Before getting to the point, an aside. I note that she deconverted from Roman Catholicism. I want it clear that the Vatican does not preach the same gospel one finds in the Bible or even the early church and the fathers. The Reformation happened for significant reasons that the Vatican has not yet corrected.</aside>
However, I find it interesting that her deconversion is more newsworthy than her conversion. Why? Why does it matter? I believe it is considered newsworthy because there are more people interested in maligning any form of Christian religion. The nuance of doctrine within “Christendom” is irrelevant to an outsider. As far as they’re concerned, the points I make in the paragraph about Rome are meaningless. A person is still all under the umbrella of “Christian,” whether that be Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox, some variant of evangelical, fundamental, reformed, whatever. They are all in the same boat as far as your typical unbeliever is concerned.
In fact, that is kind of a vital part of the story. This confuses the real issues that authentic Christians are trying to tell and allows a person to conveniently lump all the nuts in one bag. “I don’t have to listen to X because I’ve talked with Y before and he was weird before and then deconverted later. Your crazy religion must be false because his was.” Deconversion is glorified by the unbelievers as showing authenticity for their own unbelief. “See! That person was a true believer and deconverted, so it must all be a lie.”
This is part of the reason why I think the doctrine of perseverance is so important. If a person is saved, he remains saved. (John 10:27-28) If he deconverts, it only demonstrates that his salvation was inauthentic to begin with. (Hebrews 3:12) Some have said this leads to some sort of antinomianism (the belief that law doesn’t apply to believers) whereby I can stay saved despite whatever it is I do, but that’s not right. In fact, it is the opposite. You demonstrate the authenticity of your conversion by following the Lord Jesus and obeying the commandments.
This is also why doctrine is important. It’s not enough to be under the “Christian” umbrella as perceived by an unbeliever. You have to know and believe in the correct God. A person who does not persevere, never put his faith into that God. he believed in something or someone else. This happens quite often. (Matthew 7:13-14)
So, despite the glorification of these acts, I will repeat myself as saying that there is no deconversion, only a person changing one form of unbelief for another.
I was reading an exchange between a Christian and an atheist today and the discussion became a little ugly. I’m not going to link to the discussion because the discussion itself is beside the point and included PG-13 language, which I don’t care for.
In this discussion, the Christian essentially started out by calling the atheist a fool and the atheist called him an idiot back. This is often what apologetic discussions turn into, unfortunately. There’s a reason for this.
At one point, the Christian threw out a reference to Matthew 7:6, “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” The atheist then responded (demonstrating the warning in the verse) with Matthew 5:22, “and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
I have a problem with the way both statements are used. Regarding the Christian using the passage in 7:6, if you have to say it, you’ve already made a mistake. It is my opinion that some things just cannot be said. This is one of them. If you are dealing with swine, move on. If they press you for an answer, you can simply say, “You are not going to change your mind, you have cursed my God, so I’m moving on to someone else whose mind is still open. When you are ready to open your mind and to seek God rather than scorn the idea of his existence, talk to me again.”
Regarding, Matthew 5:22, the context of the passage regards anger. If the writer was calling the atheist a fool because he believes something foolish, atheism is by God’s definition, foolish, then there’s no problem naming him as such. Unrighteous anger is the sin, not name calling.
In any case, just quitting the conversation might have been better than throwing out a reference that really speaks to the Christian, not the atheist. The atheist is going to call this retreat a success just as he’ll call the name calling a success just as he’ll call anything he does in the debate a success. It is in the nature of someone who is committed to his world view (and, of course, that can cut both ways as well).
Before diving into the passages themselves, it’s always a good idea to reflect upon the book overall. Who wrote it? Why? What’s it generally about?
The author of the book is pretty clear, it’s stated as the first two words in 2 Peter 1:1, “Simeon Peter.” Of course, that hasn’t prevented the critics of the past 150 years from trying to look for another author. Some scholars even say the book was forged. (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 2 Peter & Jude, p. 1) Yet, the book’s content really helps negate any such claim of forgery. The book itself denounces the false teaching and deception such a forger would be engaged in. (Ibid. p. 12) In any case, while there are scholars who doubt that Peter was the author, I don’t know of any compelling evidence for those doubts and accept it has Peter’s.
