Canadian Reporter+Sled=Funny

There is a part of me feels bad for this guy, the other part of me says don't stand in front of a sled. Watch it all the way to the end.


http://www.break.com/index/reporter-owned-by-sled2.html

Bebo Norman (Borrow Mine)

While I was writing tonight I was trying to find some good music to listen to, I found this song that I haven't listened to in a while. It is one of my favorite Bebo Norman songs and it voices the need for a good community of friends very well.

Bebo Norman-Borrow Mine

Take my hand and walk with me a while
Cause it seems your smile has left you
And don't give in, when you fall apart
And your broken heart has failed you
I'll set a light up
On a hilltop
To show you my love
For this world to see

You can borrow mine
When your hope is gone
Borrow mine
When you can't go on
'Cause the world will not defeat you
When we're side by side
When your faith is hard to find
You can borrow mine

Take my love when all that you can see
Is the raging sea all around us
And don't give up 'cause I'm not letting go
And the God we know will not fail us
We'll lay it all down
As we call out
Sweet Savior
help our unbelief

You can borrow mine
When your hope is gone
Borrow mine
When you can't go on
'Cause the world will not defeat you
When we're side by side
When your faith is hard to find
You can borrow mine

When you are weak
Unable to speak
You are not alone
The God who has saved us
Will never forsake us
he's coming to take us
Take us to our home

You can borrow mine
When your hope is gone
Borrow mine
When you can't go on
'Cause the world will not defeat you
When we're side by side
When your faith is hard to find
When your faith is hard to find
You can borrow mine

Take my hand
Take my love
Don't give in
Don't give up

Good Questions (Part 2)

Here is the second part of those the questions, this post will be shorter then the last. Again if something doesn't make any since just post it in the comments and I will do my best to respond and make it clear what I mean.

Minor Questions

• If Christianity is right then why is there so much proof for evolution? Christianity and evolution are not actually mutually exclusive, there are many people who believe that the way that God created the world and all life was through evolution. In fact when you look at the theory of evolution and get down to the statistics of it evolution becomes a very unlikely thing and the only way to really explain it is with God.

• Was the virgin birth real? Couldn't someone just made it up? The answer to this is yes it could have been made up. But this isn't very likely because, to put in a modern example it would be like going around saying that you have aids but you haven't had sex, people would have just said that you where crazy. Not only that but the chances of the man staying with the woman would have been slim with out some intervention. You see back in those days there was a huge double standard and if a woman got pregnant the man could just leave and get away with little more then a stern talking to.

• Did they really find Noah's ark? This is a debatable question, many people say yes and many people say no. The facts are that for a boat to survive for thousands of years is very unlikely, but God has done more miraculous thing then keep a boat on top of a mountain before.

• If Noah's ark is true then why aren't we all inbreed freaks? First most people don't realize that there where 8 people on the boat; Noah, Noah's wife, Noah's 3 sons, and the 3 sons wives. This is an ok number to start with so that nothing goes wrong down the line. The second thing that most people don't realize is that problems with inbreeding don't USUALLY start in 1 or 2 generations, it USUALLY takes longer then that. You can look at dogs for an example, we have been breeding dogs in a relatively small gene pool for many years now and, while there are some problems that have come up, there aren't any 2 tailed dogs running around or any with 5 legs. Inbreeding happens when a small group of people (say about 5) have sex, then there children have sex, and then those children have sex.

• If Christianity is right then why are there so many other religions? It is in the nature of man to wonder about God, this makes us ask question of ourselves and the universe around us. This is great except that because we are sinful when we go searching for those answers we inevitably get lost, the ironic this is the time that we are, usually, closest to God but we may not reach out for Him and instead we go on to try to answer our questions by ourselves. This results in false doctrine and false beliefs.

• I want to learn more about this and start to go to church but I can't fit it into my schedule. If this is really true then in today's world there are a lot of things that you can do that fit your schedule. Podcasts are a good example, and two great ones to start with are Mars Hill Church with Mark Driscoll and Ravi Zacharias, blogs are another place to go as well as seeing if a local church has a podcast that they offer.

