Condolances to #Chickfila and the Cathy

Condolances to #Chickfila and the Cathy Family in the passing of Founder Truett Cathy, a great, generous man #TruettCathy #RIP

How To Create a Screencast Using “Jing”

A video tutorial on how to use the TechSmith screencasting tool “Jing.” Jing is a free product available at Techsmith.com. It enables people to create videos of up to 5 minutes, in addition to images, from one’s computer screen. This video was made using SnagIt, a premiere product from TechSmith.

Crimes in Crimea: The Ukrainian Crisis Broadens

Weeks ago, before the initial storming of Crimea by shrouded Russian soldiers not wearing Russian insignia (required by International Law of soldiers from sovereign nations), I wrote on this blog about my fear that the megalomaniac, Vladimir Putin may encroach the Ukrainian borders.  Days later, he did.

In a subsequent post I mentioned my fear that the apparent reprieve Ukraine had gotten from Putin’s aggression (after a belated and tepid response by the U.S. and global community) would be short-lived, possibly resulting in a partial or full Russian invasion.  The reason I expressed this concern is because I have a deep-seated conviction that Vladimir Putin has profound angst over the embarrassment of the USSR’s demise at the end of the 20th Century.  He absolutely loathes that Russia was embarrassed on the world stage and that the empire fell apart economically and politically due to a failed Marxist Communism.  There are some who believe that Putin would like to see that empire restored under his rule.

Crimea has historically been bounced from captor to captor over the centuries due to its strategic importance.  And after Crimea was given by Russia to Ukraine as a gift decades ago, Communist leaders were dumbfounded that it was no longer a part of Russia.  Putin, a former KGB agent under the USSR, was one of those who was frustrated by the inexplicable loss of the Crimea, and he could not resist annexing it once he got the chance.  The civil unrest in Kyiv due to the former Ukrainian President, Viktor F. Yanukovych, being deposed led him to call on Putin for help.  Putin, offered Yanukovych political asylum and a potential return to power (as a Russian puppet government like those of old), and the hook was set.   Days later, Russian troops rolled into Crimea.

Before long, the U.S. administration hobbled together a weak response in a paint-by-numbers foreign policy.  As expected, Putin saw through it, having long before calculated America as an isolationist nation without the moral will nor the conviction to call his bluff.  He knew that the U.S. would bluster about “being on the wrong side of history” and effectively do nothing.  Check mate.

Now, weeks later, after a clumsy attempt at limited sanctions of a handful of Russian billionaires, Putin returns the favor by creating sanctions of his own against the US.  Within two weeks, with nary a bullet fired, the entire Crimean region falls to Putin’s forces and the world’s cartographers get to work redefining geopolitical maps of Europe with a much-enlarged Russia.  Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to flounder and waffle, uncertain of its next move– with Russia not knowing, nor caring what that move might be. The U.S. has already told Vladimiar all that he needs to know– that the U.S. would remain pacifist in the situation and not provide support to a militarily-outmatched Ukraine in genuine danger of once again becoming a Russian imperialist state– the very thing the Ukrainian revolution escaped when the USSR fell.

In the last few hours we have learned that Russia has now lined up troops across Ukrainian borders in a number of areas.  They have also boarded some Ukrainian naval vessels after severe military threats against those ships’ crews.  What happens now is up for grabs, but one thing we know is that there is no compelling reason for Putin to stop his advance, since he now sees that no one will do anything, regardless of what unprovoked action he takes.  At this point, he can literally ‘make up’ an excuse to invade even more of the Ukraine.  At stake? 46 million currently free citizens of Ukraine, most of whom who want to be free.

Though the US has no appetite for military involvement, and though perhaps it should not be entertained– when you have the world’s greatest fighting force, that’s one thing you don’t take off the table– even if you aren’t planning to use it.  The very presence of a strong military can evoke fear into an enemy and make them shrink from emboldened actions.  But now, with our preemptive passivity, they know the most they’ll get from the U.S. is an earful and that’s simply not enough to stop a man whose delusions of grandeur are leading him to become a power-hungry glutton with an insatiable appetite for land and glory.

