As some of you know from reading Summer's blog, we went to Kleinwood this year for the singing. I have the honor of working with Brent Clanton and a few others on producing the MP3s this year. Let me say that the sound is great, and you all should be able to listen to them really soon. The only big thing left is to get rid of the annoying "essssss" sound whenever a "ch" or "s" is sung. We had to get rid of some background hum from the sound equipment (I am guessing some sort of electrical interference), and fix the volume in a few places, but for the most part, this year they got a really clean recording.
So, be patient (Kelli!). I should be done with the editing by Tuesday, and they should still be able to put them up this week.
The usual... yes, it has been a while since I have posted. Ive been busy ;)
We are having our marriage seminar right now at Eastside, and Summer was relating to me some of what they discussed in the women's class. She came up with this on her own, as she was recounting the discussion (and wanted to be sure I credited her with saying it when I mentioned it was Pleo worthy):
"At people's 50th wedding anniversary, the guests don't talk about the [wedding] cake."
"It is the moments between the wedding and the anniversary that matter"
Hey, it was great working with you for Ryan and Jessica's wedding this weekend :) Thanks for all of your help and for doing double-time to get through the pics before so we could start on time :)
To the editor: I want to get something out there. I am tired of my the people at my church. I became a Christian just recently, and they seemed nice at first. But now they ignore me, don't invite me over, don't want to chat with me online, only give me a quick hello at the building, never want to go out to eat with me, make no effort to talk to me outside of worship. I am tired of it, and I want the world to know about it. I wish they would pay attention to me...
This is a fake story submitted to a paper for all to read. It may seem kinda funny, but I have seen this kind of thing happen quite frequently. No, I don't think (at least I hope not) that a Christian has written a letter to the editor of a paper about problems they are having with their brethren. I have seen it in a far more public place - the Internet.
The title of this article is a play on Mat 18:15-17. Let's re-read that real quick:
Mat 18:15 "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
Mat 18:16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
Mat 18:17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
This seems pretty simple - if a brother (or sister) has sinned against us, go privately and resolve the matter. If it isn't, take a witness, and then to the congregation if that does not work. Somehow this has turned into something more like "If a brother does something against you, share the fault with the world, only generalizing the situation, as to not name names - thats ok."
There is another passage I would like to share. Though this deals a little more specifically with disputes that end with lawsuits, I think we can see the general idea expressed in this passage:
1Co 6:1-8 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? (2) Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? (3) Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! (4) So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? (5) I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, (6) but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? (7) To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? (8) But you yourselves wrong and defraud--even your own brothers!
The Corinthians had problems with their brethren. Instead of resolving the issues within the confines of the congregation, they were taking their cases to worldly forums - the courts. The danger here seems to be twofold. One, the case will be judged by those outside of the body, and advice / decisions will be made that are not in harmony with scripture. Sticking with the example at the beginning, I could see responses like "You should just leave that church" or "See, you should not be a Christian - they are just a bunch of hypocrites."
Venting your frustration with fellow Christians online has a secondary effect : it casts a bad image on Christians everywhere. It gives cause for blaspheme for the same reason listed in the quote above. By exposing the failings of Christians to the world, instead of working to resolve the issues in private, you do nothing to convince the reader why they need Christ in your life.
I suppose I could put together a few more complete thoughts on this subject, but instead I would just like to close with a simple reminder. Before you vent about a problem, ask yourself: 1) is really the fault of a brother, or is there something I personally can do to fix the problem? 2) By my writing about this in a public forum, will I show Christ living in me to the reader and ultimately give them a reason to follow Christ as well?
Good thoughts, Dan. I always love reading your blogs because they really truly do make me think deeply about the way I am living my life -- do I show others Christ by the way I live, the things I do, the things I say? Just wanted you to know that. Keep the thought-provoking blogs coming.
Ecc 1:9-14: What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
With the wisdom given to him by God, Solomon reminds us that nothing truly changes from generation to generation. Anything that is percieved to be "new" has actually been done before.
Several years ago I started work on a small article entitled "No New Theft". In the years that have passed, I seem to have lost my original work, so here I am, starting fresh. When I started my thoughts, it was in the height of online music piracy - Napster was still around, WinMX was very popular, Kazaa was gaining popularity. It was socially acceptable to download music without paying for it. People would brag of buying "new" 40GB hard drives to store their vast collection of illegal music. What was worst of all is that I would hear Christians talk of doing such things.
Before I get into details, I must confess what I have confessed before : I was part of the crowd that did this. I had event invested about $500 in hardware and countless hours in developing custom software to make a PC that would run in my car and play my music*, of which maybe about 5 albums I actually owned (* - Keep in mind this was before the iPod, and before any real portable MP3 players started to show up on the market). I would not openly admit this around Christians, but that did not stop them from talking about what they had downloaded. My friends at school knew I did this, and we even would download songs on Napster in one of our clasrooms, because the school had a faster Internet connection than we had at home. It took me until I was in College to start thinking about my actions, and one day I did what few would do - deleted my entire music directory.
