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Lewis says that as he was beginning to believe in God, a great stumbling block was the presence of demands scattered through the Psalms that he should praise God. He did not see the point in all this; besides, it seemed to picture God as craving “for our worship like a vain woman who wants compliments.” He goes on to show why he was wrong:

“But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. . . . The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game. . . .

“My whole, more general difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”

But I do think it necessary in these times to remind my readers that a man may commit sin and yet be ignorant of it and fancy himself innocent when he is guilty. I fail to see any scriptural warrant for the modern assertion that: ‘Sin is not sin to us until we discern it and are conscious of it.’ On the contrary, in the fourth and fifth chapters of that unduly neglected book, Leviticus, and in the fifteenth of Numbers, I find Israel distinctly taught that there were sins of ignorance which rendered people unclean and needed atonement (Leviticus 4:1–35; 5:14–19; Numbers 15:25–29). And I find our Lord expressly teaching that ‘the servant who knew not his master’s will and did it not’, was not excused on account of his ignorance, but was ‘beaten’ or punished (Luke 12:48). We shall do well to remember that, when we make our own miserably imperfect knowledge and consciousness the measure of our sinfulness, we are on very dangerous ground. A deeper study of Leviticus might do us much good.

Happy birthday, E. You have no idea how much you are worried about, gushed and cooed over, and just flat out loved by Mom and Dad (not to mention your two Grandmas, Opa, Grandfather, and a gaggle of aunts, uncles and cousins).

Following Mom’s lead, here are some things you do that make me smile:

• You’re finally taking my advice and learning English. (And if I ask you what language you’re learning, you answer, “English”.)
• Even though you can’t read, you know what all your shirts say because we tell you and you remember. I showed you this picture yesterday and asked you what your shirt says, and you said, “I’s love Dad”:
  
• You call Smarties “Farties”. (See mom’s recent post and video about this.)
• You are starting to figure out subjects, objects and indirect objects, but you get them in the wrong order sometimes. The other day you said to mom, “Mom [subject] get Dad [indirect object] a car [direct object],” which was phenomenal, but you will sometimes say things like, “E pick Dad up,” when you really mean “Dad pick E up.” I’ve offered to help you diagram that sentence, but you oddly don’t seem interested in that. You’ll figure this stuff out, I’m sure, and in the meantime it’s genuinely fun seeing the wheels turning in your head as you experiment with language.
• You love driving the train with me (the Toca Train app on my iPhone/iPad). We have lots of fun together picking up passengers and loading things on and off our flatbed car with the crane.
• You also like playing Legos with me (Duplo Legos), but the fun is definitely not in helping me build something, but rather in destroying whatever it is I’m trying to build. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all upset by this, but I do look forward to a time when we will have more fun building things together.
• Ever since Aunt Kathlene got her new kitten, Gracie, when we sing “Amazing Grace” you won’t sing the actual words, but instead want to insert “Gracie” into every line. (“Amazing Gracie! How sweet the Gracie. That saved a Gracie like Gracie!”)
• You are an amazing eater. You’ll eat anything we put on your plate. We’ve fed you every variety of salsa (from mild all the way up to hot) and you seem to have no problem with any of them. I fed you some jalapeño jelly the other day and you loved it. You’ve enjoyed octopus, sushi, fresh lemon, avocado (guacamole), coffee, and many foods I turn my nose up to, like mushrooms and various other vegetables and fruits. There are one or two things you turn your nose up at, but for the most part you eat anything put before you in a seeming state of ignorant bliss. Everything is new, and therefore, everything is worth trying.

Well, my list isn’t as long as your mom’s, but right now I’m faced with the choice of either adding more things to this list or sitting down to play with you, and I’d like the record to show that I made the right choice right now. I love you to pieces, kiddo.

In our brief discussion, my wife agreed with me about context being important, but she found it curious that I would say that I look at statements by the same author and try to avoid other authors until I have a greater understanding of what that one author really meant. I’ve been approaching scripture this way for a while almost without thinking about it and without ever expressing or explaining it to anyone else, and her curiosity about it set in motion some introspection and self-reflection about why I do it. These comments are an attempt to set into words my thought process.

Why do I stay within single authors?

From the world’s perspective, the Bible was written by several individual men. From a Christian worldview, the various scripture books all had one author, namely God, notwithstanding they were written as God inspired those individual men.

If it can be shown that any Biblical author contradicts himself (is not internally consistent within his own writings) then we have really serious problems. Either (1) that author was of lesser intelligence and incapable of articulating cogent and consistent arguments or (2) that author was insane and actually concurrently believed contradictory truth claims, (3) that author changed his mind at some time or (4) at least some or all the documents claimed to be by that author are of dubious authorship and were therefore mistakenly included among the canon.

If it can be shown that the several Biblical authors are each internally consistent, but that they contradict each other, then we can conclude the Bible was written by intelligent but uninspired men who held to cogent and consistent but nevertheless contradictory and competing worldviews. It then becomes a contest as to which one of these authors’ systems of theology is inspired (and thus true) and which are wrong, or if they are all wrong together.

If it can be shown that each Biblical author is internally consistent and is furthermore externally consistent with all other Biblical authors, in other words, that the Bible taken as a whole is internally consistent, then that is possible cause for believing that God authored the scriptures. Considered another way, a necessary condition (but not a sufficient condition) for accepting the Bible as God-inspired is being able to show that the whole Bible is internally consistent.

It is in consideration of the above three “ifs” (the above three paragraphs) that I pay very careful attention to the various authors to make sure they are consistent within their own writings and also with the other authors. If one passage in the Bible seems to contradict the rest of the Bible theologically, I first look for instances from the same author where he is consistent with the rest of the scriptures. Then I consider why he may seem to be contradicting himself in the one passage in question. I try to consider that one author in a vacuum and interact with only his writings before I begin to look outside his writings.

