charlieDEAN’S Blog

You only need to continue reading this post if…

(a) you own a mac, and (b) you’re a bibliophile like me, who is often loaning books out to people and not always getting them back.

Last week, a friend recommended a piece of software to me, that in one week has changed my life.  It’s called the Delicious Library, and it’s a library management system.  You scan your books into it using the bar codes on the back of the book (which are read by your iSight)…so sexy!

You can then loan them out to friends, and you can track who has your books, and it even automatically places a reminder on your iCalendar two weeks later!

So worth the cost of the software!  (and I found out that I have 396 books in my library, not including all my history books and the other books in our upstairs office)

And one more thing…you can also use it the same way with movies, music & games!

I’m an admitted bibliophile.

And yet, I was thinking to myself yesterday about how seldom I actually walk into a bookstore, much less purchase a book from one.  My reasons are three (“not two, not four, three” — name the movie?)

1. cheaper — why go into Borders or Barnes and Noble so they give you 25% off, when I can regularly buy from Amazon and get 32% off.
2. convenience — someone tells me about a good book, or I hear about a good book, I instantly add it to my shopping cart on Amazon.  Currently I think I have 3 or 4 books in my shopping cart, that when I’m ready I will purchase.
3.  on Amazon I can read reviews as well as see other books that are related (this is also dangerous, because I potentially buy more!)  At the bookstore, some freckle-faced kid might be able to tell me where the book is located, but that’s about it!

somebody, please defend the bookstore, cuz I’m at a loss!

Another Peterson quotation: 

“There can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from an immersion and embrace of community.  I am not myself by myself.  Community, not the highly vaunted individualism of our culture, is the setting in which Christ is at play.”

In what sense do you agree with E.P.?

In what sense do you disagree?

We tend to glorify leadership success. (maybe “tend to” is a little weak) And when I say “success” it’s almost always numerical. Leaders that make the most money for the business, athletes who command the highest salaries because of their batting average, ERA, or completion percentage are the ones who write books and speak at conferences.

The same is true in the church world. We clamor to hear stories of the leader who transformed their church from 30 people to 3000 or the leader leads the church of 30,000.

I think this is instructive: after 40+ years of leading the people of Israel out of Egypt (success!) and then to Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments (meanwhile they were worshipping a golden calf — failure!), and then across the desert to spy out the land (failure) which led to 40 years of wandering that was marked by complaining, Moses says this to the people he’s leading:

“I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are…I know that after my death you are sure to be utterly corrupt and to turn away from the way I have commanded you.”

And yet…despite mostly failing, Moses is considered perhaps the greatest leader in Israel’s history. Why?

IMHO? faithfulness. Moses wasn’t ultimately responsible for the people…he was responsible to God…and he was faithful.

I bought my first Nalgene bottle probably 12 years ago, when Jennifer and I were living in Colorado (I still have it and take it to the gym everyday). I didn’t know they were “trendy” — I just knew that they held a lot of water and were supposed to be pretty much unbreakable.

But recent reports suggest that Nalgene bottles may not be so health-friendly. So, Jennifer and I are probably going to start switching over (I think there are a total of 5 Nalgene bottles in our house, so we can’t afford to do it all at one time) — and the mostly likely option is SIGG bottles. (Like Megan, I have a VOSS bottle as well, but I don’t take it out of the house much…I’m afraid of dropping it.)

So, here’s my ecological dilemma. What do I do with my old Nalgene bottles?

Here’s a quote from a post on the Out of Ur blog, reporting on the National Pastors Convention in San Diego this week.  The author is reporting on a pre-conference session called “Emerging Critical Issues Facing the Churches.”  Anyway…without going into the whole article too much, I thought this quotation from Andy Crouch was “spot on.” (Yes, you should say “spot on” with an English accent.)

“Reading from an article he wrote in 2003, Andy Crouch introduced the third critical issue facing the church: homosexuality. According to Andy, ‘Humankind is not divided into homosexual or heterosexual categories. We are all sexual beings who tend towards self-satisfaction.’ Additionally, many churches rally around these categories, ‘which leads to a double standard: chastity for those who are gay and a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy regarding sexuality for the rest of us.’”

I’ve talked before about how I think that perhaps one of the single most significant events in my life in terms of understanding God differently has been taking on the role of parent.

Last night, I made my rounds, tucking them in, kissing them, telling them I love them (even while they’re sleeping, I’m convinced that it sinks into their heads anyway).  Anyway, I was kinda laughing at myself, because I turn to a big pile of mush when I see them sleeping in their beds (even if they were holy terrors only hours before!), and I was asking myself this question, “at what age do you stop going in and kissing them every night, whispering in their ear that you love them and praying blessings over them.”

(I don’t want that age to come.)

Particularly when reading the epistles I find that in my head I assign the writer a “voice.”  I do this with other literature as well.  So when I read Velvet Elvis for example, I “hear” Rob Bell in my head.  However, when thinking about the Bible, this is difficult since there are no podcasts from the that time period.  So the “voice” that I “hear” really is arbitrarily assigned by me.

Which brings us back to the epistles.  For most of my life, when I’ve read Paul’s epistles, the “voice” in my head could best be described by the following list of words: irritated, self-righteous, intense, serious, angry, stern…you get the idea.   But the voice is changing.

Our leadership team is working our way through 1 Corinthians and it’s been remarkable to me how Paul’s voice is changing.  I don’t want to get into all the ways here, or this post will get too long, but seeing Paul’s use of sarcasm (4:8ff) and the way he taunts the Corinthians at times (6:5), makes Paul more human too me.  It’s quite refreshing.

Sometimes, I think that some theologies are built on exceptions rather than the norm.  For example, one might say, “God still speaks audibly today.”  Which I think can be true.  But it’s also true that most of history is filled with God’s silence.  For every burning bush there are 400 years of slavery in which faith is worked out against the backdrop of silence.

Eugene Peterson hits this idea with this quotation in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places:

Any understanding of God that doesn’t take into account God’s silence is a half truth — in effect, a cruel distortion — and leaves us vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation by leaders who are quite willing to fill in the biblical blanks with what the Holy Spirit never tells us. (p. 156)

Some may get depressed by this idea of working out faith against the backdrop of silence, but personally, this excites me because this is where things like the community of faith and the revelation of Scripture are so significant and meaningful.

Yesterday, Jaxon turned two.

(Actually, it’s birthday season — including me we have 5 birthdays in 4 months.)