Final Post...

Not because I have decided to give up blogging, but because I have merged with my friend Andrew, formerly of Jackknifed Juggernaut. Please update your bookmarks to our new blog, Of Bald Men and Bears, which is at http://baldbears.blogspot.com/. I will still keep this blog up, but will only post to the other one.

Breakfast

My 40 day policktical fast was completed yesterday. This process was probably one of the best I've done in my life; the time in peace from politics have given me a lot of time to do better things (like this blog), and I feel much less likely to have a gut reaction to an event or idea come straight out of the Republican Party platform. Up to this point, I have still not visited the Drudge Report or Rush Limbaugh's web site, but I may after a while.

This morning, I read the Omaha World-Herald and the New York Times, but I skipped most of the stories about politics. I suspect that I felt today like what I will feel on my twenty-first birthday: I'll finally be able to do something, but I'll have no desire whatsoever to binge. The political world seems much more dull than it ever did, and I am reminded of that song: "Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."

Pray for me that I don't enslave myself again to American politics: "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 5:1)

Reflections on a Willow Creek Conference

First, I should note that, contrary to some rumors that have been circulating, I am neither dead nor apathetic toward my beloved blog; I have merely been working like a legalist to get caught up from having taken pretty much four days off of any homework to go to the preaching/teaching conference at Willow Creek Community Church.

Second, I want to answer a few of the comments posted where I announced that I was going on the conference:

• Yes, I want to become a pastor of some sort; I feel extremely led to preach (and have been blessed to have been given opportunities to do it a couple times at my college ministry).
• What I think about Willow Creek is something that I may take up in a future post. My impression was largely favorable, but I feel I need more time to reflect on the church as a whole before I write something one way or another.

Those things taken care of, I mainly want to write about something that has seemingly been coming up in various aspects of my life, and was one of the main ideas of the conference: the idea of striving for excellence in what we are called to do.

I personally have been a little hesitant to want to be a great preacher because there seems to be something egocentric about that. I now have a slightly different approach to this idea: a desire for people to think that I am a great preacher is egocentric; a desire to be the preacher God wants me to be (which entails my striving for the upper boundaries of the abilities He has given me) is not egocentric, but fulfilling my calling. In the Bible, Paul exhorts Timothy to be devoted to growing in his preaching because the salvation of people is at stake therein, for preaching is proclaiming the Word of God.

Also, I have been starting to read Rick Howard's and Jamie Lash's This was your Life, which deals with the Judgment Seat of Christ (see also Hebrews 6 on this subject), where believers will be asked to give an account of what they have built on the foundation of their salvation through Christ. The book challenges Christians to bust their butts for Christ here on earth--not for salvation (that is completely accomplished through faith in Jesus Christ by grace), but to accomplish the work for which God saved us to enable us to do.

So, what have I learned? First of all, I really see the great need in my life to be disciplined. I have struggled this entire semester with procrastination. Although I have finished all the work I needed to, I have been crippled from accomplishing more than the bare minimum to do well in my classes, which barely covers the sort of ministry God has called me to right now. Thus, I am shortchanging myself, those with whom I interact, and God (although I'm not quite sure if it is possible to shortchange the self-sustaining God of the universe, but I'm sure that you know what I mean). So, without becoming a workaholic, I am trying to manage my time a little bit better (which has gone pretty well this week--we'll see about next week).

Second, I have had to repent of a certain fatalistic outlook where I have not worked as hard as I could, thinking that God will still accomplish what He wants to accomplish no matter what I do, which coincidentally (or is it?) is a point about which D.A. Carson wrote in today's reading in For the Love of God, Vol. 2 in regard to Daniel 9:

When Daniel becomes aware from Scripture just when the close of the exile would take place, far from resting and waiting for the promises to come true, he prays for such fulfillment. The peculiar dynamic between God's sovereignty and human responsibility in the Bible never retreats to fatalism. The promises of God are incentives to intercession.

That's probably enough for now, but I'll keep you posted on what God is teaching me about all of this.

Essential survival gear

I will be writing a post soon on my experiences this weekend at the conference I attended in Chicago. For now, you should read this story to find out about an essential piece of survival gear should you ever become stranded on a desert island or something like that.

En vacances

For the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Fall Break, I have travelled to Chicago to attend a preaching and teaching conference at Willow Creek Community Church. So, I'm writing this from a hotel in a suburb of Chicago, and I probably will not have a lot of opportunities to post until Wednesday. Still, I should be back full force on Wednesday! For those of you at UNL, have a good break.

My next computer programming assignment...

