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.
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.
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.
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.
This month Iām reading Henry Blackabyās book Experiencing the Cross. (I can almost guarantee youāll hear me quote it in my upcoming Easter series.) Blackaby has already grabbed me by the throat with this quote early in the book:
āNot many people seriously think of themselves as Godās enemy. Even believers often resist this way of thinking. Theyāll say with all sincerity about their past: āWell, I wasnāt really going against God; I just wasnāt going with Him.ā But theyāre sincerely wrong. Godās perspective is all that matters, and He says in His Word that we were His enemies (Colossians 1:21). Or as Jesus put it, āHe who is not with Me is against Meā (Matthew 12:30).ā
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 Godās love for us.
This squares with my experience, both as a preacher and a sinner (two words which donāt 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, āNot many of you were ax-murderers when you were called; not many were thieves, pornographers, drug-dealers or email spammers.ā Our very respectability works against us in understanding Godās grace. We say, in effect, āI meant no offense, God, by my rebellion. Iām sure you didnāt take it too seriously.ā 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 Godās holy standards. Besides, it isnāt 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 ā OUR sin ā the story of the cross is only a lot of religious talk. But when we finally get it, His grace becomes magnificent.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Isaac Hayes, the soul-singer best known for the theme song to Shaft recently quit the TV show South Park due to its intolerance to religion. Hayes, who voices a character on the animated show, resents a recent satire (attack?) that South Park did against Scientology. South Park co-creator Matt Stone said that Hayes had made plenty of money on the show making fun of Christians. But it’s hard to take a stand when it doesn’t affect you, isn’t it? I mean, who among us would want to stand up against ridicule of Scientology?
“Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.“
William R. Inge
Out of Ur is carrying on a discussion right now about how megachurches are starting to spawn house churches. Megachurches usually succeed after all by getting people into small groups, and it appears that some believers like the small group so much that they’re deciding that they no longer need the mother church. Even Time has done a story on home churching, a fact which makes it a noteworthy trend.
It bothers me when people start touting house churches as a favorable replacement for the larger group. Undoubtly this is true partly because I’m employed by “organized religion” (though ours isn’t all THAT organized).
But it’s also because of this: The easiest way to do church would be to get with six or eight other like-minded people and just enjoy studying the Bible together. There wouldn’t be too much need to deal with people I don’t enjoy being around, and there wouldn’t be many older folks or needy people to take care of and there would be little need to practice the Scriptural command to forebear and forgive and work together for a purpose larger than our own growth.
It interests me that it’s George Barna who is driving this new interest in house churches with his book Revolution. His 1988 book Marketing the Church was the second bible of the megachurch movement, and his User-Friendly Churches from 1991 was important too. THIS is what brings to mind the quote at the start of this article.
Sarah Pulliam has a good article at ChristianityToday.com about Christians and happiness. The article says that evangelical Christians who attend church regularly say they are happier than the general population, and then examines why this might be. Is it our teachings (grace, forgiveness, security) our support system, our focusing disciplines (prayer, Bible study)? Or is it that evangelicals are TOLD that happiness is a virtue and we feel pressured to say we’re happy?
Kirby Puckett’s death at age 45 has got me to thinking about Sting’s beautiful song How Fragile We Are…
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrowās rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetimeās argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
I remember Sting singing this song on a TV special a few days after 9/11 when it was incredibly appropriate. Puckett’s death wasn’t from violence but it still reminds us of how fragile life is and how quickly and easily we can lose it. As it says in Ecclesiastes 8:8:
No man has power over the wind to contain it;
so no one has power over the day of his death.
The next line in Ecclesiastes says:
As no one is discharged in time of war,
so wickedness will not release those who practice it.
I’m not trying to apply this last line to Kirby Puckett, understand. I simply find in it a reminder to live well each day and avoid getting trapped in the tempter’s snare.
How fragile we are.
