Here’s something I have been wondering about. Militant Muslims who carry out acts of terror often kill Muslims in the process. Why would the Muslim community of the world (militant or otherwise) tolerate that? The insurgents in Iraq are killing American service men and women, but they are also killing Iraqis who help them. Aren’t they implicitly saying that those Iraqis are not Muslims? They’re even attacking mosques. The examples of this could be multiplied.

Now in Indonesia the radicals are actually thinking about this. An interesting phrase in the article is “Some militants…want their jihad, or holy war, to focus on fighting Christians in certain regions of Indonesia rather than bombing Western targets where Muslims die, too”. What you have to remember, though, is that for many Muslims (especially outside the US) to be an American is to be a Christian. Still, the intention is chilling.

So my son got a MacWireless USB kit for his iMac (rev b) and I have an Airport card for my iBook. We now have a wireless network in our house. Too cool. As a matter of fact I’m on the internet via the network right now. We’re streaming iTunes to each other. Next we’re going to work on some networked games.

I like the way this guy (admittedly, he’s a Mac fan already) thinks!

I think Panther is going to bring about a major increase in the number of people switching to Macs from Windows. Let’s face it, Windows is a security nightmare. Seemingly every week there’s a new patch, a new worm or virus to worry about. People are fed up with Windows, and Macs have been getting a great buzz of publicity lately.

[…]

Could hackers write viruses for a Mac? Sure. But because Panther is based on the much harder to hack, industrial strength UNIX foundation, they’re not likely to have nearly the success they do with Windows worms.

This is a drum I’ve been hammering for a while. Good to see it in the mainstream media. :)

What is up with the BBC? I’ve notice a PC bias there but in their story on the release of Panter, they make this snipe:

The company are touting the re-design of its interface, Expose, which lets users to see all the windows which are open at once, as “revolutionary”.

This isn’t exactly correct. Exposé does more than just let you see the windows, it makes it easier for you to navigate them if you have a lot open at once. What’s revolutionary about Exposé is that you can touch one button and have all of the windows you’re not using dim and shrink slightly. Hit another and the ones you are using does the same thing. Hit a third and you get the desktop. Not much about the other 149 changes in the article either.

I think they’re still mad because Steve Jobs didn’t pronounce “Jaguar” the way they do. That and the fact that it is harder to make an é on a PC (’cause notice that they didn’t) than it is on a Mac. :)

I’ve added a link to Derek Webb’s website. Derek did chapel a week ago and I was very impressed with the young man. He was in Caedmon’s Call and I love God of Wonder, so that was a plus. His recent album She Shall and Must Go Free is excellent and challenging.

So here’s the deal. I usually don’t go to chapel. I just don’t have enough time in my life since I’m working full-time and going to seminary full-time, I have to study sometime. Margaret Becker was going to be at chapel and I used to have a CD of hers so I thought this time I’d go. I needed to worship and I thought this might be a chance. Well, Becker was there the day before and instead it was this young, shaved-headed, tattooed, guitar-playing kid I’d never heard of. Okay, I was there so I thought I’d see what the Lord had in mind so I stuck around. Glad I did.

Derek is deep. He loves Reformed Theology and the Church! You don’t see those two thing going together very often. Too often you have what I call the “Mike Horton Syndrome” where you love Reformed Theology and are very suspicious of the rest of the Body of Christ. I even started drifting down that path at one point. Well Derek sang some good songs, played the guitar excellently and preached to me the message I needed to hear. He talked about feeling uncomfortable in church but sticking with it any way. He said that he thought we should hate about every third song we sing on Sunday. The reason is that there is someone else who loves that song and is blessed to be singing it, so sacrifice your preference for the other believers in the body. He railed against having a traditional and contemporary service, against having age-specific worship and Sunday School and he did it for all the right reasons. The 20 year olds need to hear what the 50 year olds have to say. The 40-somethings need to see things from the 20-somethings’ perspective. We need the differences to build each other up.

What his talk did for me was to affirm that I was doing a good thing in sticking with a church I wasn’t entirely comfortable with and to fight against the flesh in order to worship every Sunday.

Here’s a snip of some of Derek’s lyrics that really hit me:
The Church
‘Cause I haven’t come for only you
But for my people to pursue
You cannot care for me with no regard for her
If you love me you will love the church

Lover
I found thieves and salesmen living in my father’s house
I know how they got in there and I know how to get ’em out
I’m turning this place over from floor to balcony
And then just like these doves and sheep oh you will be set free

I strongly recommend the CD.

