Love Not Fear

Click the title to go to an episode of Rocketboom, an internet video broadcast (vlog, vodcast, video podcast, whatever you want to call it), about a village in Botswana and the guy who set them up with a website and blog. (You'll probably find broadband handy to see the show.) The clinic in the town got a donation of, I think $250, and had to decide whether they wanted to buy new fans, or chairs for people to sit in. (They had no chairs.) I don't know if the guy is Christian; I don't even know if he's religious at all. Doesn't matter. Christ works through him. I hear so much about how the big, bad internet and independent web content is supposed to be dangerous and immoral. Thought you might like to hear what good there is out there. (Also check out One Laptop Per Child from MIT and Camara . There's tons more.) [PS: I didn't put a link to Rocketboom's main site here because, while I regularly watch the show with my kids, it does occasionally use some v...

It was kind of a meandering class today, but I wanted feedback on last week's youth-led worship, and I've found that sometimes it helps to let you all organize your thoughts by wandering around a bit. (Or maybe that's me that organizes my thoughts through chaos....) The troubling passage I read you was 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. I am stuggling with this one, and I'll probably read the rest of 2 Thess again to see what I can learn. I'd love your thoughts. As I said, if you think you understand the totality of God's word, you're wrong, possibly crazy, and maybe even dangerous. Finally, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's a really cool science fiction short story by Terry Bisson called They're Made Out of Meat . It is not specifically religious or Christian, but one of Christianity's central tenets is God's Incarnation, which literally means "God Become Meat." {Note: On Bisson's website, there's a lin...

Well, we're working hard on getting our youth worship service together. So hard, in fact, that I forgot to bring up the big relgion/archeology story of the week: the discovery and release of The Gospel of Judas . The book that was discovered dates to the 2nd century and is written in coptic, an Egyptian language. This is a very impressive find, but not as impressive as you've probably heard... The MOST IMPORTANT thing to remember about The Gospel of Judas is that it is a gnostic work. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word for "knowledge", or, I think more precisely, "secret knowledge". They were a sect which seems to date back to the 2nd century C.E., though it might have started a bit earlier. They were condemned as heretical by the so-called "orthodox" church of the time. They were called heretics for good reason. Not to say that they should have been burned or tortured or anything, but their beliefs were very different from what was to become...

Our lock-in theme this year was "Peace on Earth: Beyond the Bumper Stickers". As some preparation, I asked the youth the week before what Biblical references they thought of when they hear "Peace on Earth". Beyond the usual thoughts (the Nativity, e.g.), two rather unusual references came up: the story of Noah's Ark and the Book of Job. I want to take a minute and document what y'all meant by those, since I think their pretty amazing. I Noah's Ark and Peace At first, when 'Trumpet16' suggested Noah's ark as a story about peace, I wondered (briefly) if she hadn't been suckered in by the soft and fuzzy version of the story that gets told to very little kids. The nice boat ride with the cuddly zoo and the nice man with the long gray beard (who didn't allow card gambling -- he stood on the deck....). Of course, I know her too well to think that for long. Here's what she had in mind: The "peace" part of the story is at the en...

Sarah is the first of novelist Orson Scott Card's "Women of Genesis" series. Card is best known for his science fiction (for example, the exceptional Ender's Game ). He is an excellent writer, and a devoted Mormon who is not afraid to allow his characters to take their beliefs seriously. I wish I could recommend Sarah , but I'm afraid I cannot. While Card is great at picking good words and putting them in the right order, there are deep problems with this book. Most notably is the near-Superman character and capabilities of Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah. They make no mistakes. Well, Abraham makes one rather big one but he soon sees the error of his ways. Abraham somehow has a fully-formed Mormon belief, including the Christian concept of the sacrifice of a Son by his Father, even generations before God gave God's name and the Law to Moses. Sarah can do anything, except have children. (And then, of course, she does that.) This is even true in what is almost un...

So we're into the Christmas season officially now that we're past Thanksgiving. One thing that always strikes me as odd this time of year is how many people seem to have confused God with Santa Claus. In a way, I guess I can understand the confusion. The famous editorial "Yes, Virginia, There I a Santa Claus" reads pretty much the same if you substitute "God" for "Santa Claus". (Except the part about the fairies. I never did get that part anyway.) Neither God nor Santa Claus can claim to be readily available for interviews on CNN. Still, it's amazing to me how much confusion there is. For example, some say God is a man with a long white beard. That's Santa Claus. I've never heard of anyone saying that God lives at the North Pole and wears a red coat, but if they do, well, now you know. Some say that God has a special affinity for little people, that God somehow treats children better than adults. Again, that's Santa Claus. (The g...

We talked about this week before last, but I wanted this on the blog too, especially for folks who weren't there. I think Halloween has the potential to be an incredibly effective, meaningful, and joyous Christian festival. Now, most of the times when you read a statement like that, the proponent is imagining re-styling Halloween into some kind of "Fall Festival", scrubbing it clean of all ghost stories or anything scary, and maybe using it as some kind of "morality tale:" a variation on the Christmas-time song "you better watch out." That's not what I'm advocating. I think that there is a great Christian witness in sitting in a dark room and telling ghost stories. I think there is something more than morality to be gotten from October 31. (Not that there isn't morality there: just look at any pre- Scream horror movie and watch who gets massacred first, and who makes it through.) Halloween, more than any other festival, is about story-tell...