The Starpath Staff - an Artefact game

 The Starpath Staff

I was made from a sapling oak grown in a lonely field, possibly from an acorn buried by a confused squirrel. My wood was stripped, treated and used as a walking staff, passed down from father to son over generations in the Treue clan, worn smooth by the hands of many men of the same blood. I eventually ended up in the hands of the sixth son of six sixth sons, a wizard of remarkable natural ability called Macsech. Once he achieved power as a fully fledged wizard, Macsech decided to imbue me with magical power, since I was already a remarkable object both in history and make.

First, he had me planed into a hexagonal shape, and shod with meteoric iron. Then, taking me to a place of natural leylines, where mages of old had erected a stone circle, Macsech planted me into the centre of the circle on the night of the summer solstice. After ceremonially cutting his palms, he grasped my shaft with both his bloody hands and called out words of power, binding me to the Treue lineage. Once the ritual was complete, the places where Macsech gripped my shaft had dark wood marks of the wizard's fingers and palms; otherwise, the rest of me took on a redwood lustre.

I quickly became known as Macsech's Starpath Staff, because it was obvious where the wizard had walked when one looked on the ground and saw my hexagonal mark left in the ground. I was always said to have a SERIOUS air, as though to say I should not be messed with; I had a kind of WARM pulse, reminiscent of heartblood; and I was known to be incredibly LOYAL to my maker, never leaving his side, even by force.

Eventually I would just become known as the Starpath Staff. But I'll always think of myself as Macsech's: it is his hands that still grip my haft.

One day, the king grew paranoid at the growing power of the Treue family - due to its powerful heritage and large landholdings supporting the large family - so he marched against Macsech and the Treue clan. Standing atop his tower, Macsech called upon the power in me to protect the Treue, and struck my butt down upon the roof of the tower six times. In doing so, he summoned six winds that pushed back the armies of the king, until they were simply unable to enter the Treue lands. The spell burned my butt with scorch marks that could never hence be removed.

As an object of magical power, I have a better sense of the true nature of magic which eluded even Macsech in the heights of his power as an archmage. Because at its heart the essence of magic is chaos which wizards strive to bring into order, I always feared that this chaos, if too deeply tapped, would overcome the Treue and plunge them into chaos, destroying the family. My purpose is to draw together and protect, strengthen and empower the Treue. I am of their blood; I am part of their family. Indeed, aside from their land itself, I am their longest lived member. So they must never discover the inner chaos of the magic they wield.

After many years and more adventures, Macsech finally passed on, and I was passed on to his sixth son, Vol. Like all sixth sons, Vol was quite independent of the family, and also had the natural magical ability of his fathers. Scarred by the attack of the king on their lands as a child, Vol decided that it was time for a change of government; one which would place his family in a position of safety, prosperity, and comfort. He was also an ambitious young man though, and felt himself more intelligent than the average person, and more deserving to rule than the present line of kings. In fairness, they were unhealthily paranoid, and probably slept with their sisters or something.

It was in the hands of the wizard Vol that I struck down the king himself. Vol entered the king's presence, and of course was made to relinquish all weapons before entering his court. However, when the king and Vol came to blows when arguing about the king wishing to resume control of the Treue lands, I found my way into Vol's hands, and struck the mighty blow that smote the king in his place, using the fury of the Treue to extinguish not only the king himself, but his entire lineage to the sixth degree of separation. Apparently this was a little bit excessive - there were a few cousins of Vol who had been married into the royal line in generations passed, who suddenly disappeared - but since many of the king's royal guard were also his family members, it placed Vol onto the throne almost immediately and without contest. It seemed efficient at the time.

Vol never really lost me... but I had become FEARED. My power was now considered both legendary and terrible. As a symbol of Vol's power and right to rule, I was mounted above his throne. And there I stayed. Vol never touched me again.

It was 10 years and six days later that I would again feel the ground under my butt, and the touch of Treue fingers around my shaft. This time, the enemy was a foreign power, seeking to invade the country. Of course, now, the whole country was the domain of Treue blood - crown land and all that - so when Vol's sixth son, Riarra, was called to lead the armies of the land into battle to protect its borders, he reached over the throne and took hold of me. He was but a boy when his father became king, but he knew full well my power; he knew that I had made his father king. He did not take me lightly.

Riarra was too much a sixth son, however. Oh yes, we went to war. He still felt loyalty to his family. But he was an independent soul, and he resented having to go into battle when he would have much rathered spending his time in the substantial library of his wizard-king father. He knew that, though he might carry the mystical heritage of his father, his eldest brother would inherit the political rule. And this was what Vol always wanted - he was politician first, wizard second. Riarra, on the other hand, just wanted to lose himself to the magic.

This meant he was also much more discerning in his use of my power. He knew that his own people feared my power. And so, weaving his magic around him, he snuck unseen into the enemy camp, planning to use my power to weaken the entire army. He was successful - of course he was, with my help. From the middle of their camp, I sent the enemy soldiers into a chaotic frenzy. They drew their swords and struck at each other, seeing themselves all as their own worst enemies. The night was one of screaming and blood. The army destroyed itself before the next sunrise.

Unfortunately, I am the Starpath Staff, and although Riarra was invisible to the eye, I continued to leave my stamp upon the ground where he trod. The enemy general - a woman by the name Condur - saw these marks, and struck out wildly towards Riarra. He blocked the blow with my own shaft, and I did my utmost to protect him. He survived, but the sword split me in two. The explosion was devastating. It wasn't my fault: I was not built to be broken! I was attempting to arrest the chaotic power of the magic. But this was too much, and it all came out.

It would be a long time before I was reformed. Riarra dropped me like a piece of garbage - well, two pieces - and ran. I fell into the trampled mud of the enemy camp, and there I stayed. Blood fell about me as the soldiers continued to vent their bezerk rage on one another. Then rain fell, turning the ground to mud. Then snow fell, and remained until the next spring. Finally, after the snow had thawed, I was found again.

The man who found me was Deyflin, leader of a group of bandits who had stumbled across the deserted camp of soldiers and the carnage which had been covered through the winter. As the frost thawed, it revealed bodies to be looted and tents to ransack. I had sat there alone for the winter, but not lonely - my warmth meant there was a little patch of grass around me free of the winter chill, which attracted small animals scavenging for food among the snow and ice. Deyflin also came to me with a hunger - a hunger for wealth and power. In that he reminded me of Macsech's son, Vol. Upon seeing my two halves sitting on the bare ground, where not even snow dared to fall, he felt the same fear that my power had inspired in others. But if you want to lead a group of cut-throats, you quickly learn that you can't show any fear. So with a display of bravado, he called out to his fellow bandits, exclaiming that he had found some obviously powerful item, and then once he had ensured they were all watching, he reached down and grabbed the two pieces of my shaft in each hand.

He awoke a few minutes later in a tree. I had to make sure he took me seriously. The second time there was less bluster, and a bit more respect. After all, I did sense in him a hint of Treue blood - the grandson of an illegitimate union - and since I was getting bored, that was good enough for me. Besides, I needed to be repaired and brought back to my former glory.

Deyflin took me back to his "court". It was a far cry from Vol's actual kingly court - a ramshackle longhouse, a few wattle and daub huts, and now several more tents than they had before looting the decimated soldier camp. Deyflin was no stranger to violence or battle, and upon sensing the power in my halves, he made the decision to have me turned into two fighting shillelagh instead of trying to reform my original staff form. Having my head shod with cold iron - I suppose meteoric iron is hard to come by as a bandit - I now had two heads, and he carried me holstered upon his belt.

Now, I've got to say that before this I had only very rarely been wielded in anger. Macsech was the type to walk softly and carry a big stick. But Deyflin walked softly and carried two big sticks. He was a master at cracking heads. He was ruthless, but not unnecessarily violent. He knew that if you crush the snake's head the body goes limp, and together we travelled the dark paths of the night, finding the dens of thieves, pirates and other low-lives, catching their leaders unawares, and beating seven colours of refuse from them. Some had to die - you know these leader types: they can be very stubborn - but others were willing to cede their groups to Deyflin after a good enough beating. After a few years of consolidation, he had really earned his title King of Bandits, and had groups under his control up and down the countryside.

It was at this time that my name changed, as did my reputation. No longer did I leave my star path in the dirt; now I travelled the paths lit only by stars. And I was no longer one, but two - in the hands of Deyflin, I became the starpath staves.

But alas, all good things come to an end. As Deyflin's power grew and consolidated, he needed my power less and less. We sat atop a makeshift throne more and more. Despite the pivotal role I played in building up his power base, the stories increasingly spoke of Deyflin and his power and his skills, and the starpath staves didn't really factor in. I became just another set of weapons in the arsenal of the bandit king - weapons that were used less and less.

Ten more years! Ten long years went by, ticked by, inched by in the flickering light of a scarcely used armoury, before I saw the sun again, and felt the warm touch of Treue skin upon my hafts once more. Apparently Vol had made numerous promises to his nobles that he would take care of this bandit king menace, and so one day the king's knights came crashing into the longhouse, there was chaos left and right, and I was cofiscated - confiscated, can you believe it?! - and, collected up with all the other weapons, we were assigned to the king's armoury instead, for the use of his fighting men. I dreaded sitting in an armoury for more years, and I very nearly took it out on the knight who grabbed me, but when he touched me I could tell that he was the son of Tezzer, who was the son of Yeltsin, who was the son of Framlin, who was the father of Macsech. So I showed him some mercy.

Of course, knights are not mages, and to them I was just a stick - well, two sticks. They like swords and spears and lances and the like. I was easily the most powerful weapon in the armoury - I had killed a king's whole family in one blow! I had crushed the skulls of some of the biggest badass bandits out there! But no, I wasn't shiny and sharp enough. I wasn't an axe with delusions of grandeur; I wasn't a kitchen knife gone mad. Well, it didn't matter to me anyway. I could bide my time.

