a broken mold

It has recently been asked for a discussion on suicide to be taken place on the blog. How morbid can you get? Fortunately, I am  morbid, so here we go!

How serious is suicide as far as Christians are concerned? I do not believe it can make you lose salvation, because I believe, like all good baptists/ reforms do, that salvation is permanent once it happens. However, why did the Catholics say that is was so serious as to lose salvation? Why do some theologians say it is the ONLY theological question? I mean, come on, murder? Rape? No? Seriously? Why suicide? Why am I even asking all these parallel questions?

Let me begin with an interesting story. Once upon a time, there was a mean bully that hurt a little girl. There was another boy who saw the incident and tried to kill the bully, but was stopped by a teacher. If he had killed the boy, it would have been murder, because it was not the boy’s place to do so. It was the bully’s parents job. But let us not condemn the boy too harshly, for he was noble in his error. After all, the Bible has the Apostle Paul do the same thing when he was Saul… only to a greater degree. He saw a bunch of people he thought were against God called Christians. He killed as many as he could, murdering them, until God set him strait. Were the murders bad thing? Of course! It followed and haunted Paul for the rest of his life… but he was still Paul the Apostle.

Now, where and who in the Bible do we find suicides? Anything come to mind? Well, there’s the other Saul. You remember, the King of Israel? He decided at the end of his reign, in order to keep the Philistines from torturing him, to “fall upon his sword.” His head was then taken off and placed in the temple of Dagon for a spell. That worked well. Where else do we see men falling on their swords? What about the enemies of Gideon, who were so afraid of the trumpets and torches that they all killed themselves. That wasn’t very good either. Nope, not a good ending. So here’s my diagnosis,  suicide, in Scripture, is for the enemies of God. Where else to you find suicide than someone who is hopeless in his sin… in Scripture?

Why would one commit suicide if they believe in an omnipotent God? I don’t mean the heathen, I am talking about saved believers. If you believe God is in control, and you commit suicide, you are telling God directly as you go to His presence, “I don’t care! Your way is not worth it. I’m doing my life my way, and if you won’t let me live my way, then, by You, I’ll die my way. My final act of WILL!” These deaths are NEVER funny. In fact, they are the saddest, most tragic, most morbid deaths of all. If a heathen thinks that their life has no control, and that they are holding onto life by the flapping tongue of a dragon, and if they said, “What the heck, this is too hard. I’ll just let go before I’m dragon food,” I don’t think it is near as tragic. In fact, many can be quite hilarious… Like this one time, I watched a movie… I forget the name. There was this business tycoon who got so fed up with it all that he jumped through a broken window and died. Wait, that’s not the punch line. Few weeks later, this other guy says he’s going to jump through the same window, now repaired. It shows this long scene of everyone but one man staring at him in horror as he runs for window. Won’t anyone stop him? He jumps! … and sticks to the glass as he slides down slowly cartoon style. The dazed man looks up in embarrassment at his failed attempt to see the one man not in horror say two words, “Reinforced glass.”

Let’s wrap this up. 1. Suicide is sin, as any other sin, but with one caveat. Suicide is always direct and embittered rebellion to the very nature of God as far as Christians are concerned. It is, as it were, a second fall, not that one loses salvation, but that they disregard their salvation so they can say, “I did it MY way.” I know Christians that I considered friends that have taken this route, and can not imagine what had made them do this. 2. amongst the heathen, suicide is an equal sin to murder, and… not to kick a dead horse… so I won’t, but you get it. Hoops! that was the name of the movie, I think. 3. To conclude, if you are not a Christian and believe that the earth is over populated and you tell Christians to not have babies and to “leave” the earth, please lead by example. That will give me a few more people to laugh at. If not, however, let me be very… very… clear. Life is worth it. Suicide isn’t. When you ask the question, “To be or not to be?” remember we serve a living, all powerful God who pulls the strings, and that “All things work together for the good of those that love Him, for all those according to His purpose.” I think I quoted that right, but don’t kill me if I messed up. That’s God’s job.

Right now we’re demoing the new WordPress theme that comes bundled with 3.0, Twenty Ten. Seems pretty sweet and polished.

The header image is a crop of one of my photographs. Right now it’s sort of hacked in, as the header image replacement doesn’t appear to be working with the theme; I suspect it has to do with the file permissions we have.

I guess we’ll be back to our regular look after a while. I think…

Update: Demo aborted for now. It appears to not play nice with FD Footnotes. I may try to track down the problem, as Twenty Ten is pretty cool.

Update 2: Turns out it was a conflict with Google Analytics for WordPress, which I installed today. Tracking of outbound clicks and downloads has been turned off, that fixed the problem. We may need to do some investigation into a replacement or just using the regular GA code since tracking outbound clicks is a nice capability.

So… we’re now demoing Twenty Ten again.