The book itself is probably written toward the end of Peter’s life. While he does not say so, it is possible that Peter was in prison and waiting for a death sentence to be carried out, based upon his comment in 2 Peter 1:14, “since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon.” This would place the place of the writing in Rome around AD 67 or 68. (Ibid., p. 14) According to verse 2 Peter 3:1, this is his second letter and likely a follow up to 1 Peter, which is addressed to the “elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” It is clearly a letter to believers based upon comments in 2 Peter 1:1, 12-15, 3:1, 18.
The book itself is directed almost exclusively at the defense of the gospel against false teachers. The entire book is directed towards standing strong in the truth and standing against false teachings and false teachers. The MacArthur outlines it like this (Ibid. p. 15)
Avoiding False Teaching by Understanding Salvation (2 Peter 1:3-11)
Avoiding False Teaching by Understanding the Scriptures (2 Peter 1:12-21)
Avoiding False Teaching by Understanding False Teachers (2 Peter 2:1-22)
Avoiding False Teaching by Understanding the Future (2 Peter 3:1-18)
I think that’s a pretty good outline. In these last days, I think this is a pretty important theme since there are more varieties of false teaching than there are believers.
Next week, I plan to dig in to the salutation itself. That may not sound interesting, but it’s really surprising how much there is in those first two verses.
There are groups trying to make abortion mainstream. They’ve been working on this for 40 years. New York Times Magazine recently featured a story on a newer strategy to get this shameful practice back into your local hospital or doctor’s office. Al Mohler provides some great commentary as usual.
Also on abortion, last week it was Pennsylvania. Now, we can add Maryland to the list of states that look to be providing Federally funded abortions from its high risk fund.
Related to abortion, our pastor has finished deliberating on whether or not to sign the Manhattan Declaration and decided not to. I’m glad to see we agree on this decision. Though, I can’t really think less of a person who has signed it, considering that Al Mohler signed it. I disagree with Dr. Mohler’s decision, but Al Mohler is a great man and a hero of the faith nonetheless.
And related to advice for pastors, this pastor has an interesting “visitation ministry” where he visits the men of his church at their place of work. Pastor Flack et. al., if you read this, you are welcome over my house any time. (HT: Justin Taylor)
Moving on to government, I’m beginning to wonder if any promise made in trying to sell the idea will be kept. It’s so bad even the MSM is reporting the news that promises about keeping insurance and keeping your doctor were probably wrong. This is not at all surprising to me. Massive changes to the system mean massive changes for the individual and this is a massive bill. Lies and exaggeration to sell policy is a political norm, no surprises in that.
Are you worried about all the top secret stuff the guv’ment has going on? You should be. Washington Post has a new resource, Top Secret America, that takes a look at the world of secret government operations. (HT: Dan)
As someone working on projects related to the credit card industry, I find this news about the profitability of credit cards interesting. The government took away a revenue source from the industry. Is the industry going to do with making less money. Of course not. They just find a new way to extort fees. That’s what businesses do. That’s life. Just as political bureaucrats and elected officials do what they can to keep hold and enhance their personal power and prestige. It’s not different except in context. It’s the way of Adam.
And from the ohnoes-we’re-all-gonna-die department, check out this museum exhibit. The Chicago Field Museum, a wonderful land of scare tactics and propaganda. Teaching children that we’re all going to get itchy from poison ivy and die of malaria because of global climate change.
Here is another sign that religious freedom in this nation is eroding. That is, you can have religious freedom so long as you don’t share it with anyone else and have politically correct views on sin. In this case, a woman is claiming that she can’t get a counseling degree now from a certain state university unless she gives up her religious beliefs regarding what is a sin and what is not.
And in Dearborn, Michigan, the police seem to think that peacefully handing out Christian literature at a Muslim festival is inciting a riot. Even the ACLU, based on the video footage, is sympathetic to the Christian missionaries in this case.