God loves you, and offers a wonderful plan for your life. – Bill Bright, The Four Spiritual Laws

I could see no purpose in putting the Christian proposition before a man unless it was made in such a way that forced him to struggle with it in terms of surrender to the ultimate and most basic demand that could be placed upon him. In order to know what had to be addressed to the depths of his being I had to wade down to it through what I was convinced were only outward displays of a deeper need in his heart. – William D. Reyburn, Identification in the Missionary Task

I have no huge problem with the Four Spiritual Laws per se, but I wonder if they as an evangelistic tool really address the needs of the human heart cross-culturally. For example, in the presentation of the gospel in our Western culture an emphasis is placed on sin and forgiveness. Though this emphasis may have become less successful in the past few decades, it did address a basic psychological need. In an animist context, this aspect of the gospel (vital though it is) does not have as much impact. What resonates more with them is the power that Jesus has over sin and death. Westerners seek comfort (hence forgiveness) and animists seek control over the environment that threatens them.

When we share the good news of Jesus Christ we cannot exclude any part of it. Death for sin, burial, resurrection for justification, ascension for present rule. What we need to understand is where to place the accent on that presentation. I once shared with a coworker about law and grace. He understood and repeated it back to me with clarity but remained unconverted. Why? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that for him is was not a matter of the heart but a philosophical discussion. There is no magic accent placement for each person that will turn the key in the lock of sin on their heart, but I think it is part of witnessing that we need to be more sensitive to.

What has “to be addressed to the depths of [the] being” of those we live amidst today? What aspect of the gospel will resonate more soundly in a post-modern context? What part of the gospel should we accentuate that will cause a Muslim to “struggle with it in terms of surrender to the ultimate and most basic demand that could be placed upon him”? God may continue to use the Four Spiritual Laws and evangelist methods like them to grant faith and repentance, He is able to do that. But that doesn’t excuse us from working hard to present the gospel in a fashion that speaks to those we intend to hear it and to do that without changing the content of the good news.

I wasn’t planning on buying Panther (Mac OS 10.3) because I don’t need any of the great things they’re adding and I didn’t feel like shelling out $120 for something I can’t use. However, I can get the education discount and pick it up for $69. It doesn’t look like they have the family pack (a site license of up to 5 machines) in the Education Store so that isn’t an option. :-/

I’m running Virtual PC on my iBook when Hebrew Tutor (Windows program) crashes and recommends restarting Windows. Okay fine. While Windows is rebooting I open Safari to surf the web. I accidently clicked on the trash can in the dock and Virtual PC pops up with the Windows 95 logo. Trash. Windows. Sure, that works for me! It did crash after all…

What ever we do, we can’t let Bin Laden find out about this. He’d be crushed.

At that time [in the 300s when Constantine converted] Christianity was the one religion that had no nationalism at its root, partly because it was rejected by the Jews! It was not the folk religion of any one tribe. – Ralph D. Winter, The Kingdom Strikes Back: Ten Epochs of Redemptive History

For if their [the Jews] rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? – Romans 11:15

It is fascinating to see how God orchastrated things so the gospel could go forth in the first few centuries. Roman roads, wide-spread trade routes, a common spoken and written language, general safety in travel from criminals, laws protecting Roman citizens. God used all of these things to help move the gospel out of Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.

Today even the most agnostic historian stands amazed that what began in a humble stable in Bethlehem of Palestine, a backwater of the Roman empire, in less than 300 years was give control of the emperors’ palace in Rome. How did this happen? It is a truly incredible story. – Winter

Had the Jews accepted Jesus, then Christianity would be viewed as no more than reformed Judaism, a Hebrew religion. But God, in His wisdom, hardened the hearts of the Jews towards Jesus and pushed Christianity out of Palestine and away from a single ethnic group. Christians were Jews and Gentiles, men and women, barbarians, Scythians, slaves and free. It was a religion of the people, not a nation. This too allowed it to spread, unhindered by nationalistic ideals it could cross cultural barriers.

What is sad is that today, Islam sees Christianity as the religion of the decadent West. To be a Saudi or Iranian or Iraqi or Indonesian or whatever is to be Muslim. Today religion has become once again intertwined with nationalist identity. If you live in the West you are a Christian. What spews forth from Hollywood and MTV is Christian culture. That is how Islam sees it. No wonder Bin Laden hates us! If that is what he thinks Christianity is all about I can see why he hates it. (I’m not condoning his barbaric reaction to it, only recognizing his revulsion at it.)

So how will Western culture be severed from Christianity in the eyes of the rest of the world? Winter’s take on history seems to be that we will be overrun by those we failed to reach and then they will be converted. He sites a historical track record of that happening (though there have been groups in history who were quite good at evangelizing and America has been particularly noteworthy in the past centuries). I suppose it could happen again but what I think I see happening is that Christianity is continuing to move west. It started in Israel then moved west to Rome then wast to Europe then west to America and now it appears to be moving west to China and Korea where there are numerically more evangelicals than in the US. As America and the West abandon Christianity the East seems to be taking it up. Perhaps once Christianity has moved soundly into the Eastern nations then Islam will have to reconsider exactly who they were fighting against. Maybe our brothers and sisters to the west will have more success in reaching the Middle East than we have. Maybe they will not have the disadvantage of having a decadent cultural image tied to the name of Christ as they go forth.