Some working examples

So, for instance, when I look at a difficult passage for perseverance of the saints like Hebrews 6:4-6, I don’t immediately jump over to the best related verses by other authors in other books of the Bible (like John 6:37-40 or John 10:28-29), but I stay right where I am and notice Hebrews 6:9-12, where the author clarifies what he really meant in Hebrews 6:4-6 by stating that, “though we speak in this way,” he is confident that his audience won’t really fall away from faith. Moving further out, but staying with the same author, I find Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews 10:14; Hebrews 10:36-39; Hebrews 12:2 and Hebrews 13:5. Clearly the author of Hebrews positively affirms the doctrine of perseverance of the saints.

Another good example is a difficult passage for limited atonement, 1 John 2:2. Compare and contrast that to the almost word-for-word passage John 11:51-52. The parallel statement by the same author helps to clarify the author’s intended meaning. Additionally, passages like John 6:38-39; John 10:11; John 10:14-16; John 13:1; John 15:13; John 17:1-2, 9; 1 John 3:16 and Revelation 5:9 help to establish that John did indeed hold to the doctrine of limited atonement.

Not just for difficult passages

I should mention that this doesn’t apply only to difficult passages. For instance, as John Piper recently pointed out, 1 and 2 John are the best commentary you’ll ever find on Jesus’ new commandment in John 13:34-35.

A corollary to this whole idea is not only looking for consistency within authors but looking for consensus among several authors. For instance, in Sunday School at Jordan Presbyterian Church this morning, Pastor Reid found evidence for the historicity of the universal deluge by surveying various Old and New Testament authors. The author of 1 Chronicles includes Noah in Abraham’s genealogy (1 Chronicles 1:4) and Luke includes him in Jesus’ genealogy (Luke 3:36), so they both evidently believed Noah was a real person. Furthermore, Isaiah, Jesus (attested by both Matthew and Luke), the author of Hebrews and Peter all treat the flood as though it was a real historical event (See Isaiah 54:9; Matthew 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-27; Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20 and 1 Peter 2:5). Whether you realize it or not, if you allegorize the flood then you are calling into question the credibility of all these Biblical figures.

Conclusion

So I hope I’ve helped you see why paying attention to authorship is a huge part of my hermeneutic—my way of learning from and interpreting the Bible. Realizing how the Old Testament prophecies of Jesus are so amazingly fulfilled in the New Testament was one of the things that made me recognize the authenticity of the Bible in the first place. Realizing further that the Bible was written by multiple authors and yet they are all consistent in what they believed and taught has really helped to solidify that belief for me. I hope I’ve encouraged you to look at the Bible in a different way as you consider the various authors and how they support each other. 

Photo credit: le vent le cri.

I wrote a research paper a couple years ago for a language and communications course in my bachelors degree program: Essential fatty acids and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This week I finally finished the second half of that language and communications course, a video presentation on the same subject, and I’m proud to be able to share it with you.

I want to say you should turn the lights down low, pop some popcorn and sit back and enjoy, but the reality is this will probably bore you to tears. Maybe you insomniacs out there can use this instead of your sleeping pills tonight.

Here are the documents I mention right at the beginning of the video:

• Visual aid script and source references
• Visual aid slides

Now, I suppose it’s not that weird that I would enjoy a book about theology. It is, after all, one of my favorite subjects to read. But generally it does take me some effort to maintain focus on any one book. There’s a reason I read them; I usually get a lot of educational value out of them, but they don’t usually grip me the way this book gripped me. This book captivated my interest until the very last page; I couldn’t put it down.

The book is Fred Sanders’s The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything. It is essentially a wake-up call to evangelical Christianity that we need to bring the Trinity back into the center of our doctrine and practice. Sanders’s thesis is that the Trinity is the gospel, and if we want to make the gospel central (something evangelicals have historically been very good at) we’ve got to make the Trinity central (something Sanders argues evangelicals should be very good at, but paradoxically aren’t). He succeeds in defending this thesis, and opened my eyes to the reality of the nature of God and how God reveals that nature to us in that God the Father sent the Son and the Holy Spirit so that, though their work, we can be reconciled to God and have an intimate share in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity.

I think one of the reasons this book engaged me so is how relevant many of its themes are to things that have happened or are currently happening in my life. Take, for instance, one of the first conversations I ever had with Janene about Mormonism and Christianity. I was explaining to her why I believed, as a Latter-day Saint, that I could become a god some day. I told her it was because when I imagined God all alone in the beginning, before he had created anything, I imagined he would be very lonely and unhappy. He could create a worm or an ant, but he wouldn’t be able to have real fellowship or love with the worm or ant. He could create a chicken or a dog or a cow or a monkey and still not experience real fellowship. The only way he could find happiness and fulfillment would be to create another being of the same species as himself. I remember she explained to me then that God wasn’t lonely in the beginning. God, the three persons of the Trinity, had experienced perfect love, fellowship, and companionship from all eternity, and didn’t need to create a race of gods to find fulfillment.

Here’s Sanders on this topic:

Creation was not required, not mandatory, not exacted from God, neither by any necessity imposed from outside nor by any deficit lurking within the life of God. The Bible does not directly answer the question, Why did God create anything at all? but it does let us know what some of the most glaringly wrong answers to that question would be. It would be wrong to say that God created because he was lonely, unfulfilled, or bored. God is free from that kind of dependence.

And further:

In Susanna [Wesley]’s Trinitarian worldview, the eternal Son has eternally existed alongside the eternal Father, always receiving the full goodness of divinity from him. The world, therefore, does not have to bear the burden of being God’s eternal recipient of self-giving goodness. To put it another way, unless the Son were the eternal recipient of the Father’s self-giving, the world would be metaphysically necessary to the being of God. The point Susanna made here has also been seen by numerous thinkers. The Baptist theologian Augustus H. Strong (1836–1921) put it this way: “Neither God’s independence nor God’s blessedness can be maintained upon grounds of absolute unity. Anti-Trinitarianism almost necessarily makes creation indispensable to God’s perfection, tends to a belief in the eternity of matter, and ultimately, leads . . . to pantheism.”

