"I Come in Pea.."

Here's a night where Heather and I fooled around with the webcam on my iMac. It's strange how amusing a visual effect can be.

Personality Info

Here's some info about my personality. I usually hate these things. But this one's short. That makes all the difference. I wish others could do it for me.

Response to "'Red-Letter Christians': A Bad Idea with a Bad Name, Alas"

Here's John Stackhouse's ideas on "Red Letter Christians" here

Here's my response that I posted:

I think that we’ve misunderstood Tony’s heart on this. He is not purposing that we only read the red letters, that we read them more often, or even that we give them more weight. He is attempting to swing the previous overemphasis Evangelicals had with the Pauline sections of scripture back to Christ. Tony makes Jesus at the center of his reading/understanding/application of scripture instead of Paul.

A few other random points:
-The return to ancient ideas within contemporary evangelical faith is very “au courant.” Read some of Robert Webber’s work (he has a series called Ancient/Future Faith, Worship, etc). Thus, using the term “red letter” fits within the mindset of emerging (not a big fan of that term though) christians.
-If you read first hand the works where Tony brings up the idea of a Red-Letter Christian, you'll see he is not pushing for the use of the term as a new designation or sect. He is simply trying to communicate the need to focus on Jesus as the center to not only our lives but also our bibles.
-You are right to say that RLCs are more blue than red. I don’t think that Tony’s point of RLC is to put people on the knife’s edge of politics. The point is to remove the political colour as the master status and replace it with Christ. RLCs will always be in flux between the political poles as they search to vote for what they think is right.
-Lastly, I’m just a guy who works to pay my bills and seeks to follow my Lord the best I can. I’m not the final authority. I’m not the last word.

Islamic Fundamentalism

I heard this definition yesterday while listing to Tony Campolo's Podcast "Across the Pond." It's in reference to Islamic Fundamentalism but as Tony pointed out, and I agree, this could be applied to all types of fundamentalism; including Evangelical Fundamentalism.

Islamic Fundamentalism:

"A reactionary non-scientific movement, aimed at returning society to a centuries old set up, defying all material and historical factors. It is an attempt to roll back the wheels of history."

(Aside: The only thing I don't like about this definition is that it presupposes that if we go back in history, culture becomes more moral. But, if you could ask those from yesteryear, they'd look backward for a critique of their "modern" culture too.)

Fundamentalism seeks to provide simple answers to complex questions. It promises to take it's followers back to "the good-old-days" when black was black and white was white (all too often, not as much anymore though, this is/was, unfortunately, in a literal sense). At face value these simple answers appear to be intellectually lacking; however, they do bring comfort to the confused soul. At some point in our lives fundamentalism is the only societal system we understand. Try communicating complex, morally ambiguities, situations to a child and you'll soon resort back to a fundamentalist "that's right" or "that's wrong" (ex: how lying is OK when it's to save someone's feelings but not when it's to save someone from getting into trouble).

As I look back at my teenage fundamentalist years I see how they helped me navigate the temptations of life. I didn't need a discussion on "how far is too far," I needed a guide line to follow. And, if it was up to me, I'd preach one thing and practice another. But, as I got older, this approach did more harm than good. It caused me to define people as good or bad and not consider the complexities of human relationships and the human experience. I couldn't make decisions in grey life because I was always looking for a pole to agree with. And most of life doesn't occur at the poles, it's somewhere closer to the equator; where simple answers cannot fully satisfy complex questions.

"Who Killed the Electric Car?"

I watched this little documentary the other night. Though I'd never heard of it playing in big movie theaters, it's not small on impact.

The film tracks the birth, production, life, and death of the EV1, an pure electric car from GM. It's an interesting and strange story. It starts in California where smog levels are high. The Air Advisory Board implements a law that an increasing percent of cars produced and sold must be "no emissions." GM complies and produces the EV1 and markets the car. However, something is brewing. There becomes a huge waiting list for the cars and yet no cars seem to be available to fulfill the demand. Also, the marketing team will not accept any suggestions from the sales reps actually selling cars; in fact they do the opposite. Oil and car companies alike begin to petition this California Air Advisory Board to back down. Then they sue. Facing this pressure the board backs down and GM slowly gets back all it's EV1 cars. They were only sold on lease, and when the lease was up, no matter what they offered to pay, drivers were not allowed to keep their cars. The small amount of infrastructure that was put in place was taken out and the Electric Car was forgotten.

