Preaching to the choir...

The only people who will read these notices about the importance of
handwashing are the ones already using the sink.

Political Activism

Someone e-mailed me one of those viral forwards urging us to "refuse" to accept one of those new George Washington dollars because it doesn't say IN GOD WE TRUST on it. The idea of the e-mail forward is that we can make the world a better place. Really? A better place? Would this not just serve as a "witness" to cashiers all over the world that all Christians are jerks and idiots? (And by "jerks" I mean it in the network-TV-censorsed Marty McFly sense—"What happens to us in the future, do we all become jerks or something?")

The funny thing is, IN GOD WE TRUST is on the coins, but it's placing cleverly on the outside edge, following the model of the British 2-pound coins.

I actually listened to a Q & A session from John MacArthur at the Shepherds Conference in which someone asked him a question about politics and he said something along the lines of, which singular person has the job of president of the United States for 4 or 8 years matters very little in the scheme of things. He laughed it off and moved on to the next question (in this same session he spent like 15 minutes talking about his pens). This article is about how much more important the cause of Christ is than one temporal election season. I encourage you to read it.

When the church takes a stance that emphasizes political activism and social moralizing, it always diverts energy and resources away from evangelization. Such an antagonistic position toward the established secular culture invariably leads believers to feel hostile not only to unsaved government leaders with whom they disagree, but also antagonistic toward the unsaved residents of that culture—neighbors and fellow citizens they ought to love, pray for, and share the gospel with. To me it is unthinkable that we become enemies of the very people we seek to win to Christ, our potential brothers and sisters in the Lord.

And this, from musician Shaun Groves:

I understand wanting to vote for someone under whom Christianity would flourish. I get that. Let me think about who that might be for a second. OK, well, because of what history teaches us about the conditions under which Christianity thrives you might want to vote for a guy or girl who will lock up our churches, strip us of our freedoms, imprison us for praying, and is a bit of a psychotic pyromaniac [like Nero]. That’s the kind of guy whose intolerance and brutality helped turn a Jewish cult into a major world religion.

God and His Church have never needed a president’s or Caesar’s support in order to survive.

"Let those who vote, as if not voting..."

This morning, John Piper published an excellent Taste and See article at Desiring God entitled, "Let Christians Vote As Though They Were Not Voting". It is based on Paul's exhortations in 1 Cor. 7:29-31 (ESV), to "deal with the world as though [we] had no dealings with it." Each of the areas Paul addresses, Piper takes and applies to voting. It's a remarkable specimen of exposition and application.

So it is with voting. There are joys. The very act of voting is a joyful statement that we are not under a tyrant. And there may be happy victories. But the best government we get is a foreshadowing. Peace and justice are approximated now. They will be perfect when Christ comes. So our joy is modest. Our triumphs are short-lived—and shot through with imperfection. So we vote as though not voting.

Read the full article.

Retro bluetooth handset

I want one of these.  It's very cool.  You can actually hold it on your shoulder and talk into it.

A piece of bluegrbutt history...

An attempt by some beginner programmer to filter out offensive words and replace them with their G-rated counterparts has lead to this article on the history of Bluegrbutt music:

"Since Bill was a native of Kentucky, the Bluegrbutt State, he decided to call his band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grbutt Boys..." And it just gets funnier!

Educational technology

Chico State updates it's Vista online classroom service to accept Word document uploads; software engineer husbands of student wives rejoice. Bug page.

Sent from my iPhone

Thabiti says it's Pastor Appreciation Month!

October is Pastor Appreciation Month!  http://blog.9marks.org/2008/10/thabiti-says-lo.html

If you are providentially blessed to have a humble, viligant man of the Word as your pastor, a man who studies to show himself approved, a man who rightly divides the word of truth, a man who lives his life for, by, in, through, and upon the Word of God, then please show him you are thankful for him.

And I don't mean by buying him a Mercedes, people!  How about something that glorifies God more appropriately, such as spending a significant amount of time in intercessory prayer for him and his family, writing him letters, or blogging about how important he is to you.

