Occasionally- I start to get concerned that I’ve completely messed this whole Christian thing up. I get to thinking that perhaps much I think I know about how to live is totally screwed up. Most of the people I’ve talked to about it seem to think that I’m doing alright, but what if they’re all screwed up too? So anyway, I was listening to the bible on CD today and I heard a few compelling verses:
2 Timothy 2:22-26
Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.
2 Timothy 3:2-7
People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
So let me point out a few items here:
“Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace.” Have I done that? What exactly are the evil desires of youth? Power? Money? Respect? Entertainment? Those are things that I still want. I’d say most people desire those things.
“Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.” What exactly constitutes a stupid argument? I heard a couple of people arguing about the tribulation the other day. Does that count?
“People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents,…” Disobedient to parents? Is this talking to youths or adults? If it was to youth, surely this was a different time, because I don’t know very many children who are not disobedient to parents in some form or another. If it is to adults, then our culture does not embrace this type of obedient relationship into adulthood.
Here’s the one that really gets me worried, “…lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power.” What does ‘having a form of godliness’ mean?! The person described doesn’t soud like someone that would have any form of godliness. Also, it seems like the juxtaposition of pleasure and God leads me to believe that the two are mutually exclusive. If that is the case, what is the definition of ‘pleasure’?
This is the kind of stuff that concerns me. Any comments?
Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
April 30th, 2007
Mood : geeky
In relation to my previous post about using technology to create better bible study experiences, here’s a trail of links I found:
Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
February 26th, 2007
Mood : Interested
I’ve long thought about what I could do– how I could really use all this random web programming and designing skill I’ve acquired to make a better bible reading experience. Today I was thinking of a semantic bible. Sort of an extention of the up and coming concept of the semantic web. For those of you that don’t know what the semantic web is (which means you’re not a total internet nerd), here is Wikipedia’s definition:
The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can not only be expressed in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.
If that still doesnt mean anything to you, my basic idea was: How can we get all the disparate information (maps, reference material, cross references, original language meanings, etc.) and make it easy for readers to access when reading the bible. I mean, we’ve got all this great info, but it’s impossible to get it all in one place. And when you do have it, it’s usually organized in a way that’s overwhelming and confusing. So how can we really make this a better experience?
I decided to see if the domain semanticbible.com was taken- because of course, I’m the first person who’s ever thought of this, right? Wrong. The bad news is it was already taken. The good news is the guy who took it (All I know is that his name is Sean Boisen) has probably done more with it then I would have done in my lifetime. So I stuck around for a while.
The site (semanticbible.com) bills itself as an emerging exploration of new applications of markup and computational linguistic technology to the study of Scripture, with an emphasis on practical tools that encourage understanding and personal transformation. That’s pretty darn close to what I had in mind- I might not have been quite so geeky about it, but each to his own. But vision is only one piece of the puzzle. Has he been able to execute was my next question.
The first place I visited was the blog. I think you can learn alot from a blog including how active the site is and some plain language information on what the site is about. At first I noticed lots of technical stuff- which is to be expected- but then I saw a post that really made me feel like this guy was on the same page. Well, he was probably a few pages ahead of me, but we’re definitely in the same book. That makes me feel good. I want to put more time into this, but I’ve never been very good at dedicating lots of time to side projects. So maybe there’s enough groundwork here that I can just jump in and have some impact.
So that’s what I’m shooting for. I’ll poke around in this semantic bible he’s creating and see if I can create something that really adds value to what he’s started.
Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
February 26th, 2007
