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So I’ve been listening to the CCEF podcast recently and heard Elliot Greene from Redeemer Theological Seminary speak. One thing he said specifically made me think. He said we’re all addicts. That confused me at first but then I thought about it. Some are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or other physical substances. Others are addicted to getting their way, pleasing others, or pleasing themselves. Still others are addicted to controlling every situation around them, holiday traditions, or even sitting down when they get home from work. I would go so far as to say that addictions are universal. You know why? We were created for addiction. However, it was to be addicted to the Creator. That was the design. All that fell apart in Genesis 3 when man chose to disobey God and therefore sin. What can we learn from all this? Instead of the addiction I mentioned about (or feel free to insert your own), our addiction should be for our Creator. That cannot happen without a heart that has been regenerated and brought back to life by God. Otherwise we’re all just dead in our addictions.

I saw this amazing blog post from Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology and had to repost it:

On September 12, 1933, 35-year-old Clive Staples Lewis wrote a letter to his dear friend Arthur Greeves. The letter is located in the Wade Center at Wheaton College–just down the street from where I am typing right now.

Greeves had written to Lewis asking about the degree to which we can speak, if at all, of God understanding evil in any kind of experiential way–as Greeves had put it, ‘sharing’ in our evil actions.

Lewis begins with an analogy (all emphases original)–

Supposing you are taking a dog on a lead past a post. You know what happens… He tries to go the wrong side and gets his head looped round the post. You see that he can’t do it, and therefore pull him back. You pull him back because you want to enable him to go forward. He wants exactly the same thing–namely to go forward: for that very reason he resists your pull back, or, if he is an obedient dog, yields to it reluctantly as a matter of duty which seems to him to be quite in opposition to his own will: tho’ in fact it is only by yielding to you that he will ever succeed in getting where he wants.

Now if the dog were a theologian he would regard his own will as a sin to which he was tempted, and therefore an evil: and he might go on to ask whether you understand and ‘contained’ his evil. If he did you could only reply ‘My dear dog, if by your will you mean what you really want to do, namely, to get forward along this road, I not only understand this desire but share it. Forward is exactly where I want you to go. If by your will, on the other hand, you mean your will to pull against the collar and try to force yourself in a direction which is no use–why I >understand it of course: but just because I understand it (and the whole situation, which you don’t understand) I cannot possibly share it. In fact the more I sympathise with your real wish–that is, the wish to get on–the less can I sympathise (in the sense of ‘share’ or ‘agree with’) your resistance to the collar: for I see that this is actually rendering the attainment of your real wish impossible.’

Lewis then goes back to the original question to bring his analogy home:

I don’t know if you will agree at once that this is a parallel to the situation between God and man: but I will work it out on the assumption that you do. Let us go back to the original question–whether and, if so in what sense God contains, say, my evil will–or ‘understands’ it. The answer is God not only understands but shares the desire which is at the root of all my evil–the desire for complete and ecstatic happiness. He made me for no other purpose than to enjoy it. But He knows, and I do not, how it can be really and permanently attained. He knows that most of my personal attempts to reach it are actually putting it further and further out of my reach. With these therefore He cannot sympathise or ‘agree.’

Lewis then relates his point to how we think about past sins, and then how we think about future sins (temptation).

I may always feel looking back on any past sin that in the very heart of my evil passion there was something that God approves and wants me to feel not less but more. Take a sin of Lust. The overwhelming thirst for rapture was good and even divine: it has not got to be unsaid (so to speak) and recanted. But it will never be quenched as I tried to quench it. If I refrain–if I submit to the collar and come round the right side of the lamp-post–God will be guiding me as quickly as He can to where I shall get what I really wanted all the time. It will not be very like what I now think I want: but it will be more like it than some suppose. In any case it will be the real thing, but a consolation prize or substitute. If I had it I should not need to fight against sensuality as something impure: rather I should spontaneously turn away from it as something cold, abstract, and artificial. This, I think, is how the doctrine applies to past sins.