What seems crazy to me is not the fact that the oil and car companies but the kibosh on the electric car. It's that it even got out in the first place. Someone up there must have really lost it. Maybe the big decision makers went on an extended golf trip came back and had to do a lot of clean up.

This film is just another step in my growing disgust of the internal combustion engine. Just thought I'd share my thoughts on it. I would highly recommend checking out this film.

Links:
-Sony Pictures Film Site
-Wikipedia: Who Killed the Electric Car
-Wikipedia: EV1
-Just do a couple Google searches "EV1" - "Electric Car" - "oil addicted" - etc.

Don Rabbit

Here's the images from the little illustration of "Don Rabbit" in the book "Blue Like Jazz." I got it off the website so give credit where credit is due and check it out (here). It's a great funny little story and it's exemplary of the book so if you like it I suggest you look into reading the book.


Here it is: It's a pdf so you'll have to click on the link


HERE


Cheers,

A

Blue like Jazz Live

"Blue Like Jazz" is a book by "Donald Miller" (site). It's a good book. One I read a back in college for a class but really enjoyed personally. I'd suggest you read it. It's that good. But, along came a guy named Jason Hildebrand (site). Jason is an actor and decided to take the book, "Blue like Jazz," and do it live, "Blue like Jazz Live." It's a little long; there got the bad review out of the way. However, it's very reminiscent of the book and makes you feel you are inside Donald Miller's mind. To say the least I was impressed. My but was numb but my mind was stimulated. If you ever get a chance to go and see it, I would verily suggest you take that chance. Just bring a seat cushion.

Here's the trailer.

More Letters to a Young Evangelical Quotes

Here's a good one. It's from a chapter where Tony is talking about the responsibility of Christians to the environment. Especially the need for a focus on nuclear disarmament and support of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from 1968 that 43 some odd nations signed but most of those actually posessing nuclear weapons failed to follow through on. It's a quote from General Omar Nelson Bradley's speech on Armistice Day in 1948.

"We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living."
-Page 211 of Tony's Book "Letters to a Young Evangelical"

Java Script taking over my web life

I've been working with iWeb for some time now making websites for both our church (thefellowship.ca) and for myself (adamnoble.ca). However, I struggle to have enough time to update these sites regularly and it takes forever to create something new and then update. Not to mention my continuing love affair with Facebook, which at times tries to take over my need to publish old school. I might have found a nice middle ground.

I've downloaded a powerful little program called "iWeb Enhancer." Basically what it does is it allows you to add java script to your iWeb sites. I then search out a good "Google gadget" that will read a rss feed or some other type of script and enter it into the iWeb site. That's a lot of gibberish to say that I can now update my blog with Blogger and my pictures with Picasa (another Google product) they automatically update on my adamnoble.ca, old school, published, website. I've even figured out how to make it so that people can actually go on my facebook (after having registered and added me as a friend obviously) right inside my adamnoble.ca website. It's great. It allows me to update things via browser based publishing anywhere I am. I can even email in my blog posts from Blogger.

All this to say it's worth taking the time to research this stuff if you're in to blogging. It takes the whole thing to a new level. You can customize exactly the look and feel without compromising the ease of posting through blogger or any other blog program.

Anyway, that's all. Happy surfing.

falling prey to the google revolution

As much as I don't like to follow the trends - though you might be questioning that claim as per the "Facebook" badge next to this post - I am however very impressed with the new products that Google is coming out with. They seem to be shooting to make everything "web based" so that you can work on your documents, handle your email, update your calendar, etc. I've just figured out how to embed a search engine into a website so that you can use the power of the Google search but just for pages found on your site. However, I still have to figure out how to get the "google bots" to check and update my website content in their church engine. Still there's lots you can do for free with Google.