i kissed dating, part get to know the person first

i really believe this is ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL KEYS to a REVOLUTIONISED SYSTEM OF DATING…

there is a trend that happens specifically in christian contexts (altho i am sure there are equivalent secular contexts that promote the same thing – like actors making a movie together for example) which contributes to a lot of debris in relationships WHICH COULD EASILY BE AVOIDED…

the mathematical equation reads something like ‘bunch of christian guys’ + ‘bunch of christian girls’ added to short-term intense spiritual space [holiday club, weekend camp, mission trip] = ‘he/she is the one’alism’ = ‘relationship’

i’ve been there. it happens. because you are ‘forced together’ with a bunch of people in a situation which highlights their positive side [playing with kids, leading a small group, reaching out to the poor] it is VERY EASY TO BE ATTRACTED to someone in the group, altho in a lot of case the attraction is purely context-related and not person-related

and so you see an attractive girl and spend as much of the mission trip trying to spend time alongside her and you feel like you’ve found ‘the one’ and you have to be with her and so at the end of the weekend or week you ask her out and SUDDENLY YOU’RE DATING… and a few weeks goes by and the butterflies head north for the summer and suddenly you realise actually you don’t know this person…

[a spanner is thrown into the works if you have rushed into PHYSICAL STUFF (whatever level – holding hands, kissing, more) because then you might decide actually this person is not the one for you, but you have already entered A LEVEL OF INTIMACY on some level (physically, emotionally, spiritually) and it becomes much harder to break up with them]

now this doesn’t only occur on the weekend or week trips/event but they often intensify or speed up the process – i think ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL FLAWS with the dating system we currently use is that we rush into relationships WITH PEOPLE WE DON’T REALLY KNOW AT ALL.

and yes, a huge part of being in a relationship with someone is getting to know them, but IT MAKES A LOT MORE SENSE TO SPEND SOME TIME (possibly in group situations so there is less pressure on the two of you) WITH THE PERSON GETTING TO KNOW THEM before asking them out. what this will do in some cases is eliminate a bunch of people as possibilities simply by taking the step of getting to know them – not necessarily cos they are bad people, but purely because you will be able to pick up that you are NOT WELL SUITED AS A COUPLE.

for example, if i am a complete outdoors nut – surfing, climbing, jet skiing – and i meet a girl and she is a complete indoors person – computer geek, playstation province champion, crochet fundi – then there is a strong possibility we WON’T BE WELL SUITED because we are PASSIONATE ABOUT DIFFERENT THINGS – and so just by spending a little bit of time getting to know each other we can pick that up and be saved even entering a relationship that is in all likelihood not going to go anywhere

GET TO KNOW THE PERSON FIRST – both as an individual and in group settings – and at least get some idea of possibility of compatability – BEFORE YOU RUSH INTO A RELATIONSHIP blind simply based on some attraction that may be based on the context or your loneliness and ‘need’ for a person…

[click here to read the next part]

who does barack obama answer to?

i came across this article about barack obama’s personal faith and the unsurprising statement that it is the call to look after ‘the least of these’ [matthew 25, sheep and goats parable] that keeps him focused… very cool…

excerpt from article below – link to full article and clip here

‘President Barack Obama gave an unusually personal speech about his religious faith on Thursday, saying that “it is the biblical injunction to serve the least of these that keeps me going and keeps me from being overwhelmed,” in address to a prayer breakfast in Washington.

The speech, delivered at the National Prayer Breakfast, comes on the heels of public opinion surveys that show only a minority of Americans know that Obama is a Christian and that a growing number believe he’s a Muslim.

“My Christian faith has been sustaining for me over the last couple of years and even more so when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time,” the president said Thursday, referring to his wife. “We are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but that we are true to our conscience and true to our God.”

“When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, I ask him to give me the strength to do right by our country and our people,” Obama said later. “And when I go to bed at night, I wait on the Lord and I ask him to forgive me my sins and to look after my family and to make me an instrument of the Lord.”‘

bad christian movies too

a great article on relevant magazine taking up the same theme of christians and bad art/movies…

can a Christ follower achieve perfection/sinlessness?

