Sean Boisen: Character

Blogos RSS Feed has Moved: Please Update Your Reader URL

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:49:44 GMT

I've moved to a new blogging platform (goodbye Radio Userland, hello WordPress).

But if you read through an RSS aggregator (this is really important, so pay attention):

This is the last post to the current RSS feed (http://www.semanticbible.com/blogos/rss.xml)
You must change your feed URL to keep reading Blogos: the new feed is http://semanticbible.com/blogos/feed/.
If you've only been subscribed to a specific channel (e.g. http://www.semanticbible.com/blogos/categories/semanticbible/rss.xml), those have moved as well: the new one for SemanticBible-only posts is http://semanticbible.com/blogos/category/semanticbible/feed/ (note 'categories' -> 'category'), and others are constructed in similar fashion

If you read directly from the website, everything will work as before at my preferred URL, http://www.semanticbible.com/blogos/. The new site includes several syndication buttons that make it easy to add Blogos to your Bloglines, MyYahoo!, or other readers.

If you have any problems with this, please send me (sean) an email at semanticbible daht com. I don't want to lose any readers in the transition (there aren't that many to start with!).

Doc Searls and the Generosity of Morality

Wed, 24 May 2006 02:07:43 GMT

Catching up on some posts ... Tim O'Reilly has a great post on Web 2.0 and an interchange with Doc Searls, co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto. Searls sees Web 2.0 as fundamentally deriving from morality as generosity. If you read down to the bottom, Searls has a link to an earlier post about how he learned this lesson from a Nigerian Christian minister named Sayo Ajiboye.

I love the idea that we're finally discovering (in the networked systems domain) the beneficial outcome in our own lives of following a fundamental principle: God gives generously to all (James 1:5), so we should too.

The Humility of Jesus

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:20:55 GMT

"... it is important that we know who Christ is, especialy the chief characteristic that is the root and essence of His character as our Redeemer. There can be but one answer: it is His humility. What is the Incarnation but his heavenly humility, His emptying himself and becoming man? What is His life on earth bu humility; His taking the form of a servant? And what is His atonement but humility? 'He humbled himself and became obedient to death.' And what is His ascension and His glory but humility exalted to the throne and crowned with glory? 'He humbled himself ... therefore God exalted Him to the highest place.' In heaven, where He was one with the Father; in His birth, His life, and His death on earth; in His return to the right hand of the Father -- it is all humility. Christ is the expression of the humility of God embodied in human nature ..." (reflections on Phil.2.5-11from Humility, by Andrew Murray)

Oh, for the humility of Jesus in myself and around me!

Google's Evil Scale?

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 15:41:37 GMT

If you've wondered exactly how Google evaluates their actions in light of their "do no evil" corporate policy, wonder no more.

The Ethics of Spying

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:30:41 GMT

A New York Times piece (free registration required) on a conference examining the ethics of spying provides some interesting insights into everyday moral reasoning (albeit in a somewhat exotic profession). Some of the issues seems like traditional wartime dilemmas: are civilian deaths justified in a Predator missile strike to kill terrorists (and if so, how many)? One participant "came up with her own ad-hoc ethical checklist" (including what her mother would say about an action). Another, a 33-year retired veteran, explicitly disavows the whole endeaver: "Depending on where you're coming from, the whole business of espionage is unethical." How does he sleep at night??

The NYTimes points out how one of the speaker's comments weren't approved for public release, "gutting" her paper. Security from one angle always looks like censorship from another, especially when you're a major media outlet. Does it all matter? "My feeling is that every problem with the intelligence in the run-up to the war was an ethical question," said a 24-year veteran analyst.

More on End of the Spear and Cultural Transformation

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 22:29:02 GMT

Following up my post about End of the Spear, i found this incredible 1998 Christianity Today article by ~~Nate~~ Steve Saint about a group of American college students who visited the Waodani and learned first-hand about both cultural differences and personal transformation. A teaser:

As the students unloaded their bags at the campsite, I could see the rapport between them and their guides—they were enjoying the camaraderie. So much so, in fact, that as we settled around a campfire that evening, a student asked me who the "savage Huaorani" were that they had read about before leaving the United States.

Sitting on logs under a star-studded sky and with a jungle of insects singing in the background, I explained that the very people they had been traveling, eating, sleeping, and hunting with were, in fact, these savages. (read the rest)

This story provides a clear response to those who think that missionaries somehow impose a foreign and unwelcome way of life on unwitting victims.

Faceted Browsing for Scripture

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 12:27:25 GMT

I've been reading some material at work on faceted browsing, a different paradigm for searching large information collections. Rather than trying to find just the right keywords to retrieve just the right documents, . You can see a nice demo of this at facetmap.com, where they show browing a collection of information about wines ("resources" in their parlance) via facets like type of wine, region of origin, and price (using a slider interface).

