When I started this blog, I hoped it would be an opportunity to explore the deeper questions of faith and especially those related to faith and technology. However, no sooner had I let my friends and family know about it, I was hit (and hit HARD) by "life". Some of the issues were as serious as life and death and some as seemingly insignificant as the overwhelming amount of laundry created by our family of five. As I'm starting to come out of the other side of the worst of it (I hope and pray!), it has given me a lot to reflect on regarding God's purposes for our lives.
One of my favorite verses is II Timothy 2:15. In the King James Version, in which I originally memorized it, it says:
"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."
Note: In other translations that are a little more accurate, the word "study" is translated "be diligent".
As I've been overwhelmed by "life" in the past few weeks, recalling this verse has made me question whether or not it contradicts itself. How can we study or be diligent if we are busy being workmen? My passion and heart's desire is to study the Word and figure out how to best live by it. How can I do this when God has put me in a season of life where my role as wife and mother makes laundry one of my top responsibilities?
In that last question, I found my answer... I'm in a season of life where God has put me in one of the most important roles I will ever have. In this season, I may not be able to spend as much time as I'd like following my passions of learning and teaching the deeper issues of theology, but, no matter where we are in life, we are to be diligent in doing what He has called us to do.
So, hopefully in my next posting I'll be able to share some cool observations and insights I've had recently regarding the intersection of faith and technology. Until then, I encourage you to "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth." (II Timothy 2:15 NASB)
Also, I rarely read The Message (just because I prefer the more literal translations) but I found the following verses especially poetic and they have been encouraging to me during the especially tough month of "life". I pray these words of Jesus encourage you too:
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message)
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
My Introduction
When I was choosing my major, I decided on Computer Engineering - a combination of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I made this decision based on my fascination with the evolution of technology. My long term goal was to attend Law School and study Intellectual Property Law. I was completely intrigued by the fact that people could "own" thoughts and ideas and the laws that governed them were rapidly evolving.
I attended Texas A&M University (WHOOP!) at a time when most students had computers in their dorm rooms, but few took them to class, e-mail had become the primary source of communication between students and professors, but cell phones were just beginning to emerge. During this time of huge technological growth, I was also seeing changes in our culture, but I didn't think much about it at the time...
Though I was interested in technology, my passion was the study of God's Word. Most of my extra-curricular activities in college involved Bible study of some sort. When I moved to Austin after graduation, I began working at Motorola in their microprocessor division and joined a Bible-preaching church and became involved in a discipleship group with girls that became the dearest friends I have ever known. This discipleship group prompted a time of incredible spiritual growth unlike anything I had ever experienced, even though I had been a believer since the age of five.
One day I was sitting in my cubicle doing verification on a small component within the microprocessor when I was hit with a thought like a lightening bolt... How were the eight hours a day I was spending on this impacting the kingdom of God? Was it really worth my time to help people have smaller cell phones? Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that you can (and should!) impact the kingdom no matter where you are or what you are doing. If everyone was a preacher, Bible teacher, worship leader, etc., we'd be starving, homeless and without cellphone communication! :-) I just came to realize that even though I liked technology in general, the minuscule details that go into creating it wasn't for me. So, Law School plans were tossed aside and I began taking classes at Dallas Theological Seminary while still working full-time as an engineer.
During my seminary days, a LOT of "life" happened. My role at Motorola transformed into one where I was training people how to develop chips with the ARM processor. I got to travel the world doing this training and I also found out that teaching was a driving passion in my life (even though I wasn't particularly interested in the subject I was teaching at that time). I also got married (to THE most wonderful husband in the world!), got pregnant three months later (the timing not planned by us, but an extremely wonderful blessing), and then quit working for monetary gain to stay at home with my baby (no mother ever really quits working!). When my oldest child was a year old, I got pregnant again and decided the "plan" needed to change. I put my Masters degree goal on hold and graduated in 2007 with a Certificate of Graduate Studies. Like I said, a lot of life in only four years!
Since seminary, I had a third (and final!) child and have both enjoyed and been extremely challenged by motherhood. :-) A little over a year ago, I came across a blog review in the DTS alumni newsletter. It was called donteatthefruit.com and it talked about issues of faith and technology. I was thrilled with the content I was reading! Finally I had found something that combined many of my skills, interests, and passions. Once the niche was found, I started researching, thinking about, and preparing to teach women about the theological issues that effect our faith in God. And so, last month, I started this blog as the first step in teaching the message that God has put on my heart. My hope is that the thoughts that are share through this media will take people deeper into their relationship with God. If it ever becomes glorifying to myself instead of Him, that's the day it stops. (And my accountability girls are reading this and keeping me to it!)
