Chickafinty ~ A Life in the Laundry

WARNING

You may come across a book called "The Shack". 

I read it and with all my being I wish I hadn't.

It is a dangerous, dangerous book and full of false teaching.

I should have heeded the warning signs, but I didn't.  When I was told about the book my internal radar went off.  It's probably the first time I've got my hands on a new book and not read it straight away.  I've had it for a week and only read it last night.

It's an intoxicating mix of lovey-huggy, New Age Eastern mythology with just enough "Christian" truth to dull the warning signals.

At the point where God is portrayed as a warm, loving African American woman, the radar started screaming in my head, but to my shame I ignored it.  I was curious about the term used for the Holy Spirit.  A quick google search this morning revealed that it is a Hindu term.  What place does a Hindu word have in a book that purports to be about Christianity?

Sin was missing.  Accountability to God was missing.  Justice was missing.  Judgement was missing.

It was heavy on love and forgiveness but light on what we need forgiveness for.  It smacked of Universalism and its instant popularity should serve as its own warning.  The message of Christianity is NOT popular.  It is foolishness.  This book may be many things, but foolish it isn't. 

Make no mistake.  This book is frightening - not because of its subject matter, but because it has the ability to get in under the defences of the unwary.  It is dangerous and should be left well alone by any person who holds the Bible as the final authority.

Edited for clarification:

My objection to God being portrayed as an African American woman has nothing to do with the African American part.  The woman part is another matter - it's distasteful and blasphemous.  What I most object to is the portrayal of God as a human person at all.  It is completely unscriptural to teach that God the Father is human.  It is also unscriptural to portray God the Father as appearing in different guises depending on the state of the human person to whom he is speaking.  God is God; eternal and unchanging.  To preach God as some sort of chameleon is to dance on the edge of blasphemy and to deny, if you will, his God-ness.  Exodus 20: 4-7 gives some quite specific warnings.  The God of "The Shack" is not the God of the Bible and therefore is not to be praised or worshipped.  Additionally, we are warned not to misuse the name of the Lord.  It seems to me that the book espouses a blatant misuse of God's name and we should not treat that lightly. The Israelites were warned about playing fast and loose with God.  It would appear that we perhaps need to ponder that warning anew.

I am so sick of this

According to news.com.au the Federal government is gearing up to name and shame "underperforming" schools by having a go at the teachers.  Obviously, it is the teacher's fault that the schools are underperforming.

Obviously.

Take Ladybaby's kindergarten class.  There are 20 students in the class.  Five have moderate to severe speech problems coupled with articulation disorders.  Put simply, it's hard to understand them when they speak.  Ten students have made it to the middle of term 3 or 3/4 of the way through Kindergarten and they don't know their initial sounds, they know virtually no sight words and cannot identify the beginning and ending sounds of even the simplest CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant word i.e. cat)

Their teacher goes over their sounds, their words, their phonemic awareness EVERY DAY.  I don't know how she has a hair left on her head or any brains inside it becasue she keeps beating them out on the chalkboard trying to help these kids.

This is not a "special" class; this is a mainstream kindergarten class in an area which is not particularly economically deprived.  No way are these kids going to be ready for Year One in 4 months time.  And it is not the teacher's fault. 

We have no control at all over what the children do before they come to school.  When you have to spend the first term of Kindergarten teaching the majority of the class what to do with a chair, how to hold scissors, what a book looks like, what you do with a crayon and yes, by the way there is no playstation here and you do have to listen to this story and I'm sorry that it's not electronic, but it isn't so deal with it...how much time can you devote to single sounds, sight words, blending and numeral recognition.

I help out two days a week at the school - can't help it, I love teaching.  On one of those days the STL (Support Teacher Learning) is in the room as well as the classroom teacher and me.  Three trained teachers in the room working at a ratio of 1:6 or thereabouts and we're still beating our collective heads against the chalkboard.

Is it fair to blame the kindergarten teacher when she's trying to deal with this?

What if, instead of playing the blame game, the goverment was to pour resources into early intervention.  How about finding these kids BEFORE they hit the school system and providing them with the Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Physiotherapy and/or preschool that they need?  Just so you know, the waiting list for these services via the government is in excess of 18 months.  To get these services privately is extremely expensive: $250+ for an intial assessment, then approximately $65 per half hour for therapy.  These kids need weekly therapy so you're asking parents to shell out $260 a month.  *If* they're in a health fund then yes, part of it is covered, but only part.

What about making the services more affordable and catching these problems before the kids turn 5.  By the time the teacher realises that the child needs intervention (usually in the first week of school) the extra help from the government is 18 months away at least.  Put that in the context of school and the child will be ready for Year 3 before they get help through the public system.

Some one has got to do something.  Please, please, please stop blaming the teachers.  We can only work with what we've got.

I want it on the record

Please note that Chickabid and Ladybaby went off to school this morning with a ham sandwich, a mandarin, a banana, a little bag of red capsicum strips and a small slice of apple cinnamon cake.

Don't tell me my kids don't eat well!

Just wondering

I've been reading a book about the history of Coca-Cola and I want to ask a question.

Coke has been around since before the turn of the last century - 122 years to be precise.

McDonalds has been in the picture for 68 years; KFC for 56.

What if the obesity crisis has got nothing to do with food?