And if you want to learn a whole bunch of really great stuff about Christianity, history, apologetics, and the like, try listening to a few things listed here. (HT: DJP)
And while we’re discussing audio, I recently have tried listening to the Dividing Line, which is Dr. James White’s podcast. If you’ve heard some recent comments about Christianity and corruptions of it on FOXnews, you might find his recent program discussing Glenn Beck interesting.
Also from James White, if you want an example of the lies of Ergun Caner, whom I mentioned last week, if you think it’s an exaggeration, here’s a sample:
These aren’t misstatements as his defenders have said. Clearly. Not accidental. You can’t lie like this by accident.
The men over at Triablogue have posted a book, The Infidel Delusion in PDF form (free download) that contains a refutation of the collection of atheist and agnostic authored essays published in *The Christian Delusion. I have not read either of these books myself, but it may be useful to you if you are discussing Christianity with an anti-theist. Related to that, part of the discussion does cover naturalism and it’s relation to atheism. If you want a fairly brainy analysis of how naturalism and atheism and logic are related, try here.
Matthew Harmon is in Africa and got asked an interesting question that might put perspective on things, “Do they go to witch doctors in the US?” Evangelicals in the United States share much with our brothers and sisters across the world, but the perspective of culture strongly impacts our notion of what is “normal.”
Switching subjects completely: Regarding phones, I thought the recent Consumer Reports decision not to recommend the iPhone 4 was a little over the top. Then again, it’s kind of what I expect from them: helpful but fickle. (HT: ramereth for the comic.)
On the other hand, Peter-Paul Koch has some interesting analysis on how Apple has done it’s best to harm themselves with bad PR in the last year or so. (Warning: PG-13 language. ppk likes to use a certain offensive four letter word.)
Also, sounds like the Nexus One is all done. Since it lacks a physical keyboard, I was never interested, but it looked like a really nice phone otherwise. However, it led the way to the great new phones on the market now.
Also in phones, despite the news that modding a Droid X will turn it into a brick, the modders are still trying to find a way in. They’ve reached the first milestone by gaining root on the phone which allows the first round of customizations. That’s only the first step though. They still have to get around bricking the phone when installing custom ROMs.
If you’re not a developer or want to show a non-geek why it is that Internet Explorer 6 causes cursing you’d normally expect from someone engaged in plumbing or electrical work, see this.
Looks like David Golden got Perl 5 development version 13.3 released on time. It’s nice to see these monthly releases going well.
I am excited by the new Tron. The original Tron was like the Matrix before the Matrix and with less sin:
Sweeeeeet!
Speaking of sweets, I really want to try these… mmmm…. pretzels… mmmm…. M&Ms:
This next bit makes me very glad that there isn’t even a subway to be ridden within 500 miles.
Six story tall Optimus Prime made from old cars. Awesome.
And finally, remember, the best way to avoid debate is to call your opponent names.
I just got a total blast from the past. I have an old blue canvas Bible case that I used to always carry with me. I got it in high school and it had the honor of holding two of my most used Bible’s, my NIV Thompson Chain Reference Bible and my NIV Life Application Bible.
Those two Bibles and this case were with me through the end of high school, my time at Manhattan Christian College many different churches. In Wichita, New Life Christian Church, Riverlawn Christian Church, Metro East Baptist Church (where Terri and I were married, which met in pretty nice building on Tantarra Golf Course), and Messiah Baptist Church. In Manhattan, Grace Baptist Church (where we go now and went while we were engaged, I also went there most of the time when single), New Hope Community Church (where we spent most of our time married), and Westview Community Church (which I visited frequently when I was single). In Hutchinson, Grace Bible Church, which is the church Terri’s folks help to create and have been going to since before I knew them.