And still further:

It is unworthy to think that God without us is lonely or bored. God is not looking for something to do in the happy land of the Trinity. God did not create the world in order to fill the drafty mansion of heaven with the pitter-patter of little feet. God is not pining away for companionship in a lonesome heaven. Good theological reflection, taking its lead from the Bible, would always reject the idea of divine loneliness or boredom. But as soon as you entertain the truth of the doctrine of the ontological Trinity, the unworthiness of the idea of a lonely or bored God becomes patently obvious. The triune God is one, but not solitary.

The reason for my believing I could be a god one day is that I did not believe in the Trinity. It’s that simple. And when I came to believe in the Trinity, it changed everything, just as Sanders says it does in his sub-title. What’s more, as I’ve thought back to that conversation with Janene ten years ago, I’ve never thought of it as a conversation about the gospel. I thought of it as a conversation about the nature of God that needed to happen to prepare me to hear the gospel. What this book taught me, however, is that God himself is the gospel. If God is dependent on the world in order to further his own glorification and perfection, then nothing we get is ever truly undeserved mercy and grace; it’s what God needs to do, not what he freely and benevolently chooses to do. The idea that God doesn’t need the world (cf. Acts 17:24-25) is the very thing that makes both creation and redemption such amazing grace, and that is 100% gospel. So it turns out Janene was preaching the gospel to me all those years ago, and it was the gospel that got through to me in that conversation, even though it’s taken me ten years to realize that was the gospel.

And that’s just one example of how I found this book relevant to my life. This post is already too long for me to share further examples. I can’t recommend this book enough to any evangelical who wants to regain a clear focus on the Trinity in their theology, evangelism, and everyday Christian living. 

Browsers

There are many different web browsers on the market today. They are all free, so cost is not a differentiating factor. What are the differentiating factors? Well, some browsers seem to care more about web standards and become the darlings of web designers. Some browsers care more about user features and become the favorites of web surfers and tinkerers, and some browsers come bundled with operating systems and become the default for people who don’t understand they have a choice.

Which browser do I use? Honestly, it depends on the mood I’m in. At work on my PC I go back and forth between Firefox and Chrome; at home on my Mac I go back and forth between Chrome and Safari. When I need my web development and debugging tools, I have to use Firefox. When I want something a little snappier for regular web browsing, I like Chrome and Safari. I’m kindof a snobby web designer, so I do try to avoid Internet Explorer, but honestly, I use it more than you might think. I do a lot of testing in IE, and I’ve even been known to use IE when I just need to look up something quick, or when I need to log into a different e-mail or Twitter account and I don’t want to log out of my main account in my other browser.

Bibles

There are many different Bible translations on the market today. Comparable paperback, hardcover, or leather editions usually sell at about the same price point no matter which translation you choose, so, again, cost is not a differentiating factor. What are the differentiating factors? Well, some Bibles care more about getting the Word into a mode of speaking that is more vernacular, closer to the ground, so to speak, closer to the language of the common man. These Bibles become the favorites of youth ministries and evangelical outreach ministries trying to put the Bible into the hands of folks who’ve never read it. Other Bibles emphasize accuracy and literal conformity to the original languages. These become the darlings of seminarians and theology snobs.

Which Bible do I use? Honestly, it depends on the mood I’m in. I go back and forth between the ESV and the NLT, and this year, due to the momentous anniversary, I’ve been reading the KJV. If I’m doing intense study of a book or chapter, I prefer the ESV or the NASB. If I’m just reading straight through, I like the NIV (I don’t have a problem with the 2011 update), the NLT, and I’ve even been known to use The Message when I get in a really particular mood for that kind of thing.

One more thing…

One last similarity between these two seemingly disparate things, and this is what I was reading this morning that made me think of this whole subject, is that there are people who swear by one browser or one Bible and refuse to use the others. These people get so militant and evangelistic that they try to convert other people to their camp. Me, I just use all of them. I see value in all of them for various situations and purposes. Browsers are just tools. They all access the same web, and are really only as good as their developers and development philosophies, and some are better than others for various reasons. Bibles are tools too. They are all translations of the same Word of God, and are really only as good as the translators and their translation philosophies, and some are better than others for various reasons.

Am I crazy to see these similarities? Am I crazy to use more than one browser and more than one Bible? Let me know what you think in the comments. 

There’s an icon at the top of the toaster, just left of the lever you push down to insert the toast. Here’s a better picture so you can see the icon more clearly.

The icon is of a piece of bread evidently coming out of the toaster. Now, you and I know exactly what this lever is meant to do, so I can only ascertain that this icon is intended to aid someone who has simply never seen or heard of a toaster before (perhaps he/she was raised with wolves or is from another planet). The thing that’s getting me, though, is how exactly the presence of this particular icon would help this hypothetical user? Why does the arrow go up and not down? Is the icon somehow meant to convey that, after I push the toast down, I can use the same lever to get it to come back up? But in that case, what is the “cancel” button for below and to the right of the lever?

Now, to be fair, I’m trying to think of an icon myself that would convey the intended meaning, and I’m drawing a blank. It seems to me the use of a toaster is so obvious that you don’t need an icon at all. What do you think? Would the icon make more sense if the arrow went down? Would you advocate the use of an entirely different icon or no icon at all? 

2 Corinthians 8:1-5 (emphasis mine):

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints—and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

So, Paul says right at the outset that he’s going to tell us about something God is doing in the churches of Macedonia. The Macedonian’s generosity, despite their great poverty, was a grace that originated from God and not from man. But then he turns right around and says the Macedonians were doing this “of their own accord”. Other translations say the Macedonians were “freely willing” or that they did this “entirely on their own” or “of their own free will”. He then turns right around again and says that the Macedonians submitted themselves to the Lord and to their leaders “by the will of God”.