This is pretty cool. Apparently, they have hooked up sensors to a quadriplegic's brain that allows him to operate a computer with 70% accuracy. The implications of this are amazing. Does this raise any ethical concerns with anyone? (It may or may not; I'm just curious.)

I just voted.

(It was an absentee ballot.)

That's pretty much all there is to it, except to say that I don't think that I will ever again reveal for whom I vote. In the midst of my political fast, it was somewhat difficult to make an informed decision, but I prayed that God would guide me and that he would bless the election. That doesn't mean that we will have a Super Christian in every office; in fact, when Paul is writing about obeying authority, he's writing under the Emperor Nero, who was not exactly one of the most Christian rulers to walk the earth. Thus, no matter who wins the various offices up for elections, I will submit to those people, knowing that God has a reason for everything he orchestrates.

This is so much better than completely fretting about what's going to happen like I did in 2000! Now, back to Hamlet, so that I can really learn to have faith in the government!

On the nature of news

What people define as newsworthy has always intrigued me. This intrigue peaked, of course, in the publications of my middle school and high school, but also in the newspaper of my beloved childhood home, the Chappell Register (where "news" consisted of letters from Santa schoolchildren were assigned by their teachers to write).

Still, these pieces of journalism suffered because of a lack of news. There simply isn't much to report in a town of only 1000 people (other than gossip of course). I am far more likely to give Chappell a pass than I am for a national publication, such as Wired News, in whom I was disappointed for this story, which actually wasted the hard drive space on some server on the internet with a story about how some iPod users don't want to wear the distinctive white earbud headphones because of their self-asserted "individuality" (never mind the fact that there are lots of them doing this). Granted, this may be a cultural phenomenon, but I simply do not see any relevance to anything here.

This may, of course, be because I do not own an iPod and am not part of the Cult of the Mac. Any thoughts, Andrew (who trendily owns both an iPod and an iBook, and has even sold his blog's soul to iTunes)? What about you, Christy (who owns the iPod and iBook, and is thinking about selling her blog's soul to iTunes).

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Update:

Christy reminded me that Chris also has both an iPod and an iBook. Sorry Chris! You can feel free to comment too (but it would be great it you got an account)!

The Jesus Seminar Strikes Again!

Dwight Knoll linked to a story about the Jesus Seminar from his blog. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read it, either.

There is no place like Nebraska

After I got up this morning, started my coffeemaker, and took a shower, I came back to my room to decide what to wear. I poked around my wardrobe for a while, but I knew what I had to do: I pulled out my favorite Nebraska Cornhusker shirt and put it on. It doesn't matter if we gave up the worst loss in school history Saturday, because I refuse to be a fair-weather fan.

This determination goes back to my days of Middle School. I remember that after Nebraska got shut out by Arizona State in 1996--this coming after going undefeated 1994 and 1995 and only having lost once in 1993's season--I decided that I needed one more day of mourning that next Monday, and I didn't wear my Husker shirt to school. About third period that day, one of my teachers walked into my class, looked around the room, and bought the two kids who were wearing Husker shirts a can of juice. He did it to teach us that we should stick behind our team no matter what happens.

Although at the time I was mainly kicking myself for missing out on a free juice, I came to realize that I must stick behind my Huskers even if they go 3-8 on the season (which is a possibility this year). If Cubs fans can root for their losing team year after year, I can do it for my Huskers who have had three national championships within the last decade.

So, I'm proudly wearing my Husker shirt today. My Husker posters will stay right where they are on my walls in my room. I will still be on constant look-out for any Husker football players I might recognize on campus. I will go to all the games I can, and I will lose my voice at every game, if necessary. One day we will be a great team again; one day we will win the national championship; one day we will again be able to mop the floor with the likes of Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech. Until that day comes, nothing will change in my support of our team. I just might get good at crying.

Thought of the day

D.A. Carson, in his For the Love of God, Vol. 2, writes:

We must always remember that: The Gospel is not admired in Scripture primarily because of the social transformation it effects, but because it reconciles men and women to a holy God. Its purpose is not that we might feel fulfilled, but that we might be reconciled to the living and holy God. The consummation [of Christ and the Church in the future] is delightful to the transformed people of God, not simply because the environment of the new heaven and the new earth is pleasing, but because we forever live and work and worship in the unshielded radiance of the presence of our holy Maker and Redeemer. That prospect must shape how the church lives and serves, and determine the pulse of its ministry. The only alternative is high-sounding but self-serving idolatry.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Bad News for Andrew

Actually, this is bad news for all you Calvinists out there. I was looking around the internet for information on the theology of 7th Heaven, and a Google sponsored result led me to an article that very persuasively refutes Calvinism. You can read it here.

