January 2005 Archives

I just want to make a chronological review of this weekend because it was one of my best and longest in a long time. On Friday, Terri woke up with a migraine. Not the most terrible one, but one bad enough that she felt she had to miss school. This is not an easy decision for teachers because it usually entails creating sub-plans, which is not a small amount of work. Friday was especially unfortunate as her kids were performing a skit about the Little Engine that Could.

I stayed home to work to take care of Terri and so I could be here when the windows guys came in to fix some windows whose seals had broken and were clouding up. The workman that took the windows out had to use a hammer to smash the glass to pull the old windows out before putting in the new ones. That was a mess to clean up after in three different rooms of the house. Fortunately, the work is being done on the previous home owners expense (or at least that of their relo-company).

Working from home, I got through as much of my email and through as many tickets as I could and was relatively quiet compared to the problems earlier in the week (mail working intermittently when, according to Courier, it shouldnâ¿¿t have worked at all). After I'd gotten through all the important stuff and assigned the rest to my dudes, I started packing for the New Hope Men's Retreat, "Battle for Your Heart II, Engage".

I tried to pack as little as possible as there is something close to competition among the men at the retreat on how little you can bring. I lost and know what I will not bring next year—ah, who needs to shower when it's just an overnight thing, just shower just before you leave. Terri's friends came over to hang out as I was headed out the door.

The ride to the retreat was only mildly difficult as it was snowing but it was way too warm for the snow to stick. I wasn't driving this year either, which was something of a relief (I get very intense when driving in poor weather). Once there, we picked our bunks and hung out until time to start (just a few minutes later). The first event, as always at these things, was the "sorting ceremony" where everyone is placed with a group leader who will facilitate discussion during the rest of the retreat. This year's sorting technique was to give everyone a piece of candy that they weren't supposed to eat. Then, you had to find the leader with the same kind of candy. Well, some of the candies were near misses (Reese's Peanut Butter cups with gold wrappers and orange writing or gold wrappers with yellow?), some leaders were confused as to what variations matched their candies, and it looks like either through miscounts or the fact that there were fewer guys present than had signed up had further thrown off the count.

After all that was sorted out, we had our learn-your-group-members-names game. Every two groups joined together to form a larger group and then we tossed tennis balls around the group saying the name of the person we tossed to. Our group was the odd group and we also had a seventh member because of a late arrival. We were more or less, unofficially disqualified from winning the candy, but I didn't really need it anyway—yes, that's sour grapes for you.

Finally, we started the first session. Our speaker was Dave Mitchell and he is awesome—yes, a "da Bomb" column is forthcoming. He is a very intense and precise speaker. I don't know if he literally reads from his notes, but I had a look at them at one point and he types his stuff out in essay form. Then he highlights where his points coincide with the slides so the visuals guys can follow. In any case, he sticks very closely to his notes. I think he must just speak his notes nearly verbatim because his phrasing of each statement is nearly perfect. He cuts straight to the heart of the matter and then inspires the listener through his intensity and passion. He's cool. He's a model I would seek to follow if I were ever to preach.

The first session was titled "The Foresight of Provision." The overall theme was "Provision," by the way. His major theme for the session was that we, as men, should be providing vision for those around us. "Being a provider is being part prophet." Looking ahead to see what God is doing in the lives of the people we take care of. Then, casting that vision into their lives to help them face the next challenge of their life. The most memorable illustration of the night was the tsunami illustration. Basically, "some dangers move too fast to outrun once they've come." The picture was of a man who'd lost his son to the tsunami. The question is, what would he have done for 30 seconds of warning? 30 minutes? The answer is, 30 seconds is meaningless. That might not even be enough time to find his son, let alone save him. But, 30 minutes could have given him the warning he needed. Thus, the goal of godly men should be as "watchmen" trying to give each of our dependents that 30 minutes of warning to weather the storm.

