Just for 2Barriff …

Although cosmetic surgery is now as commonplace as a perm or a manicure, many of us would still be embarrassed to admit that we are considering treatment; but there is no embarrassment factor with the FFH therapy, because it is self-administered! The incredible truth is you can even perform the treatment in front of your friends and family, but they will have no idea that you are doing anything out of the ordinary – although they may comment on your skin’s healthy glow!

Does this sound too good to be true? What would you think if I told you that the treatment is all natural and there are no side-effects?

The FFH facelift is the world’s best-kept secret. Once you learn what it is, the only item you have to pay for is one piece of equipment that you can buy over the counter or through the web. And even better, you choose how much you spend: from a minimum of $50 a year to a maximum of $200 a year. Yes, a maximum of $200 in one year! To buy it outright can cost up to $1000, but $500 is sufficient to achieve quick and noticeable results at excellent value. (This item can last for ten years, but we recommend replacing it every five as they begin to biodegrade. Of course, higher quality usually costs a little more.)

What is the FFH facelift? The therapy is based on the finding that it takes 1,000 creases to form a wrinkle. Once we pass 21 years of age, our body begins to deteriorate: our skin loses its elasticity and wrinkles form more readily. But that’s no problem with the FFH treatment: not only is it self-administered, you can perform it as often as you want, and get rid of the wrinkles faster! It won’t conflict with any other treatments; in fact, because a small part of the therapy involves mild exfoliation, it will help skin creams penetrate and work more rapidly.

The only information you need now is, What is this equipment? And how do I use it? I’ll let you know … in a while. And no, I don’t want anything for this information. No money; no gifts; nothing. Not one cent. You can have it for free. I’ll even give you a hint: all the information you need is found in three letters – FFH!

copyright Troy Grisgonelle 2008.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:9-11)

In history there were people who, when the name “Jesus” was uttered, would literally bow: a pre-emptive obeisance perhaps. I suppose that most people, reading this passage, would think that “the name above every other name” is “Jesus” because we’re used to hearing the abstract noun “name” connected with a proper name, like “Philip” or “Chloe”.

In Biblical and later times, a name wasn’t just a label; it referred to who you were and what you did. If your name was David and you shod horses for a living, you’d be called David the Farrier; for simplicity, David Farrier. If Margaret was a cook, she would be known as Margaret (the) Cook.

When God renamed Abraham and Jacob – and when Jesus gave Simeon the name Peter – He was giving them a new identity. Abram became the “father of many peoples”, Jacob became Israel, “he (who) wrestles with God”, and Simeon the reed became Peter the rock.

Jesus’ name isn’t quite like this: its Hebrew equivalent is Yeshoshua (“God saves”). In whatever transliteration you read it though, is “Jesus” the name above all others? By now you should be guessing that my answer is “No”. Here’s why.

There were, and are, people who have been named Jesus. In first century Palestine “Jesus” was a common name, like John or Peter or David or Michael. Are we to suppose then that everyone called “Jesus” should be bowed to? Are people called “Jess” or “Jean” to be honoured more highly than we whose names, shaken out in the lottery of parental whim, don’t include any of those letters? The “o”, “e” and “s” in my moniker should get me a little respect, even though the latter two letters are in the wrong order. Why should Yosemite Sam be considered a bad guy when Bugs Bunny himself can only boast an “s” and a “y” in comparison? However, Elmer Fudd seems properly cast.

So no, the combination of consonants and vowels that form “Jesus” is not “the name” above every other name. So what is Jesus’ worshipful name then? Look at the text again with a little emphasis (mine of course):

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

What is the appropriate response to a king? To bow, yes? That is what the name of Jesus means – it refers to who He is and what He does: He is Lord. This is the reason we (will) bow.

If you’re better with numbers or things than with words, you might be looking at the third line and exclaiming “But it says right there that ‘at the name of Jesus’ ..!” To which I reply: Yes, it does say that; but what does it not say? If the proper name “Jesus” were the word at which we will bow, the text would rather say “at the name ‘Jesus’ every knee should bow” – there would be no “of”; no possessive pronoun.

The text is not
“at the name ‘Jesus’ ”
but
“at the name of Jesus”

The text as we have it means “at the name that Jesus possesses”; that God gave Him. When we read that

God … gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow

the first line describes God’s action and the second line describes why He acted as He did (the “purpose clause”). This means that God gave Jesus the highest name so that Jesus would be honoured. This means we still have to find out – as if it was in doubt! – what this name is. And we do, in verse 11: Lord. As the end of the paean or creed, it’s a fit for the beginning: “who, being in very nature God”. And in the middle, we find the counterpoint: that God became man and, even more humiliating, died as a condemned criminal. The whole section is I think an instance of inverse parallelism (if I remember the terms correctly). This is where the first and fourth lines, stanzas or concepts match each other thematically, as do the second and third. If we attribute letters to the lines, then we’d have ABBA:

A – highest place as God;
B – low(est) place as human and servant;
B – lowest place as condemned criminal;
A – highest place as Lord of all.

(The whole block of text may have been akin to a poem or, crudely, a jingle, which early believers memorised.)

What makes more sense: that we worship Jesus because He is called “Jesus”, or because He is Lord of and over everything? Which one would glorify the Father more?

copyright Troy Grisgonelle 2008.