[laughed the boy]

a friend of mine from the Malaysian Younger Leaders Gathering i attended in 2006 asked me the question and so i did my best to answer it, or to at least look at some of the aspects of the question – thort it was worth posting my thorts here…

hey Debbie

greetings in the amazing name of Jesus!

thankx for the email and the encouragement and hopefully this gets to you in time altho not sure how much help it will be…

i like your ‘out of the box but still in line with scripture thinking’ line – thankx – will do my best:

“I am involved in a Bible Study and we had a very great debate last week about whether it is actually possible for Christians to get to a point in their relationship with God where they no longer sin. On one side, we had those who believe that we are never free from the sinful nature while we are on earth, so there is always the possibility that we might ‘fall into sin’. On the other side, of which I am the ringleader, we believe that “if you live by the Spirit you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature – Gal 5:16″ and this means that you will not sin: not that you will not be tempted to sin, but you will not give in to it because your desire to please God is greater than your desire to please yourself. But the others believe that only God is capable of being without sin.”

i would imagine this is a question that not so many people here have asked as generally we christians accept the fact that we are sinful as something that goes without saying and so because we are SO sinful just assume it must be the norm, but in fact i have asked this very question – i remember clearly when i was on my Youth With A Mission DTS (Discipleship training school) in Holland i wrote a thort for the week on it that i don’t think went down very well (wish i could go back and find it but not even sure if it is in the yahoo archive cos might have been still when i sent TFTW via hotmail) and sadly i don’t really have a clear answer but perhaps i can give some of my thorts… on the plus side it does seem as if there are some statements that back up the idea – there is one at the beginning of one of the peters that says we have been given everything we need for righteous and holiness or something like that – maybe it should stop being so lazy and get my Bible – one sec –

ah here – 2 peter 1.3 – His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.” – then it goes on to talk about participating in the divine nature and a little further down gives a list of add to your faith goodness and to your goodness knowledge and self-control and perseverance and so on – so for me (in maybe a frustrating kind of way) it seems to back up both sides of the answer – we have been given everything we need for godliness but keep adding this and this and this – so the potential for perfection is in our hands, but it’s a journey and there is always adding to be done… make sense?

i think Jesus came to demonstrate that it is potentially possibly to live a sinless life – if He only achieved sinlessness because He was God then does it count as being able to be representative of man? and would it be fair for God to say ‘walk perfectly but oh you can’t sorry’ – i think the Bible definitely calls us to walk in perfection in terms of what we are meant to be aiming at but then you see the example of Paul in Corinthians i think it is where he says what i want to do i dont do and what i dont want to do i do and so even he seems to be caught up in the sinful life – we see Peter after he is filled with the Spirit and doing amazing things having to be rebuked by Paul for living hypocracy in a situation with the jews and gentiles (galatians 2.11) and we see king David a man after God’s own heart sinning horrendously and losing a son because of it – so it seems as if those who walked before us didn’t manage that easily which increases the likelihood of us being the same – and i can testify from my life that i still completely mess it up in terms of priority and time usage and a lot of not doing what i should be doing and still a bunch of doing what i should not be doing – so my mind says it is possible or should be but my body and experience keeps testifying that it is still far away for me at least

i think for me the basic premise was this – if it is possible for me not to sin for 5 seconds then the 5 seconds before i die i can be said to have been living sinlessly and if i can manage 5 seconds then surely i can manage ten and then maybe 30 and then maybe two minutes and so unless i sin every moment of my life there has to be some short period where i am sinless in thort and deed – and so can’t we extend that to an hour, a number of hours, a day? etc etc – that was where i started my dts thort and so surely we can get to a place where for an x period of time we don’t sin at all and surely for some people that is days and maybe months and years – but ja there is no way of testing that and it is a bit of a silly theory i guess – the one thing i was thinking in the car last nite after reading your email and driving to vals folks house where we slept over was that maybe the moment you reach that perfection and are aware of it then pride naturally steps in cos the moment you take joy in how sinless you are (even by just realising it and smiling quietly to yourself) then that is the moment when sin has already struck? i don’t know…

