In which the pond can't resist the bromancer's call to god ...

The pond couldn't resist …

The bromancer has a book to sell, and the pond couldn't resist helping promote a book it has absolutely no interest in purchasing.

There's a devious scheme behind the pond's attitude. Surely at some point, and pretty quickly, someone who regrets their folly will dump their copy in a street library somewhere in Newtown …

Indeed, if it was the last book in the last bookshop in the land, the pond would probably prefer to spend its last dime on Aldi cones …

The pond swears they taste just like the cones you used to be able to buy at Dungowan store for a penny before the war when travelling with 'Digger' Hong …

Never mind, this is supposed to be a serious blog, so the pond should start with some prefabricated opinions …

Well yes, and that doesn't leave much of anything else to add or to say, but the pond will plough on, indulging in that strange phenomenon, the Monday meditation … well not so strange remembering the old days when the nuns used to beat religion into the pond on a daily basis …

First up was the paste Hastie ...

Now the pond doesn't mean to intrude into Hastie's personal grief, but he's always struck the pond as a rather dull knife in the drawer, not helped by having a fundamentalist creationist father … but the next gobbet shook the pond's resolve …

Imagine if you weren't a Christian, if you were a closed universe atheist, how bleak and senseless those deaths would be …

Actually in any universe those deaths were supremely bleak, senseless and pointless, but more so in a Christian universe …

You see, the chances are that those boys were unreconstructed Islamics, and as any Christian theologian will tell you, unreconstructed Islamics are destined to an eternity in hellfire, no matter the mechanism or the form the messenger of Death took to send them on their way …

But then dad has firm views on dealing with the pesky, difficult Islamics (pdf here):

In November 2007 300 leaders within the evangelical church published a manifesto known as the Yale Statement which purported to represent a major consensus on thisissue amongst evangelicals, particularly those in the USA. Leading signatoriesincluded J. Dudley Woodberry (Dean Emeritus of Fuller Seminary), Leith Anderson (president of the National Association of Evangelicals), pastors such as Bill Hybels and Rick Warren and British evangelical Christopher J.H. Wright. The statement focused upon the supposed agreement between Christianity and Islam on the priority of our duty to love God and our neighbours. It ignored Muslim claims that Muhammad is the supreme prophet of God, eclipsing any of Jesus’ claims. Further, the statement was silent about Jesus’ divine nature as well as the Bible’s claim to be the supreme standard. Further, while the statement affirms the unity of God, it actually says nothing about the deity of Christ. This glaring omission casts an ominous shadow over the most central Christian doctrine of all, the Holy Trinity. Frankly, we expect better of evangelical theologians. If Christians are to engage in meaningful dialogue with Muslims, then truth must not be the sacrificial lamb. When a Muslim once denigrated Christ to the famous Christian missionary, Henry Martyn, he replied: “I could not endure existence if Christ was not glorified. It would be hell to me if he were to be always thus dishonored.” May it be so with us. Peter Hastie ...

But then the pastie Hastie isn't short of a jihad word or two himself …

And so to the Wong ...

Well that's easy enough, the clueless in search of a miracle, but Malware was something else again and earned himself a breakout splash …

It's impossible to contemplate this ineffably mysterious statement, which avoids the question of mystical (or romantic or emotional) experience, and settles for the inexplicable … though it does perhaps explain why a mysteriously mystical Malware can see little difference between the exalted status of copper and fibre …

Not to worry, the pond has been there before with this sort of mumbo jumbo …

Take it away Malware ...

Uh huh …

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things such as copper. For now we see through unpolished copper, darkly; but then face to face with fibre: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known at some decent speeds and with modestly miraculous reliability ....

Well the pond has already dealt with Malware's tendency to cannibalism - perhaps that's why he also devours onion eaters - and so must move on to the Keneally ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, how cheap is that, dragging Aboriginal beliefs into a defence of the Xian patriarchal god, but the pond left that question about what Keneally believes comes after death as a tease. The answer?

Not a clue, just the usual warm waffle about good times in the sweet bye and bye … and then for reasons that are up there with Malware's sublime mysteries, bomber Beazley got into the act ...

What to say?

And so to the commercial …

What to say about politicians mixing religion with politics? Or by the bromancer wanting to mix religion and politics, while also scribbling epic tosh along the lines of …

The Donald not the problem?

Amen to that brother, hallelujah ...