Author: Jonathan Blundell

I'm a husband, father of three, blogger, podcaster, author and media geek who is hoping to live a simple life and follow The Way.

Mac user punished for loyalty

From Wisebread:

I’m an unapologetic Mac-junkie. I’ve got an old, dead Mac laptop that I can’t bear to part with from 1996. Our iMac is still up and running, having recently been put out to pasture after a disk drive malfunction. I eagerly bought one of the early iPods, and still use it all the time. And I’m writing to you now from my G4 Cube, which was a gift from a friend years ago. I’ve watched other Mac lovers fall away from the True Faith, one-by-one, but I never thought it would happen to me. However, yesterday when we brought home the newest addition to our Mac family, an 80 Gb iPod Classic, it would be my turn to be disillusioned. After you pay the hefty $249 price tag, plus an extra $30 for a wall charger (they used to bundle those in for free), plus $55 for the composite AV cable for your TV, plus any other little extras you may need, there is a hidden cost that blows up in your face when you get it home.

In short, the new iPods are not compatible with any operating system before OS 10.4.8. There’s a good discussion of the problem here. Basically, if you don’t have a newer operating system, you have to buy it before you can use your iPod. If you can’t run the newest OS, Leopard, you need to call Apple tech support and they’ll graciously sell you the outdated and obsolete Tiger for $129. You can imagine what I said to this gracious offer, after plunking down $350 for the device.

What all of this comes down to, for me, is that I am tired of the platform wars. Enough is enough already. I’m tired of manufacturers trying to force me to buy equipment I don’t want and need, or pointless “upgrades” (I shudder to think of my old cube trying to run a bloated newer operating system), just so that I can listen to a song, or download TV shows from iTunes (which, by the way, I was planning to do extensively). I’m tired of trying to exchange text files with people who have some subtly different document format, and seeing all of my formatting turned into gibberish. I’m tired of declaring loyalty to one manufacturer or another just because I bought their product.

When I take my car in for repairs, the mechanic never tells me that my older model car is “no longer supported,” or that my new tires are incompatible with my older chassis. I am not forced to stop using my refrigerator because my new food is suddenly incompatible with it. And while I’m on the subject, I don’t understand why I need a desktop or a laptop computer at all to use my iPod or my other smart devices. Has no one ever thought of making an ethernet or wireless adapter so that we can download our tunes directly from the internet? Of course not! Because then people might decide they don’t need a $2000 laptop just so they can listen to music in the car. Slam dunk!

Laurie decided to make the switch back to PC and from what I understand she’s loving (most of) her new PC with Vista. I’m just wondering how much longer people will put up with proprietary equipment. No wonder Linux fans are such fanatics.

U2 – In a Little While

Today’s Song of the Day….

In a little while
Surely you’ll be back
In a little while I’ll be there

In a little while
This hurt will hurt no more
I’ll be home, love

When the night takes a deep breath
And the daylight has no end
If I crawl, if I come crawling home
WiIl you be there

In a little while
I will blow by every breeze
Friday night running
To Sunday on my knees

That girl, that girl
She’s mine
And I’ve know her since

Since you were a little girl
With Spanish eyes
Oh, when I saw her
In a pram they pushed her by

My, how you’ve grown
Well it’s been
It’s been a little while

Slow down my bleeding heart
Man dreams one day to fly
A man takes a rocketship into the skys
He lives on starlets dying in the night
And follows in the trail
The scatter of light

Turn it on
Turn it on
You turn me on

Slow down my bleeding heart
Slowly, slowly love
Slow down my bleeding heart
Slowly, slowly love
Slow down my beating heart
Slowly, slowly love

Quote of the day

“Do you ever ask yourself why people try to come to this country? Do you think people deliberately and cheerfully leave their families behind and come to live in a situation of fear all the time, that they’re going to be deported again? No; they leave because they’re desperate. They’re trying to save their families.”

— Thomas Gumbleton, retired auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit and author of “The Peace Pulpit,” an online version of his homilies published by National Catholic Reporter
via DMN

Community is more about who you are

It’s a buzz word. It’s often misunderstood. It’s central to the Christian faith and yet so absent from many churches. Community. It would be appropriate to launch into sociological reflection on the dearth of community in our culture, drawing from observations made by sociologists like Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone, Better Together) in order to demonstrate the human desire and decline of community, but I don’t have the time or expertise. Instead, I will address two main issues with our attempts to find community. First, defective Christian views of community are based on unbiblical notions of the Church. Second, true community is based not on what you do but who you are.

I still have to wonder and question why it seems like many in the church today are against this idea of “community.” They seem to think its some evil conspiracy of the purpose driven church.

Jonathan Dodson talks more about this in his recent article for Next-Wave Ezine:

The church is not just people; its God’s living room, his neighborhood.

But even with Jesus dying to remake people into better, worshiping, missional communities, the Church still remains defective. The family of God is dysfunctional. Why? Because at the center of community we too often have a set of rules, not the gospel.

Most communities fluctuate in their success based on how well people keep the rules of the community. For instance, if I join a book club my acceptance in the club will likely go up or down based on how well I understood the book, know the author, and can discuss his ideas. My sense of acceptance from the community is related to things I do, not who I am. The same is true for most community outlets in this world. If I am part of a Fantasy Football community, my sense of significance will ride upon how well I know my player stats and football trivia. Bottom line, the strength of a community is often determined by how well I perform, by what I do or don’t do, not who I am.

So what can we as a church body and a community of believers do to ensure that people feel significance based solely on who they are and not what they do?

All too often Christian communities have rules at their center, not the gospel. If you read the Bible, don’t drink beer, and “go to church,” you’re accepted. If you do the opposite, you are not accepted. This is religion, not the gospel. Religion says “I obey a set of rules and I am accepted,” but the message of Jesus was “You are accepted by my grace and as a result you obey and follow me.” As dysfunctional people we need something more than performance to bind us together. We need something that provides acceptance and forgiveness even when we fail one another. We also need something big enough to satisfy our infinite appetites for community, something divine. We need Jesus.

Jesus is sufficient for our failures and successes in community

Something every non-Christian should know

Ever feel this way?

For years I was convinced that it was my job, as a Christian, to make sure that those I came into contact with knew and believed the things that I knew and believed…

Maybe we’re forgetting this childhood song:

Jesus loves You
This I Know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong…

…That said, I am increasingly convinced that, if I am walking in the Way of Jesus and you only know one thing about me, it should be this…that I love you.

Read the rest of Kester Smith’s column

If you think I’m going to hell, you should care that I’m going to hell.

In the latest Next-Wave Ezine – Dan Kimball writes:

Jesus didn’t seem to focus on hell as a means of evangelism. I am fully aware of how Jesus focused on the Kingdom of Heaven on earth for His teachings, not only the after-life. I think we have often taken hell and subtly infused hell as the primary focus and motivation for salvation and the gospel – which I think has altered what the 1 Cor. 15 gospel holistically is. But then I fear that some can remove hell and judgment from the gospel and we are left with the same path some of the more extreme “liberal” (so to speak, I don’t like using terms but can’t think of others right now) churches currently and in the past have taken to where hell, judgment, eternal shutting out from the presence of God (2 Thess. 1:7-9) is not mentioned or seen only as a metaphor for this life and not the afterlife. It has to be holistic and I believe in eternal judgment and there is separation.

Would the subject line describe you? Do we get too caught up in the salvation of a person that we forget about caring and loving them?
I pray it’s not true.