Hotel Rwanda

The second winner of my "Run, don't walk" movie award*: Hotel Rwanda.
This isn't an easy movie to watch, but it is well made, and very good.

If you have seen it, check out SaveDarfur.org (or check it out anyway.)


*Previous winners include: Napoleon Dynamite

How about this:

Why does God not just abolish the law? Without the law, the fault of sin is not attributed to anyone,* but a just** God cannot allow sin to simply exist without attributing it to someone and punishing them. So now “the Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”# And so justification before the law is possible without injustice, through grace, for we can become “justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus”## Abolishing the law would mean God was unjust, so instead he offers justification as a gift, and our sins are imputed to Christ.
So Jesus came to fulfill in the sense of completing the law. The law was sent to increase sin, and therefore increase grace. Jesus was sent to be a propitiation for the sins of the whole world^ and allow grace to begin, thus completing the purpose of the law. So not a single bit of the law will become void until heaven and earth pass away;^^ We all remain guilty before the law until the end of days except for the grace of Jesus.

*Romans 5:13 “For until the Law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.”

**“Consistent with what is morally right; righteous: a just cause.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

#Romans 5:20

##Romans 3:24

^1 John 2:2 “and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”

^^Matthew 5:18 “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

Free Gift

That sure is a weird phrase... especially considering the definition of "gift:" Something that is bestowed voluntarily and without compensation.

Lend a Hand

Here's your chance to help me with my essay (again) I have this sentence:

God makes the Holy Spirit avaliable to the great and the poor alike.

and I need a reference...

NASB

Hmm... it seems the NASB translators strove hard to make each of the groups of people Jesus blesses in Matthew 5:3-11 desirable.

* "poor in spirit" has a note "i.e. those who are not spiritually arrogant"
* mourn is skipped, hard to make that blessed (by skipped, I mean they didn't do anything to make it desirable)
* meek is changed to "gentle" (although meek is in the footnote)

That's all I've noticed...

The Big Questions

I posted a list of my questions about the Sermon on the Mount over at johnnymail but here are my most pressing questions:

What is the "good news [gospel] of the kingdom"?

Where is the good news in the Sermon on the Mount?


also:

How can I develop the Legalism vs. Heart-condition... How can I even put it in the form of a question?

How does the slave -> son/heir transition work? (Gal. 4:7)

A break

Phew... I need a break... I just typed about 3000 words for my essay. Unfortunately, most of it was Matthew 5-7 from the NASB, so I'm not ahead any :-( (crap, I have to type to post to my blog... this isn't a break...)

It was 14 this morning, and I was walking to my dorm from picking up a package, and about halfway there, my left hand went numb (my right hand had a cup of tea in it, so I think that kept it from suffering the same fate.) then as I approached my door, it felt like it was getting bigger and bigger... When I checked, with windchill, it "felt" like -15degrees. I tried to type a little email, but I couldn't use the ol' left hand... it just kinda flopped there. When I went back out in shoes and gloves, I was fine.

Question

Is there an option between man’s effort entirely being responsible for entrance into the kingdom of heaven (Legalism) and God arbitrarily chosing some to be saved from damnation? Neither option sounds very good, the first seeming entirely impossible, the second seeming malevolent, and neither containing any freedom. So if we are to have any freedom at all, it must lie in our freedom to do God’s will or not do God’s will. But how is this different from Legalism?

Where am I going?

Well, I kinda know what my essay is going to look like now. I'm going to ask "What and When is the kingdom of God," use the Sermon on the Mount as an outline, treating it as a sermon rather than a collection of Jesus' sayings (even if it was just Matthew putting them all together, he put them there for a reason) and one of the big answers is going to lie in the difference between legalism and love... following the law and changing your heart... the misconception that following the law brings righteousness... It's kinda hard to say, hope I can before this paper is due :-)

Mac mini

Wow. That is all I really have to say, but here's some buying advice:

I would recommend, if nothing else, to get the $75 upgrade from 256 to 512 MB of RAM (You can't upgrade the RAM yourself, or I'd recommend getting it from someone else)... everything will run much more smoothly. I usually recommend getting applecare, but if your computer costs $499 plus $75 for RAM = $574, the $149 for apple care doesn't make much sense, just buy a new one, it will only hurt if the thing falls apart in the first year or so, and Apples don't do that.

