Books and Quotes

Loving Your Neighbor?

2005-10-25T11:27:00.000-07:00

Sin seems like a simple concept. If you do wrong, that is sin. The Christian response should be to repent and refrain from repeating the sin. At one level that works. At another, sin is much more complex and nuance. While it is true that personal repentance and restoration are necessary, dealing with other people in areas where we are prone to sin calls for more than just dealing with our sins and moving on. It requires, in addition to repentance when called for, changing the focus of our concern from our own state to considering the best interests of the other person or persons involved. Lauren Winner is addressing this next step in our relationships in the following quote from Real Sex. She pulls our thinking away from us to others as she challenges us to “…consider others better than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3b)

How do we determine when our behavior toward others is proper? Winner, speaking of sexual ethics to a young woman regarding dating, said the following. The truth in her words apply to many other areas of our lives – gossip about, giving to, and judging others to name a few.

“I’m not sure … that the question you should be asking is At what point, precisely, did I sin? You may want to be asking if your behavior was prudent, loving, or wise. You may want to ask at what point you loved your neighbor.” (Theologian Christopher West puts the question this way: “Is this … behavior an authentic sign of Christ’s love, or is it not?”)

From Real Sex: the Naked Truth About Chastity by Lauren F. Winner

Dissenting Views

2005-09-28T09:48:00.000-07:00

Librarians are supposed to stand for intellectual freedom, diversity of opinion, and providing access to materials that represent all points of view. How can we do that when many of us are intolerant of dissenting views? Allowing our profession to be a bastion of orthodoxy of any kind defeats our purpose.

From “The Loneliness of a Conservative Librarian” by David Durant
The Chronicle of Higher Education, from the issue dated September 30, 2005

Anyone care to speculate how Mr. Durant’s point might apply to the church?

It seems to me that when the church, just like ALA( the American Library Association), endorses any political orthodoxy we are at risk of losing sight of our primary objectives, bringing Christ Jesus to a lost and dying world and living the Christ life in it. That doesn’t mean we should not bring our faith into the political arena just that we should expect our churches to help us do so rather than tell us what party we should support.

The Founding Fathers of our nation had observed the problems a State Religion caused for religion as much as for the state. They recognized how important it was for Americans to exercise their religion freely. In essence they freed the church to be the church. Rather than making one orthodoxy or the other a “test” for our faith, the men who set up our nation allowed faith to drive our politics. The church should be interested in political issues, take part in the political life of our country, and send its members into the political arena armed and supported by sound doctrine and prayer. But, when that participation becomes endorsement and how one votes is a test of how good a Christian one is, the church, as much as ALA, needs to stop being political and start being the organization it was intended to be.

Google and the Luddites?

2005-09-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Google is being sued for copyright infringement. Filed yesterday, the suit made the news today. The New York Times starts its article as follows, “Three authors filed suit against Google yesterday contending that the company's program to create searchable digital copies of the contents of several university libraries constituted "massive copyright infringement."’

Like it or not, the digital library is coming. Some of us will welcome it. Others, like authors and the publishing industry, will either resist it or move with caution toward digitization. We are all going to have to manage it. I think it is a good thing such cases are being tried because these issues must be resolved and the copyright law clarified. As with all changes in technology, the path will not be smooth.

Some two hundred years ago the timesaving inventions in the textile industry in Great Briton lead to smashing the efficient new looms and rioting in the streets. These Luddites lent their name to anyone who opposes technological change. Fear of loss of income, of the uncertain and unfamiliar, of social displacement all played into the violence of the weavers who feared industrialization. Not all of their fears were unfounded but their resistance could not stop the juggernaut of the power loom.

Fears of infringement of copyright and loss of sales on the part of authors and publishers won’t stop the digital revolution. Changes to accepted and cherished institutions like the book store and the library are inevitable. We can either attack entities like Google that are on the forefront of this movement or we can join the movement or we can wait and watch the trends awhile longer. What we can’t do, or do at our own risk, is ignore the issue and hope it goes away. It won’t.

The New Yorker on the Digital Edge

2005-09-20T11:58:00.000-07:00

I was listening to Morning Edition on my local NPR station this morning and heard an interesting piece about the newly released, 8 DVD archive of The New Yorker magazine. The set contains all the issues from 1925 to February of 2005. The DVDs have over 4,000 individual magazines in their entirety. This treasure trove sells for only $100 per set, an amazing value for the money. For a closer look visit The New Yorker website.