On the other hand, when we are thinking of a sin in the future, i.e. when we are tempted, we must remember that just because God wants for us what we really want and knows the only way to get it, therefore He must, in a sense, be quite ruthless towards sin. He is not like a human authority who can be begged off or caught in an indulgent mood. The more He loves you the more determined He must be to pull you back from your way which leads nowhere into His way which leads where you want to go. Hence MacDonald’s words ‘The all-punishing, all-pardoning Father.’ You may go the wrong way again, and again He may forgive you: as the dog’s master may extricate the dog after he has tied the whole leash around the lamp-post. But there is no hope in the end of getting where you want to go except by going God’s way. . . .

And in a final, powerful, delightful reminder–

I think one may be quite rid of the old haunting suspicion–it raises its head in every temptation–that there is something else than God–some other country into which He forbids us to trespass–some kind of delight which He ‘doesn’t appreciate’ or just chooses to forbid, but which would be real delight if only we were allowed to get it. The thing just isn’t there. Whatever we desire is either what God is trying to give us as quickly as He can, or else a false picture of what He is trying to give us–a false picture which would not attract us for a moment if we saw the real thing.

–Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2: Books, Broadcasts, and the War, 1931-1949 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 122-24

I wanted to use “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish,” but didn’t want to copy Shane Ross at lfdh.net. It’s a sad time for video editors. The Final Cut Pro (FCP) line has died (as we know it – more on that later). For those who don’t know, Final Cut Pro has become the industry-standard program for video editing. A short sampling of movies edited with it include Cold Mountain, 300, The Corpse Bride, Enchanted, Eat Pray Love, True Grit, and The Social Network. As you can see, it has quite an impressive resume.

I started using FCP 4.5 back in 2006. I stepped through versions 5, 6, and 7 through the years, and view it almost as another arm when it comes to editing videos. The hot keys, menus, layout, and integration with the rest of the suite (Color, Motion, LiveType, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor, and DVD Studio Pro) has become second nature to me. I can snap together a video stinkin’ fast because of the muscle memory I’ve developed through five years of using this program at work. It’s an amazing program and I used to sing it’s praises any time I met someone even remotely interested in the field. So you all get it. It’s been a great program. Now to the bad news. Final Cut Pro X. (Yes, I know the current version is 7 and they’re skipping to 10. But that’s beside the point.)

The newest version of Final Cut is X, or 10. But people who used any previous version won’t recognize the new version. Since I don’t plan on wasting my money on this program, here’s a list compiled on premiumbeat.com:

• Chapter Markers: Apple seems to have done away with DVD Studio Pro, but you can now burn DVDs from directly within Final Cut Pro. In earlier versions of FCP you could add markers and include them as chapter markers upon export. This feature has inconveniently been left out of FCPX, making the ability to architect a commercial DVD fairly infeasible.
• Limited Export Settings: You are limited in the formats and sizes you can export from FCPX. Whereas before you could export a variety of codecs and formats out of FCP, you now must complete more specific encoding in Compressor.
• No Export for Hi-Res JPGs: If you want high resolution screenshots you must save them as TIFF or PNG files. JPG stills can be saved out of FCPX but they will be low resolution files.
• No Support for EDL
• No XML Import: Word on the street is this will be accomplished with a future third party plugin (for an additional fee, certainly).
• No OMF export: Again, this should be able to be completed with a third party plugin sometime in the future
• No Native Support for Red Raw files: With the wide range of codecs and file formats that FCPX natively supports, it may be a bit of a surprise that they don’t natively support this now popular video format.
• No Multicam: The initial release will not have support for multicam, but sources close to Apple say that it will be included in future updates. If you use Multicam often, the lack of this feature could be a deal-breaker.
• Inability to Open Projects Saved From Previous FCP Versions: The initial release will not allow you to open up projects saved from previous Final Cut Pro versions. There may be some ability to import legacy projects in future updates, but for this reason alone it makes sense to keep both FCPX and an older version of FCP on your machine.
• No Capture from Tape or Output to Tape: Tape is slowly being phased out in most forms of production, in favor of solid state and file based systems. It’s no surprise that this one wasn’t included, but it may be a deterrent for those that are still working in a tape based environment. UPDATE: You can capture from camera, but does not appear to have batch capture function.
• Limited Options for Arranging Your Workspace: Say goodbye to editing on 2 screens and sending the video signal out to a third monitor. The workspace is primarily “locked” and windows cannot be rearranged.
• No Native Support for Third Party Plugins: We can anticipate this being a feature in immediate updates to FCPX. For now however, you are relegated to Final Cut Pro X’s built in plugins and filters until the SDK for developers is released. Your FCP 7 and earlier compatible plug-ins WILL NOT work in FCPX. UPDATE: Noise Industries reports an update to it’s FX Factory bundle with over 140 effects, transitions and generators for FCPX.
• Support for External Monitoring?: Early reports state no support for external monitoring on a calibrated video display. UPDATE: There is external monitoring with an AJA card and new drivers.