Thinking of springing for the DVD-R drive? Don't... Get an external drive, then when you buy a new Mac mini next year, you can save $100 on that one too. But it is really cool to have a 6.5"x6.5"x2" box on your desk with only a monitor, keyboard and mouse... if you are looking for cool, you'll be spending a lot more

The $50 for 40 extra GB is worth it, it just depends on what you are looking for on the bottom line.

Internal Bluetooth is only available if you buy it now, but if you change your mind later, there are dongles you can buy...

Don't buy from Apple, you get sales tax, and no extra deals... Go for MacMall or MacWarehouse to get free shipping, no sales-tax, and extras (like a free keyboard and mouse)

They are obviously way overcharging for the 1GB of RAM... that is probably to separate it from the iMac. When I checked the iMac, they are selling 1GB sticks for it for the same price, so I guess I was wrong...

For $2,500 you could get a very awesome setup, 17" LCD, 1.4GHz, 1GB RAM 80GB HD, AirPort Extreme, DVD Burner, and Apple Care (with a price that high, AppleCare again becomes a must-have...) Well, you can get an iMac for $300 less, with a G5 1.8GHz and 250GB HD, so I'd go that route :-) )

Just for Reference, my G4 800MHz Powerbook runs just fine with 640MB of RAM... 1.4GHz would be plenty fast for photo editing, internet, Garage Band, etc.

NRSV and NASB

I've been slacking a little bit on my essay, mostly just replacing all my verse quotations from the New Revised Standard Version to quotations from the New American Standard Bible. I had always thought these two were pretty much the same, but in the few verses I compared, there is quite a difference.

I switched because the NASB has greek notes on Crosswalk while the NRSV doesn't.

My next task is to reflect on the paradox of God's will, using the passage from the Lord's prayer I was asking about the other day.

Ow

I just sneezed really hard and now my elbow hurts...

weird.

Matthew 6:10

I'm surprised to find that most translations I can find are something like:

Your kingdom come>.< Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

I've always thought it as:

Your kingdom come>,< Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

The Message puts a semicolon there, but that is the closest I could find.

Even with the period, is it alright to say that we are praying both for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and for his kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven?

Ouch

Bill Gates on Apple:

They had a hit with the Apple II, they had a hit with the Macintosh, and they have a hit with the iPod, so this is a company that's had three hits...

***Edit***
You may remember this post where I said:

This [icon ()] is [for]when I hand out a "Thumbs Down" to a company or celebrity... you don't want one of these, it follows you around, haunting you until you leave public life, a hollow, broken, shell of a man (or company.)

Well, check this out, Gates had a little trouble with is keynote the other day...

***Edit#2***
I might also point out that another recipient of my thumbs down, Larry Brown, can't seem to get either of his teams (US Olympic Squad, or the Pistons) to perform up to their potential...

Woo Hoo!

I don't know if this is the sort of thing I should be telling other people, but I am pretty excited. Within the next week, God willing, all of my outstanding debt (at least monetary and to specific institutions which have finance charges ;-) ) will be paid off. If you are reading this and don't have a credit card, don't get one!

Huh?

I was reading this article, and although I'm not a "super-lutheran" I took exception to this part:

We have quoted Luther’s small catechism (followed by every Lutheran group today, including the Missouri Synod): "Holy Baptism is the only means whereby infants...can ordinarily be regenerated...it works forgiveness of sins...delivers from death and the devil [and] gives eternal salvation...." Calvin said, "God in baptism promises remission of sins...regenerating us...makes us his by adoption...let us therefore embrace it in faith."

The first thing that caught my attention is all the ellipses. So I give you the entire section of Baptism from Luther's Small Catechism:

The Sacrament of Holy Baptism

As the head of the family should teach it in a simple way to his household
FIRST
What is Baptism?
Baptism is not just plain water, but it is the water included in God's command and combined with God's word.

