Posts

Posted on

Should Frank Farina have been sacked?

Brisbane Roar made a brave move today in sacking Frank Farina as the coach of the A-League football (soccer) team. On Saturday morning, Farina was charged for the second time for drink driving. Farina was one of Australia’s greatest players and I believe a very good coach. Were the Roar a little bit harsh in ripping up his contract?

frank's distraught eyes

I don’t think so. While I genuinely feel sorry for Farina, the seriousness of the action taken against him shows how much responsibility coaches have in their example to their players and the community. Other football codes, of which Rugby League particularly comes to mind, would do well to take note of the swift and serious consequences of stupidity – only then will they have any chance of changing their seedy culture.

Here’s what Roar Chairman, Chris Bombolas, had to say:

“I acknowledge Frank’s contribution to the club but we can not excuse or condone his behaviour off the field […] It is simply not in step with we expect of our players or our coaching staff, or what the community expects […] The message from our board is very clear: the community and our fans expect a professional standard of conduct and behaviour and so do we.”

PS – if you stumbled here via google, I used to think that “soccer was life, and the rest just details” – that’s a bit silly, life is all about Jesus.

Posted on

Illustrating the Cross of Jesus

This morning in MPJ’s Doctrine 2 class, we discussed the limitations of a number of popular illustrations for the explaining what happened at the cross of Jesus.

pic from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1227526

Here are 3 things I’ve been thinking since:

  1. We often stumble when the illustration involves discussion involving a father giving up the life of his son. Parallels are quickly made between God the Father and God the Son. I don’t know of any illustration that adequately explains the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Therefore, one of the problems with these illustrations is that they’ve crossed into the impossible territory of illustrating the Trinity.
  2. For this reason, I think that it’s better to illustrate the love and sacrifice of Jesus with (albeit limited) examples of sacrificial love shown by other people. There’s the example of the husband who dies in the place of his bride (very different from this jerk) by putting himself in the line of the shark while on their honeymoon. There’s no need to allegorise the illustration so that the shark becomes a picture of God’s wrath or anything like that, but simply say that this is but a fraction of the love that Jesus has demonstrated at the cross.
  3. Don’t forget the Old Testament! Use it to illustrate the work of Jesus. About 10 years ago I heard Al Stewart explain the sacrificial system from Leviticus and used it to illustrate the work of Jesus – I’ve used a similar illustration quite a few times since. Another obvious example from the OT would be Isaiah 53 and the different images of Jesus the suffering servant.

What do you think?

No idea what the fuss is all about?? Check out this, this, this, this and this.

Posted on

Break it Down #14

Hey funky chickens. Breaking it down this week with some high culture is Michelangelo’s David. For over 3 years he’s been my profile pic on Twitter (and previously on blogger). It’s time to say goodbye. I now have a profile pic on twitter and gravatar that’s actually me. You’ll be pleased to know I’m wearing clothes. Also my about page was kinda out of date. So that’s been updated too. Check it. More content under nude dude…

michelangelo's david

See below for all the haps on dmdc in the past week or so.

Continue reading “Break it Down #14”

Posted on

Counting the Cost of Sexual Immorality

I’m scared of sexual immorality. Am I planning on committing adultery? No!! I love my wife, she is more precious to me than anyone or anything else on this earth. I also know that God’s plans for sex are within marriage and that this is good. So why am I scared? Because I know the deceitfulness of my own heart and that I’m capable of great sin given the opportunity. My prayer is that God would keep me (and you) from impurity.

no!

Randy Alcorn and Alan Hlavka have thought through specific consequences resulting from the immorality of a pastor. This really is essential reading. Here’s my plan:

  1. Re-read Proverbs 6 (see below) and God’s wisdom on fleeing from adultery;
  2. Re-read Alcorn’s blog post;
  3. Copy it and customise it for me;
  4. Print it out and put it in some prominent places;
  5. Pray.

It might be wise to do the same!

Proverbs 6:20-35 is below…

Continue reading “Counting the Cost of Sexual Immorality”