What’s the Internet?

I didn’t know people like this existed until today. R.C. Sproul has never used the internet, much less heard that his podcasts are Top 10 in Religion & Spirituality!

He’s never sent an email and still uses fax and phone to communicate. Caveman or Renaissance Man?

Watch this video clip on The Resurgence

“I don’t read, but I can write.” Kanye West

Proud Non-Reader Kanye West Turns Author

Didn’t realize this came out until today, but Kanye West apparently wrote a book!? He’s a self-designated “non-reader”, who thinks books take a back seat to real life. He contends he’d never waste time to read a book and would rather live life. But this self-designated “non-reader” has now done what? He’s written a whole book?! Well, let’s not carried away. The book is about 52 pages of Kanye-isms, or one-liner nuggets of wisdom coming from the very mouth of the Wise One, Kanye West. This non-reader thought it was a daunting task to write all 52 pages by himself, so he’s signed on this project with his co-author J. Sakiya Sandifer. And together they’ve produced genius like the page below…

Ok. I shouldn’t be so cynical. I apologize. But this just embodies the self-absorbed ethic of our age. We aren’t willing to listen to anyone, yet we feel entitled to have everyone listen to us. Kanye won’t pick up a novel for the life of him to hear another voice, but he wants everyone to go out and hear his for $8. Trouble lurks around the minds of those that have shut themselves out of hearing a different voice than their own.

That is why God speaks into the lives of His people. We have His Word given to us to speak into our lives; to be the other voice that we hear. The Word is a reality outside of ourselves that speaks objectively into our lives. And when we begin to shut that Word out, watch out…

Running Out of Space: The Story of Our Lives

I realized a long time ago that men and women have different engines when it comes to certain activities. For example, get me in a room where there’s a hint of competition or something to win & my senses are heightened and I’ll fight until I come out on top. My wife? She’d rather hangout and talk with those watching on the sidelines. But get my wife in a building with stores that are lined up in a straight line with red signs marked “sale” and she’s ready to have at it. Me? I’m the guy that sits on the nearest flat surface until we’re ready to leave. All that to say…we went shopping today.

While shopping, I ran in for a quick respite at the Apple Store. I know I won’t ever buy anything, but just being surrounded by cool technology inspires me. I was hovering around the section where they sold the new magic mouse, which happened to be sold out. While asking about when they were going to receive a new shipment of the mice, I was eavesdropping on a conversation close by. They were talking about the days when 30gb Hard Drives were the sickest thing on the market and how we find 1tb Hard Drives as a default on our computers now.

That led me to think, “When did we ever find the need to have 1tb of information on our computers?!” But the dude was right, without 1tb of Hard Drive space, we’d be hard pressed to have anything on our computer these days. We just have so much crap on these things. They hold our entire lives on a small spinning disc. And in one way or another, our lives have grown from dreaming about 30gb of stuff to needing 1tb of space. We’ve amassed so much junk, haven’t we? I can barely fit my life into my 160gb Hard Drive currently, but I remember a day when I didn’t know what to do with a 30gb computer. My how times change, but more poignantly…my how our lives are full of junk.

One Day’s Wages

Spreadin’ the word on a SOLID collaborative effort headed by Eugene Cho from Quest Church in Seattle called One Day’s Wages. Check it out.

Top 10 Life-Shaping Books…thus far

We read a lot of garbage these days. Judging from the New York Times Best-Seller List, America consumes romance, fictional thrillers, & self-betterment books like it’s going out of style. In my short years of reading and learning from the hard work of the authors that write the books, I’ve come across both garbage and precious stones. I’d like to say that every book is life-shaping in one way or another, but I thought I’d compile a short list of books that have changed my perspective on life and most importantly, shaped my thoughts about God. I don’t want to bore you with my thoughts on each and every book, but I hope at least the list can serve you well in exploring a bit further those books that I’ve found to be diamonds in the rough.

these are in no particular order

1. Desiring God by John Piper

2. The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer

3. The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer

4. Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

5. Kingdom Prologue by Meredith Kline

6. Simply Christian by N.T. Wright

7. Revolution in World Mission by K.P. Yohannan

8. A Hunger for God by John Piper

9. The Next Evangelicalism by Soong-Chan Rah

10. The Confessions by Augustine

Deadly Viper: Kung Fu, Asian Stereotypes, & Racial Reconciliation

Not sure if you’ve seen some of the dialogue happening around this issue, but here’s a quick summary of what the whole ruckus is about.

