strophe

The worst prayers come in the shower.

Do you love the idea of a wife more than me,
Son of dust,
Says the Lord?

My heart is all in reach
I cannot grasp the smallest.

Surveillance

So the United States charged Edward Snowden with a few things, including espionage. He's probably guilty of communicating classified material to an unauthorised person - that's materially shown by the information be leaked to the Guardian. Espionage, however, is a crime of intent. It's hard to argue that he reasonably expected the information would be used against the United States when he was giving it to a reporter.

But whatever. I'm an Australian.

I sat down and thought for a bit about surveillance in Australia. And I really have no reason to think the federal police, or ASIO or whomever, is doing the same thing here. I also have no reason not to think that they are doing the same thing.

The Australian government has, since September 11 2001, stuck with the USA. It makes sense to maintain a military alliance which has been central to our security since the beginning of World War Two. What bothers me is that the Australian government has also been remarkably craven when it comes to being part of the broader "war on terror" - extraordinary rendition (a term which is the definition of Orwellian - it means kidnapping and torture), broader and broader powers for police and national intelligence agencies, and the chorus of fear-mongering used to justify all these things.

So when I imagine Australia being (secretly) asked to spy on certain Australian citizens without warrants or any real evidentiary basis and then give the results to the FBI or NSA or DHS or any of the alphabet of terror, the request is met with "Sure, here you go!"

An election has been called for later this year. Why aren't our federal politicians being asked about this? Is this done in Australia? Would you allow it? What limits would you place on it? Instead we get another round of speculation about internal Labour Party politics and ugly barracking about our ass-backwards racist fearful pointless policies intended to stop refugees from coming to our shores.

I don't like the idea of government employees being allowed to spy on me without a judge allowing it. I don't. I'm more scared of it than being blown up by a pressure cooker bomb. The spying thing is a betrayal. The bomb is a crime, and it doesn't deserve my fear.

The Problem of Suffering...

...runs like this: God is omnipotent (can do anything) and omniscient (knows everything). He is also perfectly good. But there is suffering in the world. Either God cannot do anything about this suffering (not omnipotent and/or omniscient) or he chooses not to, in which case he is not perfectly good.

In summary, for suffering to exist in the world God must either be powerless over it, or be a real big jerk.

This question of whether suffering is compatible with belief in God (I mean the God of Abraham and Paul, the great unchangeable I AM) perplexes and discourages many Christians. It is often a stumbling block for those seeking God. And it has been a powerful argument for atheism for thousands of years.

I am a Christian, so I will approach the problem from a Christian point of view. I will be making certain assumptions that I feel no need to defend. I do not have to defend all of my faith every time I defend part of my faith.


What's the problem? 
The problem of suffering is even bigger than you think. Every terrible thing that happens on this planet happens, in one sense, because God does not prevent it. Every death. Every rape. Every mugging, mutilation, assault, arson, war crime, and act of littering happens because he does not prevent it. I believe he does not cause these things to happen, he does not actively will them, but nonetheless he certainly allows them to happen.

But let me restate the question of "what is the problem?" in a slightly different way. How do you identify this problem? When you say that the world should not be this way, should not contain suffering, against what are you comparing it? No human has ever experienced a world without suffering. Yet suffering is not only not hardwired into our expectations of the world, we actually expect or hope for a world without suffering.

This could be called imagination. I call it an awareness of what we are supposed to be and have. What we all silently expect is a perfect world. Most people try to create it for themselves while knowing it is impossible, but that is their desire: a perfect world. I believe perfection is not just a concept.

Perfection exists, and its name is God.

Perfection exists, and the state of humanity experiencing perfection is called perfect relationship with God. Heaven. The new creation.

So the problem, phrased differently, is: why am I not in heaven already?


Why not straight to heaven? 
If God is so good and loves us so much, why didn't he create the world and put us all straight into heaven?

Well, he sort of did that.

God created humanity and put them in a garden. He told them to take care of the garden. He visited regularly. The only negative instruction he gave them was don't eat from that tree there, because if you do you will die. Humanity was created to obey God and reflect his glory, to see and revel in his total amazing perfection. Adam and Eve (yes, both of them) chose to disobey God's instructions and make their own rules. They wanted to run their own lives.

God doesn't kill them. He could have wiped away the world and started again. Instead, he boots them out of the garden and they have to work for a living. But he promises them that one day Eve's descendants will triumph over the serpent - that is, the creature that tempted them into disobeying God.

What does all this have to do with you? Well, if you were put in Adam or Eve's place you would make the same decision. That's what makes you a human - all humans are disobedient now. You can't overcome what you are. Ever since the first two humans disobeyed God we have all been unable to obey God. We are all sinners.