At the end of the story, the reporter discussed the copyright problems faced in producing this set. Recent Supreme Court decisions allow the archival digitization of the entire magazine where articles appear in their original context under its collective work copyright. Individual articles would have to have permission from the author to be reproduced so collections of J.D. Salanger or John Updike pieces or even partial archives present major difficulties to publishers. By producing a cover to cover copy, not only the significant but the mundane is preserved. You will find the great writers and the cartoons The New Yorker is famous for and you will find the ads, some quite odd after 80 years, and out-of-date announcement magazines include.

Technological advancements over the past 10 years, since the National Geographic produced a similar archive, is also a part of the picture in making this set available to the public. While building on the past, the magazine had to “invent the wheel” in working out the details of the project. From finding two copies of each magazine in good condition to transporting the collection in a truck driven you their own staff to the company who digitized it in Kansas City, the story of the creation of the DVDs is interesting on its own. More publications will undoubtedly follow and The New Yorker will be the first of many.

An interesting sidelight was that The New Yorker maintains a card catalog dating back to 1925 that numbered some 1.2 million cards. It was considered too valuable to transport as there is only one copy of the catalog. The technicians came to the card catalog to digitize this resource. The librarian in charge is spending his time searching the digital product these days and the card catalog is “gathering dust.”

The success of this project must make us wonder what other venerable library fixtures may soon be gathering dust. This may well be a significant step toward the digital library college administrators long for and library staffs feel great ambivalence toward. I think there are four issues in this news release that bear further thought: the copyright implications, the involvement of the publisher in the release of this product, the technological advancements to allow such a massive project to be completed in a timely manner, and the low cost making it affordable to a wide range of consumers. I think we are still some way from a truly digital library but this, and other efforts to offer us an affordable product, are important steps toward that end.

What Makes Us Valuable?

2005-08-17T14:46:00.000-07:00

There is no one of us whose life is too flawed with sin to be used by God. Our value comes not from who or what we are, but from what God makes of us.

Donna, a missionary in South America, quoted in Voices of the Faithful with Beth Moore, compiled by Kim P. Davis

On Being Non-Politically Correct

2005-08-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

”…large numbers of students either parrot the PC line or (more often) quietly avoid contradicting it. Yet political correctness looks a lot stronger on the surface than it really is. The truth is, its strength (intimidation) is also its weakness – because most people don’t really believe in it. … The gods of secularism and political correctness are nothing compared to the God of Israel. They can only intimidate us if we let them - if we forget who our God is and what He does.”

Matt Kaufman (from "Power PC") quoted in Abby Nye's new book Fish Out of Water: Surviving and Thriving as a Christian on a Secular Campus.

The Sound of Thunder

2005-08-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

In Elizabeth Peter’s He Shall Thunder in the Sky*, intrepid Egyptologists, Amelia Peabody Emerson and her family, must deal with the events surrounding the Turkish plot to take Cairo from the English in the opening years of World War I. Peter’s feisty heroin needs all her skills as a criminologist as well as her archaeological ones to survive the 1914-15 season. In the depths of the novel is a reference to jihad to free Egypt from colonial control. It was a timely reminder that the roots of today’s conflict with radical Islam are long and complex.

Having peeked my interest I did a little research on the history of jihad. While the term goes all the way back to the founding of Islam, the jihad called for by modern radicals is far different than that of early thinkers on the Islamic law. Pulling together personal devotion and cultural responsibility with a political agenda that is anti-colonial and anti-western, modern proponents of irregular, terrorist warfare have thrown aside the ancient rules of combat Islam had embraced for more that a millennia. Putting the events of the last decade into an historical context is a start in making sense of the seemingly senseless acts of radical Islamic terrorists. While the logic of such leaders as Osama bin Laden may seem twisted and sick to the western mind, it makes convincingly clear sense to his followers. They classify all who disagree with their beliefs as infidels and apostates who must be removed from power before true Islamists can reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

Who said history was dry and irrelevant? For more on the history of jihad try Michael G. Knapp’s article, "The Concept and Practice of Jihad in Islam" which gives a good survey of the topic (from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania web site). Want to dig deeper? There are many good books on the subject that your local reference librarian will be happy to help you locate.