Good Questions (Part 1)

So this past week one of the things that kept me really busy is that some questions were asked that I really need to answer. Some of them were really basic and easy but others made me think in ways that I never had. I typed them all out but the file is four pages long, I am not going to publish that all in one so I decided to split it into two posts. When I was writing this I broke it up into two part: Major questions that are more important and minor questions that weren't as important, so here is the first one of two. Also some of this was written late at night after long days so some of it may not make since, if something doesn't just post it in the comments and I will try to make it as clear as I can there.

Major Questions

• Since I can't see God how do I know that he is real? This ultimately a question of faith, the chances of God coming and showing himself to you are slim to none but there are other things that you can look at. The analogy of the wind is a good one because humans didn't always know about the wind, there was a time when people thought that the wind was something mystical and mysterious and it really wasn't until the age of enlightenment that we started to think of natural things in light of what they where and not these mystical things. In a similar way we can look at the world around us and see the effects of God, if you are a poet you can see it in the actions of a small child growing and learning, if you are an artist you can see it in nature and the trees growing, but if you are a scientist you can see it in statistics. One simple statistic is about the chances of a single enzyme to form, the chances of this happening are 10 to the power of 20, to 1 then the chances of that enzyme to self replicate is 10 to the power of 40000 to 1. This is just one statistic but the list of things that if changed just a little bit would mean that life here on earth would never have been is seemingly endless which doesn't make much sense at all if you don't have someone or something behind the stage pulling the strings (so to speak).

• If you don't follow Christianity do you go to hell? In essence yes, but this is no more then most other religions assert. Jesus said in the Bible that He is the only way to true salvation and Christians hold this statement to be a foundational one. There are, however, different dynamics to the grace of God, primarily being that a person can only be held responsible for the knowledge that they have. This means that if a person in the middle of the African plains dies it is possible for him to go to heaven. The reason for this is because that man was created in the image of God which make him ask questions of himself (Who am I?, How did I get here?, What is the meaning of life?), these questions, when followed to there natural conclusion lead irrevocably back to God. A person doesn't need to know about the Bible or Jesus but when someone is confronted with more knowledge then they are responsible for that knowledge, like we are here in the west.

• Why is a monotheism better then a polytheism? In essence this is a very philosophical question so it will get a very philosophical answer. If we look at the nature of God or gods (for the rest of this answer just known as god) from an a priori (being what we can deduce about god simply because they are god) view. The nature of god is that of all power, when a person thinks of god it is not a stretch for them to say that an attribute of a true god is all power, anything less would simply be a lesser demigod. Still thinking of god another attribute that a god would have to posses is that of need, in other words we must need him for something even if it is as small as being simply god, therefor anything less would make this god a demigod. This means that if god exists then we would have to need him and if god is all powerful then there would be no need for two or more gods, this would make one god God and the rest demigods that would have nothing to do with us anyway.
  

• How do I know what is the right way to go with so many religions all saying that they have the truth? Ultimately this, again, comes down to faith, if every religion says that they have the right way to God and they are all different then it stands to reason that not all of them can be right. There are, however, somethings that you can look at with this to help make a decision on what you believe to be right. God would not create a world and not give it a way to live and communicate to Him, that would go against the nature of what god would be, so you know because of that God has given some means to interact with Him, we can also assume that this would be written (this is just logical since written text can be given to the most amount of people and can be past down through out time from generation to generation). In this text we know that God will not contradict Himself in anyway (this would just send mixed signals and would hurt rather then help), this text would also caring with it a good amount of historical evidence for its age and accuracy of writing (This comes mostly in the amount of copies that have been made through out time and how closely they match each other). With these understood if any text from another religion comes in and tries to say that it is the same or better but does not hold the accreditation of these logical steps it would be a very big leap of faith to believe any of them. The Bible on these accounts comes up clear over and over again, the Bible doesn't contradict itself and there is no other book ever written that can even come close to matching the amount of copies made of the Bible (from the dead sea scrolls all the way up to today) and all of those copies match up to within 99% of each other.

• Couldn't religion be made up to make you feel better and get people to live a good life? Yes, in fact no one on Earth can really argue that it isn't, many studies have brought back results that suggest that people who regularly practice religion (including praying, reading their Bible, consistent quite times, etc) have happier healthier lives, studies have also shown that prayer actually does speed up healthy in sick patients. There are many religions out there that are made up simply to make the people that are in them feel better, these are usually filled with rules and laws that you have to strictly follow to maintain a good spiritual life. All of this really speaks to a need in people, a need that even though people may try to fill it can't be filled by other things, and when you look at religions that are set up just to fill this need then most of the time the end result will be a person that is tired and more spiritually drained then ever before. The need of religion really just points to the fact that we are a lost people in need of someone to reach out and help us.
  

