Twitter Wars: Rob Bell edition

Technology is funny.  Some examples:

• I sometimes forget my current car (I'm driving my friends' car while they're overseas) has seat warmers.  Occasionally, about 5 minutes into a drive, I'm suddenly very alarmed that my butt is on fire.
• When my mom's email inbox is empty, she will usually say, "Someone's blocking my emails again."
• I specifically chose a Samsung phone because I'd save money on all the chargers, since I have them from my previous Samsung phone.  Despite the fact that the charger input apertures look identical on both phones, they're different, rendering my old chargers useless and nullifying my entire phone choice.  Ok, this one's not funny.
• When you're fast-forwarding on a DVR and then hit play, it jumps back a little bit from the most recently viewed frame.  This allows for honing one's skills and being able to yell "Now!" when someone else has the remote.
• I took part in an evangelical twitter war the other day without even realizing it.

This last one will serve as the springboard, framework, and any other building/design jargon for today's tangent.

Rob Bell, John Piper, and a bunch of other people

Rob Bell has a new book coming out soon.  It is called Love Wins, and it asks us to examine what we believe about hell.  To generate momentum for the book's release, the publishers gave the public a summary of the book and a video of Rob Bell discussing its contents (both appear on the website linked above).

The summary and video both imply that Bell will suggest in his book that the traditional evangelical view of hell is all wrong and, as far as I can tell, that the only people who will be in hell will be those who eternally demand it even after death.  Obviously this is just speculation based on one paragraph and a 5 minute video.  But obviously a book that will be a best-seller and tells people to not worry because our loved ones will all be with us in heaven (again, I don't know if this book says that) would be very important.

Enter Justin Taylor.  He's a blogger for a group called The Gospel Coalition, and apparently his blog is pretty popular in certain Christian circles.  He writes a blog post warning people about Bell's upcoming book.  His post quotes the publishers' summary and shows Bell's video, and concludes that this book may be the point at which Rob Bell officially departs from "biblical Christianity" and takes on the label of "false teacher."

Enter John Piper.  If you're a Christian, you've probably heard a couple of his more famous quotations.  If you're a reformed Christian, you've probably listened to a bunch of his sermons.  He's the pastor of a church in Minneapolis.  Anyway, he tweets the words "Farewell Rob Bell," followed by a link to Taylor's blog.

Enter yours truly.  I log onto twitter and see that my friend Chris has retweeted Piper's tweet.  So I click on the link and read Taylor's blog post.  I find it incredibly thought-provoking.  It makes me wonder about hell, God's love, public criticism of seemingly dangerous teaching, false teachers, etc. 

(I honestly didn't find the blog entry judgmental at all; Taylor admitted he hadn't read the entire book and that he was merely speculating.)

So, because I had benefited so from the blog entry, I also retweet Piper's tweet.  Only later do I realize this was the equivalent of throwing a theology grenade.

Enter Matthew Turner, some dude who apparently writes a "Christian left" blog.  Later on twitter I see a retweet of something said by this guy.  For some reason this guy has tons of followers.  He says this: "For a moment I was afraid Rob Bell had died. But then I realized that it was just a few Calvinists hating him into a trending topic."

I'll try to piece this together a little for you, if you're not twitter-savvy.  When Matthew Turner logged onto twitter, he saw Rob Bell listed as one of twitter's "trending topics".  These are the topics being tweeted about the most currently.  He then saw a bunch of people on twitter (and he follows 38,000 peeps, so he probably saw a lot) retweeting the "Farewell Rob Bell" tweet.  Thus the remark about how he thought Bell had died.

But Turner then concluded it was "just a few Calvinists hating [Bell] into a trending topic."  Ok, I have so many problems with which.  First, mathematically that's just not sound.  If only "a few" people tweet something, it's not going to become a trending topic.  Second, he assumes for some reason that anyone who retweets John Piper is a Calvinist.  Third -- and obviously this is his most wretched mistake -- he takes the tweets to be expressions of hatred??

I'm searching my heart, and I find no hatred for Rob Bell.  I retweeted Piper's tweet because it linked to an article I had found to be profoundly thought-provoking.

Enter Mark Batterson.  This is another really famous pastor.  He has read Bell's entire book, and claims that Taylor's blog post is way off the mark in terms of Bell's perspective on hell.  But in the process of defending Bell, he decides to call John Piper's fans "a legion of minions."  Thanks Mr. Batterson.  I am indeed a minion and a proud member of a legion, and it's nice to finally be recognized as such.
***
As the dust cleared, I realized a couple things.  On a specific level, I should have just made my own tweet with a link to Taylor's blog.  Apparently I join a demonic horde by associating with John Piper.  But also, reflecting on Piper's tweet, the "farewell" thing was presumptuous and unfair.  As for more general lessons:


More general lessons

1. The issue of hell will, I think, become increasingly important because of how polarizing it is.  If there are two issues that will drive a wedge further between Christians and non-Christians in the years to come, one of them will be our doctrine of hell.
2. For some reason, Christians think that it's ok to be publicly mean in the name of "truth", "holding a pastor accountable", "defending a pastor against false accusations", etc.  Just because you enter a twitter war doesn't mean you should start throwing around words like "hatred," "minion," or "false teacher."  For the most part, this isn't ok.  Shouldn't our discourse, even over strong disagreements, be characterized by love?
3. We are way too quick to adamantly pretend we have all the answers.  We don't.  I'm not calling into question the authority of the Bible right now or anything, but even that wonderful, beautiful book is subject to flawed, sinful, and sometimes stupid people's interpretations and teaching.  And I don't mean other people.  You and I are flawed, sinful, and sometimes stupid.

As for the actual topic of hell, I think I'll give it its own entry.  But I might wait a month for Love Wins to come out so I can incorporate Bell's thoughts into the discussion.


Twitter and warfare

If you're on twitter and we don't follow each other, let me know.

Have you taken part in any online arguments?

Any thoughts about any of the above "Christian celebrities", the Rob Bell twitter war, or funny incidents with technology?

Love wins.
Jon

Facebook Pet Peeves

We can be honest here, right?  I hope so.  Because honestly, sometimes I feel like I live on facebook.  My life wasn't always like this, and I trust it won't always be.  But right now, as I work from home and some days have about 12 minutes of work to do, "home" and "facebook" can start to blur together.

I bring that up because A. as I just clarified, this is a place of honesty, and B. when you're home, you expect people to behave the way you want them to.  So the more that facebook feels like home to me, the lower my tolerance becomes for people who violate my internal set of facebook rules.

But I can't complain, because I've never explicitly told anyone what these rules are... until now.


Facebook Rules*^


1. You better use your last name. 

I've never really understood this.  For some reason, some girls (and only girls) feel compelled to be known on facebook only by their first and middle names.  I can only assume this has something to do with privacy, but with all the privacy settings available (including the ability to be invisible to any non-friend), I don't understand how there can be any real threat of stalking.

The reason this matters is because WHO ARE YOU??  When you come up on my newsfeed as Elizabeth Joy, Shannon Kristen, or Anna Lisa, I have no idea who you are.  The time it takes to visit your profile and use my detective skills to figure out who you are is time I could have been... um... I don't know, doing something better.


2. Can you change that wedding profile pic after, say, 6 months?

I'm sure your wedding day was the most wonderful day of your life.  And that's awesome.  But when you've been married for a year and you still have the same black and white picture of jumping down the aisle that you put up the day after the honeymoon...

Look, I know it's probably just the cynical, doesn't-like-weddings part of me talking.  But like I said, it's my home, so could you maybe change the picture after we've all lost our short-term memories of your big day?

Not to mention, haven't you done anything else fun this past year?


3. You can either invite a million people to an event or repeatedly send a message to all invitees, but not both.

Having a small get-together and need to send out 8 last-minute messages?  No problem.  But if you have, via your friends' friends' friends, invited 13,000 people to some charity barbeque, how dare you spam them all with message after message?  If I were willing to devote more time to this, I could probably make some equation that relates the number of invitees to the number of permissible mass messages.  But alas, even I have other things to do.

The real issue here is that the little red talk-bubble icon up in the corner is exciting.  When I log on and see that I have a new message, I'm happy.  But, seconds later, when I see it's some change in plans for the car wash I was never even considering attending, that happiness is instantly transformed to annoyance.

What's that?  You say it's all my fault for putting too much emotional stock in getting messages?  It's my home.  Get out.


*This is a list of rules for facebook, not simply a statement that "Facebook rules!!", though that is also true.
^These are rules for my guests, i.e. those people still on my newsfeed.  There are many, many more general facebook rules (e.g. no Farmville), but since violators of these rules are instantly and eternally banned from my home, i.e. removed from my newsfeed, such rules have been left for another discussion.



It's your home, too (or at least pretend it is)

What are your biggest facebook pet peeves??

Jon

P.S. If you didn't notice yet, check out the new pages at the top of the site under the Tangent Space(s) banner.  They're not only for you, they're about you!

Wikipedia: the mother of all tangents

As much as I like to write, I like to write for me (and you), not "the man."  So when I was in college, I (somewhat subconsciously) scheduled classes that would force me to write as few papers as possible.  This was made easier by the facts that I was a math major and that WVU gave me like 400 hours of credit for AP tests in fields that would have made me write a lot of papers.

But when, O reader, I was forced to write a paper that required even the slightest amount of research, the first thing I did was consult with wikipedia.  You might think this was shoddy scholarship, maybe even an affront to educators everywhere.  I would defend myself with how that was only the first step in a lengthy, rigorous research process, but A. that's outside the scope of this blog entry, and B. I'm not sure it's true.