Take My Poll on the Current Ukrainian Crisis (February 28, 2014)

February 28, 2014 at 9:07am

Here’s My Take on What’s Going on in Ukraine.

Though time will tell, my earlier fear that Yanukovych’s ego might cause him to do the unthinkable– challenge what I think would be an already-ready Putin to intervene ‘militarily’ in Ukraine could come to pass.  If it happened, it would be the bloodiest of wars, to be sure– but we’re now even seeing that Crimea– that constantly war-torn area that has been tossed about over the centuries like a playing chip, is potentially already a front of a possible coming Russian intervention.

Russia is denying it, but others are reporting (since yesterday) that Russian troops (not Ukrainian) can be seen maintaining the airports by armed military personnel.  I think this will develop or defuse rather quickly– but if it develops, then some quick decisions would need to be made by NATO on behalf of Europe, by the UN (which Russia, unlike Obama, could care less), and by the U.S., not to mention the E.U.  The E.U. is a weak state as far as military goes, and my guess is that it doesn’t want to challenge Russia militarily for many reasons– but this “could be” an occasion it might… but I think (what I expect would be) French opposition will win the discussion in favor of pacifism, making them all talk, no action.

That sort of leaves the U.S. to step up (or Britain), but I’m unsure Britain has any compelling interest and the U.S. administration’s resolve on anything other than its obsession with domestic politics on tangential issues of concern to the far left makes me think we’ll grandstand, then do nothing while Ukrainian blood runs down Kyiv streets.  I could be wrong– I hope I’m wrong, but I feel that the U.S. President has no real resolve to deal with the issue of freedom in other nation-states.

This summer I am slated to go teach Ukrainian Pastors and Ministers in Kyiv, and the last thing many Ukrainians want to do is to move further toward their former USSR-like existence.  If full-on revolution were to occur, God forbid, my opportunity to teach and mobilize the church there may be in jeopardy.  The church in Ukraine needs support and our prayers.  What is going on there goes far beyond the political– it’s also intimately spiritual in nature, and because it involves the freedom of Ukrainian countrymen, it could end up having a direct impact on the U.S. and American citizens in our volunteer military. It’s a frightening situation that is becoming even more tenuous.

The New spyPhone 5 from Apple: I’ll Pass

The “S” in iPhone 5S stands for “Spy.”  This is a complete #iPhoneFail.  Apple may have made a big mistake with its latest iPhone (spyPhone) offerings.  (Yeah, that’s original with me–  the Apple “spyPhone” 5S).

 

In a day of NSA snooping and data collection of all people’s phone metadata, I’m not so sure the average American will want their ACTUAL fingerprint stored permanently and associated with a particular device, along with everyone they talk to, so that the government (and Apple) can exploit that information to its own ends. 

The phone company and government will be able to– and no doubt take advantage of the ability to– triangulate that information to know what you are doing (through fingerprinting good enough to stand up in court) and where you are (through GPS location services) literally around the clock.  

Think about that.

This fact may give even the most devoted Apple Fan Boys pause.  As soon as a person (like YOU) applies their own fingerprint to that device, the government and Apple will have more predictive powers over your behaviors than have ever been granted by any such agreement you’ve ever clicked.  The company and government will quickly collect enough data that it knows you better than you know yourself.  I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.  Just seeing these photos makes me feel like I’m at a police precinct being fingerprinted. 

I want to generate conversation around this issue– so I’m going to keep it short.  Your imagination, thinking through these issues I’ve raised, is better than my commentary. 

Thanks Apple, but I’ll pass. 

What thoughts does the new spyPhone 5S raise in your mind?  What do you think?

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 9,200 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 15 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

“Do” Your Dream

Everyone has dreams.  We all have things we would like to see materialize in our lives.