• What about before the bible came along, what did they do for religion? Some of this I already answered in question 2 so this may over lap a little. People can really only be held responsible for the knowledge that they have received not for what they haven't. This means that before the Bible was written a person couldn't be held responsible for not praying for forgiveness from God, they simply wouldn't have known that they would need to. At the same time, but looking at it from a different angle, when we examine cultures from around the world there are certain things that start to come to light, namely with 2 well known stories Noah's ark and the Garden of Eden. In every culture on earth there is a story of a flood whipping out the earth except for a few that the gods of the culture save to restart mankind. The second story that can be found in most, but not all, cultures in that of the Garden of Eden where people lived in some kind pf a perfect place but through some sort of sin they fell from grace and where kicked out. There are several conclusions and conversations that you can draw form these examinations but one that is clear is that early humans found these stories important enough to pass down from generation to generation for the purpose of teaching them, this in essence was the early religion and these stories were the bible before the Bible was penned down, so to say that they were out in the dark without a light is not a good examination of the facts.

• Does Christianity make you give up anything? If so what? Yes. In a, somewhat, figurative sense what it means to become a Christian is to give up your life, you are putting aside sin and taking up a righteous life style that would reflect that of Jesus, that is actually what the word Christian means "Christ follower". For many people this is a huge change in there lives and can effect them in many ways, it is for this reason that the step to become a Christian isn't one to be taken lightly. On the other side of that same coin would be, to barrow a phrase from Aladdin, "A whole new world, with a new fantastic point of view". This world and anything that comes after would take on new life and new meaning, the security that comes with Jesus is unmeasurable and at the same time impossible to ever experience it all. It sounds mystical and impossible and it is, that is what makes it so great.

Reprehensible

While I was online the other day I came across this post Vargas about a man named Guillermo Habacucdecided that it would be art to capture a dog, with the help of two children and put that dog on display in an art gallery so that people could shuffle past and watch it. None of that is the sad or reprehensible part, the "artist" (Which is a term that I use loosely and sarcastically) Guillermo Habacuc Vargas thought that what would make this art is not to feed the dog anything at all. That is the reprehensible thing but the real sad part about this story is that the art exhibition was a success and Guillermo has been chosen to represent his country in the Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008. There is a petition to stop this from being an exhibition which can be found here, it is in another language but it is easy to figure out.

The Void made by Family

Ruth's sister and grandma have been it town for the past week, It has been a lot of fun to have them here. While they were I started to think about Family and what the role of the family is, both now and back in the first century. I personally think that the community is vital to the Christian life and I have the tendency to place it as the most important to Christian life, but no matter what I think about community I know that family is the most defining of all groups that a person will ever be in, even if the family group is non-existent it will still effect someone very deeply.

In the Old Testament the family was huge, ever week you had a whole day where you wouldn't be able to do anything except hang out at home with, guess who, your family. This was also a culture in which most people lived and died within 10 to 20 miles of where they were born, in the case of women many times they would never move out of their fathers house. In this environment Family was top dog, you had to be close to your family because there was no way to get away from them. Not only did you have to like your family, but at first glance there was a huge amount of pressure for the parents of the family to live right and set good examples for there children.

Moving into the New Testament there seems to be change in thinking, from the family driven society to a community driven society. With this change we call other Christian brother and sister, we think of God as are father, there is less of a family focus and more of a community focus. With trade routes becoming easier to travel and the access to ships becoming more common place you find people going to more distant places and stating for long periods of time. Even in this new mind set, however, the Bible still places a huge emphasis on the family which can be seen in places like Ephesians 5 and 6, the Bible says to judge potential elders and deacons of the church by how good of a family they have.