Also, last month, John Dyer (the writer of Don't Eat the Fruit) came out with his first book entitled From the Garden to the City: The Corrupting and Redeeming Power of Technology. It is a thought-provoking, well written, highly interesting and very informative book about the relationship between faith and technology. Be sure to pick one up soon (see http://fromthegardentothecity.com/ to start reading immediately). In subsequent posts during the next 13 weeks I will be reviewing each chapter of this EXCELLENT book. Be sure to become a "follower" of my blog so you will know when those posts are published and we can journey through this subject matter together!
I attended Texas A&M University (WHOOP!) at a time when most students had computers in their dorm rooms, but few took them to class, e-mail had become the primary source of communication between students and professors, but cell phones were just beginning to emerge. During this time of huge technological growth, I was also seeing changes in our culture, but I didn't think much about it at the time...
Though I was interested in technology, my passion was the study of God's Word. Most of my extra-curricular activities in college involved Bible study of some sort. When I moved to Austin after graduation, I began working at Motorola in their microprocessor division and joined a Bible-preaching church and became involved in a discipleship group with girls that became the dearest friends I have ever known. This discipleship group prompted a time of incredible spiritual growth unlike anything I had ever experienced, even though I had been a believer since the age of five.
One day I was sitting in my cubicle doing verification on a small component within the microprocessor when I was hit with a thought like a lightening bolt... How were the eight hours a day I was spending on this impacting the kingdom of God? Was it really worth my time to help people have smaller cell phones? Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that you can (and should!) impact the kingdom no matter where you are or what you are doing. If everyone was a preacher, Bible teacher, worship leader, etc., we'd be starving, homeless and without cellphone communication! :-) I just came to realize that even though I liked technology in general, the minuscule details that go into creating it wasn't for me. So, Law School plans were tossed aside and I began taking classes at Dallas Theological Seminary while still working full-time as an engineer.
During my seminary days, a LOT of "life" happened. My role at Motorola transformed into one where I was training people how to develop chips with the ARM processor. I got to travel the world doing this training and I also found out that teaching was a driving passion in my life (even though I wasn't particularly interested in the subject I was teaching at that time). I also got married (to THE most wonderful husband in the world!), got pregnant three months later (the timing not planned by us, but an extremely wonderful blessing), and then quit working for monetary gain to stay at home with my baby (no mother ever really quits working!). When my oldest child was a year old, I got pregnant again and decided the "plan" needed to change. I put my Masters degree goal on hold and graduated in 2007 with a Certificate of Graduate Studies. Like I said, a lot of life in only four years!
Since seminary, I had a third (and final!) child and have both enjoyed and been extremely challenged by motherhood. :-) A little over a year ago, I came across a blog review in the DTS alumni newsletter. It was called donteatthefruit.com and it talked about issues of faith and technology. I was thrilled with the content I was reading! Finally I had found something that combined many of my skills, interests, and passions. Once the niche was found, I started researching, thinking about, and preparing to teach women about the theological issues that effect our faith in God. And so, last month, I started this blog as the first step in teaching the message that God has put on my heart. My hope is that the thoughts that are share through this media will take people deeper into their relationship with God. If it ever becomes glorifying to myself instead of Him, that's the day it stops. (And my accountability girls are reading this and keeping me to it!)
Also, last month, John Dyer (the writer of Don't Eat the Fruit) came out with his first book entitled From the Garden to the City: The Corrupting and Redeeming Power of Technology. It is a thought-provoking, well written, highly interesting and very informative book about the relationship between faith and technology. Be sure to pick one up soon (see http://fromthegardentothecity.com/ to start reading immediately). In subsequent posts during the next 13 weeks I will be reviewing each chapter of this EXCELLENT book. Be sure to become a "follower" of my blog so you will know when those posts are published and we can journey through this subject matter together!
Monday, August 29, 2011
Cain and Abel's Offerings
Over the past week or so, I have been mulling over the question: Why was God pleased with Abel's offering and not Cain's? (See Genesis 4:1-8, esp. vv. 3-5)
Now, I've been in church my whole life so I am pretty well-versed in the stories of the Bible. When I was little, my Sunday School teachers told me that Abel offering was pleasing to God because he brought the best of his animals while Cain just offered up some of his fruit. The New Living Translation definitely supports this view:
3 When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. 4 Abel also brought a gift—the best of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, 5 but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.
However, most of the more literal translations of the Bible simple say Abel brought the "first born" of his flocks and leave out the phrase "the best of" (NIV, NASB, ESV for examples). So, while I can see some Biblical evidence for this viewpoint, it doesn't seem like the complete story...
