An article on Mashable today shows that according to a Nielsen study, Twitter’s growth can’t be attributed to those younger than 25. Implications of this are manifold, but the first thing that came to mind is the fact that Twitter, like “real life,” in-person relationships, is sometimes hard work.
Twitter resonates with people who are more comfortable in their position in society and are looking for meaningful relationships through which valuable content is exchanged. Twitter is an ongoing conversation. What’s been said is water under the bridge. The focus is on moving the conversation forward and collaborating to create value and meaning by sharing information.
By contrast, Facebook provides a way to create a static view into your life. You can carefully select quotes, interests, links, and photos that reflect exactly what you want your friends to see. You can even tailor your friend list to control exactly who you associate with and who can see your meticulously manicured online identity. When it comes down to it, Facebook becomes an exercise in creating a self that you want others to see, rather than one of finding meaning through relationships with others.
Twitter more closely emulates real life relationships. The focus is more on content. What you say and how you say it has a lot of influence on how you fit into the social landscape. Being a professional writer, I frequently tell my colleagues and friends that Twitter is a lot of fun because every update is an exercise in careful editing as you choose which 140 characters you’ll use to convey information.
Followers and followed come and go on Twitter as we search for meaningful relationships and useful information. Facebook is a popularity contest. The more friends you have, the bigger the audience to watch as you tweak your profile into the envy of your friends.
I upgraded to WordPress 2.8 and added a new theme. The coolest thing about 2.8 is the ability to add themes and plugins directly withing WordPress.
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Kevin Roose, author of The Unlikely Disciple, spoke out against Liberty University nixing the campus Young Democrats club in a Huffington Post article today.
The thing that strikes me with this guy is that, over and over again, he ends up acting as a sort of apologist for evangelicals. His recurring message appears to be “I realize what this looks like to us outsiders. Don’t judge too harshly. I’ve spent time with these people and I’ve seen they do have good qualities.” In his own words:
“… speaking about the Liberty Young Democrats as if they were bizarre outliers (like “Jews for Jesus” or “Skydivers Afraid of Heights”) ignores the fact that Liberty students, like many other young evangelicals across the nation, are rethinking what it means to be a Christian in the 21st century.”
Millions of young evangelicals are ready to overhaul “traditional” evangelicalism, opening the doors to secular culture with an eye toward inclusiveness, acceptance, and love–all while maintaining the integrity of the faith.
I think much of the massive disconnect between evangelicalism and mainstream society is that evangelicals fail to balance their position in the world with their mission. They miss nearly every opportunity to effect real change because of their own rhetoric. They rail against secular culture while bemoaning their loss of influence in the marketplace.
Kevin Roose seems to have his hand on the pulse of the “underground” Liberty–the Liberty that, whether the administration likes it or not, will be out in the world teaching, preaching, leading, and serving. They will be the agents of change, showing the love of Christ to every corner of the world (ideological corners as well as geographic ones).
I’m pretty sure I can guess what Liberty’s “official” position is on Kevin Roose, but they should consider him a blessing. I’m willing to bet that more people are listening to what he has to say about LU these days than what they do.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro dashboard:
Looks like a clown puked all over it, huh?
The country (and the world) is enthralled with a frumpy woman from a Scottish village who can sing like a nightingale.
So I asked myself, “What’s the big deal? What makes Susan Boyle so special?” The answer lies in the fact that everyone loves an underdog. But, by definition, being an underdog means that there’s something apparently insurmountable overshadowing the path to success. What was this 47-year -old, single, self-avowed cat lady’s insurmountable obstacle? Apparently herself.
We all have to overcome our own doubts, fears, and inhibitions from time to time in order to wrest ourselves from the rut of ourselves and make a new self more like the self we want to be. Surely Ms. Boyle struggled with all of this as she decided to participate in the Britain’s Got Talent auditions. But that’s not the insurmountable obstacle I’m talking about.
There are thousands upon thousands of people in the world who have a natural singing talent. They open their mouths and angels weep. It’s not really that uncommon. So why is Susan Boyle so special? Susan Boyle’s insurmountable object–the thing threatening to prevent her success–was other peoples’ opinions of her. No one expected her to have anything worthwhile to offer because her appearance contradicted popular notions of grace, beauty, eloquence, talent, ability, etc.
Wrong? … Right? … Food for thought.
Automakers like GM and Chrysler are not allowed to fail because of all the poor workers that would lose their jobs (those auto workers who are making astronomical wages mandated by union contracts). At the same time, the country wants the heads of the finance industry’s leaders because of their bloated incomes and bonuses.
So, to make sure I have this straight:
- The auto makers get bailouts because the overpaid workers need government subsidies so they can continue manufacturing crummy, low-quality products that no one seems to want anymore.
- The financial sector gets bailouts with the proviso that they can’t use the money to subsidize their executives’ salaries.
I switched to WordPress to provide the blogging framework on this site. I really liked Movable Type, but there were certain things that I wanted that MT just didn’t provide. WordPress definitely seems more widely used and supported, and I like the clean, simple interface.
Followers of Christ are supposed to do just that: follow Christ. Few orthodox Christians will deny that emulating Jesus’s example is the way to ensure that we’re on the right path. However, for me, there was always that nagging sense that Jesus had an “edge” that made it easier for him to live righteously: he was 100% holy, omnipotent, and omniscient God.
For quite some time now I’ve been mulling something over that has utterly changed the way I see the example that Jesus set while he was here on earth. I was studying Philippians, and I came to rest on the following passage:
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (2:5-11, NASB)
As I went through this passage, several things became apparent to me about Jesus’s deity and incarnation. The word that’s most relevant to he current discussion, however, is emptied, in verse 7.
