Conclave

Well, I haven't updated in a while, but right now I am in Chattanooga at Conclave: Pure and Simple. It is a youth minister's conference, so this is a very good thing. I need to get much better at my job, so this is me trying. I am going to attempt to blog updates throughout the weekend. Here is the first.

Tonight Charlie Hall led the music and Mark Matlock spoke. He gave us three questions that he's been struggling with and challenged us to ask them of ourselves as well. They are:


1. Is my life a threat for all that is unjust, selfish and evil?

2. Am I willing to "get up" and do whatever God wants me to do?

3. Right now, am I "getting up" to respond to what I clearly know God is wanting me to do?


I'm pretty sure that I know what the answers to these questions are for me right now and I'm not sure I like them. What are your answers? Why?

My First Truck

Well, I did it. I bought a truck, well my wife and I did...and by bought, we mean we traded my 1996 Honda Accord that had 165,000+ miles in and are going to be making payments on this vehicle. Regardless, we have "bought" it in that sense and are loving it so far. Here is a picture of it.

Sorry about the quality of the picture. I took it on my cell this morning and since we got it yesterday, a formal photo shoot for the newest member of our family has not yet been scheduled.

Hospitality

Changing the world...

A friend of mine just recently left me a message saying that he loved my new blog and that it felt like we were sitting in my room changing the world again.

The truth: we never changed the world.

We talked a lot about the world, but we never changed it. Does that stop us? No. We see need for change in our world and we desire so badly for it to happen. The change is not just needed in religious areas (though there is great change possible there), but also in the political realm and the scientific realm and the music realm and the food realm and the publishing realm and the entertainment realm and the realm of people's desire and the lack of reading realm and the healthcare realm and the worldwide poverty realm and the familial relationships realm and the holiday realm and so many other realms.

The truth is that we lived a completely screwed up world, but this does not stop us. We do not allow ourselves to get depressed and pessimistic about the situation of our world. Rather, we imagine. That's right, we imagine. You may be asking how imagining can do anything to change the world. And you'd be right to ask. But I'd also have to say that if you are asking that question you have not imagined often enough or hard enough or deep enough. We imagine, just like John Lennon. We imagine a world that is better than the one we currently live in and we imagine what it would take to see that world come to fruition and then we work with every ounce of our being and our soul to be that change to this world. We help raise awareness for issues like the genocide in Darfur and the utter poverty in our own country and the amazing omnipresence of hypocrisy within the religion that we claim as our own (Christianity).

I echo John Lennon when he said, "You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one." I have been told countless times in my life: "Thomas, one person can't change the world." I reply that yes, one person can. How many times have we seen it. Jesus pretty drastically changed the world (and I don't say this in a super-spiritual-look-at-me-the-good-Christian way, but in an honest way that any student of history, especially religious history, as I am, must admit) and Ghandi wasn't too shabby either. Should we mention the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Tim Berners-Lee (step over Al Gore, he actually did create the Internet) or Mikhail Gorbachev or Frances Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin (the three who discovered DNA). And just so you know that I recognize the other side of the coin. Let's talk about what Adlof Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini and Osama bin Laden. I hope you get my point. We have the ability to do so much more than we tell ourselves that we can.

I am trying to change the world by changing myself and being the change that I want to see. You can do the same.

P.S. If you are looking for maybe an organization or two to get involved with there are two that I would suggest you start with, as they are doing what I'm talking about in the area of poverty and equality. They are making things happen and truly changing lives. The two organizations are Compassion and Kiva.

Francisco da Silva Neto

Say hello to Francisco. Francisco lives in Brazil with his father and mother.

I sponsor Francisco through Compassion. I was writing him a letter tonight and thought to let you meet him and to consider sponsoring a child yourself. It only costs $32 a month and my wife and I each sponsor a child. Compassion is a fantastic organization and currently helps more than 900,000 children in 24 countries. Please consider it. Besides, how big of a deal is $32 a month to you? I can promise you that my wife and I are strapped financially as we have been married for 6 months, are both graduate students and both work part time at out church. We don't have a ton of money, but we do realize that we can use the money we do have for good, to help those who have far less than we do.

For more information you can visit Compassion's Website or click on the banner on the right side of the page.

My Philosophy of Teaching Greek

For those of you who care, I have just finished work on a paper for my Advanced Greek Exegesis Seminar on My Philosophy of Teaching Greek. I have published the paper to Google Docs.

The paper can be found here.

The Golden Compas

There has been a ton of conversation about the upcoming movie "The Golden Compass" and about the trilogy that it is based on His Dark Materials. As I have not read the books or seen the movie I have largely been an outsider in the discussion. Thus, I have been led to what many others have said. In that, I have come across two places that handled the movie/books in ways I have not seen done yet. One is an article about it and the other is an e-mail interview with the author himself done by Peter Chattaway. Chattaway contributes often to a magazine that some of you may be familiar with, Christianity Today. They are very interesting reads. I do intend to read the books soon so I can finally be allowed to have a voice in this conversation.

The first article can be found here.

The interview can be found here.