It is this sin which messed the world up. God created the world as good, harmonious, fruitful. Human sin made it chaotic, painful, riddled with suffering.

It is humanity that is responsible for suffering. I don't mean that you yourself directly cause your own suffering, but the choices of Adam and Eve - the same choices you yourself would make - have broken the world. We choose to disobey God every day. Can we really get pissed at him when we suffer as a result of past disobedience?


Can't God fix it? 

Yes he can. He's omnipotent.

But consider this. Your sin is mixed up with the suffering in the world. Your sinful desires don't cause the suffering, but they come from the same source: the original sin of humanity. God can sweep in and take away the suffering. In fact, he is going to.

But when he does he will deal with the problem at the source. He will judge sin, and everything that is not perfect will be swept away by his anger. This includes people. Have you ever sinned? Have you ever done one thing that would not make God proud of you as his child? Then you're going to be swept away by his wrath as well.

God has provided a way out of this problem. He sent his son Jesus to pay for everyone's sins. Everyone who trusts in Jesus is shielded from wrath because God sees Jesus' perfection instead of human sin (Jesus being God, and therefore perfect).

The only reason God holds back the end to suffering, the re-creation of the world, the terrible flood of his righteous and judging anger, is so that as many people as possible will be saved by trusting in Jesus. Suffering will end. Judgement will come. 

Electronic Economics

I was given a $30 gift card for JB Hi-Fi for my birthday, and since I now have a computer that might be able to run Starcraft 2 and was pretty sure I'd seen the game at JB for $34, off I went to purchase it. Maybe that $34 pricetag was only there for the Christmas sales, or maybe I only imagined it. Either way - I wasn't getting SC2 from JB without forking over sixty bucks. Sorry, $59.95. 

Now that is fine. Sometimes prices are oddly high or low at stores for reasons I can't guess at. But by this point I had been imagining finally getting this game and playing online games with my friend Big Josh. I hopped on to the Blizzard website to buy SC2 digitally. 

$39.99. I assume that is US dollars, so probably a little less in AUD at the moment. Wait, no, after logging in with my Battle.net account I see it is $49.95 AUD.

Leaving aside the fact that from the splash screen Blizzard actually requires you to enter a Battle.net account to see the price (click buy from this screen) this is a ridiculous price. First of all, this is a game that came out three years ago. Computer games usually experience a fairly swift fall in prices after the first 6-12 months. For example, Deus Ex: Human Revolution came out in 2011 and is $25 online through Steam (without taking sales into account). I'm sure it was around sixty dollars on release. This might seem like a steep drop-off but big-budget games aren't so different to big-budget movies: first the expensive release price for those want to have it now (at the movies). Then the lower price for those not prepared to pay so much, or only vaguely interested in the experience (buying or renting DVDs; also streaming video or Pirate Bay). 

But there is another reason why this price is ridiculous: it is only ten dollars less than the in-store price. This seems like a funny thing to say. It is very convenient to buy a game over the Internet; why should the publisher knock down the price for such a superior delivery method? 

In fact digital purchase is vastly less convenient than a physical disc. You have to download all the files for install rather than having them to hand, you have to re-download them if you get a new computer or have to re-format, and you cannot do any of this if the publisher's servers are down or you lack Internet access. That might be fine now, but in three years that publisher may not even exist. Companies merge, split, dissolve or are dissolved all the time. And who will be supporting the publisher's guarantee of access to the data you paid for? Probably no one. 

Not to mention that a digital copy is not "yours" in any physical sense. You can't sell it secondhand, or give it to a friend, or trade it in for something new. Digital purchase is a purchase of access to data and services, not of any clearly defined "thing". This is why it is cheaper for the publisher. They do have to pay for server space and so on, but this is much less than burning and shipping DVDs (packaging, quality control, security, so on and so forth). 

We also have to look at the competition. Blizzard's big enough to distribute its own games, but many companies aren't. In the world of digital distribution of games, there is Steam and Origin (we don't talk about Microsoft's efforts). I haven't really used Origin but I do use Steam. What is my experience of Steam? Games often cost the same on Steam as physically, but because of the frequent sales this is a fiction. Because of Steam, my attempt to buy SC2 was my first attempt to physically buy a computer game in years. Games are cheap and Steam's cloud backs up my progress in case of a hard drive failure. Yes, the same fears about access to what I paid for continue to exist. But the marketplace is cheap, slick and  most importantly Valve have been in the business for a while and to a degree have earned my trust. 