Faceted browsing has some significant advantages:

The continual exposure of the next level of detail helps you understand the nature of the data more than the sodastraw view of keyword retrieval. I don't need to figure out what subcategories of wine types are, or how they're named: i can see them and select them directly
Adding information about how many resources fit in particular facets reduces blind alleys
Even an enormous collection can quickly be reduced to just the items of interest through the intersection of several facets

I posted previously about a prototype browser for New Testament Names using Longwell from the Simile Project, a nice faceted browser that runs off RDF.

So now i'm thinking more about the Composite Gospel and what facets would enhance search. Once i finish NTN (alas, still a work in progress, and too slow progress at that), person and location names are two obvious facets that will then be easy to add. There are some obvious top-level categories as well:

historical periods in the life of Jesus (birth, ministry of John the Baptist, Holy Week, his Passion, etc.)
parables, other teachings
a collection of imperatives, that is, commands that Jesus gave, whether general or specific (another yet unfinished project). Once i've got an initial catalog, i'd like to organize these in an ontology: imperatives about prayer, about our relationships with others, about our attitidues, etc.

This really comes back to a deep and fundamental issue: why do we read Scripture? The basic factual tasks are to understand the history of God's interaction with people and his revelation in Jesus (as well as the history of the early church). But beyond this, it's really about change: learning a different cognitive framework or worldview, adopting new attitudes, and changing the way we behave. How do we structure this information in a way to make it easier and more transparent for disciples to grasp and internalize, resulting in their own transformation, and subsequent teaching and training of others? That's a cognitive and learning challenge behind the task of making disciples in the 21st century.

Scripture and the Psychology of Learning

Thu, 05 May 2005 13:21:56 GMT

Everything in the Scriptures is God's Word. All of it is useful for teaching and helping people and for correcting them and showing them how to live. The Scriptures train God's servants to do all kinds of good deeds. (2 Tim 3:16-17, CEV)

I'd really like to know more the interaction between the content of Scripture, and the psychology of learning, to understand more deeply how Scripture supports our growth in character and spiritual discipline. Just off the top of my head, i can see the following roles for Biblical instruction:

We learn facts we didn't know before, and taught basic principles about spiritual life
We're directed to specific thoughts and deeds, and warned against sinful living.
We're given motivation and encouragement to do what's right
We see examples of how to (and how not to) live out godly principles, in the lives of the characters described there
We're invited to worship God through psalms and poems

and no doubt others. Surely somebody has put together some clear ideas about this? Let me know what you think.

National Day of Prayer

Thu, 05 May 2005 11:57:40 GMT

Today is the National Day of Prayer. Our Lord told us to pray, and taught us how to pray (Pericope 73: Jesus teaches about prayer, and others): take some time today to do it.

You Can't be a Sweet Cucumber in a Vinegar Barrel

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:24:21 GMT

is the intriguing title of a lengthy article by Stanford social psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. He reflects on the connections between Abu Ghraib and his famous Stanford Prison Experiment in the early 70s. The main conclusion is that putting "good" people in a bad environment, especially one that includes anonymity, power, and pressure, causes nearly all of them to do very bad things. We want to believe good people don't do such horrible things, but the evidence shows that under the right conditions, most will. The key is dehumanization: if we stop viewing people as people, all sorts of unthinkable evil becomes ... thinkable.
This seems like a clear call to the church to loudly proclaim the inherent value of people, made in God's image.

Sider: the Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience

Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:59:51 GMT

e-church points to this Christianity Today article by Ron Sider, an excerpt from his new book "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience". It is a careful and well-documented look at how little those who claim to be Christians differ in their moral behavior from the general populace. Well worth reading and deeply contemplating ...

Christian Smith on What American Teenagers Believe

Sat, 08 Jan 2005 16:07:31 GMT

Christianity Today has an interview with sociologist Christian Smith discussing his findings about the beliefs of contemporary 13- to 17-year olds. In general, "teens reflect the world more than they rebel against it". It's surprising that most kids in this group aren't opposed to the religious views of their parents. At the same time, they really don't want to be perceived as "too religious", particularly in the social sense of somebody who stands out and seems weird. At the same time, they are "incredibly inarticulate about their faith, their religious beliefs and practices."

... it really struck us in our research that very few teens are getting a chance to practice talking about their faith. We were dumbfounded by the number of teens who told us we were the first adults who had asked them what they believed. One said: "I do not know. No one has ever asked me that before." (italics mine)

The whole article is worth a thoughtful read, particularly Smith's discussion of "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism", which he sees as the de facto faith of many teens, including those from evangelical Christian backgrounds.