I also had the opportunity to pray for a friend, who confessed to having been struggling with pornography and had been caught by his wife. This is tough. I have had the same experience. I hope I won't, but I don't trust myself enough to say I won't ever have that experience again. God is gracious and, fortunately, so are our wives. It's good to have men praying for each other in a situation like this because all men face it and men really know the needs of another man who's wounded in this way. If only we could cast of these natural bodies and take on our spiritual ones to complete the work of sanctification. These bodies drag us down under the curse even after our minds have been renewed. Unfortunately, we don't get to see that happen until after death, so such hope is vain.

After the first session, we had "free time." They also started the movie, "To End All Wars" on the screen in the sanctuary. I came down and watched the movie and it's a good one. It's about POWs in a World War II Japanese labor camp. These men are made to live on barely enough food and forced to build a railroad through Thailand to prepare the way for a Japanese invasion into India. The story itself is based on a book written by one of the men in the camp (and the main character of the movie). The only star I recognized in it was Kiefer Sutherland. The story is, like most labor/death camp stories of World War II, about the horrible conditions of the camp and how these conditions turned the men into animals. However, early in the story there was a turning point that led the men to hope and through following Christian teaching, the men became better workers for their Japanese captors. I don't want to give anymore than that away, but it is an excellent movie.

After that, I hopped up onto my bunk and slept. That was just Friday.
On Saturday morning, I woke up about five hours later at 6:45 and showered, dressed, and headed to breakfast. The guys I rode with slept on the top bunks and another group of guys slept on the bottom. I met Mike, one of the bottom bunkers, and we headed over to breakfast together. At breakfast, I sat with a different group of guys, only Aaron I knew. (I think I actually met him last year at the men's retreat.) I met his brother Kelly, I hope I'm spelling correctly, who's currently studying business. I also met another completely unrelated fellow, Adam, who's studying Civil Engineering.

We then went on to session two. This session was focused upon "The Sacrifice of Provision." A major point of this message was that we cannot work to provide for others without sacrifice. The difference between welfare and provision is sacrifice. Welfare is a purely selfish endeavor: "Here, take this and leave me alone." Provision is when someone needs clothing and all you have is your own shirt to offer. You give it to them in their need. In the movie we watched, this is very well demonstrated when a man who is dying of dysentery (basically, a disease that drains all the water out of your body through your bowels until there's none left) is nursed to health by a fellow prisoner by sacrificing his own rations. The man nearly sacrifices his own life to save the other and then the saved man does the same for the other.

Lunch was roast beef and vegetables. This time I sat with Jeremy, my small group leader, Robbie, Alex, Todd, and one of the guys from the Wichita group (whose name I am not now able to remember). We had some spirited discussions about the sessions and our difficulties, along with mocking Todd a bit for a story he told about nearly winning the high school baseball championship.

Session three was about "The Source of Provision." I'd say the theme was more, "Dependence Upon God for Provision." Men can't be men on their own. We are weak and our masculinity is undermined both from outside by our culture and from within by our own bodies. Men want to be gruff, rough, and tough. We want to club our women and take them home and take advantage of them. This is the natural state of man in the model of Adam. In Christ, our spirit is given a new model through the working of the Holy Spirit, we can take after our new father, the new Adam, Jesus Christ. The ultimate man (to men) in our culture is James Bond. He's untamable. He gets the girl (or several sometimes). He's strong, courageous, independent, and debonaire. He can dodge bullets while sipping a martini. He's a god of manhood and needs no one else. He is an unattainable lie.

When men try to become this man, we get men who have affairs, who abandon their children and wives for money, sex, fun, or self-satisfaction in work and achievement. We have men who don't make commitments to provide for those around them. We end up with boys disillusioned with masculinity and wanting no part of it. We have a culture slowly breaking up like a calving glacier. Our culture is falling apart around us because men don't care for their own, they care for themselves.

Thus, the point of this message is that men can't achieve true masculinity on our own. We must be dependent upon the source of true strength, Jesus Christ through His Spirit. This is how men become fathers who don't just play with and punish their kids, but become role models for their kids. This is how husbands go the extra mile to make sure their wives have what they need to succeed at work and as mothers. Leadership in Christ is leadership through service. We need to sacrifice our personal goals and try to achieve God-sized goals that force us to be dependent on God for their success.

