Matt’s News / Blog

I don’t think I’ve ever really given anything up for Lent in the past, but this year I decided to try it. I gave up my biggest vice World of Warcraft. It’s going fairly well, so far I’m down to breaking out in a cold sweat once a day. j/k I’ve mainly been spending my extra time working on setting up my new VPS. I’m having quite a time getting everything going.

I decided to ditch the long-time standard UNIX mail server, Sendmail, for the newer hopefully better and easier to configure Qmail. I’m also using vpopmail to manage the domains and email address for Qmail per the how-to that I was following. I did end up deviating from the how-to in the way of the IMAP/POP3 server. The how -to had me use Courier-IMAP. But I couldn’t get it working for the life of me. So I switched to Dovecot. It seems to be working now. I also found out that a dovecot is a building for pigeons. I find this a very clever and witty name for an IMAP/POP3 server.

Problems that I still need to fix:
-Can’t send email to any of my new domains
-Not sure if can check email via IMAP
-Need to convert existing email accounts from mbox to Maildir
-Need to test SMTP.

Once the mail server is up and running, I will move unto Apache, the web server.

As you have probably heard, there is lots of controversy over the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools. There was a ruling yesterday that called it unconstutional. Today, I heard a very good opinion about the court decision and I.D. in general. (It is an opinion in favor of it, but I think well balanced.) You can listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5065062

Most arguments against Intelligent Design go like this:
-ID is really creationism.
-Creationism deals with religion — ie the supernatural
-the supernatural is not possible
-therefore ID is bad science

Another arguement against Intelligent Design:
-ID takes Evolution, which is an atheistic idea and fills God into the places Evolution has problems.
-ID then really is a “God of the Gaps” theory.
-God is bigger than the Gaps
-ID is bad.

Most arguments for Intelligent Design go like this:
-Evolution is a completely atheistic idea
-Atheisim is bad/wrong
-Creationism is right
-ID is right

I really like the explaination of I.D. in the opinion peice, which is basiclly that ID is looking at the complexities found in biology and looking at empirical evidence to whether those complexities arised out of purely natural-mechincal processes or was there design in it.

So, this afternoon I ran into on of my biggest frustrations with the Taylor Network, the blocking the download of nearly all mp3s and other music files from the Internet. (As a side note, I think blocking P2P on campus makes sense just for the bandwidth issues, but not normal http traffic). I ran across this site. It looks pretty neat. How it works is you can try music, then if you like it you can buy it. I hadn’t heard of any of the artist before and wanted to take a listen, but no, I was denied, block, censored by Websense, Taylor’s filtering software. The music offered on the site is licensed under the Creative Commons License which, in my opinion, is much more like what copyright should be and how it was originally defined in the Constitution. The Creative Commons seems to be a much better, more balanced answer to copyright issues than suing teens and old ladies, perpetual copyright and DRM.

Over the weekend I read/saw two things that made me think about how we as Christians engage the culture around us.

First was an artical that Aaron mentioned to me. It is about a journalist from GQ who is a non-Christian. He immersed himself in the American Evangelical subculture for a week. The article chronicles has experiences and thoughts. He is critical of the Christian subculture that creates bad copies of secular things, such as music.

The second was a frontline documentry about advertising. One thing that was especially interesting was the statement that companies are trying to build meaning and community into their products to replace the meaning and community that was traditionally found in churches and schools. Market researches figured this out by studying why people join cults. Another change in advertising over the years has been the shift from appealing to one’s reason (it’s new and improved, works better!) to the more subtle appealing to one’s emotions (use this and you will feel good). It’s scary to think just how much we are influenced by corporate advertising. Even scarier is the fact that political parties are using the same type of things to get people to vote for them.

Many things to think about.

John Stott has been around campus the past few days. He spoke in chapel today and Wednesday. When I was in London last January, I was able to visit his church, All Souls Church. I don’t think he spoke the day I went, but still a good experience. I really appreciate his urging for balance in Christianity. He also advocates thinking about issues. Too often, I think Christians except the stereotype that church requires you to check your brain at the door. Emotions have become the standard for Christians, we strive for the spiritual highs, and dread the lows. Emotions are important, but not what we should strive for, while abandoning our minds. Jesus says the greatest command is to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37 NIV.

I think that the church’s abandonment of the mind reflects the American pop culture’s mistrust of intelligence. Today, instead of being wise, or intelligent we are merely knowledgeable at best. Think of school these days. In high school, most of my classes just required me to regurgitate information back to the teacher. Here at Taylor, although better (depending on the professor), the same things happens. Just spit the facts back up and you get an A. No thinking required. We need to strive for a balance. The opposite is true. All thought without emotions becomes hard, cold and uncaring. Hence people that think about things, computers, literature, politics, math, physics, society, etc are labeled as ‘nerds’ and ‘geeks’ and become uncool.

The logical outworking of this lack of thought is ‘do whatever feels good’ even if it hurts people or yourself. Don’t think about it, ‘Just do it’. ‘Live for the moment’. etc…

This pas Friday, I went to a meeting of the CS Lewis and Friends Society. Aaron was going and invited me along. The meeting was held at Taylor Fort Wayne’s brand new English Library. The new building was impressive. I really liked the style it was built in, kindof an a Ivy League Academic feel. Dr. Neuhouser gave a lecture on George MacDonald’s view on evangelism. He thought that by living a loving, Godly life, people would be attracted to his lifestyle. Then, the person would read the Gospels and would be convicted of something, even if they didn’t quite believe in Jesus. This conviction would then lead them to Christ. It was a good balance to Mark Cahill’s chapel on evangelism. His view is the ‘Christians should be handing out tracks in Walmart’ view.

I’m a big CS Lewis fan. I also like his friend’s writings too. I like George MacDonald’s writings too. Although, I’ve only read: Lilith and The Golden Key.

Well, that’s all for tonight. Oh, if you are on Taylor’s campus, check out the new Online Echo site.

Yesterday, I went to Upland United Methodist Church. This past Sunday was their 100th year anniversary. Even though it was my first time going to that church, it was neat to see how God worked in the church over the past 100 years. The theme of the service was “The Light Shines On”. It seemed to tie in well with their anniversary. The service reminded me of camp. This past year was the 135 year that camp meeting has been held on the camp grounds. I think that in the American-Evangelical world we tend to forget about the years in between the end of Acts and now on a practical level. Sure, we know who Luther, Augustine and Aquinas are but don’t look at the common people and how God worked in their life. The story that sticks out in my mind that was told in church on Sunday was of a man who was known as a thief around Upland circa 1904. In the midst of a revival that was going on in Upland, he went to a service at Upland UMC. After the service, he was convicted and went to the people he stole from and repaid them. How often do we hear stories of how God works in the lives of the everyday person from 100, 200, or even 1000 years ago?

Either this evening or tomorrow morning I will be heading out to Simpson Park Camp for camp meeting. My family has been going there many, many years. My grandpa and grandma first went together back in the 40’s. I’ve been there every year of my life. The year wouldn’t seem complete without going to camp.