All of this leading us down to today is the 21st century and what is the role that family is taking today. In today's culture family seems to have taken a back seat, and there are many things that you can point at as being the cause of that, myspace, facebook, everyone in a house have there own computer/tv/cell phone. But I know a lot of people who have that and there families are very strong, so that leads me to believe that, while the things listed above might not help the situation, the big problem is complacent leadership in the family. Parents have stopped making defining memories for their kids, traditions that can be passed down from generation to generation. Now the traditions that I see being passed down are giving up, running a way. I don't see how people can look at families in this society and say that on the whole we are doing a good raising the next generation, the divorce rate is higher then 50% and rising every year, even in houses that might have both parents still together there is no unity or "togetherness".

None of this is to say that communities that have been created in the void made by family are bad, if fact I love them, but I do think that there is a point at which we have to stop and look around us and say 'we need to figure out where we came from'. Learning from our parents and grandparents mistakes is what keeps us from repeating them, learning from our family is also what ultimatly guides us in are communities and, in the end, helps us to guide our families.

Potential (In YouVersion)

A few months ago I was turned on to a new website called YouVersion, I singed up with it but didn't give it much attention at the time, but recently I re-found it and have started to like it very much. What YouVersion is doing is trying to make the Bible web 2.0 friendly, and it is very interesting how they are doing it. YouVersion is combining Facebook and Bible Gateway to give the user the ability not only to search scripture on there own but to also talk to other people and friends about what they have found, share insights and resources along with many other features (some of which will be coming out soon). Right now it is still just in beta but I have been using it for the past few days and I think that at its present state it is giving Bible Gateway a run for its money. It still has a lot of things that it could work on, and since it is still in beta I love to give the developers some of my ideas on how to make it better. I still like the pen and paper method of reading the bible but seeing as how most of my life is spent in the virtual world YouVersion would be a close second for me. Check it out and when profile views become available I will post my link.

Best Online Storage

searching the If you are anything like me you are a Google freak, and again if you are anything like me any time someone comes out with a new rumor about a Google Hard Drive (a.k.a. GDrive) you are instantlyinternet to see if it is true. Unfortunately the GDrive hasn't come true yet but in the means time I found a site (thanks to Webware) that is a close second to the mythical Gdrive. The Site is called ADrive, this site gives you an amazing amount of storage for free 50GB. ADrive gets a lot of things right, the upload speed is amazing I was able to upload a little under 310MB in about 10 Minutes, it is a nice clean interface, it is a great option for hosting our files, and if I didn't mention it earlier you get 50GB for free. That all being said there are some down sides, the download is not as impressive as the upload taking me about 15 minutes to get a 30MB video (I did only do the test once so it could have just been the time of day that I was trying to get it at), when you are uplaoding that is all that you can do in that browser and it sucks up all of our bandwidth when you are doing it, also there is no option to get for room (not that you need much more room then 50GB, and it is an option that they are trying to add at a latter date). But if you are starting to run out of room on you computer or you want to share files on two computers this is a great way to do it.

Trinity

Recently I posted my Statement of Faith which caught the interest of a few who disagreed with my statement of the trinity saying that Jesus wasn't both God and man, just man. This isn't new statement at all, in fact it is a argument that is almost as old as the belief in the trinity it self. The reason for this, as far as I see it, is because the trinity is one of the hardest doctrines to believe, not so much because of God the father or God the Holy Spirit but because of the statement that Jesus is not just 50% God and 50% man but 100% God and 100% man.

I will primarily be responding to a post made on Adoni Messiah because it seemed to give a good explanations and give a point by point argument. The first point that I see in the post is "that both Oneness and trinity doctrines try to make Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah our Lord, into Almighty GOD!! And both doctrines state that you must believe that the Lord Jesus is Almighty GOD to be saved!!". On this point I have no problem, in fact if someone were to say that someone did have to have a full understanding of the trinity to become a Christian I would argue against them, the reason for this is because many people don't have a full understanding of the trinity when they are saved. In fact the only major saving elements is that Jesus was perfect, died for are sins, and was raised three days latter (give or take depending on your view of a day), those three elements satisfy the sacrifice system set up in the old testament for our sins.

Second "Both doctrines appeared hundreds of years after the ascension of Christ." This is also true, the formal doctrine of the trinity wasn't written down and worked out until The Nicene Creed (325-381 AD). The reason for this is there really wasn't a reason for it to be written down until then, There was a small contingent of people who would say that Jesus was just a man from the time that He set foot on earth but after His ascension among believers that group shrank a lot. The reason for this is that Christians adopted many of the views that the Jews had on God, you see the doctrine of the trinity in Christianity may have been defined years after Christ but it was actually a well established doctrine in by the time of Christ (you will notice that in the Gospels this is one of the few things that Jesus didn't have to teach, because it was already widely held before He came).