i think at the end of the day it is not for us to look at ourselves and go ‘ooh look i have no sin’ or to look at others and go ‘ooh look no sin’ but it is for us to strive towards sinlessness by submitting to God and the Holy Spirit and continuing on the journey of adding to your faith goodnessand knowledge and love and perseverance etc and loving God, loving people and looking after those who need help and so at the end of the day the question of whether we can or cannot achieve it becomes largely if not completely irrelevant because it is the direction in which our compass is always aimed and that is what matters most…

hope there is some help in there – maybe just more questions than answers
much love and all the best for cell – if either side of the argument starts loving the other side of the argument less or getting heated then i think that will just prove the lack of perfection so argue nice, fight well, love harder

God bless you my friend
love brett fish

the double tease

so i recently was on an orange river trip with a bunch of youth okes linked to a southern suburbs church youth group…

two of the guys on the trip wore t-shirts (which i addressed with them both – one directly and one a little more indirectly cos i couldn’t remember who had been wearing it) which distressed me a lot

[1] cartoon picture made up of two blocks – in the first block a guy and a girl figure [similiar to toilet man and woman stick figures] standing next to each other – in the second block dude has shoved his arm out and girl is falling through the bottom of the block – caption reads “PROBLEM SOLVED”

[2] second was a block with a cartoon groom and a bride, similiar stick figure vibe to first pic – bride is holding bouquet and smiling, groom has big sad face – caption reads “GAME OVER”

both of them saddened me in terms of the message they were delivering and in terms of the fact that young guys would choose to wear them [the ‘problem solved’ guy told me that he had been given the t-shirt by a bunch of his girl friends which made me maybe even a little more horrified]

are they funny? yes, i guess so, clever word play, well done

but they are horrible, horrible, horrible, especially the ‘game over’ one

the statistics for divorce are something like 1 in 3 marriages or maybe even closer to 1 in 2 these days – and they are largely the same in so-called christian and non-christian marriages – how much of this is due to the fact that marriage has largely become a joke, or at the very least a joked about thing

when i marry people [two down, one to go next weekend] i marry them with my shoes off, linking back to the moses story and the fact that he was standng on holy ground, because i truly believe that is how God views marriage – it is a holy and special and spiritual and sacred thing – when we return to that point of view, we will have a starting point towards having healthy marriages which – altho not necessarily easy, because marriage is not always easy, it requires work and effort and sacrifice and humility and service and surrender on a continual daily basis – can and do work and will be an effective role model in a world where relationships have largely become a selfish endeavour, reduced to a me-me-me-me enactment, or a joke on a t-shirt…

i’d rather you were an atheist than a ‘christian’

so, once we get past the mindless comments of people responding to the blog title and not actually reading it, what am i on about?

if you haven’t read my other blog about the christians choosing to become atheist (https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/a-theist-walks-into-an-atheist-bigbang-its-a-steel-atheist) i would suggest you begin there, cos this is a (s)equal of sorts…

so in the context of finding out that one of my church peoples had turned atheist over the varsity holidays, i have been giving this a lot of thort and i came up with this:

both of my friends who became atheist were christian and so they know the deal – they understand what the Christian-perceived Bible-teaching consequences of not being a Christ-follower are. they both know that if they have got this one wrong – and continue to stay in it – that they are in a LOT of trouble.

so, knowing the consequences of not being a Christ-follower, they are actively choosing against that and embracing another belief, and everything that goes with it

therefore, there are no surprises for them – they get that if they’ve got it wrong, it’s death. damnation to be more precise.

