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Author Archives: Derek Ouellette
The New iPad: Game Changer
Apple said the iPad I or
dered should arrive sometime between April 11-17. So you can imagine my pleasant surprise when it arrived at my door March 30. I’ve been a bit of an iPad watcher since Christmas. Almost every day I hopped online (at least twice) to see what new rumours were surfacing about the new iPad. I was so confident in what to expect that, as it turned out, I was dead on with one exception: I believed the new iPad was going to have Siri. Oh well, it has dictation which is like half of Siri. The only other (minor) disappointment is that they simply named the new iPad, “iPad” (or “new iPad” or sometimes, “iPad 3rd Gen). Everybody kind of expected it to be called “the iPad 3″.
This is my first tablet. Sort of. My brother has one of those Blackberry Playbooks, and it’s alright. For Christmas I got my wife one of those new LePan tablets that everybody was saying was as good as the iPad, only cheaper. We learned the hard way that you get what you pay for. The screen went all glitchy within two weeks. We sent it back for a refund. That is when I became an “iPad watcher”. I was waiting for the iPad 3 (oops, the “new” iPad) to come out so that I could get my wife an iPad 2 at a reduced price to replace the LePan. So I’ve played around with a LePan and I often toyed with the display models of those other tablets at FutureShop and BestBuy (Samsung, Asus, Acer, Toshiba, et cetera). But I’ve never even held the 1st gen. iPad. So my wife’s iPad 2 (which came in two weeks before mine) was the first iPad that I really get to play with.
First: the iPad vs. well, those other tablets. There really is no comparison. You get what you pay for, and the iPad truly is a premium devise. There is no discernible delay when swiping from one screen to another or when opening and closing apps. And the iPad’s gestures that Apple is quickly becoming famous for is simply to die for. The whole experience, from its look to its feel to its capabilities to its apps, there truly is nothing else like it.
Next: the “new” iPad vs. the iPad 2. I got to play with my wife’s iPad 2 for two whole weeks before my iPad (3) arrived. They say the iPad 3 is faster when playing video games (A5x chip). Well, I’m not a gamer, so I haven’t experienced that yet. If it’s faster when opening and closing apps, the difference is nearly indiscernible. It’s internet is faster if you have the 4G model (which I do), but I hardly ever use it because 1) most places have wifi, 2) my Palm Pre can double as a hot spot (when it wants to apparently – grrr.) and 3) with the iPad’s 4G LTE it eats up data like a hungry, hungry hippo. Then there’s the new screen (a.k.a. the “retina display”). I’m not a particularly fussy guy in this area, but I have to say, I love just looking at the display of my iPad. It’s so beautiful. And yes, it’s nice when you do things like watch movies in HD or read ebooks. But it seems the digital world is not prepared for a retina display. Many websites don’t look any more clearer than if you were to use your iPad 2, and the same goes with apps. And while watching movies in HD is an incredible experience, you’re also paying more for them. In short, the new iPad is better than the iPad 2, but if you have an iPad 2, I don’t think you need to buy a new iPad. But if you’ve never owned a tablet (like me), than yah, go get one. Or better yet (if you’re on a tight budget like we are) just buy an iPad 2 to get the same great experience at a fraction of the cost (though with only 16GB, you’ll have to back things up to your computer regularly to keep space on you iPad 2).
A Game Changer:
My iPad doesn’t replace my computer, but it’s certainly a game changer. More often than not I’m simply to lazy to pull out my MacBook Pro if I don’t need to, when the iPad is in reach. Which it always is.
Here are a few ways the iPad has already changed the way I do things:
1) How I Preach: Incidentally, my new iPad arrived in the mail on the Friday before I was to preach. I told my wife I wasn’t going to use it at the pulpit until I got more used to it. But Saturday night I felt led to make certain last minute changes to the notes for my message – significant changes. With no printer handy I simply sent my document to “Pages” on my iPad and preached from it on Sunday. It worked like a charm. In the future I may even “mirror” it so that what I see the congregation will see on a screen, allowing me to illustrate points visually.
2) Organization: I’m a very disorganized person. I’ve never been able to keep an agenda, never even in high school when we were docked marks if we didn’t keep our agenda’s up to date. I thought I would start keeping agendas when I got into computers, but it never happened. Then I thought for sure I would be able to keep an agenda when got my smart phone. Nope. But now I found myself actively updating my Calendar on my iPad. I’m not sure why the change, but I suspect it has something to do with how much I love the whole iPad experience.
