I’ve never been coy about the fact that I’m looking for academic work. Through the blog, the podcast, publications and public speaking I’m trying to raise my profile in the hopes that all these things will help me to make that contact, get the right person to notice, land that job, get that title, improve finances, and set me off on a rewarding career. Of course I wouldn’t shun any of those things. I’m not stupid. But I’m not just an academic and a Christian. I’m a Christian academic. That doesn’t mean that the only subjects that interest me are overtly about God (although given that my subjects of interest are philosophy and theology that is certainly a common theme in the subjects that do interest me). It means that I do academia as a Christian. My goals and my attitudes need to be continually shaped into goals and attitudes that are not just compatible with a Christian outlook, but which are an integral part of it.

One of the things that this means is that it’s not about me. What if I could pass on knowledge, stimulate interest in the greatest questions life offers, questions about right and wrong or what’s really real, challenge people to engage the world in a more reflective and just way, present a Christian worldview as credible to critically minded people, address objections to the Christian faith, and achieve all the ends that I set out to achieve that benefit other people without benefiting myself in terms of my profile, job, status, position in life or financial wellbeing? Would it be worth it? Would I still do it? Facing real world concerns, frustrations, disappointments, disenchantments and ambitions, it has often been easy for me to lose sight of the right answer to that question. Of course it would be worth it, and I’ve got to work on not measuring the worth of an endeavour in terms of me. It’s not about me – it was never supposed to be. Think about all those goals: passing on, stimulating, challenging, presenting, addressing. Those goals are all about doing things for others, getting a job done. If I can speak in terms of having a “calling,” those things (as far as I can tell) are my calling. Crazy though it might sound to people who don’t share my most fundamental beliefs about things, I actually believe that when I do those things I am serving God as he wants me to serve him.
Interested? Read the rest.

I wasn’t sure whether I would share this or use it as an opportunity for comment. I’ve decided to do so, albeit with some fear and trembling. Somebody has to say things like this. If you think I shouldn’t have done so, or if you’re personally (or professionally) connected to the circumstances I describe here, don’t use the comments section to point this out. If you’re concerned enough, contact me privately.

A while ago, I applied for an academic job at a Christian college of higher learning. I describe it vaguely that way so as not to give any clues which college this was, but I’ll say that it was in New Zealand. Reading the job description, it looked to me like I was ideally qualified for the role, and given the profile of the college, which was not as high as some, I thought I might even have stood a good chance. I was interviewed, but I didn’t get a the job. That was a bummer, but it happens. I figured I would just keep doing what I do, doing my time in my job that I had always said I would just keep doing until I landed the sort of job I was looking for, trying to squeeze out of the rest of my schedule the time and space to work very hard at raising my profile to improve my chances of getting this sort of job.
Interested? Read the rest.

Dear friends

Not just friends, but brothers and sisters. Some of you might think that I am feigning my treatment of you as both friends and even family. I’m not sure how to persuade you that I’m genuine, but I am. I’m writing this open letter because I don’t know you all personally (in fact I don’t know any of you personally), and I also think other people might benefit from seeing what I have to say.

Who are you? In the long and protracted debate over the biblical teaching on judgement and final punishment, you’ve gained the label “traditionalists.” You say that the Bible teaches that God will punish the lost with eternal torment. There’s a range of different terms that many of you use, but that’s a reasonable summary. Some of you use those terms, while others prefer what you take as less crude language like “eternal separation from God.” But you believe that it will last forever, it will be a conscious experience, and it will be horrific. In particular, I write this for those of you who are apologists for this belief. The people I have in mind have contributed to a veritable torrent of books, articles, public talks and sermons on the subject, assuring the church and the public that the Bible teaches eternal torment.

I don’t believe you’re correct. I am persuaded that the Bible teaches annihilationism. You don’t like that fact. Many of you are on record telling people that annihilationism is false and unbiblical, that it is clearly so, that it undermines the Gospel, that it misrepresents God, that it underestimates sin, that it is a concession to postmodernity and so on. Many of you swarm theological organisations, gatherings, websites and so on, reassuring your peers and your readers that you hold the solid, clearly biblical position, and that annihilationists quite clearly lack biblical support for their view, and many of you encourage theological organisations and colleges that would literally exclude me from working or even studying there because I am persuaded as I am.

