What’s My Faith?

Now this is interesting. Apparently, I’m 100% Orthodox Quaker. I don’t even know any of them, but they sound nice. I took the Belief-O-Matic™ test over at Beliefnet, and these are my top ten results:

1. Orthodox Quaker (100%)
2. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (99%)
3. Seventh Day Adventist (98%)
4. Eastern Orthodox (97%)
5. Roman Catholic (97%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (79%)
7. Liberal Quakers (56%)
8. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (52%)
9. Orthodox Judaism (52%)
10. Sikhism (51%)

It’s not that bad. My declared faith scored at 98%, so I’m well-secured in the fold. On the other hand, three of the ten are not even Christian, and only half are Protestant. Oh, well.

Anyway, the test is pretty fun, actually. Check it our at www.beliefnet.org and let me know how you turn out.

Elephants on the Great Plains?

Just as you thought the world couldn’t get any stranger, this idea comes along!

The notion that we can preserve nature by tampering with it is flawed. So is the idea that if Man wasn’t there nature would be in perfect equilibirum. I’m not a fan of environmentalism per se; on the other hand elephants in America would be cool!

New Design

Everybody else have these really pretty and extensive blogs, customised and everything. So I did feel kinda like an amateur, using just a standard template with nothing fancy whatsoever. Especially given that I work as a webmaster and have my own private site, this could simply not go on.

So, voilà! Behold the results of a lazy Sunday afternoon with nothing else to do. Hope you enjoy

Good Things About Denmark

Faith’s immensely flattering post gave me an idea to expand on a bit. Furthermore, I thought this might be a good way to cope with the struggles of returning to my home country after spending a wonderfully long time away.

To enhance the psychological effect I should probably do a list of bad things about Australia, too. But that’s not going to happen, I just can’t.

Good Things About Denmark

• The trains (after 15 years of service, the IC3 is still going strong).
• Old buildings, charming café-lined city squares, and an abundance of good-quality jazz and classical music.
• It can actually be very pretty, at least in the summertime (in spite of the weather).
• It’s the perfect country to be complacent—overall safe and pleasant with a laid-back lifestyle and high standards of living for the large majority.
• It’s small—so you never need more than a day to get anywhere.
• Free education and health care.
• Some of the best bread and bakeries in the world (overseas-made Danish pastry is a joke when you know the real thing).
• You rarely have to worry about sweating because it’s too hot.
• The prettiest girls in the world (no offense to anyone—of course there’s exceptions, and I’m certain you’re one of them).

Great People From Denmark

• Lars Ulrich
• Helena Christensen
• Bjarne Riis
• Michael Laudrup
• H.C. Andersen
• Carl Nielsen
• A.P. Møller
• Aqua (!)
• Niels Bohr

Great Stuff to Come Out of Denmark

• LEGO
• Carlsberg
• Maersk
• Bang & Olufsen
• Windmills

See, it’s not such a bad place after all. Any additions are welcome.

Chaos @ Heathrow

I was sitting at my place in Denmark, not too happy about being home again, when I turned on CNN and found there are worse places to be right now.

I flew out of Heathrow yesterday at around 10am (no catering on board). If I’d come half a day later I would now be spending the weekend there. How lucky can you get?

Happy Birthday, Singapore!

40 years ago on this day Singapore became an independent nation. As a pure coincidence, I’m here to join in the celebrations.

I’m just passing through the city, doing a few days of sightseeing. This is the perfect example of a new pastime in a modern world: City Hopping. 40 years ago, who in their sane mind would within two months travel around the world and spend just a day or a few in cities as versatile as Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Adelaide, or Singapore? Furthermore, it doesn’t even seem that strange anymore.

Given, not everyone does this, and I am, admittedly, lucky to be able to travel this much.

But it still tells me something about the world in 2005. As modern-day individuals we should be able to navigate pretty much anywhere, anytime. One day you’re working in Sydney, the next, you’re shopping in Singapore, the next again you’re going to church in Denmark.

And the tendency applies to relationships as well. You meet new people all the time and congregate with a lot of very different groups, depending on your mood, work requirements, desires, etc. As a result you may have hundreds of acquantiances, but few very close friends.

This is the world today. Good or bad? Probably neither, but it’s not a bad thing to ponder the consequences.

GC – At Arm’s length

Wow – more than 3 weeks just passed since the session. And if I were to point of the significance of it all in hindsight, I would have to say… well, nothing much.

At the session everything seems very important. Adventists virtually own the town (or like to think so). All the delegates trying to get home afterwards clogged the St. Louis Airport for the whole day and a lot of people missed their flights–some even had to stay another night because they couldn’t get out of there. (Fortunately, my dad’s Qantas Gold card got us into the First Class line and we caught our flight with no problems.)

But now, after a few weeks of holidaying, what difference did it all make? To me personally, probably not much. I’m not saying GC sessions are unimportant or uncontroversial. But somehow you just let it all go and continue your life and your ministry as you would before. And should, in most cases.

Let’s not get carried away with big events. Our impact of the world as a church should be at ground level. We are the salt of the Earth and should be stirred and cooked to get the taste into the whole stew. If someone catches a lump of salt that’s too big for them they will most likely throw up. (If you don’t like the picture, give me another one

Besides from that I do actually have some thoughts and ideas for interesting new political structures in the church. But I’ll have to get back to those at a later stage.