Third, this is where we really start to get in to the meat of the theology, and where it starts to get interesting/ fun "But the original faith which was once delivered unto the saints [Jude 3] did not suffer from this problem. The original faith has always been that there is solely ONE GOD, the Father. And Jesus of Nazareth, is the one man, the one human being whom Almighty GOD raised from the dead, made him, both Lord and Christ, and exalted him to His right hand. Hence, Jesus of Nazareth is the Lord Jesus Christ, a man approved of Almighty GOD, who is currently at the right of the ONE GOD in the heavens. Whom we await for his return. (1 Cor 8:4) ... there is none other God but one. (1 Cor 8:6) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him."

For this one we have to start by looking at the full context of the verse 1 Corinthians 8

Take Care with Your Liberty

1 Now concerning things sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies 2 If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; 3 but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him. 4 Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. 5 For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. 7 However not all men have this knowledge; but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. 8 But food will not commend us to God; we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. 9 But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? 11 For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. 12 And so, by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.

In regards to verse 4 it becomes clear that it is taken out of context, this verse is speaking about idols and saying that there is only one God, it is not speaking about the Godhead and does nothing to either support or reject the idea of the trinity. Verse 6 on the other hand does seem to be making an attempt at separating God the Father and God the Son, that is until you start to dig into the Greek of the words Lord in Lord, Jesus Christ means Lord of Lords which is a name used for God. Not only that looking at this verse we realize that this is speaking of roles with in that Godhead, in other words we exist for the Father and we exist through the Son.

(1 Tim 2:5) For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; (1 Th 1:9-10) For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; 10 And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. Here, in 1 Timothy 2:5, you have one of the few verses in the Bible where the doctrine of the trinity could be in conflict, that is until you read it in light of 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10. In 1 Timothy there is no denying what is being said it is clear that the author is speaking about God and His Son, there is a clear separation here, as well as in 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 we can see the same separation made and if we were to take these three verses by themselves never looking at what is said around them the conclusion would be that there would be two separate entities (in this case one God and His Son Jesus). But when we pull out from the verse just a little and look at 1 Thessalonians 1 in its whole we can see a different story being painted

1 Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. 2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; 3 constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, 4 knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you; 5 for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. 6 You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit, 7 so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. 8 For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. 9 For they themselves report about us what kind of a reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, 10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.

Starting in verse 3 we can see Jesus motioned as Lord Jesus Christ, this is the same word translated Lord of Lords earlier. Again later in verses 5 and 6 the Holy Spirit is mentioned as another person yet equal here. with these verses it quickly becomes clear that this verse is talking about the trinity and what it is doing is giving a little outline of what the roles in the trinity are. When we go back to 1 Timothy 2:5 with this new realization the same thing can be seen there, this is speaking to the roles of God the Son and God the Father.

Hundreds of years after the pure, true, apostolic faith was propagated; Greek, Hellenistic and pagan philosophy/doctrines changed the human Jesus into a demigod then into a godman. And in response, both the doctrines of the trinity and Oneness tried to solve this self-inflicted problem! The solution then, is to return to the pure faith and doctrine as taught in the Scriptures: that there is solely ONE GOD, the Father. And there is solely one man, one human, whom the ONE GOD has made "Lord of all", the man Messiah Jesus. There are several problems with this statement. First as I said before the pure and true Apostolic faith would have said that there was a trinity because they would have taken the basic belief from the Jewish doctrine and the only real difference is that in the new Christian belief there would have been a greater understanding of the roles of the three persons of the trinity. Second this statement assumes that because this doctrine wasn't written out until a few centuries after the death of Jesus it must be false and made up but the simple fact is that in the history of God's people is has been that way. We can look back at the early and see that there were hundreds of years between God making a covenant with Abraham and the Ten Commandments, same with when Israel came to possess the their land and the time that an actual kingdom was set up. This is a weak argument to begin with and it only gets weaker as you examine it in greater detail. My third problem with this comment is that it seems to think that there is a problem to begin with that we need to solve. I will admit that we can't really know everything about the trinity and how it works but at the same time I will also say that we don't need to know everything about the trinity and how it works. In fact to try to get rid of it creates more problems and questions, from why are three persons mentioned in the Bible to if Jesus was just a man then what was so special about him. Unless we are ready to say that the bible is in direct conflict with itself we can't really believe this statement of One God.

