Just some updates and random thoughts for today.
The Greatest Story Never Told
Interesting how ideas from different people will occur at the same time. Tomorrow, I’ll be posting on my tech blog about some tech snake oil. I started the article last Thursday, and another favorite blog of mine in the meanwhile posted about snake oil in a different context. While working on the very same article, there was a news segment called “Don’t Waste Your Money” that interviewed someone who called one of those late night TV commercials that promised to speed up your PC. Well, I, of course, put a link to that segment in the article since it was related but about a different company.
Well, Life Hope & Truth recently put in Discern magazine the article “The Greatest Story Never Told“. You might recall I recently posted an article with the same exact title. BTW, I’m not saying it is anything more than a coincidence in any of these cases, but I do find it interesting, nonetheless. In addition, GTA was the first one I’m aware of that used that term and wrote an article on it, so that puts it squarely into the “interesting” category and nothing more suspect than that.
Other Interesting Articles
BTW, LCG’s Wallace G Smith, author of the Thoughts En Route blog, is back from camp and posting at a furious rate! I recommend checking them out, but in particular “Islamic terrorists present youth with a serious ‘God.’ Does Christianity?” He examines why some western youths might be drawn not just to Islam but to extremist Islam (aka, terrorists driven by fanatic Islamic philosophy).
The Quintessential Leadership blog posted “Quintessential Leadership Practically Applied: Avoiding the Snake Oil Trap“. It points out a way of thinking and speaking that I’ve tried to point out in the few years of this blog. I too have noticed that a significant number of people seem to gravitate towards snake oil salesmen, and in particular if has a religious element to it. We want the easy answers, the “silver bullet”, and we don’t want to do the effort and time it takes to research out the truth.
We also get sloppy in our language. QL points out the detriment of sloppy language, mixing up dementia and Alzheimer’s. Prophetically, however, we call groups of people “kings” instead of what they are: nations. It has become ingrained in our system so much that it becomes gibberish to an outsider. How can we spread the Gospel if we cannot even talk in a meaningful and careful manner?
Sabbath Thoughts last week posted an engaging article about “A World of Panes” in which a hummingbird desperately tries to get beyond the window panes and doesn’t look at the big picture long enough to see the way of escape.
Check out these and others in the Blog Roll. I cleaned it up quite a bit not long ago, and I’m hoping to add more meaningful blogs to it in the near future.
Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices and Helium Network Articles
I’ve managed to grab all of the articles that were worthy anything off of Yahoo! Voices before it shut down with very little notice. I’m now reposting some from Helium, but some are already on here. However, the Helium articles probably were better quality for various reasons, so keep an eye out for them. Helium gave a lot more notice, which is good since most of my good articles outside of this blog were on there. 🙂
Wiki Progress
Some articles as well as some others I’ve been privileged to write will become part of the new wiki I’m working on. Blogs are nice for posting information and having a multi-directional conversation, but I feel the more important articles should be moved into a different format that is easier for searches and interlinking.
My goal is similar to one I had previously started at the very beginning when this was all a private site, and that is a blog that will address news and new information as it comes along but a wiki to represent a systematic theology of the Churches of God. It should address not only what I believe but what is the standard doctrine as was stated by HWA and how any of the COGs differ (if they do).
I think I’ve finally settled on a platform. I’ll have to do some more testing to see if I can set it up from scratch, though, as I will only have limited rights on the hosting site. If not, I may have to go back to one of the less desirable but easier to set up platforms.
The concern I have is where else can one turn to get an unbiased systematic view of the beliefs of the Churches of God? Most would probably point to Mystery of the Ages, Herbert W Armstrong’s final attempt at a book that really tied it all together. However, it doesn’t necessarily reflect all of the views of all of the groups any longer (maybe especially the ones that claim the loudest to be following it). You could turn to COGWriter’s site, but it is anything but unbiased. There are plenty of other good blogs and such to glean information, but blogs don’t really lend themselves well to interlinking and showing the relationship between various items.
It is an ambitious project, but it is one I’ve wanted to do for a long time now.