So was it the Macedonian’s will or God’s will that accomplished this? It was both! Or perhaps, more accurately, it was ultimately God’s will to put it into the minds and hearts of the Macedonians so that they would will, even delight, to give so generously.

The other passage makes this connection even more explicit. 2 Corinthians 8:16-17 (again, emphasis mine):

But thanks be to God, who put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care I have for you. For he not only accepted our appeal, but being himself very earnest he is going to you of his own accord.

Again, other translations have phrases like “by his own choice” or “of his own initiative”, but the meaning is the same. God, in his sovereignty, put the care into Titus’ heart so that Titus himself would freely will to visit the Corinthian saints.

I love the few passages in the New Testament that mention free will. They do not in any way deter me from glorying in the absolute sovereignty of God. 

Classic xkcd. Gotta love it. And it’s actually very relevant to a research presentation I’m working on. More on that later… 

You may have seen a Tweet from me mentioning that the backlight on my iPhone 3G finally kicked the bucket. I used it for two weeks and couldn’t stand it anymore, so I started thinking about alternatives.

I’ve got an old Motorola AT&T GoPhone I bought back when I was doing a lot of biking and needed an expendable backup phone, but I hate using it for two reasons: (1) it doesn’t have any of my contacts, and (2) I hate texting with the tiny numeric keypad. However, it dawned on me yesterday that I haven’t even been using my phone for most of my texting in the last several weeks. More often than not I’ve used the excellent free Google Voice service on my recently-mobile-data-plan-enabled iPad. It further dawned on me that I can do almost everything I do with my phone on my iPad instead, except for actually making and receiving calls.

So, I’ve dusted off that old GoPhone and swapped my SIM card in there. When I need to make a call now, I bring up Google Voice on my iPad, click Call, choose the contact, and instruct Google Voice to ring my cell phone. It’s actually a great little setup and I’m sure it will serve me fine until Apple finally decides to release iPhone 5. 

Hundreds of years of making books and it seems to me everyone agrees justified and hyphenated is the way to go. Now all of a sudden it’s controversial whether or not it’s really better for reading, easier on the eyes, &c. The technology exists to easily hyphenate any website or app, but many developers either aren’t aware it’s possible or choose not to do it because they somehow think ragged-right is better.

And I’m not just talking about average blogs or news websites. I’m looking squarely at sites like Instapaper and Readability, and apps like Flipboard and Articles, who claim to offer a superior reading experience (and for the most part I think they do), yet continue to feature rag-right text. I’m also looking at e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iBooks, or Bible apps like OliveTree BibleReader or Crossway’s ESV Bible.

For all this new-fangled technology we have, e-reading is just not like reading a real book. It seems to me justification and hyphenation are a cheap and easy way to get closer to the real thing, so why aren’t they being utilized more universally? 

As should be patently obvious, this prediction is not based on any inside information.

I’ve read some rumors to the effect that the next iPhone will be half an inch wider and half an inch taller than iPhone 4. I’m trying to imagine how Apple could increase the size of the screen without compromising their much touted Retina display. Apple’s always bragged about iPhone 4′s display being greater than 300 dpi, which is supposedly some kind of sweet spot where the human eye can no longer perceive individual pixels. Setting aside the possible dubiousness of that claim, it’s inescapable that increasing the screen size by a half inch on each side without also increasing the resolution would decrease the dpi to around 280 (by my very rough calculations) and basically ruin their whole marketing shtick.

So here’s my totally half-baked prediction: iPhone 5 will have a 720p HD display in order to preserve the 300+ dpi on a larger display. I imagine this will ruffle the feathers of a few iPhone app developers who’ve had to work over the past year to redesign their apps for 960×640, since now they’ll have to turn around and redesign for 1080×720, but wouldn’t it be a fantastic blow to all the competing handset makers who seem to be standardizing around qHD?

Let me start with a short story. You may remember that I used to be the proprietor of the Homestar Runner Wiki and its accompanying discussion forum. Well, there was some drama there one year (as there was every year and as there is with all online fora) and one of our members decided to start his own forum and tried to persuade other members to leave us and join him since we were so dumb and he was so cool. I almost signed up on his forum just to see what all the fuss was about, but before I got around to it, one of our forum’s moderators signed up on his site. Shortly after she signed up, he was able to retrieve her password from his own forum’s database, and, since she had used the same password for his site as she had used on our site, he was able to log into our site using her password.

Total chaos ensued. Using her moderator abilities, he was able to delete a significant chunk of our forum’s posts, though it was slow going because he had to delete the posts one at a time, and the activity was eventually noticed and blocked by one of our admins. I was mortified as I imagined what would have happened had I signed up there as I had been considering. He would’ve had much greater permissions to delete whole sections of the board much faster, and could have done a lot more damage. The take home lesson from this little story is obvious: no matter how secure you think any two sites are, don’t ever use the same password twice, or you risk a disgruntled administrator using your password from one place to log in somewhere else.

How ’bout you? Do you currently use the same password in many different places across the web? Imagine what someone could do if they were to obtain that password. Could they log into your e-mail and steal all your contacts? Your blog and delete all your posts? Your bank and transfer all your money to their secure off-shore account?

Password Hasher

Of course, managing unique passwords across hundreds of sites is no easy task. Enter Password Hasher, an algorithm for generating secure passwords from a site tag and a master password. Since the passwords are regenerated using the same algorithm every time you need them, there’s no need to actually store the password anywhere. As long as you remember your master password and the tag you used for each site (the easiest way to do this is simply to use the domain name itself as the tag), you can regenerate the password whenever you need it.

A Password Hasher Firefox extension makes it easy to generate these passwords whenever you need them on your own computer (be it a Mac, PC, or Linux box), and a JavaScript version of the same algorithm makes the system portable (say when you’re using a library computer or a friend’s computer, and don’t have your Firefox extension handy).