I decided to clean out this old Bible case while cleaning my office and the treasure trove of notes and bulletins and things has been fascinating to look through. Here are some highlights…
I have all the papers and notes I mad while attending a Christ In Youth (CIY) conference at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri. I have a personal note in here about a storm that blew through while there, which knocked down a tree limb and scared some of the non-Midwesterners in attendance because someone shouted “Tornado!” There was no Tornado and every Midwesterner there knew it. Anyway, I noted that I thought it was significant, but I don’t know what the significance would be. I also note that I had an infatuation with one of the girls on the trip that I made note of, hoping that I would have a chance with her. Glad that never panned out. I was such a hopeless romantic in those days.
I found some notes from a Niel Anderson conference I, unfortunately, attended. If you don’t know who that is, don’t listen to him. If you do know who it is, stop. That’s really all you need to know.
I found an itinerary from a missions trip to Dallas I took in high school with our youth pastor at the time, Kevin Yoakum. That was an interesting trip, though pretty scattered. It was like a missions sampler. We stayed on the campus of Dallas Christian College and then visited a different mission in inner city Dallas. The most memorable for me were a food bank where we parceled out bags with potatoes for a few hours. I learned that I was really good at repetitive tasks. I also remember visiting a mission for prostitutes in a former brothel and touring a part of Dallas where the homes were made out of junk.
I found a flyer that I made for the last Falcon Fellowship of my graduating year. In high school I was part of and helped lead a prayer group and Bible study at our school with Wendy Walker. There was a Campus Crusade (if I recall correctly) ministry that helped us pay for an off campus meal at the ELCA Lutheran church across the street (pretty much the only off campus building within sight of the campus in those days). At this particular event I spoke my first and last sermon. I don’t think it was a particularly good one, but I was barely an toddler in the faith at that point.
I have some programs from Grace Baptist Church from 1998 that made me realize that some things never change. The bulletin format is practically the same now as it was then. The main difference I notice is that the mission then was “To Seek. To Saturate. To Send” and we’ve added “To Serve” to the list since.
Looking through the bulletins, I must have been fairly awful at taking notes during these days. In fact, most of them seem to be notes passed between Terri and myself when we were dating or engaged. And many of those seemed to be concerned with getting food after the service was over and how I was to pay for it.
I found a cryptic set of notes in one bulletin for Grace Bible Church on November 15, 1998 suggesting that that was the day we informed them either that we were getting married or that we were planning to get married in May of 1999.
I found a directory for New Hope Community Church that is a single page, printed on both sides with the entire church membership on it. It included a number of names that I haven’t forgotten, but it was great to be reminded of.
I found the rules for a game my family made up, called The Insult Game. The original incarnation of this game occurred when we lived in Lawrence. We remodeled our basement and had new sheet rock up. My parents told us that we could write on the walls with pencil with impunity because they were going to paint over it. So we did. One of the things we did was The Insult Game, which was invented as we went. You write an insult of your opponent on the wall, i.e., something silly rather than truly degrading. Then the other person can change a word, add a word, or remove a word to reverse the insult.
Lastly, I’ll leave with a poem I wrote while sitting on a bench outside the Campus Center at MCC. I used to write poetry when I was single. I don’t think I have enough angst anymore to write poetry, but here’s what I wrote there—I won’t say it’s very good poetry. ;)
Blessed Innocence
Where has the innocence gone?
The elders have lost its twinkle.
The aged remember, but know it not.
Was its parting so long ago?
Where has the innocence gone?
The men have lost its restraint.
They have heard, but care not of it.
Is its destruction so enticing?
Where has the innocence gone?
The women have lost its purity.
They have felt, but shaken loose from it.
Is its modesty so lonely?
Where has the innocence gone?
The children have lost its hope.
They have nothing and their anger cosnumes.
What price must we pay?
When will the innocence return?
Will it come again in revival?
Is this the last fall?
Lord, we long for your cleansing.
I recently started reading John MacArthur’s book, The Jesus You Can’t Ignore. This book focuses upon the confrontations Jesus has with his ideological opponents, the religious establishment of the day. The third chapter covers what is probably the most congenial of these confrontations, which you will find in your Bible in John 3. This tells of the clandestine meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus.
