This is just too awesome (ht)
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Online photo editing, with a lot of the capabilities that all you Mac users like with your web cam and doing silly photos of yourself.
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On killing your children if they don't obey.
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Joe, Darryl and I are going to try out Google Groups while we prepare for out next ten months at theStory. We'll use it to organize all our notes, thoughts, arguments, quotes, ideas and everything else that comes to mind as we struggle through Genesis. Not sure if I like it so far, the capabilities are very limited, but it's nice that it keeps us congruent with everything else Google we are using.
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Another cool stat program to give you a better perspective on the earth with a strong emphasis on pollution.
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Some of my favourite nights are staying up late with my friends and brainstorming our ideas just for the fun of it. We've come up with some awesome ideas/inventions. Then we found this site which is basically our brainstorming nights online. I totally thought of some of those ideas first. Like for instance, the new Mac laptops should come with projectors built in on the back side opposite to the webcam on the front side of the monitor. How convenient...I know. I've got so many of those.

This is in response and addition to Dan posts on leadership. I have done a bit of writing on the ideas of authority over the past few years. I have grown a lot in my understanding of what it means and where I am in the spectrum. You can read all the posts I wrote on authority here. It’s odd to link back to posts I’ve written one or two years ago because I’ve changes so much. Yet there is still this underlying idea of what I think about leadership and authority and I think it is still quite prevalent. It’s funny though because I find myself slipping and being tempted constantly by the idea of power and leadership that I like to pull away from what I really think about it at times. I like when people follow me, listen to me and do what I think its best. I like when people read my blog and say that I made them think and challenged them to live differently. I like it because I like being in front and listened to as if I actually have something of value that they need and the only way they are going to get it is if I tell them.

In this sense, I can see how leadership needs to be redefined away from one individual passing something of value to another creating some sort of hierarchy which puts one in power and the other in powerlessness. However, I still think there is a place for leadership in the kingdom that can work. Miroslav Volf talks about the relationship between givers and receivers in his book Free of Charge and how almost always their relationship becomes skewed. He says that “many maintain that the act of giving puts the giver in a position of wealth and power, whereas the act of receiving puts a person in a position of poverty and weakness.” He goes on to say later than when this exchange is done in love “gifts neither establish the superiority of the giver, nor rigger rivalry between the giver and receiver.” I wonder if the relationship between a leader and a follower can follow this same pattern. Where leadership almost always comes in power, selfish influence and distorts the relationship that humans are to have with one another. Yet when done in love, maybe there is some redeemable factor of the relationship.

I don’t think I can throw out all ideas of leadership. There is something inside of it that still rings true with me. I think there can be a leader/follower relationship that is healthy and not degrading to either side. It needs to be reinvented, of course, but I don’t think it needs to be thrown out or looked past. I think this is where my language of influence starts coming in. I don’t mean influence as something used as a tool to convince people to follow, but I mean influence as a by-product of who you are. Influence can’t be sought after and achieved unselfishly. It should come unbeknownst and then I would consider that grounds for the beginnings of a true leader.

I still think there is room in the kingdom for leaders. I would like to think it fits in with all the other weird tensions. Everyone needs to understand and live in both sides. We have such a bad view of leadership that when we think of it we automatically think of harmful relationships or forceful dictators. I do believe though that there is a place for leaders because it’s their gift. There needs to be an entire new reworking on what this means or look like, and in most ways I have no idea. As I write this post the more I run Volf’s book through my head and I realize how close the relationship is between giving and receiving and leading and following and that it could be redeemable and there is a proper place for it.

And here is why I don't like calling myself a Christian. (ht)
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I asked Dan what his thoughts on leadership were. He answered on his site, some good stuff here.
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Does micro-credit help the developing world?

Question:
Should you draw or erase the line for someone else? Should you allow your sacrifices to be forced on other people in that they have to make the same ones without really deciding?

Example 1:
You and your friends live in an apartment. You meet someone on the street who is going through a rough period. Your heart goes out to him so you invite him to come and stay at the apartment for a few nights to help him get back into the swing of things. At first your other friends are all over the opportunity but now, four days later they are wishing he was gone. Somehow God gave you more patience and a heart for this guy and you really feel like he needs to stay with you for a bit longer. What do you now do? Do you sacrifice listening to the wishes of your friends who you live with? Or do you sacrifice the room and the food that you will be giving him as to abide by your friends? Who becomes more important? Do I have a right to make decisions when my friends should be accommodating or not? If I allow him to stay is it almost like I'm trying to teach my friends a lesson and telling them how they should feel towards people?

