Monthly Archives: March 2012

easter: two

Next question.

What’s so important about the resurrection?

Keeping it short today, the resurrection is a guarantee that the death… worked.

Once the debt was paid, there was no longer any reason for Jesus to stay dead. It is finished.

Not only that, but Jesus’ resurrection was a guarantee of resurrection and life after death for us. If you take the account of the disciples during his crucifixion, they fled from him and hid away, and Simon Peter the disciple even openly denied knowing Jesus three times that night for fear of his own safety.

Yet almost all of the disciples died a matyr’s death.

It wasn’t because they had spent time with Jesus when he was performing miracles and doing his ministry.

It had to be something pretty convincing, to overcome your fear of death.

Paul, who was a huge persecutor of Christians, had his life changed by the risen Jesus and went on to preach the Good News with all boldness, and without hindrance.

30 For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. 31He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance! (Acts 28:30-31 NIV)

It was a resurrected Jesus that changed their lives. That’s why in the Christian Church we don’t have Jesus on our cross, because we don’t just focus on His death, but his resurrection and the completion of payment for our sin!

What does that mean for us?

Our faith is certain. We know for sure that our debt has been paid, because the proof is in the resurrection.

God fulfilled his promise.

easter: one

First question.

Why did Jesus have to die? We talk about it all the time, and a lot of the time we’re speaking Christianese, using words that we’re so used to that we forget the original meaning. We had a bit of a discussion on Wednesday night, and tried to break it down into simple terms.

Bringing it back to fundamentals of Christianity:

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23 NIV)

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NIV)

Everyone is guilty of sin, from the time of Adam until now. And to bring it back even further, what is sin?

Sin is a deviation from God’s plan for our lives – that is, every time we take control and do “what we want to do” and not necessarily what God wants us to do (and it should be mentioned that those two things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive) then we SIN.

(Personally speaking: I have done a terrible job with my life. But God’s done so much more than I could imagine for myself)

Sin is an offence that has been committed against God, and this offence deserves the punishment of death. And for the sake of our redemption, to take on the sin of mankind, God as a man being perfect and blameless died on our behalf.

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV)

What does that mean for us?

Our sin is wiped off the record. Our price is paid. That’s a pretty good deal. But beyond that, it’s also very humbling.

The sin that Jesus took from your life, might be different to the sin of that guy you know, or your friend, or your father, or your pastor, but it was a sin. You have sin too, and God dealt with it. Thinking in light of this, makes it a little easier to be humble, and to get off our high-horses.

Another question that comes up is, “Why couldn’t God just say, “I forgive you” and leave it at that?”.

Here’s an answer that I’ve read in the past and found to be beneficial in my understanding of God and how this works within His Justice.

Jesus had to die for our sins.

why isn’t it better?

Why isn’t it better?

  • Perhaps you don’t know enough
  • Perhaps you don’t care enough, or
  • Perhaps you’re unable to execute because of committees, the status quo and fear

These might be three ways to say the same thing.

The combination of fear and ignorance (two sides of the same coin) can be paralyzing.

From Seth Godin. I think he’s writing about marketing, but you read it, and tell me what it brings to mind :)

growth

Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.
- C.S. Lewis

I am at a point in my life again where I feel like I need to do some growing. Having had a relatively easy term in the last few weeks it’s been a good chance to reflect on my priorities, and where exactly I spend my time. I wrote a few posts ago about “if not now then when”, and it still comes as a harsh reminder that I do waste a lot of my time doing things that aren’t an effective use of my time, and that the things I do want, and the habits I do want to cultivate I actually neglect.

Do you want to be more patient? Then next time you’re faced with a situation that tries your patience, BE PATIENT.

Do you want to be more organised? Clean your table. Buy (and use) a calendar. START TODAY.

It doesn’t have to be a big step, but if you get past that initial barrier, that is, if you just start, then you’re already on the way.

It’s not easy. And you will fail. But that’s okay, because it’s not by your strength anyway.

3 At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. 4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.
Titus 3:3-8 (NIV) 

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
- C.S. Lewis

“the waiting room”

I keep coming up with names, that end up being better than the actual product/service/thing. And I also have a few ideas in mind that could be turned into reasonable products, but I have neither the time nor initiative to get them started, as most of my energy is devoted to Medicine, Church or SMA.

I thought a witty blog name might be “prose and cons” once I move on from the phrase “the bell and the diaphragm” (which is talking of course about the two sides of the stethoscope’s point of contact. I figured it’d be a nice label for any creative writing I do… but it turns out it’s already been used for the writing that prisoners do in the US… not so good.

Anyway the phrase “waiting room” came to me as the possible name of a charity organisation in the future. It’s meant to reflect the idea that people in countries less fortunate than ours are in a waiting room, waiting for a solution.