You’ll have to study John 3 in depth or get Dr. MacArthur’s book if you want to look at this in detail, I just want to look at a couple aspects of this meeting. However, I do want to quote John 3 here to let you know exactly what I’m talking about. Here’s John 3:1-21:
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
I really would like to discuss the tone of Jesus and how he interacts and comment on these things as MacArthur does, but I think there’s something more important here to point out. Thus, I just want to make two observations regarding this passage.
First…
John 3:16 here is probably the most well-known scripture in the Bible, “For God so loved the world…”, yet it is often unknown that it took place in the context of this conversation with Nicodemus. Jesus was telling this ruler among the ruling council of Jews that the Messiah had come, but that the traditions of the ruling council and of Nicodemus himself and his colleagues, the Pharisees, were failures. They didn’t heed Holy Scripture. They missed the important point.
The point he missed is that it is not enough to act holy. It isn’t even enough to believe that that holiness has its source in God. (Luke 18:9-14) Everyone in the world is condemned from the start. See the subtle play on words in this passage? The Son of God didn’t come to condemn the world because it’s already condemned. The world we live on and the people in it are, by nature, condemned. Left to ourselves we are broken down, dead, and useless. All our attempts to do good are weak and fail to achieve any righteousness.
Second…
The salvation that Jesus brings comes from without and isn’t a matter of your actions. If you think that you’re a relatively good person and that will get you by, you are already condemned. Being good and doing good is not enough to help you in the eyes of God. To gain the salvation Christ offers, you have to realize that it’s not something you can do for yourself. It’s something only he can do for you. Which brings us to the reference to Moses and the serpent—which is the key. Jesus is referring to a story that would have been familiar to nearly every Jew and certainly to Nicodemus.
This story is found in Numbers 21:4-9. In summary, the Jews were on their great exodus from Egypt to Canaan and travel was slow going and the people grumbled. God punished the people for their complaint by sending poisonous snakes among them. The people asked Moses to pray to God for help and God responded by asking Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it upon a pole. Then, whenever someone was bit they would look at the bronze serpent and be healed. Jesus is claiming that he too would be raised up and that anyone who looked to him on the cross would be made righteous.
All it takes to be saved as a Christian is to be born again. All it takes to be born again is to yield yourself to Christ and look upon his cross for salvation. Everything else you need to know will grow out of that simple dependence on the cross. Every believer in Christ knows that this is the rock and foundation of our salvation. We grow in knowledge and understanding, but each of us starts by looking at the cross and each of us keeps on looking throughout the rest of our lives and on into eternity.
Lately, I’ve been hearing more and more about how important it is for Christians to engage in a new sacrament: protecting the environment. As with so many teachings, this desire is often couched under the premise that this is just an extension of our commanded service to be stewards and keepers of creation. Yet, as with any good thing, there can be too much. This desire for stewardship can easily become sin, idolatry.
Stewardship of God’s creation is commanded very early in scripture, in the first chapter of the first book even, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28) We are indeed the delegates of God to be masters over and caretakers of creation. We are told to fill the earth and bring it into order. That means, in my understanding, that we are to cultivate the earth in the way a gardner cares for his garden, we encourage that which is beneficial and discourage that which is harmful. This is good environmentalism, in my view of scripture.
Too often, however, it would seem that the goal of environmentalism is to minimize and even eliminate our influence over creation. Yet, the command is to productively exert human influence over creation, a creation that is hostile to us, rather than leave the earth in a pristine, “natural” state. The fact is that earth is no longer in its original paradisiacal state is the result of sin and because God cursed the ground as punishment for Adam’s sin. (Genesis 3:17-19; Romans 8:20-22) And yet, God commands us to care for and use this cursed ground for ourselves, not let it go wild, but I digress.
2 Peter
What in the world does this have to do with 2 Peter? I explain all this to tell you the agenda I came to this text with. As with most any Bible study that anyone chooses to start, the selection of the text is done with bias. The above is the bias I started with (and still hold to, but… I’ll get to that in a minute). Specifically, I wanted to study 2 Peter 3:1-7, which culminates with:
But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
It says some specific things about creation that I think are very timely and meaningful to any discussion we might have about the stewardship of our planet. I am looking forward to the exposition of this passage for this reason.