PointForm

• we have a functioning monitor again
• I got less than 5 hours sleep last night
• the "project" is well underway - I broke through some serious roadblocks today and the progress has been good
• my dad has almost finished landscaping the front yard...just wait until you see the pictures! (Now we can get cracking with the veggie garden) <just kidding, Dad!!>
• the house is suffering from 16 days of solid neglect
• blame it on the IOC
• I have 692 -count 'em folks!!- 692 unread bloglines resulting from the dodgy monitor
• we're going to the Gold Coast...don't know where don't know when, but we'll be there some sunny day
• YES I AM in a good mood today, thank you for asking
• you haven't laughed until you have seen Mamma Mia!
• you haven't *really* laughed until you've seen Chickabid unpacking the groceries to ABBA Gold
• please leave me a comment cos the blog is feeling sad and lonely <violin music>

Perspective

Colin/Colette the abandoned humpback whale calf that ended up in Sydney Harbour this week just gone has had Sydney abuzz.  The city seems to have been polarised by debate over what should or shouldn't have been done for Colin.  No matter which side of the fence you were sitting, the news on Thursday that Colin was to be put down was deeply upsetting.  On Thursday night I sat on the lounge with a weeping child on each knee as we mourned the decision that had to be made.  Ladybaby in particular was moved by Colin's plight and she kept shouting "But it's not fair!  They shouldn't be killing him; they should be looking after him".

Colin's plight and his eventual death has tugged at the heartstrings of people everywhere.  One lady whom I have never seen before bailed me up in the stationery aisle at Coles to tell me what b******* they are at the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Two things occurred to me in relation to Colin.

If we are, as the evolutionists believe, nothing more than the end product of a random biological process in which only the strongest and fittest survive, then we have no business grieving over Colin.  He is the result of a natural process; Darwin's theory in practice and nothing more nor less.  Colin's abandonment and demise should barely cause a ripple in our pointless, materialistic, live-for-now-cos-there's-nothing-after mentality.

But that clinical detachment was sorely lacking in the news, in the faces of those on Pittwater devising ever more schemes for saving Colin.  There was no "well that's just the way it is" in the actions of the guy who bought all the milk he could find and poured it into the harbour in the hopes that Colin would somehow derive nourishment from it.  Chickabid and Ladybaby, as young as they are, *knew* that what was happening was an abomination.

I put it forward that it is because we are NOT the end result of a random evolutionary process that Colin's plight so disturbed us.  We are human beings created in the image of God...the same God who made the whales.  We, as human beings, were given dominion over the animals by God (Genesis 1:20-31).  We were instructed to look after all that God had made, to use it wisely and well, and to be good stewards of all He gave us.  The reason that we all felt like we should do something about Colin is because God gave us the responsibility to care for the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and all the creatures who crawl along the ground.

In the perfect world that God created "Colin" could never have happened.  But when sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, God's perfect world was broken.  Colin's death is a consequence of that sin, of that broken world.  It wasn't fair.  It shouldn't have happened.  It is an abomination.  It is a reminder that rebelling against God has serious, far-reaching consequences and it should cause us to take pause and ponder our own mortality and our own attitude towards God.  

Some would blame God and berate Him for allowing it to happen.  Others would claim that it is evidence for there being no God at all because if there was He wouldn't allow this to happen.  I say that our very response to Colin points to the existence of God, the reality of sin and its far-reaching consequences.

The other thing that I wanted to say was brought home by a caller to 2GB and it put the whole Colin episode into stark perspective.

In the five days that Colin languished in the Harbour, over 1100 babies were aborted in Australia.  1100 babies who would have been willingly adopted into Australian families had they been brought to term.  We drive past an abortion clinic every time we go to church.  I wonder how many babies lost their lives on Friday in that clinic?  I wonder how much pain they suffered in being ripped from their mothers?  I wonder why *that* doesn't make the front page of the daily papers?  It is to our collective shame that it doesn't.

There's a reason for the silence

Actually there are a few reasons for silence.

1. We have a project on the boil that I don't want to talk about here for the moment.  It is absorbing a lot of time and it's a good thing, but it does mean that my blogging time is somewhat restricted

2. As a result of the "project", this blog is going to have a new focus and purpose

3. All the strands of my life are being drawn together and are being woven into a new picture - one that I never thought would exist but it's very exciting

4. I'm trying to be brave and blog authentically.  Every time I have done this in the past the blog has been dive bombed and it's kind of scared me off...not a good thing

5. The monitor is still cactus but is residing at the repairers.  I'm hoping that it will be back v v soon as trying to work on "the project" without a properly functioning monitor is really really hard

Behold it has come

Courier form for the monitor arrived in the mail today :)

Hopefully I''ll be able to find a box and send it off asap.

Hooray for a properly functioning monitro again.  If Fujitsu run true to form it might not be until October though.

It beggars belief

Channel 7 is the local network with the rights to the Olympic Games.  You know...the Olympics...only happens every four years?  Big, worldwide event thing?  Well, Channel 7 have stopped their coverage of the Games this afternoon in order to screen...

a football match between Adelaide and Richmond!

What the?

Thank goodness for SBS.  They are only screening boxing at the moment, but it is Olympic boxing and therefore ok.

The first one (but not the last)

Just watched Stephanie Rice win gold for Australia in the 400m Ind. Medley at Beijing.

C'mon Aussie C'mon!!