Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Archives for August 1, 2014

Sidenotes – A new feature at Attempts at Honesty

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Update: Attempts at Honesty is no longer using Livefyre or Sidenotes for comments. This change was made for several reasons; the main reason is the negative effect Livefyre had on page load speed. Also, Livefyre limited commenting to those who are willing to create a Livefyre account and Livefyre controls all the comments. I’d rather have the control within my own domain.

SidenotesYou may have noticed that at the end of every paragraph there is a little icon. That icon is there because I have installed Livefyre Sidenotes to allow for increased interaction. The beauty of Sidenotes is that you can comment on a paragraph or even a word or two in the post.

The hyperlink in the previous paragraph takes you to a post in the Livefyre blog that explains what Sidenotes is all about. You can learn about it there or you can just play around with it and see if you like it. I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts.

Give Sidenotes a try. You can select text in this post and a box pops up which allows you to share the text to Facebook, Twitter or add a Sidenote regarding the selected text. You can also click on the little icon at the end of a paragraph to make a comment on that paragraph.

I think this is a pretty cool feature, but I’m not sure how much interest there is in using it. Therefore, I’ll keep Sidenotes live for the month of August and will then evaluate if there is sufficient use of it to warrant keeping it installed. If it is not helpful or not used, I will remove Sidenotes to keep the page load speed to a minimum.

Let me know what you think.

A tale of two cities

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Tale of two citiesWith an apology to Charles Dickens for the theft of his title, rather than Paris and London, I’m thinking of Sychar and the Decapolis (which is actually ten cities).

In one city Jesus did no miracle other than tell a woman about her past. In the other cities Jesus delivered a demon possessed man in a spectacular manner. It is interesting to note that where Jesus did no miracle, he was received and the people believed. In the other they could not wait to get Jesus to leave them alone.

Often I am tempted to think that it would be so much easier for me and others to believe if only we saw some incredible miracles like the ones recorded in the gospels. But would it? Did the people seeing the overt miracles show any increased tendency to believe?

I am reminded that we cannot say that there are no miracles around us. Is there any question that a changed life is in itself a miracle? Maybe the change is so gradual that it seems a natural process, but the fact that I am not what I was is testimony to God’s power.

We must be careful not to ignore the clues all around us. Like the Samaritans in Sychar, we need to be listening for the truth in what we hear and act upon it. If Jesus is correct and one day we will all give an account for our belief and consequent actions, we cannot lightly dismiss the evidence in favor of Jesus being who he claimed to be.

We need to come to grips with the fact that some will see miracles and hear truth and walk away in complete rejection. We can be cavalier about this and offer our proof texts about election and predestination and wash our hands of it. Or, we can be like Jesus and weep for those who reject the truth. We can turn up our noses at those who most loudly oppose Christianity or we can pray for them and implore God to intervene and have mercy upon them.

Yes, we should be confident that God knows who will accept and who will reject his offer of salvation, but he sees fit to keep that knowledge from us. Therefore should hope and pray that all accept Jesus, even while knowing that all will not.

We should stand waiting by the roadside with the loving father for the prodigal to come home.

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