I return to Dunedin and work in the new year, and as I do my Mum asked me what was going on this year. I mentioned conferences, that this year the promotion cycle turns around, and where the boys will be. I have to plan my year about ten months in advance.

Part of me wants that promotion. It is attached with a new academic title. But the work and the family are more important. I should not make plans dependent on it: in this fallen time one has to have political skills and abilities that I simply lack.

And the desire to be first is a source of many, many, errors.

Today we get, unusually, an entire book of the Bible as our Text. There is more within it than one can discuss in a thousand words or so.

The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth.

Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul. For I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.

I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.

Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God. Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself. We also add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true.

I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink. I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face.

Peace be to you. The friends greet you. Greet the friends, each by name.

(3 John ESV)

I am struck by how Diotrephes works. He basically makes stuff up: he accuses John of being unchristian: he wants to be alone and insists that there is no charity.

He wants the label, not the reality. For most people who are brilliant — I know a few — do not look like Sheldon Cooper and the fake nerds on the Big Bang Theory. They are more likely to be fixing their house, running around caring for their families, and the only sign is that they at times seem to zone out.

This decadent time likes the label, and hates the sheer bloody work it takes to get the reality.

Of course, turning science into a religion is why we have kooks like Bill Nye demanding to have skeptics thrown in prison. He’s a good reminder that you can be batshit crazy and still be able to design a decent toaster. The amusement park manager, Neil deGrasse Tyson, made it through a doctoral program, but found better money in peddling pseudo-scientific nonsense to rich people.

The funny thing about the fake nerd stuff is that real nerds are usually active people who enjoy the outdoors, playing sports and doing the sorts of things normal people do. I used to play hoops with a bunch of programmers. I know a few body builders who are engineers, one is a rocket scientist at NASA. In my experience, the highly numerate tend to be a little nuts and anything but nerdish.

Of course, the fake nerd stuff is just a pose. We live in an age of marvels where the technology is far outpacing most people’s ability to keep up. In that regard, our era has another striking resemblance to the late 19th and early 20th century, before the great wars. When Wells, Gernsbacker and Verne invented science fiction, it seemed as if science would conquer the human condition.

A century ago, to be thought of as smart you had to be a tinkerer and love what passed for science and technology at the time. Everyone was convinced that all the answers were just around around the corner and the pace of technology would only accelerate. Taylorism was the economics of its day and everyone that was thought to be intelligent was into science.

A big difference between then and now is that fake nerdism is probably filling the void where religion used to reside. A century ago, even the most empirically minded went to mass, just to keep up appearances. Today, no one believes in anything so everyone falls for everything. Slap the word “study” onto any batshit crazy idea and your fake nerd friends will be posting infographics about on their Facebook page.

The second part of the subtitle of this blog is hopeful science, and at times I post extracts from papers: but like the reviews, I’ve generally read them. Particularly the methodology. I know how hard it is to get things published. (And it does not get easier: you just get more intellectual scars as time goes on).

Science itself is not the enemy. The false image of science however, is as much an enemy as those who claim to be of God and show this by being hyper religious, damning Calvin and Aquinas in one breath as lacking rigor and Francis of Assisi and Julian of Norwich on the other hand as not having any understanding of spirituality. There lies the mark of the cult: and in this fallen day, many of the cults are liberal.

And talk about love while meaning the opposite.

One of the signs of the petunias in this age is they love the title and want to proclaim with authority, leaving the church with neither truth, or a healthy piety, or life.

This Advent season, Presbyterians have been called by the PC(USA) Office of Public Witness to make this an “Advent of Justice” and to reflect and faithfully act for justice in Palestine, the land of Jesus’ birth. In 2012 the General Assembly called for a boycott of products that are made in illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine.

Do not be them and do not be like them.