Now we were done and headed home. On the trip home, Brian, Rudy, Jeff, Chris, Peter, and myself discussed what we were most challenged with and I think it helped me focus on a couple issues. One aspect we discussed in the third session about dependence is the difference between working for God's purpose and striving within ourselves to be godly. The first is possible, the second is self-defeating as we just don't have the strength. Yet, the second seems easier because it's straightforward and we can claim the glory for ourselves if we succeed. The problem is, we won't succeed. On the trip home, I focused this down to Paul's discussion of the natural man versus the spiritual man, the new man versus the old. This discussion can be found in 2 Corinthians, Romans, and is a major theme of Galatians and Ephesians too. My conclusion is that to be dependent on God means to pursue God's will our motive. To strive to achieve God's will is to try to satisfy our own will as our motive. Dependence on God is a matter of motives, not a matter of works. We must work because it will bring us closer to God or will serve the same purpose in the lives of those around us. We must not try to work so as to assuage our guilt or to prove our worthiness to God because there simply isn't any worthiness that can be proven nor can guilt be removed without the shedding of blood, and Christ has already paid that price. To strive is to mock Christ's sacrifice. Or, as Dave Mitchell put it, "If we can succeed by our own works, then God becomes a cosmic monster. Why did He make Christ suffer such a horrific death for no reason?"

Once home, Terri and I had our date night and discussed what had happened during the last 24 hours or so. We had a very good meal at Coco Bolos, which reminds me I need to think about Valentine's Day...ahem. We hit Pier One as they're selling out their stock at their current location to move to a new one. We found a mirror to hang above the mantle and a vase. We also rented The Village and Napoleon Dynamite to watch this weekend. We came home and hung the mirror, talked some more, and then went to bed.

On Sunday, we had one of the best sermons Dan has given in a while. It was on Romans 5 and about how we can either keep our natural born ancestry of Adam or choose to take on the new ancestry of Christ. The first leads to death—i.e., eternal separation from God, a state Christians call hell. The second leads to life—i.e., enjoying God and worshipping him for the rest of eternity, a state Christians call heaven. It was a very good message.

Terri and I then went shopping for groceries and folding chairs, which we needed for meals this week and for seating for the friends coming over later that night, respectively. We bought a rotisserie chicken for lunch from Walmart's deli. We had lunch and then cleaned the house up as our LIFE group started meeting at our house last night. We then watched Napoleon Dynamite, which is a truly strange movie. As far as I can tell, the theme of this movie is, "Dorks are cool too." Revenge of the Nerds, but about guys who have nothing going for them. The movie also has no plot. There isn't really a struggle or climax as far as the whole movie goes. There is a small amount of plot in some of the subplots, but even most of those are just pointless. I'd say it's definitely a post-modern movie, but with a happy ending. (I'd expect a truly post-modern movie to have no ending as this movie didn't really seem to have a beginning.)

Once the movie ended and we were able to wipe the incredulous looks off our faces at having enjoyed something so mindlessly stupid, we made final preparations for LIFE group to come over. This was one of the best LIFE group meetings we've had in a long time as well. This weekend has been very good overall. We are discussing the book of First John and specifically discussed the end of chapter 2 and start of chapter 3 yesterday. It's a challenging section that I think I will talk more about in another blog, if I have time.

After the discussion time we had some really good prayer time amongst the guys. We were able to share a bit of what was on each of our hearts and to pray for each other. I understand the women also had a pretty good prayer time.

All in all, this weekend was hard but good. All throughout, Terri and I had some really good intimate discussions as well. I really want to do more of that with her, but it is very hard because I don't like opening myself up. It's much easier to superficial with her as it is with everyone else. Yet, I know that our relationship cannot grow if we only show a mask to each other and let our internal doubts gnaw at us alone.

I think there is an unfortunate tendency in the modern American church to focus on only one half of the Gospel message. Now, the interesting thing is that different churches tend to pick different halves.