The word rendered emptied in the New American Standard Bible is the Greek word kenoo, which means, literally, “to empty.” Jesus “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped” because he didn’t have to grasp it (the Greek word rendered grasp here means “seized.”) In other words, Jesus already had equality with God, therefore he did not need to “seize” it. Rather, he surrendered his God-identity, pouring it out and taking the form of bond-servant, and being made in the likeness (or appearance) of men. Jesus, although he was still fully God, willingly limited himself to humanity.
So, here’s the rub: as Jesus walked the earth as a man, emptied of his divine identity, how was he able to perform miracles? Did he cheat, sneaking out a bit of his divine power to accomplish feats that appear to defy natural law?
The answer lies in what Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 17:20:
“… I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
I always pictured the disciples thinking “Easy for you to say,” but now I see that Jesus was telling them “Follow the example I am setting.” We see that they did, as throughout the apostolic era, those very disciples performed miracles similar to the ones that Jesus performed during his earthly ministry. Obviously, the apostles did not lay claim to any innate deity. They were exercising utter faith in God.
So all the miracles were performed not by God shrouded in a man-shaped shell, but rather by God, who surrendered his claim to deity and submitted himself to the limitations imposed upon mankind. His command of nature, sickness, demonic forces, and even death was derived not from his innate deity, but from his perfect faith in his Father. What an incredible example this is!
As I was looking for a hotel to stop at that’s halfway between my house and my sister’s house in Georgia, I got a little crazy with Google Maps’ scroll-wheel zooming and inadvertently stumbled upon what may be the greatest discovery in modern philosophy: parallel worlds!
In physical appearance, the worlds are similar. However, it does seem that only the East Coast of the United States and Canada have survived the brutal conditions on the leftmost world; whereas eastern Asia has completely been blown off the globe in the rightmost world.
Perhaps these two alternate realities provide an insight into the possibilities of a renewed era of nuclear proliferation. Either way, I’m glad I live in the nice, calm, middle-world.
Followers of Christ should submit to earthly authority regardless of their approval or disapproval of the particular regime in power at the moment. Romans 13 was, after all, written during the reign of Nero, one of the most brutal anti-Christian rulers perhaps in all of history. Still, Paul encouraged Christians to pay their taxes, obey the law, etc. (Notice that Paul mentioned nothing about submitting to the law forbidding spreading Christianity itself.)
Believers should neither withdraw from society, nor mount some political “Jesus revolution” and establish a strict theocracy. We are given the unique privilege of choosing our leaders in the United States. I believe we should use that privilege to the glory of God.
I think the “evangelical establishment” (as I call it) has sort of fallen into this erroneous notion that America was once a Christian nation and that’s been stolen from us by atheists and agnostics and secular humanists and all the “other” religious groups. We feel that it’s our God-ordained duty to take back what we had and “put down” the rebellion of anyone who dares to challenge the sovereignty of this America-Kingdom of God hybrid idea that we’ve created.
Listening to agnostics, atheists, and their ilk, often their biggest beef with “Christianity” is all the evil it has purported over the centuries in the name of “doing God’s work.” I’m not going to address the egregious and unavoidable errors in this argument here, but the point is this: these people are pissed off for a reason.
Christianity has long been the de facto “official” religion of Western civilization. This idea took root during the Holy Roman Empire, and continued as Rome’s influence spread over the globe (ultimately via the British Empire in the modern age). The Inquisition, the Crusades, witch burnings, and other events in the development of Western Civilization and Christianity, in addition to the contemporary issues surrounding civil rights are points against Christianity in the mind of an atheist (or agnostic).
I think the problem through the ages is simply this: Christians, as a whole, have failed to abide by the Law of Love.
For example, the Federal Marriage Amendment is touted by many evangelicals as a critical issue in preserving America as the godly nation it was designed to be. I think that’s a mistake. I think there are other solutions to that semantic puzzle that don’t alienate homosexuals and those who support them. I think if it was up to me, I’d broaden whatever Federal incentives are currently provided to man-woman marriages to include every taxpayer, married or unmarried. I don’t need the Federal government to legitimize my marriage or anyone else’s. that way the wind is taken from the sails of the groups saying “what about us?” (Feel free to insert the slippery slope argument of your choice here.)
To bring this ramble full circle, I think we, as followers of Christ, should let God’s Love be our guide in relating to the world. This should include choosing our leaders. We are so eager to throw our support to the person who promises us some little glimmer of hope that we’ll be able to re-establish the “city on a hill” and put all these non-believers in their proper place. I don’t think that’s the proper way to “go into all the world and preach the gospel.”
Believers need to stop playing political catch up, trying to hang on to the illusion that America was ordained by God so that we, God’s children, can have our way all the time. I do believe that America is God-ordained, as are all earthly dominions. I think the onus is on us to embrace the freedoms we have to express the love and grace of God.
As an epilogue, I’d like to mention my intense distaste for the abject fear that many believers seem to have for the notion of postmodernism. Postmodernism is the paradigm that follows modernism. Postmodernism’s main “theme”, if you will, is re-evaluating the constructs embraced during the modern age. Postmodernism is not the scourge of Christianity. Christianity was born in a social-religious climate much like our postmodernism. It grew at that time like it has never grown since, and I wonder sometimes whether Christians can get their heads out of the sand and forge ahead instead of pining for the aged modern paradigm.
… but that’s another post, I think.