What is that word of God?
Christ our Lord says in the last chapter of Matthew: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit." [Matt. 28:19]

SECOND
What benefits does Baptism give?
It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.

Which are these words and promises of God?
Christ our Lord says in the last chapter of Mark: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." [Mark 16:16]

THIRD
How can water do such great things?
Certainly not just water, but the word of God in and with the water does these things, along with the faith which trusts this word of God in the water. For without God's word the water is plain water and no Baptism. But with the word of God it is a Baptism, that is, a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says in Titus, chapter three: "He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying." [Titus 3:5-8]

FOURTH
What does such baptizing with water indicate?
It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Where is this written?
St. Paul writes in Romans chapter six: "We were therefore buried with Him through baptism in to death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." [Rom. 6:4]

You might have missed (as I did) where exactly it says:

Holy Baptism is the only means whereby infants...can ordinarily be regenerated

in fact in the explanation, question 251 it says:

Is it possible for an unbaptized person to be saved?
It is only unbelief that condemns...

going on to quote Mark 16:16 "Whoever does not believe will be condemned. And in 246 it says that babies also are able to have faith, basing that on Matthew 18:6 "If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." and Luke 1:15, 41-44 which is about John the Baptist being filled with the holy spirit as a baby and even before birth.

Maybe now that I got that out of my system I will go back and read the whole article :-)

I've read some more, and was tempted many times to respond before I got to this little bit of rhetoric:

He neither meant physical bread nor physical death nor physical eating. He was communicating eternal spiritual truth. So it must be also when He said, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" (6:51), "Living bread" is clearly a metaphor, as is His statement that this "living bread" is His "flesh." Clearly, the "eating" is symbolic of believing that "Jesus Christ is come [once and for all] in the flesh" (1 Jn 4:2,3). He is both God and man in genuine human flesh. That much should be clear.
Yet when Christ goes on in the same breath to say, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you" (Jn 6:53), Rome insists that He means literally eating and drinking His physical body and blood!

The specific part that caught my attention was "in the same breath..." I want to give this guy some slack, but this seems to be an outright lie. When I saw "in the same breath" and noticed that he had previously quoted John 6:51, but this time quoted 6:53, I naturally wanted to know what 52 said:

51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
52
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
53
So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Oops... forgot that one little thing. There really does seem to be a difference between Jesus saying "I am the door" or "I am the true vine" and responding to the direct question: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" with "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you"(paraphrase). If you want to write about the bible, and you come to a difficult verse, you shouldn't sweep it under the rug, you should mention it and respond to the difficulties it raises.

Is it just me?

... or is it faster to select a lot of text in most browsers by starting at the bottom and dragging up?

Senior Essay

I'm having a little trouble with my senior essay:

God rules the kingdom of heaven, and that is his realm. But he made everything, He rules everything, and so his realm extends to everything, even where his will is not obeyed. There is a paradox here, for we truly have free will, and yet our will cannot go against God’s will. Paradoxes are hard to think about, the mind constantly slides down and takes sides on the issue because of the non-contradiction principle. I guess the only way I can think of holding on to this thought is that God’s Will is that which cannot be contravened, and extends to his entire realm, but within his realm he created things which are able to make free choices. These choices are not subject to the Will of God, but can never cause an event to occur which God does not Will. That really just spreads the paradox out with the intent that you forget the first part by the time you read the second.

If anyone can help me out, please do :-)

Now Reading:

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God by Dallas Willard

Galatians 5:12

...one of the funniest verses in the bible =)

Wish List

This wishlist is really a place for me to remember books I need to get, but hey, if anyone feels generous.... (some of the books have used versions around 2 bucks!)

More on "Separation of Church and State"

See this earlier post. I am not an antidisestablishmentarian, I believe there should be no state religion, but the courts are acting beyond their stated powers when they rule on anything using the so called "constitutional separation of church and state principal" on anything besides a law that Congress passes. If someone wants to amend the constitution to allow the courts to rule on other cases, then they will have a valid pretext for their rulings.

