Why Powerpoint is Worse than Your Bible

This last weekend I announced that I won’t be putting the Bible verses on our screens anymore during our weekend services. The references, yes, but the verses themselves will need to be read out of your own Bible that you bring with you or that you get from the seat in front of you. I didn’t really have too much time to explain the deeper reason why we are making this change, so I thought I would have a go at it here…

My reason can be summarize in a phrase - “The Medium is the Message.” If you ever study communication theory, this is one of the first slogans you will learn. A Canadian communication theorist named Marshall McLuhan was the author of the slogan and by it he meant that every method we use to communicate necessarily influences the content of the communication. For example, years ago the great philosopher Socrates was concerned about his Greek society moving from the spoken to the written word.

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Second Place is the First Loser: The World According to Sports

I’m in the middle of reading the current issue of Christianity Today and I have to admit that I am stunned. I have been reading CT for years and it is usually pretty careful not to be prophetic. But this issue’s cover story is different. It is titled “Fanatics: How Christians Have Succumbed to the Culture of Sports” and it is a pretty sharp rebuke of how important sports have become to those in the church and how little we have thought about them from a theological point of view. I mean, what is the purpose of sports in God’s world? Is competition beneficial or detrimental to our Christian maturity? Is it more important in our minds if our kids win hockey tournaments or follow Jesus? Have we ever even asked these questions of ourselves? I’m an avid fan of a number of (really bad) teams and I grew up playing all kinds of competitive sports, but I don’t ever recall thinking too deeply about how my Christian faith ought to interact with my participation in or support of a particular team.

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Who is in Control?

I am coming to realize more and more how much we are the children of Adam and Eve. What got them to disobey God was the enticement of becoming like him in knowing everything. You might respond by saying,” I know I’m not God!” But are your actions and words confirming this?

During this last weekend I awoke a couple of nights in a row and the worries began. Even reciting Scripture did not seem to settle my mind enough for me to return to a restful sleep. By Tuesday morning, I was crying out to God to give me some measure of understanding about why I was, once again, so down on myself. As I was driving to the church I saw on the horizon (it’s 5:30am), a golden sliver of the moon, perfectly shaped, perfectly visible. Immediately I understood. I only see and understand a part of the truth in the circumstances I am living in and its driving me crazy. How arrogant for me to think that I can and should know everything. Do I think I am God? Only God can and does have the full understanding of these situations in my life, only God can and does know the full truth.

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Racing the Train

Thursday evening I was traveling east bound on Highway 7. Just past Mission I noticed, on the tracks beside the road, a train traveling in the same direction and at approximately the same speed. The thought immediately entered my mind, “I want to beat that train to the next crossing 5 kilometers ahead. But not only do I want to I MUST beat that train to the next crossing.”

Let me paint the picture. It’s already dark, so dark in fact that I can barely see the train. There were at least 3 vehicles ahead of me already going speed limit (80 km/hr). I wasn’t late for anything. No one was expecting me to arrive at a certain time. I was quite content listening to a sermon via my iPod. THERE WAS NO REASON TO BE IN A HURRY!!

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