Yet, as I’ve studied the text and it has spoken to me through the Spirit, I now take a slightly different tack. The book as a whole matches up with the title of this post very well. The Second Letter of Peter to his beloved spends much of it’s time explaining those things which will sustain the Church. He’s writing this letter to “[stir] up your sincere mind by way of reminder” to tell us how to live on in and protect the Christian faith now that he is gone. (2 Peter 3:1; 1:13-15) That will be the primary focus of this study.
How do we preserve and sustain our belief and our Church?
That will be the focus as I work my way through 2 Peter over the next few months. I pray that my study is useful to you and profitable for myself. The next post will look at the general overview and outline of the book before starting in to the exposition of the book itself.
Okay, before I begin the very first edition of Sterling’s Stash, I must first say that this series of posts was inspired by Dan Phillip’s Hither and Thither, which is the regular Friday edition on his blog, Biblical Christianity. I highly recommend him and his blog and his writing over at Pyromaniacs. My format varies from his a bit, but the essence is the same. This is, in my opinion, a superior way to share my favorite and most interesting links and such from my week of reading with my own commentary. With that said, let us begin…
First, I want to tell you a great secret: the study of origins (whether of life or the universe or everything) is a theological rather than scientific issue. Don’t say that too loudly or the fundamentalist scientists will start calling you a heretic. That isn’t to say that the two aren’t entangled, but that the theology of your view determines how you interpret your science, never the other way around.
Isn’t it interesting to note then, when a case comes up where the creationist position predicts something that the evolutionist position didn’t and then that prediction comes true. That’s not proof, but I like it anyway.
BioLogos has been generating a lot of criticism from my favorite bloggers of late. I hadn’t heard of them before, but it seems that they are dedicated to science based upon a materialistic (i.e., un-scriptural) world view but with a evangelical gloss to it. As DJP points out, these folks aren’t a contradiction so much as showing that they believe they themselves, via scientific pursuit, to be the inerrant source of truth rather that the Word. Everyone believes someone is the source of ultimate truth. Is that God? Or yourself? Pick one. (Oh, and “glandolatrous” might be the most excellent portmanteau ever.)
Speaking of Triablogue, and moving on to hard theology, they pointed me over to an article describing the Two Wills in God. Everyone should understand that there are different layers to the will of God. God may want everyone to be saved, but that doesn’t trump all.
I found her article to be disingenuous. She’s either ignorant or pretending to be so for effect, to achieve what has been called her National Geographic moment. She also puts on a show of appealing to scripture when it’s obvious she really doesn’t care what scripture says. I know this because she says so in the article. Anything that disagrees with her egalitarian view is marginalized or thrown out somehow. It’s not that she wants to know what the Bible says, she just wants to use some of the Bible to help her sound more authoritative.
Besides Dr. Mohler’s excellent commentary, Dan Phillips has a great piece over at Pyromaniacs describing how this relates to the importance of inerrancy. Fred Butler also has a good response City of the Wymyn Slaves, though it is considerably more snarky than the other two I linked.
Changing away from inerrancy and moving on to human error, deceit, and resume enhancement, I’ve been following the Dr. Ergun Caner scandal for a few weeks. If you don’t know, it comes down to a few bloggers (James White, TurretinFan, The Squirrel and others) have been documenting the outright lies Dr. Ergun Caner has been telling about his personal history. Dr. Caner would appear to have a very credible testimony regarding his conversion from Islam to Christianity, but has been embellishing it rather significantly.
Lately, though, the story has turned to Dr. Norman Geisler, who has been defending Dr. Caner rather heavily. This is a little disappointing since the evidence practically speaks for itself (for example, recordings of Dr. Caner saying things that contradict reality that no one could say except to deliberately mislead for one’s own benefit). It’s a little sad really. We all just pray that Dr. Caner will really repent of his deception and come clean. I think most of his critics would go away if he would just do that.