The Gospel can be summed up like this: You, like everyone else are a sinner and have destroyed any chances of getting into heaven by all of the bad stuff you've done, we call this "sin." Because of that, you have chosen hell as your final destination. However, God is unwilling to let you go there without a chance for redemption. Thus, he sent his Son Jesus Christ two millenia ago to show humanity what a perfect life looks like and then to give up that perfect life in a sacrifice to satisfy the punishment you (and all others) should endure. He then rose from the dead to prove his conquest over death and that there is hope to have life. To gain this life, you must believe in Christ and his sacrifice and ask him to forgive you for your sins. Once done, your destiny is switched from eternal damnation to eternal paradise. Your mind is freed from the slavery to sin, but you must still abide in a corrupt body until death when you too will be reborn into your new body in paradise.

That is the jist of the Gospel. The half Gospel is one of two things: (1) go to hell, you sinners! or (2) oh, it's so happy, we get to go to heaven! These half-gospels come in many forms ranging from bad theology to pure heresy.

In the negative half Gospel, the milder forms usually come out as forms of legalism where Christians forget the freedom brought to us by Christ (read Galatians sometime). Or, we find the hypercritical Christians who consider any deviation from their exacting beliefs to be tantamount to heresy. Again, this forgets the freedom we have in Christ. As Christians, we can still make mistakes and the grace of God covers them over. In cult form, we find the older cults of Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, or even the Judaizers described in the New Testament. They break Christianity by adding to grace or by so badly twisting the words of the Bible to fit their own agendas and reform the Bible into their own heresies.

In the positive half Gospel, the weaker theology usually comes out as easy-believism (now that God forgave me of my sin, I can do anything fun and sinful and get away with it) or even trying to make the Gospel "relavant" to our culture. Cultural relevance is an especially dangerous trap because it honestly sounds good—and in a small measure, it even is good (Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians). Yet, in an attempt to make the Gospel "seeker sensitive" or easier to digest, we change it. If you only believe in the happy half of the Gospel, how are you to cope when God puts you to the test? Jesus said that following him would be a light load, but it will lead to hard times. The word of faith movement is a cult example where the Gospel becomes a magic spell to solve all our problems.

The truth is, we must always remember that the Gospel has a dark side and a light side. The dark side is that humanity is nothing but a soiled rag. We have nothing to offer God (he's already God, what would we offer?). We had it all and we tossed it aside so we could do things our way. The American revolutionary in me says, "Cool!" But, such rebellion to the God of heaven has consequences, especially when his way was perfect and pain free. Total depravity is something we Christians must never forget and we must broadcast as the fundamental first step to belief. All humans will go to hell if they do not take active steps to change their position with God. Anyone who chooses to reject God's Way, will go to hell. That's final. The New Testament couldn't be any clearer.

On the other hand, we must also remember that God is Love. He wants us to be free. He created us with the ability to think freely and to do freely. He wants us to choose the way we want ourselves and doesn't want to force us into the same mold. We all have the freedom to do what's right in Christ. That may even look different for different people (read first and second Corinthians).

We must remember the humility of the negative. We must remember the joy of the positive. The half Gospel, whether half-empty or half-full, isn't enough.

I'm bored with my CIS web site and a little tired of maintaining it. For anyone looking for it's content, it still exists and I'll be bringing it back, but I'm trying to put together the next generation content management system for my web site.

History: Okay, this is pathetic. I am so picky about my crud that I have literally spent the last 7 years trying to put together a content management framework for web design as my number one pet project. All of that work and I have very little to show for it. In that time, I've restarted at least once a year.

The original reason for all this work is that I wanted to have a journal of articles and essays that I updated on a regular basis, but wouldn't have to maintain the index. I wish I could say that 7 years ago, I started blogging before "blogging" was even a part of Internet jingo, but I did want to do it 7 years ago.

More History: I've been "programming" since I was able to read. Something around five years old. I wasn't really programming per se, but I did know how to copy programs from Compute Magazine. When I was eleven, my friend Lucas gave me a (pirated) copy of Turbo Pascal 6.0. He also had a tutorial he'd gotten off of a local BBS to learn Pascal. From there, I got my one wish for my sixteenth birthday, Borland C++ 3.1 with Application Framework and then taught myself C and C++. (Yes, I have been geek since I was five years old.)

At K-State, because of the leadership of Dr. Schmidt, I learned Java and became completely emersed in the language. It was around this time, while working as a consultant for Network Resource Group, I began trying to put together a CMS. It wasn't called a CMS back then, but that's what it was.