Links:
Wikipedia
TheocracyWatch (Notice how they dance around the fact that the constitution does not allow the courts to rule on anything except for Congressional Laws)

Browser Wars

***Update:
My friend Shane Anderson helped me to lessen the grinding halts in Safari. The Autofill option was causing it. Turn that off and there is no reason to switch away!***

I've gotten a little annoyed when Safari grinds to a temporary halt, usually when dealing with net applications like amazon.com, store.apple.com, blogger.com etc. But I keep running into problems when I want to switch browsers.

Cookies

I can't find a way to import cookies out of Safari and into a new browser. There aren't a lot of cookies that I want to keep, but there are enough.

Keychain

There are many sites that I have forgotten my username and password. I could look up each one in keychain and paste it across, but I'm way to lazy to do that.

Bookmarks

I just want my bookmark bar to be identical to my Safari bar. I think I got it in firefox, but it keeps adding it's own 3 links in front which I don't want to use. Also, I can't figure out how to make a group open together without a contextual menu.

Ad Blocking

Not originally part of Safari, but I have PithHelmet installed and it just works. I found a way to get firefox to block ads, but it required creating a file in my user preferences, buried deep inside my home folder. I haven't tried it yet, but I guess it will work. The nice thing about PithHelmet is I can easily temporarily disable it (if it is blocking something accidently,) and it also filters other content besides ads.

Tabs

I like being able to close the tab with a button that is on the tab. In firefox (and others, I'm just picking on firefox because I just tried switching to it, Camino and OmniWeb may not exhibit this behavior anymore) you have to right click and select close tab from a contextual menu, or click the close button al the way over on the right.

AutoFill

I will have to re-enter my auto fill info If I ever get around to switching, and that is just annoying.

---

Two things I would like to see in a browser that writing this all up has brought back to mind are:

The ability to overwrite the expiration date for a cookie. I'd like to set all cookies to expire after one year if the cookie is set to expire in a longer time. (I think OmniWeb lets you do stuff like this)

Never open a new window unless I purposefully open a new one. Right now I have to use a contextual menu to open new links in a new tab, and sometimes (e.g. when there is a picture that has a link attached to it, but there are others) the menu lacks the option to open the link in a new tab. I'd rather all links open in new tabs, I could close the old window if I didn't want it. (I may get tired of this, because I am used to having some links open in the same window/tab, but I'd like to have to option to open all links in new tabs in the same window.)

I hope that someone will prove me wrong on these points, I'd love it.

Senior Essay Excerpt I

I put up a little bit of my essay today over at johnnymail.

Mac Users: Decode Anything!

Well, just about anything... This page has freeware and shareware to decode and encode just about any format you can imagine:

.zip, .yenc, .uue, MIME base 64, shar, .rar, Tomes, .tar, .sit, .sitx, .cab, .pkg, .arc, .arj, .b64, .bin, .bz2, .bz, .compressed, .cpt, .gnutar, .gnutar.bz2, .gnutar.bz, .gnutar.gz, .gsm, .gz, .hqx, .lza, .lzh, .macbin, .mime, .pit, .tar-gz, .tar.Z, .tar.gz, .tar.bz, .tar.bz2, .taz, .tgz, .tbz, .tbz2, .uu, .xx, .xxe, .z, .zip, .zoo, .Z, WINAce, .lha, (and more?)

Some of the direct download links didn't work, but the ones I tried let me download after finding the link on the homepage link...

Lambic

I had some raspberry lambic over the holidays and it was pretty good. It was what I wish wine coolers tasted like. I think my mom even tried a little and liked it.

Go Aggies!

I'm off to go see the Cotton Bowl.

******

Well, I'm back... The game was not much fun to watch. The 12th man showed up, but unfortunately the first 11 didn't for the Aggies. They had more turnovers in this game than the whole season, it seemed. After giving up 3 TDs off of 3 turnovers, they never really got back in the game. Tennessee scored a point for each of their fans in the crowd though.

I rang in the new year at midnight yell, which was pretty fun. They could have used some better speakers though. I was about 20 feet from the yell leaders and could barely hear them.