The biggest ones that get me are Chapter Markers (long DVD creation is out, then), Multicam (back to the old days of FCP 5 where you chop manually – two major version ago!), inability of open old FCP files (Seriously!? I can’t open old projects!?), no tape interface (I think you can capture from, but no giving videos to old production houses – like most big production companies, TV stations, etc.), limited arranging of the workspace (the default never works for me), no third-party plugin support (Dropping support for the 1,000s of current ones. That’s nice…), and external monitoring (Hope they straighten this out). Hmm, my list is almost everything on the list I copied in. That’s neat. Also, there is no physical media with FCP X. You purchase it in the new Mac App Store and download it (all 1.33 GB of it). Hope you never have to reinstall on the road!

P.S. They also dropped DVD Studio Pro (and added in DVD burning into FCP X), Color (added into FCP X), and Soundtrack (as far as I can tell). Motion and Compressor are separate apps. FCP X is $299.99 and Motion and Compressor are $49.99 each (totaling cheaper than the previous $1,299-ish price tag).

And so we have the day the music (or video editing) died. Bye Final Cut Pro. Now we have iMovie Pro.

This review was posted at Tim Challie’s blog and is so well spoken that I wanted to repost it here. Go check out his blog for lots of other great reviews like this.

Questions matter. They can help you to grow deeper in your knowledge of the truth and your love for God—especially when you’re dealing with the harder doctrines of the Christian faith. But questions can also be used to obscure the truth. They can be used to lead away just as easily as they can be used to lead toward. Ask Eve.

Enter Rob Bell, a man who has spent much of the last seven years asking questions in his sometimes thought-provoking and often frustrating fashion. And when he’s done asking, no matter what answers he puts forward, it seems we’re only left with more questions. This trend continues in his new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, where Bell poses what might be his most controversial question yet:

Does a loving God really send people to hell for all eternity?

Read the rest of this entry »

So we’re getting involved in a church here in Dahlonega named Christ Family Church. It’s quite phenomenal to find a church we can call home after coming back to Georgia. While we attended some nice ones in Lawrenceville, one of them was too focused on tradition and the other was too focused on its members (although it was trying to change that and become more missional). In Dahlonega, CFC is solidly biblical and missional. Just because they’re so concise, here are the vision and distinctions of the church:

Missional

We focus our times together on building up believers and encouraging one another to take the Good News of salvation into the community, region, and world.

Family-Integrated

We place high value on the health of families, and our corporate meetings are multi- generational in that children remain together with families in the meetings to allow and encourage families to function and grow together.

Covenant Membership

Covenant membership involves all members’ commitment to be subject to one another for the sake of the integrity and spiritual growth of the Church. It is both a solemn and joyful matter—a deep agreement between regenerated believers that welcomes discipline for the sake of the greater good of sanctification.

Expositional Preaching

We, in our corporate presentation of Bible texts, will deal exegetically with each passage, taking as our main point for the sermon the main point of the text and attending to each issue presented in that text.

Reformed Southern Baptist

God, with absolute sovereignty, accomplishes the salvation of his people by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and for the glory of God alone. He uses his people as His means of spreading the gospel of eternal salvation; we, therefore, being Southern Baptists, cooperate with other churches in supporting mission efforts worldwide.

Plurality of Elders

Elders are the scripturally mandated positions of leadership in the Church. Biblically qualified leaders are shepherds, guiding the body towards accomplishing congregationally selected goals and adhering to Scriptural values; thus, the church is led by the Holy Spirit and guided by multiple elders.

Gospel-Centered Counseling

We acknowledge the Bible as the chief authority on healthy, fulfilled living. As such, pastoral counseling is first and foremost the application of Biblical truth to guide us through our lives.

Those who know me or have read old posts in this blog know that many of those topics have been addressed in this blog, especially the last one.