Everything That's On My Mind

It’s with some trepidation that I begin this blog entry. As Brian McLaren has outlined recently, trying to address the issue of homosexuality is a minefield for those of us trying to accurately represent both the truth of God’s word and the truth of His love for sinners. With this year’s movies like “Brokeback Mountain”, “Transamerica”, and to a lesser degree, “Capote”,* Hollywood has brought this issue to the forefront like never before. Many in the Christian community have decried the purported agenda of these movies. On the eve of the Academy Awards, I offer a few observations on the issue of homosexual behavior.

• Homosexual behavior is sin. There is no honest, literal reading of scripture that can come to any other conclusion. However, it is not a “special” sin. It is no different to God than the sins we find “more acceptable” like divorce, lust, or greed. As fallen human beings, we classify sins. Those who are overcome by sins that we ourselves are tempted by receive our understanding and mercy, whereas those who are overcome by sins that we are not tempted by are more likely to be condemned and ostracized. God has no such categories. Spending time browsing the latest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition is no less repugnant in God’s eyes than homosexual activity.
• We need to learn how to listen, even to viewpoints that we disagree with. Listening, discussing, and caring will not “compromise” the Gospel. Quite to the contrary, how can we expect anyone to listen to our viewpoint if we are unwilling to listen to their viewpoint? Spreading the Gospel does not require silencing the voices of dissent; the Holy Spirit is powerful enough to overcome all opposition. Have we learned nothing from church history?
• Can we as Christians please refrain from joining the fraternity of the perpetually offended? Do we really want to be associated with PETA, NOW, Greenpeace and the rest of the professional protest industry? When I read scripture, I don’t see Jesus or John or Paul or James or Peter decrying the decay of Roman society or calling for political change. Picket lines and press releases do not help spread the Gospel. The fires of revival are not fed by political action; they are fed by prayer, devotion, and holiness.

This may be my first little “dry spell” as a blogger. I just haven’t been inspired to write anything for a few days. Of course, that word “inspired” carries a bit of baggage for conservative evangelical Christians, so maybe I should find another term. Let’s just say my muse has been silent. Oh wait, that’s pagan Greek mythology…aarrgh.

My last entry about the ECI got me thinking about global issues that I put on the back burner a few years ago. Conservative evangelical Christianity has tended to shy away from social justice and economic issues, not wanting to be accused of promoting a “liberal social gospel”. In some ways, it’s like how a friend of mine describes his Baptist upbringing...no one wanted to talk about the Holy Spirit for fear of being accused of being a closet Pentecostal. (Oh, the horror!!!) I must admit, I’ve probably been caught in the same “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” trap, whether it’s because I’m a conservative evangelical Christian, or simply because I’m a dumb American who hasn’t really experienced much of the rest of the world.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve begun to revisit social issues lately. There has been a lot of “buzz” on these kinds of issues lately, whether it is Rick Warren’s work in Rwanda, Bono’s work with DATA, or the SAY Detroit campaign surrounding the Super Bowl. My friend Keith and I have been trading emails on such subjects lately, too.

OK, I admit it. I'm a techno-geek. I own one of the original PalmPilot PDAs. I still have it in a drawer somewhere…cracked screen and all. Technology is all over my life. Every now and then, however, I'm uncharacteristically slow in adopting a new technology. I've been hearing the term RSS for years, but never really took the time to understand the technology. Now that I do, I wonder why it took me so long. RSS (and ATOM) feeds are great time-management tools if you know how to use them.

I'm a voracious reader, particularly when it comes to news items and magazine articles on topics that interest me. Long ago, I learned about the benefits of pre-reading and skimming. Pre-reading is a technique for quickly determining the topic and general content of an article to determine if it is worth spending time reading it in depth. Some people call this skimming but in my opinion skimming is a different skill, somewhere between pre-reading and normal reading. Both pre-reading and skimming are important time-management techniques. If you read as much as I do, you need learn them.

With the advent of the Internet, we have access (and most of it free) to more information sources than anyone could have imagined just a couple decades ago. For someone like me, this can create a time-management nightmare. There are easily 50+ web sites that I visit on a regular basis, from The Detroit News to Christianity Today to Rotten Tomatoes, not to mention all the other bloggers I read. That’s where RSS comes in. Most online publications (including bloggers like me) now offer an RSS feed, which provides the title and the first few paragraphs of the content. With a good RSS reader/aggregator, you can be notified when a new article is posted and quickly determine if it’s worth reading or not. This can save you lots of surfing time.

So I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’m just now getting up to speed on this technology, but better late than never, right? If you’re an information-aholic like me, you need to check out this technology. I haven’t actually calculated how much time I’m saving, but I’m confident it’s significant. Here are a few of the RSS aggregators I’ve tried, with some comments. Since I’m a cheapskate, these are all free.

• My Yahoo lets you add RSS feeds to your home page but you only get article titles, so I didn’t find it all that helpful.
• The Firefox browser has some RSS support (called Live Bookmarks) built-in, but it’s not very feature-rich. Habari Xenu is a plug-in for Firefox that is much superior to the built-in support.
•  There are stand-alone Windows applications like Feed Explorer and Sharp Reader. They’re nice, but I prefer something that’s integrated into software I already use regularly.
• Right now, I’m using intraVnews (thanks for the tip, Bob), which is a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. Since Outlook is always running on my PC, this has been the most convenient aggregator I’ve tried. Until I find something better, I think I’m sticking with this one.