And indeed the day is coming where ... (Phil 2:11) And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Again as in the start of this there is nothing that I can disagree with, there will be a day that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) sits in all his glory and we praise Him.

If there are any questions and/or comments please feel free to post them, I love talking about stuff like this and I will be sure to respond to any questions.

Books, Publishing, and Me

So I had posted about a site to self publish books and said that I was thinking about doing a calender. After I posted about that I went online and started to search On Demand Printing and came up with a bunch of different place that not only do books but also t-shirts, mugs, hats, etc. After searching around for a bit I started to think about how much I really did enjoy writing and how I really haven't been doing as much of it as I would like. So I decided to start to sit down and put forth an effort to finish two of the book ideas that I had, one is a SciFi adventure and the other is a collection of notes on 1,2,3 John, Jude. I will be using Google Docs to write them, and publishing as I go along, I have also started a Pownce to do some micro blogging on when I make updates and other stuff that may come up.

P.S. I am still working on a calender as well

I am still here

So I know that I haven't been posting as much as I have been, and I haven't stopped or anything. There are two reasons that I haven't been doing it, one is Ruth's sister and grandmother have been in town and I have been spending a lot of time with them, and secondly some questions have come up in the past week that take a lot of study to answer adequately. I will be posting some stuff soon including those questions and my answers (as much as I can)

Face in the Smoke

While I was looking up stuff for one of my other posts I came across this picture which I remembered from being circulated around in emails right after 9/11 with titles paragraphs about who this is Satan's face, and this is proof that Satan was behind the 9/11 attacks. Now I am not saying that Satan wasn't behind the attacks and I am not really talking about them right now, but what struck me from seeing this picture is how it looks nothing like what Satan would look like (not that I know what Satan does look like, but I do think that I can spot a picture that doesn't look like Satan), in fact I think that this smoke looks like a character in Viva Pinata more than it looks like the lord of the under world. But this struck me, that people read or see what they want in pictures, text, and just about any media really easy. This translates into the Bible, radio, people's statements (which we can see playing out right now in the politics between Obama and Clinton). Looking at this picture I can't help but start to think what have I gotten caught up in, what have I started to see that isn't really there?

On something a little bit lighter when I was writing this post I decided to go on Google Trends and search Obama, Clinton. Check out the results for the last twelve months here.

Basics (Statment of Faith)

While I was at Ravencrest one of the of the assignments that we were given was to write up a Personal Statement of Faith. I found this to be a very engaging exercise that has been exceedingly beneficial to me as time goes on and I get further from my time at Ravencrest. Every once in a while I will pull my Statement of Faith out and look over it, maybe update, check the verses, etc. In an age where there are many people say many different things it is good to have thought about what your non-negotiables are in your faith and know why you believe them. Statements of Faith are something that are very important with churches and pastors but people tend to down play them, if they know what they are at all. It is because of that I thought that I would put my Statement of Faith up starting with the Wikipedia definition:

A statement of faith is a statement of the core beliefs of a religious group. A typical statement of faith is said to be a non-comprehensive summary of the core beliefs of a particular church or churches within a tradition (or traditions).

My Statement of Faith

My Personal Mission: To learn about God and grow into a deeper relationship with God while enabling others to do the same.

My Vision: 1^st to be in a community that wants to grow in Christ and let Him work through them. 2^nd to show the world and believers who Christ is by my actions as much as in my words. 3^rd to teach and empower people to learn who God is.

My Doctrinal Statements of Faith:

Trinity: I believe in one God who created everything. He is omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (present throughout all time and space) and omniscient (all-knowing). I believe that the one God is made up of three distinct persons and and personalities (Deuteronomy 6:4, 2 Corinthians 13:14).

• God the Father: I believe that the Father is infinite, perfect in holiness, active, powerful, and loving. He sovereignly concerns himself in the affairs of humankind. He is the one who answers prayers and saves from their sins all those who come through His Son (Ephesians 1:11, Revelation 4).