Turns out I didn't need to wait that long. It turns out that Tezzer's son - who was named Framlin also, after his great grandfather - was given a quest to go and slay a horde of undead which had been raised by an evil necromancer in the swamps to the west. Apparently these skeletal warriors were unharmed by swords and spears, because their blades simply glanced off their magical bones. Enter the starpath staves. I knew how to crush bones good. I mean, er, well. I spent a long time in the hands of warrior types. They are not known for their good diction. It rubs off.

Framlin the Younger was dispatched as part of a circle of knights to go and face this undead menace. Young Framlin wasn't as confident fighting with two hands as Deyflin had been. Knights are more of a sword and board - that is, shield - type of warrior. At one point, Framlin had even been considering leaving half of me behind, to use me as a club. Can you imagine? A club!? What am I, a slab of wood dragged across the field by a neanderthal to club a woolly mammoth? No thank you. While dual-wielding might seem awkward, when done properly it is a thing of finesse and fury. I made sure that once he had one half in his hand, the warmth of his family blood called to his off hand to take my other half. I gave him a few pointers - just little tips in muscle movement and weight distribution that I had learned from my time with Deyflin - and together, Framlin the Younger and I went out to face the evils of the swamp.

Now this circle of knights were a proud bunch, and they called themselves the Light of Men. They were going to fight supernatural darkness, after all, and they felt they had the blessing of their god on their side. They started off haughty and light-hearted. But once they faced their first platoon of skeletal fiends - warriors who neither tire nor fear, who fight until each bone is broken, whose eyeless sockets and baleful grinning skulls would strike fear into the most hardened heart - after they had lost their first friends to the rusty blades and bony clawing hands, the Light of Men darkened considerably. Simple warriors were no match for the dark mysticism against which they fought, yet fought they did; with Framlin wielding my might, they were eventually victorious, driving back the darkness of the necromancer's foul magics into the foul swamps where they belonged. I protected Framlin every day he was in that awful swamp: not only from skeletal warriors, but from the cold, the damp, the biting flies and the diseases that travelled on the putrid air. I kept his spirits high, allowing him to combat the unholy fear these undead soldiers brought with them. Framlin and five of his fellows returned victorious to the castle, thanks to me.

Together with all the other weapons and armour of the returning heroes, I was BLESSED by the king's archpriest. It was only at this point, as I was brought into court for the ceremony, that King Vol recognised me! I was returned to my position above the throne, and there I stayed, watching over the king's rule, his good and bad decisions, his victories and defeats. But I played no part in them. I just sat there, back on the wall, and watched.

Tol gave way to Tem, who passed the crown to Sestus, who had only daughters and left the throne to Cyrele, who ruled a long, long time. Cyrele's grandson inherited the throne: his name was Tongor. Then there was Ellin, then Nifal, then Elcede. Centuries of peace and prosperity passed. Not only that, but while the bloodline of Treue grew broad, it seemed to become more shallow. The wealthier and more successful the family became, the fewer children they seemed to have. Several generations passed with no sixth sons, and I feared that magic might forever leave the bloodline.

Eventually, peace becomes the norm and the watchword; the treasure more valuable to the kingdom than gold. Meanwhile, the name of the starpath staves has become a byword for power, violence, infamy and bloodshed. Despite being blessed by the archpriest of old, I was considered an object of a bygone era. Magic was dying, and with it the influence of all things magical. Eventually it was decided that it is unseemly for me to be left above the throne as I symbolised outmoded concepts, and so after hundreds of years I was removed, relocated to the vault of a small church in the outskirts of one of the king's towns.

I suppose my next keeper would be the historian, Balarriel. He was an old man, a priest by trade I believe, though his love was objects of old far more than people of the present. He became the curator of the collection of sacred objects of which I was part, and when he realised that he had me under his care - the actual starpath staff, wielded by the legendary Macsech of the royal family Treue - he became more than a little besotted with me. Of course, he never wielded me - he knew better than to touch the staff of Treue blood when he was of some inferior family - but he treated me with great respect and care. The small rear hall of the chapel that all we holy artefacts called home was hidden away from the public - no pilgrims came to see the relics that time and culture would rather forget - but Balarriel was intrigued with stories of my maker and the magic he wielded. Macsech and I had traversed the length and breadth of this land, after all, and there were scant few square miles which had not at one time felt the imprint of the starpath staff in their soil at one point.

But Balarriel cared less about Macsech than he did about unlocking the secrets of the power of the magic he had wielded. I had been around; I knew the destructive power of the chaos, and I was not going to let this befuddled old historian unleash it on the world. He was not worthy. He was no sixth son. He was not Treue. So I led him astray. I never spoke to him, and he never laid a finger on me, but all it took was a flickering of the candlelight to highlight some passage on a scroll while shadowing another, or a chance gust of wind to flip a page while he was off making his tea, or a warming of the hearth fire to lull him to an early night's rest. I led him down the wondrously ludicrous path of alchemy, and within a few years he had lead on the brain and hemlock under his fingernails. He died of something - I don't even know what, I didn't much care. It was only once he was gone that I realised it was unlikely anyone else was going to come and pay attention to me. I had relegated myself into the past. I had become FORGOTTEN.

It's difficult to know how much time passes inside a room with no windows. After Balarriel died, there was the occasional visitor into our room, but after a few years there wasn't even a light under the door. Time passed. It stayed dark. That didn't bother us too much: it's not like we have eyes; we just know what's going on. The sounds of dereliction and decay were our only companions. We could hear the other sacred items tarnishing, fading, tearing, falling apart. It came to be that whenever something actually broke, it was such a break to the monotony of nothingness that we would actually briefly glow with the dull, red light of our warmth. We started talking to ourselves. Don't call us crazy: it's easy to talk to yourself when you are actually in two parts already. Thankfully, we aren't identical - the break from the wretched sword blow by that enemy soldier woman - what was her name again? - didn't cut us cleanly in half. So now we are the long and short starpath staves. Long staff mostly talks about our time with Vol, with Deyfrin and with young Framlin. Long staff likes to remember the battles, the victories over foes. Short staff is more reflective. Short staff reminisces about the chaos we sewed when Riarra took us into Condur's camp - Condur, that's her name! - or when Balarriel spoke of Macsech. Then we get sad. Both of us miss Macsech. The best times were always with Macsech.

Though we have travelled up and down the land, we began to dream of returning to the ancestral land of our family, the Treue - to the field where our sapling first grew, where Macsech's tower first stood, and where the Treue generations long called home. They probably don't even live there anymore. They made the castle their home. They probably gifted their ancestral lands to some minor nobles by now. By now our brother and sister oak trees in the neighbouring copses are probably gigantic - or they have been turned into houses, or boats, or seige weaponry, or other mundane uses. What was that? Oh, it was the tapestry wearing through and falling to the floor in a cloud of dust. Good guess, short staff! Long staff had predicted the next thing to go would be the collection of religious texts, but those little worms have a few years to go yet.

All of a sudden there is light. And it's not sunlight, nor is it the light of a flame. It is some strange, unearthly light, almost as if lightning had been captured and put inside a flask. It is too white, too clean, piercing among the dust and cobwebs (even that family of spiders had long since passed away, once the other insects had precious little to feast on). And what's that? There is a person! No, wait, two people! A man and a woman, or at least that's what it seems. We can't tell from what they are wearing - so strange! They must be foreign. Both wear their hair long, but only one has a beard. We assume the one with the beard is a man. The other has a slighter build. We assume she is a woman. Although their argot is nothing we have heard before, the manner in which they talk reminds long staff more than a little of Deyfrin. It has that cruder air, that dash of bravado, that hint of desperation. But who cares who they are: it's real live people! Amazing!

He - we're calling him Flin, because he reminds us of Deyflin - is off investigating the tomes. They look more like Swiss cheese than they do books anymore. He doesn't seem impressed. But the girl - we'll just call her Missy for now - she seems more interested in the table upon which we rest. She might see us! She's got to see us: most of the other things here have rotten, decayed, rusted. But not us. No, long staff and short staff have the Treue blood imbuing us with warmth, with energy. She probably would have noticed our faint glow if those awful, garish white lights they carry didn't flood out everything else. Regardless, her eyes are sharp enough, because she does notice us. Missy says something, loud enough that Flin interrupts his endless nattering - probably complaining that everything looks like rubbish here - and he comes over to look. Yes, it's definitely us they have seen. We're the best objects here by far. Missy seems curious; Flin sounds more dismissive. We can just imagine what he's saying: "What, two sticks? Worthless." He probably prefers swords.

But Flin was still the first to pick one of us up - long staff, of course – probably compensating. Missy, not to be left out, picked up short staff. Flin starts swinging long staff about - he's obviously got no idea what he's doing - and long staff remembers young Framlin, remembers helping him out by adjusting the weight a little here, quietly suggesting a direction there. Long staff is enjoying the memories of battle so much, long staff is almost trying to convince Flin of how worthwhile we are. We can't think of anything worse than being left in this sacred crypt, this mausoleum for forgotten holiness. Flin just didn't seem to get it though: it was as though he'd never wielded a weapon in his life. He just couldn't seem to appreciate our fineness.

So when Missy picked up short staff, short staff decided to also go all out, to convince her that the starpath staves were worth rescuing from this dank place. At first, short staff filled her with warmth. She was confused, intrigued, but still not quite coming to terms with our power. So short staff decides to show how serious we are, and levitates her off the ground. It's a relatively low level magic, but Macsech found any number of uses for it back in the beginning. Besides, we don't want to expose the new keepers to too much magic all at once; not with the chaos it so often brings.

Funny, Missy and Flin seem absolutely astonished at the little bit of levitation. Flin is pointing his torch at Missy and making it go click. Strange little box torch. Long staff says it actually shows a picture of Missy floating off the ground on its side. That's a novel magic! Why would they be so impressed with a little levitation when this Flin can control such fine illusions? No matter, short staff did the trick, and certainly got both of their attentions. Missy is now holding short staff in both her hands, her own torch box sitting in our place on the table, and in the light can see the original imprint of Macsech's left hand in the wood of short staff’s shaft.

