This morning my wife and I were abruptly woken by someone pounding on our door…at 5:30 a.m. I shuffled out of bed, grabbed my glasses and went downstairs to see who it was at our door. I spoke through the door, which was double locked for those concerned, and asked who they were and what they wanted. It was a guy I’ve never seen before and he wanted to come inside and sleep. He looked like he might be high or possibly homeless – or I suppose both. I told him no, then he offered to pay me $5 and again I turned him down. Then he asked for socks, so I grabbed a pair of socks and through them out a window for him – I wasn’t about to open the door for him. Then I asked him to leave and he did.

He probably wasn’t violent or dangerous, but I was cautious nonetheless. I always feel conflicted about these types of situations. Christ tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves and that he is the “least of these”. Where do you draw the line between being faithful and cautious. It’s not like homeless and/or poor people suddenly became dangerous in the past century. I’m sure there were some who were dangerous in Christ’s day. I’m pretty sure we did the right thing and we’ve subsequently prayed for the guy, but is that all just rationalization to make ourselves feel better about turning him away?

I could go on and on about this, but I think the point is out there. How and where do you draw the line between compassion and caution?

Earlier this week Glenn Beck made waves by urging Christians to leave any church that supports social justice.  Promptly after he made these statements, prominent Christians all over the country reacted negatively and started to urge their followers to boycott Beck.  While I understand the reaction, I’m wondering if it was the correct one.  After all, this wouldn’t be the first time Christians made a knee jerk reaction and made the wrong move. Read the rest of this entry »

As someone who works in the field of information technology I am fascinated by the concept of Open Source Software (OSS) development.  OSS is primarily the principle that by allowing anybody the chance to work on your source code you’ll end up with better code. Another name for it is community based development. Sure there is the possibility that someone sabotages your project, but most people that care about the project will treat it with respect and actually help to make it better. The thing that makes OSS work isn’t that it’s (largely) free software, it’s that communities develop around specific projects and these communities work together to make the project better.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the development of the church in terms of open source.  Initially the two seem to be polar opposites, church and software development, but the more I’ve thought about it the more it makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

No doubt you’ve heard about the kerfuffle surrounding Miss California in the Miss USA pageant on April 18.  If you haven’t then you are truly a blessed person and I’m going to introduce you to it – and thus remove your blessing I guess. Basically in the Q&A section she was asked whether she thought states should allow homosexual marriage.  She answered honestly and happened to say that she did not believe in homosexual marriage. She ended up as the runner-up – many people say she would have won has she answered the question oppositely. I really don’t care about her answer, which I thought was oddly phrased and not well thought out, but hey she was nervous and probably expecting a question about world peace or something. My problem is with the questioner, a well known tabloid personality, who happens to be very pro-homosexual marriage.  He asked the question thinking that he would get a particular answer based upon his bias and he didn’t get that answer.  Ever since he has ravaged this young lady at every opportunity, because she did not answer the way he would have liked. Read the rest of this entry »

Who does not like a parade?  If you had asked me a couple days ago I’d say a lot of people.  In fact I was of the opinion that parades had gone out of style.  They just don’t seem like something that people are really into anymore.  I mean we have Twitter and text messages, movies and TV and a thousand other things that seem much more interesting that waiting on the side of the road to see endless numbers of floats, marching bands and who-knows-why dignitaries from who-knows-where.  Mark me as surprised on Saturday when I went to photograph the local Daffodil Festival parades and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people along the parade routes to watch them.  I’m sure that, as an outsider, I don’t fully appreciate how big of a deal the Daffodil Festival is in this area.  Still, there were a lot of people out there at 10 a.m. on a Saturday to watch a parade.  The second parade was even more well attended – I had trouble finding a place to stand where I could take decent photos of the event. I don’t know why so many people like parades – they’re not my cup of tea and maybe that’s the point.  My own bias against parades prevents me from truly understanding why people enjoy them so very much. Read the rest of this entry »