I got an iPhone

I have roughly 30GB of music. My iPhone contains 8GB of data. How to choose, how to choose…

Step 1: Create a folder in iTunes called “top ten best songs”

Step 2: Go through your playlist and add songs to that folder.

Step 3: Roughly 5GB of music later, you should have about enough.

Step 4: Sync.

How would you describe your theology? That is, if you’ve even ever thought about that question. Have you ever considered how you would label your theology?

The correct answer, of course is “biblical.” If you are a Christian, hopefully you would say that your theology is “biblical.” You’d say to me: “Come on, Matt, we don’t need labels, we simply need to figure out what the Bible says and do it.” (At least that’s what you SHOULD say…) However, have you ever stopped to think about what that means? How do you KNOW that your theology is biblical?

Christian Theology comes in many different flavors it seems. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Reformed, Armenian, Open, Liberal, Emergent, Charismatic, Anabaptist, Adventist, Congregational, Pietist, Puritan, this list could take up several pages. Where do you fit? Have you given it any thought? All of the above (and all the rest, many of which are utterly contradictory) consider themselves to be “biblical.” At least biblical in the sense that we all mean it when we say it: most true to what the bible would teach us to be.

How do you know that your theology is biblical? Which school of theology would you say you ascribe to? Why? By the way, you probably do fit into one. There’s very little escaping it. I submit that in order to correctly understand scripture, you NEED to go with one (or several, rather.) Understanding scripture is such a HUGE and COMPLEX pursuit that we need guidance.

Guidance from The Holy Spirit (first and foremost), guidance from each other (a close second), and guidance from field experts (in theology, the original languages, linguistics, hermeneutics, exegetics, literature, history, archaeology, paleontology, philosophy, and others) in order to get at exactly WHAT the Bible says. We would do well to stand on the shoulders of people who have gone before and done hard work for us.

Whose shoulders do you stand on? Why?

The Batman. My favorite comic book character of all time. Followed secondly by The Daredevil, then the usual suspects (X-Men, Superman, Spiderman, etc…)

I wrote an excited review of Batman Begins. When I heard they were making another movie in this series, I knew I had to see it. All the hype surrounding Heath Ledger made it all more interesting. The Joker was brilliant, as good as Nicholsen’s. Seriously, who among you did not raise at least one eyebrow upon hearing that he was cast in the role? I was skeptical. His performance, however, was award winning. As good as it was, the further development of the Batman character was what won me over on this movie.

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Most of us have probably at one time arrived home from “vacation” feeling exhausted physically, emotionally, and/or spiritually. This post by C.J. Mahaney (who I had the privilege of hearing at a conference eight years ago) from the Sovereign Grace blog on leadership in family vacations addresses the father’s role in planning vacations that refresh instead of drain, but I think that the content can be easily applied to anyone seeking R&R.

I know that I have definitely fallen into some of the traps of “me-focused” time…forgetting to be grateful to God and picking up an “it’s all about me” attitude. I really appreciate how Mahaney brings a Christ-centered focus into something that we can tend to separate from our spiritual lives.

(Note: The link above is to the post with a complete .pdf of the article. If you prefer to not read it as a .pdf, part 1, part 2, and part 3 can be read separately.)

One of my favorite blogs, ReFem, recently featured this post entitled, “Wife In The Fast Lane.” (I wish I could have been the one to come up with such a catchy title for a post, but, nope, can’t take credit for this one. ;)) I originally just forwarded it to a few close friends who I knew would share my viewpoint and appreciate the content, but perhaps there’s someone else out there that could benefit from it.

I see my role as teammate, #1 cheerleader, a support, and helper to Matt as the most important part in my life. I know that to a lot of people this idea just sounds plain crazy, but because I believe what the Bible says about my life this is the first priority in my life, second only to my relationship with God. I think I could probably write for about a decade about all of my thoughts on this because I’d really like to thoroughly explain them, but I guess I’ll just have to do that in little chunks :)

Because this is such a large part of my life, I’ve grown to deeply appreciate articles and books on the topic. I’ve posted links to other ReFem articles before, but I think this is the first one I’ve posted on marriage. The author of this particular article has been through some major difficulties in life, and I know that I respect her thoughts even more so because of that.

In church/Christian circles, it seems that women (me included) to whom God has given a husband can often get super-involved in book studies, relationships with other women, helping to meet various needs in the church (which are all excellent things to be involved in), but this articles reminds us that our primary God-given ministry is to our husbands. This plays out in many different ways in different women’s lives, but it’s something that I believe we need to carefully consider.

Oh, dear…I think I could just rehash the whole article, but I’ll just let you go ahead and read it :)