i am sparticus: Words

From The Bondage Of The Will

Of the Comfort of knowing that salvation does not depend on 'free-will'

I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want 'free-will' to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities, and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground and hold fast my 'free-will' (for one devil is stronger than all men, and on these terms no man could be saved); but because, even were there no dangers, adversities, or devils, I Should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success, and to beat my fists at the air. If I lived and worked to all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortable certainty as to how much it must do to satisfy God. Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging doubt as to whether it pleased God, or whether he required something more. The experience proves that; and I learned it well enough myself over a period of many years, to my own great hurt. But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. 'No one," He says, 'Shall pluck them out of my hand, because my Father which gave them me is greater than all' (John 10:28-29). Thus it is that, if not all, yet some, indeed many, are saved; whereas, by the power of 'free-will' none at all could be saved, but every one of us would perish.

Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God.

Martin Luther - The Bondage of the Will

Reasons I Haven't Updated

The real reason I haven't updated lately is because I've been writing other stuff. That answer is rubbish though. The real reason I haven't updated is because...

• A severe lacking of self-esteem. That's right, all the wrongs in the world can be blamed upon a lacking of self-esteem, including the wrong of writing this website.

• Anger at the current season of Doctor Who.

• Mark turned to face his enemy but instead found himself face-to-face with a halibut. Not sure what to do in this situation, Mark surveyed his choices.
  • If you would like Mark to run away turn to page 45
  • If you would like Mark to try and eat the halibut turn to page 93
  • If you would like Mark to reach a dramatic conclusion turn to page 953

• Continuity errors among early blog posts forcing us to ret-con every entry I ever wrote in the first year of uni.

Live with Mark!

So, I need to find a flatmate within the next week. £700 a month in Central London, all inclusive (that's a bargain really). Find out more (or just be nosey) here.

Discipleship Explored Filming

The Crystal Palace National Athletic centre is designed with one thing in mind; Communist Russia. Not only the bare rusting concrete assembly (as TV's Barry Cooper pointed out already) but the way the stands are designed to concentrate all the available bitter wind into one particular corner of coldness. And that's the corner we've been in for the last hour or so, in shorts and running vests, walking backwards and forwards between the stands and the starting blocks. Apparently this makes for good TV.

Then we get released for five minutes. That's probably not true. It's as equally likely to be three minutes. Or possibly seven. It's all a guess. The only time it's likely to be is the exact time it takes to fumblingly put a pair of tracksuit bottoms on to try and get warm. Here's another thing about filming other than the cold. Hilarious outakes: They don't actually happen, because you know, you don't want to screw up and so you don't. At least not in a funny way. Will Smith might naturally get hilarious outakes, but I assume that's because he's Will Smith. You're not. Here's another thing. To make a few minutes of TV you've got to film a few hours. And when those few minutes are us sprinting around a track, that means a few hours of us sprinting around a track. Doing the 50m repeatedly doesn't seem too bad until the next day when you can't stand up and realised that 50 metres times forty shots is two kilometres of sprinting.

As for reporting on the actual event we're there for, you know, the whole Discipleship Explored filming thing bit, it turns out we missed it all. I mean, we were there for the whole-stand-around-on-a-track-and-feel-cold-bit, but the bit with the whole actually-speaking-to-the-camera-and-telling-them-about-Jesus-which-let's-face-it-is-the-entire-point-of-this-filming, was all filmed the day before. There were a few scenes left to film with TV's Barry Cooper in it, but alas they used the standard celebrity film technique of keeping the TV personality as far away from the extras as possible and not telling us when they're filming him in the background. Still he was good enough sport to let me take photographs of him with make-up being put on. He wouldn't sign my t-shirt though.

Enough about that. It's a week later and my legs still ache and I still feel slightly embarrassed from trying to fill my frame into a running vest and shorts, but on balance I'm glad I did it. The bits of the filming we saw did look very smart and it is all going for the production of an awesome Christ-centred series.

How Policing In Suffolk Differs From That of London

Overheard conversation between a police officer and a young male at Ipswich Train station.

Police Officer: "We've just been advised the Suffolk Police want you searched."
Young Male: "Okay"

Things I Learnt This Week (11th May Edition)

• It's illegal to drink alcohol in public in any part of Camden or Westminster, and that includes Regent's Park. The Westminster branch of the Metropolitan Police are instructed to take this law quite seriously, anyone drinking in Regent's park, regardless if it's a bottle of champagne between six or a litre of white-lightning for one, it's still illegal and can't be tolerated. The Camden branch though have a more laissez-faire policy. If you want to drink in Regent's Park then, the far East sliver of land is the place to be.