Not only does Password Hasher let you generate unique passwords for each of the sites you use, but it also makes it dead simple to use much more secure passwords than you normally would. I’ve set my default password length to significantly more than eight characters, and I make sure to use special characters on any sites that allow them. I rest easy knowing it is that much more difficult for any of my passwords to be cracked.

KeePass

Now, once in a while I have need of passwords outside of my browser, where opening up my browser and firing up my Password Hasher extension is a bit impractical. For instance, user passwords for web servers, FTP passwords, instant messengers, &c. For these kinds of outside-the-browser passwords, I supplement my security scheme with an open source multi-platform tool called KeePass.

KeePass has a nice password generator built in, but instead of generating your passwords on the fly each time you use them, your passwords get stored in a strongly encrypted master-password-protected database. I store this database on my Dropbox and use Portable Dropbox and Portable KeePass on my thumb drive for when I’m on the go, and this has worked very well for those passwords where Password Hasher just isn’t a good fit.

Drawbacks

I’ve been using Password Hasher and KeePass for a couple years now, and they continue to serve me well, but there are a few niggles. For one, I find myself using Google Chrome more and more on my Mac and PC, and of course there is no Firefox at all on my iPad and iPhone, so consequently I’m using the JavaScript version of Password Hasher more and leaving the more convenient Firefox extension behind.

Furthermore, on iPad and iPhone, there is simply no way to access my KeePass database, so I find myself either reading my passwords from my Mac or PC and typing them into my iPad or iPhone, or copying and pasting my password into Simplenote on my Mac or PC and subsequently copying and pasting it out of Simplenote into the app or website on my iPhone or iPad. This is not exactly ideal—and of course this only works if I’m near my Mac or PC, and I rarely prefer to use my iPhone or iPad when I am—but until I find something better, it suffices. In light of this, though, I’m seriously considering replacing KeePass with 1Password, even despite my deep consternation about replacing an open tool with a proprietary one.

Conclusion

These days the only password I have memorized is my computer login password (I wish there was an easy way to copy and paste a password on an initial computer login screen, but oh well), but even that password is generated with Password Hasher, is not the same password I use anywhere else, and is changed on a regular basis. All my other passwords are either stored in KeePass or generated on the fly with Password Hasher.

I hope I’ve encouraged you to come up with a system to keep your passwords more secure and armed you with some tools to make this easy (though, if you think my system is too complicated, by all means, check out Aaron’s). You never know what can happen on the world wide interweb series of tubes, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry. 

See also

• My setup: YubNub

We pray for blessings,
We pray for peace,
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep.
We pray for healing, for prosperity,
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering.
All the while, You hear each spoken need,
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things.

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops?
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?

We pray for wisdom,
Your voice to hear,
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near.
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love,
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough.
All the while, You hear each desperate plea,
And long that we’d have faith to believe.

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops?
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?
And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?

When friends betray us,
When darkness seems to win,
We know the pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home.
It’s not our home.

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops?
What if Your healing comes through tears?
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy?
And what if trials of this life,
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights,
Are your mercies in disguise?

And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you.”

In our study we then connected that back to the new covenant promises found in Ezekiel 36:22-38:

Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

My forgiveness, my assurance of salvation, my living a new life, my having God’s spirit in me, is all grounded upon an oath, a covenant that God has made and which has been sealed with Christ’s blood shed for me.

With all that in mind, I was particularly struck by the third verse of the hymn, “The Solid Rock”, which we sang in worship service this morning:

His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.

Are we leaning on other people in our lives—parents, spouses, friends? Are we leaning on ourselves and our own abilities? Or is our salvation built on Christ and Christ alone, his oath and covenant sealed with his blood, which is our only “hope and stay”? 

This is too good not to share. It was created two years ago on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 2009, but remains equally relevant and powerful this year.

By “cleaning up messes” I simply meant that I’m having some time-management difficulties juggling several commitments and Facebook is just a really big timesuck. I could probably manage my Facebook time a little better if I was more self-disciplined, but in this particular situation it seemed more effective to just hit the big red button and go cold turkey for a while. I have every intention of coming back to the Facebook world once I get things a little better organized elsewhere.

While I’m absent from Facebook, you’re welcome to communicate with me using a more ancient form of communication such as a phone call, text message, instant message, e-mail, or even snail mail. If you don’t have my current contact information you are welcome to utilize the contact form on this site to get in touch. I do look forward to hearing from you. 

I don’t know why, but the “omnis” of God have always held a sort of fascination for me. I think everybody has heard of three of them: omnipotence (all-powerful), omniscience (all-knowing), and omnipresence (everywhere-present). A couple years ago I stumbled upon omnibenevolence (all-good).

I’ve been reading the book of Job and got a little mind-boggled this morning and went looking for context and background to help me understand what I was reading. I started with Wikipedia, not because I think it’s a really good resource for understanding the scriptures, but just because it’s as good a place as any to start. Lo and behold, in the Wikipedia article on the Book of Job, I came across two “omnis” I had never heard before: omnisapience (all-wise), and omniliberty (all-sovereign, or all-free—able to do whatever he pleases), though I can’t seem to find omniliberty anywhere else on the Internet, and wonder if whoever added it to Wikipedia just made it up.

Are there other “omnis” I’ve never heard of? Can anybody recall any others I haven’t listed here? Is it possible that all God’s attributes can be expressed as “omnis”? 

I heard a fascinating story this morning on NPR Morning Edition about a man whose blindness was corrected by doctors, but who still can’t see very well. As it turns out (and this really should come as no surprise), sight not only depends on hardware (your eyeballs) but has a pretty significant software component as well (neuron pathways in the brain). This man had lost his sight at the age of three, and, by the time it was restored at age 43, he had lost many of the neuron pathways necessary to drive the sight experience. Based on his hardware, he should have 20/20 vision, but, because of the state of his brain, he can make out only vague shapes and movement, but no detail. To really cure blindness, it turns out, we’ll need to figure out how to restore all those pathways in the brain.