When I grew older and actually started listening to what the pastor was saying in "big church", I heard commentators on this passage say that Abel's offering was accepted because it involved the shedding of blood which foreshadows Jesus's blood shed on the cross for our sins. This made a lot of sense to me and seemed to fit with the theme of the Bible. However, as I started looking into this claim for myself, I found other passages in the Bible where crops were a completely acceptable offering to God. As Derek Kidner writes in his commentary Genesis:
It is precarious to claim that the absence of blood disqualified Cain's gift (cf. Dt. 26:1-11); all that is explicit here is that Abel offered the pick of his flock and that Cain's spirit was arrogant ([Gen.] 5b; cf. Pr. 21:27). (pg. 75)
In Walvoord and Zuck's The Bible Knowledge Commentary, they comment on the content of the sacrifice, but use completely different logic and reasoning:
...the narrative lines [Cain] up with the curse; he worked the soil (lit., ground, Gen. 4:2; cf. 3:17). Abel, however, seems to be lined up with man's original purpose, to have dominion over life (cf. 1:28); he kept flocks. (pg. 34)
This statement seems to ignore that fact that, even before the Fall, God also instructed man to cultivate and keep the Garden. So, where does this leave us?...
Though he was using this story to comment on man's relationship to technology, John Dyer, in his new book From the Garden to the City (http://fromthegardentothecity.com/), provided me with the answer that finally gave my heart and mind peace: "...the issue was not between crops and blood but between faith and faithlessness" (Chapter 5).
To support this claim, Dyer goes on to quote Hebrews 11:4:
"By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts"
as well as I John 3:12:
"We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous."
In some ways, it seems strange to me to look in the New Testament to explain something from the Old Testament. I mean, if you want to know the facts of a story, you ask the witnesses to the event as soon as possible. The more amount of time that passes, the less accurate information tends to be. But, then I realized that this isn't just any crime scene. This is God's revelation to all of mankind.
Every answer I heard to the question "Why was God pleased with Abel's sacrifice and not Cain's?" was, in some part, true. The reason that my mind wasn't satisfied with answers is because they were just commenting on the facts themselves. I was looking for the meaning of it all. Moses's purpose in writing Genesis was to communicate the history of the world and the law of God to the Israelites. We are in error only if we don't look beyond the facts and fail to read God's Word with the light of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Once I finally sought the complete answer to my question, I realized that it had been right in front of my face the whole time. I had just failed to read the rest of the story... :-)
"Abel went out of his way to please God (which meant he had faith in God, Heb. 11:6), whereas Cain was simply discharging a duty. Abel's actions were righteous, whereas Cain's were evil (I John 3:12)." Walvoord & Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, pg. 34
"The New Testament draws out the further important implications that Cain's life, unlike Abel's, gave the lie to his offering (I Jn. 3:12) and that Abel's faith was decisive for his acceptance (Heb. 11:4)." Kidner, Genesis, pg. 75
Now, I've been in church my whole life so I am pretty well-versed in the stories of the Bible. When I was little, my Sunday School teachers told me that Abel offering was pleasing to God because he brought the best of his animals while Cain just offered up some of his fruit. The New Living Translation definitely supports this view:
3 When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. 4 Abel also brought a gift—the best of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, 5 but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.
However, most of the more literal translations of the Bible simple say Abel brought the "first born" of his flocks and leave out the phrase "the best of" (NIV, NASB, ESV for examples). So, while I can see some Biblical evidence for this viewpoint, it doesn't seem like the complete story...
When I grew older and actually started listening to what the pastor was saying in "big church", I heard commentators on this passage say that Abel's offering was accepted because it involved the shedding of blood which foreshadows Jesus's blood shed on the cross for our sins. This made a lot of sense to me and seemed to fit with the theme of the Bible. However, as I started looking into this claim for myself, I found other passages in the Bible where crops were a completely acceptable offering to God. As Derek Kidner writes in his commentary Genesis:
It is precarious to claim that the absence of blood disqualified Cain's gift (cf. Dt. 26:1-11); all that is explicit here is that Abel offered the pick of his flock and that Cain's spirit was arrogant ([Gen.] 5b; cf. Pr. 21:27). (pg. 75)
In Walvoord and Zuck's The Bible Knowledge Commentary, they comment on the content of the sacrifice, but use completely different logic and reasoning:
...the narrative lines [Cain] up with the curse; he worked the soil (lit., ground, Gen. 4:2; cf. 3:17). Abel, however, seems to be lined up with man's original purpose, to have dominion over life (cf. 1:28); he kept flocks. (pg. 34)
This statement seems to ignore that fact that, even before the Fall, God also instructed man to cultivate and keep the Garden. So, where does this leave us?...
