Philippians – a summary, a loose paraphrase and some observations

Leave a Comment

70 things our generation did instead of making the world a better place

  1. Played Farmville
  2. Played Mafia Wars
  3. Played Minesweeper
  4. Played Solitaire
  5. Played World of Warcraft
  6. Played on our Xbox
  7. Played on our GameCube
  8. Played on our PlayStation
  9. Filled in crossword puzzles
  10. Filled in Sudoku
  11. Hung out at the mall
  12. Hung out at Starbucks
  13. Hung out at the beach
  14. Hung out at the campground
  15. Twittered about trivial things
  16. Blogged about trivial things
  17. Texted each other about trivial things
  18. Chatted on messenger about trivial things
  19. Emailed about trivial things
  20. Wrote on Facebook walls and photo pages about trivial things
  21. FAIL’d, FTW’d, LOL’d, and ROFL’d
  22. Learned what WTF and OMFG meant, and used them anyway
  23. Consulted Wikipedia about episodes, but not about ethics
  24. Clicked the StumbleUpon button…again
  25. Browsed the photos on Flickr
  26. Browsed the drawings on DeviantArt
  27. Browsed the pages on TV Tropes
  28. Browsed the forums on Reddit
  29. Browsed the forums on Digg
  30. Browsed months worth of archives of online cartoons
  31. Browsed through online ‘top ten’ lists
  32. Browsed the suggested videos on Youtube
  33. Had a goldmine of information at our fingertips, but Googled for Kim Kardashian
  34. Played around with our iphones
  35. Played around with our ipods
  36. Played around with our ipads
  37. Played around with the stock market
  38. Watched MTV and Nickolodeon
  39. Watched football
  40. Watched basketball
  41. Watched baseball
  42. Watched House
  43. Watched Gray’s Anatomy
  44. Watched Sex and the City
  45. Watched Desperate Housewives
  46. Watched Lost and obsessed about its every detail on online forums
  47. Watched the Twilight movies and complained how dumb they were
  48. Watched the Transformers movies and complained how loud they were
  49. Watched DaVinci Code and and complained how boring it was
  50. Watched Cloverfield and complained how shakey it was
  51. Watched Slumdog Millionaire and then did nothing for the poor
  52. Watched porn online even though we would never do anything like that in the company of others
  53. Pirated movies and music even though we would never steal from others in public
  54. Ranted in ALL CAPS at people in online forums even though we would never be so rude in person
  55. Hid behind privacy settings and incognito windows because we were ashamed of where we had been
  56. Hid behind usernames and anonymous avatars because we were ashamed to stand behind what we wrote
  57. Argued over Star Trek vs. Star Wars
  58. Argued over Mac, PC and Linux
  59. Argued over Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Exploder
  60. Argued over Leno, Letterman and Conan
  61. Bashed Bush and Obama instead of praying for them
  62. Bashed Muslims, Scientologists and Fundamentalists without learning much about their beliefs
  63. Bashed others’ grammatical errors without engaging their positions
  64. Bashed BP without doing anything ourselves to help the environment
  65. Read atheist books critical of religions rather than reading the Bible or the book of Mormon for ourselves
  66. Read People magazine rather than international news
  67. Knew more about the lives of Lindsay Lohan and Justin Bieber than about the lives of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr
  68. Knew more about combining Coke and Mentos than about combining justice and mercy
  69. Knew more about how to download a file than about how to lift up a person
  70. Knew more about how to make a reservation than about how to make a difference

…and when our broken planet, our lost human race, and our own impoverished souls called out to us, we announced that we would have given more, but we didn’t have the money, that we would have helped more, but we didn’t have a clue what to do, and that we would have found out what to do, but we didn’t have the time or energy to do so.

Comments (4)

False sources of ultimate happiness

Rebecca DeYoung, my philosophy teacher at Calvin College, had us read excerpts of numerous ancient works. The topic that most impacted me in that course was the search for happiness – what is the ultimate good of a human being? What should we make our goal in life? Aristotle, Boethius and Thomas Aquinas reject a number of inferior goods that many people past and present have made their life’s goal to attain: power, » Continue reading “False sources of ultimate happiness”

Comments (1)

My place

I’ll find my place

And I’ll get in line

Stop buckin’ the system

Tell my will to resign

I’ll bite my lip

And I’ll swallow my pride

Nothing’s ever gonna change

So it’s useless to fight

I’ll be one of the sheep

And I’ll do it their way

I’ll accept my defeat

I’ll submit and obey

Won’t be nobody’s martyr

Been burned enough before

I’ll just work a little harder

And comply a little more

I can only hope

There’ll come someone else

Someone with a bit more nerve

Someone who’ll ring the bells

Until then you can find me

Where I’m told I belong

If you hoped me the hero

Well I guess you were wrong

Leave a Comment

Infant baptism articles list

I thought I would list my various articles on infant baptism so that visitors can read them in order. This also makes a handy link for me when I mention my articles to others. Blessings.

1. My convoluted interactions with the doctrine of baptism

2. Two ‘Reformed’ hangups I had regarding infant baptism

3. A Giffmex defense of infant baptism

4. A clarification regarding the ‘Reformed hangups’ post

Leave a Comment