Chicago Bears - Preseason week 2

Just feel like blogging about American Football tonight. Someone who cares might read it one day.

Chicago Bears (my team) made it to the NFC Championship game last year, which most commentators call an over-achievement. Add to this an unspectacular draft and free agency (so far) and you have a team set for a bad season, right?

Well, maybe. American Football is very hard to predict until the games that count start. But has the talent in Chicago improved or diminished since 2010?

Offense

QB: Cutler is still there, looking fitter, with more experience and better footwork. Hanie and Enderle are better backups than Collins and Hanie last year (and better prospects for the future). +1

RB: Forte is fitter than ever, Barber will push Taylor out of the squad and we've got a better RB core. +1

WR: Aromashodu out, Williams, Hurd (& Sanzenbacher?) in. Aromashodu is talented and will do well elsewhere, but for Martz's system, this is a +1.

TE: Olsen out, Spaeth in, with Davis taking over the main role. Olsen was probably more talented but these guys fit the system more. =

OL: Kreutz out, Carimi and Spencer in, and musical chairs going on. It's hard to believe, but this is actually an improved line. Webb played better than people think vs. Bills but Louis was poor. A good bunch of run blockers and with some time they may turn into a decent unit. +1

Defense

DL: Harris has gone, Paea, Okoye, Gholston are in and Melton's looking superb. OLs are going to have real trouble working out who to double team, no matter which lineman is rotated in. A definite upgrade to an already strong group. +1

LB: You'd never call a group with Urlacher and Briggs weak, but there's not much reliable depth at the moment and an injury could cause problems, despite promising signs from rookie J.T. Thomas. -1

CB: Peanut Tillman is getting older and although Jennings is an excellent tackler we're not blessed with great depth at the position. DJ Moore is a good and improving nickelback.-1

Safeties: Daniael Manning has gone but Chris Harris is a quality player and two promising third round picks, Wright and Conte are in training. Steltz has had an excellent camp. I was a bit harsh on the corners so we'll leave this as a =.

Special teams

Maynard gone, Podlesh in, probably not much change there. Manning was an excellent returner but Knox is a Pro Bowl returner and Hester is the best of all time. Davies has gone, Hurd is in but other key contributors are still in the squad. =

Overall

By my reckoning, 5 personnel groupings have improved, 2 weakened and 3 stayed roughly the same. That's a +3 overall. I'm still happy with the 32-1 odds I got with a free bet during the lockout.

Review: Gospel-Centred Family by Ed Moll and Tim Chester

Ed Moll and Tim Chester have written Gospel-Centred Family, a book/workbook for Christian parents.

Ed is a vicar who blogs at Journeyman Preacher, who I was able to serve with on a CPAS venture last summer. Tim Chester is well known as an author and for his involvement with the Crowded House church planting initiative.

The book is twelve short chapters long, each including a short Bible study and questions for thought/application.

I'll readily admit that I'm not the target audience for this book, being married with no children. Nevertheless, I think this is a highly valuable book for parents, which throws a couple of sticks of gospel dynamite under the idols of our heart bound up in the issue of family. It consistently applies the gospel to all sorts of areas of Christian family life with the occasional surprising result.

Some particularly helpful topics covered include your ambitions for your children, enjoying them, and the importance of belonging to a family (the Church) beyond your family. This last point is particularly important to me, and I have experienced wonderful kindness from Church families in the past when they have included me in their lives. Chertsey Street Baptist Church in Guildford is remarkably good at this, incidentally.

I do have some minor quibbles/suggestions for improvement. This is still the most helpful book I've seen on the subject, and available at approximately £5 it's a steal. Before I mention my reservations, you really should go ahead and order it.

Buy it from the Good Book Company or 10ofThose now.

Done? Good.

There's a helpful review of the book at Reformissionary which touches upon one piece of advice in the book that I wonder about. But here are mine:

• Definition of the family: In the introduction, the authors state that families come in all sorts of different sizes, although no acknowledgement of no-children-yet families. Of course, since this is a parenting book that's not the biggest deal (although it leads to serious problems when considering public policy). However I wonder if this is the root cause of the second (and to my mind main issue):
  
  
• Male/Female Roles: Clearly, if you're writing for all sorts of family units, you might well refrain from talking too much about Mother and Father. But this is the normal family unit, established by God. A couple of times the authors get close to talking about this but seem to shy away.
  
  I think that both the authors would take complementarian positions on male and female roles in family and Church, but it doesn't seem to matter enough to make it into the book. But there are important questions about this area, which are close to the gospel concerns the authors clearly show.
  
  If we are to raise boys to become men who sacrificially love their wives like Christ loves the Church, our parenting may be different to them, than to girls who are to develop different skills and strengths (not to mention attractions, etc.)
  