Let me begin with as little ceremony as I possibly can, since I’ve been gone out of the blogsphere so long. Everyone knows about the Great Oil Spill of BP and how it is killing birds and ruining vacations. (Except ours, because it is far enough east that we can avoid it.) I mean, take a look at the sky view pictures! See the beautiful orange and purple hues. If we poured that much paint in the water, it would cost a fortune! Now, now, I understand, and we all tear our garments for the poor birds… well not really. I’m too busy feeling sorry for the guys who were on the rig when it blew. But, yes, birds dying and being dyed is not a good thing. My point that I’ve been hinting at is this, stop arguing on whose fault it was and start enjoying it or cleaning it. There, I said it. I’m really long winded I suppose.

Let us examine my vague arsenal of half-facts. One, an oil-rig blew up. Two, there was a pipe sticking out of the ground for our convenience. Three, the oil WAS in a localized location, and it was highly possible to burn most of it off right there, as it was recommended for us to do. Four, environuts said we could not burn because it would hurt the environment. Five, the blame game began and oil is still spilling out of the pipe. I know, it sounds like I’m in the blame game and am against the environuts, but that is not so. I was against them before this ever happened. It was not their fault the rig blew up. As a matter of fact, that is my point. It was old, it shifted, and it blew. A tragedy happened and we are left with a gorgeous hue of orange on the blue and black water. You will pardon me if I sound flippant, or not if you must hate me. So what do we do if we don’t blame anybody? Who will get stuck with the bill to clean it up if blame is not placed? I personally still think we should light a match and call it even. If a hurricane ever came through, it would be the most awesome firework display the world has ever seen. However, if that is voted down, then I say we all split the bill: Mexico, America, and Britain. If we can’t agree to clean up our own boating lake, then how can we agree to do anything? Oh, wait, we can’t. We can’t even agree on what the world “natural” means. “Natural,” as far as I can tell, means from the earth, raw and untouched by man. Well, here you go my friends, and as soon as that hurricane comes through, we can have a natural wonder on the forth of July. I’ll bring the beer if you bring the lighter.

On a couple occasions during the last school year, Caleb, fellow classmate Chris and I have discussed the subject of death, and specifically the Christian attitude towards death. More recently, Caleb made this post on the matter. He argues that we should be able to laugh at death and irony, that we should not fear death, but look at it as a natural part of life. Lamentably, even after those discussions and his post, I’m not sure I’ve sorted it all out to my satisfaction (maybe I should write a paper on it). But I agree that death is a beaten enemy. We shouldn’t fear it, we should be able to laugh at it, and we should even be able to scorn it. The righteous are brave as lions. But Rachel’s comment¹ was significant — we shouldn’t treat it as a friend.

There are situations where death can be a blessing, but only in the sense that God uses or allows evil to work a greater triumph. Like the death of a dear saint in the pain of old age, ready to go home. Like Aslan and his death at the hands of the White Witch, or Christ’s own death on the cross. Caleb said at one point that death is just taking us to be with Christ. That is true, but that’s not the way it was intended. We were to fellowship with God by truly natural means; it is death that is unnatural, the result of a curse. And yet, Christ has taken the curse upon himself, and triumphed over death. Dying with him, we are raised to new life.

But I also believe there is an appropriate sorrow at death — in the case of beloved saints, merely at the separation, but with unbelievers the separation is eternal. That is worth grieving about. While everyone who rejects Christ gets what they want, it’s still a terrible, sorrowful result of the Fall. To repeat myself in a comment on Caleb’s post, while we trust and submit to God’s sovereign plan, it is not wrong to sorrow or attempt to change things (through evangelism, etc.).

But we live in God’s story, and we must tune our sense of humor to match his. Caleb made his case well in a follow-up comment: Eglon’s death is pretty funny. Yes, we can laugh at a dead man. But we can also sorrow. “The Lord is … not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). And finally, we surely must not fear death. I close with a quote from the end of Pilgrim’s Progress:

“My Sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my Pilgrimage, and my Courage and Skill to him that can get it. My Marks and Scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his Battles who now will be my Rewarder.” When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the Riverside, into which as he went he said, “Death, where is thy Sting?” And as he went down deeper he said, “Grave, where is thy Victory?” So he passed over, and all the Trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

How can I appeal to my audience? How can I attract readers? When you’re writing a blog, or really anything for publication, it’s tempting to focus on drawing readers in. Tagging posts strategically, trying to be important and relevant, appearing seeker-friendly. I am guilty of this. When I post a YouTube video, I try to think of all the possible tags I could file it under, to attract views. I think some of this instinct springs from a culture of Internet memes. But then you see a video with a few thousand views, and not all that many tags, really. Just the obvious ones. It’s the quality content and the word-of-mouth publicity that made it popular.

This and Nathaniel’s post on audience have got me thinking and somewhat re-working my approach. In fact, this is an attempt at a short to medium post that puts forth a thought for consideration. Now there is, of course, an appropriate way to strategize and target your audience. That’s what this post is about. But targeting your audience doesn’t mean broadening your appeal¹ so much as knowing your audience, like Nat said, and producing good content.