But for most people, their dreams are elusive.  Their goals don’t seem to come together.  After all, it isn’t like the vast majority of people around us are all making a great impact.  And it’s not that high impact performance is “commonplace.”  Actually it’s quite rare. 

So what does it really take to “do our dream?” 

Personally, I think that (the variables of life notwithstanding) we can “do our dream” if we can learn to leverage the fulness of ourselves to that end.  After all, God has placed eternity in our hearts and has given us great potential.  And to the degree that we are willing to align ourselves to the pursuit of our dream, our goals begin to materialize.  Here’s how I think about it all…

 

To Do Your Dream, you must:

Fully Train or Focus Your Mind on Your Dream.   The size of your dream in your thinking affects nearly everything about how you respond to that dream.  If your dream is tiny, you stay unmotivated– because you’re playing small ball and you know it.  We simply can’t get really motivated for small dreams.  They don’t inspire us and they don’t pique our interest enough to invest our sustained energy in reaching them.  My advice is to ask God to expand your thinking and to grow your capacity to believe. As you nurture your dream, it feeds your imagination. 

Put Your Heart on the Line.  You’ll never reach your dream if it’s not IN you.  You need motivation.  You need conviction.  You need the burn.  You need to go “all in.”  You won’t change the world without this type of commitment.  Taking the “I’ll get emotionally involved when things start working out” approach isn’t going to cut it because seeing a big dream come to pass takes lots of emotional energy.  And that energy is needed right “NOW”– so you can’t hold out emotionally. 

Act with Resolve. Dreams scare us. Fear causes us to lock up.  That’s because big goals come with big price tags– they cost us a lot.  But action extinguishes fear.  The best way I know to overcome the threat of potential failure is by choosing not to fail and then doing something.  Sometimes the fear of failing is enough to give us the motivation we need to “not fail.”  So work like it all depends on you, and pray like it all depends on God. 

When we nurture our minds with the virtue of our dream, it inspires us to greatness. 

When we cultivate our hearts with the grandeur of our dream, it motivates us with the motivation to act.

And when we give ourselves completely to our dream and act with faithful abandon, that unleashed will of ours imposes itself on the forces that work against us, and that dream is powered forward toward completion. 

 

Becoming Globally Involved as a Christian or Ministry: (You and Possibly Your Church)

Ethiopian Jimma Crisis Management

 

 

 

 

 

My friend and a doctoral candidate here at the Talbot School of Theology, Woyita Olla, is the Deputy General Secretary for Ethiopia’s largest evangelical Christian denomination, which is a network of over 8000 churches with millions of members.
These churches have suffered a great number of church burnings and persecutions as a result of attacks by Muslim extremists due to the evangelistic fervor and effective church planting done by Woyita’s organization.

If you are thinking about supporting a ministry internationally OR are considering taking a church or ministry group to Africa or internationally in the months or years to come, let me commend Woyita and his organization to you.

 

They can be contacted at:

 

Phone: 251-911218617 /251-115534900

Fax: 251-11-551-2763

E-mail: ekhc-spiritual@ethionet. et                              wwoza_olla@yahoo.com

Website: http://www.ekhc.org.et

 

Why You Should Be Informed (And 8 Tips to Become Informed)

We live in the age of information.

Between 1750 and 1900, the total expanse of human knowledge had doubled .  At that time of pre-technology human history, it took 150 years.  Today, the growth of knowledge is occurring some 100 times faster.  It is said that the entire sum of all known information, i.e., human knowledge, doubles every 1.5 years.  By 2020 it is estimated that it will be doubling approximately every month and a half (72 days).  Think about that…

This Information Age is one in which the average illiterate person, one unable to read or write– but who can understand language and watch videos, can easily learn more about science than those towering figures of centuries past like Louis Pascal and Isaac Newton.  Another example: a 5 year old child holding a smart phone possess more technology than was required to send a man to the moon only 40+ years ago.

