Wordbooker

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If you use Facebook and maintain a personal blog outside of Facebook, it may have crossed your mind that it would be nice if your blog posts were somehow linked with your Facebook feed.

I use my blog primarily for article-length posts that I want to save.  Short, random thoughts I’ll just post on Facebook, and I’m not worried about losing track of what I wrote.  Since the longer posts tend to be a bit more rare, and since few (if any) people are going to subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed, it’s nice to have a way to bring some attention to new blog posts.  Thankfully, there are several ways to have new blog posts show up in your Facebook feed.

Facebook provides a convenient way to import a blog into your Notes.  Just go to http://www.facebook.com/editnotes.php and paste in the address of your blog’s feed.  Then whenever you post something to your blog, it will also show up as a note in Facebook.  However, if someone comments on your note, the comment will only exist in Facebook; you may wish that comments would be reflected on your blog page as well.

Depending on your blogging software, there have been attempts to write plugins that attempt to import comments on notes from Facebook into your blog.  I use WordPress for my blog, and there was a Facebook Comments plugin that served this purpose, but it no longer seems to work.

If you don’t feel it necessary to have your blog posts imported into Facebook as Notes, but you want an update to appear on your Facebook wall when you make a new post to your blog, there are plugins for that too.  For WordPress, the Wordbook plugin makes it easy to to this.  This plugin will just post a little one-line story on your Wall with a link to your blog post.  If someone wants to read it, they have to click over to your blog.

Today I’m trying a new method, using the Wordbooker plugin.  This plugin purports to show new blog posts on your Wall without importing them into your Notes.  If Facebook friends comment on your Wall post, those comments are supposed to be imported into your blog page as well.  I’m not sure how it’s going to work, so this post is a test.

The Wrath of God

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The other day I had a fictional conversation in my head.  In this conversation, I recommended a work by Jonathan Edwards.

Although I don’t really know, I’m guessing that responses to Jonathan Edwards frequently fall into one of several different categories:

1.  Jonathan Edwards is my homeboy!  He was a great thinker and theologian; there is much that can be learned from him.

2.  I’ve heard of him, but that’s about it.

3.  Yeah, I’m not a big fan of those “hellfire and damnation,” “fire and brimstone” types.  We serve a God of love!

These are exaggerated generalizations, and I’m sure there are other categories, but I suspect these three are fairly common reactions.

In my imagined scenario, the person to whom I was speaking fell into the 3rd category.

At that point, I don’t bother trying to convince them that Edwards may have something valuable to offer.  That maybe they have the wrong impression of him; that maybe they should actually read Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, instead of just dismiss it.  Instead, I suggest that maybe they should do a study on God’s wrath.

John 3:16 is a wonderful verse.  It’s great news that God offers eternal life to those who believe in Jesus.  But it’s a mistake to focus solely on the positive.  It’s simply not true that the only barrier to eternal life is man’s unwillingness to accept it.  The real barrier, an insurmountable barrier (unless God removes it), is God’s wrath.

John 3:16 says that if we believe in Jesus we will not perish.  We had better ask the question, “why would we perish otherwise?”  We need to read the whole chapter.  John 3:36 tells us that if a person doesn’t believe (and obey) Jesus, then God’s wrath remains (or abides) on him.

I think it’s also worth noting that John isn’t just saying, “one day (in the future) you’ll face God’s wrath” if you don’t trust in Jesus.  It’s true that the day of Judgment, when God pours out His full wrath, is still coming.  But John 3:36 says that God’s wrath “remains.”  It’s already there.  John 3:18 says that the one who doesn’t believe is already under condemnation.

Another instructive passage is in Romans.  Romans 5:8 is quite popular, and rightly so.  But many seem to have lost sight of Romans 5:9.  When we are saved by Christ, what are we saved from?  From ourselves?  Are we rescued from Satan’s grip?  Certainly salvation includes release from bondage to many things, but primarily, we are saved from the wrath of God.

When Jesus died for us, he drank the cup of God’s wrath for us (Matt. 26:42; Isa. 53:4-5,10; Gal. 3:13).  Those who do not trust in Jesus will have to drink the cup of God’s wrath on their own (Rev. 14:10).

There are some within Christianity who minimize or deny the importance of Christ’s substitutionary atonement.  This is a problem, not due to differing interpretations of theological minutia, but a problem of not understanding and appreciating God’s wrath.

Giving to Beggars

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Jon Bloom (Executive Director of Desiring God) has recently blogged two entries on the subject of Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:42 (“Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”)  I recommend reading both of them.