Honestly, if it weren't for my pastor's influence in my life, I don't know where I'd be today. Thank you, Patrick.

Sent from my iPhone

How do you put your family-values money where your family-values mouth is?

Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, is one of the leaders in the emergent church. I used to like his writing because it offered sort of a contemporary edge and made Christians feel like it's okay to listen to secular music and get inspired by cool movies. Honestly, I don't think he's as harmful as some others, like Rob Bell, because he's not a pastor, just an author. But, by falling in line with some others in the emergent church, he has thereby identified himself with watered-down theology.

Tim Challies recently posted a link to this interview Donald Miller did with the Burnside Writers' Collective (from Portland, my old stomping grounds). It's a very interesting interview in which he explains why he, though he is Pro-Life, is supporting a Democrat for president. The summary of it all is this:

• There is only one candidate who claims to have a relationship with Jesus Christ
• This candidate has a plan to lower abortion rates
• This candidate plans to stop rewarding families whose fathers leave

Something to think about. Will you vote for a Republican just because he's a Republican, even though he's really not very conservative and forsook his marriage covenant, leaving his wife when he came back from Vietnam because she was in a wheelchair and didn't appeal to him sexually anymore? Or will you put your family-values money where your family-values mouth is?

Update: The estimable Dr. Robert P. George, who is arguably a much more reliable source than Don Miller, has written an article alleging that the exact opposite is true regarding Obama's stance on abortion. These two views regarding the same man cannot be true. One must be true and the other false, or both must be false. I encourage you to look into each of the facts presented, and consider these senators' actual voting records in congress in addition to what they say they will do in order to earn your vote.

When we consider McCain's "family values" that were reflected when he abandoned his wife, we must also consider whether mass infanticide is a worse sin. It probably is (compare 2 Samuel 12:13 where God forgives David's adultery with 2 Kings 17:17-18 where he puts the entire nation out of his sight due because of their infanticide). Something more to thing about.

Disclaimer: Obama says he voted against that law in Illinois to provide medical treatment to an infant in the event of a failed abortion because they already had such a law on the books. To fail to provide treatment was already a felony in the state, and he is not against it being a felony. This law would have undermined Roe v. Wade (which would have been a good thing), and that's why he voted against it. This solidifies his pro-choice stamp, yes, but the "it gets worse yet" and "breathtaking injustice" remarks from George are clearly sensationalized. He's not a super-abortionist; he's just like any other pro-choice liberal democrat.

Calendar Synchronization

Today I came across a service called NuevaSync. It allows you to sync calendars between Google Calendar, Gmail, Plaxo (which I don't use actively, was just automatically signed up for from AIM a couple years ago), and mobile devices that support Exchange, like the iPhone and Windows Mobile-based devices. I thought about this after reading a little bit about the Chandler Project, an open-sourced project intended to compete with Microsoft Outlook. Scott Rosenberg worked on the project for three years and left before its first release, and has said, "For now, Google Calendar does the job for me." I use Outlook at work, but not the Calendaring feature. I used to use iCal on my MacBook, which sync'ed nicely, but since my hard drive crashed and had to be replaced, I am back to using my PC as my primary machine, and my MacBook only when necessary. The only way Google Calendar would be useful to me would be if it synced with my iPhone.

Which it does, now, with NuevaSync.

Setup is a cinch.

Step 1: Click on the "sign up" link and enter your user info.
Step 2: Check your e-mail and click on the link.
Step 3: Sign in and set up your services.
Step 4: Configure your phone.

It's a mobile-friendly site, so you don't need to be on your computer to set this all up.

When you set up your Google Calendar service, it will take you to an official Google site where you confirm your access request. It appears this is all done through an API rather than screen scraping, so you don't have to worry about NuevaSync having access to your password or any other information from your GMail account.



Unfortunately, I cannot go any further in this review as far as how well it works or how convenient it is. It turns out Apple syncs from a clean slate, so you will lose all your existing contacts and calendar information if you choose to use this service. I'm not willing to do this, but as iPhone updates come out in the future, I'll keep checking back on this page to see if anything has changed.