Bought some snap frozen prawns in Geraldton the other day, one of Australia’s preeminent fishing cities.

The chatty chap who sold me the prawns told me a fascinating story.

The prawn I was buying had been caught, not in WA, but off Townsville in Queensland. They had been snap frozen raw and shipped to China – yep! China! Where the worlds only automatic shelling and deveining machine lives.

Apparently most shelled prawns go to China to their one off machine.

After the China treatment the prawns are shipped back to Townsville, then on to Geraldton in WA where I thought I was buying a prawn caught “just out there” on the lovely, wild deep blue Indian Ocean and sold through the local outlet, literally on the docks!

A prawn about the size of my thumb has a carbon footprint about the size of a house! How ethical is that? How can we know these things? What should we do about it? Can we do anything anyway?

Just goes to show there’s more to a raw prawn than you might think.

Cheryl and I really enjoy our canoes. A lot of people ask us whether we think they are worth having? Our answer is , “Absolutely!”

The reason we think having canoes particularly worthwhile is a little different to what you might think.

The reason we love our canoes is because they enable us to see things differently.

Do you know what Freshwater Bay or the Grenough River or even the Cottesloe pylon looks like from on the water? Not in it but on it? We get an entirely different perspective from our canoes than walking on the bank or stopping at a lookout.

I appreciate this different perspective when it comes to thinking about where I live, who I should vote for, what “normal” really is or what God thinks about things. A different perspective opens my mind, I live in a culture. That culture is far more closed than you or I might think.

As i was writing this post from my canoe i literally bumped in to the fella fishing from the bank. Looked up and there he was, big wide grin, Get a canoe for an entirely different perspective,

There seems a lot to read at the moment and I find the whole “does God exist?” a bit of a been there done that bore. Having said that, I’m reading a book by Peter Hitchens, the well aired and vitriolic anti-Christian Christopher Hitchens’ brother. As fate or God would have it, Peter is a devoted Anglican Christian of over 25 years.

While Christopher, along with his mate and sidekick Professor Dawkins, rail at Christian hypocrisy and soft headedness, Peter shares his testimony from atheism to faith.

I’m only a little way in but the themes are familiar; we come to whatever world view we come to largely because it makes sense to us and works for us. Most “isms” and religions work on one level or another. Most people are keen to find a compass. A good compass shows us how to sail when the weather is rough. The best compasses take seriously the ultimate human questions; who am I? Why am I here? How should I live? Where am I going? And how do I get there?

Peter makes the point that the militant atheist – read his brother – sees his “ism”, atheism and intellectualism, as inherently superior. The presupposition is that he is cleverer than you so he must be right and if you disagree he will intellectualy mock you into submission. Cleverness is not a measure of rightness. And humiliating and mocking people is not a sign of strength or intellectual integrity.

Our church is full of clever people who love God and believe he saved them from their sins – it ain’t about being clever – remember that next time you feel diminished by someones intellect. It’s just their prop. At least you know what yours is!

Christianity doesn’t rely on intellect but on revelation. God reveals himself in Christ. He has done this largely through the testimony of Gods people through history. The Bible is the record of this. They share what they have encountered – Christ in me, the hope of glory. No intellect can extinguish or dismiss a persons experience of God in Christ.

This is not to argue against the intellectual arguments for Christian faith, of which there are many. It is to say, don’t be bullied by smart people who glory in themselves at others expense. They are shallower and more fragile than you might think.