3) Books: I may be going through a change of opinion about ebooks. The first (and only) ebook I ever read was Scot McKnight’s Junia is not Alone. I read it from my computer since I didn’t have an iPad or reader at the time. It really felt no different than reading a really long blog article. In short, it cheapened the whole book reading experience for me. I also believed nothing could replace the sensation of holding a tangible book in my hands. Those are fair points. But I’m reading my first book on my iPad – Thomas Cahill’s Desire of the Everlasting Hills – and I’m beginning to appreciate some counter-points.
1) I can have my library with me wherever I go. This matters to me more, all of a sudden, than it did two or three weeks ago. With our impending move, the idea of having my books stored in a reader looks more appealing all of the time.
2) Quick access. Ideally, my book cases would surround my desk for quick and ready access to what I’ve read and where I’ve highlighted or marked a book for when I write blog articles and prepare sermons. But then I have to remember what I read in which book and then take the time to fan through and find those pesky marks that I made. With iBooks, any mark or highlight or note I make are easily accessed from the “contents” page under the “notes” table. In that table I see a list of notes and highlights I made and just by clicking on the one I’m looking for it takes me right to the page. Amazing time saver.
3) Speed. I don’t have to wait for a book to arrive in the mail. When it’s released I simply click, download and read. I should emphasize that I don’t really feel like I am losing the kind of book reading experience that I thought I would lose. But it is easier to sit up in bed with my iPad and read, than with a clunky book. And I can still highlight and make notes.
4). Definitions and more. Yes, this is great. Especially for someone like me who often has to infer what a word means because I’m too lazy to go and look it up. Now, as I read a book, if I come across a word I don’t know I simply press it with my finger and the following options come up: “define” “highlight” “note” “Search”. Very convenient.
What about it’s con’s?
There have been two big complaints people have made about the new iPad: 1) it heats up, 2) it’s battery takes forever to charge. Well, I can tell you that neither of those complaints have been an issue for me. I use my iPad so much, almost non-stop, and the back still feels cold to the touch, or, sometimes, mildly warm. But it has yet to be hot. You want hot, buy a Palm Pre. Sometimes I have to remove my Pre from my pocket because I feel like it’s burning my skin. And as a rule of thumb I try to keep all of my devices plugged in as much as possible. Having said that, the other night I watched a movie with my iPad, then I spent some time surfing the web, watching YouTube, reading Facebook and finally reading a book with it. Then it put it on my bed stand. The next morning I sat up and played around on it for awhile and it was only down to something like 94% batter life (all of that without plugging it in). Compare that, again, to my Palm Pre smartphone. If I unplug it at 9am, fully charged, and don’t even use it, it’s dead by 2 in the afternoon. The battery of my iPad is a non-issue for me. It’s great.
People around me want to know why I am so crazy about the iPad. That’s okay, I didn’t see what the big deal was a year ago either. It’s like, when you drive a pinto in a city full of pinto’s, and your pinto has A/C and a red paint job, you’re happy and content that you have something good going on. But then you are told about this car called a rolls-royce, but without experiencing it you think, “what’s the big deal, my pinto works fine.” For people who don’t understand why I’m so crazy about the iPad, it’s because they’ve gotten so used to driving pinto’s in a pinto world that the only way for them to understand, is to get into a rolls-royce and take it for a spin.
Ontario Gives Green Light To Right Light District
Sex workers at a press conference Monday
The Ontario highest court of appeals has given the green light on the red light district.
As the Windsor Star reported Monday:
Ontario’s Court of Appeal made history Monday by striking down some of Canada’s prostitution laws. The ruling will make it legal for sex workers to ply their trade indoors in organized brothels or bawdy houses, hire bodyguards for protection and live off the money they earn.
It was somewhat scandalous back in the ’90′s when the government legalized “escort services” as part of the effort to get prostitutes off the street. Something like “don’t ask don’t tell”, escort services allowed men to pay to “take women out for dinner” which wasn’t much happening. As one escort worker put it, “I’m not going on dinner dates”.