Zondervan Publishing and the authors Mike Foster & Jud White have a book out, since 2007, called, “Deadly Viper Character Assassins: A Kung-Fu Survival Guide for Life & Leadership”. It’s essentially a book on character building and integrity keeping for Christian leaders, which no one doubts the contents of. But what’s caused a stir is their marketing and apparent exploitation of Asian stereotypes.

Brought to the forefront by Dr. Soong Chan Rah (North Park Theological Seminary), the issue surrounding Deadly Viper’s misuse of Asian stereotypes is alarming. Catch up with the conversation by reading this interaction between Dr. Rah and one of the authors of the book, this open letter to Zondervan & the authors, and this response by Mike & Jud.

I just thought I’d share a few quick thoughts on all this.

some caveats: I don’t know Mike or Jud personally, so please don’t take my remarks as lambasting them and their character. I realize Mike & Jud’s marketing of the book was all in good intention and I scarcely see how they were being racist or are racist. I also recognize that Mike & Jud are brothers in Christ, who share a passion to develop godly Christian leaders.

My surprise with this whole issue is the seeming unawareness of both the authors, Zondervan, and many of the book’s readership. How could anyone overlook the blatant racially charged stereotype of Asians for nearly 2 years since publishing the book? How did it get overlooked for so long? Did it have to take an Asian to point out the obvious flaws? Are we so blind to issues of racial stereotyping? I thought not, but this makes me rethink. I mean, do we really need “Kung-Fu Fighting” as intro music (click on Deadly Viper at Catalyst) to anything remotely Asian? Do we need images like this one to promote a Christian leadership book?

Do we really need random Kanji characters to authenticate our Kung-Fu theme? Don’t we realize that Kanji is a Japanese use of Chinese characters and that Kung-Fu is a Chinese martial art? I wonder how different this would all be if it was a book on character with pictures and themes depicting Native-American Stereotypes, or maybe more poignantly, African-American stereotypes?

It all just confuses me and mostly saddens me. I thought the people of God, the multi-ethnic multitude, were to love and encourage one another, not exploit and sell each other out. It saddens me that in 2009, we deal with issues like this, where there was no obvious malicious intent, but still a lack of awareness of different cultures and peoples. I know we’re all works in progress, especially me, but I hope that we can all work toward a respectful unity that exemplifies the Body of Christ and its beauty in diversity.

Twitter: The World’s Stage

Can Twitter become a tool for global conversation or is it just a sounding board for one’s own thoughts?

I think it has the potential for the former, but is realistically the latter.

I recently de-followed John Mayer. I love the guy’s music, but the dude just tweets ridiculousness and does it often. His Friday night shenanigans are of no interest to me. Now that’s a trite example, but in the same manner, do we not dwindle down our lists of people we follow by how much their message fits into our narrow perspectives? Do we not follow people just because they say what we want to hear (i.e. celebrity gossip)? Or ought we to use this sort of medium to increase our awareness of the global voice? voices outside our own kingdoms.

I’m not too sure I do a good job of this, but beginning to think this is a perfect tool to hear & maintain a global conversation. Maybe it’s not, but how can we redeem this medium of technology?

Relationships: Real or Virtually Real?

Mate debate: Is monogamy realistic? – CNN.com.

Take a minute to read this incredibly eye-opening, yet completely unsurprisingly article by CNN.