The final reason $50 is an outrageous price? This year Heart of the Swarm, the next standalone expansion pack (don't ask) for Starcraft 2, will come out. Multiplayer is the main reason I wanted to buy this game and Heart of the Swarm will have a separate multiplayer ladder (no crossover with basic SC2 players). Most dedicated SC2 players will upgrade. Essentially, base SC2 will be obsolete. And yet the price is still $50. 

I've put thirty-nine very enjoyable hours into Mark of the Ninja. I bought it on sale on Steam for five bucks. 

What kind of world are you living in, Blizzard?

Failing

You may have noticed that there are rather less posts in the Calvintaries series than you might expect, since I declared a M-W-F timetable for them. The truth is I have totally failed to do what I hoped and planned to do. Let's talk about why.

The first reason was a blow to my morale. When I struggled with the posts about Romans (more on why below) and missed several deadlines, I wasn't really sure how to deal with it. I had lost my momentum. I was going to break my self-imposed schedule, which would make me feel bad. The only way to avoid that feeling was to ignore the project and pretend it didn't exist. This has been a pattern in my behaviour for years.

The best way to fix this response to failure is to, upon missing that deadline, commit to getting the next thing done without reference to time. I think that this will help restore momentum (upon which I emotionally thrive) and get me over the shame of failure. Yes, even for a little blog project which like five people will ever see, I experience shame when I fail.

I struggled (struggle) with summarising Romans not because I can't understand what Calvin is saying but because I found it difficult not to simply transcribe the commentary. What I really want to do is look at what Calvin is saying about the passage, and how it relates to that passage, and why he might expound it in that particular way. Really I want to analyse Calvin's hermeneutic. This takes more time and brain power than I anticipated.

So that's why the blog has been dead. Hopefully it will regain some life in the near future. 

Skyfall Is A Beautiful Mess

As an action movie experience, Skyfall works. It is exciting to watch. It is engaging. It draws you into its world and movements. It is the most visually beautiful Bond movie I have seen, and by far the best-directed of the Craig films.The theme song by Adele is beautiful and sums up the spirit of the film - but which film? Because Skyfall tries to be three different movies; and so it is totally lacking in cohesion and internal logic in both a narrative and thematic sense.

Also, there's a massive helping of misogyny to the point that I felt uncomfortable because my female friend didn't feel uncomfortable. Has she been living with this kind of stuff so long that it no longer registers? Anyway, spoilers (misogyny isn't really a spoiler).

As I said, this is a movie in three parts. There is the traditional Bond movie which holds our attention at the start and appears in brief flashes later: far-flung locations, Bond being charming and deadly, a villain with a plan that threatens the world. There is also a rather more grim movie in there about the challenges that MI-6 faces in a new world as its enemies not only proliferate but splinter, endlessly, into so many different faces that they might as well not have identities. And there is the beating heart of the movie which asserts itself most in the last quarter: the origins of both Bond and his enemy, and the dread machine of human intelligence into which they were both fed. Or into which they fed themselves - the movie is intentionally ambiguous about that point (and I can't really tell if that's a good thing).

The problem is that these three movies, these three plots, have very little to do with each other. The villain's identity as ex-MI6 rather undercuts the idea of MI6 suffering fundamentally new threats. And the intimacy which the villain shares with both Bond and M means the missing list of undercover operatives which ought to drive the plot never gets the space it needs to feel properly threatening. And as for the villain's big evil plot...it turns out to be to shoot M. Marvelous. The same M who was traveling about London in a Jaguar for much of the movie, and Jaguars are not known for their bullet-resistant properties. I understand that it is the mentality of the villain which drives this complicated plan, but the villain himself is a problem.

He's a former agent with a bone to pick with MI-6 and particularly M, who gives a brief justification of her abandonment of him. This issue is never questioned or expanded upon by any of the characters. Skyfall is content to let us know that there might be a moral issue here, but it has no interest in actually dealing with it. The brutal use of people, fed into the machine of human intelligence and gunfights that is the recent Bond movies - that goes unexamined, even though the entire motivation of the villain is to get M to examine herself. Because Rodriguez nee Silva never gets a chance to be right, he is never proved wrong and so his hatred of M lingers with the viewer longer than I think it was intended to. That Javier Bardem makes the character work at all is a testament to his talent and presence on screen.