Now brothels are legalized, as long as they don’t advertise. You can enter a brothel and legally exchange money for sex. The purpose for the new law is to provide safety for the prostitutes whose career choice often comes with high risk. (But as my wife quipped, the easiest solution to eliminate the risk is to not do it. Yet that is akin to something like the whole abortion debate all over again.)
The only thing that surprises me is that it is still illegal to advertise for the service the brothel’s are offering. But I suspect that in due course that will be legalized as well.
Leave a comment.
The Basis of Justification
In Justification: 5 Views, Michael Horton, while explaining and defending the Reformed view of Justification, says:
“Justification is a verdict that declares sinners to be righteous even while they are inherently unrighteous, simply on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed to them” p.85
I would like to contend that Justification does not come on the “basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed on them”. Rather Justification comes on the basis of Christ’s faithfulness. Period.
And here’s why… (more…)
Do Evangelicals Lack Reverence In Worship?
In the book Journeys of Faith there is an article by Wilbur Ellsworth, a once prominent Reformed Baptist minister from Wheaton who shares his story of how he journeyed from Evangelicalism to Orthodoxy.
One of the main factors which contributed to prompting Ellsworth’s search for other expressions of the Christian faith was how Evangelicals worshiped. He explains:
Reverence is a spiritual experience that comes from consciously standing in the presence of the All-Holy Triune God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth. This Presence is so great that very often in Scripture, when people became aware they were in the presence of God, the first thing they needed to be told was, “Fear not!”
Such a message seldom seems necessary today across a wide span of American Evangelicalism. People are invited to sit back and relax and enjoy the service. It would seem the service is more about us than it is about coming into the presence of the living God. In an attempt to relate to present culture, the atmosphere of the modern church service is intentionally casual, comfortable, and user friendly…
Some years ago I was talking with a widely known professor in one of America’s most prestigious seminaries related to a major mainline denomination. While there is a great diversity of theological views at this school, the students are serious and thoughtful. One of the notable things about this seminary, the professor said, was that the vast majority of the student body attend chapel with a spirit of reverence. There is one exception: the Evangelical students. They come with bright minds and a settled theology but with little regard for humility and respect in the presence of God. (p.30)
He goes on to say, “My point is not to charge all or even most Evangelicals with irreverence. That would be untrue, unfair, and unkind. But I do believe that the very roots of reverence have been greatly weakened in Evangelical churches.”
Tagged Journeys of Faith, Wilbur Ellsworth
How God Became King: Part Two (Adjustment)
In the next part of Wright’s new book (4-stars) he reaches for the metaphor of a sound system whose speakers are in serious need of adjustment. While reading the Gospels, the Church has tended to turn the volume down on some speakers, up on others and nearly off on yet others still. The result has been a distortion of the beauty that is meant to ring through the beautiful and true message of the Gospels.
Turn Up Israel’s Story
After assessing the problem we face, a misreading of the Gospels, Wright directs us into an adjustment of sorts by taking us through the Gospels one book at a time. He wants to draw attention to the importance of the story of Israel for the Gospel writers and reminds us that if Israel’s story is important for them, it should be for us as well. Of particular interest is Wright’s continued insistence in the Exile motif at this junction. This view that he holds to is still widely contested but for Wright it is absolutely essential to get it right and to understand that first century Jews believed they were still in Exile and that the Messiah would come and deliver them.
So to this end – in chapter four – he talks about Daniels seventy-weeks – “a jubilee of jubilee’s” if you will – and connects it directly to Matthew’s genealogy list where the Gospel writer structures Jesus’s genealogy into three fourteen generations (14 x 3 = 42) with Jesus being the last (totalling 49, a la Daniel’s seventy-weeks). I agree with my friend Drew, that when we think about this type of math it does seem that Wright is stretching things a bit, looking for any under-the-rock evidence connecting to key Exile-related numbering systems. But maybe Wright is correct here. Maybe we are just not thinking “Jewishly enough”. Perhaps for a first century Jew, Matthew’s point would not have gone unnoticed. I can’t say for sure, but Wright does present an interesting case.
Turn Down These Two Speakers
Many Christians will find Wright’s next adjustment somewhat shocking. He says that the next two speakers have been turned up way too loud, thus making the Gospel writers more subtle points nearly impossible to hear.