While we can look at numerous factors that might lead to the complete disintegration of the monogamous relationship, I thought of one particular one that really intrigued me. In the article, a French author, Jaques Attali, writes this about the declining state of monogamy, “Monogamy, which is really no more than a useful social convention, will not survive. It has rarely been honored in practice; soon, it will vanish even as an ideal.” Then we have suggestions from authors like Judith Eve Lipton & David Barash who wrote the book, “The Myth of Monogamy”, suggesting a serial monogamy as an alternative to the traditional mode of monogamy. Not only that, but there seems to be a dating website now called, “The Ashley Madison Agency”, a dating site for married men and women, which claims 4.5 million members and greets visitors with the motto, “Life is short. Have an affair.”

Then it hit me… Monogamy is disintegrating because it is quite literally vanishing. We have no real point of contact in relationships anymore with the onset of social media giants like facebook & twitter, and the proliferation of portable devices hooking you into these mirage-like relational medias has only perpetuated the problem. Could the unrealistic state of monogamy be due to the virtual reality we’ve planted ourselves in? We no longer have real friends, but facebook friends. We no longer have real conversations, but g-chats. We no longer see one another, because we’re too busy looking at our iphone and checking on the twitter update of the friend you happen to be in the same room with. With the disintegration of the reality of relationship, no wonder we’ve lost any reality of the monogamous marriage relationship. Husbands and wives, individually tied to their blackberrys, no longer communicating, because it’s easier to send an email, when convenient.

Yes, we can very well attribute the breakdown of the monogamous relationship with a declining moral ethic, a loss of the reality of God, a confused sexual ethic, the increased consumer mentality, and many more contributors. But let’s just sit on this one for a bit. How real are your current relationships? And for the married folk, when’s the last time you sat and talked, done relationship the old-fashioned way?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for social media and technological advances that aid our communication. But as one of my professors rightly points out, “With the addition of every new advancement in technology, we very well lose something real”. Everything is virtual – virtually invisible. The lines of reality and virtual reality are being blurred by the minute. And I don’t think it to be a stretch to see a world one day like we see in the prophetic movie, Wall-E.

Come down from the high clouds and blurry fogs of virtual reality and ground yourself in the reality of God’s very Word. We’ve extrapolated and abstracted everything and everyone to the point where nothing really exists anymore. But when we return to the ground of God’s Word, we root ourselves in a timeless truth that instructs us that a monogamous relationship is the design for humanity.

Justification: What is it?

Justification is an incredibly weighty doctrine in Christianity. It determines our standing before God, and considering we’re sinful to our core, we place our hope on this doctrine of Justification. In recent years, two prominent Christian thinkers, John Piper & N.T. Wright, have engaged in a debate through a myriad of books and articles, in hopes to clarify and lay bear the weightiness of the Doctrine of Justification.

Here is a quick PDF article from Christianity Today explaining what the debate is about.

For Whose Sake?

“Save me for the sake of your steadfast love” Psalm 6:4

Would not this sentence be more appropriate if it read, “Save me for my own sake“? It seems odd to me that David, the psalm writer, would ask God to save him, for the sake of God’s steadfast love. In other words, how does David’s saving lead to a lifting up of God’s steadfast love?

It seems that for some reason, the saving of David leads to a magnifying of God’s steadfast love. I think precisely because God’s love is magnified when God gives to David what is ultimately best for him and that is God. So when God saves David, he saves David to Himself, giving David the greatest thing he could ever want or desire.

As somewhat of an aside, I was at a conference last night at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, featuring some top notch thinkers of the Evangelical Faith. At the conference, echoing statements made by both Dr. Jack Davis of GCTS, and Dr. Miroslav Volf of Yale Divinity, struck me. They echoed similarly that the Church lacked the concrete reality of God in its life. Meaning, the Church has lost any sense of who God really is and that He is the ultimate reality, more real than the chair we comfortably sit in as we listen to our favorite preacher. Volf proposed that the only way to combat the increasingly sensational thirst & desire of our present age, or what he terms, ‘The Empire of Desire’, “we need to make plausible that the love of God is the key to human flourishing (or satisfaction).” All this to say, David’s salvation is for the sake of God’s steadfast love, because it shows that God saves David, not only to give him more of the earthly things he desires, but he saves David to give him more of God, who is the ultimate reality and, as Volf might say, the only hope for human flourishing.