• God the Son: I believe that Jesus is God's only Son and is both fully God and fully man, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. I believe that it is by Jesus that God put into place His redemption plan to redeem man from his sinful nature by Jesus dieing on a cross, resurrecting on the third day, and ascending into heaven ten days later (John 1:1-18, Philippians 2:5-11).

• God the Holy Spirit: I believe that the Holy Spirit convicts man of sin and points them to Jesus Christ. Once a person believes in Christ the Holy Spirit comes into their lives and empowers them to do the will of the Father through the giving of gifts and wisdom. He is active in the works of regeneration, sanctification, and preservation (Acts 5:3-4, Romans 8:1-17).

Man: I believe that man was created in the image of God, perfect in every way but man sinned against God. That action corrupted the vary nature of man towards sin, separating man from God but all of that can be over come by the work of the Holy Spirit through the redemption of Christ (Genesis 1:26-31, Colossians 3:10).

Scripture: I believe that the Scriptures (Bible) is the inspired word of God. It is infallible and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which it speaks. I believe that it is also the primary means that God uses to speak to believers today (2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:20-21).

Salvation: I believe that salvation comes through the Grace of God and is not based on anything that man does or has done and comes through the redemption of Christ's blood for anyone who accepts and believes in Him (John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-9).

The Church: I believe that the Church is God's primary means to show Himself to the world with Jesus Christ as the head and all the members as the body (Matthew 28:18-20, Ephesians 4:15-16).

Eternity: I believe that there is a Heaven and a Hell and that if you do not trust and believe in God that you will be condemned, at the second coming of Christ, to Hell for eternity, but if you trust in Christ you will live forever in the presence of God (Luke 16:19-31, John 5:24-29).

If you have any thoughts on this feel free to leave a comment.

For all you who want to write a book

Today I was watching Mahalo Daily, which is hosted by the wonderful Veronica Belmont who I use to love to watch on Cnet.com, and to day they were talking about how to go about publishing your own book. One of the sites that mentioned to do this was called Lulu, they said it was free so, of course, I went to check it out. I found a lot there, some of the books are really well written and if you are willing to take the risk on some undiscovered writers this would be a good place to start. But even if you aren't there are some great options for picture albums, calenders. Not only is it a great place to discover new writers but since it is a site that specializes in helping people self publish for all of those people who feel that they have a good story, or something meaningful to say (and think that they can fill up 100 pages or so) you should give this a look. I myself have a few Sci-fi stories that I have been throwing around in my mind that I might try to weed out, I also might try to create a 2009 calender with some of the better pictures that I have from Estes Park.

Battlefield Heroes

Battlefield Heroes is a new game coming out from the people who developed the Battlefield series. This looks like a very fun game, unlike the other Battlefield games this won't take up a lot of system resources so they can reach a larger audience, which is an idea that I love because it means for the first time I can run a Battlefield game on my computer. The graphics look great, game play seems solid (of course I have only seen the preview), and the rest of the mechanics seem to be on par. But the best part about this game is that it is going to be free at launch, the reason that they are going to be able to do this is because they are working under EA's new "play 4 free" business model. So instead of charging you for the game you will see and ad when you boot up the game, and then you will have to buy some upgrades if you want them (nothing that will effect game play). All of that combined and I am really looking forward to this game, even if it sucks its not like you paid anything for it.

The Love Guru

This looks like it will be funny, I hope Mike Myers won't let me down.

1 John 3:13

I love First John, the Johns (The Gospel of John, 1,2,3 John) are probably my favorite books in the whole of the Bible (I think that I would through Jude in there too). These book don't make up a lot of the Bible but they are very important books, when you read through them you realize that you are working through very different things from what Paul and many of the other Epistles work through. Even the Gospel of John is very different from the others, in fact it is so different that theologians have divided them in to two categories, the Synoptic Gospels and John.
Over the past few days I have been read some of First John and one verse in particular stuck out to me, "1 John 3:13 Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you (NASB)". There are two words that stick out to me in this passage, first "surprised" and second "if" (You'll notice both of those are direct quotes from the verse).

"Surprised" caught my attention because of how many times people are surprised when the world push back against them, when the world seems in direct conflict with, what seems to be, Gods will, but in this verse it is telling us specifically not to be surprised. When we feel God pulling us in a direction we should move with caution preparing for a backlash to come from the world (hope for the best and prepare for the worst so to speak).