Example 2:
Paul (the apostle) has been invited over with all his Jewish friends to their Gentile friend’s house. Paul has certain convictions about eating meat that his Gentile friends don’t necessarily have which gives him the freedom to eat the meat served before him. Yet at the same time when he’s with either friend he either eats meet or doesn’t eat depending on their convictions. Meat is served before him, what does he do? Without making it sound like a war, who does he side with? Does he eat meat and basically tell his Jewish friends they are over reacting and just to suck it up? Or Does he refrain and in return say to his Gentile friends he is too good for their meat and they are doing something wrong?

These are the kind of situations I find myself in lately. I’m having a hard time deciding what I should do because it makes me feel like I’m making decisions for other people without them knowing it. Especially in the first example. If I allowed this homeless man to stay with me, it feels as if I’m taking my convictions and pushing them on all my roommates which I don’t feel very comfortable in doing. I feel also that these situations will arise a lot more in the future being married. I don't want to force her or be forced into situations where the other person has to accommodate and feel that they are lesser because they don't feel the same way. Or should we?

What do you think? Any advice?

This made me laugh out loud a number of times. The comments are probably the funniest.
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Looks like a conference I would enjoy. Anyone want to sponsor me to go?
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Hypocrisy of "Radicals" | This is good and I have thought about it often.
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Tim Challies offers his own thoughts on hell, not surprisingly much different from my own.
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I'm currently reading Genesis by Laurence A Turner. It was recommended to us by a few professors from Regent and Tyndale. It costs us $120 to buy it off Amazon, and its only 200 pages. Must be out of print or something. It's all to prepare us for our upcoming 10 month series on Genesis at theStory starting in September.
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When my Uncle Larry died, I got to take all the books I wanted from his library. Unfortunately he was an avid library user. Fortunately most of the books he did own were on religion and politics.
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Havard magazine takes a look at consumerism and our current economic situation. Good article describing a lot of what you might not know and putting into perspective how the world's money works. It's a long one though. (ht)
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I haven't been able to get on Skype all day really, apparently its been down for most of the day and their stock has lost over a billion dollars.

Since my Uncle Larry died on Thursday I have been finding myself in an abnormal amount of conversations about death, hell, heaven and the afterlife. My Uncle Doug is a pastor in Connecticut, has been at the same church for 22 years and it all started with him. After seeing my hesitancy to the idea that Uncle Larry might be in hell, he asked me a few days ago. “So I’m curious Nathan, what do you believe in when it comes to death.” Being faced with the reality of my Uncle that I found myself constantly in interaction with and on very close terms, I had to have some sort of understanding. Five years of questioning and confusion lead me to simple say “well in the end I believe that God’s grace is bigger than any sort of judgment (in the punishment sense of the word that we like to attribute to it).” I just left it at that. Really what else can I say? Five years ago I would have been devastated because I would have been convinced that my Uncle Larry was now being eternally tormented in hell.

I’ve been warned over and over again not to base my beliefs on negatives, but sometimes I just can’t get away from it and other times it helps me understand a lot better what I do believe. So here are some things that I am either having a hard time believing or don’t believe at all (I won’t tell you which one is which cause it’ll be too easy to call me a heretic.)

1. I don’t believe hell is a place of eternal torment, or a place that those that don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour go because they eternally rejected God.

2. I don’t believe that judgment refers to punishment.

3. I don’t believe that anyone (even Hitler) being subjected to eternal separation from God is an accurate view on grace, mercy or judgment.

4. I don’t believe salvation is limited to just going to heaven when you die. In fact I'm starting to think it has very little to do with that.

5. I don’t believe that God’s story ends in separation or a split, but rather in reconciliation and embrace.

6. I don’t believe salvation is purely personal; there is something universal and larger than just individuals getting saved.

7. I don’t believe cognitive understanding of Christ’s death is a ticket into the Kingdom of God and a get out of hell free card.

I don’t exactly know what these things mean for me. I do know though that my concepts of salvation, eternity and judgment have been vastly changed over the last few years. I feel like I am moving into sort of a limbo where people are afraid to talk about it but they love to warn you to be careful. Sure it’s a scary road to be on. Doesn’t it make sense to be on it though? Would we be true to ourselves if we didn’t ask these questions? Hopefully soon, I’ll start have a better understanding of what I do believe, and hopefully and more importantly it causes me to act more lovingly and more graciously to those around me. Here is a few quotes I’ve stumbled upon.