The reason this story fascinates me is that I’ve recently been reading a lot about the kind of new birth Jesus talks about in John 3:3 where he says that we must be born again or we cannot see the kingdom of God. Elsewhere the new birth is compared to God opening one’s eyes so they can see him for who he really is and accept him by faith. The implication I see from this story is that, in our sinful and dead state, not only do we need new eyes, but a new heart, mind, and soul. We need to literally be reprogrammed or we cannot have our eyes truly opened. I think this is what second birth is really about. Of course, there are also accounts of Jesus literally healing the blind in the Gospels, and I see implications in this story for those accounts as well. God is the great physician, healing the whole person, hardware and software, able to perform miracles modern medicine and science can only speculate about.

You can read and listen to the story on NPR’s website: “Treating Blindness Takes More Than Meets The Eye” (listen). 

I heard a great interview early this morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. NPR’s Liane Hansen interviewed Charlie Hunter, a jazz musician who plays an instrument unlike any I’ve ever heard of before, a modified eight-string guitar. I’m given to understand an eight-string guitar is usually nothing more than a regular guitar with a slightly extended range, adding one string to the top and one to the bottom. However, Hunter has his guitar modified and tuned in such a way that his three bottom strings are genuine bass guitar strings and the other five are regular guitar strings, though he notes in the interview that he’s recently removed his top string and prefers to play without it since he felt it got in his way. Eight strings or seven, though, what’s fascinating is this guy is simultaneously playing the bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and solo guitar parts in real time! My dad plays both guitar and bass (though not simultaneously, of course), so I thought he especially would get a kick out Hunter’s unique instrument and style.

Hunter’s latest record has a nice jazzy, upbeat feel with the 7-string guitar plus a couple trombones, a trumpet, and drums. The few song clips they aired during the interview were really fun to listen to. Besides talking about his unique instrument and playing style, they also discussed his practice regiment, why he chose to record the album in mono instead of stereo, and how he is learning to play the drums because it informs the way he plays the guitar, so the interview was generally entertaining for all these reasons. I’m going to be looking around online for Hunter’s albums now.

You can listen to the article on NPR’s website: “Charlie Hunter Has ‘Neglected To Inform You’” (listen).

Right now I only have three contacts with Wave accounts, none of whom I really collaborate with much, so I don’t know if I’ll get much use out of the system early on. If anybody out there has a Google Wave account and wants to chat, click here to see my address. Oh, and you, my dear readers, will be the first to know if/when I’m allowed to invite other people to the party. Stay tuned. 

I just finished reading God’s Passion for His Glory, which is not a new book, but a reprint of a book by 18th-century philosopher and theologian Jonathan Edwards called The End for Which God Created the World, with a new (nearly book-length) foreword by John Piper. I greatly enjoyed this book. It has challenged and even reshaped my perceptions about God, the world, and scripture. I recommend this book to every reader. If you’d prefer not to read Piper’s foreword, at least pick up some edition of Edwards’ book and give his claims the careful consideration they are due.

An aside about old and new books

I’ve all but given up on new books lately. Several months ago I found myself in a rut of always looking for something to read among the latest releases and current bestsellers. The problem is that’s a total crap shoot. The overwhelming majority of new books aren’t any good, and, as the old adage goes, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, so you never know which ones are good before you spend (or, as the case may be, waste) the money and time to read them.

The great thing about old books is they’ve already stood up under scrutiny. If something’s called a classic, it means lots of people have read it and enjoyed it and continue reading it and recommending it to others. Also, many older books are in the public domain and therefore free to download as ebooks and generally cheaper to buy in print. So, in a quest to read more old, good books, I have recently read Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, and I plan to read his Religious Affections soon. I’ve also heard good things about, and plan to read, John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. I’d also like to read many of the classic novels—e.g., Dickens’ David Copperfield is first on my list in that category.

Piper actually discusses the value of old books in his foreword. He echoes the following recommendation from C.S. Lewis:

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.” —C.S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books,” in God on the Dock, 1970

I fully intend to follow this advice from now on.

My review of God’s Passion for His Glory

The End for Which God Created the World, (and by extension God’s Passion for His Glory) is about exactly what the title implies, viz., the reason God created the world (or universe, if you prefer). It answers the question, “Why are we here?”. Edwards’ answer—and I believe, the Bible’s answer, since that is Edwards’ proof-text—is surprisingly straightforward and simple: God esteems himself as the ultimate end for which he made the world. The world was (and we were) created for God, or, to put it a different way, for God’s glory.

One thing that stood out to me early in the book is Edwards’ simple yet profound interpretation of a few verses I had seen a million times before, but had never considered in the context of this question. Edwards cites verses like Isaiah 48:12 and Revelation 22:13, where God calls himself the first and the last, and interprets this to mean that God is not only the first cause but also the last end or purpose of all creation. He similarly cites verses such as Romans 11:36, Colossians 1:16, and Hebrews 2:10, where all things are said to be from God, for God, and to God, to show that all things proceed from God as their creator and flow back to God as their ultimate end or reason for existence, and that all glory will ultimate flow back to God, so that the glory of God is the last end and final consummation of the existence of the world.

In fact, I’ve never seen so much scriptural support for any belief as Edwards provides for his claim that God makes himself his purpose in the creation of the world. Many times in the book Edwards lists off a half dozen passages and then says something like, “but places to this purpose are too numerous to be particularly recited; see them in the margin,” and if you follow the footnote you’re presented with a list of two or three dozen passages that are similar to the five or six already given.

I have been blessed by this book. I will never think about God’s purposes and intentions in quite the same way again, nor will I read or understand many passages of scripture in the same way. I’m overwhelmed by how great God is and how insignificant I am in the scheme of things, and yet how significant I am to God in fulfilling his own purposes because I have the capacity (albeit only as the Holy Spirit works in me) to recognize God for who he is, to take my delight in him, and enjoy him forever, thereby giving him the honor, praise, and glory he alone is due. As Piper has said elsewhere many times, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him,” and, “the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.”

