Today Ash brought Krispy Kreme doughnuts to the church. If you don’t live in Perth, you may think this is no big deal. If you do live in Perth, you realise that this is a HUGE deal. The reason for this is that you can’t buy Krispy Kreme doughnuts in Perth. Ash had to fly to Sydney and back again, with a huge box on his lap, so we could eat Krispy Kreme this morning.

Now you may say, fair enough, Krispy Kreme are pretty good, and if you don’t get to eat them often, it may be a bit special when you do. If you are thinking this, you are obviously not from Perth, because you are underestimating the excitement that Krispy Kreme cause by a factor of at least a thousand.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Bobby went to Melbourne. Another friend, Aloysius, told Bobby that if he did nothing else in Melbourne, he must bring back Krispy Kreme, and that money would be wired directly for the purpose. When the doughnuts arrived, Aloysius screamed and ran around in circles. Seriously.

This is not unusual. That’s how significant Krispy Kreme doughnuts are in Perth. The strange thing is that, on their own, Krispy Kreme don’t warrant this kind of reaction. They may be good, as far as doughnuts go – they may be the finest doughnuts in the world – but doughnuts can only go so far. There’s not a doughnut in the world that warrants the excitement a Krispy Kreme will generate in Perth.

So why the excitement? Is it the exoticism? The mystique of the unreachable? I’m not sure. Many have stated hypotheses involving secret additives, even narcotics. These things could all be part of it, but there must be more to it. I’ve never seen anyone in Perth go anywhere near as nuts for Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups or a copy of the Times. What is it about Krispy Kreme? And more importantly, what does it say about a city when its idea of heaven is a deep fried dessert?

Photo by kfisto via Flickr

Obviously the different options all have advantages and disadvantages and the best choice will depend on what you would use it for, your level of technical expertise and ability to make use of what the programs offer, your computer’s hardware capabilities, and available funds.

Perhaps the place to start would be – why use bible study software at all? The ink and paper variety functions very well so why bother? That’s certainly worth asking before you go throwing any cash down on something. If your only use of the bible is in personal reading, taking it to church or Hub then you have little use for Bible software. It’s just not as good for sitting down and reading, and it’s not transportable with the exception of PDA/smarthphone versions.

On the other hand, if you want to study the bible and not just read it; if you lead a small group and want to really come to grips with a passage, to contrast all the different english translations, to explore how it connects with the rest of scripture, do word studies on key words, see how commentators have grappled with a passage, use other reference books – dictionaries and so forth; and if your skills allow, grapple with the text in its original languages and do sophisticated grammatical and syntactic analysis; you’ll either need a large free table, a pile of books and plenty of hours to scour through finding the information you need… or software.

Over the next weeks I’ll try to give you a snapshot of what’s out there, what it can do and who it would be useful for.

What has surprised me is that by and large it wasn’t like that at ECU. Sure, lots of people weren’t Christian and weren’t really interested in talking, but I don’t remember anyone sneering or answering the question, “Are you a Christian?” with the “as if!” tone of voice that so many UWA students used.

It reminded me of 1 Corinthians 1:26–27 where Paul reminds the Corinthians that “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.”

UWA students are wise by human standards, but let’s pray that God would use ‘foolish’ ECU students to shame the ‘wise’ at UWA.