I’ve long had conversations with people about the separation of people’s public personas and their private faith. As someone who’s determined to learn from all people and enjoy the contributions of non-Christians to society, I’d be a hypocrite if I said I’d never taken pieces of a public person without swallowing the whole.

But I believe we take it too far when we deign to remember and commemorate a person, and indignantly insist on our right to separate out only the parts of the person we like, brushing the rest of the person under the rug. It’s a mildly revisionist form of memory, which is bad to start with. It also reflects a foundational attitude toward the people being remembered: we want to remember your public persona (or, the parts of it that we like), and we demand access to that persona without the entanglement of your personality.

Tebow’s one example. The editor contends that since Tebow is being commemorated because of his athletic ability, his evangelistic side–which Tebow himself never separated from his athletic side, which could be seen in the eye blacks in question–was the reason for his commemoration. It’s not the end of the world for me if some video game doesn’t have Bible verses on the front; I completely support their right to put Tebow-sans-Scripture on the front of their game. But it’s the attitude of the author that gets me, an attitude which I’ve seen reflected in the nation’s attitudes towards other people we commemorate.

One example that I’ve seen often is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Since we love having the inspiration of a passionate civil rights activist, we have dedicated a day to him; there are streets and civic buildings and ceremonies dedicated in his honor. However, we feel like we can celebrate the parts of him we like–civic hero–and throw out the parts of him we don’t–passionate preacher of God. For me, I just don’t see how you’re celebrating his legacy when you throw a party to remember what he did for you–and completely avoid mentioning why.

One good counter to my argument, which I’d love your thoughts on: if what I’m saying is true, must we also celebrate his alleged (or proven? I never really looked into it much) unfaithfulness to his wife? How do I feel comfortable throwing that part of him away? Any thoughts? Am I just being a hypocrite?

This web site and I have grown up together. My brother Ricke and I volunteered to make the site for them in 2002; when we started their host didn’t have MySQL, so Ricke programmed a custom flatfile Content Management System for them (I know this is Geek-ese for most of you). Later the host installed SQL, and we moved to WordPress.

Word of God Web Site Screencap from 2002

I created the first Photoshop layout (right) for the site when we got started in 2002. The design has stayed pretty much the same; you can see the site to see how I updated the logo section to use WoG’s real logo, and made some changes to modernize the layout just a little. A few other changes were made at the request of Phil, the head of WoG.

Both Phil and I have been rather busy since 2002 and didn’t have this site as our top priority, so we’ve worked on it in fits and bursts (usually no more than a week long) for 8 years now. I graduated high school, went off to college, graduated college, and every 6-12 months we’d get a little more work done.

In November of 2009, Phil brought on a guy named Steve Lucchetti, and since then Phil & Steve have been filling in the nearly-completed site with content. I’ve put in about 17 hours of tweaking, final prep work, and transitions between servers and such things–as well as doing a little work here and there to prep a site made in 2002 to go live in 2010.

All in all, I’m really excited the site is finally launching. Their old site was unbelievably out-of-date, and even though this site is old, it’s on a new framework and has new content. So it’s as good as new. I’m happy for Phil’s work, Steve’s work, Ricke’s work, and my work (of 8 years!) to finally come to fruition.

Recently the nature of our business has changed. Where we once were a designer/programmer team, both working out of Ann Arbor and both with similar amounts of free time, our situations have now changed a lot. Ricke is one of the lead programmers at a very important international consulting firm, and I’m now working 10-15 hours a week doing web design to supplement Tereva’s and my incomes from working with InterVarsity (and to engage a different side of my passions and talents.) Our business is now a lopsided designer-hackprogrammer(me)/awesome-programmer(Ricke) team, where I get clients in Gainesville, I try to make the web site, and Ricke fixes anything I break.

Basically, all of this leads to needing help from you, faithful reader. I have 2 directions I can go from here.

Little old me
First, I can move toward a more casual, open relationship with my potential client. I’m not Stauffer Design–I’m just Matt Stauffer. Part of this transition would be to make the web site more personal and comfortable (since, in reality, the clients are just dealing with me anyway); part of this would be because stwd is a frustratingly incommunicative domain name, and staufferdesign.com is already owned by someone else.

