Another Blog!

Well you are probably wondering why I would start another blog since I really don’t update this one!  There is good reason… so you should probably add adamandsally.wordpress.com to your feed readers and check it out occasionally!  I’m not guaranteeing I’ll post there any more frequently then I post here, but at least someone else will be posting there too!

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with this blog, but as of right now I still plan on keeping it going…

Interesting Articles on Facebook

This past week I’ve read some interesting articles on Facebook:

Al Mohler – Facebook Turns Five: Thoughts on Social Networking

Social networking is like any new technology. It must be evaluated on the basis of its moral impact as well as its technological utility. Social networking sites offer unprecedented opportunities for communication and contact — and that is both the promise and the peril of the technology.

Here are a few suggestions for safeguarding the social networking experience:

1. Never allow social networking to replace or rival personal contact and communication. God made us to be social creatures that crave community. We cannot permit ourselves to substitute social networking for the harder work of building and maintaining personal relationships that are face to face.

Carl Trueman – No Text Please, I’m British!

How should the church respond? Well, the virtual world is new but it is here to stay; and it will no doubt continue to shape human behavior and self-understanding. We cannot ignore it but neither should we simply allow it to dictate to us who we are and how we think. Thus, we must teach people by precept and example that real life is lived primarily in real time in real places by real bodies. Pale and pimply bloggers who spend most of their spare time onanistically opining about themselves and their issues and in befriending pals made up of pixels are not living life to the full; nor are those whose lives revolve around videogames; rather they are human amoebas, subsisting in a bizarre non-world which involves no risk to themselves, no giving of themselves to others, no true vulnerability, no commitment, no self-sacrifice, no real meaning or value. To borrow a phrase from Thoreau, the tragedy of such is that, when they come to die, they may well discover that they have never actually lived.
For myself, I rejoice that I grew up before the web and the videogame supplanted the real world of real friendships, real discussions, real lives. I did not spend my youth growing obese and developing Vitamin D deficiency in front of an illuminated screen, living my life through the medium of pixels. However she does it, the church should show this generation of text and web addicts where real friendship and community lie, not with some bunch of self-created avatars on Facebook but with the person next to them in the pew on Sunday, with the person next door, with the person they can see, hear, touch and, of course, to whom they can talk, and who is created not in webworld but by the mighty Creator.

Steve Tuttle (Newsweek) – You Can’t Friend Me, I Quit!

When I think about all the hours I wasted this past year on Facebook, and imagine the good I could have done instead, it depresses me. Instead of scouring my friends’ friends’ photos for other possible friends, I could have been raising money for Darfur relief, helping out at the local animal shelter or delivering food to the homeless. It depresses me even more to know that I would never have done any of those things, even with all those extra hours.

Ever thought of being a Monk or Nun?

Think you’re called to being a monk or nun, then you should give this place a try!

Why spend the weekend as a monk?

Inside a monk’s ‘cell’

Top Blog Posts of all Time #1 – “Adam’s blog = no fun”

Recently I was looking at my blog stats and a thought occurred to me that I should re-post the top five post in regards to hits.  Interesting enough the number one post really doesn’t have much to do with the cross.  I guess fun trumps content… at least on this blog.

Growth found in the Gospel

“We habitually and instinctively look to other things besides God and his grace as our justification, hope, significance, and security.  We believe the gospel at one level, but at a deeper level we do not.  Human approval, professional success, power and influence, family and clan identity–all of these things serve as our heart’s “functional trust” rather than what Christ has done, and as a result we continue to be driven to a great degree by fear, anger, and a lack of self-control.  You cannot change such things through mere will power, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out.  We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts.  We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves.  That is how we grow.”

- Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God (New York, NY: Dutton, 2008), 115.

Don’t let the title fool you, the word “prodigal” has a wide semantice range of meaning, but in Christian lingo it usually has a negative connotation.  Read the book to find out what Keller means by Prodigal God!

Unpacking Forgiveness

After about a month, I finally finished Unpacking Forgiveness by Chris Brauns. This was one of those books I got through the majority of it rather quickly then the last few chapters took a few weeks to finish. Unfortunately, sometimes I get bored with a book and never finish it, but that wasn’t the case for this one.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. It was the first I’ve read over forgiveness and it did a great job of “unpacking” this difficult and debated subject. A couple things that stood out about the book were it constantly referred to the best book for forgiveness, the Bible (just look at it’s Scriptural index), and it started off connecting forgiveness to the gospel. I like it when books start by building their foundation on the gospel. I always need to be reminded about the simple truths of the gospel, regardless of how much I “think” I understand it.