Yes “JESUS IS GOD!” But…
As he touched on earlier, the Church has been obsessed with proving the deity of Christ and reading the Gospels as if that (and perhaps some moral teaching stuff) is all they had to say. Wright says, YES THERE IS A GOD, YES JESUS IS GOD (reflecting the volume of this emphasis), but the screaming of some points has drowned out the more subtle emphasis of the Gospels, not that Jesus is God (though he is), but that God has dwelt among us. Jesus did not do things to prove that he is God, he did things to show us what God is up to. It’s also been custom in the Church Tradition to read “JESUS IS GOD!” as simply an answer to Genesis 3, and to skip over, almost complete, the story of Israel. Yes Jesus is God, but he’s not just any old god, he’s Israel’s God. In fact, the main point of this whole chapter is to further what he said in Simply Jesus to remind us that the story of Jesus is more than just the story of Israel, the story of Jesus is the story of Israel’s God.
Yes, the Gospels are for the Church, But…
The second speaker that has been turned up way to loud is the one that emphasizes the Gospels as simply reflecting the life of the early Church. They have no real connection to Israel and are rather merely a reflection of the crisis’ that arose in those early days. Each Gospel writer, it is said, wrote to a specific audience to address a specific issue. They’re also read, then, as providing the early Church a proper moral compass, via the life of Christ. From the liberal point of view, this is why the Church made up a fictitious Jesus and filled his mouth with words and his hands with actions, things he said and did that he never actually said and did.
The truth is, says Wright; the Gospels are the Churches foundational documents, but primarily in the sense that they tell “the story of the launching of God’s renewed people” (emphasis original). But it’s not right to think of Jesus’ mission as one of “founding the church” because, as Wright points out, there already was a people of God.
Turned Off, Unplugged and Placed in an Attic
The first speaker, says Wright, was turned down too low and the second two were turned up way too high. But the fourth speaker, he goes on, “has often not merely been turned down, but never switched on in the first place. Maybe, to extend the metaphor, it’s even worse; maybe the speaker needs to be retrieved from its lonely spot in the attic, dusted off, put in its place, and plugged in.”
What speaker could Wright be talking about? Well, that precise speaker that speaks of the clash of the Kingdoms. Not some secondary, subsidiary, incidental clash, but an actual clash of the Empire of Caesar with the Kingdom of God. Explicit. Intentional.
For Wright there can be no doubt about it. It is especially clear, he seems to think, for anyone who embraces the notion that the true gospel is understood as the story of Jesus as fulfillment of Israel’s story. For Wright, that is a direct corollary to the notion that Jesus and his followers consciously pitted the Kingdom of God against the Empire of Caesar. (This must make Scot McKnight’s view ironic to N.T. Wright. McKnight passionately affirmed the first – that the gospel is Jesus’ story as fulfillment of Israel’s story – while rejecting the latter. )
Wright then sets about to make an impassioned case for the explicit conflict between the Kingdom of God and the Empire of Caesar in the Gospel’s:
“But, you say, surely Caesar is only mentioned once in the gospels, and there Jesus says that there’s a clear division between God and Caesar, a split of church and state, so that never the twain shall meet. Well, not so fast. We’ll get to that. It sounds suspiciously modern. Did Jesus really anticipate post-Enlightenment Western ideology so exactly? And the objection is forgetting, in any case, the wonderful passage in John 18-19 (to which also we shall return), in which Jesus, representing God’s kingdom, confronts Pilate, representing Caesar’s. They go at it together, arguing about kingdom, truth, and power until Pilate proves Jesus’s point by having him executed with the words “King of the Jews” above his head. And once we recognize that confrontation for what it is – part of the very climax of John’s astonishing gospel – there is more. Much more.” (p.135)
He goes on, in the allotted time, to build a wonderful case for the clash of the Kingdoms, not by appealing to some obscure verse here or there, but by tackling large portions of each of the Gospels and mixing them with the times and context of Israel’s own his(story). The confrontation of God and Caesar is a final corollary to the confrontation of God and Babel, or perhaps more explicitly, God and Egypt. Each case, as much as they have a spiritual element, have an explicitly physical one too.
