Well, actually Friday.  Yes, only 3 days until I join the dual-core revolution.  I ordered my new set on Sunday night from NewEgg:

• Athlon 64 X2 4000+
• 2GB pqi Turbo DDR2 667
• Gigabyte mobo with 690V chipset and 2000MHz HyperTransport
• MSI 8500GT OC 256MB GDDR3

It’s not my dream system, but with the two rebates it’s coming to about $210.  I’m going to give Ubuntu a shot, and see just how great it is.  I’m going to part out the old desktop and build a system for a friend (who’s got a PIII) and I dug my old socket A XP 2000+ out of the closet to build a home server.  It’ll be a fun weekend.

Any of you get some new hardware you’re excited about?

I recently met Mike Todd, sole proprietor of Waving or Drowning, in the comments to my post Mark Driscoll and the Progressive Double Standard. We had a hearty disagreement, but Mike seemed to be interested in actually talking to me, rather than just tell me my modern theology is worthless in the postmodern world, then scurry off into the night. We went back and forth a couple of times, and I thought that it might be worth it for us to talk more, and on more subject. So, today we are launching our semi-official semi-dialogue.

It’s semi-official because we want to see if it will work before we go full-bore. It’s a semi-dialogue because at first it won’t be a “dialogue” at all. We’re going to start with dual monologues; we’ll each answer the question, and the other will offer no response. This will be building a basis for our conversation so that we can understand each other. Then we’ll get to the back-and-forth.

The monologue questions will be in the vein of our prompt today; they are simply setting the table for the deep discourse that will happen later. I hope you enjoy this discussion and return for our future interactions. (continue reading…)

The other day I was reading this poem by Karsten Piper (read it, the title of this post will then make sense) and started to think about the story of the Rich Young Ruler, particularly the ending. You know, the whole camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle thing.

I haven’t studied it a great deal, but in the past I’ve been taken in by a couple of rumors. First, the one about the gate outside of Jerusalem that was so small that a camel would have to crawl through unladen. Back in high school that seemed like the answer. No such place. The second was that the word for “camel” is the same as the word for “rope”. In Aramaic the jury is still out (for me), and the Greek words may be close but a mix-up is just speculation.

After looking into it for a while I read something that made me want to slap myself because the thought had never occurred to me, and I just can’t figure out why not: (continue reading…)

[Disclaimer: This post may make me seem divisive, but I don't intend it to.]

Why is the progressive Christian movement - led in part by Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and others - so obsessed with finding common ground? I’m hearing it everywhere.  Common ground between Christianity and Islam, between evangelicals and “post-evangelicals”, orthodox and neo-orthodox, traditional and emergent…. It seems to be the answer to everything.

But is common ground really that important? In a lot of situations people say, “the things that unite us are greater than those that divide us.”  But is that really true?  Are the things that unite Christianity and Islam greater than the things that divide us?  Are the things that unite the theologies of Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell greater than those that divide them?  I guess it depends on your perspective.

If you feel, as some do, that the heart of Jesus’ message was changing this world in the here-and-now, the answer is yes.  If you think of salvation as liberations from physical constraints like poverty, oppression, and emotional scars, the answer is yes. But if you think that the message of Christ is bigger than here, and more lasting than now, the answer gets more complicated. (continue reading…)

As I thought a little bit more about the tendency I discussed in my last post, other instances of the progressive double standard came to mind.  The most glaring is all the flack Mark Driscoll has taken for pointing out bad theology, particularly at last year’s Convergent Conference (my thoughts here).

It seems that every time he steps out and tries to speak the truth about the poor theology of Emergent leaders, he gets chastised.  The sentiment seems to be along these lines: Who are you to say what is good and bad theology?  To many this sounds righteously indignant.  Unfortunately the people who say it are often doing the same thing themselves.

I keep mentioning McLaren’s new book, but it fits here, too. It seems to be nothing but a treatise on the invalidity of the “conventional” (read traditional or conservative) view of Jesus, and the truth of the “emerging” view.  He mocks traditional doctrines and sets them up with language that we can generously call “unfavorable”.  He is committing the same social crimes that Driscoll seems to be guilty of.  Pagitt is no different.

But Doug and Brian’s behavior will never be acknowledged as akin to Mark’s, because their follower’s believe them to be right, therefore they have the authority to correct and mock other theological positions.

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