Rev. Paul C. Jong points out basic logical errors in the theology of Calvinism, such as how:

What the untrue theology says about predestination is that God elected the people He loves while condemning those He dislikes. This means that some who were elected are born again of water and the Spirit and accepted into heaven while the others who were not elected are destined to burn in hell.

If God in fact elects only some of us, we cannot help but agonize over the question, "Was I elected for salvation?" If we were not elected, it would be useless for us to believe in Jesus. Thus this theory has made many people more concerned with whether they were elected by God than with faith itself.

(Disclaimer: I am writing this sarcastically; I thought that this article represented one of the worst misunderstandings of Calvinism I have read yet.)

The Last Tempation of Jacob

I regret to inform you all that I have fallen. I didn't want to do it, but my entire family was talking about the presidential debate this evening. I should have yelled, "Get behind me, Satan!" and left the room, but I must admit that I sort of wanted to hear what was happening. I only have seventeen days left in my policktical fast, but I succombed to temptation. These last days are going to be harder than I thought they would be.

Still, I am not going to just throw in the towel. I will continue to shun news and politickery as much as I, by the grace of God, can.

Homecoming

It's homecoming time in Hastings, sports fans! My dad picked me up at about 2:30 from Lincoln, and we just got back into town. The reason was twofold: (1) my car had broken down, but was now fixed in Hastings, and so the trip from Hastings to Lincoln and back again was inevitable for him (whether it was he driving a vehicle and my mother driving my vehicle, their leaving my vehicle in Lincoln, and then driving back together in Hastings; or whether he picked me up from Lincoln, took me back to Hastings, and I drove my car back to Lincoln myself); and (2) my brother's Homecoming at Hastings High School is this evening, and my brother has been nominated for the prestigious position of Homecoming King. So, it made sense for me to come home, go to all the Homecoming festivities, and return tomorrow morning in time for a friend's wedding in Lincoln.

We are all really excited for my brother. The semi-humorous part about all this is that I, when I was in high school, ended up taking the Homecoming King crown for the class of 2002. I don't generally volunteer this information because the title "Homecoming King" conjures a different image in most people's heads than the sort of monarch I actually was. You see, I was not all that particularly popular, nor was I a jock, nor really anything that should have stuck out in any traditional sense.

So how did I usurp the throne of Tiger-land? In terms of geo-political affairs, the events leading up to my coronation were more complicated than those leading up to World War I.

It all started when I voted to nominate myself and my immediate friends. I mainly did it as a joke, but apparently a lot of other people were in on the joke as well.

But my seizing the throne basically came together because I carried the band vote. All the jocks and popular kids split their respective votes amongst themselves, but I was the solitary band member on the ballot. I think that I also carried the drama vote and part of the choir vote, but those were relatively small groups, with most of the major figures in both were also in band.

The political anomaly no one would have factored in was the freshman girl vote, of which I had a cult following. I'm still not exactly sure what that was all about, but there were several freshman girls who actually wore small pieces of paper that they taped to themselves that said, "I voted for Jacob Gerber, did you?" As long as there are historians, I think that they will be puzzling over that one.

So that's the story, recorded for posterity's sake. And as I read it, I'm glad that I'm not in high school anymore.

***GEEK ALERT***

If you enjoy video games, you have to see this eBay auction where 1355 video game system and accessories (including over 290 entertainment systems) were auctioned off in a lot (Slashdot reports that there were over 1300 games, but I didn't want to count them). The lot went for $11,500. There are some rich nerds out there.

Furthermore, Google has added SMS service which, in their words:

...enables you to easily get precise answers to specialized queries from your mobile phone or device. Send your query as a text message and get phone book listings, dictionary definitions, product prices and more. Just text. No links. No web pages.

Ahhh...The path to world domination is moving along smoothly!

"Imagine there's no heaven..."

MC Hendrick wrote a thoughtful post on what the world would be like if there were no God and everything were irrelevant. He makes the case that there is no freedom if there is no creator, since there would then be no objective set of morals, not ultimate purpose for our lives, and no reason not to do the sort of things we don't want done against us (murder, adultery, theft, etc...). I very much agreed with what he said.

Personally, John Lennon's "Imagine" never made much sense:

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
(Source)

I understand the argument that many wars have been waged because of conflicting religions, but how would "living for today" bring about any peace? If there is no God, then there are no moral standards that might prevent starting a war for even more petty reasons. Furthermore, if there were no reason to abstain from certain activities in life that are harmful to others, why bother when I might gain something out of it?

To be fair, I am probably setting up a straw man here, but I think what I'm saying is ultimately true. If you are interested, Hendrick listed a link to another blog, No Religion Now, which basically argues the philosophy of John Lennon's song (WARNING--strong language). It is pretty enlightening from someone who has been a Christian his entire life (me).