If I move to “Matt Stauffer Design,” I will be focusing on my individual strengths. I’ll be able to work more with boutique firms and be hired as a consultant more often for larger clients, but it will reduce my appeal for small businesses that want a whole corps of designers, not just one guy.

Going corporate
Or,  I can focus–both in message and in how I run the business–on providing a more corporate appeal. I already have a name I very much like for this business* (not putting it here for fear of domain snatchers–I’ll be buying the domain name today just in case); I have Ricke as an advisor and several subcontractors who do work for me regularly enough. I have the groundwork laid for a more corporate culture.

The benefits are plenty: peace of mind for my clients, more approachability for local businesses who are scared of hiring just one 25-year-old. The drawbacks, however, are also plenty: a level of separation between me and the client, the need for new tax situations and a DBA and other such legal tomfoolery, the eventual need to pay for larger group task-management software like Basecamp.

Of course, the majority of you have nothing to do with web design. But for those of you either in web design or in a position where you might hire a web designer, could you give me a brief thought? I’ll make the decision myself, and of course a blog post is far from the most efficient means of collecting professional advice… but I like my people, and that’s who many of you are. So. Lemme know.

*Update–I mistyped the name of my potential company when checking if the domain for it is free. It’s not. So, unfortunately, if I do go corporate, I’m back to square one in deciding what the name will be.

I took a class my sophomore year of college called “Biological Perspectives on Contemporary Issues.” It turned out to be, “Why Christians are wrong in all of areas of current debate, and scientific proof for why they’re wrong.”

In many cases, I agreed with, or at least could see some serious validity in, the professor’s points; I’m certainly not sold on anti-evolutionist creationism, let alone full-blown Young-Earth creationism. I’m not confident there isn’t a “gay gene.” I’m not some Bible-thumping homophobic backwaters idiot.

However, purely because of the way this professor thought–and thus led the class to think–I felt it my duty to disagree with him often and vocally.

This man had so much faith in the power of science to observe, describe, encompass, and power everything that ever happens that he–and in my mind, much of the scientific community–couldn’t see past the limitations of science.

As soon as I write this (and said it in class), it seemed like I’m some crazed anti-science “reason is wrong, faith is right” nut. I’m not. But science presupposes dozens of things, and as soon as you make presuppositions–assumptions–you are limiting yourself to only describe the narrowed view of the world that’s presented based on your assumptions.

One tiny, and probably very flawed, example I gave: science presupposes the non-existence of God. Right? So if something happens, and a scientist submits a hypothesis, and the entirety of it is this: “God sneezed, and then the stars came out,” this scientist would be mocked. It’s not a legitimate scientific area of study. Sure, you can think that, but can we measure it? No? Well then, science has no interest in it. Instantly, all things not measurable by mankind are outside of the range of science.

I’m not saying we can’t appreciate science, use science, study science, or anything. What I’m saying, and this is inspired much by my excitement in reading this article by C. John Sommerville, is that science is just a tool. It’s not full enough to form the basis for your entire worldview. It’s not capable of describing or measuring all things worth thinking about.

I wish this were longer. I just wanted to get out that one point before I force myself to sleep.

My new friend but long time admiree York Moore (InterVarsity’s National Evangelist) writes on “counting conversions,” a great collection of teaching about what distinguishes a “conversion” from a “decision,” which Jesus would be concerned about, which the Bible records, and what Jesus’ and the Apostles’ evangelistic messages looked like.

One thing that I really appreciated was the listing of the 10 things that York says were a part of every evangelistic message, in a diagram he calls “The Line of the Gospel.” He says that in every Gospel presentation in Scripture, 9 elements were present (and in most, 10 were present). The one that was left out of some was the moral law–but not, as we might assume, because they don’t want to offend people who don’t share their same conviction. Instead, the moral law would be left it if the person was already convicted of their sin.