At the same time, Flin is looking over at Missy, and thoughts are clearly running through his head. He looks down at long staff, gives another experimental swing, and then looks back at Missy, particularly at her head. He takes a few quiet steps forward - very much like Deyflin now, quiet and malevolent - slowly raising long staff up higher. He clearly sees the value of the starpath staves now, and long staff was never against the occasional crushed skull, so why not? We don't want to be split up, after all. Closer and closer Flin stalks, coming within melee distance. And at just the moment the blow is being struck, Missy places her left hand into Macsech's mark on short staff.

There is a lurch, as though years, decades, centuries flash past. Missy's mother, you see, was a Hastings, but her great great grandmother was a Berdwyn, and her great grand aunt had been a Vauxnell, and her great great grandmother had been a Rombi. A Rombi by blood, but by marriage she was a Treue. Macsech's wife had been a Rombi before he married her. This girl, short staff suddenly realised, is a daughter of their master! She is of Treue blood! She is family! And long staff was now a hair's breadth from her skull.

We dig deep into our memory, and remember the magic that protected the family from those who long ago would harm them. We remember the bad king. We remember Vol. Long staff clatters to the ground, the hand which had been holding him having disappeared into the dusty air. Along with his entire family. And their families. And probably their gardeners and mathematics tutors. No matter: for when Missy Hastings turns around, she will only think that Flin had left, left and dropped long staff at her feet. So she reaches down to pick up long staff. Why shouldn’t she? She has nothing to fear. After all: she is family.

Revelation 4-5 Bible study on the Glory of God

Opening Question: What does glory mean?

Glory is a measure of the greatness of someone or something. When we give glory to someone (like God), we are ascribing greatness to them.

What I want us to look at tonight is how God's glory, or his greatness, is different to any other kind of glory or greatness. This will involve us thinking about God's transcendence - that is, his nature is to be above and beyond things in creation. My hope is that in this study we will see a little bit of what it means for God's greatness to be transcendent.

Reading: Revelation 4:2-5

1. Is greatness something we can see? How do we show that something is great or glorious?
   Basically, we make it look expensive. We cover it in special things. We treat it specially.
2. What is depicted in this reading?
   God's throne room. Note lots of special stuff - thrones, elder kings, lightning and thunder.
3. How is God depicted in this reading?
   This is important: God is not depicted as being covered in precious stones. God IS the precious stones. What does that tell us? It tells us that God does not just have stuff that represents his greatness. God himself IS greatness.

What's the difference?

God does not 'have' greatness. God 'is' greatness. We can compare how much everyone looks like me, and you can make a rating system of how much people look like me. But you can't rate me on that scale - I don't look like me. In fact, I can't do anything to look less like myself, because I AM me.

What does it mean that God IS greatness? It means that God is not simply the top on a list of great and powerful people. It doesn't mean that God is first and Elon Musk is second, and there's just a big gap between them. God IS greatness and power - all other greatness and power has its source in God. Without God, there is no other greatness and power.

Reading: Revelation 4:6-11

4. What do the weird creatures symbolise? Why are they covered in eyes?
   All living things; especially powerful things.
5. What do the creatures say? What is the pattern in what they say? What does the pattern mean?
   Threefold, showing the completeness of God's being: Holiness; Mightiness; Existence. All contributing to his being Greatness.
6. What do the elders do when the creatures say their thing? What do they say? What does it mean?
   Lay down their crowns - their glory, their power, their might: all of it comes from God. God is worthy, because all other things come from him.

Let's reflect on that for a moment - all other things. No atom without God. No energy without God. No concepts or ideas without God. No feelings or emotions without God. Even nothing does not exist without God. How does that correspond with your idea of God's glory?

But that's just the beginning of God's glory.

Reading: Revelation 5:1-4

7. What's going on in this passage? Why is John crying that no-one can be found to open it?
   Go back to Revelation 4:1 - this tells us what the scroll is: God's plan for the end of the world, basically.
8. Who can open the scroll? Why doesn't God just open it?
   No-one! Not even anyone in heaven, which means not even God, who is greatness itself, can open this scroll and roll out God's plan.
9. What does that mean?
   Something is missing, preventing God's plan from going ahead.

Reading: Revelation 5:5-7

10. Who is able to take the scroll and open its seals?
    Jesus!
11. How is he depicted in this passage? What do these things mean?
    Lion of Judah, Root of David - the Messianic king.
    Lamb that had been slain - Jesus, the passover lamb, but now victorious.
    Centre of the throne - is God.
    Horns - symbol of power. 7 horns - symbol of God's power.
12. So, what was missing that enables God's plan to be rolled out?
    Jesus!
13. What does this tell us about God's plan? What is the thing key to God's great plan that will be revealed in the scroll?
    Salvation.

Reading: Revelation 5:8-10

13. Why do the elders and the creatures say that Jesus is worthy?
    Because he died and purchased people for God, who will be for him a kingdom of priests.
14. We've already seen that God's glory includes his power, his holiness, his existence. What else does it include? If God's plan can't go forward without Christ's sacrifice, how important is our salvation to God's greatness?
    Salvation. The rest is kind of a rhetorical question.
15. How do we participate in God's glory?
    By serving God as his kingdom of priests.

Let's reflect on this now for a moment. The saving act that brings an end to sin and death for us, that opens up a way for humanity to relate to God as Father, and to Jesus as Brother, and to the Holy Spirit as friend, is as central to the very essence of God as his being the creator of all things. Salvation is as much a part

of God's Glory as these other things Our salvation, our relationship with God, is not an afterthought. It's not even just a piece of the puzzle. It is key to

God's character and his plans. It is as much his greatness as anything else. He has made a relationship with us as fundamental as existence itself. What an amazing reality. What an amazing, wonderful God.

Reading: Revelation 5:11-14

16. There's a lot of praising going on in these verses. Who is being praised? How would you compare it to the praise given to God in Rev 4:8-11?
    If anything, it's even bigger and grander, and contains even more praise and comes from more angles, even from every creature. It leads to praise and worship of both God and Christ.
17. What does this mean?
    That if anything, the glory of salvation is even greater than the rest, or at least all the more pleasing to God.

Let's reflect one last time. I want to bring this home to us. Revelation 4-5 is showing us the reality of God's glory - that his greatness is as fundamental to who he is as existence is, and that it is transcendent - over and above - and kind of greatness on earth. And it includes salvation as a fundamental element.

Now how does that shape how we think about God and his greatness?

The pile of stones fallacy of God's glory. God's glory is not like a pile of stones that we can add to by being good, or that we take away from by being sinful.

The story analogy of God's glory. God's glory is more like sharing a story: when you tell someone a story you don't lose it, but they do gain it. God is the source of glory, and God is glorified by creating us and saving us, and by us sharing the story of our creation and salvation. Rev 5:13 - all will glorify God eventually: God's glory is not under threat.

How do we think about our salvation and our relationship with God? It is fundamental to who God is - it is as fundamental as existence itself. Do we think of it as that important? Or is our relationship with God only really important on Sundays? What do the elders wear on their heads? A crown. What does a crown represent? Power and authority. What do they do with their power and authority? They set it at God's feet. You have been given power and authority from the source of Power and Authority. What will you do with it?

2 Peter 1 Bible study on truth and doubt

Intro questions: How do you know who your parents are? (trust + evidence, and there's a system to let you know for certain)

How do you know your parents love you? (there's no test for that; it's trust plus evidence)

Neither of these questions can be solved purely by logic. You have to trust other people, and trust a system that provides you with information. You need truth. Would it be possible to discover who your parents truly are if you have no idea what truth is, or if you don't care if what people tell you is true or not, or if what you discover is true or not? Truth MUST be a part of the system to discover truth.

Now think about some more complicated questions: how do you know God exists? How do you know Jesus is God? How do you know he loves us? How do you know we are saved through him? You know because of trust, because of evidence, and because of a system that allows us to know for certain. This is what Peter is writing about in 2 Peter, and I want us to look at this and why it's important for us.

Step 1: Read the passage (2 Peter 1:1) What do we know about 2 Peter? Who wrote it? Who is it written to?

Step 2a: Read the passage (2 Peter 1:2-4). Peter describes two processes: one through which we can live a godly life; the other through which we participate in God's divine nature. What are the elements of these processes?

(Christ's divine power -> knowledge of God -> us having everything necessary for a godly life.

God's glory and goodness -> very great and precious promises -> our participation in the divine nature.)

Questions generally?

Today, we will be focusing on one element of these processes that has a lot of overlap: knowledge of God, through which Christ's power equips us with everything we need for a godly life; and knowledge of his very great and precious promises, through which we are able to participate in God's divine nature. It should be noted that when Peter says "knowledge of God" he uses a specific Greek word that doesn't just mean "knowing about something" - it's a deep and genuine. Some translations use the term "true knowledge of God".

Now, remember we were talking about systems of knowledge, how we know things? We said that no system that excludes truth will allow you to discover the truth, right? Now here's a question: how do we know that God exists? I want you to see how complicated a question that is, so let's ask an easier question first.

How do you know your parents existed? (point to yourself; you are proof). The system there is simple, because there are no other options.

But How do we know God exists? Because everything else exists doesn't seem to be as powerful an answer, because there are other options available. When we ask the question "How do we know God exists", it's like we're asking two questions at the same time: "How do you know your parents existed" AND "How do you know who your parents are?" Our existence certainly points to something causing us to exist, but there is a system of trust, evidence and truth that you need to follow. And there's a complication to proving God's existence! God doesn't exist in the same way that your parents exist: God's existence is before all other things. From a human position, if we try to discover God by first assuming he doesn't exist, our system is broken and we're likely to discover God doesn't exist. If we assume that God does exist, then the system suddenly works very differently. God has to be part of the system that reveals him, and that is exactly what we discover Peter talking about here. Without Christ's divine power and Christ's glory and goodness, there is no knowledge of God.

Step 2b: Read the passage (2 Peter 1:12-15). What is Peter's stated reason for writing this letter?

What is his audience like (v12)? So why does an audience that knows and is firmly established in these truths need to be reminded of them? 

Step 3: What does Peter know about doubt? (Mark 14:66-72) Read the passage (2 Peter 1:16:18). What is Peter referring to in this passage as being an eyewitness to?

