Thursday, January 25, 2007

The Right Tool...

I just thought I'd mention that I have my computer back up and running. Ironically, after all the trouble I had with my old hard drive, my new windows installation took one look at it, went to work repairing the disk, and now I'm happily copying data off it. Well, I think I am...time for bed.

P.S. Remind me sometime to talk about how the Christian life is more like a road rally than a marathon.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

15 seconds...and poof

So the poof part is that my computer hard disk finally failed. Mostly it is my fault for getting caught unprepared; it had been acting weird for a couple weeks now, but I just hoped that it was alright. I haven't lost much (I did a late November backup), but lost my latest (1+ year) update of my finances from paper to Quicken. Oops. So my computer usage may be a little off for the next couple weeks while I fix that up.

Meanwhile, CBS is doing a thought provoking contest. They are offering a 15 second spot to say "anything" you want...within certain restrictions (e.g. no profanity). So I've been thinking about: How would I use those 15 seconds to communicate the gospel in a clear and creative way using both audio and visual appeal? My follow-up thought is: Is there a better message to communicate to America? Something more like John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Christ? If so, how would I present it?

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Baaa...and evil.

So it doesn't feel like I've been doing much lately, although I'm managing to keep myself busy with one activity or another. But I did start a class today at church on 'discipleship in the 1st century,' which is looking at what Jesus meant by discipleship. It's particularly interesting since we don't have many examples of discipleship in America today. When was the last time I knew someone who followed a teacher around, emulating the way the teacher lived life? (And no, cults don't count.)

We talked a lot about sheep - communal animals, vulnerable, and valuable for wool, food, and milk. We talked about raising sheep in the Middle East, and how the sheep were generally travelling - none of this 'put the sheep in the pasture by Michigan State with donkey' bit.

Anyway, two thoughts that were a good kick in the pants, err, stood out to me. The first is that following Jesus often involves movement, especially movement to places I wouldn't naturally go. The second thought was that an inherent part of following Jesus is whether other people follow me as I follow him. It's easy for me to loose focus, especially that following Jesus isn't a purely nebulous 'do good' type idea, but there's a very concrete application. I don't think our concept of teaching (e.g. verbal instruction) quite captures the essence of this application, but neither does the nebulous 'do good' idea.

Meanwhile there was a fascinating comment to my last entry:
So you believe that Christian people are the only people in the world that love others unconditionally... w/o self-protection?
I'm still thinking that one through, mostly because I wrestle a lot on what exactly the Bible means in teaching that we're fallen (depraved?) and how that interacts with our experiential observations of people.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Giving And Receiving

So a week ago I mentioned that I'd been reading Tropical Gangsters. Today I thought I'd share one. Ironically, this is one of the few quotes of Steinbeck that I've really appreciated (even though that may scare my high school English teachers). Reading this quote made me think of Gates and Buffet's recent donations, although it's far older than that.
Perhaps the most overrated virtue on our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice.

It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

Tropical Gangsters, pg 13, quoting a John Steinbeck essay
As others commented earlier, I don't know where Gates' heart is coming from. But I've been pondering whether I really believe people change after accumulating great wealth, and what sort experience it takes for that change to happen.

I've also been pondering whether Jesus would agree with Steinbeck or not. I don't know. Here's something else I read today: It's possible to be many good things without Christ - charitable, disciplined, self-restrained. But without Christ, we cannot love others without self-protection.