so it is an active step made, considering the facts or understanding or belief or perception or whatever, away from that

there are many ‘christians’ on the other hand (and i use a small ‘c’ as i always do to depict people calling themselves ‘christian’ but not necessarily following Christ at all) who think they are ‘in’ and ‘making it’ and ‘on their way to heaven’ and ‘damnation-free’ and so on, but who are one day going to stand before God and be completely surprised when He says, “Depart from Me, I never knew you!” [Matthew 7, towards the end, bible downstairs, me upstairs]

they are doing the stuff, going through the rituals, hanging out at church, maybe listening to the music and watching the (awful) movies, walking what they suppose is the walk, but completely missing the point

and as i have been thinking about this whole situation, i think that i would rather have you actively choose to walk away from Christianity and become an atheist (or something else) than be lulled into a false sense of security, thinking you are a Christ-follower when you clearly (at least to God who sees all) are not

“I never knew you” speaks of relationship, not religious hoops – it’s not about you didn’t do enuff stuff or you didn’t get enough people saved or you didn’t attend enough religious meetings or you didn’t try harder – it’s that you missed the primary number 1 key aspect of being a follower of Jesus which is loving God with all your heart and soul and mind (closely followed by ‘and loving your neighbour as yourself’ – matthew 22)

i would, obviously, rather have you follow Jesus with me. after all He claimed to be “the Way and the Truth and the Life” and said that “No-one comes to the Father except through Me” [john 14.6] and that is what i believe and am chasing (and being challenged a lot lately that i need to be more focused on the remaining in Him and building relationship with Him than all the other stuff i get caught up in, so that all the other stuff can flow out of being in a strong place with Him) and would love for you to be a part of

but if you’re not. if you choose to walk away. and pursue something else (because please don’t walk away from Christ-following and just sit around apathetically and believe nothing!) then i would much rather have you do that, than call yourself a ‘christian’ while completely not believing in any of it, or living any of it, but just miserably continuing to live out some kind of sick meaningless pointless waste-of-time facade.

what’s it gonna be?

coffees with john of ellis

so as part of a pretty incredible weekend up in the kwazulu of natal i managed to get some coffee time with john ellis (formerly of tree63 and ‘john ellis has hung up his cross and become a giant piece of plasticine’ fame) to hear his version of where he is at and whether he still loves Jesus (he does, whoops i hope that wasn’t one of the ‘between you and me’ moments we shared, john?) and what the flippery flop is going on in these parts…

i left having had coffee with a new friend (well i think i did, or having spent time with a reeeeally good actor – aw man he’s probly going to post something on his blog saying i just used time with him to get better blog hits…oh wait, which in turn will give me better blog hits… hee hee win-win, go for it you thespian!) and someone who is a lot on a lot of the pages i find myself on in terms of God, good christian books and Monty Python/Blackadder humour (altho someone do him a favour and buy him a copy of Black Books so can at least update a little, sheesh – oh wait he Mighty Booshed… never mind, as you were) which let’s face it, are among the most important things in life… ‘she turned me into a newt… i got better!’ and all

in fact twice when i mentioned the two books that had changed my life asking him if he’d heard of them his response was ‘that book changed my life’

is john ellis still a christian? you know what? ask him yourself. i’m pretty sure i know the answer to that question and i look forward to many more conversations and hangings (of the caffeine type not the christian lynch mob) with him when we happen to be in the same place and maybe he’ll even one day include a song about No_bob on one of his albums (okay, maybe not THAT close!) but the point is i did not meet jon to interview him for a magazine or a blog and i don’t think it’s particularly fair on him for me to talk about all the stuff we talked about (and hope i haven’t already said too much, john?) and i don’t really want to – i was just glad for the opportunity to spend some time speaking to someone with a brain, who thinks, and loves it that the place where he is in right now is getting other people to think, and has a sly mischievous sense of humour which creeps in and out of his regular conversation

i do think that sometimes the judging of a person, for whatever reason and in whatever way, says more about the person judging than the person being judged and that Jesus had a bit to say on people with planks sticking out of their face muttering comments about the person in front of them cleaning the dust speck off of their contact lens…

tx john for a treemendous time (no no no PLEASE TELL ME I DIDN’T JUST WRITE THAT!)