In a recent study by the University of California, San Diego, researchers found that we swim in a boundless sea of information.  All total, Americans consume 3.6 zettabytes of information collectively every day– that’s 34 gigabytes per person, every day– be it through TV, radio, the Internet/computer, reading, and other digital devices.  Ironically, with this enormous access to literally UNLIMITED data, one in which we can learn everything about everything, the average American is not very informed about the world in which we live.

Note that I’m not saying that Americans don’t know very much– because we do.  It’s just that the “average American” is simply uninformed to a large degree about the ultimate things that matter and that affect his or her life.  Whether this ignorance is apathy, indifference, or something else– I do not know, but it’s hard to believe such a high level of societal ignorance exists in this world awash in an infinity of information.

For example, while most people have instant recall on trivia like their friend’s speed dial numbers, their favorite TV shows’ times, nuances of their favorite wines, beers, coffee beans or marijuana strains (I live in California), most live without a working knowledge and, sometimes, only a vague familiarity about civics, economics, and politics– not to mention spiritual truth.

You might say– “Who really cares?”  It may seem that not knowing virtually ANYTHING about the stock market, the strength of US currency, trade deficits, political processes, the separation of power, representation and taxation, and things like that “makes no difference.”  Some think that ignorance is bliss because, they reason, we can’t do anything about it anyway.

My response is many-fold, but if I were to reply, I would use these three brief answers.

1. Christians shouldn’t be ignorant about the world, because Jesus wasn’t.  For Christians, we should keep in mind that (of all people) Jesus himself had a working knowledge of those things, and he informed His disciples about them.  He spoke more about money than he did “heaven!”  In the gospels, Jesus shows familiarity with the Roman Empire and its government, the geo-political set up present in Judea and greater Jerusalem, and a deep familiarity with law, justice, economics, and even taxes.  If Jesus did that– and frequently taught his own disciples on issues of those sorts, it can be argued that we must do the same as Christians.

2. Being Uninformed Leaves You Open to Exploitation and Victimization.  Second, ignorance of the primary currents of our culture leaves us vulnerable to those things. Being unaware and disengaged of what is happening in any given area (say, government spending) is a sure-fire way for those who have authority in those areas to act with impunity.  An informed populace means that people can rise up and protest, shape public opinion (through free speech such as this blog), communicate with their senator, hold rallies, organize political movements, or a host of other things as a response.  If we are ignorant, we don’t respond because we are, well, ignorant.  We should keep in mind that an INFORMED MINORITY is always more powerful than an apathetic majority.  For example, in the former Soviet Union, only 24% of citizens were Communist, but they controlled approximately 1/5 of the world.  Informed minorities are always stronger than apathetic majorities.  What is funny is that some people say “I can’t do anything, so why bother?” I say that we can do more than we think– but even if that were true… even if we were powerless subjects being acted upon by the powers that be, at least by understanding what is going on we can play defense and perhaps be better off than if we didn’t.  Let me give an example.  If I were to be an 85 year old man and have to face a 23 year old Mike Tyson in a boxing ring– I may not be capable of successfully fighting him, but the fact that I couldn’t win by playing offense doesn’t mean that I would lower my arms and take a merciless beating… instead, I would AT LEAST put up my gloves and pull in my elbows and try to protect my vital organs and my face, head, and chest.  Then, even if I didn’t WIN, I might at least survive.  Similarly, when we don’t know much about our world, we are defenseless because of our indifference.