When I think about this topic, I always recall Dale Ahlquist’s description of G.K. Chesterton in his book Common Sense 101: Lessons from G.K. Chesterton.

He seems so frivolous and so careless, but he gives money to beggars, not frivolously or carelessly, but because he believes in giving money to beggars, and giving it to them “where they stand”.

He says he knows perfectly well all the arguments against giving money to beggars. But he finds those to be precisely the arguments for giving money to them. If beggars are lazy or deceptive or wanting a drink, he knows only too well his own lack of motivation, his own dishonesty, his own thirst.

He doesn’t believe in “scientific charity” because that is too easy, as easy as writing a check. He believes in “promiscuous charity” because that is really difficult. “It means the most dark and terrible of all human actions—talking to a man. In fact, I know of nothing more difficult than really talking to the poor men we meet.”  (pp. 13-14)

I have given money to someone with a sob story, and afterwards concluded that I was scammed.  I have given a few bucks to someone in need, and afterwards regretted that I didn’t do more.  I have spurned a beggar’s request, and wondered if I did the right thing.

The thoughts from Jon Bloom and the example of Chesterton convict me that it is better to give than to worry about analyzing the situation and attempting to predict the outcome.

Is Postmodernism for real?

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[D]on’t we live in a postmodern culture in which…appeals to traditional apologetic arguments are no longer effective?  Since postmodernists reject the traditional canons of logic, rationality, and truth, rational arguments for the truth of Christianity no longer work!  Rather in today’s culture we should simply share our narrative and invite people to participate in it.”

William Lane Craig responds:

In my opinion, this sort of thinking could not be more mistaken.  The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable.  Nobody is a postmodernist when it comes to reading the labels on a medicine bottle versus a box of rat poison.  If you’ve got a headache, you’d better believe that texts have objective meaning!  People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they’re relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics.  But that’s not postmodernism; that’s modernism!  That’s just old-line Positivism and Verificationism, which held that anything you can’t prove with your five senses is just a matter of individual taste and emotive expression.  We live in a cultural milieu which remains deeply modernist.  People who think that we live in a postmodern culture have thus seriously misread our cultural situation.

Indeed, I think that getting people to believe that we live in a postmodern culture is one of the craftiest deceptions that Satan has yet devised.  “Modernism is passe,” he tells us.  “You needn’t worry about it any longer.  So forget about it!  It’s dead and buried.”  Meanwhile, modernism, pretending to be dead, comes around again in the fancy new dress of postmodernism, masquerading as a new challenger.  “Your old arguments and apologetics are no longer effective against this new arrival,” we’re told.  “Lay them aside; they’re of no use.  Just share your narrative!”  Indeed, some, weary of the long battles with modernism, actually welcome the new visitor with relief.  And so Satan deceives us into voluntarily laying aside our best weapons of logic and evidence, thereby ensuring unawares modernism’s triumph over us.  If we adopt this suicidal course of action, the consequences for the church in the next generation will be catastrophic.  Christianity will be reduced to but another voice in a cacophony of competing voices, each sharing its own narrative and none commending itself as the objective truth about reality, while scientific naturalism shapes our culture’s view of how the world really is. (emphasis added)

from Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics

App Launcher

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I want to say a few words about some useful software for finding and launching programs and files on your computer.

The old way to launch programs:

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  1. Click on the Start button.
  2. Move the mouse to Programs.
  3. If you’re using “Personalized Menus,” some of the Program folders may be hidden, so you have to click or hover on the two little arrows at the bottom of the list.
  4. Remember which of your many folders contains the program you’re looking for. You may have to browse multiple folders and subfolders to find it.
  5. Finally, once you find it, click on it to launch the program.

Alternatively, if it’s a frequently used program, you can put a shortcut on the desktop. This works fine if your desktop is showing, but if you already have one or more open windows, you first have to minimize those windows before you can click the icons on your desktop. You also have to decide in advance which icons to put on the desktop. Personally, I like to keep my desktop icons to a minimum.

Another alternative would be to create hotkey combinations (eg., Ctrl-Alt-M, Ctrl-Shift-W, etc.) for your frequently used programs. This allows you to launch selected programs without navigating through the Start menu or minimizing open windows to expose the desktop. However, in addition to deciding which programs are worthy of having hotkeys (usually only a small number of programs), you have to remember what all those hotkeys are.

I have come to prefer a specialized application launcher. My current favorite is Find And Run Robot (FARR). Another popular choice is Launchy.

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