*The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters incorporate mystery, romance, and history in a cleaver, entertaining blend. To keep all the characters straight it is advisable to read the books in sequence. He Shall Thunder in the Sky is the 12th in the series and was published in 2000.

Faith Comes First

2005-07-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

Subway is one of the leaders in the fast food market. It was started by a college student and a research scientist with a $1,000 and very little else. In his book, Start Small Finish Big, Fred DeLuca, the college student in the partnership, not only tells his story but that of other successful business people who started small. One such is Cynthia Wake. She sums up why she has persevered in her business thus:

“Faith comes first”, she says. “I have faith that God can do anything, including make me a success. I would have to do my part, of course, and that meant I couldn’t give up.”

Start Small Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start and Run Your Own Successful Business by Fred DeLuca with John P. Hayes

Wired Recognizes Challenge

2005-07-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

The August 2005, issue of Wired magazine arrived in yesterday’s post. I ripped open the plastic cover and settled into my easy chair last night to explore the cutting edge of technology and culture in this slick, edgy periodical. Along with a million-dollar production car, the Bugatti Veyron, digital images on Japanese school girl's nails, and the latest movie news was a side bar that really caught my eye, “Will the Internet put public libraries out of business?”

What followed was a brief overview of the debate in library circles. It is summed up in three quotes from some leading figures in the field – libraries will change roles but continue to be the storehouse and gate keeper of information in the community, Sue Davidsen; electronic access may draw clientele but books will keep satisfying a need to read in the public, Michael Gorman; the library is all ready on its way out and public money will be shifted to more pressing needs, Jessamyn West. (The side bar is found on page 30 of the Aug. 2005 issue.)

Wired is good at side bars but much more can and will be said on this topic. How about continuing the debate here – post your comments!

Essays from a SciFi Master

2005-07-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

Isaac Asimov was one of the most recognized names in Science Fiction in the 20th Century. While he was a legendary novelist, he loved playing with ideas as the essays in The Tragedy of the Moon demonstrate. In "The Ancient and the Ultimate" he muses on the book as a form of "stored speech." Asked to speculate on the perfect video cassette of the future, he describes the BOOK - compact, self-contained, personal, unobtrusive, portable. Technology may find a replacement for the ubiquitous book but, until that day, Asimov argues, books will not disappear.

While the essays in this volume cover a lot of ground from space to the thyroid gland to the book, one of the most intriguing is "Lost in Non-Translation". Asimov examines the meaning of despised foreigners in two Biblical stories - a Moabite woman, in the Old Testament book of Ruth, and a Samaritan business man, Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament. He brings home the distinctions humans make toward those despised others in our midst in terms of American race relations. Although there have been many changes to the category of despised others in America, this essay is as thought provoking a treatment today as when it was published some 30 years ago.

These two essays alone make The Tragedy of the Moon worth reading.

Worth Quoting - Prayer

2005-07-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

Keeping His commandments means we have a God-reference to life. God and His word are taken into account… He is our frame of reference.

Don't Just Stand There, Pray Something by Ronald Dunn

The Miracle of the Garden

2005-07-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

My garden inspires many emotions. Sometimes it is frustration when it seems that my weeds have weeds. Sometimes it is satisfaction when a plant combination works just right or a flower blooms to perfection. Underlying all is the knowledge that it is not my skill, persistence, or luck that makes my garden grow. One of Jesus’ parables uses the miracle of the garden to explain the Kingdom; conversely it tells us how gardens grow! A garden is a reminder that God is the creator and sustainer of all things.

26He also said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."
Mark 4:26-29 (NIV from BibleGateway.Com)

The miracle of the garden is the topic of Jan Karon’s sweet little book, The Trellis and the Seed. This picture book is attractive both for its art, by Robert Gantt Steele, and its story of a little seed who becomes something far more than anyone ever expected.

The Trellis and the Seed: A Book of Encouragement for All Ages
by Jan Karon
Paintings by Robert Gantt Steele
Viking Juvenile (April 14, 2003), ISBN: 0670892890

Worth Quoting - Joy of Grace

2005-07-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

"Surely it has theological significance that unearned gifts and unexpected pleasures bring the most joy."

Philip Yancey What's So Amazing About Grace?