Most of the passages in the New Testament which have been thought by the Church to refer to people going into eternal punishment after they die don’t in fact refer to any such thing…they have to do with the way God acts within the world and history. Most of them look back to language and ideas in the Old Testament, which work in quite a different way from that which is normally imagined.
– N.T. Wright-

There cannot be a kind of curtain which comes down at death, dividing humanity irreversibly into the companies of the saved and of the damned. God’s loving offer of mercy cannot be for the term of our earthly lives alone...Every turning away from God will make the return journey much harder....If these ideas are correct, they illustrate the claim that theology can make to be a discipline concerned with the progressive exploration of truth, not held forever in thrall to past understanding alone...Eternal punishment was a source of moral scandal which helped to alienate many thoughtful and sensitive people from contemporary Christianity. Charles Darwin called it a “damnable doctrine” and said he could not “see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true.” [The rethinking of the doctrine of hell] has come about, not through surrender to a secular sentimentality, but through the realization of its incompatibility with the mercy of a loving God, who cannot be conceived to exact infinite punishment for finite wrong. Theology has proved itself to be open to correction.
-John Polkinghorne-

This week we brought back Shutterbuggs. This time there was five of us that went out with cameras and snapped pictures for a few hours. We went to St Peters church who is soon going to be removing their bell tower and then looked for inspiration along Vidal St. And I just thought that it was pretty ironic there was a fence around the church with a big no trespassing sign on it. If your interested in coming out with us, shoot me an e-mail. Here is all the pics I took, and here are a few of my favourites edited up a bit.

A few days ago my Uncle Larry had a heart attack. From my understanding of the story he was alone at home when he had it and had to crawl to a phone and then crawl to the front door to let the emergency team in. He was rushed to the London hospital where they got him stabilized and he was ready to come home tomorrow. His sister was in visiting with him today, and she left for a few moments only to return to him being surrounded by medical staff trying to revive him. He died today.

My Uncle Larry and I were quite close. His wife died while I was in high school and we started to talk ever since then. We exchanged e-mails on weekly basis usually debating (or him teaching me) things about religion, politics, marriage and life in general. In fact, I still have an e-mail in my inbox from him that I hadn’t responded to him yet with the subject as “Anointment of Jesus.” This relationship started when I started taking religion at school and he was interested in how I was progressing. I soon found out he knew way more than I did and enjoyed the endless banter between us. He could always be counted on for a joke, insult or odd sense of humour whenever it came to anything too serious, but for some reason it always only highlighted his seriousness about it all the more. He’d occasionally send me an e-mail commenting on one of my posts usually disagreeing with me or putting me in a corner and asking me how I was going to get out. He was intellectually stimulating, something that very few people can offer you, and so he was always a breath of fresh air to be around.

He will be missed. I will miss fixing his computer. I will miss getting his chapter long e-mails ragging me on my punctuation and my indoctrinated ramblings. I will miss leaving his e-mails in my inbox because I had no idea how to reply, because they made me rethink so much. I will miss his quiet and gentle approach. I will miss him at Christmas dinner. I will miss the depth of his pain and suffering and joy that he shared with me that I felt more intimately than anyone else in my family. This is a quality I can only hope to learn from him.

Here are some snippets from e-mails he has sent me over the last few years. The first few are quotes from other people that he sent me, and the last ones are his words. I have over a hundred e-mails and thousands of words for him, so it’s just a few that stuck out to me from skimming over them. Some are funny, some are serious, some are disheartening, some are hopeless and some are simply just intelligent.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russell-

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
-Confucius-

It is amazing that all men of war e.g. George Bush, have been counselled by God and used God as a justification for their atrocities. George talks to God every morning before he talks to Dick Cheney. Germany, one of the most Christian nations in history put the Nazis in power. Jews throughout their history have always acted in compliance with their Jehovah God. And Muslim fundamentalists, who martyr themselves, by blowing themselves up along with a lot of other innocent people believe that Allah will bring them to heaven and put seventy virgins at their disposal. Students of religion will know that God, Jehovah and Allah are one and the same God, but why throughout history and even now do Christians, Jews and Muslims all compete with each other to see which one can make the biggest jackass out of their God.
-Larry Spaulding-

If you end up working for the "church" for twenty thousand dollars a year, you will be prostituting yourself. I suggest you claim a higher price for your ass.
-Larry Spaulding-