Other readers who perhaps do not wade into theological controversy and who might not be familiar with this issue will likely find this letter rather dreary and irrelevant. They can simply ignore it, I suppose. But I am writing to you. What’s more, I have nothing personally to gain in writing this. Your colleges will continue to be unlikely to hire me because of my beliefs on this issue (and writing this will certainly not help this situation), and mainstream colleges will be uninterested in the fact that I have an interest in the subject at all. I will not increase my number of friends, but may potentially increase the number of people hostile to me. But I’m writing to you anyway.
Interested? Read the rest.

This blog is usually devoted to philosophy (especially philosophy of religion, ethics and political philosophy), theology and biblical studies, and my thoughts on social issues. But it’s my blog, and in theory I can say whatever I like. Like right now.

I was absolutely gutted this morning to find out that one of my favourite musicians and songwriters, Gary Moore died this weekend. I didn’t expect that. Born in Belfast in 1952, Gary played in Skid Row at just sixteen years old, then Thin Lizzy, going on to have a career as one of the most underrated musicians in the contemporary scene. He was fifty-eight years old and still performing at the top of his game – way too young to die. He collaborated with some of the greats in blues guitar: Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, B B King and others, but his own playing was unmatched in his genre. There’s nobody to fill these shoes.

I feel like I’ve lost a friend.

Rest in peace

(In fairness, I should have also marked the passing of Ronnie James Dio last year, but did not.)

Every now and then I make a remark about the unfairness and crippling partisanship of some evangelicals and the way that it harms our collective effort to present the Christian message to the world. However I don’t typically name names when it comes to people who have personally attacked me. I don’t like to give publicity to those who do not deserve it. This post is an exception, both to give an example of the kind of widespread behaviour that is of such concern, and also to point out that I’m not just making it up. I’m also putting this here to give the perpetrator the opportunity to publicly make amends, after thus far ignoring my public invitation to do so at his blog.
Interested? Read the rest.

Sometimes my blog posts aren’t terribly academic in nature, but are purely personal. This is one of those.

If you’re an evangelical Christian then you and I have some pretty important things in common. In fact if you’re a Christian at all – a serious Christian (I hope you know what I mean: you’re self consciously Christian, Jesus is at the centre of your faith, you believe in the supernatural and the ability of God to do the humanly impossible, you don’t want to change the religion to make it easier for you or others to accept, you accept that you actually have a duty of obedience towards God, you agree that there are no cases where you’re right and the the Bible is wrong, you think the truth matters, you think that there really is such thing as sin, you even have the audacity to state as historical fact that God raised Jesus from the dead etc) – then we have a lot in common. You could say we’re family.
Interested? Read the rest.

I live in the wrong part of the country. Dunedin is lovely, don’t get me wrong. However there are opportunities of a whole range of sorts that I am missing because of where I live. I won’t go into all the details of that, just trust me. We’ve decided that we should move to Auckland. Plus it’s much warmer, and we have family in that part of the country who we haven’t seen much of.

I’m a family man and we’re not particularly well off, so I can’t responsibily move unless there’s there’s a job to move to. I’m applying for jobs already, and while I’m explaining each time I apply that we do intend to move to Auckland, there’s going to be a natural reluctance to hire people from out of town when there are local applicants. I thought I’d give a shout out here in case there are readers in that part of the country who might know of something, or who might even be in a place of influence who might be able to offer something. There’s a whole range of areas that I could work in. I currently work for the Inland Revenue Department in Student loans, doing technical work on accounts and also liasing with other agencies (like Studylink, the Ministry of Education, the Immigration Department and tax agents). I also get in touch with customers by phone and also address their queries by email. It involves applying legislation, and I’ve also played a role over the last year and a bit in clarifying the legislative requirements of the roles that my team has been involved in, and also coaching fellow staff members. Prior to this role I worked as a customer service rep in the call centre for Inland Revenue. Prior to that I managed a bookstore.

You already know (probably) about my academic background, but in general my approach is that unless a role requires years of experience in a highly specialised field, I can do it: anything involving communication, coaching, training, tutoring, or anything that involves explaining technical information. I also work well with numbers, and I even have a couple of papers in accounting. I could do web based work and even some graphic design work (it’s not like I have professional expreience there, but I made this site and the graphics here – bearing in bind that the blog is a wordpress blog, although the graphics are mine). I also have a background in music, recording and audio engineering (have you seen my site www.podcastermusic.org ?).