Though he was using this story to comment on man's relationship to technology, John Dyer, in his new book From the Garden to the City (http://fromthegardentothecity.com/), provided me with the answer that finally gave my heart and mind peace: "...the issue was not between crops and blood but between faith and faithlessness" (Chapter 5).
To support this claim, Dyer goes on to quote Hebrews 11:4:
"By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts"
as well as I John 3:12:
"We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous."
In some ways, it seems strange to me to look in the New Testament to explain something from the Old Testament. I mean, if you want to know the facts of a story, you ask the witnesses to the event as soon as possible. The more amount of time that passes, the less accurate information tends to be. But, then I realized that this isn't just any crime scene. This is God's revelation to all of mankind.
Every answer I heard to the question "Why was God pleased with Abel's sacrifice and not Cain's?" was, in some part, true. The reason that my mind wasn't satisfied with answers is because they were just commenting on the facts themselves. I was looking for the meaning of it all. Moses's purpose in writing Genesis was to communicate the history of the world and the law of God to the Israelites. We are in error only if we don't look beyond the facts and fail to read God's Word with the light of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Once I finally sought the complete answer to my question, I realized that it had been right in front of my face the whole time. I had just failed to read the rest of the story... :-)
"Abel went out of his way to please God (which meant he had faith in God, Heb. 11:6), whereas Cain was simply discharging a duty. Abel's actions were righteous, whereas Cain's were evil (I John 3:12)." Walvoord & Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, pg. 34
"The New Testament draws out the further important implications that Cain's life, unlike Abel's, gave the lie to his offering (I Jn. 3:12) and that Abel's faith was decisive for his acceptance (Heb. 11:4)." Kidner, Genesis, pg. 75
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Smartphone Security Issue
I've recently been sent this video from NBC news concerning posting pictures online from smartphones.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DN2vARzvWxwY&v=N2vARzvWxwY&gl=US
This is information I was already aware of, but it was a great reminder that we can NEVER be 100% secure when posting things online. After working in the high-tech world and learning about IT security, the one thing I'm convinced of is that, if someone wants to access something, they will find a way to do it.
So, what is our response as Christians? One option is to withdraw from technology completely and live segregated from the rest of society like the Amish. But, how does that obey the Great Commandment?
The solution that I've come to adopt is two-fold: 1) We must do our best to learn about the risks and security vulnerabilities of the technology we are using. Then, we must use this knowledge and the tools available to keep our personal information and our families as safe as possible. 2). We must realize that we are living in a fallen world and that evil will be present until Jesus returns. So, after taking informed precautions, we must do as people have done for many centuries before the invention of the computer... Know that God is powerful enough to protect us and have faith in Him.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DN2vARzvWxwY&v=N2vARzvWxwY&gl=US
This is information I was already aware of, but it was a great reminder that we can NEVER be 100% secure when posting things online. After working in the high-tech world and learning about IT security, the one thing I'm convinced of is that, if someone wants to access something, they will find a way to do it.
So, what is our response as Christians? One option is to withdraw from technology completely and live segregated from the rest of society like the Amish. But, how does that obey the Great Commandment?
The solution that I've come to adopt is two-fold: 1) We must do our best to learn about the risks and security vulnerabilities of the technology we are using. Then, we must use this knowledge and the tools available to keep our personal information and our families as safe as possible. 2). We must realize that we are living in a fallen world and that evil will be present until Jesus returns. So, after taking informed precautions, we must do as people have done for many centuries before the invention of the computer... Know that God is powerful enough to protect us and have faith in Him.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
I'm actually blogging!
Okay, I have to admit, I have often thought that blogging was bizarre. I mean, why would someone want to share their thoughts in such an impersonal way with the entire world?! And, why would anyone want to read those?!
However, about a year ago I started a journey of exploration about how technology is related to theology. In my research, one of the things I have found most helpful is... BLOGS! :-) My heart and my thinking have undergone a lot of change through what I have learned and my desire is to share some of my knowledge with others in order to help them grow in their personal relationship with God. So, I'm starting this blog as a way of collecting my research and making it available to others. My prayer is that everything I share here will bring glory to God.
However, about a year ago I started a journey of exploration about how technology is related to theology. In my research, one of the things I have found most helpful is... BLOGS! :-) My heart and my thinking have undergone a lot of change through what I have learned and my desire is to share some of my knowledge with others in order to help them grow in their personal relationship with God. So, I'm starting this blog as a way of collecting my research and making it available to others. My prayer is that everything I share here will bring glory to God.
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