• When babies are below a certain age, you can't inject them in the bottom because their bottom muscles aren't strong enough.

• The following words arent, by default, in my Nokia N80's predictive text memory, "Ipswich", "Suffolk", "Scones".

• Some muscles only exist to ache.

• "Scone" is pronounced "Scone".

Things I Learnt This Week (11th May Edition)

• It's illegal to drink alcohol in public in any part of Camden or Westminster, and that includes Regent's Park. The Westminster branch of the Metropolitan Police are instructed to take this law quite seriously, anyone drinking in Regent's park, regardless if it's a bottle of champagne between six or a litre of white-lightning for one, it's still illegal and can't be tolerated. The Camden branch though have a more laissez-faire policy. If you want to drink in Regent's Park then, the far East sliver of land is the place to be.

• When babies are below a certain age, you can't inject them in the bottom because their bottom muscles aren't strong enough.

• The following words arent, by default, in my Nokia N80's predictive text memory, "Ipswich", "Suffolk", "Scones".

• Some muscles only exist to ache.

• "Scone" is pronounced "Scone".

Filming Discipleship Explored

I'd like to draw your attention to the filming of the Discipleship Explored talks, the exciting spin-off of Christianity Explored currently being filmed in London. Barry Cooper (the most gentlemanly man in all of what's left of Christendom south of the river) is currently blogging the filming of the talks but as he's the one actually giving the talks this seems slightly biased. See for example this made up extract from the website:

I, Barry Cooper, had an amazing day filming Discipleship Explored today at Highgate Cemetery, I think half way through the third take revival broke out, but it was hard to tell as everyone around us was significantly dead.

So, for the sake of journalistic integrity, and because Barry Cooper (who is, may I remind you, the most gentlemanly man in all of what's left of Christendom south of the river) asked me to be, I'll be involved as an extra in the filming on Friday in a secret London location. That's right, all through episode 6 (I think) of the Discipleship Explored series you'll be subject to my face in the background. If that's not going to make you wish for heaven, I don't know what will.

Oh right, but yeah, for the sake of journalistic integrity I might bring my camera and notepad along.

Cannabis

You may have missed it, but the UK government has reclassified cannabis as a class B drug It's being reported as the Home Secretary going against the professional advisory panel to change the law, but it's a bit more subtle than that.

Essentially all the panel looks at is how harmful the drug is. Cannabis, and even skunk, while evil drugs, aren't particularly harmful in the way that other drugs in the class B range are. I hate cannabis with a passion because of the waste it makes of young people but I still can't really argue with the logic, in purely medical terms cannabis isn't as dangerous as other class B's like amphetamines. So the logic of changing cannabis to a Class B drug isn't to do with danger but to do with public perception and policing.

The current situation with cannabis and the law seems to be something like this; unless you're caught selling it, the police couldn't care. That's probably overstating the mark a bit, but it's not entirely untrue. Despite that it's two years maximum sentence for the possession of a class B I've yet to meet anyone who has had anything more than a slap on the wrists for possessing cannabis. And so if you increase the class it's in, you'll increase the policing of it and also thereby increasing the severity of how the public see it.

Which is all rather silly when you think about it. Because it means that to get the police to treat cannabis as a class C drug you have to label cannabis as a class B drug. And with that logic in effect you're then going to have to increase class B drugs to class A drugs to get them treated as class B drugs. And then what do you do with Heroin? Label it as A plus? And if you start applying this logic to other crimes, then all of a sudden you're liable for a life sentence for manslaughter, on the principle that you won't get a life-sentence. All this does is de-value the law and make a mockery of justice. Surely a better way to deal with the increase in serious cannabis use would to be enforce the existing laws?

Today's Sad News

We have the lift repair people in the building today, presumably this means that the lift needs repairing but I'm still holding out for the hope that they're installing a system of trampolines in the lift shaft. Being the nosey person that I am, I asked to look down the lift shaft when the doors where open. Alas, to my grave disappointment, it does not disappear into blackness, only marked by the occasional sounds of screaming, nor does it provide a secret entrance to the tube. Instead it stops about a foot or two below the ground floor door, which is probably not even high enough to lie down and hide in in an extreme game of hide and seek.

I've suggested they flood the hole and put a shark in it and then put a trapdoor in the lift itself, but that didn't go down too well.

Boris Backing Down Sweep Stakes

I was going to write an entry listing things like:

• Back down on Bendy Buses slightly - 2 weeks
• Back down on Bendy Buses completely - 6 months
• Back down on reintroducing the Routemaster - 3 months

But then I found out he's still in favour of the tram down Oxford Street. So I'm happy. Well, more so. I'd still want Ken, but I'm fickle like that when it comes to politics.