I think we all know that theft is a sin - Mat 19:18, Rom 2:21, Eph 4:28 to name a few. What we commonly neglect to do, however, is admit that what we personally are doing is considered theft. We try and find ways to justify it, make excuses, but ultimately we are guilty of theft.
I would like to outline some ways that we can use technology to be guilty of stealing something. Some of these are old and rarely done, some are just starting to be a problem with some. I myself can say that I am guilty of more than one.
Stealing TV
I was hopeful that this is something that does not happen to offten, until I saw the cable industry's estimated damages (granted, this is from the industry that charges us more and more each year...) - around $6.6 billion a year is lost to stolen cable. Cable theft is when you actively or "passively" get cable TV service that you have not paid for. Active would be if you plug into someone else's cable on purpose, passive is when the cable-co makes a mistake and you get service without having to pay for it. Both are crimes, and have been punished in the past by up to 16 years in prison and fines in the millions (I doubt the sentences are standard, but that is where the extreme seems to go). I know the later does happen - while in college, the provider in Urbana, IL had given free Showtime and Starz to most of the student apartments in Urbana. I informed them of this mistake, and they were aware of it, but chose to not fix it for some reason. In Champaign (the sister city to Urbana), a mere two blocks away, people on the same plan as me did not have this error.
More recently, TV shows have become available online. You can download some legally - iTunes sells several new shows, and though they have since moved to a different service, NBC offered shows like The Office for about $2-$3 per episode on iTunes. You can also download many more shows online illegally. I will not go into the details, since I would not like to tempt someone to do so, but it requires only a couple hours to download an entire episode, and it only takes a couple of minutes to find them, if you know where to look. Usually these are stripped of commercials, resulting in no revenue generated by those who spend money making the show.
Stealing Music
This has been the most popular for of theft for the last, oh, 10 years or so. Why pay $14.99 for a CD that only has two good songs on it? Maybe you just want to preview some songs before you buy the CD - and then casually forget to delete them (not that the first part is right). What about the artists - dont you know that the greedy record labels are the ones taking all the money? All of these are excuses that people make in trying to justify stealing music.
With the invention of the MP3 format around 1995, which allows near-CD qualify music to fit in 1/10th of the storage (making a song that is usually 40MB only 4MB), came the rise of music piracy. Formats had existed prior to MP3 which could squeeze music down, but they required special software to play back, required expensive software to create the files (it was possible to convert a CD to MP3 for free since very early on), and required too much computing power for most users at the time. Though MP3s started to show up in the mid 90's, it was not until the invention of Napster (1999) that it became truly easy to find any song online. Since then legal means to get music online have become available, most notably the iTunes Music Store, where individual songs can be bought for only $0.99, taking away the excuse of "wasting" money on an albun with only a few good songs.
Stealing Internet
This one is a bit more recent. I have done this myself, and after looking at the laws surrounding this, I will not be doing it again. So, you are traveling. You want to check your e-mail on your laptop, but there is no place around that offers free, or cheap, wireless service - no Starbucks, no McDonalds (some have wireless now), etc. There are some houses near where you are staying, and they seem to have high
speed Internet. Your laptop lists several wireless networks - "linksys","netgear", another "linksys". None have passwords, no encryption. In fact, you know that since these default names are listed, the people who set them up probably dont know how to secure their wireless. You tell your laptop to connect, and, wow, you are online. The (il)legality of this has started come into light only recently. In
Missouri:
1. A person commits the crime of tampering with computer users if he knowingly and without authorization or without reasonable grounds to believe that he has such authorization: (1) Accesses or causes to be accessed any computer, computer system, or computer network;
Texas:
33.02. BREACH OF COMPUTER SECURITY. (a) A person commits an offense if the person knowingly accesses a computer, computer network, or computer system without the effective consent of the owner.
There are many other ways that we can use technology that is wrong. Remember - there is nothing new under the sun. The Bible speaks nothing of the Internet, MP3, wireless, TV, or any other modern technology, but stealing is condemned. Man has come up with many new ways to do the sins condemned in the Bible. Let us all be careful about how we use the technology we have.
Good article. It is really tempting to do this, and I'm sure almost everyone our age has committed at least one of these types of theft either knowingly or unknowingly. The problem arises when we do so knowingly and without repentance. Thanks for the good thoughts!
Some Cable companies are idiots. In Mattoon, we had our cable turned downgraded to local TV only. They said they would disconnect take care of it later that week. The following week we called them back and asked them to turn it off. They said they would take care of it. After numerous phone calls and six months later the cable was turned off.