The book does a great job of giving an overview of the theology behind forgiveness and then how it is practically lived out. In case you’re wondering he takes the “conditional forgiveness” stance! This book is very readable and the chapters are manageable in length. The book is very thought provoking, especially if you haven’t thought too much about the details of forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of those words that is through thrown out without thoroughly thinking through it’s meaning and intent, so if you’re looking to learn more about forgiveness, I’d highly recommend this book!

Ice Wayne

When I got home to Fort Wayne I was greeted with a beautiful surprise!  The ice that Lafayette got on Friday quickly  melted due to the warm temperatures, but the temperatures in Ft. Wayne never made it above freezing, so it left a beautiful yet destructive scene.

And things may get worse as well, we’re under another winter storm watch calling for more freezing rain tomorrow!

Follow this link for a few more pictures

Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World

Today, the greatest challenge facing American evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world.

-C.J. Mahaney, Worldliness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 22.

AMEN!

Immigration Resources

Like I said last night there isn’t much on immigration from a Christian perspective, but here are some resources that I found.

Christians at the Border

The book Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible by M. Daniel Carroll was the only decent book on the realtionship between the church and immigration.  I only skimmed it, but what I read was OK at best.  The author took a very sympathic view on illegal immigration and I thought a lot of his support was a little shaky.  Especially his handling of Romans 13, which I don’t think he did the text justice.  Anyways, I would encourage you to read it if your are looking for a Chrstian perspective on immigration and the church, though I wouldn’t call it a must read.

Al Mohler

A couple years ago Al Mohler (president of Southern Seminary) had a couple radio shows addressing the issue.  Al Mohler is a great biblical thinker and anything he says is worth hearing.

How Should Christians Respond To The Immigration Debate? – Monday, April 10, 2006

Sorting Out the Immigration Debate – Monday, May 01, 2006

John Piper

Here is what John Piper has said on illegal immigration.

What should we do about illegal immigration?

I don’t know the answer, but I’ll tell you how I lean.

I would like to see us as a country find a way to provide for illegal immigrants to stay but still have them pay a reasonable penalty.

Such a solution would give honor to the law and show mercy to the immigrants, whose situations are so varied and so many. It’s not an easy, black-and-white, “they disobeyed, so get ‘em out of here” issue. There’s a lot of exploitation. We’ve benefited a lot from these people, etc.

As I’ve looked at both sides it seems that we could probably come up with a way to acknowledge that it is against the law (and we’re not going to say that breaking the law doesn’t matter), and yet we’re not going to say that it’s a simple and easy solution to try and ship 20 million of them back to Mexico. It’s not going to work that way.

Just like illegal parking is against the law and we are charged a reasonable fee when we’re caught, so too we should charge a reasonable penalty for illegal immigrants but one that doesn’t require them to return to their home country.

I don’t know if that will work, but that is the direction my heart leans toward.

I think my heart leans the same direction as Dr. Piper’s.

Immigration Talk

So here is my talk from last night. There’s nothing really profound, so don’t be expected to be blown away. It essentially is about foundational principals to help guide our thinking on immigration.

Also, I probably haven’t proofed this like I should, so please give me grace on my grammar I’m still learning the English language!

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Introduction

The importance of certain political issues comes a goes depending on the time. As you see now, the primary issue is the economy and rightfully so, because it currently has the greatest impact on our country. Though the down turn in the economy is definitely helping out with the immigration issue.

Immigration was a hot issue a couple of years ago and a new immigration bill almost got through, until talks broke down amongst the parties. Here we are now in a different political climate, but the issue with immigration still remains.

The sensitivity of the issue is also geographically based. Those in the south like Texas, California, Arizona and Florida deal with it far more regularly than those living in Minnesota, unless they’re worried about an influx of illegal Canadian immigrants. So most of us in the Lafayette area don’t deal as frequently with immigrants, but nonetheless if we aren’t directly connected to the issue we are most certainly indirectly connected to it.

Americans Response

There are a couple of points that everyone can agree on. One, there are no easy answers and, two; the current immigration system is broken. It is a very complex issue, with many of the laws set up in a different political environment, such as the cold war era. Most Americans aren’t very sympathetic to illegal immigrants or the more politically correct term “undocumented citizens.” The idea that taxpayers’ dollars are going toward supporting many undocumented citizens doesn’t sit well with the American people. Also, the idea that Americans need to take care of their own people, before we worry about the rest of the worlds is another common thought.

Christians Response

How about the Christians, how have they responded? Well, some have unabashedly protected them, which have caused some major headlines in the past. Others want nothing to do with them, because they are lawbreakers. Some over-emphasizes the biblical principal of compassion while others over-emphasize the biblical principal of submission to authorities, submission to the government. Before I really started thinking biblically about the issue I would have probably leaned more towards the submission to government. Now, in the complexity of the arguments I can sympathize with both.