In the end Wright’s point is that “the four gospel writers, each in his own way, tell the story of Jesus as the story of the new and ultimate exodus. What our present fourfold exercise has done is to draw out the various dimensions of that new exodus and to highlight their significance.” (p.153)
All of this delivers us through the corridors of the main arteries and directly into the heart of Wright’s book: “the explosive combination of the kingdom and the cross.” – Part 3…
Tagged Book Review, How God Became King, N.T. Wright
How God Became King: Part One (The Problem)
In How God Became King (4-stars) N.T. Wright takes up the problem he introduced in Simply Jesus and carries it to the next level. There Wright addresses the problem the Church has made of assuming ‘the gospel’ equals ‘justification by faith’ which seems to have little or nothing to do with the actual Gospels. He attempted to show us in Simply Jesus that the Gospels tell the gospel and that the gospel, proper, is the Story of Jesus. Now, in How God Became King, Wright goes a step further: the Story of Jesus is actually about another story, the story of how God became King (see here for how I think McKnight and Wright diverge on emphasis at precisely this point).
How Tradition Distorted The Gospel Message
The first two chapters play off each other in a way. The first shows how the gospel became distorted early on in the great Western Christian Tradition in large part do to the emphasis laid down in the Creeds and then later again by the Reformers. In both cases emphasis is laid upon the Birth, Death, Resurrection and (sometimes) Ascension of Jesus, leaving out complete everything in between; the life of Jesus, his mission in action and word and how the rest should be interpreted along through it’s lens.
The Liberal and Social Movement Did No Better
The second chapter then takes a look at how since the 18th century Jesus’ humanity, his actual life, was emphasized at the expense of what the Gospels actually had to say regarding those good things that the Creeds and Reformers did emphasize; the Birth, Death, Resurrection and (sometimes) Ascension of Jesus. Instead, Jesus became a social activist. His primary message, unrelated to all of that other stuff we find in the Gospels, is to care for the poor, the downtrodden, the prostitute, sinner and so on. Sliding along a bit from this Liberal Christian movement of the eighteenth century, but still keeping within this category are those Wright calls the “devout Christians” (as opposed to the Liberal’s he referred to as the “less devout Christians”). The social gospel movement that carries on today, that emphasizes what Jesus did and said in regards to the poor without necessarily rejecting the Creeds, but certainly downplaying them as if they weren’t really all that important. The problem with the social gospel movement, says Wright, is that while emphasizing many of Jesus’ apparent social concerns (such as “what you did it unto the least of these…”) and deemphasizing his more doctrinally laden ones (“the Son of Man came to… give his life as a ransom…”), the world since the birth of the social gospel movement has not really gotten any better. The social gospel, on it’s own, is not really the answer to the world’s problems.
Six Inadequate Christian Answers
In his third chapter Wright explores the six answers a devout Christian might give today to the question: what do you suppose all of that middle stuff – the stuff between Jesus’ birth and the cross – was written down for? They are: 1) to tell us how to get to heaven; 2) to teach us how to live an ethical life; 3) to give us Jesus’ example to follow; 4) to show us that Jesus was perfect, thus qualifying him as the ‘perfect sacrifice’; 5) to give us stories to identify with; and perhaps the most common answer would be, 6) to prove the divinity of Jesus. All – or most, at least – of these answers have a grain of truth to them, but they fall short of being what the Gospel’s are all about. The last point will make a good example: the early Creeds were written apologetically to defend the deity of Christ as were the apologetic writings of the eighteenth century to this day in many circles. Gnostics denied the union of the Father and the Son and eighteenth century modernists denied anything resembling miracles. In response Christians turned to the Gospels and sought to defend the miracles of Jesus so that, by default, his miraculous acts would bolster the Christian claim to his deity. That is, the Gospels have been routinely read as if their main point were to prove that Jesus is God. That’s all fine and dandy, but was that the message that the gospel writers themselves wanted to communicate? The flat out answer is no. The gospel writers didn’t seek to prove Jesus’ divinity at all, they assumed it and wanted to make other points.
Wright says that some people today say that the point of the middle stuff was to show us, through Jesus, what God is really like. He says “that is a bit more like it”, but it still falls short of the actual intent of the gospel message. The point of the middle stuff isn’t just to show us God (be it God’s character or otherwise), but more precisely, it was written to show us what God is up to. He says that people have come to the Gospels with the wrong questions, and they found answers to those questions, but that doesn’t help us understand what the actual message of the Gospels is, which should be our goal. We need to begin, he says, by admitting our misunderstanding and then seek a fresh reading.
