Piqued

My church group is studying “The Reason for God” by Timothy Keller.  This week’s chapter was on the perception that Christianity is a “straitjacket” that compromises our freedom.  Keller’s conclusion is excellent:

“What then is the moral-spiritual reality we must acknowledge to thrive?  What is the environment that liberates us if we confine ourselves to it, like water liberates the fish?  Love.  Love is the most liberating freedom-loss of all.

“One of the principles of love – either love for a friend or romantic love – is that you have to lose independence to attain greater intimacy.  If you want the “freedoms” of love – the fulfillment, security, sense of worth that it brings – you must limit your freedom in many ways.  You cannot enter a deep relationship and still make unilateral decisions or allow your friend or lover no say in how you live your life.  To experience the joy and freedom of love, you must give up your personal autonomy.  [...]

“A love relationship limits your personal options.  Again we are confronted with the complexity of the concept of “freedom.”  Human beings are most free and alive in relationships of love.  We only become ourselves in love, and yet healthy love relationships involve mutual, unselfish service, a mutual loss of independence.  C.S. Lewis puts it eloquently:

continue reading…

In all my years of using computers quite heavily, I’ve been a Windows user 99% of the time.  But I have used other OSes, particularly Linux in certain work environments.  I’ve configured PXE-boot network-driven automated installs of Suse and Red Hat, tweaked NFS and Samba on Linux servers in a network of mixed client OSes (Linux and Windows), and have played around with Debian a bit on a personal computer.  Yesterday I wanted to set up a file server at work without having to deal with getting a Windows server license, so I decided to go with the Linux distribution that everyone seems gaga for, Ubuntu.

Now, to be fair, I was installing on an old machine that I hadn’t used much beforehand, so it’s possible it may have some hw issues independent of the OS it’s running, so some of my issues could be related to that.  Its CD-ROM drive had apparently died, for one thing, and it had issues booting an OS off of a USB key.  But before I installed Ubuntu, it seemed to boot into Windows consistently, so the vital components appeared to be working.  Anyway, I just wanted to say that some of my issues below could be due to hw, although again, Windows didn’t seem to have problems.

continue reading…

I’ve begun reading Timothy Keller’s book The Reason for God at the recommendation of a pastor friend of mine.  The following excerpt from the introduction describes exactly the viewpoint I’ve come to consider to be profoundly important for our society.  I honestly believe that the failure to take this approach in forming one’s beliefs is one of the greatest problems facing Americans today.  It affects how we interact with and respect one another, and how we determine those beliefs upon which our worldview is based.

“A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection. Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts—not only their own but their friends’ and neighbors’. It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them. Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous or offensive. And, just as important for our current situation, such a process will lead you, even after you come to a position of strong faith, to respect and understand those who doubt.

continue reading…

Hey all,

In the past couple of weeks I’ve uploaded a number of new photos to both the Wallpaper Portfolio as well as my Smugmug account.

California & Arizona

In January, my family and I took a vacation to the Monterey/San Francisco area of California, and then stopped at the Grand Canyon on the way home.  It was my first time visiting either place, and I’d definitely like to return to California and bring my motorcycle or rent one.  As we drove those awesome roads along the coast I couldn’t help but long to be feeling that cool air rush by me on my bike while getting a full view of the gorgeous scenery.  Not to say I’d be opposed to going back anyway, but definitely would’ve been great on a bike.

I posted the pictures from this trip to Smugmug a while back, but just recently created wallpaper out of them for my portfolio site.  Check ‘em out:

California Wallpaper
Arizona Wallpaper

continue reading…

Tonight at the Bible study I attend, the issue of abortion came up.  Our brief discussion inspired me to expand upon some points I made in a post a year ago, which led to a valuable exchange with some friends in the comments: read it here.

I won’t reiterate that entire post, but our conversation tonight reinforced my opinion that the pulpit really isn’t the right place to address this topic.  The moment the church starts making a religious issue out of abortion, we’ve conceded the idea that it is a judgment call that’s determined by personal beliefs.  If being pro-life garners its mandate from a religious movement, its adoption will be largely limited to that sphere.  This approach often leads to debating abortion on an emotional level with women who either wish to assert their feminine rights, or defend their decision in light of the motherly hardships they’d have to endure without the presence of a committed husband/father.  While I feel for the women in these situations, debating the issue in this way is completely beside the point and, again, implies that it is still a personal judgment call.

continue reading…