Dave Faulkner. Musings of an evangelical Methodist minister.
In come the New Year’s Resolutions over the next twenty-four hours. None from me, though. I see them as a form of legalism doomed to failure.
I noticed the nihilism of a non-Christian friend on Facebook this morning, who wished everyone a happy 2011 with the words, ‘Same old sh*t, different number.’
However, as a Christian, I look forward to the Great New Year one day. That makes it worth ‘working for the kingdom of God’, as Tom Wright puts it. Cue U2:
(Link courtesy of the weekly Mojo email.)
There’s not a lot to report today on the cat front. Debbie had a long phone conversation with a woman who runs what amounts to a clearing house for people who cannot keep their pets. We’ve expressed an interest in two separate pairs of cats, and now await a call back regarding arrangements to visit them.
In the area of church and sabbatical, there is also little to say today for delicate reasons.
So instead of the usual, I offer you a pot-pourri. (No, not popery, Mr Paisley.)
Here are some interesting links I came across.
Some Video Fun
How about Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody played on old school computer equipment?
(Via the weekly Mojo magazine email.)
Here’s a parody of the Christian worship – ahem – ‘industry’:
Jesus Stuff
Not a link, but a couple of great quotes from an interview with J John in the Summer 2009 issue of New Wine magazine, pages 10 and 11:
If we are all witnesses, does that mean we are all evangelists?
Not everyone is an evangelist, but everyone is a witness. In a court of law, you have a lawyer who takes the facts and presents them in a convincing manner. As an evangelist, that’s what I do. I take the facts and try to get people to the point where they are convinced that Christianity is true. An evangelist will communicate much more of the substance of Christianity.But if you are a follower of Jesus, then you are a witness. And a witness in the court stands up and says, ‘Well I don’t know very much, but let me tell you my story.’ Everyone that’s a follower of Jesus has a testimony of what Jesus has done for them. Therefore everyone can answer. It’s not hard at all.
How do you approach people of other faiths?
I don’t get defensive. Rather, I ask questions such as: in what way does your faith help you in your life, give you confidence for the future or help you face death? I reveal cracks in their philosophy and show them that in Christ, we have a confidence and a hope. But I wouldn’t ever put people down. All we have to do is lift Jesus up.(This material copyright New Wine Magazine and used with permission.)
Chopping down the Sunday tree: radical thoughts on how to approach a potentially dying church from Graham Peacock. HT: Maggi Dawn.
Mr Tweet recommended Mike Todd on Twitter to me. I found his blog, Waving Or Drowning, and among a feast of riches I found in this post a brilliant quote from Brian McLaren about what Christians might consider to be a proper view from the economic crisis. Do read it. He says that we might contemplate recovery in the way an addict does, in which case we don’t want recovery to be a return to our old addictive highs, but a facing of the addictions.
Tech
1st Web Designer: 28 Online Photo Editing Sites To Have Fun With – via@problogger.
Read-Write Web has great first impressions of Wolfram-Alpha, not a ‘Google killer’ search engine but a ‘computational knowledge engine’ that will cross over into Wikipedia‘s domain. TechCrunch reports there will be a public preview on Tuesday, streamed live from Harvard.
OK, here’s another round-up of links I found during the last week. Have fun.
A Theremin (remember Good Vibrations?) inside a Russian doll. (Via Mojo.)
A friend of mine once rewrote Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch as the Dead Church Sketch. But now we learn that the ancient Greeks pre-empted the dead parrot sketch.
Jesus spoke about lust as ‘adultery of the heart’. Now, a ‘virtual affair’ in Second Life has led to a divorce.
The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 ponders great drum solos.
Remember the Johnny Cash song ‘One piece at a time’? Well, a Russian Orthodox church has been stolen, brick by brick.
Once it was pizzas looking like Jesus, now it’s Buddha bee hives.
You want a prayer movement – how about this? Artist creates ‘public prayer booths’ in NYC. They look like phone booths, apparently.
If only this were true: hoax New York Times newspaper proclaims end of Iraq war.
My father has a life-long interest in astronomy. Doubtless he will have been excited to read about the Hubble Telescope spotting a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut and the planetary system discovered by the Gemini Observatory in Chile. (Both links via Personal Computer World‘s weekly email.)
Ruth Haley Barton has written on the loneliness of leadership: loneliness drives us to seek the presence of God rather than any notion of the Promised Land.
Unhappy people watch more TV. ‘TV doesn’t really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does,’ says researcher John P. Robinson.
Go on, you want to make cake in a mug.
MyBloop – unlimited free online storage, max file size 1 GB. Via Chris Pirillo.
Twenty hated clichés. In contrast, here are James Emery White’s top five irritating Christian phrases.
Big Circumstance 