Virtually Paul

Paul to the Max(ima)

Well, I finally took the plunge and got rid of my 626.  I’m now quite pleased with myself, now that I own a used Nissan Maxima to get around in.  I reckon I got a reasonable deal too.

So I’m back on the road again.  No more trains to work.  No more scabbing lifts.  I can successfully spend this entire weekend bouncing between the eastern and north western suburbs of Melbourne.

What I found most interesting about the new car experience, was how much I actually tried to spiritualise it.  You might get the wrong end of the stick with this comment if you’re not all that familiar first-hand with Christian teaching… so leave a comment if you have any questions.  Here’s the story…

After a reasonable degree of whinging and indecisiveness about my old car, I stopped and realised… ‘I haven’t prayed about this one’.  Now that’s not a legalistic faith requirement.  I don’t have to pray about anything.  But if you want something and you believe in a supernatural, all-powerful creator of the universe… it seems logical to ask for stuff that you need.  So I did.  And two weeks later I have a car, not because a magic pixie appeared on my doorstep… because I went to a caryard and bought one.  Nonetheless, I did the same thing a month ago and found no suitable cars in about 10 different yards.  Divine intervention?  You tell me.  I’m open to suggestions.

Now, I’m really thankful for the car.  It will make my life a lot easier.  I’m thankful for the provision of a job that I love and for the finances that seem to have accrued themselves without that much careful accounting on my part.  And yes, I said ‘thankyou’ to God for the car.

At the same time, part of me felt like an idiot.  See, if I’m really tuned in to this whole God thing, even though God is definitely going to be interested in the mundane details of my life, I felt like a bit of a hypocrite for making such a faith ‘thing’ out of this car.  I don’t want to appear self-righteous, like the americans in one of those Amazing Race teams that go out of their way to call themselves Christians and keep asking God out aloud for divine intervention to help them win the million dollar prize (at the expense of all the other teams).

There’s nothing wrong with me being thankful to my God for the small stuff.  There’s nothing wrong with the idea that God cares about the small stuff.
But there is something wrong when our big investments in spiritual connection with God come at a time when it suits us… when we have a material gain in focus… or when a relative is in hospital or something.  From a biblical perspective, God is going to accept you no matter when you decide to turn to Him.  So I’m not saying that we have to try and make ourselves adequate before God.  What I am talking about, is avoiding a personal hypocrisy, which comes closer to being religious than having faith.

From my personal perspective, if I’m only interested in God as an extension of being interested in myself, I may as well cut down on active expressions of faith altogether and embrace an illusion. I could just be toddling along to a random church for Easter and Christmas, comfortably calling myself a Christian and completely missing the point at the same time.

This, I think, is one of the big reasons why people don’t want to pay attention to God.  It’s because they know it will cost them something.  Usually they think that the cost will be church attendance - but it doesn’t have to be about an institutional church if you don’t want it to be.  That’s between you and God.  Church participation is not the cost.

The cost is that you can’t have your spiritual cake and eat it too.

Junior Camp Ahoy!

Seeing as Carris put in such a top research effort for her pirate post, I thought I’d use my new found burst of energy as I recover from being sick, to give my blog design a bit more of a pirate feel.

I’m leading on a kids camp this summer. The theme is “The Quest for Treasure Island”… What’s in the box with the locks? I’m co-directing the camp with two good friends, in Warren and Tash. There’s also Janelle, Carris, Bec and a bunch of other people that we’ve roped in from church and other places to be leaders.

The point of the camp is basically to form relationships with the kids, aged from Grade 4 to Year 7 and invest in them. We spend a bit of time on the camp talking about Bible stories and how those things can apply to our lives today… at the end of the day though, it’s up to the kids to make up their own minds about what they want to think and believe. I think that’s an incredibly healthy attitude… and it’s one of the reasons why in my high school days I got so much out of the teen camps that the same organisation runs. Mostly though, it’s fun, games and quality time.

I really enjoy spending time with kids. They have such an uncomplicated view of the world. I wish I’d gone on camps like this one when I was their age. I think I would have really liked them… so I’m really glad I can offer the privilege to my slightly smaller friends. I don’t think they’d appreciate being called ‘little’.

The blog theme will probably stay around until after camp, unless I get sick of it.
Camp runs from January 6-11, 2007, although I’ll be getting there a bit later because of my groomsman responsibilities in Nathan’s wedding.

In sickness and in bed

That post title sounds slightly dodgy now that I think about it.  Oh well.

I’m sick.  After my wonderful family was kind enough to take me out for dinner on Wednesday night for a belated celebration of my 23rd birthday, I spent the early hours of Thursday morning lying on the couch in pain, making half hourly trips to the bathroom to lose a bit more of the rather large dinner I had eaten.  Not fun.  I slept for less than three hours on Wednesday night, listening to question time in the Senate and other fun early morning programs to take my mind of the horrible pain in my stomach.  I’ve since slept for about 16 hours, with a 4 hour break starting at midnight today.

Since then, I have consumed a few watered down glasses of cordial, a couple of slices of toast with a bit of vegemite and some stewed apple.  I saw the doctor yesterday and he ran some tests.  He reckons that I’ve got a rare type of food poisioning - more specifically chronotrianic cucurbitis.  Apparently, only 2.4% of the population are susceptible to it.  It strikes you down after about three days after eating bad pumpkin!  As you can imagine, aside from the severe abdominal pain and vomiting, I find this extremely amusing.  The doctor also warned me that one of the side effects of the illness is inventing fake diseases to tease your friends and their cooking… but I don’t seem to have experienced any of that yet.  If I start italicising nonsensical words that are meant to sound like they’re latin, that’d probably be a warning sign.

I really do have food poisoning.  It’s interesting how the body deals with that sort of stuff.  It just shuts down.  Digestive system closed for business.  Everything stops until it has done what it has to do, at which point the user can recommence using it.  I’m like a computer that’s low on RAM.  Or one that’s running Exchange.  Actually probably not like Exchange.  That wouldn’t fix itself.

Leave me some sympathy in the comments please.

Also, I’m preaching on Sunday night.  Come along if you’re interested or email me to request the mp3 if you’re interested enough.