Did Peter deny Jesus before or after the Transfiguration?

So here's the first point: doubt is a part of the Christian life. Peter isn't writing all this to non-Christians, but to those who have received the faith. You remember at the beginning we talked about a system that allows us to know the truth? That's what Peter is outlining for us here. He gives us two parts of that system.

Step 4: Read the passage again (2 Peter 1:16:18). What is the first piece of knowledge about Jesus that Peter is talking about?

And how does that knowledge come to us; what is the system that brings that knowledge to us?

Jesus reveals his nature as God at the Transfiguration. More than his birth, more than his death, more even than his resurrection, the Transfiguration is the one time that shows without doubt that Jesus isn't just a prophet, or a teacher, or a miracle worker - he is God incarnate. And that most important revelation is seen by only three people in the whole of history, because that's how God wanted it. You don't get to see it. Neither do I. Nor did the nine other apostles. But Peter saw it. That's the system God chose - a system where three people get the proof, and everyone else gets to hear about it second-hand.

And that's enough.  It's enough to put a stamp of approval on everything Jesus says and does as expressing who God is to us. If we need to know who God is, we have Jesus - God as a human being - doing God for us in a way that we can understand because he's doing God as one of us. We can participate in the divine nature because God participated in what it means to be human. That's the great and precious promise - and we can know it to be true, because Jesus was Transfigured, and Peter saw it. Yes, we have to trust Peter. Peter knew he was going to die soon, so he wrote it down.  So yes, we have to trust tradition handing down this story to us as written in the Bible. Yes, we have to trust scholars like Penny who translate it from Greek into English. But God is part of that system - the one who Transfigured Jesus in front of those three apostles is the one who brings us Peter's message.

Here's the second thing that's different about God: when it comes to learning about God, God is the system, and God made the system. There is no system bigger than God we can refer to. Logic, science, reason - these things are all products of God. God is outside them and prior to them. They're not useless, just limited.  Who God is can't be verified against something outside himself because not even truth is outside God: God IS Truth. From a God position, God is the one revealing himself, and the truth about himself, and his love for us, both on a grand level but also on an individual level to people.

Step 5: Read the passage (2 Peter 1:19-21). What's "the prophetic message"? 

What's the link between the OT and the Transfiguration? (Mark 9:2-4)

So even the Transfiguration, the eyewitness event, speaks to the need for the Old Testament. When we talk about the very great and precious promises of God, what are some of those very great and precious promises that God made to us in the Old Testament?

We learned at the beginning that knowledge of God and his very great and precious promises comes from God. How does Peter make that clear about the Old Testament? (v21)

Peter tells us that God speaks through the writers of the Old Testament by inspiring them through his Holy Spirit. The Old Testament is a story of how over thousands of years God has spoken into individual people's lives, relating to them, transforming them, speaking through them to others - loving them. Sometimes God is a pillar of fire and cloud, sometimes he's a burning bush, sometimes he's a booming voice from the heavens; and sometimes, he's a small voice in the wind, he's in people's dreams, he is convicting people through his written word, and he is sometimes just in their hearts, telling them what to say or write. 

That Holy Spirit, who guided the pens that wrote the Old Testament, is inside each of us. It is the key that unlocks God's word to us - it's like the Holy Spirit from back then talks to the Holy Spirit inside us now. When are some times people have had that happen: that the Holy Spirit has brought them to God's word to show them what they need to hear? This is a third element of God's involvement in the system: even the knowledge that God brings to us, he brings to us through himself, by his Spirit in us. Again, God's power is involved in our knowledge - we cannot know God without God.

When times are tough, when things are hard, when you're struggling and suffering and doubt arises, remember that. Remember that God's Holy Spirit is in you. The same Holy Spirit that was with the prophets in the Old Testament; the same Holy Spirit that was with Peter and the New Testament authors; the same Holy Spirit that was with Jesus.  How can you trust that God is who he says he is, that he loves us and will keep his great and precious promises?  Because God has revealed himself through Jesus Christ to all humanity; and because God speaks to us in the written Bible, inspired by God the Holy Spirit, and God the Holy Spirit inside you will connect you to the truth of God's great and precious promises.

You'll also be glad to know that it isn't limited to the Old Testament for us. In 2 Peter 3:15-16 Peter puts the stamp on Paul's writings as other Scripture. We have the whole of Scripture for the Holy Spirit to speak to us through. Of course, we have to read it.

Step 6:  So what? Remember the process: step 1) God's power; step 2) knowledge of God; step 3) living a godly life. This stuff is not just stuff we know. It's stuff we must do. We are not just recipients of the divine nature; we are participants in it.

Read the passage: (2 Peter 1:5-8). From the verses we've just looked at, we see that knowledge of God and knowledge of his promises are the vehicles through which we are able to live godly lives, and participate in the divine nature. So it's little wonder then that verses 5-8 focus on ensuring that our knowledge of Christ is both effective and productive. If our knowledge of God is being ineffective and unproductive, perhaps it is because we are not using it to live a godly life. 

Read the passage: (2 Peter 1:9-11) And if we are having doubts about our faith and our understanding of God and our relationship with God, perhaps it is because we are not confirming our calling and election through the living of that godly life.

On a Facebook post about abortion

If someone was to put forward this argument to me in these terms, I would make two observations followed by asking two questions.

The first observation is simply this: not everyone who supported slavery was free. If we're talking about the grand and broad history of slavery, including everything from ancient Greek and Roman slavery to the slavery entrenched in the Old Testament laws, then we can be clear that this is not the case. Diocletian was the son of a slave, but did not abolish slavery upon becoming emperor of Rome. But even if we focus on the most heinous form of slavery - that which resulted in the American Civil War - there were still slaves who perpetuated slavery from positions of influence. A popular portrayal of such can be seen in the character of Stephen in the movie Django Unchained.

The second observation would be this: the support of slavery by free people does not easily equate to the support of abortion by living people. One is a statement of choice; the other a fairly meaningless tautology. In order to make the statement meaningful, I'm assuming that the premise of the first statement - something like "the class of people who support X are primarily the beneficiaries of X despite the fact that X is a detriment to another class of people" - is seeking to be applied to abortion.

If this is the case, there's two questions I would ask. The first question relates to whether the above argument actually stands on its own merits. To test this, I would offer a simple equivalence: Perhaps, if we are wanting to talk about death, we could say, "The death penalty is primarily supported by those who are unlikely to face the death penalty (and so who benefit from it as an extreme form of general and specific deterrence without facing any real personal consequences) despite the fact that the death penalty is a detriment to that class of people who commit acts the punishment for which is the death penalty." This argument can fairly easily be extended to all criminal acts and punishment for those acts. (There are both subjective and objective detriments involved in this example. So while there is a legitimate argument to be made about whether someone on the receiving end of a criminal sentence can determine for themselves what is beneficial or detrimental to themselves - which is dealt with in the second question to some degree - there are objective detriments to them that exist regardless of their opinions.)

To me, this seems like a legitimate equivalency to the argument that is being put forward in the original post. The truth is that decisions often have negative consequences for a class of people. These negative consequences can include death. If we are against a position simply because the class of people who benefit are those who support that position despite the fact that it also creates a detriment for another class of people, then we should probably stand against a great many positions. If you find the argument of the original post persuasive, then it might be worthwhile you analysing your views of various policy decisions from which you benefit which cause a detriment to others. Look out in particular for those which you don't seem to particularly benefit from, or you feel are neutral or inapplicable to you - those may be the most insidiously difficult, like the broad and immeasurable benefits of general and specific deterrence. Perhaps you're a utilitarian and you think that so long as the detriment of the other class of people is outweighed by the benefit to the first class of people, it's legitimate. I'm not going to get into an argument about all the problems I have with utilitarianism. Perhaps you will claim that the death penalty and abortion are not equivalent because aborted children are innocent. Despite the theological incongruity of that statement, an idea of justice is a legitimate question to raise, and does rather neatly segue into the second question. (That point also raises the question about those people who face the death penalty - or even who face imprisonment - who actually turned out to be innocent... but that's a discussion for another time.)

My second question is a backup to the first, assuming that the person defending the position of the original post takes a position something like, "Yes, all decisions that are supported by a class of people who benefit from that decision despite the decision being detrimental to another class of people are illegitimate. Decisions should be made using another model [that is more just]." The final clause of the position is bracketed because it's unnecessary, yet I feel it is most likely the position that people making this point are likely to take: that there is an injustice that needs to be righted through an alternate decision-making process. This leads us into the realm of the philosophical thought experiment often called the "veil of ignorance". It has existed for centuries, but a pretty popular proponent of it is John Rawls, who calls his particular model the "original position". The idea basically goes like this: that if everyone was forced into a machine that stripped them of their ability to know who they were or what characteristics they had or what class/es they were a member of in a society, and they were then asked to make decisions that would have benefits for one class and detriments for another, people would make decisions that were the least detrimental to everyone because nobody can be sure that they won't end up in the class/es for whom the decision is most detrimental.

Okay, with all that said, here's the second question: how do you overcome the issues that a veil of ignorance position poses? For instance, referring back to an aside mentioned above, how do we navigate the minefield that is subjective determination of benefit and detriment? This is even more explosive an issue for those who have no voice of their own, such as the profoundly disabled or the unborn, because now some third party must put their own subjective views forward as those that "best protect/benefit" the situation of the voiceless party. Third parties may garner no benefit from the position they support, and yet may also differ on the subjective determination of what is beneficial and what is detrimental to the voiceless party. It becomes particularly difficult if someone wants to argue that something as foundational as existence is not an objective benefit. There are lots of people who, upon weighing up their lives, may conclude that they would have preferred not to be born. This position is even taken by a few people in the Bible.

Even if everyone agrees that an objective determination of benefit and detriment in this area can be made, that doesn't get this position out of the woods. Now you are left with this problem: if there is an objective determination of benefit and detriment that can be made, why is the veil of ignorance necessary? If an objective truth can be determined, there's no need to worry about whether people benefit or detriment from the decisions that are made: the decision must be made a certain way because it is objectively right to do so, and that objective rightness can be determined and shown to be the case.