3. Be Informed Because You Are Greatly Affected By These Forces, Simply Because You Are a Living Citizen. Third, we need to be informed about the world– because we are citizens in that world.  It is where we live.  It is where we exist.  The condition of the world affects our lives.  The things happening in our world affect our families.  These things affect our children’s children and loved ones, friends, relatives, acquaintances and neighbors. And when I say that these things (civics, politics, economics, and so on) affect our lives– I mean that decisions made by people having authority who are not held accountable by informed, thoughtful, engaged people, affect you nearly every moment of the day.  So while we live in an apathetic state being brainwashed by time-wasting novelties, decisions and actions in the stock market, bond market, futures, congress, judiciary, by the President, governmental agencies creating regulations, and on and on and on– while those things are going on, together they affect EVERYTHING in life: gas taxes raise your gas prices, Standard & Poor’s downgrade makes loans for a car or school harder to get or to pay, new regulations on coal means higher prices for air conditioning at home, OPEC trade imbalances means it costs more for trucks to bring products to your favorite stores, raising the price of Mac & Cheese– do you see what I mean? All of that to say that being uninformed doesn’t make you invulnerable to these bad things– it makes you and your family and everyone you care about MORE vulnerable and, yes, victims.

Being Uninformed Always Makes Us Gullible. 

The irony of being a victim, however, is that those who are both victims and who are uniformed OFTEN (almost always) blame the wrong people for their problems.  Instead of kicking themselves for being willfully ignorant– and instead of holding the right people accountable— those who actually caused the problems– their ignorance typically makes them unable to discern what actually happened.  When this happens, we become gullible.  That gullibility makes us vulnerable to slick slogans and simplistic explanations, where we are more likely to believe someone because they speak with passion or eloquence, and we begin to believe certain things because the person is “speaking loudly” or pounding his or her fist.  Gullible people are defenseless to these things because they are ignorant– and since they don’t know the facts, they fall for rhetoric and emotion instead of believing things because they are actually TRUE.  Does that make sense?

The Challenge

We all have areas of ignorance– I know I do.  But the key is to do something rather than nothing.  My advice to those who feel unable to discern what is happening in our world and who are at a loss to understand what to do is this:

1. Read God’s Word and ask for Wisdom (James 1:5)
2. Reserve judgment, avoid giving opinions, and stop yourself from assigning blame until you know what you’re talking about
3. Begin to be informed by trustworthy sources (people and institutions who, by having a long track record of being fair and informed, have earned and kept your trust
4. Build your knowledge solidly in a number of areas, as they are all interconnected (the areas all influence one another)
5. Check your thinking against others of like-mind and who disagree, then reassess your thinking
6. Be sure to evaluate ideas based on their underlying assumptions (the basic commitments and beliefs that led them to reason a certain way and come to certain conclusions), then evaluate whether your assumptions about things are correct or need adjusting
7. Test your ideas with both scripture (does it agree with God’s Word/truth) and reality itself (if it doesn’t work in real life, there’s something wrong with what you’re thinking)
8. Be slow to come to final conclusions prematurely.  But when you know that you have finally discovered what is true, become unshakeable in your convictions.

America in Shambles & Shame

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach (disgrace) to any people.  Proverbs 14:34 (KJV). 

Things have gone too far.

America in 2011 stands in shambles and shame.  The once-bright beacon we know as Lady Liberty, is now tarnished.

The Statue of Liberty is a representation of American idealism.  But more than that– it wasn’t just the “ideals” themselves, but the fact that those grand and audacious commitments had, in fact, come true.  The American Experiment had worked!!   America was a success.  And due to the fact that our nation embodied those ideals, she captured the imagination of the world and her peoples.

This led France to create and to offer Lady Liberty as a gift to the United States on her centennial (1876).  This was done at great national cost to France.  It was a love offering to our government and our people, at least partially paid for by individual French citizens because of their respect for what we had become as a nation.

Back then, France had just suffered the Franco-Prussian War, and the nation lie in tatters.  In 1871, Paris had suffered a bad defeat at the hands of the Germans who left the burned-out and battered city in ruins.  As that was happening, America was soon to celebrate her 100th birthday, and France was looking for hope and inspiration.  A disillusioned French artist named Bartholdi sailed to the U.S. that same year, and upon entering New York harbor, wrote:

“The picture that is presented to the view when one arrives in New York is marvelous, when, after some days of voyaging, in the pearly radiance of a beautiful morning is revealed the magnificent spectacle of those immense cities [Brooklyn and Manhattan], of those rivers extending as far as the eye can reach, festooned with masts and flags; when one awakes, so to speak, in the midst of that interior sea covered with vessels… it is thrilling. It is, indeed, the New World, which appears in its majestic expanse, with the ardor of its glowing life.”

