Authentic?

Recently I attended a class on spiritual warfare. One of the messages the teacher was hitting on was immoral sensual indulgences. Sounds like a topic that could really stir up a good sized crowd, doesn’t it? The illustration used by the teacher was incredibly disappointing. [Side note: I have taught and it’s not as easy as it looks, but I am going to go off about this anyways.]

The teacher confessed that sometimes he struggles with eating too many sugar free cookies. I wanted to stand up and scream, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” That’s your immoral indulgence?

Now it would be different if this person was chronically obese and he was chowing down on Twinkies and cupcakes 10 at a time. Not the case here though. I also realize that not everyone has to have an “immoral sensual indulgence” to confess at any given moment of their life. However, I can guarendainteeyou that someone in that class of 100 sure did, and that person swallowed theirs for another day.

How do confessions like this one help the church’s authenticity problems?

I’m not petitioning for some erotic or pornographic struggle to be confessed to this crowd of 100 on Sunday morning but surely there’s something a bit more concerning going on in our lives than the skinny person’s eating of a handful too many sugarless cookies?

The real admission should have been: “I get daily cravings for disgustingly tasteless cookies.”

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Is maintaining a blog vain? If a blog is for journaling or self reflection, aren't there notebooks for that which can be hidden under your mattress or something?

Maybe a blog is for maintaining relationships. That might be a less vain usage of the technology. Technologies like this one, texting, email, skype, etc., have aided to our over extendedness. Yeah, we can keep up with more old friends but friendships of any depth seem to be less common. Maintaining relationships or friendship building via blogs sounds good, but I suspect their truer application is a manner to spy on each other's inner thoughts or life happenings. How often do you blog hop without leaving a word behind? And if you did leave a word or thought, how long would it take before you wore yourself out?

I mean, what are these counters for but to measure how popular your blog is? Seems vain to me. The biggest reason I haven't included one here is because it likely wouldn't budge. You see, I'm concerned about popularity too.

The usage of blogs, and the like, which seems least vain might be to chronicle experiences for those from far away who are invested in you, whether, emotionally, spiritually, financially, or otherwise. This is typically a way to satisfy a need for connectedness to those supporters of you or whatever you are doing.

I guess some people just like to write and for their writings to be read and appreciated. It sounds dumb to even say, but if people weren’t doing it, putting there thought to “paper”, we would have a lot less to read out there. So I’m glad some do.

So, I guess I’m not advocating that folks shouldn’t write. Rather, I’m asking, what leads you to write?

Is this something that you, fellow bloggers, have asked? What keeps you blogging?

Our New Place

Here are some pictures of our new place. This is proof that we do own our own camera and are capable of not pirating pictures from the world wide web.



Blanco keeping a watch out.



Angel, the Shutt family's dog, visited Abilene a few weeks ago. This is a sweet moment she shared with Blanco. It's pretty much the only sweet moment that the two shared. Blanco was quite a nuisance to Angel so she was glad to finally get home.

Euro 2008

Another soccer tournament has started. It's a tournament between the top 16 international teams in Europe. It happens every four years and last year's victor was Greece. Out of the eight games played so far I have called all but one right.

I'm a bit sour that I still have to go to work. Tournaments like this should really be coupled with some holiday time.

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We are in our new house now and have settled in quite nicely. We lack finishing some decorating projects and assembling our dining table. We are so grateful to be in a larger place where our passion for hosting can thrive without so much limitation.

I am going to do my best to get some pictures of our place up soon.