09-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

My parents and little brother visited this weekend/till today (Wednesday) which was lovely. They came with gifts and were as always worth the time I spent with them. I'm sunburnt, tired, overworked and yet I've a full belly and I'm very glad I spend it with them.

Jon

Tourist Attractions on Campus

2008-08-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

One of the most distinguished things to do on KU campus is the visit of the great old "White Owl". There are various rumours as to how this creature came into being, one of the most popular theories is that he was a professor at the university who has now developed mild Alzheimer's. Regardless of how he came about he can be seen regularly marching in his tie dye shirts and jammin hat outside Wescoe Hall shouting "I'm here, get used to it! Go KU" as well as supporting the football team in a very fervent manner.
Although a hit with the football team he is also is a hit with the ladies with rumours of him dating every single head cheerleader since his own graduation at the university. Some claim he is able to win a game of connect four in three moves, something not even God has achieved.

I feel bad sitting in the computer lab on a wednesday night at 10.10pm typing about white owl. Time for Prozac.

10 things to do in Lawrence on a Sunday

2008-08-24T18:15:00.001-07:00

1. Go to (one of many) churches
2. Watch the Picking and Fiddling Contest
3. Visit the Buskers festival
4. Look around the antique mall
5. Laugh at the word fiddling
6. Look around some other shops
7. Have your meal card rejected from Mrs E's.
8. Study for class tomorrow
9. Order a pizza because your friend is too hungry to wait for you at Mrs E's
10. Eat a snow cone.

Note to myself (and everyone else)

2008-08-23T13:31:00.001-07:00

If your orange juice tastes funky, stop drinking it.

John Wayne and a car park

2008-08-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

Lawrence is crazy, for example tonight is the start of the buskers festival which I am strangely looking forward to. Last night however there was an outdoor film noir night. So a John Wayne film was being projected onto a car park. It was free and fun. I enjoyed myself. I promise I'll put up photos eventually, just not quite yet.

What else has been happening?

Wescoe beach. So they ordered a load of sand and piled it outside a lecture hall and played games of volleyball. It was crazy. There was sort of like a freshers fair where you could get all this free information about sports teams or societies you want to be involved in. It was lovely.

Oh and the other night was traditions night where you learnt about the traditions of the uni and their songs and met their mascots; Baby Jay and Big Jay (very original names). It was fun and there was a gig afterwards which I got really excited over but then realised "Indie Rock" here means "Country Music". But some of his songs were good, just not all of them.

Hmmmm I think that's about it thus far. First day of class yesterday and it was a mix of tiresome and hard. That aside. Oh crap I just remembered I need to get my SA2 form signed by my tutor...

Peace out popsicles

Jon

Week One

2008-08-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

Travelling is always fun. You get to sit next to strange people on airplanes and have awkward small talk. This was no exception.

I flew to Zurich which was nice I guess. On the flight from there to Canada the lady sitting next to me was telling me all of these immigration horror stories about how a resident of the usa who is a canadian citizen was not allowed entry and all that, she made the story a lot more exciting and that, I just there feeling a little scared.

So I slept to avoid having to speak to her as my multimedia thing was broken.

In Toronto people are lovely. I asked a guy where to get tickets and next thing you know it he gave me his ticket and was having a huge conversation with me about it all and what there was to do. It was very nice and his name was Cartman. I laughed.

Toronto itself is shamefully indie, it has etsy written all over the place. I went to a ball game (we lost) and then up the CN tower (we didn't lose), visited some art galleries (and was pensive) and then left. It's a lovely place and all the shop people love talking to you a lot. Especially if you're from Scotland. Apparently I have to say hello to a certain canadian living in fife. Great.

I can't remember how I got to Chicago.

And then flying from Chicago to Kansas was fun if not slightly scary as the person next to me was a bit of an emo and told me I should've gone to colorado and not kansas and how crap it was. She was very nice though. Apparently life is easy here if you have an accent. I said "Bugger" at the airport when I found out my suitcase was on another flight and everything is then fine and dandy.

Kansas itself is huge. The campus is huge and it's all realyl crazy. I honestly can't think of any other way to describe it. In due time I'll stick up photos and that but I've not yet bought a laptop. That's today's task.

Last night was funny we ended up at a latino dance party trying to salsa dance. Too much fun and insanity followed.

I've got quite a few more stories up my sleeves don't worry, I'm just saving them for a rainy day.

Peace out

Jon

OMG Did he just post a vlog?!

2008-07-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

Oh yes I did.