  This may well be partly/largely due to Tim Chester only parenting girls and Ed Moll only parenting boys, which I believe is the case (from the back cover).
  
  Also relevant here is the potentially different roles of Mother and Father, in how they relate to each other in front of the children, and what differing roles they may play in parenting (e.g. discipline).
  
  These aren't obscure doctrines that make no practical difference, nor are they easily separated from gospel-centredness, being as they are, so closely related to the story of Christ and his bride.
  
  Some of these issues are covered briefly in the talks from Emmanuel Evangelical Church (Southgate)'s 2011 Family Conference. Listen to the mp3s here for extra credit.
  
  
• Extended family: by which I mean other people from Church. I've already mentioned that the points raised in chapter 11 are particularly good and helpful. This is really just an add-on that I'd like to have seen in the book. What do you do with childless couples (particularly those who want to have children, like myself and Adele, but who haven't yet been able to conceive)?
  
  Make sure you invite them too. They can even cook for you all at your house. Ask them to babysit (if they're anything like us, they'll be keen).
  
  I wonder if we can apply this more smartly in our church structures. Why do we need to organise small groups in Churches when God has organised them for us in families? Make sure everyone in the Church is adopted by a family and get them to eat Sunday lunch together each week. Make sure you talk some Bible while you're there (even if it's just going over the morning service's teaching). This would kill a lot of birds with one stone.

Nevertheless, this is an excellent book that I highly recommend. If every Christian parent in the UK read and tried to practise half of what's in this book, reformation would come quickly to our Church and country.

Top 5 Google Products

While people are all getting excited over Google+ (hopefully Google's new Facebook killer), here's my countdown of the 5 most revolutionary Google products so far:

Honourable mention: YouTube

YouTube doesn't count for the list as it was well known before Google acquired it. No doubt, videos of cats and Rick Astley have changed the internet forever. But even now, it remains an arm's length from other Google products through branding. And I could think of 5 other important innovations...

5. Adwords

Google invented adverts that didn't annoy its users. The adverts are typically useful and not distracting. Not to mention being the source of revenue for Google's vast empire.

4. Docs

Docs was originally powered by some Google acquisitions, but Google made it their own and popularised it. Taking Office applications to the cloud is thought of as a Google thing.

3. Chrome

Chrome has hit 20% market share today, under 3 years since its announcement. A sizeable feat in an already competitive market (Firefox was slowly eating into IE at the time). But the key revolution Chrome sparked was making browsers faster, more secure and putting tabs at the top. IE and Firefox have had to up their game and copy Google design decisions.

2. GMail

Free web mail accounts used to have storage limits of 2-10 Mb. GMail blew that away with fast, searchable, 1Gb accounts. Also cool is that they made dots optional in email addresses. So experts.exchange@gmail.com can double up as expert.sex.change@gmail.com, all in the same inbox.

1. Search

Google made bookmarks nearly obsolete. You could actually find good content quickly on the internet. We easily forget just how hard this was PG (pre-Google). Remember web circles? Remember link sites on a topic that would send you to 20 other sites on a topic, half of which would also be lists of links? Google made the internet work.

What did I miss?

Android, Calendar, Translate, Books, Scholar? What deserves to be here that I haven't included?

Free will

Free will and God's sovereignty have been touched upon many times on this blog. I promise I'm not obsessive over it but nevertheless, here we go again.

Last time I checked, 'free will' isn't a phrase in the Bible. Yet it's often appealed to in order to solve difficult questions.

• Why did God allow sin?
• How do we reconcile God's sovereignty and human responsibility?
• Why isn't everyone a Christian/going to heaven?
• What's the name of a series of films about a whale, with the last letter taken off?

Two observations:

1. Free will 'solves' these issues in people's minds because it takes the blame for things away from God. But it makes me ask 'What kind of loving God lets people suffer excruciating pain eternally, for the sake of 'free will'? If I saw someone out of their mind, trying to commit suicide I'd try to stop them. Why wouldn't God?
2. The typical answer to this is that we can't truly love God otherwise - we'd just be robots, programmed to love God which isn't real. But why would God be so determined to receive this 'real love' from humans? Is he deficient in some way? Are Father, Son and Spirit not enough? Is the power of the inter-trinitarian love derived from the possibility that one could, of free will, decide to abandon the others? That smells fishy.

Teachability

Who would you rather have listening to you?

Someone who is easily swayed, who will shift their opinion without too much effort?

Or someone stubborn, who doesn't give up their ways of thinking quickly and causes frustration?

My natural instinct is towards the shifters. Less argument, more like-mindedness.

But I've been blessed to interact with a number of the stubborns in the last couple of days. The stubborns test you along the way and when (if?) you win them over, they're more useful.

Arise, Sir Brucie

So Bruce Forsyth has been knighted. And if anyone deserves recognition for services to gameshows, it's Brucie.