The second word "if" caught my attention because if people aren't surprised when the world fights back against them it seems like that is how they measure the success of their projects. I use to hear this all the time, if the slightest thing went wrong at any program it was Satan trying to stop us, it didn't matter if it was the wind picking up or the speakers not working simply because someone didn't plug them in (which is something that I forgot to do one more then one occasion). But this verse says that the world isn't always going to push back, we aren't always going to be fighting an uphill battle, it is ok to put the hope in front of hope for the best.

One other thought on this verse, one of the cross references that is given by Bible Gateway is The Gospel of John 15:18 which says "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you". This verse leaves it in God's capable hands, the world may hate us, it may hate the truth (not that we shouldn't also recognize that there is a part in all of us that also hates what we teach) but in the end it always comes back to them choosing or rejecting God. This verse gives me great comfort because in the end this verse takes everything away from me and puts it on God hand, the world doesn't hate me it really hates God and on a superficial that gives me relief. But on a deeper level I wonder how anyone can look at God and say no, and he fact that people do it everyday saddens me, but I realize that my sadness doesn't hold a candle to the sadness that God must feel.

1 John 3:13 is a small verse but there is a lot in there once you start to unpack it.

LibriVox

For about a year now I have been using a website called LibriVox. LibriVox is a great website made up of volunteers who record themselves reading books that are in the public domain and then upload those recordings onto this website that you can then go and download for free. If, however, you aren't big on the whole audio book thing you can always try Project Gutenberg which is basically the samething but you download text files instead of audio files.

LEGOs

Everybody remembers LEGOs, those wonderful little bricks that would let you go anywhere your imagination would take you. That is until your mom said that you were to old for them and made you through them away. But a few people have been able to keep the magic alive for themselves and are sharing the joy with as many people as they can. The web site is name The Brothers Brick and they have amassed a significant collection of pictures and stories about LEGOs. The one pictured is my favorite so far but they have a lot more on the site. Check them out if you can stand to waste some time.

Worst Company in America

I was online the other day and came across this poll on the consumerist about the worst companies in America. Right now it looks like Comcast is in the lead right now with %20. Go a head and vote, you know you want to knock Steve Jobs down a peg or two

View this quiz on Quibblo More quizzes on Quibblo

The wrath of God is something that can seem very contradictory, the reason is that we are told from the time we were kids that God is a God of love and compassion, when someone joins the ranks of Christianity the propaganda somehow glances over, what we decide is, the mean parts in favor of the good parts. So it becomes impossible for us to come up with a comfortable reconciliation of a wrathful God and a compassionate God, some try to say that God had to deal with people in different ways at different times and now He doesn't need to deal with us in a wrathful way that He did back in Old Testament times. But this excuse is just that, man trying to excuse the actions of God and write them of as nothing, in fact if we take an honest look at the actions of man then and the actions of men now we would be forced to rethink that excuse.
So the question then becomes what do we do with a God the is perfectly loving and completely vengeful? Maybe I am getting ahead of my self though, first we have to ask is God wrathful? Is God loving? The answer to the second question for many would seem to be an easy answer but in reality it can be a lot harder to answer then some might think because of the first question, and I will try to show why.
First is God a wrathful God? My answer to this question will, of course, be yes He is? We can read over and over in the Old Testament about the wrath of God from the fall of man and God taking away eternal life from all of man for their actions to the story of David and Bathsheba and God taking a child as punishment. All through out the Old Testament we can see God's vengeance being worked out. It is written about in a poetic form in the Psalms and Lamentations, It is written about in factual terms in the prophets. The wrath of God would almost seem to be the theme of the Old Testament until you look at why God is punishing people in the Bible, God takes away eternal life as a consequence of sin, He takes Davids son as a consequence of sin, even Israels exile is a consequence of sin. Gods wrath is always in response to sin as a type of punishment for the purpose of correction.
This would then bring me to the second question is God loving? My mom would always say to me when I was younger that she punished me because she loves me, she would also say "this is going to hurt me a lot more then it is going to hurt you" and I never believed her on that, but the first statement is true. No good parent would let their child run around and do what ever they wanted, parents are there to put rules in place so that their children can learn and grow in safety, in the same way that is how God's punishment works, He punishes because He cares, sounds corny but it is true