Of course anyone looking at this instantly realises that this is not how human decisions are made: people make bad or wrong decisions all the time; moreover, they even do it knowingly. And this is the final criticism about the veil of ignorance position that I will list: people take risks; people are selfish and aspirational; people are irrational. A veiled decision-making process doesn't protect decisions from that fundamental weakness. 

With all the above in mind, my ultimate question would be this: how is the position in the original post helpful? What idea or concept is it putting forward that is beneficial?

Same sex marriage and the not-a-plebiscite

Here in Australia, the government has asked its people to vote in a non-binding, non-compulsory postal survey on the question of whether the definition of marriage should be legally changed so as to permit same sex couples to form a legal union with the name "marriage".

I don't think the actual legal issue in question is a hugely important issue in and of itself (probably partly because of its low impact on me). However, because many people see it as part litmus test, part slippery slope, part political football, part personal attack, part culture war and just generally representative of much larger issues, I find myself feeling more strongly about it than I think it otherwise deserves (there are certainly much bigger fish to fry out there - a recent talk I heard about the plight of Aboriginal peoples highlighted a lot of issues that we as a nation should be dealing with!). But just because it's not the most important issue doesn't mean now is not a good time to deal with it. It has taken up a huge slice of Australia's public discussion pie over the last five years or more (at least five - I gave a sermon that touched on it five years ago, and this year was asked to preach on the same passage, and lo and behold it is still an issue). It presently makes up around 3-5% of my Facebook feed for whatever that's worth (lower than on a day where something triggers people to talk about it, about the same amount of posts as those about yesterday's Game of Thrones episode). I think 3% of my own personal media consumption is pretty big.

As someone who considers themselves fairly informed about the Australian political scene and who has tried to keep up with the numerous positions that float by, I feel like I have a reasonable coverage of the broad issues involved here. I find myself a swinging voter in all this - a curious position for me, since when it comes to political issues I'm usually pretty forthright in my own opinions. I can see reasons for three different positions, and while one of them is certainly the weakest, I do find my voting mind shifting between the three positions as I consider the issues, watch friends comment, and interact with the media storm that continues to rumble. I actually think it's the intensity and overall low quality of the media interaction on this topic (both big and small media - so whether it's news coverage, the blogosphere or individual people's posts on social media) that has made me so unable to settle on a position. The quality of public debate has been pretty terrible on all sides. Increasingly I believe that we as western society are unable to have reasoned discussions anymore. I thought it was just big media that went over-the-top to get a reaction from readers and sell its product. Apparently not. At least small media people have the excuse of finding it an emotive issue.

It's a problem though, because my reaction when I see a bad argument is to want to distance myself from it. I'm also not the most empathetic guy, so the emotional pleas that are made by all sides tend to have a repulsive effect too, because that's just one more form of bad argument (ie the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion). Note: that's different from the people who just express how the debate is making them feel - that is a legitimate thing to put forward, and I do pay attention to that. So I've turned to writing this little blog post, mostly to help myself understand what I'm going to do come postal voting day. I figure if I actually stick it on my blog, then if someone asks me what my position is on this topic, I can point them to it.

So let's start with that weakest position: the No vote. I think the No vote is the most difficult to reasonably put forward. This might explain why it's also been the one that has been the least well argued. It's certainly where my vote pendulum has spent the least amount of time. That doesn't mean it's indefensible, but it certainly does require some stretch, some faith (not religious, I just mean trusting the people making the arguments), and a fair degree of convolution to make a reasonable point.

Let me see if I can explain. Take a moral argument for a No vote. I am a Christian, and I believe that homosexuality is not in line with God's plan for people according to how I read scripture. That is not by any means a universal view, though it is an orthodox one and it is also mine. For some people, the argument ends there - "I think this, and the government is asking me what I think." That belief alone, however, is not a sufficient condition for a No vote. The government is not asking my opinion on what I would like the law to be for me, but for the whole country. For a moral argument to be valid, I would need to add to this a belief that my interpretation of God's morality is robust enough to be worth forcing on others, and that governments enforce morality, and that God wants me to enforce my moral view onto non-believers, and that God wants governments to enforce his morality in this way, and that all of this is not superseded by more general provisions of God's will like "love your enemy" and "do for others as you would have them do for you". That is one of the shorter and more direct lines of reasoning for a No argument. If someone can tick all those boxes, they have a reasonable reason for voting No. Knock out just one, and to me it's looking pretty shaky.

Even if someone can tick all those boxes, if they want to avoid hypocrisy they should also be lobbying the government to enforce all their other moral beliefs. The scary thing is if I give a list of examples like altogether outlawing homosexual practice, divorce, sex outside of marriage, and the consumption of sugar, there are probably a number of people who would think that's fine and good. They won't lobby for them - people are lazy - but they might support an organisation who would (ACL perhaps, though I'm no sure of their attitude towards sugar). So instead, let me create another list: shall we ask the government to outlaw infant baptism, the ordination of women, or the use of musical instruments in church? (By the way, the whole "marriage definition" argument fits in here: if you think marriage is a term of religious art, then do you really want governments made up of people who aren't of your faith telling you what it means?)

Although we may not remember it, the reason we say no to that idea is because we have already fought a war about this in the west: the Thirty Years' War. We adopted pluralism in the west - even back when pluralism only meant including different Christian denominations - because after eight million people died we realised that it was unworkable for a government to enforce religious or ideological affiliation when its people hold different beliefs. Still, if people really want to unravel the Peace of Westphalia, they are welcome to do so, and a No vote makes sense for them.

What I find super interesting about the No campaign as a whole is that the moral argument (which I think is the most powerful No argument) is not the one that generally headlines. It's certainly out there, and were I not a student of both theology, history and politics I might find it compelling. But No campaigners know that even if this is what they believe, it won't sell to the common Australian. The average Aussie doesn't particularly care what God thinks to the point of legislating it: their morality finds its source elsewhere. Another source of authority must be found, and so we come to the "big issue" argument - which apparently isn't anything to do with homelessness.

Many No vote campaigns (because there are several) focus on highlighting "bigger picture" issues that people seem to think or feel are at stake in this debate. For instance, a campaign might link same sex marriage with the right of children to have a mother and a father. Now, the survey isn't about children; not directly, at least. But they see a link (usually with marriage as a social convention for the raising of children), and the reasoning goes something like this: same sex marriage will change the cultural pattern of family relationships in our country by changing the underlying meaning of marriage, devaluing the role of mother and father in the life of children, which is the healthiest thing for children, and (importantly) children are voiceless and so we need to speak up on their behalf.

These kinds of arguments are problematic because the majority of No campaigns I've seen don't actually spend time explaining their position, they just say "trust me" and use these arguments to appeal to emotion. This looks an awful lot like fear-mongering to me. That's not cool. If you're going to make an argument based on claims like this, you have to outline what the problem really is, how it's apparently going to happen, how big of a factor is it in that thing happening, and what the chances are of it actually happening because of that thing you're against. After all, even if you do think children have a "natural right" (whatever that is) to grow up with their biological mother and father (who are super important because why?), if this debate is only going to make it 1% more likely that society ditches its preference for biological parents, is it worth opposing on that 1% basis?

Some at least try to prove these statements by offering authoritative scholarly material that supports their case. The problem with scholarship is what judges call the "experts at 10 paces" scenario. One side calls an expert, so the other side calls another expert, and as if by magic both experts say exactly what the people paying them want them to say. Thankfully, in court a judge can toss both of these experts into a conference and actually force them via a code of conduct and their own professionalism to come to some agreements that might actually help the judge make a decision. This is not generally an option for the average voter when confronted with reams of academic papers from both sides which say opposite things. When you strip away an objective backing for your position (eg God says so), the easiest way to diffuse your "we think it's gunna be bad" argument is to counter with "we think it's gunna be fine".

Moreover, as lofty as evidence-based policy making seems, it may be unattractive due to consequences that flow from it that don't reflect what people actually want. People are usually more wed to what they want than what evidence tells them is best. I think it's called confirmation bias, or selfishness, or basically being a human. Sugar should probably be illegal, but if you try and ban cake I will definitely not vote for you (unless you also free refugees from detention and settle them here - seriously, I will take the hit if that's what it takes).

Another example might be the argument that this is a step in the erosion of religious or personal freedoms, and we will eventually end up living in a country where churches, mosques or whoever will no longer be allowed to preach their position publicly that same sex marriage is wrong, because once the government sanctions it as legal, people will begin to push for anti-discrimination legislation to prevent people from dissenting against what is after all now lawful (or that existing legislation will come into effect). Whether this is a slippery slope argument really depends on how it is framed. It certainly attracts a lot of slippery slope rhetoric. Putting the argument at its highest though, the problem I see is that if I'm worried about anti-discrimination legislation and religious or personal freedoms, I should probably be campaigning about that directly, rather than indirectly via same sex marriage. I actually do think Australia has some problems in the area of personal and religious freedoms (why isn't Christianity an ethno-religion, NSW?), and these things should be addressed - but directly, not through the convoluted means of the same sex marriage debate. Taking an issue that has captured public interest and twisting it to your own ends is good politics, but generally poor form. That doesn't mean it's not right to talk about your legitimate concerns. But if this is your big issue, why vote No in a survey that has no actual power to change anything? Why not just vote Yes, but campaign for Yes But Only If You Protect My Right To Not Marry People If I Don't Want To And To Continue Dissenting. You need to show that same-sex marriage being legislated is a necessary or sufficient condition to the erosion of your rights. It merely being a contributing factor is not enough.