Let's now talk about the misogyny. First of all, the easy example. Bond meets a henchwoman in Macau. Her name is Severine (though in fact the movie develops her so little I had to look up her name on Wikipedia), and she is magnetic. The self-control covering gnawing fear, the self-possession of her body language, the strange and fragile hope which she places in Bond to free her from slavery. Then she is killed by the villain to mess with Bond. Perhaps the point is that Bond failed her, that agents cannot rescue everyone who needs rescue - but this is never pointed out in any way by the movie, and in fact her quiet, senseless death is overshadowed by the arrival of Bond's backup. What should be a stirring moment was for me a waste. Why couldn't they have arrived ten seconds earlier and saved her? Why is her death so meaningless? Why is she in this movie if she has no purpose? Is she just here to look pretty and vulnerable, sleep with Bond, and then die?

Do not, please, tell me that this is part of the Bond movie milieu. Skyfall is not based on a Fleming novel, and even if it were there is no reason that an adaptation has to carry across misogyny and the linking of female sexuality and death. Nor ought it to contain its other strange message about gender: that women cannot be trusted in fieldwork or authoritative positions. Early in the movie Bond tells Eve that field work is not for everyone, and near the end she accepts his advice and accepts an administrative posting, becoming Moneypenny. This might fly if it was a decision she made herself, but because of Bond's blunt assessment earlier it has nasty undertones of women can't do this manly manly job. Screw you, Skyfall.

Now, I'm a Christian. I get my spiritual truth from the Bible. Let's flick to Judges chapter four, down to verse eighteen. Jael invites this guy in to her tent, gives him a drink to put him at ease, and when he's asleep hammers a tent peg through his skull. Now, this might not have been a moral thing to do. But it was certainly stone cold and I think's it pretty clear evidence - which is borne out in the world around us - that woman are just as capable of violence, and duties which involve violence, as men.

Also M is treated oddly. She tells Eve to take that shot, even though Bond is in the way. Later she gives a perfectly reasonable justification for her decision and Bond says she lost her nerve. Yes - because the heads of intelligence agencies are commonly very nervous people. The whole thing has nasty undertones of oh women are so emotional. And at the end of the movie, after M's death, she is replaced by a man. This would be no problem if it wasn't for all the weird gender roles stuff the movie had spent so much time implying. As it is, it reeks of the idea that women can't control their emotions and so can't be trusted with Important Decisions.

In summary: a beautiful movie as long you don't listen to anything anyone says.

Solomon's Story (First Draft)

I was king of Israel, and I ruled from the city of Jerusalem. I decided to spend my life studying, to become wise and understand the things that happen in this world. I studied everything that happens under the sun and none of it meant anything. It was like a dog chasing cars.

And I said to myself, "I am the wisest king my country has ever had. I know as much as anyone in the world about wisdom and knowledge." So I stuck with my study of the world. I studied madness, and folly. And I realised that my wisdom didn't mean anything, either. I was no better than a dog, still chasing those cars.

So I stopped studying and started having fun, just enjoying myself. And the fun meant nothing. Laughter got nothing done, fun got nothing done. I started drinking and acting like an idiot. If human lives were short, I might as well do whatever.

I built things. Great projects and monuments. I built more houses for myself, and vineyards, and gardens and parks with all kinds of fruit trees. I built dams and water tanks so I could water my trees. I owned slaves, and sheep, and cows: I was the richest man who had ever lived in my country. I had silver and gold and music and sex - all the things that make a man happy. And I was still wise.

I knew that it was better to be wise than be an idiot. But then I realised that I was going to die, just like an idiot; and death wasn't going to care that I was wise. So I hated all the things I had built, and all the wealth I had, because it was all going to go to someone else when I died.You can work as hard as you like but it won't last. What do people get out of all their hard work? So I hated the whole world, and I decided it meant nothing.You can't do any better than eating, drinking, and enjoying your work. But no one can enjoy anything without God.

I looked at the world and saw that in the places where it was supposed to be fair and just, it was evil. And I decided that it was like a test. A test so that humans can see that they aren't going to live forever. And who knows what happens after we die? I saw that there was no point being envious of someone else. And there wasn't any point being greedy. Nothing we have will last after we die.

So I decided the best thing anyone could do was eat and drink and enjoy their work. It's a gift from God, and people who are happy don't worry about how long they are going to live. Some people are rich, some people are poor. Some people live for a long time, some people die young. But they all go to the same place. Sometimes good people die because they are good. Sometimes evil people live for a long time because they are evil. And really, no one in the world is always a good person. God created humans to be good people but none of us are.

I realised that wisdom is better than being an idiot, and better than power. But even a wise person dies and is forgotten. There is so much to learn that no one can learn it all. The only thing you can do is to listen to God and obey his instructions. Because everything you do gets judged eventually, even the things that you do in secret.