i am sparticus: Words

Where's The Beef?

Paul asks:
Where's the Beef?

In this post-modern age there is no absolute truth. Where is the beef? Only you know! Only you can decide! And only you can decide using our clever quiz-o-bot 3000. Where's the beef? YOU CHOOSE!

Where's The Beef?

(It works now)

Goran

Now with more Goran!

Sometimes people just come into your life and change it completely. Then sometimes people come into your life and five minutes later you forget they ever existed. Imagine these are two points on opposite ends of a line, over at the life changing end you have people like 'your future wife', 'the guy who sells you that car with the shoddy breaks' and hopefully happening chronologically before that one, 'Jesus'. On the other end you have people like 'the man who took your car parking space', 'the person who held the door open for you' and 'the French'. Around two thirds of the way along this scale towards memorable is Goran. It's hard to explain Goran without you actually meeting him, but here are some of the words of wisdom he came out with.

• While writing down descriptions next to people's e-mail addresses so he wouldn't forget who they were: "Ah ****, the girl who looks like her boyfriend. No! I mean just in the face!"
• Over breakfast: "***** I will tell you you are beautiful in three different languages. You are beautiful... I forget the rest.
• To Rhiannon after hearing me do a seminar: "You are a very lucky woman. If you have children they will speak very fast."
• To me, up in the mountains: "I love all English men. I mean women. I mean English people"
• To me, after I finished a talk on an overview of the bible: "Calvin was a great reformer, and so was your Wesley, but it's interesting how with every new movement you get equally heretical views springing out of it"
• More Goran: To Becca after she had done the actions to the 'Na Na' song "People like you are very righteous"
• More Goran: To various people playing volleyball "Pass th ball around. When you score, it no count. When I score, it count."

Ah Goran, such a legend.

Deep Theological Thought Of The Moment

As I sit at my desk and think about an evangelistic talk I'm doing for tomorrow night I ponder what the aim of my talk is. I write down "to tell young people about Jesus and his gospel", then delete it because my aim really is "to get young people to know Jesus" and then delete that because I realise that's God job and my aim is just "to tell young people about Jesus and his gospel".

Deep.

Slovakia in General

One of the things I find I can't do without vast amounts of effort is write narratives. Compounded with the fact that I like to avoid writing about work, the idea of me writing a long and lengthy piece about the fun and frolics I had while away with work in Slovakia isn't best appealing. However, because I feel obliged here is a brief summary of everything that happened. Flew into Poland, Met Frans got a bus through to Slovakia (got lost on route and accidentally passed through the Czech Republic). Met lots of Europeans, sung some songs, prayed some what, discussed the bible, played lots of volleyball, went for a run (I'm fit). Went to a lake, bought some sandals, did some talks, generally played it cool. Made fun of the Danes and the Estonians. Lost narrowly at football. Climbed a mountain. Bought cheap beer (to take back with me). On the way back missed flights and got stuck in Poland. One 18 hour coach journey later and ferry home from Calais.

I may write more about certain things as I go on, I may not. I will get around to telling you where the beef is though. Hooray for beef

Denim Put The Soul In Your Rock and Roll

Hello! I'm back from Slovakia, and very tired I am too. Over the course of the next few days I'll write about the amazing time I had, the hi-jinks and shenanigans I got up to, and the amazing jokes I'm going to pretend I made up! Similarly I'm uploading a bunch of photos a day to my flickr account. That way you can experience the joy of seeing what I'm telling you about. Hooray!

Enough about Slovakia for today though. This morning whilst going through the backlog of e-mails I came across one from an old acquaintance I met through a Christian camp seven years ago. They happened to be in Swansea last week, had thought of me, had googled me and had come up with this site and so e-mailed me. Nothing particularly astounding I know, but the reason she was in Swansea was because she was attending the wedding of a guy, a guy who I happened to know through a Christian camp I went on eleven years ago. She didn't know that I knew the guy and he didn't know that she knew me. Therefore this I shall label as a Coincidence of Extraordinary proportions.

Reformed People

Yesterday we introduced the notion of Reformed Points, points you get for doing reformed type activities and lose for doing unreformed type things. Today, we illustrate how these points work in practice. Below is a no expense spared graph, in which we illustrate how reformed points work for three famous Evangelical Christians

click for larger size

Steve Chalke

Positive Points: Does generally good type Christian things, preaches gospel, probably likes Calvin in the comfort of his own home, trained at Spurgeon's college (gets bonus points for this as Spurgeon himself had reformed points in abundance), sets up Christian Charity. Negative Points: Deny's Penal Substitution. Error! Total Points: Just under the Line Of Orthodoxy Overview: Steve Chalke made an error when he denied penal substitution. When he denied penal substitution. What he should have done was write a few books on the Gloriousness of Unconditional Election and maybe a TV show called 'The 100 Greatest Reformers'. Then he'd have bagged himself enough reformed points to quibble with something major like Penal Substitution. Unfortunately he just wasn't reformed enough to pull it off. He's got a lot of work to do before he's truly reformed