One last thing is worth mentioning. Consequent to my reading this book, I have added some new text to the footer of every page of my blog. The first part is the Greek from the last verse of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, “μόνῳ σοφῷ θεῷ, διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ᾧ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, ἀμήν,” which translated means, “to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ, Amen.” The second is the Latin, “Soli Deo gloria!”, which is one of the five solas of the reformation, and which translated means, “glory to God alone!” I will strive for the rest of my life to live out this creed and make the highest end in everything I do the same as God’s highest end in everything he does.

The problem I have with this “feature” is that it doesn’t integrate in any way with Amazon’s already existing Wishlist feature. Items I add to my Save for Later list do not appear on my Amazon Wishlist and vice versa. Consequently, there’s no way to access or add items to my Amazon Wishlist from my Kindle, and no way to access or add items to my Save for Later list from Amazon’s website on my computer. This is frustrating for a number of obvious reasons, and I can’t help but feel that Amazon has made a major marketing blunder here. By not allowing me to see my own Wishlist on my Kindle or my Save for Later list on my computer, they’re actually decreasing my access to the things I’ve already decided I eventually want to buy from them. It’s as if the grocery store were to search my pockets at the door and steal any grocery lists they find. That’s an extreme analogy, to be fair, but not entirely far from the reality here.

Now, to cut Amazon some slack, a Kindle book is different from a physical book, and physical books and other items that exist on my Amazon Wishlist would not be very useful to me if I attempted to download them to my Kindle device, so I can see some rationale behind keeping the regular Amazon store and the Kindle store separate from one another. However, since I can browse the Kindle store on my computer and even purchase items and send samples to my Kindle device from my computer, is it really too much to ask for me to be able to add items to my Save for Later list and view that list on my computer?

Update: In December 2009 Amazon enabled support for adding books to an Amazon Wishlist from the Kindle device, effectively merging the “Save for Later” feature with the true Wishlist feature on Amazon.com. I still cannot view non-Kindle items on my Kindle, but I can now view my Kindle book wishlist either on my Kindle or on my Macbook and add/remove items from either place. This is of course much better than before, though I still question the marketing wisdom of not allowing a user to purchase physical items for shipping right from their Kindle. My credit card is on file, Amazon. Why not let me shop your entire catalog from wherever I am using a device I purchased from you?

• You may download the plugin here: lds-linker.2.5.zip
• For additional information, frequently asked questions, and a complete change log, see the LDS Linker page at the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Here’s some background for those who don’t know what I’m talking about: the LDS Linker plugin for WordPress changes any Latter-day Saint scripture reference in a blog post into a hyperlink pointing to the appropriate passage in the Internet Edition of the LDS Scriptures. It recognizes references whether the book name is written out or shortened using the standard abbreviations.

Here are some examples:

Moro 10:3-5 is a scripture mastery verse. Other scripture mastery verses include Mosiah 4:30, D&C 130:22-23, and JS-H 1:15-20. I have Articles of Faith 1:1-13 memorized—how ’bout you?

A big thanks goes out to those who’ve helped me improve the code. Are you using LDS Linker? Please let me know what you think.

My lovely wife, with help from my parents, her parents, and her Granny, bought me an Amazon Kindle 2 for my birthday. This is the best gift I’ve received in a long time (which is what Janene was going for, since, after all, this was a milestone birthday). Thanks, everybody!

One aspect of the unboxing experience impressed me. You know how most electronic devices come with a thin clear plastic film over the screen to protect it in transit? And you know how sometimes the manufacturer prints something on that film that approximates what the display might look like when turned on, or includes instructions for using the device the first time? Well, keep that in mind and check out this picture of a Kindle 2 fresh in the box (this is not my photo, just a random one I found so I could show you what I’m talking about).

Well, I started peeling the film off and noticed right away these helpful directions weren’t printed on that film! This gave me pause for a moment, wondering if there was a second film I needed to remove, or if Amazon had done something really stupid and printed permanent ink on my device before applying the film, but then I remembered an interesting aspect of e-ink displays: they don’t have to be continuously powered to keep something visible on the screen. Power is only needed to place the ink; whether the device is powered or not, the ink will remain until you replace it or clear it away. As a subtle but impressive touch, Amazon had placed these getting started instructions on the display before it was powered down in the factory. Brilliant!

To that end, here is a link to the series: The Gospel of John. I’d love to chat with you about these sermons, so please please leave a comment if you do check them out.

My mother-in-law gave me $20 in nickels for my birthday (that’s 400 nickels if you’re counting with me at home), along with a jar that counts coins as you drop them in through a slot in the top. If the jar is accurate, I have 490 nickels in there currently. Add to that the 21 nickels I have in my PayPal account, and I’m up to 511. Only 31,489 nickels to go. Sweet!

If you’re paying attention, the number of nickels in my PayPal account hasn’t changed at all since my last update. Is a nickel too much to ask? Come on all you PayPal users out there! Click the button. I dare you!

What’s all this about, you ask? Check out the original post for details.

Aaron asks:

And what’s the head count (no pun intended) so far? How many nickels?

Well, it’s rather depressing, actually. I really need to start spreading the word a bit further than just my little circle of influence. I’ve got some ideas for making this little project go viral, but it’s all a matter of working up the time and energy required to put those ideas into action.

The grand total right now is 59 actual physical nickels in a cup in my desk drawer and 21 virtual nickels in my PayPal account. That’s 80 nickels all together, making the grand total $4.00 even—one four-hundredth or 0.25% of my goal. Another 31,920 nickels to go, and I’ll have my MacBook. Things are looking up!

What’s all this about, you ask? Check out the original post for details.

I accompanied Janene to the endodontist on Monday to get a root canal (she tells the story here). As they prepped her for the procedure, she eagerly inquired about sedation options. They offered her a little something called Versed. I don’t know if you know anything about Versed (I didn’t until Monday), but it’s an awfully potent drug with some rather remarkable effects.