For that, we’ll have to turn our attention to part two…
Tagged How God Became King, N.T. Wright
A House For My Birthday!
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Things just sort of worked out that way. It made for a very exciting day. It wasn’t planned, but my wife and I just purchased our first home! And on my birthday no less…
We were thinking in January that we might want to leave the renting scene and take the plunge into our own home some time this year. Then, as January plowed on we decided to rent for perhaps another year or so. But as February rolled on, we revisited the buying option. We had already been approved for a mortgage at a really low interest rate and our realtor was sending us weekly updates of homes on the market that meet our criteria.
A few days ago this really nice home (above) just hit the market. We arranged with the realtor to see it, but the only time available was the following Monday (i.e. my birthday, February 27th), along with a few other homes today (in January our realtor took us to see several homes too).
To be honest, on the way to see it I was only “half-sold” and not very excited. I fully expected to appreciate some bits, not others and move on. But from the moment we pulled up we were in for a pleasant surprise.
The homeowner was home (a very nice catholic man and his baby). He was the type of man who took great pride and care in his stuff. He liked us. We liked him. The house, being only 10 years old, was purchased by him before it was built and has a whole lot of customized features throughout. The kitchen is outstanding and so is the backyard. It has a sweet gas fireplace, and a movie entertainment room where the flatscreen TV is on the wall but the cables have been dropped behind. This is perfect because we have a flat screen TV and had said that when we buy a home, we wanted to do that. But here it’s already done! The house, aside from a gorgeous and private backyard, has four wonderful bedrooms, two full baths, and a finished basement with, as I said, a gas fireplace.
Dollar for dollar, nothing in our price range compares.
So we went home and crunched some numbers and discussed low-balling the offer. When we called our realtor she explained to us that she contacted the seller’s agent and though the house had just hit the market, they have received many offers. Some people had even offered up to $10,000 OVER the asking price. But the owner had turned them all down. Why? Because he’s building another home and wants 120 days before he moves. The other offers were all conditioned upon moving in sooner than that. To make things more intense, two other realtor’s were bring more interested homebuyers to look at the house that evening. Whoever puts the offer in first would have the best chance for the purchase.
We went to our realtors office where the paperwork was drawn up. She called the selling agent to arrange a visit to pitch our below-asking-price bid, and the agent had told her that another agent was asking her questions about us because his homebuyer wanted to stall us so that they could make the first bid. It was a race. We were first in line but coming up beneath their asking price.
So our agent met with the home sellers agent and we went to have a birthday dinner at Red Lobster. As we finished up dinner my cell rang. It was our agent. She was there with the homeowner who wanted to come back with a counter offer: they wanted $1,000 more, but in turn where willing to give us there newer washer and dryer. We were beyond thrilled since we were in need of a washer and dryer anyways. We also couldn’t believe that they accepted our low-ball offer (it was still a few grand beneath their asking price). We met with our realtor one last time today, signed a few papers (which needed to be signed by 11:59 pm today) and the deal was done.
We put a few conditions on the home including things like we are having a home inspector inspect it this week. But assuming all goes well with our conditions, we are no longer property virgins (to borrow the phrase from a popular TV show we have been watching for the past few months).
“So”, I asked my wife, “what’s for my birthday next year?” 
29! (AGAIN)
My little sister Katlynn who's birthday is March 3, and my mom who's birthday is Feb. 28th. I'm just outside the picture.
So today I turn 29 again. It’ll be my fourth 29th birthday.
My wife’s abuelita made the observation that the soul never grows old. It’s true. With each passing year I find that the experiences I have and the things I learn change me in some ways. My perspective changes. My attitude changes. I soften up in some ways and harden up in others. But in spite of all of the ways I change, the one thing that seems to remain the same is my soul. I’m no longer 20 and it’s hard for my mind to grasp that. My body does not cooperate with me the way it used to, but my soul has not grown old. I think that is because humans were created for eternity. Imagine if the body remained as ageless as the soul, that is what we call ‘eternal life’.
Let’s hope for a happy and productive 33 year as my wife and I have a few big and exciting things planned. Please pray that God would open some doors for us and that we would grow in wisdom as we face some huge decisions in the coming months. Thank you!