Reading: Ordering Your Private World

Sun, 02 Jan 2005 14:01:15 GMT

This is the season when we reflect on the year gone by and think about what we'd like to be different in the year to come. New Year's resolutions have come to mean things we don't take seriously, or don't maintain over time, but there's great value in reviewing and re-purposing, if we follow through.

MacDonald's book offer readable encouragement to take the inner life seriously, something i find myself more and more focused on over time. Simply stated, the difference between merely existing and actually accomplishing something or being someone seems to come from a decision, whether conscious or not, to manage yourself. As Christians, this is a practical expression of Paul's statement that "the love of Christ controls us" (2Cor.5.14)

Here are MacDonald's Laws of Unmanaged Time from chapter seven:

Unmanaged time flows toward my weaknesses: without a clear notion of where i'm strong and what my abilities are and aren't, i'll tend to invest my time outside the areas of my best and most important contributions
Unmanaged time comes under the influence of dominant people in my world: my schedule, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If i don't take up my God-given responsibility to manage it, others around me will do so for their own agendas, well-intentioned or not.
Unmanaged time surrenders to the demands of all emergencies: only a clear sense of priorities can help me decide what really needs to be done, as opposed to what is merely the tyranny of the urgent.
Unmanaged time gets invested in things that gain public acclamation: while this may be more of a tendency for public figures like MacDonald, things like email and blogging provide many of us the allure of potential public presence. My sitemeter has a graph that shows how many times my blog page was hit: it's easy to make this a barometer of the significance of what i post.

My resolution: keep working at identifying what God has actually called me to do, and find ways to keep my time focused on it.

On Oaths and Swearing

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 13:33:26 GMT

"But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your "yes" be yes and your "no" be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation." (James.5.12)

This weekend i finished listening to the audio version of the Autobiography of George Fox (courtesy of the wonderful Christian Classics Ethereal Library), all told more than 16 hours worth of rich material for reflection while mowing the lawn and doing other yardwork. Though i wonder about some details of his theology, one cannot dispute Fox's dedication to Christ, or his impact on his 17th century world, including the fledgling settlements in America that i've been reading about in Michener's Chesapeake.

One of the major issues that confronted Fox and the Quakers was their refusal to take oaths of allegiance to the government. We are repulsed today by images of terrorists beheading their victims: in this time as well, changing political fortunes often lead to similar (and worse) barbarities against those associated with the former government. So there was strong motivation to declare allegiance under oath, and Fox and numerous of his followers spent much time in dungeons for their refusal to swear, some even being executed.

The words of James above, echoing those of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt.5.33-37), seem clear enough: as translated in the Contemporary English Version, "When you make a promise, say only "Yes" or "No." Anything else comes from the devil." Fox often challenged his judicial opponents to show him where Jesus or any of his apostles commanded the taking of an oath.

We're all familiar with the modern courtroom drama that begins with "place your right hand on the Bible: do you swear ... ?" I've never been called upon to testify in court, but isn't this practice in direct contradiction to the words of Christ printed in that same Bible? Certainly a different legal standard applies: if the judge or lawyer suspects prevarication by the witness on the stand, they are reminded "you are under oath," and (unlike the lies of ordinary life!) you can go to jail for lying under oath. Fox's witness has caused me to wonder whether a Christian ought properly to refuse to take such oaths, in obedience to Jesus. (Note further the Oath of Allegiance to be taken by those seeking naturalized US citizenship: "I hereby declare, on oath, ...")

William Law on Holy Living

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 14:12:50 GMT

I'm re-reading William Law's Serious Call, and found his story about Penitens worth repeating.

Read it here...

A Lottery Ticket for Heaven

Mon, 31 May 2004 01:01:54 GMT

The Barna Research Group does a great service to the American church by trying to carefully and scientifically assess what the actual facts of Christian behavior are (which don't always line up with our preconceptions or hopes). A recent study looks at a variety of behavioral questions, segmented along faith lines (evangelical Christian, non-evangelical born again Christians, "notional" Christians, adherents of non-Christian faiths, and atheists/agnostics).

George Barna's summary statement bears repeating:

“The ultimate aim of belief in Jesus is not simply to possess divergent theological ideas but to become a transformed person. These statistics highlight the fact that millions of people who rely on Jesus Christ for their eternal destiny have problems translating their religious beliefs into action beyond Sunday mornings.”

One interesting factoid: those who fall into the Christian but not evangelical categories (non-evangelical and notional Christians) are more likely to purchase lottery tickets.

"Overall, 15% of born again and 23% of notional Christians purchased lottery tickets in a typical week, compared to just 10% of other-faith adherents and 12% of atheists/agnostics."

It doesn't say much about our faith if it isn't strong enough to transform our attitudes about money, particularly the desire to get rich (which Paul describes as a snare, 1 Timothy 6:9), and our trust in God rather than in riches.