Interesting

It is funny to me that I still get hits on my new blog from this blog. In fact, there are still people to subscribed to this blog too.

I have zero plans on doing anything with this blog, but you are welcome to come join me at my new one.

http://manofdepravity.com

Hey

If you are getting this in your rss feed then you need to delete this blog from the feed and subscribe over at manofdepravity.com

That is my new blog page and the only one I blog on now.

Thanks for reading!

Moving Time

Well the time has finally come to unveil the new blog. Make sure to subscribe there and change your links to that url as well. It took a lot of confusion, help from Vin, talking with customer support with several companies, and lots of reading....But I think everything is ready to go. It shows you that anyone can set this stuff up because I'm not all that fluent in computer language.

So head on over HERE and enjoy!

Big Changes

I'm planning on rolling out a brand new blog sometime this coming week. It will be a new domain, new look, new host...the list goes on. So you can be looking forward to that.

21st Century Problem

In my theology class today my professor talked about some of the issues facing the church (meaning the body of believers). In his opinion, the biggest obstacle in the 20th century was answering how God could allow such grievous suffering. With tragedies such as the Holocaust, and dictators such as Fidel Castro this was certainly not an easy question to answer.

He feels that now the biggest challenge to the church is the idea that there are many ways to get to heaven. Not only is this something held by several religions already but many Christians would even say that Jesus isn't the only way. This could be called a form of universalism and it is very dangerous.

Fortuitous Bouncing

It was this week that I realized that being an adult isn't that cool. Well I guess I'm not really an adult, but being in real life out of college (I know I'm in college but I commute and its grad school so it isn't the same) isn't all it is hyped up to be. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, my brother and sister and mom got 2 days off of school this week because of snow. At our place we got a little dusting that I showed a picture of earlier this week. I still had to do homework, I still had to work, no matter if school was closed or not, it didn't matter. Being an adult is no fun, I can't even enjoy the snow.

• This paper just figured out that college students are walking away from Christianity. What a shocker!!!
• An interesting CNN article on the world's major religions and how they view the environment.
• I've spent a fair amount of time following this election process so far. By far the best coverage on tv and the internet is CNN. It is not even close. They are fair and objective in their analysis and I have learned tons from watching. They know their stuff.
• A golfer who is ranked 22nd in the world thinks he is the ONLY one who can challenge Tiger. Apparently he is delusional as well.
• Barack raised $32 mill....that is a lot of change.
• An interesting and thought provoking blog on church leadership and management.
• This is an honest look into the conflict in Kenya.
• My biggest complaint about Oregon winters: If it is going to be 35, it might as well get down to 30 and snow.
• I guess the new type of model is supposed to look more like normal people.
• I've been planning to delete my personal Myspace account, but I've run into a few loopholes that Myspace has in place. Hopefully it is something I can fix early next week. I'm just pissed that I missed out on the national delete your Myspace account day.
  

Irresistible Revolution .10

Research has shown that the more a person goes to church, the more they are likely to be sexist, racist, anti-gay, for wars and committed to a local church. Shane questions what Bible we are teaching. It is these things that cause many people to think of Christians as hypocrites instead of audacious lovers of people. Brennan Manning says, "The greatest cause of atheism is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him in their lifestyle. This is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." So how can we reverse this? Shane gives a few examples that can help us envision how to live as followers of Jesus who are full of grace.

1. If terrorists are beyond redemption, he says that we can rip out half of the New Testament, since half of it was written "by a terrorist who became an extremist for grace."
2. Shane tells the story of a woman he met in Iraq whose son and husband was killed by an Iraqi police officer. In court the woman told the judge that she simply wanted to officer to know grace and love. She asked that he be ordered to come to her home in the slums 2 times a month.
3. Spin magazine did a feature on Shane and the community he is a part of named The Simple Way. He said after the feature ran he received hundreds of letters from non-Christians who were intrigued by the God he followed and many other letters from Christians who were upset that he would do an interview with such a secular magazine. It was at that point that he knew he had done the right thing.

Internet Efficiency

Last week I wrote about how great iGoogle is. The biggest reason I thought it was so good is that it makes me more efficient on the internet. I wanted to let you know of a few other things that do the same for me.

1. If you use Internet Explorer or Safari you need to switch to Firefox. 75% of the readers of this blog use either IE or Safari, but neither of those even comes close to what Firefox can do for you. The ability for 3rd party themes and extensions on Firefox makes it so much better. From spell check, to awesome browser looks, Firefox is incredible. It is like comparing Facebook from when it first came out to where it is now. Not even close.
2. A few weeks ago Mr. Whittaker talked about something he uses called Morning Coffee. It is a Firefox extension that basically allows you to load all the websites you check in one window in different tabs. I've been using it for just over a week and it is a-mazing and you have to try it.
   
3. A website called Readburner lets you look at the most popular blog items that have been shared within Google Reader. So for those of you who use Google Reader, go to this site and add your shared url so that there is more diversity of the kind of things that are most popular.
4. If you have problems or questions with these, either email me or leave a comment with your email and I'll try and help you out.
   

What makes you more efficient on the internet?

Irresistible Revolution .9

Chapter 9 of Irresistible Revolution is essentially a look at modern versus post modern.

Shane says that modernity is a joining of people who have it all together, while post modern is a joining of people who know they don't. This divide is played out in all areas of faith. Iraq to some is what America deserved (he quoted Jerry Falwell for this), but Shane quotes Mark 10:18 to respond to Falwell's opinion. During the great persecutions it was written that for every one Christian that was killed there were at least 10 converts. Shane believes that Christianity spreads rapidly when it is killed by evildoers without retaliation.

I know a lot of you who have followed this are thinking Shane is really liberal. I'd like to share this quote from chapter 8. "Conservatives stand up and thank God that they are not like the homosexuals, the Muslims, the liberals. Liberals stand up and thank God that they are not like the war makers, the yuppies, the conservatives. It is a similar self righteousness..."

A powerful story he alludes to is his relationship with the father of a girl who was killed in the Oklahoma City bombings. At the first the father was bitter and angry, very angry. However, the father always remembered his daughter saying "execution teaches hatred." This father traveled the country, after McVeigh had been sentenced to death, speaking about the message of his daughter. He believed that the death penalty was teaching people that we believe some people are beyond redemption, a message unsupported by Scripture in his mind.

• Claiborne is not shy about tackling just about every sensitive subject in politics and society in this book. I commend him for that. Whether you disagree or not, it is much better to discuss than to suppress your thoughts.
• I have spent a lot of time thinking about the validity of the death penalty. It is something I have supported my whole life. I always felt that some people had simply done something too wrong. It is at this point in my life that I am saddened by that mindset that I have been a part of. From a national standpoint I see some sensibility to it, but in a human and Christian standpoint I see no sensibility at all. The wages of sin is death, one sin or many sins, but it is never too late for grace to reach someone. Do you think Jesus would support the death penalty?

If You Were Wondering

In Oregon it doesn't take much for school to be late or closed. Some of my siblings and mom are busy celebrating a day off in Salem and up in my neck of the woods, school is either 2 hours late or closed. The funny thing is....that picture is how much snow we got. Basically everyone outside of Oregon thinks this is a joke, but it is not. It doesn't take much here. Pretty funny eh?