So, starting with the somewhat-optional Moral Law:

• The Moral Law
• Sin
• Death
• Eschaton (this is my first time even hearing this word)
• Righteousness
• Death/Cross
• Resurrection
• Lordship
• Repentance
• Decision

I’ll let you follow as I walk through trying to process this. I’m hoping to find that somewhere else York has written a document further explaining this, but for now–and since I have no Internet to check or even to look these words up–you’ll see how my brain tries to process it.  NOTE: My understanding of all of this is very limited. That’s why I’m trying to read up on it. So please, correct me, teach me, expand my knowledge. I’ll even buy you lunch for it if you want.

The Moral Law

All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. There’s a moral law written on all of our hearts, and none of us have or will meet up with it.

Sin

Sin is separation from God. I wish I had a better understanding here, because I’d normally say “sin is when you break the Moral Law”; yet I’m not really sure if that’s theologically correct. But I do know that it means separation from God, the giver of the Moral Law.

Sin is multi-faceted, and there are many words that we translate as sin. But there are some things for sure, as York writes: “We have been born into sin (hamartia) and have actively sinned against God and our world (hamartema) and are in the process of embracing a love for sin (hamartano) which will lead to our eventual absolute depravity and worthlessness (adokimus).” And each/every/all? of these elements of sin break our relationship with God, drawing us away from him and his desires.

Death

I also know the consequences (“wages”, to use Bible-speak) of Sin is death. If you sin, the consequence is death. And everyone sins.

Eschaton

OK. I know that eschatology has to do with studying and being aware of things to come (the end of the world.) So I’ll say this next step is sharing the reality of the return of the King and His judgment.

There will come a day when the King of the world will return to the earth and will judge the living and the dead. To those who are a part of him, he will say “welcome home.” For those who are not, he will say, “depart from me, for I never knew you.” The not folks are headed to a lake of eternal fire, along with Satan and his minions.

Righteousness

Here’s where I get confused. I would’ve assumed that righteousness and Lordship go hand-in-hand; making Jesus the Lord of your life ties nicely in with working out your salvation with fear and trembling, working towards righteousness. But that’s not it. Is this God’s righteousness? Is it Jesus’ righteousness while he was on earth? Is that, “An unrighteous man will sure not enter the Kingdom of God?” Not sure.

York is talking about Jesus’ righteousness here. I definitely don’t know everything there is to say here, but I do know that a good understanding of how our righteousness is obtained (imputed? infused? whatever?), we must start with the understanding of Jesus’ righteousness. Beyond that, I still have a lot to learn.

Death/Cross

OK, so Jesus died on a cross. But whereas our deaths pay for our sin, Jesus has a lot more power, and was able to take the consequence–the debt owed–for the sin of all people onto his back. Because of this, his death didn’t just pay for his sin–it paid for everyone’s sin. Ever.

Also, Jesus’ death was not just a normal death. Quoting York, “he was mercilessly beaten, scourged, spit upon and ultimately died at the hands of sinful men. Isaiah 53:10 tells us that it was the Lord’s will to “crush him,” thus signifying that Christ’s death was a result of God’s direct wrath and judgment, poured out on Him on our behalf.”

Resurrection

Foggy here again. I know the resurrection is vital in many, many ways–that it is a solid historical fact that gives proof to Jesus’ status as God, that it foretells our coming new life. But I want a better understanding of its significance in the role of this story and this evangelism, because I think I’m missing something.

Lordship

OK. I know that Jesus wants to be Lord of our lives. I don’t know if he ever says those words, but it’s clear that he wants that. “If you love me, you will obey my commands” is one. Another is the fact that the Kingdom of God is a place where God is King–so the thing that Jesus preached all that time was a place where he was the King, and people obeyed his command.

York referenced in his post “The Lordship of Christ,” and while that phrase seems like it would practically refer to what I wrote above, it looks like a broader concept–not just that Jesus wants to be our Lord, but that there’s no hope unless he is. “The Lordship of Christ is necessitated because any other captain at the helm will only lead us further into the deep seas of death and judgment.”

Repentance

Again, I’m a little fuzzy about the order here. Doesn’t Lordship come after repentance? Either way, I know that when he took the consequence of our sin on his shoulders, Jesus didn’t automatically apply that salvation (freedom from the penalties of our behavior) to everyone. Rather, he bundled up all that salvation and freedom as a present, and held it out to each of us. We need to accept the gift in order to reap its benefits, and when Scripture talks about accepting that gift, there are a few steps to it.