So if you’re in a position to suggest anything in the Auckland area – anything at all really – please do drop me a line and let me know.

Not too long ago I announced that there were some changes afoot. Although we’re keen supporters of homeschooling, we started sending our children to a nearby very small Christian school and my wife was going to look for work. It had become clear that there just wasn’t time available for me to work on writing, publishing, and generally putting in the work required to work towards the kind of academic role I’m looking for, plus another income wouldn’t go astray.

It will come as no surprise that I’m a firm believer in the providence of God, so it’s only appropriate that I’m now very thankful to God for the way things are turning out. Just a matter of days after deciding to send the children to school Ruth was given a job at a nearby rest home / hospital, working between 19.5 and 30 hours per week, give or take a little. Within a week of this happening, I got a change of hours at work approved, meaning that soon I’ll be working four days per week. The way New Zealand’s welfare and tax system works means that we’re only slightly better off financially than before (but hey, slightly is better than not at all). The other side to that is that we’re earning a much higher proportion of our income, which is much better. Also, although the change of hours at work has been approved, there is a project at work that I need to make myself available for (one that we’ve been planning for a while), so the new hours won’t kick in for a little while yet, but it’s pretty much a done deal. Also, I have exams on the 16th and 17th of November, so initially what extra time I have will be spent preparing for those. But the upshot is that we’re doing a little better now and I will have more time available to work on my own projects, which is what we had hoped for.

I had expected that this process would take a couple of months, but from start to finish it took only a couple of weeks. Think me terribly superstitious if you will, but I’m calling it a sign.

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow
Praise Him, all creatures here below
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

EDIT: I’ve started putting some of my music clips up at YouTube, and this one is apropros here!

Under most circumstances, homeschooling is the best form of schooling/education for children that exists in the world. I say most to allow for extreme or unusual cases where things don’t work as they should – severe disabilities or disorders, long term illness, I don’t know, there are probably other cases too, but you get the idea. Having said that though, homeschooling provides scope for a much more individualised approach for your child’s education, meaning that there will be plenty of people for whom a special needs child will make them better suited to a homeschooling environment.

As far as educational outcomes go, the worldwide evidence is simply overwhelming: Homeschooling is superior. It is a hands down victory. This cannot be stated clearly enough: If anyone suggests to you that the case is not obviously, clear cut, backed up universally by all the available evidence and beyond dispute, they need more exposure to the information. This is a settled issue: Homeschooling on average produces markedly better academic results. This, for many parents, is the main drawcard for the homeschooling option.
See here, here, here, or… you get the idea. I won’t multiply examples. Just Google it.

It is simply a falsehood that you can’t teach children well unless you’re an accredited teacher. Homeschooled children receive a superior education to children who attend the local government school. It also enables a far more customised approach to education. Children are diverse, they don’t all learn the same way, and what works for one child may not be as effective as another. While a school might be able to pump extra teaching resources and time into catching up with this diversity and moving away from an “education mill” model, for the homeschooler it is natural – why wouldn’t the education of each child be uniquely tailored to that child?

The one comment that I hear more often than any other when somebody finds out that we homeschool our children – and other homeschoolers will guess what it is before I ever say it – is, “what about the social aspect? Do they learn to interact with other children?”

Here’s how I look at it: Take animals in the wild vs animals in farms. Do animals in the wild get to interact in a normal, healthy way with other animals? Of course. What about animals in a farm, or maybe a zoo? Do they interact naturally with each other? To some extent, yes. Children in homeschooling are like animals in the wild. They, with their families, form natural communities: Families, neighbourhoods, churches, sports clubs, social organisations, you get the idea. What’s more, because it’s not a forced environment like a zoo or a farm, you don’t have the serious social problems associated with schools: bullying and being forced to belong to the same social group as the bully, being forced to associate with groups that are frankly bad for them (gangs, antisocial behaviour, violence, smoking/drugs, fill in the blanks). Picking up a line from my sister (they also homeschool their children), when people ask me whether our children are “missing out” socially I tell them: “Oh no, we make sure they don’t miss out. We beat them up, steal their lunch, teach them bad habits, encourage them to be promiscuous, all that stuff.” The other person usually sees the point! Do we shelter our children? Of course. We’re their parents, and they’re all younger than twelve years old. What kind of irresponsible people would we be if we didn’t shelter them?