As should be apparent, this is really just a good business model — it applies to blogging almost informally. Companies like Apple, Inc. understand this.² Apple has a niche market and focuses on content that resonates within this group, to the extent that Jobs has what is termed a “cult following” [warning: link contains some language]. After all, Macs just work. Nevertheless, Apple is also a good example of a company that expanded its focus to great advantage (read: iPhone).

Conversely, Microsoft wants the whole market — go big or go home. Call it biting off more than you can chew, taking in too much territory, or whatever; but Microsoft tries to cover a broad range of user needs, hardware manufacturers and platforms, and comes up short on the quality front. Not content to focus on what it does best (using the term generously), Microsoft is constantly competing with Sony, Apple, Google, Gmail and Linux. And — whether it’s gaming consoles, hardware, media players, operating systems, communication services or search engines — you get a lineup of products doomed to eternal second place.

I could regale you with talk of BSODs, driver headaches and viruses, Windows ME and Vista, but the goal was merely to demonstrate what I mean by “the myth of relevance.” Just getting the most customers or the biggest audience is not an end unto itself. A streamlined, focused business model and quality control builds and retains a loyal consumer following. Spyderco is a good example. With only 30 employees and direct input from owner/founder Sal Glesser, there is a personal attention to quality and focus on customer relations that makes a Spyderco owner feel included, as it were. One wants the same sort of connection with a blog audience.

Finally, one more application: churches. There are, sadly, a lot of churches that would cut off their doctrinal arm to be “relevant.” They are the seeker-friendly, spiritual-milk, easy-believism variety. As Pastor Terry Tollefson is fond of saying, if the young people aren’t coming, break out the pizza, guitars, low lights and couches. Preach what people like to hear. Tickle ears. Unfortunately, they — just like the girl with mismatched shoes (one Converse and maybe a fur-trimmed boot is about right), striped leggings, outlandish hair and the “raccoon” style eyeliner — are pitching an indiscriminate appeal for attention. But attention is not an end to itself. You want the right kind of attention, the right kind of publicity. To quote Pastor Doug Wilson in a related vein, “Young Christian people should seek to become the kind of person that the kind of person they would want to marry would want to marry.”

Churches should want to attract people because of the strong preaching of law and condemnation in tension with grace and love, the unity, fellowship and accountability. The robust doctrine of Psalms and liturgy. The corporate-ness of Christ’s body. If someone is repelled by any of these things, that’s the way it should be — that’s the only hope for them. Diluting the truth until no one feels convicted is doing no one any favors. Taking the potency from worship and the doctrine from the songs is what, in other venues, would be called false advertising.

The church, properly functioning, shows people where they stand in relation to the body of Christ. When this is not done, people either discover spiritual meat at some point and have no taste for it, or settle into a warm, fuzzy, God-isn’t-about-guilt version of Christianity. (Just as long as I don’t have to do anything uncomfortable, like loving unlovable old people in nursing homes or confessing sins or letting grudges go.) On rare occasion, they realize they aren’t getting fed and look for a body to keep them accountable, words they can chew on — the Word himself.

So then, what I’ve called the “myth” of relevance is the notion that attracting attention, broadening appeal or increasing numbers is anything to aim for. At best, you will raise lukewarm interest in your lukewarm product. At worst, you will fill the Church with people who wouldn’t be there if they knew the way is narrow, and deter those who would only be there if they did. If I have spent time and digital ink on this last point, it’s because I’m serious. In any of these applications, there are some people to whom you don’t want to be relevant, and especially when it concerns the sanctification of Christ’s bride.

But, as always, that sanctification should flow out through all our endeavors, even our blogs. And yes, as a short to medium post, this is a fail. Oh well, semper reformanda and all that.

This is rather overdue.

Since I care somewhat about SEO (not an SEOhead, though… I mean, how many SEO blogs can there be?), I looked for a WordPress plugin to handle that sort of stuff for a broken mold. All in One SEO Pack is pretty much the package for WordPress, I guess, but I couldn’t even get it to run. I have no idea why.

I tried another SEO plugin, too, as I remember. HeadSpace, I think. I also tried Platinum SEO Pack and that’s what I ended up using. The author asks that you either review, link, or donate. I was happy to oblige since the plugin worked fine but being lazy I haven’t done it yet. Until now.

This isn’t really like reviewing a piece of art or anything, so I have simply this to say: it works and it works well. I suppose I’m not an expert and it’s probably missing some, but I’ll go ahead and say ‘name a SEO feature and it’s got it’. All sorts of meta stuff. A big long list of check boxes for you to decide on.

One thing I’d like to highlight, even though I don’t use it, is custom meta elements for individual posts. Check it out.

I guess some people would find this handy.

For a while now we’ve had a page with our tag cloud on it since we’ve removed it from the sidebar. It sure can be interesting but it’s not all that useful on the sidebar. Supposedly this page listed all our tags, but when I was editing a tag recently, I noticed we had a lot more tags than that. I investigated, found the problem, and got all our tags showing.

So, have a look at our tag cloud if you wish. It will get bigger as we write more posts. I’ve also added a link on the top nav bar to bring the page into view. Enjoy.