The Filthy Jesus Experiment

I'm starting a band. A gospel band. A singing, hollering, foot stomping mess of a band that is taking the back-door to heaven through the drinking holes of hell. To raucous for the church we've been thrown out on the street to preach the lost gospel of down and out, love and laughter and a beer for everyone.

The band will be called "The Filthy Jesus Experiment" It will be gospel music like it was being played to a bar room of prostitutes, drunks and con-artists.

At the moment all I have is the seed of an idea but I'm excited I think it might have legs.

Tiny Houses, Minimalism and Junk

Lately I've been addicted to looking at tiny houses and reading about minimalism. I'm begging to feel weighed down by all my stuff.

For example, I have books on my shelf that I know I will never read again. Books like the beauty myth by naomi wolf (that i somewhat pretensiously used to give women as a 21st present). It was a great book a book that made me look at life in a new way but I will almost definitly not read again. But, I tell myself it "says something about me". It's a memory of something that was a turning point in my life. No one is going to walk out of my house saying "at first i thought you were a shovanist pig but then i had a look at your book shelf..." For what it's worth I may as well pass it on to someone and then photo copy the spine on to a packet soup box and stick that on my shelf.

And so it goes to other areas in the house. A jacket that I used to wear to work, not something I'll wear out but a good smart casual kind of look when you're wearing a shirt but not a tie.

Like the book I keep items like these because they might one day come in handy. Usually I think "I might be able to pass this onto someone one day". One day when Libraries no longer exist and when opshops won't exist. Opshops were me and a hundred other poeple have donated jackets like mine.

After a fairly sizeable cull of stuff about 6 months ago. I'm looking at stuff that I thought then was to valuable to just give away or sell. But it's just stuff taking up space. Stuff that reflects who I am as a person. Which is great if I'm not around or if I'm likely to forget who I am. But that's not going to happen.

Down With Materialism

Picture this... a picture of a green V8 4WD with biggest engine ever built. With the slogan "lets all go green"

Or perhaps, a man in office with deodorant on his desk and a bevy of scantily dressed female secretaries around him. With the slogan "for men who'd like a bit more sexism in the work place"

Or finally, simply an array of products made out of material (all imported from countries with labour laws far less stricter than ours) all on special with the slogan "down with materialism".

This last scenario is actually a real ad from Ikea. I can only assume that makers of the add were so convinced that the overwhelming majority of readers are so addicted to materialism that no one would complain let alone be offended (unlike the other scenarios). The add is now quite old so the ad makers were right. Our collective desire to to buy and own more and more and more stuff is not even up for debate. In a finite world with a growing population I just can't help that for people like me (in the richest 10% of the world) that's nothing short of insanely selfish to not be thinking about how me might curb our materialism.

The Worst Kind Of Blog

The blogs I find most irritating are the ones that are updated sporadically. Sometimes it's every second day and then sometimes there are months between posts. This Blog is one of those blogs. If you would like to avoid both missing posts and regularly checking a site that hasn't been updated you can follow me on twitter @churchlessfaith, subscribe to my RSS feed or subscribe to get an email every time I post something new (you will not get an email about anything else).

Hanging The Washing Out Like A Real Man

From John Piper to Mark Driscoll there has been a bit of buzz of late about gender and God. Rachel Held Evans put out a call for blokes to respond to these (particularly John Piper's) views so I thought I'd add my voice to the growing throng. I've written some things in the past about my view about what the Bible says about gender here.

However, to be honest, beyond the whole biblical exegesis I just don't get the whole gender divide thing. Rather than thinking Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars I've always been inclined to think Women are from Earth and men are from Earth. People are different from each other and in any close intense relationship (like a marriage) those differences will become really obvious really quickly. Although I haven't asked, I'm going to bet that homosexual couples experience the same amount of difficulties and communication problems as a heterosexual couples does.

To be fair I'm not a typical bloke. I stay at home while the wife works. I've always done the sewing for the family, I now cook, clean and do all the domestic chores. My wife (like many husbands) is a better cook than me but I look after the washing much better than she ever did. I am generally more patient with the kids but hopeless at noticing mess around the house. At parties I'd hang out with the mums and talk about the kids rather than hang out with the dads and talk about sport or work (I did this even when I was working). When I hear some off the things the playgroup mums complain about things their husbands do they are often things that my wife does as well (although I prefer not to divulge my wife's faults - which are going to be far fewer than mine anyway). Things like not knowing where a particular item is kept although I've told her half a dozen times. These are really just a product of me being at home all the time and her being at home a heck of a lot less. At no point have I thought of myself as less male even though I don't have all the stereotypically manly traits.

Similarly, when the biblical writers attribute God with male traits I tend to think of them just as traits that happen to stereotypically belong to a male or in some passages traits that stereotypically belong to a female. I don't think of God being Jewish and therefore look down on anyone who is not Jewish. I don't think of God as free and therefore look down on people who are slaves. Although it'd be easy to pull out verses describing God as Jewish or free there is no point where we would think of God as not being able to engage with gentiles or slaves equally. Or that these categories would make these people so different that they should have different roles in the church community or there should be some kind of hierarchy when they relate to each other. No, in Jesus there is no Jew, etc...

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28)

Valley Songs - Compiled

It's been about four years since I started collecting "Valley Songs" - the kind of church songs I like to sing and usually the antithesis of "Hillsong" songs. Well now they are all neatly sorted on their very own pages. Most have you tube videos attached as well as lyrics and guitar chords and, the occasional song has guitar tabs too. 

Listed Below they are also one of the first things on the side bar too.

Valley Songs A-C
Valley Songs D-G
Valley Songs H-I
Valley Songs J-N
Valley Songs O-R
Valley Songs S
Valley Songs T-Z
 

Enjoy, and please let me know if you ever use any of them.

Rest And Skipping Church

Yesterday we skipped church again. Why? "It" just doesn't seem to fit with our family and "It" is placing too many demands on us.

The only problem with the above statement is that "It" does not refer to the church we hang out with. Rather "It" is the culture that we live in. My wife is out the door by 7:30 and back home around 6. Although it'll be later over the next three nights with after hours meetings. She's a teacher and a really good dedicated one. Now I know that plenty of people work similar ridiculous hours, that really, is the point. My daughter is in year one does speech therapy, is creative, imaginative loves being outside and struggles to do school desk work (like, I suspect, many 5 year olds). My son has Autism and is supposed to be at school 5 days a fortnight and at a therapy Kindy two mornings a week (but because the nearest centre to us is an hour away the morning will last around 5.5 hours).  Me I'm a stay at home dad who's studying part time. The one thing that we all have in common is that at the end of the day and week we are all exhausted. And, we will be facing a weekend of birthday invitations for both kids, church, family to visit and friends to catch up with. On top of this is all the usual around the house projects we'd like to do. That's without any weekend team sports or similar activities.

Our family has one stay at home parent and just two kids, which is much easier than many, but I feel like I'm dragging our family from pillar to post with little opportunity to sit down and hang out or have our kids complain "Dad, I'm bored".

So, this year I have added a new activity to our hectic schedule. Rest. A morning an afternoon and a night of unplanned family hanging out time preferably all on the same day. So far (for two weekends) we've stuck to it and "Rest" is already written in the diary for the rest of the year. It means that when we get invited to too many things on a weekend we'll just have to decline. Yesterday, it was church that got the flick. Next time, I'm not sure. All I know is "rest" will not be leaving the diary. On the seventh day God did not get up early and set up to play music at church nor did God drag the family to a birthday party of a some child that God's child hardly plays with at school. God rested. This year whether it's Saturday or Sunday or a combination of both this year our family will rest.