I want to reiterate this is clearly as I can: In virtually every way, homeschooling is superior to other kinds of education. Schools just cannot compete with it. It’s barely even a close race. I say all this in  advance in bold terms because I don’t want anyone to think that what I say next reflects in any way a lower view of homeschooling. I continue to hold the above view of homeschooling.

Now for the next part: In a couple of days time, our children will start attending a school. It’s not a public school (we’re not crazy), but it’s a school. Five days a week, from 9am until 3pm (I think). It’s not a decision we relish for their sake, but it’s one we’ve had to make. My wife is a wonderful mother and has been doing a really outstanding job with our children. But something had to change. As I’ve been saying from time to time, I have virtually no time to do the things that I really need to do if I am ever going to move into the area of employment that I spent all those years getting degrees for: academia in theology or philosophy (or both).

What’s more, I currently work a pretty low paying job, and our financial situation could be a lot stronger (actually, it needs to be. I don’t think the employer envisages someone on this salary supporting a family). I figured it would only be a temporary measure while also work at home, I get material published and boost my profile to improve my chances in academia, but the trouble is, working full time actually prevents me from doing that to the extent to which I need to do it, so I end up just staying in that low paid role, supporting our family. Financially, something does need to change.

So we need a little more cash, and I need a little more time, even just a free day each week. So the children are going to school – a less than ideal situation education-wise, but the best school that we are able to make use of, a small local Christian school with a very flexible approach to education. Ruth is going to be looking for some work, maybe just a few days a week, and when that happens, I will see if I can work fewer hours.

If that all goes to plan, I will be much better placed to work towards landing an academic job, and if/when that happens, we will be in a position to revisit Ruth’s employment situation and the children’s education options. The long term plan is about what’s best for the whole family. We’d like to be in a position to homeschool again.

Glenn Peoples

So where have I been? The blog has been very quiet lately and the podcast has fallen silent. Where to begin!

First, as suggested by my cave man post, things are a little frustrating on the future employment front. New Zealand is just the wrong place to be a scholar in the humanities. Because there are so few major academic options in the form of universities and similar institutions here (countable on one’s fingers), you simply must either have an illustrious career history already, or you must be friends with the right people. Neither of those things currently apply in my case, so I’ve got a lot of work (no, not professional work) ahead of me before that becomes a live possibility. Getting anyone’s attention is going to involve a considerably above average research/publication output (that is, above the average of somebody already in an academic career), without the benefit of actually having time allocated to my schedule to do that like someone who is already working in the fields I’m aiming for. I could manage it well were it not for that time factor. That means trying (very often unsuccessfully) to squeeze out all the available time from the gaps in my evenings, beween eating, sleeping, and having a relationship with my wife and children. As I mentioned a while ago, I’m taking a couple of classes by distance as well (towards a diploma in business – everybody needs a backup plan). Those classes will be over on the 17th of November when I sit the second of my two final exams, so I will gain a little more time then. Until then, it’s probably best to give up on my empty promises of getting the current podcast episode finished.

As a family we’re also looking at some changes to make even just a small amount more time available, possibly involving changes in schooling and employment, but that’s all still just in the realm of possibilities at the moment and we haven’t decided anything. It’s a terrible thing, but I’ve frequently envied the unemployed for their wealth of time (not that I could afford to be unemployed!).

I’m looking at some research/teaching fellowships outside of New Zealand at the moment. It’s hard to know what Universities expect in a fellow. Their advertisements make encouraging comments about looking for someone who has just obtained their PhD within the last five years, and yet it’s common to see people who are fellows who have a long career with scores of books and other publications behind them already. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve put together a modest research proposal and bibliography for any such applications. It’s a proposal for a project that I’ve been wanting for some time to use as the basis for a book for publication, on a history and defence of the moral argument for theism. It’s a subject that has received surprisingly little academic treatment, and I know of literally no published book at the moment that represents what I intend to produce, a fact that I find incredible when considering the sheer number of works published on the other classic and modern arguments for theism (e.g. cosmological, ontological, fine tuning). After I’ve read through the proposal a few (dozen) more times to make sure it’s as I want it to be I’ll post it here at the blog for your scrutiny.