.:: a few thoughts on the subject by rob wright ::.

Tim Keller, author of “The Reasons for God” and pastor of Redeemer Church, NYC.

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Mere Christianity, Book 3 Chapter 11

If there was any idea that God had set us a sort of exam, and that we might get good marks by deserving them, that has to be wiped out. If there was any idea of a sort of bargain-any idea that we could perform our side of the contract and thus put God in our debts so that it was up to Him, in mere justice, to perform His side-that has to be wiped out.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, “Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.” Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. The man is awake now.

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I would like to know the ESV guys because it appears that I have much in common with them. It seems very rare that a Biblical translation would have as many geeky features. The latest proof is the social network map of the New Testament. Too, too cool.

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I always laugh when people talk about October 31 being the “devil’s day.” I’m such a poor student of history, that it wasn’t until 5 years ago that I learned that October 31 is also the day that Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses on the church doors of Wittenburg, Germany (October 31, 1517).

So to some October 31 is also Reformation Day. This is a huge day in the history of the church. Without the providential efforts of Luther, Calvin, and Knox in the Protestant Reformation, it’s likely that we’d all be Catholic. So, between the candy, thank God for these men and their fiery committment to the His Word.

* Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone!
* Solus Christus - Christ Alone!
* Sola Gratia - Grace Alone!
* Sola Fide - Faith Alone!
* Soli Deo Gloria - Glory to God Alone!

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace - of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel - after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps - suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started… Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

– Robert Capon

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As a continuation to my previous post, further proof that Congress is listening to the wrong folks. Via Jon Stewart, hear Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), head of the Commerce Committee, explain the Internet.

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In addition to being a great translation, the ESV guys are very high-tech…my favorite combination Christians and geeks They even have a blog. It’s terrific that they can weave Perl, XML, and Bible quotes in the same post! Check out their use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk in this entry, ESV Bible Blog » Blog Archive » Mechanical Turk Recap.

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I’m in no way an expert on Net Neutrality, but I sent the following letter to Jim DeMint. In the words of a wise man, “I don’t have to be able to lay an egg, to smell a rotten one.” In other words, I can choose to side with the best or the worst innovators of the last 30 years.

Senator DeMint,

I was very disappointed to read your opinion piece on Net Neutrality at http://news.com.com/2010-1028_3-6088253.html. I am a software engineer who has actively used the Internet since 1992. I’ve worked for the Department of Defense, publicly traded IT companies, and run a small IT consulting company. All of these organizations made heavy use of the Internet well before my parents had email. As such, I’m well acquainted with the business and engineering aspects of the Internet. I am also a conservative Republican that voted for you, Senator Graham, and President Bush.

I strongly disagree with your statement that Net Neutrality discourages competition. As the owners of the backbone of the Internet are all former Baby Bells, I would argue that today there is little to no competition in the network services market. We are still victims of the anti-competitive practices of AT&T. This statement becomes even clearer when one sees that Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T are pitted against Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, service providers verses their customers.

In addition, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft are synonymous with innovation. In contrast, my local and long distance provider, Vonage, has in a period of less than 5 years delivered more consumer services and innovation at a lower price than Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T combined. The cable and telecommunications companies are very good at delivering reliable utility services, but they do not produce the innovations necessary to grow and sustain the U.S. economy. To enable the telecommunication companies to penalize the innovators is incredibly detrimental to our economy. In this specific instance, the argument that government regulation hurts the competitive marketplace is simply a red herring. Government regulation may very well enable competition.

Finally, it is no mistake that this engine of commerce is termed the “Internet Super Highway.” Just as Eisenhower’s Interstate System is a federally funded enabler of traditional personal and commercial traffic, the Internet is the enabler of digital personal and commercial traffic. If you are a supporter of federal funding and regulation of our highway system, then many of the same benefits apply to federal funding and regulation of the Internet.