C.S. Lewis

Positive Points: Decent conversion story, Wrote a shed load of good stuff (The Narnia books to name but one), had initials as opposed to a first name, generally an alright guy, famous for being a Christian.
Negative Points: Too nice to Catholics, occasionally had slightly odd views on stuff, probably made occasional jokes at reformers expensive, was not considered too preachy by the BBC.
Total Points: Comfortably over the margin of orthodoxy!
Overview: By dying with points above the margin of orthodoxy and being so famous C.S. Lewis was eligible for posthumous reformed points elevating him to near saint like levels of orthodoxy. Every word he said that was even slightly unreformed was transformed in the twinkling of an eye to inspired word. He can do no wrong (granted, this would be hard being dead and awaiting the new earth where sin is unheard of, but still). For similar examples of posthumous reformed points see G.K. Chesterton, Martin Luther King Junior, Calvin and St Augustine.

John Stott

Positive Points: Writes about important things like the Cross, Mission and God, wrote the Cross Of Christ, by and large supported TULIP, seems to like Calvin, Is John Stott, is single, is not American (American's are automatically less reformed because of bias (mine, not there's), does a good effort of rebuking liberalism.
Negative Points: Denied literal hell
Total Points: Ridiculous amount of reformed points
Overview: A classic example of how having vast amounts of reformed points allows you to get away with unorthodox views on certain subjects. If he'd denied penal atonement he'd still have more reformed points than most.

There, I hope that has helped clear up any confusion about what reformed points are. I know it's helped me in my walk as I follow Calvin... uh wait... Luth... No... Jesus! Yeah that's it. So yes, hooray for 2000 years of Calvinism! May he return soon!

Thursday the 14th

• Just to let everyone know, I'm not bitter at all about not going to Alton Towers yesterday. Not even slightly.
• I've come to the conclusion that All Maps Welcome by Tom McRae is his best album. Though if you were to first start listening to him I'd probably recommend his self-titled debut (Sao Paulo Rain is the one song to recommend).
• The problem with going to the park for a picnic lunch is that you don't bring any lunch with you to work and so have nothing to start eating at five past ten.
• I'm still not bitter about not going to Alton Towers.
• I've tagged every photo I can find of me on flickr with the tag Mark Walley. I'm sad like that.
• Kung-Fu Hustle would be better if it kept the Cowboy theme up through the entire film. And if it actually made sense.
• I'm off to Slovakia tomorrow, so after today don't expect much hilariousness coming from me on this website for a week or so.

Reformed Points

Hi! My name is Mark Sparticus Walley and as a 23x10⁵ point Calvinist I have to confess that I've struggled for a long time with an issue with my faith. No, not doctrine silly! I'm a Calvinist after all! What I've struggled with, and I know a lot of you have too, is not knowing whether or not someone is reformed enough to be worth paying attention to. Introducing: REFORMED POINTS. By calculating a person's reformed points you can work out whether or not they are a person who needs to be ignored, rendering awkward judgement calls, extended thought processes and heavy duty thinking redundant*!

Reformed points are gained whenever you carry out an activity that is considered reformed, examples of activities currently in the reformed list are: quoting Calvin, listening to sermons on your iPod, emphasising the sacraments of baptism and communion (but not unduly so, pesky catholics!), rebuking the immoral believer, and quoting from the ESV.

As well as gaining reformed points you can also lose them. Activities designated as 'un-reformed' will take away from your hard earned reformed points. Currently recognised as un-reformed activities are: ranking bible books by order of amusing story quotient, general sinning, starting a hymn by saying 'and now we come to worship', sniggering during liturgy, denying a metaphysical hell/a local church/limited atonement/that Luther was sexy, using the word sexy when not about your wife in the privacy of your own home, questioning Calvin (especially questions that involve the words 'anabaptist, put to death, bit harsh really'), asking how GK Chesterton is okay to quote in sermons but the Pope isn't and a whole load of other things!

Using our patented reformed-o-matic reader we can distinguish how many reformed points someone has and whether they cross the all important "line of orthodoxy", the line that we use to distinguish the truly reformed from the unruly reformed! Never before has distinguishing truth been so easy!

Tomorrow, we see how may reformed points some modern day evangelicals (and one surprise guest) actually have!

Footnote

* Finally enjoy what the Catholics have been having for years!

Forms, Crug and Jilly and Girly Sissy Writing

• Forms!
• 3.50 + 2.50 mark owe £4.00
• Make Rich CD. Gospel in Golf?
• Mention Crug & Jilly on website
• Talk to everyone re: there (What? What does that mean? I'm as confused by this as I am anything else in my life)
• Forward Russia (I'll forward your Russia. Stupid punk bands)
• Get straws
• Blog re: Divine or Demonic (Smite or bless? WHICH WILL IT BE?)
• Dodgeball - Monday + Impressive food (In girly sissy writing)
• Stop speaking in public ever

Rhiannon

I'm not sure what the proper protocol is for this sort of thing, so I'm going to have to improvise.

PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET: I AM NOW GOING OUT WITH SOMEONE.

There, I thought I handled that well.

(For those who want actual information, her name is Rhiannon, she's 18 and a genius. Any other questions will be answered in the comments if asked nicely)

Fix

Thanks all for your concerned e-mails and texts and what not about my website, it's been fixed now (I think). Speaking of websites though it was my good friend Hayley Cornwell's birthday yesterday. Getting to number one on Google for yourself == best birthday present ever.

Snap

I've accidentally just broken my website. However it's an improvement over the normal situation as this time it wasn't my fault.

Or not as the case maybe. That entry just fixed everything (as I secretly hoped it would all along), or at least most things, anything running out of the cgi-bin seems kinda whack. Whatever. Anyway now this entry exists I better make something of it. Here's a half hearted list of things I was going to write about but felt too guilty to because the ideas are completely stolen:

• FOP (Fat Or Pregnant)
• Pimp My Church

Other than that I could just lace this entry with in jokes, but I'm a model of discretion and so could never bring myself to do that. *Cough* KEV *Cough*.

Kinder Egg Suprise

To be a youth worker is to live a life where constant surprise is unsurprising - anon (where anon == me)

To illustrate a point (bonus points if you can guess what the point was!) I and my co-workers decided it would be a good idea if we got a bunch of young people to try and put a bunch of small toys together without any instructions. Seeing as Lego is expensive and the small ones can not only be put together blindfolded but also without using your arms or brain (Example instructions: (1) insert lightsaber in Darth Vader legoman's hand (2) purchase Vader Jedi Tie-Fighter for £69.99') we decided Kinder Egg toys would make a better substitute. The obvious problem with this is that you can't guess whether the toy is a kick ass self-assembly one or a stupid hand painted (All the worst kinder egg toys are hand painted) solid toy. On top of this you can't remove the instructions from inside the yellow plastic casing without first breaking open the chocolate egg. And that is why the other day I sat and ate through 12 Kinder Eggs to get to the yellow innards. Actually that's not quite true, yesterday I sat and ate through three and a half Kinder Eggs before I felt very very ill. Kids; There is a reason Kinder have never released special edition 'Solid Chocolate' Kinder Egg.

Stomach upsets aside, one of the things that this experience did allow me to test was my Kinder Egg Innards Detecting Theory. I've always reckoned you can tell what the type of toy is in a Kinder Egg if you shake it. If you hear one sort of rattle then that's just the yellow bit rattling around inside the shell. Two types of rattle and you're hearing the shell move and the toy inside it move. The two types of rattle is bad! If it rattles twice then the toy isn't crammed in tightly, which means it only has a few pieces or worse, just one therefore it's a rubbish toy. The one type of rattle indicates the toy is crammed in as tight as possible, therefore probably made up of lots of little pieces therefore a good toy. Unfortunately for proving my theory after the first few eggs my hearing was sufficiently impaired and my vision sufficiently blurred that I couldn't say one way or another whether there was a rattle or not. If anyone else wants to try they are more than welcome too.

My Friend Helen

The most exciting thing about my last trip to London was not the Apple Store (though that was exciting), nor was it seeing college friends at Wimbledon (though that was also exciting), what was most exciting was seeing my dear friend Helen. Helen has been previously mentioned a thousand times on this website, but if you have never spent all day at work reading the archives of this site then all you need to know about her is this; she is a legend. And not just any legend, a proper high quality bona-fide LEGEND. Most legends are only legends through thousands of years of exaggeration and hyperbole. So Ulysses accidentally pokes his mate in the eye with a chop-stick and then can't find any cotton wool to make a bandage and two thousand odd years later he's rescuing his crew by stabbing a Cyclops in the eye and escaping his grasp by hanging onto a bunch of sheep. Helen on the other hand has her address book in code because she's afraid people will nick it and go and ring up Jamie Oliver while slightly drunk. Her sister used to go out with a guy off home and away. In her own words Gordon Ramsey is "such a nice guy". That's right people, Gordon Ramsey is "SUCH A NICE GUY". This is coming from a person who is so rock and roll she turned down a job offer from Noel Gallagher. Turned it down to his face! If she was 20ft high and breathed fire she still couldn't be any more of a legend then she already is. AND SHE'S MY FRIEND.

In other London news:

• When I arrived at Oxford Circus I was listening to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band by The Beatles. I'd like to think I'm above caring about what people think about the music I listen too but listening to The Beatles in Oxford Circus made me feel like a terribly terribly clichéd person.
• I debated hanging around All Soul's Langham Place to see if I could catch a glimpse of John Stott. We need a term for the theologically geeky so that people can apply it to me.