Nathan, What do you know about Hell? Let me tell you about it.
1. Hell is when your American Company shuts down and sells out to another company who doesn't want you anymore and lays you off with all of your friends and cohorts, destroying your twenty year career and your pension entitlements along with your morale and self worth and self confidence.
2. Hell is the treachery of friends who desert you and/or betray you when you need them most.
3. Hell is watching old friends and acquaintances die off one after the other until you now have far more friends and acquaintances in Lakeview Cemetery than walking the streets of Sarnia.
4. Hell is watching your wife suffer from the ravages of cancer and listen to her scream and howl when you apply Aloe Vera to her radiation burned breast and back and shoulders.
5. Hell is standing over your wife's death-bed, with her swollen face and bloated stomach caused by the shut -down of kidneys and other organs, knowing that she is only being kept alive by drugs and assorted life-support paraphernalia and ultimately Hell is getting to play God by instructing that those life support systems be disconnected.
When you get there come and tell me about it.
-Larry Spaulding-

The following quote came in to-day's Toronto Star in an article on "Addiction in the Relgious World". The Quote by Abraham T. Twerski, Rabbi: "Religion is for people worried about going to Hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there". I consider myself to be a spiritual person.
-Larry Spaulding-

The only demands God has made of me is to be independent and not become a burden on others or society in general (and that means financial security). Its not written down either but that's what I conjure up in my mind not having been subjected to the process of religious indoctrination and callings as determined by other like minded people.
-Larry Spaulding-

Every man contemplating marriage should ask himself whether or not he is good enough for his bride.
-Larry Spaulding-

The possession of truth isn't nearly as precious as is the search for it.
-Larry Spaulding-

Personally, I'll be seeking truth right up to my death-bed, knowing I never truly found it.
-Larry Spaulding-

You will always be remembered Uncle Larry. May the hell that you spoke of be over. May the truth that you discovered here on earth be all the more true where you are now. May the truth that you left with me be remembered and passed on. May God be with you and love you and hold you. Amen.

I took a critical reasoning class in Philosophy at Tyndale. We got a sheet of paper, that I still have to this day, that listed out all of the fallacies that people use when making arguments or statements about something. Like appeals to majority (if 90% of people believe something it must be true) or appeal to force (making someone feel guilty for thinking a certain way) and the list goes on. I’ve started to notice one creeping in lately. It’s one that you don’t usually catch that often because it almost makes sense at times. It’s called the composition and division fallacy. An example would be that since every player on the all-star team is the best at her position, the all-star team must be better than the divisional champs (sort of like the Canadian Olympic Team :) It’s when we take something true of a part and make it true for a whole, or vice versa, taking something true of a whole and making it true of the part.

I find we use this fallacy a lot when telling people stories and informing people of new insights they have in their life. If someone has an epiphany, let’s say for instance, that they should start keeping a composter as to be less harmful to the environment. They have the statistics to prove why it’s less harmful, they have the bible verses to support their actions and then they start assuming that everyone needs to be doing the same thing as them. In fact, they often get upset at people that don’t see the same way as them or are convicted the same way as they are. Eventually as time goes on if they continue on this path, they start to think their way is just common sense and that any other way is just insanity and evil.

This is where I think some theories of relativism play a strong role in helping us give grace to people who don’t agree with us. Just because it is true to you in any given moment, doesn’t mean it’s going to be true to them. I know as soon as I wrote that statement, red flags went up everywhere. Yet try to let down your guard for a moment and think about where I’m coming from. For instance, a bullfighter who believes killing a bull is a sacred cultural ceremony is going to hold on to a truth entirely different than an animal activist. Yet both would tell you there reasons, all valid, give you personal experiences and share the history of their belief yet no one can tell them that what they believe isn’t true.

Our problem is twofold. One, I don’t think we can categorize beliefs neatly into true and untrue beliefs. They just aren’t that simple. By doing that you are saying more than their conclusion is wrong, you are saying their history, experience and logic is wrong and invalidated, something we have no idea about. This is why for some reason lately I have found myself highly sympathizing with those that are usually seen as acting “wrong” (needy, angry, retributive, selfish). I am starting to see causes as opposed to effects in their lives instead of just getting upset at the end result.

Second, we think that what is true for us is true for everyone everywhere. So if we are convicted about burning all our secular music well then all of sudden everyone who doesn’t do it is in the wrong. As if wherever we are in our convictions or morals is the standard for the world and where they should be. It all seems so selfish and arrogant and it completely nullifies the journey. We forget that people are at all different points in their understandings and their worldview and with those beliefs come different ways of living. To pedestalize one spot on the journey over another is to forget your past and to not understand the kingdom of God at all. The same kingdom that pays an identical wage to the guy who works all day and the guy that works for an hour (Matt 20).