I’ve long been convinced of the worth of learning the lessons of history. Reading a book called Lost Causes I discovered these quotes: one pithy and the others less so but both apropos of the thesis:

Weak things must boast of being new… But strong things can boast of being old.
~ G.K. Chesteron.

If the accumulated wisdom and the tested habits of the ages accounts for naught, then surely it is ill. But is such things afford security and sanity, then it is an augur of great good.
~ James Gleason Archer.

When we prosper we lose sight of the very virtues from whence prosperity has sprung – virtues birthed in suffering, isolation, shame and defeat.
~ E.M. Bounds.

With reference to this last quote, if we want to enjoy a fair, gracious and free society we must continue to exercise the responsibilities that made such a society in the first place. To do that, we must recall and recapture those qualities.

It’s a happy circumstance than finding a wife doesn’t depend on my social group alone because many of the eligible females in the swing dancing world are at least a decade younger than I am. Once such an age gap was not worth mentioning – a couple of hundred years ago a man might arrange the marriage of his daughter to a work colleague for example – but today it is rare. I’d have had a better chance of surviving the first hour of the D-Day invasion of Omaha Beach in 1944: there was about a 60% casualty rate.

People’s reactions to an age gap depend on the stage of life the couple is in. The younger they are, the greater reaction an age difference evokes. So if a girl is, say, eight years my junior, there might be a couple of “Mmh?”s. But if she were 13 years younger, “cradlesnatcher” would be on everyone’s lips. But add 30 years to both of us, and then the difference would only receive a raised eyebrow; probably congratulations that we’ve found someone after so long, and possibly even envy from the guys that I managed to score someone so young.

The basis of this seems to be related more to maturity than to age. Once someone is in their mid-twenties or early thirties, we suppose they’ve grown up enough to know what a relationship entails; whereas before this, we view it as taking advantage of someone. Yet if both couples are young, say 23, there may be a few questions about their maturity, yet no one seems to question whether one is taking advantage of the other’s naïveté. Unless, as we’ve seen, one partner is older than the other by a significant amount.

The oddest part is that maturity isn’t always connected to age.

copyright Troy Grisgonelle 2008.

At the battle of Rorke’s Drift, in the province of Natal in South Africa, on the 22nd and 23rd of January 1879, almost 100 soldiers of the Welsh 24th infantry held a weak defensive position against 4,000 Zulu warriors. In that battle, 11 of the soldiers received the Victoria Cross, the highest award possible for a British soldier to earn: for bravery above and beyond the call of duty, equivalent to the US Congressional Medal of Honour.

On Gold Beach during what is popularly known as D-Day, the 6th of June 1944, the Victoria Cross was received by only one out of approximately 20,000 soldiers: Company Sergeant Major Stan Hollis.

Did bravery become a more common commodity in the 20th century, or are assegais more terrifying than machine guns, and Zulus more fearsome than Germans? Or is mounting a defence behind bags of grain and overturned wagons more fearful a task than attacking concrete bunkers and minefields?

copyright Troy Grisgonelle 2008.

I am Troy Grisgonelle, editor, and this is my confession. I am not troubled about spelling accurately.

The Australian linguistic heritage is undeniably English. We spell words in French fashion: colour, rigour; metre, centre; and, as Sir Humphrey Appleby noted, Concorde. Why have the English never thrown off this Frankish yoke? Perhaps the reason is their history, which provides sufficient justification for their fear of Continental invasion. And so a small tribute – a slight dilution of the Queen’s English – both soothes English fears and sublimates the French desire to dominate small islands.

This was the language of my youth and I am comfortable with it; yet I find myself inclining to favour North American spelling. This will probably horrify my fellow Australian editors. Despite this, I think that spelling words such as “colour” with a final “owe-are” is more phonetically accurate than “owe-you-are”. And there are also “-ise/ -ize” words like “surprise”, which the North Americans spell in the latter fashion, are more faithful to the original Greek suffix, where “-izō” indicates causation: thus, katarizō means “to clean; to cause to be clean”. Given what I’ve said about French influence on English, perhaps I’m being hypocritical in favouring the Greek suffix; however, what is the source of the “-ise” spelling? And again, the “-ize” spelling seems more accurate vis-à-vis phonetics … which is not spelled with an initial “eff” because of the dominance, worthy or not, of its Greek origin.

From spelling, it seems almost natural to shift to pronunciation. Once more, this confession could mark me as a heretic, but I think the important issue is consistency rather than accuracy. I know that every Australian child should go to “skool” and engineers study “ske-MAT-ix” but I don’t recall any words that begin with “ess-see-aitch” that are pronounced “SH”.

There are instances when there are other influences to one’s phonics. The pronunciation of the word kilometre – specifically, which syllable is emphasised – has been the object of a tug-of-war between people who have literary pretensions and the other 99% of native English speakers, whose power is merely numerical. The first group insist that the word be pronounced “KIL-o-meet-er”: as such it is consistent with other units of distance: “MIL-i-meet-er”, “CEN-ti-meet-er”. As my old maths teacher said, you can murder a mile but you can’t kill-a-metre. The force (such as it is) of this quip is not in the concept but in the sound. On the other hand, the pronunciation “kil-OM-et-er” is consistent with Australian manner of speech, where the accent normally falls on the antepenult.

Ultimately, in spelling and pronunciation, consistency is the key. Not that accuracy isn’t important …

copyright Troy Grisgonelle 2008.