I’m not a Biblical scholar in this aspect, but I know that repentance, baptism, and public proclamation of your new status are all a part of it. I don’t know which is required when. But I do know that a part of both receiving the gift and of making God your King and Lord is repentance–turning 180º from where you were before. Walking toward sin? Turn 180º and walk toward God.

Once again, I know it’s more complex. But that’s what I have so far.

Decision

See! Once again, I’m confused with the order. Because the thing above describes decision–you have to decide to receive the gift. It’s not forced on you.

OK. Thanks for walking through that with me. I’d love to hear your thoughts, both on York’s model and on my experiences with it. Please teach me better theology! Show me where I’m dearly missing huge chunks of essential Scripture or practice.

There is no way to even begin to share the things we’ve heard and seen since 5pm yesterday … yes the four story Caribbean Market building is completely demolished. Yes it was open. Yes the National Palace collapsed. Yes Gov’t buildings nearby the Palace collapsed. Yes St Josephs Boys home is completely collapsed. …

Thousands of people are currently trapped. … Precious lives hang in the balance. When pulled from the rubble there is no place to take them for care.  Haiti has an almost non existent medical care system for her people.

There are friends and co-workers that are missing. … The horror has only just begun and I beg you to get on your knees – I truly mean ON YOUR KNEES and pray for the people of this country. The news might forget in a few days – but people will still be trapped alive and suffering. Pray. Pray. Pray. After that – PLEASE PRAY.

From LivesayHaiti

Photos

• The Boston Globe’s Big Picture (by far the best collection): http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti.html
• ABC News Slideshow: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/slideshow?id=9546756
• Terremoto in Haiti Flickr set
• Lisandro Suero’s Twitpics

News

• NYTimes: The Lede blog (actively updated with collection of news): http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/gleaning-information-from-haiti-online/
• Wikipedia: 2010 Haiti Earthquake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_earthquake
• CNN Haiti Quake Site: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/haiti.quake/
• LivesayHaiti (a missionary blog): http://livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/

Aid/Organizations

• Red Cross: http://newsroom.redcross.org/2010/01/12/disaster-alert-earthquake-in-haiti/
• Worldvision: http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/learn/world-vision-haiti?Open&lpos=lft_txt_Haiti
• Partners in Health: http://pih.org/
• Full list here: http://www.urbanfaith.com/2010/01/ways-to-help-haiti.html

Obviously, the fullness of each of my thoughts can’t be explored in 140 characters. But no matter how long I make this post (before I edited it, it was almost four times longer), its summary will always be simply the post’s first sentence (which is far less than 140 characters): “Twitter has helped me learn conciseness.”

Edit: I chose to change to the word conciseness. I prefer concision, personally, but conciseness is a better communicator–there’s much less of a pause between reading the word and understanding it, as conciseness has only one meaning and concision has multiple.

This blog, Twitter, Facebook, and then an IV blog, IV facebook and IV twitter, have given me so many outlets for expression that I’ve reached the point of emptying myself of anything significant to say. I find myself always referring to “that post I wrote last week”, or, “did you see that thing I posted on Facebook?” Something had to change.

This blog, taking the most effort to update, was the first to drop. I’ve begun to limit my Twitter & Facebook updates pretty severely as well. I’m moving more towards generating content I want other people to see, and away from just talking about my life, my frustrations, etc.

Hopefully this is a good sign for the blog, because it’s my best place for generating content. It’s hard to have a teaching moment through Twitter. We’ll see.

It does mean it’ll be harder for people to just keep up with my life through these online mediums. So, if you ant that, and you miss it, please give me a call, email me, text me, comment here, or whatever else it takes to get in communication. I’d love to hear about you, and maybe tell you a little about my life as well.

But, for now, if you want to be kept a little more aware of my goings-on Internet-wise, feel free to follow me on twitter. Otherwise, pray that I use my time, attention, and expression wisely and in a way that helps others, leaves me with impetus for non-Internet conversation, and glorifies God.

