c. scott andreas

37Signals has a brilliant post on their blog called “I Wonder.”

My son loves toy catalogs. He’ll turn the pages and just imagine. He drinks the koolaid, and loves every minute of it. I love to watch him.

I hope he never gets to the point where he thumbs through a catalog and scoffs. Where he reads the descriptions and cynically dares them to be true. I want him to always retain his sense of wonder, his desire to believe the best.

What has happened to our optimism?

I tried with all of my might to conjure up this sense of wonder while watching Teh Steve’s WWDC Keynote…but it was just so tough. I’m not really exited. I want to be – I want so badly to believe.

I want to believe in iPhone, too. But with no SDK, no support for Flash, and limited availability at present…I can’t. It’s an amazing phone - positively groundbreaking…or “revolutionary” as I’m told to say. But I just can’t do it.

And I want to believe in Coda by the amazing guys at Panic who work a few blocks away. But without great support for content management-based development, I can’t shell out.

I admit that there is a cynical spirit at work in me. But at the same time, I feel let down by these amazing companies to whom I’ll gladly surrender my bank account in exchange for outstanding hardware and software.

The developer in me still has faith. I’m working on a project that has me tremendously excited at the moment - a project that could revolutionize the way churches come together and actually serve their local communities. May you find a project to ignite your undying work-til-3-am-and-sleep-til-7 passion as well.

The bar has been set really, really high, and the web has never been better than it is right now. But that’s no reason to stop making really great tools. I hope. We can keep this up.

Because underneath all of this beautiful code lies the passion.

 UPDATE:  I just bought Coda.  Played around with it for awhile.  It’s cleverly.  Thanks, Cabel and co.  Enjoy my $79…and maybe a cup on me in a couple weeks.

This is the formal conclusion to a four-part series; I may or may not extend it.
Read parts one, two, and three.

I concluded the previous installment by highlighting a portion of Jesus’ statement which I believe has profound implications for us today. Now, we’ll explore what he meant by this.

Jesus tells us that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

Other translations of this text include “is/draws near and draws nigh.” The Greek word used here is “eggizo“. It means to join one thing to another or to approach. There are two implications for this interpretation. First, we see that the Kingdom of Heaven is immediately available to us — we need only respond to this call to repentance (that is, allow our minds to be completely transformed — from which action will flow).

Second, we see that the Kingdom of Heaven is approaching the kingdoms of the world. As God has no intention of retreating, his Kingdom will crash into earth as he reclaims, restores, and renews what is His.

When a king comes to visit — or better yet, take up residence, it’s a pretty good idea to put things in order. We see this in the Parable of the Ten Minas in Luke 19 (a mina was about three month’s wages for a laborer). In this parable, a king entrusts three servants with a significant amount of resources in order that they might invest and grow them. But we’re told that “his citizens hated him…saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’” In this story, those who submit themselves to the authority of the king are trusted and loved. Conversely, those who refuse the king’s authority and failed to obey him were put to death.

As such, we’ve good reason to submit ourselves to the Kingdom of God. We’re called to trust in Him, to freely give as we have received, to minister to widows and orphans, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked — in other words, to be Just. The King calls us to push against the pain and brokenness of sin. Though we’ve long participated in its destruction, we must do what we can to make good on it. Not for salvation’s sake (at least as we tend to think of it). But because we know that the will of the King is obedience, justice, restoration, and renewal. Waiting around for him to simply return would be much like the third servant in the story of the minas. He was viciously scolded and had what was entrusted to him taken away.

Today, Christ calls us to enter into the Kingdom, much like he called his first-century disciples. What might living life in the Kingdom of Heaven look like today?

Greek references from Blue Letter Bible.

This is the second post in a multi-part series on American History X and the Kingdom of God. Click here to read the first.

In the first post in this series, I offered a brief description of American History X and suggested that it converses with the story of the Kingdom of God in a variety of ways. Here’s one of them.

American History X can be seen as an ideological struggle that manifests itself in real, physical ways. A rhetoric of white power led to violence against racial minorities (primarily blacks and hispanics, both of which were referred to in alternate terms). Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that hate breeds hate. Though Derek’s violent speech and actions near the beginning of the film are directed against minorities, he soon found himself screaming at his mother and hitting her, grabbing his little sister by the hair, and shouting down voices of wise authority in his life. It appears that the medium is the message — a rhetoric of hatred is not capable of bringing peace.

Similarly, Paul writes in his letter to the church at Rome that followers of Christ are to “be transformed by the renewing of [their] minds.” He establishes a direct connection between patterns of thought and patterns of behavior. We’re also commanded by Christ to bear fruit as God the Father enables us. Here, a transformation of the spirit through the infusion of new life enters into the world in real, tangible ways.

Living in such a manner has the opposite implications from those we see at the beginning of American History X. Rather than violent speech of power and violence, we find words of humble and love restoring peace and respect to broken families, communities, and nations in the Kingdom. This is a kingdom that does not “force” itself upon those in its proximity, but one to which people are drawn by its fruit.

In the film, Dr. Sweeney, an incredibly wise black high school English teacher has a conversation with Derek (the former neo-Nazi protagonist):

Dr. Sweeney: There was a moment…when I used to blame everything and everyone. For all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn’t get no answers ’cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions.

Derek: Like what?

Dr. Sweeney: Has anything you’ve done made your life better?

Like Paul, Dr. Sweeney suggests that the nature of our minds, attitudes, and motives are directly responsible for the conditions in which we live, our welfare, and the welfare of those around us. It seems that we have an imperative to renew our minds. As we observe this transformation occuring by the work of the Spirit, we’re able to watch the Kingdom breaking into our flesh and the lives of those around us in real, tangible ways that have immediate implications for life today and for eternity.

welcome,

c. scott andreas