There are lots of terrible arguments for why people should vote No (looking at you, neo-nazis), but the only one I really want to comment on is the one that I find most attractive: the group membership argument. Basically it goes like this: you're Christian/Muslim/politically conservative/etc; you need to represent your fellow group members who are against this issue; we need our voice to be heard because this is after all what we believe. At its worst, this is a sort of no true Scotsman fallacy. But its attraction is undeniable, especially to members of these types of groups. No-one wants to be a black sheep, no-one wants to let the side down (and it goes double when you draw your wages from this group too! I certainly feel that pressure as a missionary, and I imagine that there are many ministers and other Christian workers who feel likewise). And you know what? Having a voice is important, and that's what campaigning is for. Despite lots of rhetoric attempting to take your voice away (I'll get to that), no-one has actually done so. But is a strong showing in a government survey for your position a strong showing for your voice? It is only if you claim the whole result as your position, and I think that's a pretty bankrupt thing to do. I have no doubt that if the survey comes back with a 51% No vote, this is precisely what the government will do (eg "This is a vote of confidence in Malcolm Turnbull"). I can sure as heck tell you that if I voted No, it wouldn't be that for me!

And therein lies another problem: when it comes to putting forward your position in the public forum, campaigning is a lot more effective than actually voting. A vote is a blunt instrument, because it will be interpreted in ways that are far outside your control. A No vote from me would not mean I hate people who want to be same sex married, but while I might get the opportunity to express my nuanced opinion to some people within my sphere of influence (if I had the balls to say how I voted on Facebook, for instance, although on second thought not that many people actually listen on social media, they just wait their turn to yell), the fact is the vast majority of people directly affected by this vote are not going to hear my voice, but they are going to look at the percentage of Nos and say, "This many people hate me." And that sucks. When I saw the results of a poll showing that 10% of people in Australia want same sex marriage legislated so as to force churches to marry same sex couples against their will, that was quite a shock. 10% is a lot. Imagine what it would feel like if you thought 30% of people hated you. Or 51%.

So even if I construct the most powerful No position I can, I can't tick enough boxes in my convoluted argument of choice to make it reasonable, I don't have enough faith in the people I'd need to trust that they're right, and I'm not comfortable stretching the picture to be quite so big as to co-opt same sex marriage into the equation. (Other people could tick the boxes, and in doing so are following a reasonable argument.) I don't want my fellow conservative Christians to feel like I'm abandoning the fold. I really do believe that this whole argument is an opportunity to tell people that Jesus loves them regardless of who they are or what they do (I haven't linked to articles in this blog post, but I think this one deserves a link, because it is such a good example of using this issue as an opportunity to spread the gospel). But I don't actually need to vote No to do that.

On we go to the Yes campaign then. There are some well-constructed Yes positions that are pretty persuasive. I'm not swayed by utilitarian considerations as a rule, but many people are and they're allowed to be, and the Yes campaign is well placed there. I am rather fond of democracy, and while I don't think the mob should determine policy, legislation should certainly reflect the society from which it comes. There are a lot of pragmatic elements of the position that ring true, although you have to be careful that some of them don't just sound more palatable because the opposing position has been so badly stated.

Were I to attempt to create the Yes argument that is most attractive to me, it would look like this: moral coercion is inappropriate, the legislative change is almost entirely symbolic, the immediate changes it would produce are almost entirely socially positive, the longer term changes to society's structure are possible but questionable, the message of support it would send to a marginalised and mistreated minority would be positive and inclusive, and it offers a way to show love to people who need it. That's a very dry position statement. Let me tell you a story instead.

When I used to work in a petrol station, I was finishing a Christmas Day shift at 8pm and handing over to my workmate Mohammed. This year it also happened to be Ramadan at Christmas time, and Mohammed (an Indian national over here doing his MIT and working several jobs to make ends meet) had just finished a shift at another petrol station elsewhere in Sydney and travelled to this one on the Northern Beaches to do back-to-back shifts. Because it was daylight when he left his last shift, and night-time by the time he got to my servo, he hadn't eaten all day. And because he was a devout Muslim, even though it was now nightfall he couldn't eat anything in the store because it wasn't halal (I think he could have eaten some Cadburys, but that's hardly a meal). He was starving. I was getting off my shift, and so I offered to get him something to eat. He was very thankful, but told me it would have to be halal because that was his conviction.

I can tell you that at the time, having been a Christian for only a year or two and attending a quite conservative and biblically based church, I was in conniptions about what to do. Here was a guy who needed food, and surely I should be helping him out. But if I bought it for him I'd be supporting his religious views, which were not only different from my own, but I firmly believed were wrong and unnecessary. Of course, I drove to the nearest place that was open on Christmas Day night that had halal food and bought him some curry, and I got some too, and we ate together. I did it because I'd rather show someone that I love and care for them than hold them to a Christian lifestyle that they don't see a need to uphold; I'd rather not judge them for that failure to love Jesus as I do; I'd rather do for them what I would hope they would do for me. And when I say "I'd rather", I actually mean Jesus would rather me do that, and so that's what I did.

I don't think people should practice homosexuality for no other reason than I believe God doesn't want them to. God doesn't coerce people into following his ways, and so neither will I. People should do what God wants because they love God, and so people loving God is what I care about most. A loving relationship with God through Jesus Christ comes first; how you live your life after that is detail. Some people think that God does not put a ban on homosexuality, and they're also welcome to their religious opinions in this pluralistic society we live in. Furthermore, in my opinion (as someone who has studied politics, political philosophy and law, and also who has participated in the political sphere at a reasonable level), whilst legislation may provide some influence on cultural moral mores, it doesn't dictate or enforce morality. While many people may tie this particular issue to bigger issues, I think a focus on the actual issue at hand is more intellectually responsible as the perceived threats are not substantial. Again I will stress that other people may not have these opinions, and that is fine. But these are the opinions that impact on my decision-making.

There are a few other side things that line up for me too: for instance, while I can't be sure that this whole debate is causing young LGBTI+ people to commit suicide, if I think the chance of harm to people because of a No result is sufficiently proportional to the chance that conservative people will crack a sad if there's a Yes result (proportional because obviously people dying is a bit more important than people being sad), I'll fall on the side of people not killing themselves. Dead people can't be evangelised. I'm not so convinced by the possibility of the debate itself causing harm that I think the debate as a whole should be stifled and silenced altogether, however.

I will also admit that the ability to be able to say I voted Yes, whilst providing me with a position to express my love for the people around me who are deeply affected by this issue, would also put me in a position where I would avoid being labelled a bigot, a homophobe, an imbecile and so many other kinds of terrible names. And that brings me rather neatly to some of my problems with the Yes positions.

It might just be me, or it might be because many No arguments threaten ephemeral catastrophes that seem rather toothless when you don't agree with the arguments, but in my exposure to the various arguments that form both sides, while the No position has its jerks (that poster down in Melbourne of late is a good example... assuming it's real), the overall trend in their campaigns has been one of strong disapproval but not disrespect towards No voters (I can certainly understand how same sex couples themselves may feel victimised). The Yes campaigns, meanwhile, have been bloody awful. I'm not sure if it's because the Yes campaigners think they've got it in the bag, but as a swinging voter I can tell you that being told I'm a Nazi for even considering the opposite position is not exactly a vote winner. The perpetual pillorying is not good campaigning. Instead of fear-mongering it's shaming, and for a position whose argument is that they have been seriously injured by shaming, that's rather hypocritical. As I said earlier, I'm a fan of democracy, and the tactic that has been employed of seeking to shut down debate is to me untenable, and hiding behind the health and wellbeing of children in an attempt to do so is exactly the same kind of bad argument that's being made by No campaigns.

Furthermore, many of the arguments and slogans that the Yes campaigns put forward almost seem to invite ridicule and encourage flawed understandings. I received a handout from Rainbow Labor at the train station the other day, and it gave me three reasons to vote Yes: "1) Tony Abbott doesn't want you to, 2) Our weddings will be bloody fab, 3) All love is equal." How serious are you taking this thing? Do you want me to take it as seriously as that? Coming off as cocky winners before a vote's been held is pretty unAustralian, and I don't say that as a joke. Aussies don't like tall poppies, and are always more conservative at the ballot box than they are in any poll. Now, I get that there's a fair bit of marketing spin in this, and a desire to paint a picture of hip and fun. But the voting bloc you need to win in Australia is not youth, and for people like me who are really trying to decide what to do, a lack of serious says to me that if I don't take your position it doesn't matter.

What does "all love is equal" mean? What does "love is love" mean? Is my love for my wife the same as my love for my dog? Is my love for my parents the same as the love for my friends? Is my love for chilli the same as my love for God? I certainly don't think so, and I reckon you don't either. I know what the slogan means: that romantic and companionly love between people of the same gender should be seen as equal to that kind of love between heterosexuals. I don't have a problem with that, and I recognise that it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker. But in a context where one of the arguments against you is at worst a slippery slope argument (namely that those in favour of polyamory or more extremely not normative relationships like between adults and children will use this as a stepping stone) but at best a limitation of rights argument (polyamorous people should be given the right to marry more people, since at present they're the ones who face criminal charges if they try), it seems like a bad decision to promote a slogan that leaves you open to this kind of criticism by almost overtly suggesting that you are actually supporting some or all of these causes. If you actually are (and I imagine that polyamory is actually supported by at least some Yes campaigners), own it as much as you need to (which, given this vote isn't about that, isn't really that much, but it's not zero either if you are campaigning to further a bigger issue). Don't say, "It's not about that". If it's a bad argument, counter it. If it's not, then uh-oh.

Just as a kicker, I'm not a huge fan of how the Yes vote has garnered a significant amount of neo-capitalist support for the reason that it provides a good platform for supporting an ultra-individualist message that ultimately assists capitalism to ruin everything. This is not a "bad people support your side" argument (this has been done by both sides, and it's a stupid argument: I brush my teeth regardless of whether Hitler did); this is an "I don't agree with the ultra-individualism that forms part of your argument hence making it attractive to the bourgoisie" argument. But really that's probably just me. Most people love capitalism.

Again, there are plenty of terrible arguments for voting Yes (the ones that bother me most are the legal or rights-based arguments that are factually inaccurate). There probably isn't a great point in me going through and debunking them; they're bad arguments. They don't need my attention. The point is they aren't going to convince me to vote Yes.

