Methodological Madness

Channel 9 has recently announced that The Block, the renovation reality television show, will be back for 2010.

Surely this is a sign that we may now be in a property bubble.

About half an hour ago I had a fascinating and pleasant conversation with two Mormons, who were apparently visiting someone from their church. I think we had about a 10 minute conversation about our beliefs. A few dot points from things that struck me:

• We use the same jargon to mean different things. To them, “grace” means something that Jesus does to enable people to get baptised and live a holy life. To me, “grace” just means undeserved gift.
• It is quite clear that they have a gospel++ theology. They emphasised that they are calling on people to believe Jesus, get baptised and live a good life. I explained how thankful and relieved I was that I contributed absolutely nothing to my salvation
• There was a big emphasis on water baptism as a prerequisite to salvation. They placed so much emphasis on the word “water” in John 3:5 that they seemed to have completely missed the point that one can’t be “born again” (same verse, elsewhere in John 3) by yourself.
• We had a brief conversation about the various English Bible translations. What’s interesting is that they mentioned that they have interlinear Bibles with the literal translations “placed there by the Church”. I haven’t heard a Bible translator place so much authority on his or her translation, as opposed to the authority of the Scriptures in its original language (see paragraph 1 of the AFES Doctrinal Basis)

Sadly, all of us were getting bitten by flying insects that we had to end the conversation early.

You may have noticed recent television commercials from Qantas, featuring the paper planes motif.

One that caught my eye is this one, featuring the Qantas Club.

I have been to the Qantas Club a few times, courtesy of my employer. What I am wondering is at what times of the day/week/year, or at which airport(s), is the Qantas Club as serene as the one depicted.

I’ve been thinking about whether I should get a new phone. Part of this is thinking about whether I should purchase the phone upright and connect to a SIM-only plan, or whether I should join a fixed term contract.

I’ve put together a spreadsheet to help me with this choice. Maybe you’ll find it useful.

Disclaimer: I haven’t checked the spreadsheet carefully, so I can’t guarantee it’s error-free.

Earlier this week Joe Hockey made a speech to the Sydney Institute titled In Defence of God. In the speech he called for, at the risk of oversimplification, a more liberal theology of God.

Today’s letters page in the Sydney Morning Herald has a section devoted to this topic. It’s good to see that biblical theological views of Scripture are so well represented.

I wonder what sort of commodities you can get from this store? Gold? Iron ore?

At the SCCCA training workshop a few Wednesdays ago, Tom Tokura led a really useful workshop on evangelism.

He has kindly shared a copy of the presentation. Hopefully you will find it as useful as I have.