I stumbled upon an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune today. The article can be found here.

The article speaks about the growth of Christianity in the last 20 years. One of the pastors of a Chinese church Rev. Jin Mingri who leads a church of over 350.

“Rev. Jin did not set out to be a religious pioneer.
The son of a secular ethnic-Korean family from China’s coal-choked industrial northeast, he was an earnest high school student who won a coveted place in the freshman class at elite Beijing University. Soon, like other strivers, he joined the Communist Party.

But it would take a turning point in China’s history to push Jin toward the church. In his junior year, China’s top leader ordered the People’s Liberation Army to end weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. The crackdown left hundreds dead, shaking the faith of young intellectuals like Jin who had placed their hopes in the state.

“It affected my generation of university students very deeply,” Jin said of the crackdown that is known in Chinese as “6-4,” for the date, June 4, 1989. “The university students in the ’80s were groomed by the country. Our fees and living expenses were paid for by the country. The 6-4 event left many students hurt. … Like all my other university peers, I felt an immense sense of hopelessness.”

It’s great to read some positive news about China and about Christianity in general.

I keep telling myself I should post more, but lately everything has been fairly unexciting around here. Right now most of my time is wrapped up in planning for the move we’re about to make. Most of the moving stuff is unexciting and thus, not blog worthy. However once the move has commenced I’m sure there will be plenty of fodder for this blog.

One thing that has been great about my free time is that I have  had a lot of time to read. I’m a big reader even without free time. The most recent book I’ve read is Ken Wilber’s “A Brief History of Everything”. I decided to pick it up after hearing a few people recommend it. (Rob Bell in his footnotes of Velvet Elvis and Zach Lind).

I’m about 450 pages into it and I am loving every bit of it. The sheer thought that is required to read this book could easily be daunting but I find Wilber’s formatting to make it a little easier for us mere mortals.

The topic of this book is a bit hard to summarize, as Wilber essentially looks at everything from the processes smallest atom to the shifting trends in modern and post-modern thought. What has intrigued me is just how much clarity he provides to it all. While I can not say I agree with every one of his conclusions he comes to, I cannot say enough for how much he has improved my thinking.

I will post more of my thoughts on ABHOE one I finish it. However if you have some free time, and are willing to put some serious mental work into a book I highly recommend that you pick this one up.

Regardless of your view on the war I think it’s important to recognize the toll that it takes on both the killer and the killed. This video really hit me hard.

I hope you all like it.  

 According to her dad she has only seen the movies once. She also apparently told a even better version, but he didn’t have the camera running. This 3-year-old is surprisingly eloquent for her age. 

I have no idea what this guy is talking about, but I find it entertaining to say the least…   Moral of the story. All you guys that don’t read KJV quit doing your business sitting down, or you may face the wrath of hades. 

The more I have delved into belief functions outside my traditional upbringing (more specifically the emergent movement) I have noticed a few words that seem to be brought up very frequently by opposing parties. These words are typically thrown around by both sids in an attempt to place the opposing party in a “negative” Biblical context while placing their party in the “positive” Biblical party. One of the more frequent words that comes up is the word “pharisee”. I see this word used almost exclusively as a derogatory remark towards a different (opposing) perspective of theology or denomination. This word typically is an attempt to place the opposing theology in a biblical analogy that essentially means “theologically legalistic”, or one that forgoes the “heart” of God yet holds the “law” of God.

I too am guilty of applying this label to others, sometimes it feels like it’s the best lens through which to view the opposing party. A way in which I can understand people who claim to be following the same God as myself, yet still hold them in a negative light. I recently have grown increasingly uncomfortable with using this label. It seems it has become a spiritual curse word at best. Yet, somehow, because Jesus called them out in the Bible we justify our modernized label as the moral equivalent. We are being “just” and if the truth hurts, so be it.

I will not argue that there are not modern day pharisees, however I will argue that many times, more often than we would like to admit, it’s not “them” but “us”.

I fear that many times when we read the stories in the Bible we like to assume that we would be on the good side. Much like any other story, we assume the position of the hero. We would be the one to stay and fight, the one to die for our friend, the one who would take in the begger and listen to Jesus when he said that “those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” We read of the disciples misunderstanding Jesus and we chuckle to ourselves “silly little disciples”. 

It is so much easier to listen to a sermon and  think about how it applies to someone we know. We entertain ourselves on stories of other persons problem’s and justify it as “letting others know to pray for them”.  That’s easy. Yet, if we spent half the time criticizing ourselves as we did others, perhaps we wouldn’t be so quick to group people of different belief system into the “bad” crowd.

Maybe its taken me longer than most, I’ve known this to be the case for a long time, yet only recently have I KNOWN this. Previously if you had asked me what I saw when I said “pharisee” I would have said “this denomination” , “or that theology”. Now when I say it or hear it said I feel gut-wrenching realization that it’s me. The second I start to promote myself is as the decider or who is “in” or “out” with God, is the same instant I become a pharisee.

There is danger in placing others in a lesser level of relation to God than yourself. It’s near impossible to simultaneously hold someone in a lesser view of spirituality and still view yourself as a servant of them. For if we view someone with contempt, than are we not merely pitying this person? If we are honest, at this point are our efforts at “humility” not more of an act and less of the quintessential expression of love?

I am not arguing against the existence of legitimate differences in theological stances. I am not arguing that there isn’t both a time and place for a debate and even disagreement on beliefs and actions. Yet, I admit that many times it is far easier to see the faults of others and be blind to my own. Perhaps we should be wary of using negative labels when speaking of sincere followers of God. Very little is ever changed by doing so, except the self-inflated view of our own perspectives.

May we always view others as individuals and not as a group. May we recognize our own shortcomings before applying a microscope to others. May we be generous with our words and thoughts. May the posture of our heart reflect Christ in deed and in thought. And may we realize that at some point we are all guilty of missing the point of Jesus’ message.

Well I finally got a DSLR. I’ve been wanting one of these for a long time and we finally scrounged up enough to get one. I’ve been using a little 4 megapixel point and shoot for a while and just felt to restrained by it. So I finally broke down and purchased a Nikon D40. Which a HUGE improvement.  Hopefully having this camera should give me a bit more flexibility and ability to shoot the kind of pictures I want. Here’s a few pictures from my first photoshoot. Thanks to my lovely wife for being in the pictures!       Let me know what you think!