Over time, I got frustrated with the restrictiveness of the Java language. I always felt like I was trying to wrap my ideas around the Java language instead of just executing them. Java is so very verbose, but it does provide a standard library for doing everything. Anyway, my first attempt went up in flames.

I then had my first, brief, flirtation with Cocoon while I was taking CIS 726 as an undergraduate and built a very small implementation of my personal web site with it. Cocoon was cool, but freaking slow!

I then began my trek for a language that could express what I wanted directly. I wanted a language I can think in. I tried out PHP. PHP is real slick. Last I checked, NRG is still using the second web site I designed for them using PHP. We need some login functionality for clients so they could check on the antivirus email service we were planning to supply (though, I understand they've since dropped that service). Anyway, I replaced a web site that took me two weeks to put together (in Java and JSP) with a new one in PHP in less than four hours. Awesome!

Therefore, I embarked on attempt number three in PHP. This is when I came with the concept of a content management system, which everyone else obviously copied from me. ;) This is when I invented, Contentment, as a framework. Unfortunately, my first concept for Contentment was doomed from the beginning. PHP just wasn't elegant enough for me to do anything but RAD. I like PHP and would use it again, but I will not build frameworks in it. Too much spaghetti.

This and the fact that PHP isn't really good for anything but web templates (though, I understand PHP 5 is changing that) brought me back to my search for a language. At NRG, I had messed with Perl a bit for the antivirus stuff (we were extending Anomy Mailtools) and decided to give it a try. I also gave Python a shot. Both are nice languages. Python offers some very elegant scripting features and freedom from static typing. (I can just hear Dr. Stoughton and Dr. Banerjee cringing at that thought.) Python is just too....ugly for me. Yes, I said ugly. It feels clunky and I have to think to hard to do things their way. It's the same old issue I had with Java.

Perl, on the other hand, is like God's gift to the disorganized thinker. I can think in Perl. I write code like I write a term paper. It's easy for me to read and easy for me to write. It fits me. Unfortunately, it too, is very clunky. Many of the language features are hacked on. Imagine an object oriented language where the objects are just things that are "blessed" with a name. Thus, you could have an array or a regular value or a map "blessed" as the same type but have completely different ways of being used. Ick. So, I cope with the clunk because I know Perl 6 is coming.

Anyway, Perl brings me back to my point. I started an implementation in Perl. I failed. I started another implementation in Perl. I again couldn't stand my own code, and started again. Around this time I discovered Mason, which is a really wonderful tool for embedding Perl into source code and is a mini-content management system of it's own, sort of. I tried again with a Perl/Mason combo and again failed.

I then decided, let's go practical. I'll implement something that works RIGHT FREAKING NOW. Ta-da! It worked!....almost. If you go to the CIS Support Site, you can see my handiwork. It works. The original ~Sterling web site featured a forked version of the same software that was improved in a lot of ways from the original. Unfortunately, both of these were still lacking and slowly became less and less manageable—i.e., they didn't scale as well as I'd hoped.

Thus, I have endeavored to use the best of those tools and added new features for database support and a new forms system to try and make the system more scalable. Unfortunately, I've again tried to go too abstract again and not concrete enough.

This time, I'm going to do it right. I'm going to take the best of my third generation Mason/Perl software and my attempted fourth generation Mason/Perl software to build the fifth generation.

This is why ~Sterling is now a blank slate. I'm going to build it up from scratch and I will make it beautiful, or I will die trying. May God have mercy on my soul.

Terri and I have been having some serious discussions over the last few days about church and Christianity. These have mostly cenetered around some specific topics. The thing that has been really brought to mind of late is the general problem Christians face when it comes to doing right, but not having to do right.

That's right. Christians partake in a religion whereby we are told we must "be perfect as Christ is perfect." Simultaneously, we are told "if we confess our sins, He is faithul and righteous to forgive." On the one hand, Christians toil to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. On the other, we fail every day to actually succeed and therefore require God's grace.