Let us not think of ourselves so highly as to judge the world by where we are. Let us give grace to all, knowing that it is only by grace we live. Let us learn from those that don’t see the world as we do as opposed to trying to make them. Let us forgive others as we have been forgiven. Let us not be afraid, or villainize those we disagree with but engage, love and be around them all the more. Let us love those that are different, because if we can’t we only end up loving ourselves.

We've been talking a lot about humour lately and how old people have such a different humour than we do, and wondering if in 30 years when we get older if our kids will think our humour isn't funny at all. Anyway, Rachel found this article about humour comparing older and younger, it was interesting, but probably more timely for me than interesting which would make us all wonder why I am linking to is.
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If you didn't catch my post before, check out this site for tons of great videos of new and inspiring ideas for anything from technology to economics to science, I was super impressed by these.
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Great site to help you match your colours, I find this helpful when I'm designing websites or anything else.
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Tons of cool business cards which could be great inspiration.

The more I desire to be active with my faith the more I realize the thin line between activism and self-absorbed acting. It’s a difficult line to see because part of me care very little about intent and thanks God that the action is there at all. For instance, a family goes to another country on a mission’s trip. They come back and rant and rave that they bought this for one person, helped build this, gave money to this person. It becomes almost a walking commercial about how great they were and how much they could give to these people. Now most of our first reactions would be happy at first and then you get tired of their constant need of approval and soon after you get annoyed and start believing that they are just doing it to make themselves feel better or a slew of other reasons.

I find myself doing this a lot lately; feeling a certain way towards someone depending on why they did something. It is all rooted in me believing that why is more important than the what.
Leaving all that behind, there is one thing that we are forgetting; the people and families that they actually helped. I spend so much time being upset about the selfish who parade their accomplishments for everyone to see that I forget to see that in the end, there was actually someone helped. If I had to pick between my poor neighbours having a meal for the night from a loud-mouthed-look-at-me-Christian or not having a meal at all, I’d probably have to lean to the former.

This is why it’s so hard to be a leader sometimes. What do we do? Do we try to lead and influence people to have hearts that are in tune with God, graciousness and love? Or do we try to lead people to physically give people relationship, shelter and food? Do we teach them about what God wants, or do we set them up to do what God wants? What would I prefer, a group of Christians opening up their homes to the homeless for a 20 day revival project with no hope for it to happen on their own, or not open up their homes at all in the first place. Is it ok for something to get done even though the motives are wrong? Is it my job to help shape motives and hearts or is it my job to lead by example and help shape people’s actions.

Growing up in church, shaping people’s actions was of the utmost important. Tell them to not have sex before marriage, don’t drink, don’t swear, read your bible, memorize scripture and there is no need to tell them why. As I pulled away from that teaching I started to realize that the heart was way more important. People need to believe things at the core of them, if they don’t believe it, what’s the point? If they don’t have a heart for the poor, then don’t give to them, after all Jesus wants a cheerful giver. Give them passion and the actions will follow.

Now I’m starting to be drawn back to the other, or maybe it’s more down the middle. Maybe my job is to shape thinking and action. Maybe both follow each other. Maybe they both push the other depending on which starts out first. Maybe it’s ok to have a group full of people who share their lives together in a Christian community yet have no clue why they are doing it, because maybe the understanding will come later. And maybe it’s ok for some people to have a perfect idea of a Christian community in their head, and not be currently living in it because the action will follow their belief soon enough. Maybe what’s going on in my head is just a typical deeds or faith debate and there is no winner only an awkward tension between the two.

The past two months, while traveling and resting I have read a lot of books, well a lot for me anyway. It was a lot of reading on international development, foreign aid, economics and new technology (that being I read the Google Story). I was inspired by everything I read. My conceptions of third world countries have been shattered and I'm trying to come to grips with anything that makes a little more sense of what is going on in the world. My assumptions about foreign aid organizations are wounded and I'm a lot more skeptical that I used to be. Then to completely change subjects, Google fascinated me. The way they run their company, create and look at the world had a lot to teach me. With that said, Darryl pointed me to a site called TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. It's video after video of great ideas being shared about everything from religion to economics to politics to technology. The video below is a man named Hans Rosling who puts the development of the world into perspective with some awe inspiring stats. The program you see that he is using to produce and show stats was soon after acquired by Google and turned into the Google Gapminder which I linked to a while back. So it was kind of cool to see all this information that I have been studying for the past few month be utilized in such a cool way by a company I appreciate.