The endodontist’s assistant explained that Versed induces a conscious sedation. Janene would be awake through the entire procedure, able to follow instructions and answer questions, but she would have no memory of the whole experience. As far as she was concerned, it would feel as if she just took a little nap.

Another assistant briefed us on the up-front costs, and, rather than pay right then, Janene and I agreed it would be easier for me to make the payment at the front desk while she was having the procedure.

As they were about to administer the magical sedative, there was a moment where we were alone in the room, so I took the opportunity to initiate a little experiment. “Honey,” I said, “let’s see if you can remember the phrase ‘green elephants’ when this is all over.” She chuckled and agreed to my little game. Then, the endodontist showed up and stuck her with a big needle and I was ushered out to the waiting area so he could get to work.

After about an hour, one of the assistants came out and let me know they were finished and I could come back and see her. As I walked in, Janene was awake and alert and asked if I had remembered to pay the bill. I answered in the affirmative, and then listened intently as they explained what they had done, went over a few post-operative instructions, and gave me a couple of prescriptions for her. They had printed the post-op instructions on a sheet of paper, and the first item on the list was “Patient will be forgetful for a few hours.” Boy, would she. As they finished up the instruction, the assistant asked me to pull the car around and she would bring Janene out to meet me (one effect of the Versed is total body weakness, so Janene couldn’t really walk on her own). As I was leaving the room, Janene asked if I had remembered to pay the bill. The assistant winked at me, and so began an adventure I won’t soon forget.

Shortly after getting in the car, Janene asked me if I’d called her mom yet. Oh, that’s a good idea, I thought, so I called her mom and let her know Janene was okay and that we’d be at their house soon. The plan was to drive back to our apartment and pick up our laundry, then head over to the in-laws’ place where I could do the laundry and Janene could take a long nap. They had explained that she would be very sleepy after the procedure and would probably take the best nap in her life.

When I got off the phone with her mom, Janene started firing off other questions, and it soon became apparent that she wasn’t remembering the answers, or, for that matter, the fact that she had ever asked any of the questions in the first place. For example, she asked me several times if her purse was in the car, and inquired several additional times about whether I had called her mom. She also asked me a few times what the endodontist had said about the procedure and what I had done while I was out there waiting for the whole hour. And the one question she really wanted to know the answer to was whether or not I had paid that darn bill.

They had explained that she needed to drink a lot of fluids and provided a bottle of red Gatorade, which Janene had set in the cup holder next to her. Every few minutes, she would look down, notice the Gatorade, pick it up, study it as if it was the first time she’d ever seen it in her life—hm, I wonder if it’s strawberry or cherry; oh, strawberry, I guess I’ll try some—take a sip, and then return it to the cup holder. This never failed to crack me up each of the half a dozen times I watched her do it.

When we arrived at the apartment, she was starting to get a little sleepy, so I helped her get her seat reclined, and she asked me if I would grab her a pillow from the couch in the front room. Sure, I said, realizing that by the time I got back out to the car she would forget having ever asked for the pillow. I brought all the laundry out and grabbed the pillow. When I asked her if she wanted the pillow, sure enough, she stared at me blankly as if the very idea of it was absurd, so I tossed it in the back seat and we hit the road again.

As we were approaching the in-laws’ place, I asked Janene where we should go to fill her prescription. Now, this illustrates a bit more of the wacky effect of Versed. You see, Janene was still Janene. She had every memory up to the point the endodontist stuck her with that big needle, and she was conscious and rational, though a bit sleepy, the whole time she was under the drug’s effects. She calmly explained that she always fills her prescriptions at Smith’s and that there was a Smith’s up ahead a little past her parents’ house. As we approached the intersection, though, not even 30 seconds later, she asked me why I was going straight instead of turning left!

The funniest part of this whole story is that every time I tried to explain to Janene that she had already told me this or already asked me that question, she would very matter-of-factly reply that she remembered “green elephants”, as if there was absolutely nothing wrong with her memory and that she was perfectly fine. She probably said the phrase “green elephants” to me ten or fifteen times in the car on the way home! I could’ve died laughing.

Anyway, the sad news (which I had to explain to her about four times that morning) is that they weren’t able to finish the procedure and we may have to go through this whole adventure again in about a month. I think next time I’ll bring the camera along and try to capture some of these antics on video. Stay tuned.

Every once in a while I hear a story on NPR that simply fascinates me. Yesterday it was a story on All Things Considered about a previously undiscovered portrait by Van Gogh. This new painting was not “discovered” in the sense that it was found in the basement of some old museum. Rather, it was discovered hiding beneath the paint of another Van Gogh!

Apparently, Van Gogh had reused a canvas by painting a new painting over the top of an old one, and scientists used a new x-ray technique to see what the painting underneath looks like. They were even able to determine the colors of paint by analyzing the chemical makeup. Listen to the story and watch the accompanying video to see how they did it: “Experts Uncover A Painting Van Gogh Covered Up” (listen and watch).

Can you spare a nickel? I’m kicking off an experiment to see if I can raise enough money to buy myself a Macbook. But here’s the catch: I’m planning to raise the money entirely in nickels. Doing the math, the roughly $1,600 it will take to buy a Macbook works out to 32,000 nickels. So far I’ve got 6 nickels sitting in a cup on my desk. Hey, it’s a start!

So here’s the deal: I’m shamelessly asking you to toss five cents into my PayPal account. This money will not go to charity or a non-profit of any kind and is most certainly not tax-deductible. It will go straight into my pocket. You’ll get nothing in return for this, but hey, why do you care? It’s only a nickel. And that’s the whole point: I’m not asking for much—just a few seconds of your time and a nickel.

So, what are you waiting for? If you’ve got a PayPal account with a positive balance, please use this button right now to throw a nickel in my change cup:

Thanks!

Update: I’ve blogged about this again since this initial post. To follow my progress, see the following posts.

• “A nickel update” on August 21, 2008
• “More nickels” on September 9, 2008