Corporately, this works out even worse. Christians in groups seem to magnify mistakes rather than magnify our good works. It's easier to say to encourage each other to seek a "me first" attitude because that's really what we'd prefer. Yet, the correct attitude is "God first." The really sad thing is that we will sometimes even claim to push "God first" and then start saying "me first" in our next sentence.

If anyone calls "us" hypocrites, they are right. We are. In fact, we're the worst hypocrites because we know the truth and still don't practice it. We sit high and mighty and draw out judgements on others by whispsering sins..."he's gay"..."she's selfish"..."he eats too much." And I do this as much as anyone else. I am too hypercritical. I want people to be perfect as I would define it. It's the same with all Christians.

In some ways, though, this is good. This is even healthy. While this might be seen as a form of complex, it's a good one---so long as we recognize it and admit it. That's where sanctification comes in. God works to refine our ability to resist sin through the process of admitting mistakes, humbling ourselves in brokeness, and repenting so we may at least do a bit better next time. All the while we look forward to The Day, when at last we will shed our "natural bodies" to put on our final "spiritual bodies."

That will be a good day.

I just wanted to comment on the fact that I haven't been very little email in my Inboxes lately. It's just plain weird. I have two Inboxes, one that I share with my wife for home and personal email and one that I use for work. Both of them have had an astonishingly low volume over the last few days.

I keep wondering if DreamHost (the provider for Hanenkamp.com) or work email is broken. Then, I have to remind myself that I have been getting a bit of email from important folks asking questions, requesting fixes, etc. at work. I've also gotten some email from friends and family at home. So, they aren't broken.

Then, I realize what is notoriously absent: spam. My spam volume has dropped to mysteriously low levels. Now, I'm not saying that actual spam sent to my accounts has dropped, but, at least momentarily, it would appear that SpamAssassin seems to have caught almost everything at home (DreamHost uses it) and work (we use it in CIS). I think I've deleted two or three spam messages in the last three or four days! That's incredible.

Still, the actual volume of spam coming in isn't really as high as I've come to expect either. Checking the Junk Mail report and the my Spam folder, I see that I've only received a dozen or so in the last day or two in both accounts. For awhile, I was seeing something like 30 to 50 spams per day. Now, they've dropped off to an almost tolerable level.

On the other hand, I've had to work a little harder keeping the spammers off my blog. In the last week, I've had to delete probably 10 or 20 spam messages to my blog. I may have to take counter-measures soon if this increases. The old Blosxom system may be losing the ability to post soon and I might drop the ability for anonymous posts here, or see if Drupal has some extensions to provide some antispam security for anonymous posting.

Anyway, I just thought this was an oddity worth blogging. Cheers.

I'm experiencing an interesting sensation. I've experienced it before, but never to this extent. I feel a bit listless. This usually happens to me during transition periods such holiday breaks or when a big project is finished. But this time it's a bit more acute. This will be the first semester where I not only have no classes or projects, but no academic goals whatsoever. Last spring I took no classes and did no projects, but I worked very hard to make my temporary position a permanent one. I also had my final report to look forward to. However, now, my degree is complete. I have no school. My job is permanent. The big winter projects at work are pretty well concluded. We now have a house and are settled. Where do I go next?

As such, I look for vision on where next my life should lead. To this point, my life has been a little like the movie Forrest Gump. Every time a major decision needed to be made an opportunity presented itself and he took it. I have always felt my life to be much the same. When it came time to decide on a school, I knew I wanted to work with computers but I also wanted some formal Christian training. MCC was a school my youth minister had gone to and offered me what I saw to be the perfect combination of both. Terri and I were a natural match when we met. The decision to get married, the timing, and everything more or less fell into place. When it came time to graduate with my Bachelor's Degree, the economoy started to go south and then 9/11. Since the CIS department was willing to give me a free education in exchange for working as a teaching assistant. When my three semesters of teaching ended, I naturally took a job from my friend Dan Andresen in the department. When a job as a student sysadmin opened, it seemed like a natural next position. When my boss was promoted to professor in Salina, applying for his job again seemed natural. And now, what opportunity lies open?

As usual, nothing is clear as yet, but prayer and patience will unveil what goal I should seek next. Thus, I wait...