I've been working on a database of the House of Lords lately, and wondering what title would suit me best. Would I like to be a Baron? I rather like the sound of Lord Huxley of Lindfield.

We all want to achieve greatness and be recognised for it. From cleaning the kitchen to winning thousands of souls for Jesus.

But whose glory do we want? Seek the glory from God, not men, says the Bible.

There was once a lawyer, who knew the right people, made the right friends and became a Peer. The lawyer's mentor in the Faith was not ashamed to stand up for Jesus in public life, making all kinds of enemies in the process, and never received an honour.

But on the Last Day, things will change.

Resurrection Science

Please do not view this as a resurrection of the blog - I'm working on some other web projects, and combined with being out of the house 12 hours a day, I have no time to regularly blog.

I was discussing creationism, young/old earth etc. with some work colleagues (Christians) this morning. One point that came up is the scientific/naturalistic/materialistic worldview's presuppositions - assumptions that are taken on faith.

For example, science assumes that the rules which govern the universe are the same today as they will be in a thousand years time, or thousands of years ago.

It's a very practical assumption that is very pragmatic - it works. It helps us explain our universe as it is, leading to technological advances of all kinds that have benefited mankind.

But it has problems predicting the future and problems understanding the past. We've only had accurate measuring instruments for a couple of centuries (being generous), which is a very small sample compared to the 13 billion years scientists claim. Nor is it an unbiased sample - it's restricted mostly to the surface of the earth in a universe so much larger than the earth that vocabulary fails us.

You see if there is any discontinuity whatsoever in the laws of science, as they have worked throughout the centuries, science's conclusions beyond that point become very dubious. For example, we know that acid + base -> salt + water. But maybe in 2000BC acid + base -> Cheese + Crackers + Port -> bliss. Were it true, science would have to be revised so dramatically that science would have to be much more limited in its conclusions.

The example above is silly. But what would a talking donkey do to biology? What would wine made from water do to chemistry? Darkened skies for astrophysics?

What if a man rebelled against his creator, causing thorns to grow? What if another man wore a crown of thorns, and, dying, took the curse on himself?

Where would that leave science?

What if a man died, was buried and on the third day rose again?

Burning Korans for fun and profit

Before the death threats roll in, let me clarify: I would prefer not to burn Korans.

Terry Jones, Pastor of a 50-strong church in Florida is due to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday, the 9th anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks. I have no desire to duplicate his deeds, which is really a mere publicity stunt which could indeed bring danger many Christians and Westerners across the world.

Jones represents virtually no one, yet his intended actions have invited reprimands from Obama, Petraeus and Christians across the whole world. Many of these have been perfectly fair but we have to look at culpability.

Is Jones or his church culpable if Muslims riot, kill, threaten, terrorise etc. people in response to what he does? I once burned my English GCSE anthology on a bonfire (after the exams); so if my English teacher responded by beating up my friends or throwing a brick threw my window, who would be culpable?

The Koran burning is no more significant. It's paper and ink on a fire. It'll make a few churchgoers feel manly/significant, release CO2 into the atmosphere, warm a few people up and boost the prophets profits of some Koran publishers.

The President of Pakistan said:

"It will inflame sentiments among Muslims throughout the world and cause irreparable damage to interfaith harmony and also to world peace,"

How is burning paper and ink (which presumably belongs to the church) going to cause irreparable damage to world peace? Answer: It isn't. If some Muslims react violently it tells you only about them, their conduct, their emotional fragility and their religion (since the Koran does condone slaying unbelievers).

Terry Jones and his church are obeying the laws of their land and threatening no one, even if their actions are selfish and foolish. Radical (historical) Islam and its followers are the only threat in this situation, and we must bear that in mind as we respond to the situation.

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Some qualifications, since I am too poor a writer to make these kinds of things clear in the main text:

1) Not all Muslims are aggressive/violent/terrorists etc. In fact most of them aren't.

2) Muslims of all kinds would be upset by the burning of Korans. That's totally legitimate, and it may well be unloving of Jones to make a show of such an event.

3) Nevertheless, violence and threat is no legitimate response by any individual to the burning of any book, assuming that the book belongs to the one who burnt it.

4) I attempt to base my opinions on morality based solely on what God says, revealed in the Bible. I do not expect secularists or Muslims to agree, since they base their moral opinions on thin air and Islam, respectively.

5) The opinions on this post, like all my others, are entirely my responsibility, and are not necessarily endorsed by anyone else.

6) I agree with Sarah Palin and Tony Blair. Palin said "People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation – much like building a mosque at Ground Zero." which I agree with wholeheartedly. I would also like to point out that Christians are not responding to the Ground Zero mosque by threatening violence against Muslims. Blair said: "Rather than burn the Koran, I would encourage people to read it." Blair thinks that it'll inspire us, but I think it will repel us.