I agree that this is a difficult subject, but I would ask that you weigh the opinions of both AT&T and Google, the established utility and the darling of Wall Street and geeks. The network services market is a commodity market. In the words of Harvard economics Professor Clayton Christensen, the value in the market has shifted upstream. There is no substantial profit in the commodity market; new more profitable markets are emerging. To enable Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft is to enable competition. If you must take sides, side with innovation.

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i think pet stories like marie’s are great to tell kids, a real descriptive way to teach a lesson. i’m saving the “i helped kill my dog because i didn’t obey my parents story” for elliott and ethan. not that i like telling the story, it’s just a terrible lesson that i learned about consequences, and i don’t want my boys to experience that. it goes like this…

when i was a kid (0 - 12), we lived in a rural area in knoxville. our house was up a hill at the end of a long gravel drive way. dad and mom had 3 acres in the woods, and it was a great place for boys. unfortunately though, the road curved around our property, so it was difficult to see oncoming cars when you pulled out of the driveway. i can still hear my mom preaching to me and my brother that we should never, ever play near the road. this was particularly tempting because there was a creek on the other side of the road.

so, one day i slowly worked my way toward the road. i can’t remember specifically why, but i do distinctly remembering that i was disobeying; but i was careful and what could really happen. i was almost to the road when i heard the squeal of tires. i then realized that my dog, a beagle named patches, had followed me to the road and was hit by a car. even though i was young, i quickly realized that my dog was only near the road because he followed me. i felt terrible.

the driver of the car stopped and was very apologetic. my dad told him that he understood, then put patches in a wheel barrow and rolled him up our driveway to be buried later. i ran to my room crying.

i later went to look at patches in the wheel barrow and noticed that his eyes were open. i ran to my dad with the hope that patches was still alive…that’s when i learned that you could be dead and your eyes still open. it was a sucky day, but for the following few weeks i was a perfect child. later we got another beagle, lucky, and i never made the same mistake.

it kills me to think that elliott and ethan may have the same experience, and that’s why they will probably hear this story more than once in their life. i don’t want them to feel that pain. as a parent, i can now better understand how in the same way God gives us the Bible as a guideline for living. there are many rules/laws in the Bible that are designed to help show us that we aren’t perfect and that God requires perfection. but many of those same rules are to protect me from the consequences of sin. in many ways i’m still the 6 yr old robbie wanting to play near the road and God my Father is reminding me that there are consequences to disobedience. i need that reminder every day.

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Luke 16:1-9: The Parable of the Dishonest Manager

¹He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. ²And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ ³And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. ⁴I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ ⁵So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ ⁷Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ ⁸The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. ⁹And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

I’ve been looking for this verse for 6 months. It finally appeared in today’s Bible read through. While the parable does not teach that we should steal from our employers when we know we are going to be fired, it does teach a principle that is very true today. I know that I’m applying a sterotype, but Christians can be so naive and irrelevant when trying to communicate to non-Christians. Among other things, this parable teaches that Christians should understand the world and know how to “speak the language.”

That’s one reason that I really like Mo Leverett and Desire Street Ministries of New Orleans (now relocated to the panhandle of Florida). Mo didn’t move to New Orleans and stand on a street corner and scream the gospel at people. He didn’t work to establish a traditional church with traditional services. He moved to the neighborhood and “became one of them.” He teaches at the local high school. He works to provide for the physical needs of the children and families. He helps them with their education and encourages college. AND he tells them about Christ. He “shrewdly” meets the physical and emotional needs of the poor people in the Desire community, all the while demonstrating and living the gospel. While Mo is smart to “speak the language” of the people and deal shrewdly with them, this is really love! He loves the people of desire. He wants to see long-lasting marriages, healthy children, educated children, and college-bound teenagers.

While I absolutely think that Christians should be creative, wise, and shrewd when ministering to the world, above all we should love! We should want to see our non-Christian friends succeed, have great friends, successful marriages, smart children, and changed by the gospel.

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing…. ¹³So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 13

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A quick and easy way to contact your Senators in support of Judge Alito.

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