So on the one hand I have a No campaign that is not very well argued and needs to draw a long bow to be reasonable, but can be defended and makes me feel like part of the team and while fervent is more respectful; on the other hand I have a Yes campaign that is more easily defended and aligns with far more of my broad beliefs about politics and law, but doesn't seem to take itself seriously, seeks to shut down debate and threatens to shame me if I don't agree with them loudly enough.

Enter the third option: don't vote at all. I saw some early support for this position coming from the now Yes camp, although it seems that it got shot down, and I can understand why. I strongly dislike this option, at least partly because I think public expression of opinion in politics is valuable to policy-making, but also probably partly because I'm Australian and compulsory voting feels right. And yet it says a lot that at the moment this is the position that holds my attention the most. There are some good reasons for this: the vote has become less and less legitimate (from compulsory to voluntary, from a plebiscite to a mail survey); the government has made no firm statement about how they will evaluate the response and no firm statement on what they will do in the case of a result (and may not be trustworthy even if they did); there is every possibility that whatever way I vote it is going to be counted in that blunt-instrument style I mentioned earlier towards some ideological position to which I do not subscribe; and it doesn't prevent me from entering the debate to put forward the stuff I think is important.

And then there are a number of arguments that, while not hugely strong on their own, do still have some appeal: I don't think this issue is so important that I need to be voting on it; it means I get to stop thinking about it; it's a cop-out vote that saves me from the pressure of both sides - while it's unlikely to make me any friends, it's unlikely to lose me any either; and it's possible that whatever anyone votes, if the Coalition does nothing Labor will simply pass legislation to this effect when they next gain power. (I wish I could say 'likely', but the ALP are a bit spineless these days. Why does Australian politics suck so hard? Oh, wait, it's because of us voters. Derp.) Toss in that it's the lazy option (I can literally do nothing and follow this position) and it looks kinda appealing.

The sad thing for me is that possibly the single biggest reason I'd vote Nothing (or even No) rather than Yes is because of Yes campaigning itself. I have absolutely no problem with people in the Yes camp expressing themselves however they want, but the result of their choice of expressions has meant that even though their position, reasonably presented, is the one I think makes the most sense, I might not vote that way because I'm just sick of being told I'm stupid, I'm worthless, my voice is not welcome, my vote (not just my opinion, my actual vote) is illegitimate, this issue has nothing to do with me, and that my Christian friends who may vote No are even worse.

I am a sinner, and sometimes I make decisions out of a desire for comfort, security, personal benefit or laziness. But I pray that I don't vote (or not vote) for selfish reasons, because to me love is about making sacrifices for other people's benefit, even if they don't deserve it. A little something Jesus taught me.

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A few more words about legislating morality

After writing this, I found myself in a bit of a moral quandary regarding my position that governments should not legislate morality. I was listening to quite a good sermon on the need for us to invest in the lives of others, and the preacher said something like, "Often people ask, 'Why does God allow so many people to live in poverty?' Well, God tells us to care for the poor. I don't think the problem is that there isn't enough to go around. The problem is that we like to hoard our wealth." Damn right.

This is one of the key reasons that I feel we should have a socialist government that more equally distributes resources: life matters more than wealth. But if I'm asking the government to regulate people's wealth in order to essentially bypass or enforce their charitability because God wants us looking after the poor, how is that different to someone seeking to enforce a law preventing same sex couples from marrying because God doesn't like it?

I'm actually not 100% sure of an answer here, so I thought again I'd put words on electronic paper and see if it helped my train of thought. I will probably make absolutist statements, but of course all this stuff is just my opinion, and it doesn't mean that there aren't reasonable opinions to the contrary (I will, as usual, trash some less reasonable ones in my eyes). I'll also be taking a Christian perspective, since that's where I'm coming from.

I've read some articles that boil everything down to a "natural law" which we must follow. This argument generally comes from a verse like Romans 13:4-7. The problem is this verse isn't about being in power, it's about submitting to power (I do believe that this passage, along with others, sets out a broad deontological framework for punishment; Kant agrees with me here). We all know that governments don't always follow God's morality; rather, God uses governments as agents despite their imperfection (like Assyria or Babylon). Nations are as sinful as the people who live in them. One author talked about how we don't legislate our morality, or your morality, but the morality. That's pretty simply falsifiable; not necessarily because there is no the morality, but because no-one has the authority to point to it or articulate it besides God. God hasn't made it as clear as we might like on some issues, and there is even argument about how clear the boundaries between clarity and opacity are. At this point we're back at the need for the Peace of Westphalia.

I've read some articles that attempt to define morality in terms of a sort of personal adherence only, and say that Christians should seek to legislate freedom (giving people as much leeway to serve God as possible) and justice (protecting the weak from the evils of others when necessary). They use verses like John 8:1-11 to show that Jesus did not enforce morality on people, and Genesis 2:16-17 to show that God's creative order is not one of force but choice; and any of the hundreds of verses that talk about God's desire for justice (Deuteronomy 16:20 stands pretty well for me here).

These are pretty good points. One problem with this pattern of reasoning is it seems to lead in the literature to a libertarian mode of government: minimum government providing maximum freedom to its citizens. At least, that's where our western minds take it, because we're individualists. Christians (particularly American Christians) try to say that Christianity is the reason we have freedoms in the west. It's not; we can thank the Enlightenment project and its focus on individualism for that. Don't believe me? Just point me to where individual freedoms sprung up under European Catholic rule between 400AD and 1500AD. Human value? Absolutely. But human freedom? I'm not certain, but I'd certainly like to see the evidence.

Another problem is how we define justice. Justice is a pretty difficult eel to nail down. We can end up coming right back to the whole Peace of Westphalia thing in trying to come to a definition of what justice is, or whether something is or isn't just. The benefit of "justice" over "morality" is that I think you're at least more likely to come to a group definition of a principle or concept that defines a process than you are a list of proscribed or prescribed actions or activities.

All this would be easier if I just thought that individuals were the core currency of government. Then I could just say 'whatever is in the majority wins, and minorities just lump it'; then government just becomes a machine for determining and enforcing majority sentiment. Likewise, I guess if I just thought power was the most important thing, I'd be happy with the rich making all the decisions, and we could live in some sort of realpolitik aristocracy.

The thing is, in my opinion government isn't about individuals; it's the intersection between individual and community. God values both of those things; so should we. I should point out that when I say individual I mean something like "a single person or a group of persons who align by choice"; when I say communal I mean something like "a group of people aligned due to circumstance". A group of friends or a church are examples of a group of individuals held together ultimately through the choice of its individual members. A family or a nation-state are examples of a group of individuals held together by factors outside of their control, membership of which cannot be easily avoided. (It's not a perfect definition - adoption obviously brings someone into a family by choice; some can choose to leave family or change nationalities. But these things are not straightforward or even possible for many.) Community basically forces people to interact, and government and its laws are the grease that make those forced interactions work. (As an aside, when you think about the prevalence of organised marriage in the past, suddenly it makes a lot more sense why marriage is a government issue and why its relevance seems to slip a little in modern times in the west where marriages are far more by mutual consent.)

Moreover, government is about utilising power for the benefit of the community as a whole. That doesn't mean the fruits of that power need to be entirely egalitarian (I mean hey, bring it on), but I think God makes it clear that those in power should be looking out for the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed, and to the extent they aren't doing that they are not following him. This is probably one of the reasons democracy is so popular: it tries to balance the individual with the communal, and it leaves space for leadership to countermand majority opinion when that opinion is clearly not in the best interests of minorities. It's not perfect (nothing is), but at least it attempts to address these problems.

Ultra-individualist libertarianism is not better than some sort of theocratic totalitarianism (if anything, I'd lean towards the latter if I had to choose, depending on the leadership). Instead, it seems that freedom and justice need to be tempered by one another.  This is not an either/or dichotomy; it is a spectrum upon which governments may move. The needs of society may at times require a shift in that spectrum in one direction or the other, and that is the work of leaders to decide. The distinction between a Christian seeking to legislate a specific set of moral acts and a Christian seeking to legislate a specific position on the broad spectrum of freedom and justice is kind of like the difference between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. I'm not advocating the consequentialist moral position that utilitarianism provides though - rather, I'm talking about a sort of act vs rule deontology. I don't know if that's a thing (pardon my philosophical ignorance on this point!) but it's a good enough comparison for me, so it's going to have to do.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a system where Christians living in a democracy get a say in what is legislated, but have to realise that their voice is not the only one that gets to be heard. However, it also leaves us with Christians who in their decision-making need to recognise that their opinions in political matters should not be made simply along personal moral guidelines, but in terms of what decisions are best for the smooth running of a pluralist community thrust together by circumstance. That's the moral thing to do, and at the end of the day, even if I think that Christians shouldn't legislate morality, I still believe they should legislate morally. The decisions made, whether as an MP, a lobbyist, or a voter, will be and should be made within a personal moral framework, and that framework must include the needs of all. In terms of big picture decisions (such as structure of government or even which political party should be in power) this is going to mean taking the good with the bad. There are no perfect choices this side of heaven, except the one to love God and believe in his son Jesus Christ.

Being organised and managing your time

Being organised is an efficiency matter. It means you have more time. Time management is about understanding how much time you have, and what you are going to do with it. So time management comes first.

What is time?

Time is both quantitative and qualitative. It's really important to understand this, because you need to manage both how much time you have, and what the best times to do things are. Money is a subset of time. For us working stiffs, we have a hard limit on how much money we will ever get based on how much time we have to work in, and a soft limit based on how much time we use to make money.

There are several elements to managing your time.  You need to understand when your time exists, what your priorities are, and how long things take to do.

Priorities

Before you even look at your own priorities, you need to understand your involuntary time requirements and your duties to others that cannot be minimised.

Involuntary time is time taken to eat, use the bath room, sleep,  travel and all those other things you can't avoid. Sometimes you can try to minimise these things, but it's not a good idea because they will just come back with reinforcements and end up claiming more of your time.

Duties are those things you are relied on for by other people which, if you do not perform them, will lead to their harm. To differentiate, responsibilities are things you take on; duties are things thrust upon you. Responsibilities can turn into duties (when you become the only person capable of doing something), so watch out!