There’s probably a further analogy I can draw, but I’m going to have to stop it here for the sake of study…

Johari window

One more thing from Organizational Behaviour before we move on in the blog.

The Johari window.

It seeks to explain the relative degree of mental instability that we all have. Mental instability has negative connotations, but stay with me, because we’re just using it in the literal sense of the words.

Johari Window

It looks at four areas that are determined by our perception and the perception of others about our personality. The full exercise involves getting some people who know you, to pick 5-6 adjectives from a list of 56 that describe you, and you are to do the same for them. You also have to do it for yourself, and then the adjectives are mapped onto the grid above.

While this might all be completely obvious, that doesn’t lessen the effectiveness of the exercise.

There are things that are known to you, and known to others. The parts of your personality that you choose to reveal in the Arena.

There are things that are known to you, that are not known to others. These are the parts that you don’t necessarily want to share, so you keep these to yourself.

Now here’s the fun part. There are things known to others, that aren’t known to you. Maybe you would describe yourself as “dependable”, whereas others might not. They might describe you as “idealistic” or even “silly”. It’s a bit confronting to have consensus about these things from a group of your peers, and does reveal to us that there are parts of us that we unwillingly project.

And of course, there are things that aren’t known to us, and aren’t known to others. Parts of ourselves that we aren’t aware of, and that other people have no reason to be aware of. But still make up a part of our personality.

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Looking back at the MARS model of behaviour yesterday, it’s easy to think that we can rationalise our behaviour because of those four factors. But the reality is, there are some things about ourselves that we don’t know, and there are some things about ourselves that we choose to keep to ourselves.

But if we believe that God is our creator, and knew us before he knitted us together in our mothers womb, then He should know everything about us in all four domains of the Johari Window. And for us, in our perception, we sit somewhere in the middle.

MARS model of individual behaviour

Something I dug up from my first year units in 2006… which is a long time ago. I took this unit called Organizational Behaviour for my Management portion of B.Com, and one of the concepts that we learnt about was this: the MARS model of individual behaviour.

From what I remember, it was a really good way to think about productivity and how to help people achieve their best in what they’re doing, from a managerial/leadership position. Looking back now, it’s also a good way to think about your behaviour in all aspects of life. Let’s… take the Christian faith as an example.

Motivation – what motivates you? This is a struggle, and for the sake of complete transparency it is really easy to walk the line between doing “what’s right” and doing “what is Godly”. It is really easy to be motivated by the idea that you can struggle and work with your own strength to overcome your weaknesses, but it’s really impossible for us to get over our “humanity”. And the Christian faith isn’t about works, but it is manifested through works. Ultimately, to use Christianese for a second, it’s about building your relationship with God and your motivation should be what God has done in your life. The next sentence may be a bit weird, but it’s a reminder of 1 Corinthians 13.

The goal of your life is not “God’s will”, but God. If you’re a good person, but you don’t know God any better, then you’re no better off.

Abilities – what do you think is within your abilities? This is… also a struggle. It’s hard to think about what exactly you’re good at, without thinking that it’s for yourself and not God. I’m an okay Med student right now, and even being a Med student is very beneficial for me. People look at you differently, and have greater expectations for you, and it’s easy to believe the hype. But in circumstances where it’s not to our “gifting” or to where we think our abilities lie, it becomes a whole lot harder. And this is where Christian faith diverges from “reasonable” thinking.

 20 Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, 21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Hebrews 13:20-21 (NIV)

I believe that wherever we are, in whatever circumstances, we are called to do good works. You might be in a situation that feels so out of your depth that all you can do is trust God, and that’s what you have to do. I am nowhere near equipped to be doing what I am doing, but I thank God that (to quote something I’ve previously mentioned on the blog) God does not call the equipped, he equips the called. I’m here for his purpose, and I’m not left alone. But when I do manage to get through, and to get through well, then the only thing people can say is that it wasn’t me, my effort or my skill, but it was all God working in me.

Role Perception – what are we here for? This is what we are created to do: good works. What “good works” actually means though, is different for every individual. Role perception is such a clinical term, it’s probably better if we think about it as “identity”. It says in Romans that we are God’s children. That is something that was completely unheard of in the Old Testament. Jesus was the first to even refer to God as “Father”, and to teach us to pray the same. There is such a huge difference between what we think of God, as perhaps a distant vengeful God, and a God that is our “Father in Heaven”. Where you draw your identity comes from what you think of yourself in relation to others, to the world, and to the Universe as a whole. Ultimately, what you think of God plays a significant role in how you determine your identity.