Feeding the hungry...

If you attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, you have often seen a gentleman holding a sign requesting alms for the poor (himself), and challenging us to think about what Jesus would do were He in our shoes. This has always been a dilemma for me.

On one hand, Jesus describes how those who will be saved will have been feeding the poor and clothing the naked, et cetera; and, in the process, they will have been serving--in addition to the poor and naked--Jesus Himself. Obviously, there is a clear biblical basis for serving the poor.

On the other hand, if this guy were really needy, why would he try to get alms from college students? In fact, one of his signs says, "Will work for food." What sort of work would college students have for him to do? Their term papers? Something just doesn't seem right about the whole thing.

So what am I supposed to do? Do I snub him, and miss an opportunity to show the love of Jesus to a poor man? Or, do I wisely invest my money in the needs of those who are really poor (in which category this man might not fall)? I have, in the past, given some money to people on the street (not often, and not much), but should I be doing it more often? What are your convictions about this?

New Google Service

Good news! Google has stepped up its services, probably in an effort to edge out the new Clusty search engine and, to a limited extent, Amazon.com (only in the way that Amazon allows you to run searches that will scour the text of their books). According to a Reuters news article, Google will now be offering a service called Google Print.

Apparently, if you keep using Google as your search engine, you will start to notice books appearing in your searches. This doesn't so much compete with Amazon.com, but instead is only a service for your searches. In other words, this does not mean that Google is going to actually sell the books. The Google Print site probably says it best:

Finding books is easy. Just do your usual searches on Google and whenever a book contains content that matches your search terms, we'll show that book in your search results. Click on the book title and you'll see the page of the book containing your search terms and other information about the book. Click on the "Buy this Book" link and you'll go straight to an online bookstore where you can purchase the book.

You will not, however, be able to read entire books through this service:

Google Print is designed to help you discover books, not read them from start to finish. It's like going to a bookstore and browsing – only with a Google twist. Google searches across entire books in order to find the pages that are most relevant to your search. Once you're on a book page, you can 'flip' two pages forward and back, view other information about the book and even conduct another search within the book.

So, fortunately, we do not need to worry about Google's downfall. I will therefore be able to sleep well tonight.

To which circle do you belong?

For my Medieval Literature and Theology class, we are reading Dante's Inferno. In this book, Dante puts certain figures from history and his contemporary world into different circles of hell, depending on their crimes.

If you are interested in determining which circle you are headed for*, take a survey** that will determine your destination here.

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* - This does not apply if you have accepted Jesus as your Savior to forgive your sins.

** - Caution, this survey asks potentially offensive quesitons, but only for the purposes of determining your circle of hell.

For the Love of God

As you may have noticed, I have listed listed this book on the list of books that I'm reading/digesting since I put the list up. The reason I am still reading it is that this is the devotional guide/commentary that I use to study the Bible.

Actually, I have been using this, as well as the first volume for about four years. The reason I have used it so much is because it, more than anything I have found, puts an incredible emphasis on the importance of saturating ourselves in the Scriptures. Carson writes in the following in his preface:

This book is for Christians who want to read the Bible, who want to read all the Bible...Here you will find a plan that will help you read through the New Testament and Psalms twice, and the rest of the Bible once, in the course of a year--or, on a modification of the plan, in the course of two years. Comment is offered for each day, but this book fails utterly in its goal if you read the comment and not the assigned biblical passages. (ix-x)

This is one of the best attitudes about one's commentary that I have yet read. Still, he's being modest; his comments are very good, and rooted in an extraordinarily high view of God. (I quoted him in an earlier post.) This is also in his preface:

Devotional guides tend to offer short, personal readings from the Bible, sometimes only a verse or two, followed by several paragraphs of edifying exposition. Doubtless they provide personal help for believers with private needs and fears and hopes. But they do not provide the framework of what the Bible says--the "plotline" or "story line"--the big picture that makes sense of all the little bits of the Bible. Wrongly used, such devotional guides may ultimately engender the profoundly wrong-headed view that God exists to sort out my problems; they may foster profoundly mistaken interpretations of some Scriptures, simply because the handful of passages they treat are no longer placed within the framework of the big picture, which is gradually fading from view [in western Christianity]. Only systematic and repeated reading of the whole Bible can meet these challenges. (x, original emphasis)

So, if you are looking for a good Bible reading plan where you will actually read Amos, Nahum, and all of Leviticus, I highly recommend this book, as well as its first volume. Anyone know of any other good devotional guides/commentaries?