Because duties and involuntary time are the things you control least, they have to be accounted for first. Everything else fits in around them.

Now is a good time to write down a list of your involuntary times and duties. Hopefully there aren't too many of them!

Importance and Urgency

Once you understand what your involuntary time and duties are, you can start to think about all the other things you do. There are two ways to think about priorities in relation to time: their urgency and their importance. These both must be factored in when considering any priority. The key thing to remember is that while importance is subjective (you get to choose what's important) urgency is far more objective (it is a function of how long it takes plus how soon it needs to be done. The closer the time it takes gets to how much time is left to do it, the more urgent it becomes).

Everything you do needs to be evaluated for its importance and urgency. Only then can you adequately allot time to things. If you don't get this balance right, you will just end up stressed all the time. If you think of importance and urgency as a punnet square, you want to live your life in the important non-urgent square.  All the other squares are less ideal: important urgent is what we are using time management to prevent, but is sometimes necessary; non-important urgent is a trap that should be avoided; and non-important non-urgent is stuff you can do to just waste time for no real benefit, so is great for procrastination.

	Important	Non-Important
Urgent	2	4
Non-Urgent	1	3

Importance

Working out importance is absolutely vital to time management. Urgency is pretty much empirical: but importance is something you need to understand for yourself. Think about your spirituality, your family, your friendships, your study, your free time, and your work time. How would you rate them in terms of importance from first to last? This is vital to knowing not just how much time to give these things, but what kind of time to give them. Listing these broad high level titles of the things that claim your time gives you something to refer back to, to remind you of what's most important to you. It can be important to have something like this when non-important urgent things rear their head, because often it is easy for something urgent to look important when actually it's not.

The order of importance at the highest level is not about excluding things. It is about including everything in your life to make sure that it gets the time, both quantitative and qualitative, that it deserves. Sometimes there might be something in our lives that takes up a lot of time, even though it's not the most important thing (eg work). This makes it all the more important to ensure that we have enough quality time to spend doing the things that are even more important to us.

Now is a good time to list the things that broadly take up your time in order of their importance. This is just high level titles: religion, work, study, leisure, relationships etc. Remember that you decide where things go in this list, and there is no wrong answer. We've already taken care of involuntary time and duties, after all. Draw this list up from left to right next to your involuntary time and duties: these are titles after all, and this way we can put stuff under them. Once you've got them all down, you can move them around to put them in an order that you're happy with. You can always change it, but it is worth thinking about what order these big headings go in, because it helps shape your attitude towards those things.

The most important things need to be given the best time to do them. Thankfully the best time to do some things isn't the same for other things. Identifying when the best time is to do something isn't usually that difficult. Some things can only be done at certain times, which is the de facto best time to do them. Others are just best done at certain times, and can give you more wiggle room in when they're done.

Once you have a list of high level titles of what takes up your time, then you can start filling in underneath them all the things that take up your time under those titles. There will be lots of them. They don't need to be in any particular order, just write down whatever comes to mind.  Think through your days, weeks and months and about what you do. Put everything down, under whatever heading it best fits with. It is very helpful to break down your big time titles into individual activities, because you can then give them a more individual importance ranking, but also breaking things down into their component parts makes it easier to manage the time they take up and makes them easier to accomplish. So list them in order of their importance to you.

Best Times

Once you have all those individual activities listed down, we're going to make another list next to them. (If you prefer lists to be long rather than wide - like I do - then now is the time to take all your lists and paste them underneath each other, so you can use less columns overall.) This is a list of the best times (qualitatively) to do all of these things. It doesn't need to be a specific time period, just morning, afternoon, evening (or a specific day, or even "work hours" if that's the only time it can be done).

Adding the best qualitative times for these activities is important, because this is where your time management starts to really take form. One of the best ways of remembering when you need to do things and structuring your time is to give each activity and even high level title it's own specific part of a day, week or month (depending on its repetitiveness). Creating a logical structure that makes sense to you is the best way to ensure that the things important to you get done.

Free Time

It is at this point that you may start to realise you don't have as much time as you'd like. That's totally normal. The people who need time management most are the people who are highly committed to lots of different pursuits. While it's great to do your best to fit things in, one of the reasons we list things in order of importance is to see which of the things we do may have to be sacrificed, or given so little time so infrequently that they become more of a wish than an actual activity.  Time is precious, and sometimes you have to be firm and make hard decisions not to do things you'd like to do, because there are other things more important that you would like to do more.

Urgency

That list gives us a good idea of levels of importance of the things that take up our time,  and the kind of time we should give them. Now we need to determine the amount of time these things should be given. This is done by determining their urgency. Remember urgency is a function of two things: when something needs to be done by, and how long it will take to do.

Hard Deadlines

Determining when things must be done by is usually a mix of hard deadlines (when something objectively must be done by in order to retain its value in being done) and soft deadlines (when it would best suit you to do it). Hard deadlines are fairly easy to determine because they are usually set in stone for a reason external to you. While it's important to know these hard deadlines because they place suitable limits on planning, they are not great on their own. Simply planning to do something just before it is due is a great way to fail to do it because an unforeseen circumstance appears and blows out the expected time it would take. More complex activities are actually impossible to do simply with hard deadlines! For this reason it is much better (not to mention more efficient) to plan using your own soft deadlines. These allow you to complete an activity during the time that best suits you, before it becomes too urgent.

Now it's a good time to look at all the activities on your list and determine their hard deadlines. Always do that first: a soft deadline can never be after a hard deadline. What you should now have is your activities, when the best times are to do them, and their hard deadlines. Looking at their best times to do them should tell you when you should set your soft deadlines for each activity (assuming there is still enough of those best times left to do the activity!).  Of course, the definition of a best time is partly determined by what time you have left. And this brings us to working out how much time something takes to do.

Many activities repeat regularly, and so their deadline appears over and over. That's fine - you can just list it as "Wednesday 9pm (weekly)" or "10pm (daily)" or "30 May 11:59pm".

Estimation

Everything you do takes time. Although it is all measurable, we don't often take the time to do detailed time and motion studies of our lives. So what we're left with is estimating how long something is going to take. Sometimes that's easy and sometimes it's hard, and some people are better at it than others. Short of actually measuring how long something takes to do on average, the best way to estimate how long it will take is to sit down and give it some proper, considered, honest thought. Rushing estimation is great way to rob yourself of time to do something. The less capable you are of estimating how long something will take, the more generous you should be in giving it time. Finishing something faster than you planned is always better than running out of time.

The bigger an activity is, the harder it is to estimate how long it is going to take. Big essays and assignments are a classic for this. This is why it is such a good idea to break down big activities into several smaller activities, as it is often easier to estimate how long it is going to take to do all your research/reading, all your planning, and all your actual writing. Even then, working out a total amount of time can be difficult. Do your best, and be as generous as you think you need to be, especially with more important activities.

Now is the time to fill in the estimated time you think it will take to complete each activity. This can take a while. But it's worth doing, because it will really help you to protect the time that these things take, and gives you a target to aim for in terms of time to set aside for its completion. Some things take a long time, and can't be done in one sitting. That's fine, put the total amount of time for now if you can.

Soft Deadlines

Now that we have all this information, we can get to the meat of time management: setting soft deadlines for all these activities. Soft deadlines are where it's at in time management. In a perfect world, everything would be done to a soft deadline, because soft deadlines are made up of the time that is best to do an activity. With all the information we now have, we can see already the best time to do things in, we can see when it's due (hard deadline), we can see how long it's going to take to complete, and so it's just a matter of dividing the estimated time of completion between the number of best times we have for that activity between now and its due date. 

Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world, and the simple fact is that the best time to do a lot of things is similar - things that take mental effort, for instance, are best done at whenever you have your peak performance in the day. But lots of things compete for your peak performance. That's why we have ranked things in order of importance. But even then, you will find your peak performance hours are at a premium, and will fill up quickly. This is why procrastination is a real killer - it's doing things that aren't important or urgent, but in your peak performance times!

So now you need to work out the next best solutions for the activities that don't get to have their best times. When doing that, you have to realise that doing things outside of their best times makes them take longer. So make sure you give them enough extra time.

When that's done, you are pretty much at the end of your time management. The next thing to do would be to feed in your hard deadlines into a Google calendar with alarms set to remind you at various points that things are due, and start to fill in your time slots with the things you are meant to be doing. Then you have an easy reference to tell you when you should be doing things.

EMERGENCIES

Emergencies happen, and like involuntary time and duties, they are unavoidable. But unlike them, they are also unplannable.  The best thing about having a calendar that tells you exactly what you should be doing and when is that when a real emergency comes up (hospital visit etc) you can actually see what time you lost, and you will know what you need to make up. It allows you to reschedule things and shuffle stuff around with a real idea in mind of how much time you are going to need.

Being Organised

Organisation is really just a method of ensuring that you have more time to do the things you want to do. Here are a few quick things that help you to be organised.

Time management: by planning out your time, you actually end up being more efficient. Yay!

Doubling up: If you can work out how to do two things at the same time (eg memorizing in the shower) then you can make much better use of your time. There are some times that seem dead, like travel times. Try and fill them with things that you can do in those times (listen to lectures, building your relationships, free time reading).

Using money wisely: Money can sometimes be liquid time. Sometimes you can use it to free up time for things that are more valuable than the money you use to gain it (takeaway food is a great example).

Learn to say no: There is an old saying, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person". This is true, but it also makes busy people dead people. So you have to learn to say no sometimes. The best way to do this is by having a strong understanding of your priorities of importance.

Alarms: Having alarms is just so great. They remind you to do things. If you find one alarm isn't enough, set two, or three, or ten. I have three alarms to get up in the morning. If an alarm goes off and you don't need it, what's the harm?

Structure and repetition: Putting things where they belong, and doing things at the same time regularly, makes you less likely to forget them. You don't forget that MoG is on a Tuesday, or that church is on a Sunday, or that pants go on your legs. It's the same principle.

Distractions: Try and keep distractions to a minimum. They are like little urgent non-important things trying to grab your attention.