I’m trying to ease myself back into this Blogging thing. So we’ll start with some Weekend Links.
We could all learn a lot from John Piper. But, in my opinion, one of the best things we can learn from him is brutal honesty in confessing his sin. Piper’s report on his leave of absence (via Justin Taylor) is striking in its honesty in revealing his deep heart sins (specifically in his marriage). Read the whole thing here.
“I would label my decades-long, besetting (and I hope weakening) sins in this relationship as selfishness, self-pity, anger, blaming, and sullenness (all of them species of pride). There are others, but these are close to the root of our troubles.”
As Ken Cochrum tweeted: this is “required reading for anyone serious about online ministry: the future of connections”
Time Magazine – Person of the Year – Mark Zuckerberg
An utterly fascinating, and surprisingly deep, article.
Relationships on Facebook have a seductive, addictive quality that can erode and even replace real-world relationships. Friendships multiply with gratifying speed, and the emotional stakes stay soothingly low; where there isn’t much privacy, there can’t be much intimacy either. It’s like an emotional Ponzi scheme, where you keep putting energy in and getting it back tenfold, even though the dividends start to feel a little fake.
For all its industrial efficiency and scalability, its transhemispheric reach and its grand civil integrity, Facebook is still a painfully blunt instrument for doing the delicate work of transmitting human relationships. It’s an excellent utility for sending and receiving data, but we are not data, and relationships cannot be reduced to the exchange of information or making binary decisions between liking and not liking, friending and unfriending
Facebook is the bottle, and we’re the genie. How small are we willing to make ourselves to fit inside?
Another very insightful article – Andy Crouch’s The Ten Most Significant Cultural Trends of the Last Decade
#1 – Connections: “What did not take off in the 2000s was “virtual reality”—a world constructed entirely of disembodied bits, populated by avatars and existing only in the realm of the ideal. As the 2000s ended, the virtual-reality world Second Life was on virtual life support. Instead, we used technology to reinforce our embodied relationships.”
#4 – The End of the Majority – “White Americans were still a bare majority of the population by the end of the decade, but in delivery rooms they were already only a plurality (the largest of many minorities). We are all minorities now.”
2010 was a year rife with bad Logo makeovers, here’s the Worst Logo Makeovers of 2010 . Here’s the Best.
The following news was mind blowing to me. How did I miss the memo that you aren’t supposed to put two spaces after a period?
Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.