Benefits of switching to a Facebook page (from a group)

• You can generate status updates and posts to your wall, allowing you a much greater capability for daily interaction with students.
• People are more likely to be a fan of something than to join a group.
• You can have multiple “tabs” (meaning you can have multiple pages to your Page.) You can choose which is the landing page when visitors first visit your site, and you can customize these to look almost any way you like (although some customizations might require the knowledge of HTML).
• Pages get detailed user interaction tracking (called Insights) about fans added, fans who leave, and how fans interact with their posts and updates.
• The user interface is more like the personal profiles they’re used to interacting with, making the page feel more dynamic, comfortable, and personal.
• Once you reach 100 users, you can create a custom URL for your page (for example, ours is http://www.facebook.com/intervarsityuf ).

Detriments of switching to a Facebook page (from a group)

• Becoming a “fan” of a page has less feel of commitment than joining a group. More people become fans, but it carries less weight than joining a group.
• You cannot message your members; you can only send updates. Both show up in their inbox, but updates are not the default view, and also don’t show up in their unread message count.
• You cannot invite all of your fans to an event; you can only invite people you’re already friends with.

That’s all I have for now. I’ll try to update this if I think of more. Overall the experience has been great, but the limitations on event invitations and messaging is putting a huge damper on our plans to use the Page exclusively.

Pause for a moment. Racialization is not the same as racism. I first read the term in Divided by Faith, an incredible book that gave me so much understanding and wisdom and research and fact (to add to the personal testimony I’d gained) about the race situation in America and in the church. Racialization as I read it is not the same as racism; racism is a knowing dislike of and unfair negative approximation of a person’s worth because of their skin color, ethnicity, etc. (which in our world fall under the social construct “race.”) However, many people have told me that white people who don’t get super-involved with race issues, etc. are racist. I always clashed with that. Instead, Divided by Faith presents the concept of a racialized society–one that has distinct lines drawn along the boundaries of race. More black men in prison, segregated churches, different health rates and hiring rates and educational quality, etc. So, you can exist in your happy white world, unaware of what’s going on with people of ethnic minorities, and you can think great things about them–you’re not a racist. Yet if you aren’t actively learning about and doing things to end racialization, you’re still allowing a racialized society to persist–which isn’t any a lot better.

Back to the original point: I’ve been making some comments recently on Twitter about Black characters on TV. Essentially, I like to watch TV while I design web sites–it distracts me just enough to keep from getting bored, but it’s not stimulating enough to slow down my work. I’ve been watching a lot of normal shows recently–not advanced, award-winning shows that are on the forefront of social commentary, but plain old normal shows–and I’ve noticed a trend across all of them: Black people are accessories.

It’s sad. It’s a terrible thing to admit. And, growing up, I would’ve told the person saying what I’m saying now to stop whining. But there’s something to this. In these shows I’ve been watching, the Black characters fall into a few simple categories:

• The mean girl’s follower best friend
• The drug dealer
• The young kid from the projects who’s trying to make his way out playing basketball
• The “mammy”, the homely, simple, sweet but a little sassy mother/neighbor/grandmother/landlady
• The voodoo mystic (usually African, Haitian, or from New Orleans)

There are certainly others, but I can’t tell you the last time I saw a consistent Black character with depth that didn’t fall into some strong stereotype. Smallville had Petey, but he disappeared right quick. I know there have been others–everyone can name a show with a Black president or a Black best friend. But in general, I’ve been more and more disappointed the more I see.

Obviously, this is excepting movies and TV intended for Black audiences. From what I can gather, I once would’ve been able to point to BET, but now it seems to be shirking its original intention of giving Black Americans A) real roles for the actors/characters and B) programming that meets them where they are.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been coming from. I find that I’ve been mentioning this a lot recently, and I decided it was time to really write something about it and see if people wanted to say anything about this, teach me more, learn from what I’ve learned, or whatever else.

*Edit*: If you’re interested in learning more about these topics, two of the best sites (in my opinion) are UrbanFaith and Racialicious. UrbanFaith looks at national issues from a Black Christian context; Racialicious is devoted to all things racially motivated/striated. One note: Racialicious contributors are very comfortable with sex and some language that might make some people uncomfortable, so visit if you can handle it.