Introverts don’t want a hug
Christian Standard had this excellent article about introverts in their January 29th issue. With the move to the building, it has been in my “must read” pile until today. As an introvert, I encourage all of you to read it before praying for me to get better or giving me well-intended “compliments” about how I’m not as bad as I used to be. I’m kidding (mostly) and I do see the need to be friendly and pleasant, but read this article and see how the extroverted definition of warmth and worship doesn’t fit a significant minority of us.
A year to live…
NPR recently broadcast a heart-wrenching and honest look at death by the dying man himself. Stewart Selman knew he was dying of a brain tumor when he began recording his thoughts on the process. The 22-minute NPR segment takes you through some of the key moments and features insight from Selman’s wife. It’s worth your time.
You might be a redneck state…
Mississippi’s house of representatives passed a resolution that I wanted to laugh at until I read the end of the article and saw that my home state (Ohio) is considering the same thing.
A little more on Christian pacifism
Christianity Today has posted an interview with Rod Sider, a well-known representative of the “evangelical left” and one of the founders of Christian Peacemaker Teams, the group whose members were captured and rescued (some of them) in Iraq. Sider has been around for a long time and comes at the Christians and Culture issues from a Mennonite (and therefore, pacifist) perspective. He apparently isn’t associated with CPT anymore, but shares their ideals and provides an explanation of their strengths and weaknesses in this interview.
No Offense, God…
This month I’m reading Henry Blackaby’s book Experiencing the Cross. (I can almost guarantee you’ll hear me quote it in my upcoming Easter series.) Blackaby has already grabbed me by the throat with this quote early in the book:
“Not many people seriously think of themselves as God’s enemy. Even believers often resist this way of thinking. They’ll say with all sincerity about their past: ‘Well, I wasn’t really going against God; I just wasn’t going with Him.’ But they’re sincerely wrong. God’s perspective is all that matters, and He says in His Word that we were His enemies (Colossians 1:21). Or as Jesus put it, ‘He who is not with Me is against Me’ (Matthew 12:30).”
Henry Blackaby goes on to talk about how we fail to understand the gravity of sin, and therefore we miss the meaning of the cross and the depth of God’s love for us.
This squares with my experience, both as a preacher and a sinner (two words which don’t mean the same thing!) Few of us in church have dramatically transgressed the ever-lowering standards of the world. To paraphrase 1 Corinthians 1:26, “Not many of you were ax-murderers when you were called; not many were thieves, pornographers, drug-dealers or email spammers.” Our very respectability works against us in understanding God’s grace. We say, in effect, “I meant no offense, God, by my rebellion. I’m sure you didn’t take it too seriously.” If we feel any guilt about our sin, it probably has to do with the areas where we broke trust with our families and loved ones. This is an important area, of course, but by no means is it the only place where we have violated God’s holy standards. Besides, it isn’t our feelings of guilt that define sin. God has done that already, and His standard is perfect.
Why do I bring this up? Because without an understanding of sin – OUR sin – the story of the cross is only a lot of religious talk. But when we finally get it, His grace becomes magnificent.
Christian pacifism and the war in Iraq
Jared Keller at Exultate Justi has a great post detailing his opposition to “Christian pacifism” in Iraq. Keller uses the recent rescue (by non-pacifists, naturally) of three Christian aid workers in Iraq to delve into the issue of pacifism, and he pulls in some excellent sources including C. S. Lewis and George Orwell. I invite you to read Keller’s post and maybe consider starting a thread on this topic at our discussion board.
Goowy
I’ve been playing around with a web interface called Goowy. I didn’t think I liked it at first, but now I really do. Goowy is a feedreader (among other things) that is very easy to customize. I keep it open on my desktop and use it to monitor CNN, FoxSports, Relevant, TechCrunch and 6-7 other feeds, which I have lined up like post-it notes across the screen. With so many sites finally starting to offer RSS feeds, Goowy becomes more useful all the time.
XXX domains: Creating a web red-light district
This week, two senators introduced legislation to create a xxx domain for porn sites (i.e., smut.xxx instead of smut.com). The idea isn’t to promote porn, but to ghetto-ize it or label it and make it easier to filter out. It might be a good idea, except that (as I understand it) pornographers won’t be required to surrender their .com domains. Also, legislation in the U. S. applies only to U. S. companies, not overseas pornographers, which is a substantial weakness since the Internet is international.
It isn’t the issue itself I’m interested in as much as the acrimonious debate about it between two parties that are on the same side. John C. Dvorak (a PC Magazine Columnist and one of my favorite tech gurus) and Concerned Women for America (an evangelical Christian activist group) both want to make it harder for kids to see porn, yet they have made themselves enemies of one another with lots of name-calling and mud-slinging in their respective columns. Dvorak likes the idea of a xxx domain (in fact, he may have been the first to suggest it, way back in the ’90s). CWA hates it, and doesn’t think much of Dvorak for liking it.
Too bad. As an evangelical myself, I wish I could call CWA to a higher standard of discourse. The bickering keeps US ghetto-ized.
9 Marks of a Healthy Church
When I attended the annual conference of Peacemaker Ministires in 2003, I was very impressed with the keynote speaker Mark Dever, a Washington D. C. pastor and founder of a ministry called 9 Marks. Basically 9 Marks is about teaching nine marks of a healthy, Biblically functioning church. I invite you to visit their site and look at mark number 6, a Biblical understanding of church membership. Do some reading there and see if you or your church (whether it’s MHCC or another) has the right understanding.
Make money on the internet!
Here is an interesting site sponsored by Amazon.com that allows you to make money (not much at a time, though) by helping other people with research. It’s called Mechanical Turk, and it gives the average user the opportunity to answer questions posted by other users and get paid for their answers. One example: A user asks for ideas for a 30th birthday party. Your answers are worth (drumroll, please) 3 cents. On the other side of things, YOU could use Mechanical Turk to run a survey and get ideas for nearly anything.
