mbjones

Gwynne Dyer writes on the Fort Hood shootings, and the larger issues plaguing the US military. He hits particularly on the giant escalation in suicide rates (now 4 times higher than in the civilian population) and the radicalizing of Islam resulting from what we are doing. It's a good commentary we don't find in our media often.

This is a great article on one form of modern idolatry and it doesn’t come from an expected source. The director of CORE (the Center for Origins Research) at Bryan College writes how, in defense of creationism (and other apologetic type activity) we fall prey to idolatry:

I greatly fear that our faith in Christ has been replaced with an idolatry of apologetics. I fear we’ve stopped believing in Christ and started believing in arguments about Christ (or the Bible or creation or what have you). I fear we’ve bowed to the world’s demand that we believe only that which is rational. We’re certainly no longer content with merely saying “I don’t know.” We have to have answers, and endless (and often pointless) argument has become our substitute for simply telling unbelievers what Christ has done for us.

And the further danger of this:

While we thought we were teaching them to believe in Christ, we instead taught them to idolize our arguments about Christ. And when those arguments are shown to be incomplete, inadequate, or just wrong, that idolatry (which we thought was real faith) slips away. That’s why I want my students to know the truth about evolution. It’s not bogus. It’s not a failure. There’s lots of evidence in its favor. But that just doesn’t make it true. Have faith in the risen Christ, and it will not matter what scientists tell you (or anyone else, for that matter).

This is a good article and starts a necessary discussion of how we find ourselves trapped believing in idols rooted in our modernistic drive for reason. I have a lot of respect for this creation scientist and what he is doing.

Here is a funny story for those that like such things. Sunday night after Celebration, Juli had to go into work to cover for the evening shift. But she had time for dinner beforehand so we decided to go with a large group of our friends to Taco Cabana thinking it’d be both cheap and fast.

Boy were we wrong…

Cheap it was but it was anything BUT fast. We got there approximately 10 till 8 and waited in the line for about 10 minutes and finally ordered. I got the taco combo and she got the cabana bowl. We went ahead and ordered to go because it looked like it could be a few minutes and that way if they took a bit longer she’d have hers packaged and ready for her to take to work. And so we started the process of waiting. And waiting. After about 15 minutes, one of the workers came out and said that it could take a few minutes because they were out of tortillas. “Great…” I thought as I’d gotten tacos but didn’t really think much more about it then. 5 minutes later another lady comes out with half our order (Juli’s cabana bowl) and gives it to us. 30 seconds later she comes back to say that it wasn’t ours but someone else. Several minutes later she’s still wandering around with it and I tell her that Juli has to get to work so if she can’t find who it belongs to, we’ll take it. 5 minutes later she comes back with it and hands it over. By this time we’ve been waiting for almost a half hour. It’s about 8:30 and Juli has to get to work so she grabs the togo container and heads off. I assume that I’ll be doing the same shortly.

Wrong.

5 to 10 minutes later I hear the manager say, “They are frozen solid! Send someone over to Walmart to get tortillas!” This is kind of frustrating to hear because Taco Cabana is known for their homemade tortillas; it’s what sets them apart on the landscape of fast food Mexican food. And further, Walmart tortillas, in general, aren’t that great. But I continue to wait. It’s a bit late to ask for my money back (as some of our friends did) as Juli had already gotten her food. The time passed pretty quickly as I was in a fairly in depth discussion about eschatology with a friend; when I finally got my food, it was about 9pm and about an hour after I had ordered. At a fast food place. Add that time scale to the fact that they used Walmart tortillas and not their own homemade ones and you have the recipe for a frustrating (and not very tasty) experience.

Looking at it now, it’s kind of funny and friends have generally laughed at the telling, but I will say that it makes me not want to go back to Taco Cabana anytime soon.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to talk with us in person about our trip, you might be missing out on some of the excitement we feel about where we are going and what we are doing. One of the (many) things we are excited about is the organization we will be working as a part of: All Nations. As you may know, their focus tends to rest on church planting through discipleship. There isn’t just one specific avenue though that this takes; as an organization, All Nations is clear that we’ve been given passions for a reason and that we are to use them for the Kingdom. To that end there are people that raise AIDs orphans as their own, people that teach music and art and other classes in schools, people that impart business skills to those that have none; the list of possibilities is limitless, really, and is why we are excited about technology training centers as all things can (and should!) be done in the context of Jesus’ mission.

I did want to highlight for you all one young lady we will likely be working quite a bit with. Her name is Bethany O’Connor and she does a lot of social work “stuff” within the townships of Cape Town. Our teams these past couple of summers have spent quite a bit of time working with her and it’s really life giving to see her heart for the widowed, orphaned, sick and broken. Her primary focus currently is a project called the Baby Safe which is a place where mothers and fathers can drop unwanted infants anonymously, insuring their care, rather than dumping them in trash bins or just on the streets.

Her most recent blog post is a good introduction to what she does, I think, and would be good for any of our readers to read to get a broader picture of what God is doing in Cape Town and South Africa.

This is a heartbreaking article on the problems facing people of the country of Eritrea. I'd honestly never heard of this country until reading this article. It borders the Red Sea, Ethiopia and Sudan and has struggles greatly. Disappearance and torture are common problems for its inhabitants and they have trouble finding any escape whatsoever. Again, this is why Africa needs discipleship.

My workplace did a video spotlight featuring me. In it I had the opportunity to begin sharing my vision and passion in life. They put it on youtube, so I thought I'd post it here for anyone interested in what I currently do day to day.

Filmed at the show in Norman on Sunday night. I didn't film it though - just found it on youtube.