Moving away from liars in Christendom and on to the real professionals, the NAACP has shown just how far it has fallen. Failing to find any real evidence they decide that they need to shout an accusation as loud as possible to try and make it stick.
They must be getting desperate.
I am not a Tea Partier, but that’s only because I don’t like crowds. It’s sad to see how much effort some people have put into trying to discredit the Tea Party on an issue that has nothing to do with their platform. It’s sad because it distracts people from real racism. It’s just propaganda. The Tea Party is about standing up against the selfish nannies in DC that want to control your earnings and control more of your life from afar. That’s not racism. Those who have made this about race instead of the obvious issues are infantile and obsessed and unable to face the truth. Grow up.
Finally, in depressing political news. You can watch our government spend money it doesn’t have over at the US National Debt Clock. (HT: DJP)
Moving on to technology, I never would have predicted that I would be as interested in cell phones as I am now, but I track a lot of cell phone news these days. I am really very happy with my Samsung Moment. Sprint has released it’s direct successor, the
Samsung Intercept. A nicer screen, better processor, and the prospect of moving forward to the latest greatest Android OS would be great. On the other hand, I think I’m probably looking toward the Epic 4G as my next phone, which is a higher end phone. Of course, I just got the phone I have earlier this year, so I won’t be upgrading phones for probably more than a year anyway.
Also I though this was cool. Ubuntu on an Android Phone. Putting Ubuntu desktop on a phone is a sign of too much free time, but I like it. I don’t know how useful it really is, but I think it’s cool anyway.
Speaking of geeking. Truth is Stranger Than Fiction. This is an awesome analysis of how the plots of Babylon 5 and Dr. Who compare with the unbelievable reality you find on the History Channel. (HT: DJP)
I only have one link on the Perl front this week, but I hope to have a section of them in the future. Strings and Security and Designing Away Bugs is an interesting article by chromatic on using API design to wisely eliminate potential bugs.
It’s time for a change. I’ve been blogging my personal information over at Andrew.Sterling.Hanenkamp.com for a long time. Since at least 2004 or so, I think. Maybe earlier, but I know I don’t have the earliest blog posts there from the days when I used Blosxom for my blogging software. However, I think it’s time for a change.
Why?
A few years back I split my blog in two so that I have a tech blog and a personal blog. For the moment, I want to keep that split going because I feel like the things I type over at Contentment have a totally separate readership (nerdy) than I will have here (friends and believers and, occasionally, angry anti-theists). That’s a distinction in reader interest, not a distinction to me at all since I see both overlapping completely.
However, I do want the focus of my blog to shift to something more positive and scriptural. My old blog was a bit too ranty at times and I’m sure this one will do the same, but I want the focus to be on my true passion, the Word of God. That’s why I bought this domain a few years ago and now I’m finally putting it to use.
New, Regular Content
Another thing I will attempt now is to post a little more regularly. I have a couple regular postings already planned and started.
First, tomorrow should see the first release of Sterling’s Stash which will be a post containing a bunch of interesting links I’ve gleaned from around the web, blogs I like, my feeds, the news, things friends send me, funny videos, etc. In the past, I’ve been known to post these things to Facebook and/or Twitter, which I will continue to do some, but this will be an expanded version that contains a longer list of things I’ve compiled.
Second, I’ve been studying 2 Peter and am usually in the midst of some personal study. I will be posting a segment from my personal studies once a week. I don’t know when I will schedule these yet, but probably I will put them together on Sunday and they will appear on the blog Wednesday or something.
Third, I am almost always reading a book or two or three. I plan to post one note each week about that book. These will probably appear whenever.
And then, of course, whatever else strikes my fancy. I will try to at least post something short on the days I schedule things and consider working myself up to one post per day here and at Contentment.
Oh, and one other thing. I’m not using Facebook notes anymore. I don’t my comments over there. I want them here. I will post notifications to Twitter and Facebook, but not full notes.
Anyway, we’ll see how successful I actually am shortly…
and my 
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