He later led the effort to construct the statue so France could offer it to the American people as a token of thanks for inspiring them in their darkest hour.  Sadly, though France wanted to become like us– today some Americans want us to become like France.   But that is not the answer.

America Feels Like a Foreign Land

For many Americans, the America they knew now feels like a foreign land.  We have been exiled from our own nation.  Our freedom of religion has been profaned.  Our freedom of speech has been threatened with silence.  The right to bear arms is under fire.  The list goes on.

But more than challenges to constitutional rights, I am primarily talking about the overall state of our country.  It has changed, and not always for the better.  And as these changes have occurred, Americans can literally FEEL our nation unravel.  We can feel our Union being uncomfortably stretched out of shape.  We are expected to stand down, accept, and EVEN CELEBRATE any and every idea, teaching, behavior, practice, and ethic… regardless of how absurd they may be and despite the fact that we groan and convulse from within at what we are seeing and experiencing.

To boot, there is also a profound and concerted effort among many to undermine the rule of law– to treat it with impunity.  This spirit of the age is so profoundly strong that it’s palpable.  One can almost feel a type of antinomianism or a spirit of anarchy seething beneath the surface of a thin and shallow civility.  Our nation is in trouble.

Many– a great host of Americans– know this to be true.

The Silent Majority Feels This Way

I am not alone in this evaluation of the American psyche.

Many thinking and decent Americans have thought the same thoughts.  But few have said it aloud.  These fears have remained largely unvoiced because of the tremendous pressure that rests on the general public to remain silent in order to spare themselves the vitriol and spite heaped on any dissenter who dare question or challenge the Spirit of the Age.  Even to have a conviction is to be the target of spite– and those who would disagree with the direction of our country quickly feel the resolute and seething displeasure and scalding anger that rests just beneath the surface of those who have banded together to produce what is beginning to feel like the birth pangs of a new socio-moral revolution.

This band of cultural radicals have largely been successful in silencing what is becoming a spineless populace.  Most Americans who would disagree with what America is becoming and with the direction she is taking have been conditioned and brainwashed with the idea that the only “unpardonable sin” is to actually have convictions.  Those convictions have given way to the Ethic of Politeness where the greatest offense in our culture is actually disagreeing with someone.  Many Americans have acquiesced to the point that they have almost no sense of ethics other than a painless personal morality.  This personal morality is one that governs the individual who holds it, but is one that assumes there are no universal or absolute standards at all for anyone else.

It reminds one of Judges 17:6 in the Old Testament of the Bible when we were told about a society who had no king, so they did what was right “in their own eyes.”  That type of near-anarchy leads to the deterioration of the moral fiber of a country that, at last, leads to corruption of society, weakening of government, lawlessness, cultural decay, broken families, and then the breakdown of that civilization.  I fear that America in 2011 is, itself, slouching toward Gomorrah in ways that will lead to irreparable national damage.

Shambles and Shame

That damage has already begun. Our nation is seeing visible examples of this profound rebellion that is occurring in our time.  This “rebellion” as I have called it, is a spirit of our age.   It is a rejection and repudiation of good.  It is a collective rejection of truth and morality that is leading to our nation in the wrong direction.  It is a disregard for principles of good.  And we see this damage when we look at what America is becoming before our very eyes.   Nearly every sector of society is compromised.  And while there is a shred of hope left, I hope Americans will, in ways big and small, begin to take back their country that has fallen and can’t seem to get up.

What Should Be Done

Remember that old truth: All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men (people) to do nothing.

So what can we do?  What can you do?

Answer: Do something rather than nothing.  Take back yourself.  Take back your family.  Take back your church.  Take back your street.  Take back your neighborhood. Take back your country– and restore her to the beauty she once was.