10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)

16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Romans 8:16-17 (NIV)

Situational Factors – where are you at? (probably poor grammar) It’s so easy to get caught up in our circumstances and situations when we lose our frame of reference. And I’ll admit that it’s not easy to feel or act the way you want to, when the situation feels dire. But there is some value in holding on to the truth, which is objective and not subjective. And it is also really important to remember that we’re not alone in this.

 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28 (NIV)

 I hope that wasn’t too rambly or overly “preachy” in the derogatory usage of the word, but a measured, well-discussed outline of some of the things Christians do, and the way they behave in a context of our belief system. The common perception is that Christians are a bunch of hypocrites, because so often our lives don’t add up to the stuff that we say. But thank God that Christianity is not about man’s perfection, or man’s search for God, but God’s perfection, and God’s “search” for man through Christ Jesus.

spirituality, suffering and healing

I’m currently taking an option for two weeks called Spirituality, Suffering and Healing. We’ve been spending time with the Palliative care team and getting to know some patients who are facing death, and it’s been a bit of a challenging experience.

There’s a lot more that I could say about it, but it would only really be relevant to Student Doctors, and it’s hard to discuss without discussing specific patients, so I’ll just leave you with a quote from Dr Balfour Mount, a Canadian physician who is the father of Palliative Medicine.

Healing is a relational process involving movement towards an experience of integrity and wholeness, which may be facilitated by a caregiver’s interventions but is dependent on an innate potential within the patient. It is not dependent on the presence of, or the capacity for, physical well being. Indeed, it is possible to die healed.

It’s been a challenging week.

34. Learn the principles of photography

Complete! I actually knew a lot about the basics of photography, but it was really nice to just sit down, and understand how it all works from first principles on a blank piece of A4.

This is me talking from my own personal understanding, and it is probably not 100% correct, but it works for me. Let’s talk about exposure and how cameras work. Everything that we see is due to light, and it’s the same with cameras. Your image will reflect the amount of light that is going into your camera lens, but also the direction of that light. So light goes from the object, through your lens and hits a sensor in your camera, which records the image. There are a few things that you control in this process, and they can be balanced with what’s called the exposure triangle:

ISO – the sensitivity of the sensor to light. The higher the ISO number, the more sensitive it is to light, but the grainier the image. ISO can sometimes be used to compensate for poor lighting conditions, when balancing the exposure triangle.

Shutter Speed – the amount of time the shutter spends open, i.e. the amount of light that is able to hit the sensor over time. The thing to think about with shutter speed, is that the longer the shutter is open, the more things will move (unless you’re shooting something stationery on a tripod). You might end up with blurring in your photos if your shutter is open for long periods of time, and this actually might be what you want.

Aperture – how wide the lens is open. This is usually described with f-stops e.g. f/1.8 or f/3.5. The smaller the number, the wider the aperture. Aperture also has a bearing on the “depth of field”, which I should probably explain now. To oversimplify things, if your aperture is wider, you’re letting more light rays in, but you’re also letting more light rays in at different angles. Objects that are closer to the camera will have light rays that are more parallel than objects that are further away, so as a result, things that are closer will be more in focus, while things that are further away will be blurry. This is what’s called a shallow depth of field. If your f-stop is higher, the aperture is smaller (that is, the hole has a smaller diameter) and less light is entering the camera. BUT the light that does enter the camera, is more parallel, even the ones from a distance. As a result, things in the distance will be sharp as well, giving you the opposite of a shallow depth of field… a deep depth of field (this is grossly incorrect terminology). As a case in point, my mate pixelpx recently got his hands on an 85mm f/1.2L for some amazing portraiture. The f/1.2 means he’s got a crazily shallow depth of field.

As seen below:
IMG_1854

Composition is a whole other ball game, but the best way to learn about these things is to run through some case examples and then try it yourself! Here’s a really poor case example to understand what you can do to balance the exposure triangle.

Case: If you’re shooting a waterfall, and you want to blur the water so it looks smooth, then you probably want a longer shutter speed. BUT if your shutter is open for ages, you might wash out your photo, as there’s too much light going in and hitting the sensor. So what can you do? Close the aperture, and let less light in! But that has the issue of changing your depth of field. Which is why you refer to real photography teachers, and not a guy who takes pictures for fun sometimes.

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One last thing – DSLR cameras usually have a priority mode, such as Aperture-priority, which lets you control the aperture, and adjusts the other two parts of the exposure triangle to give you the best results. From what I’ve seen, a lot of my friends shoot a lot in A-priority, because it means that they have control of the depth of field, and how much is in focus, and the camera can make sure enough light is getting in to give a clear picture.

This website is great, and has a better explanation for why things work the way they do, but I can cross this off the 101 list!