I mention all this merely to say that I've had plenty of experience reading wikipedia.  And not just for "fun."  As I was recently using the site (more on that in a second), I realized it is the greatest generator of tangents of all time.  And since tangents are sort of our business here, I decided this blog needed to pay homage to the free online encyclopedia.

An example of wikipedia's awe-inspiring tangent production

Recently Kmech -- a friend of mine and faithful reader of Tangent Space(s) -- suggested I write something interesting about language and/or words (still working on it).  My first thought was that I could write about "auto-antonyms"; an auto-antonym "is a word with multiple meanings, one of which is defined as the reverse of one of its other meanings."  This deals with words, and I'll be darned if it's not riveting.

So I went to the wikipedia page (feel free to follow along if you like).  And look how many tangents wikipedia presented me with, primarily via links to other wikipedia pages:

1. First of all, right off the bat, I'm told that auto-antonym is just one of many items on a wikipedia page called "English words with uncommon properties."  Gotta go there.
2. Secondly, while this doesn't give an actual tangential link to follow, I'm given a list of other names for auto-antonym.  Here it is: autantonym, contranym, contronym, antagonym, Janus word, self-antonym, and enantiodrome.  How can I not ponder how there could be so many names for the same thing?
3. The last name there, enantiodrome, should not be confused with a link they provide to me -- enantiodromia, which is "the Jungian principle of equilibrium."  If you are on that page and don't click that link, you lack basic human curiosity.
4. Then, in what is a relatively short article on this word type, there are over 35 links to other wikipedia articles.  Over 35!  And I don't know who can pass up such obvious clicks as "crossbows", "co-opetition", and "Queen Ann."
5. Tangent-within-a-tangent, but still a number on this list: One of the 35+ links is for "neologism."  It's a term for a word that is new and in the process of being added to common use in a language.  When I saw it, it rang a bell, but I couldn't remember why.  And then it came to me: wikipedia uses this word all the time.  As proof of this, I submit to you the webcomic xkcd.com making fun of wikipedia.

What's my point?  Well, I couldn't possibly focus on auto-antonyms when Queen Ann is shooting crossbows at me and there are huge words like enantiodromia.  Tangent overload.


Wikipedia and you

I offer a suggestion and a question(s):

• If you're ever in the mood for a tangent and I haven't updated this blog since your last read, head over to the free online encyclopedia and travel down whatever rabbit holes catch your attention.
• What has been your experience with wikipedia?  Have you ever used it for school?

Jon

My second best made-up holiday tradition

If this hasn't been made clear to you by knowing me or reading some of my previous posts, I'm a huge fan of holiday traditions.  Not necessarily the stupid ones that society tells us to do, but those unique ones that somehow develop within our families or groups of friends.  These not only give us something to look forward to each year, but they strengthen our relationships with those who take part in them with us.

Now, before I present my Valentine's Day tradition, it should be noted that there is much disagreement as to the status of V-Day.  Is it a romantic holiday, or a gigantic cog in the inexorable machine that is American consumerism?  The obvious joke to make is that your view depends on whether or not you're single, but with the wisdom I've gained with age, I realize the far more accurate litmus test is whether or not you're a 14-18 year old girl. 

Well, before I get carried too far away on a different tangent, I'm here to tell you a story:


The greatest two-single-dudes-hanging-out-on-Valentine's-Day ever

The year was 2004.  Just one year had passed since the Ultimate Valentine's Day Triple Date of 2003, and a lot had changed.  I had no girlfriend.  No date.  No plans.  All I had was one friend, Jon, who also had none of those things.  He wasn't like a mental projection of myself or anything; Jon is a common name.

So Jon and I went to our college's worst cafeteria ("the 'Stro") and had Valentine's Day dinner for two.  This place was usually packed with smelly, nerdy misfits, but alas, on this most romantic of nights, even they had dates.  The emptiness of the place should have suffused our souls with despair.  But there's something about the company of a good friend that can cause light to shine in a dark place.  And if you haven't gotten the picture, an empty "the 'Stro" on V-Day is a dark, dark place.

But our friendship (we called it "The Alliance" because A. we were the only single guys around, and B. naming friendships is cool, right?) kept our spirits high.  That night, eating what was probably macaroni 'n cheese and Cap'n Crunch, we reflected on life, and love.  This means we made fun of our friends who had dates.

In all this contemplation, one of us Jons pondered, "What do you think we'll all be doing next year on Valentine's Day?"  And thus, Valentine's Predictions were born.


The tradition's evolution and struggle to survive

So that night, and the remaining three V-Days of college, no matter whom we were dating or how many tears we were shedding into empty Ben & Jerry's containers, Jon and I would meet to predict how (or, more accurately, with whom) we and each of our friends would spend next year's Valentine's Day.  This was clearly the tradition's golden age.

But life moves on, whether I want it to or not.  We graduated, Jon got married, I moved to Pittsburgh, Jon became a father... you know the drill.  I was faced with three options -- let the tradition die (too sad), do the predictions by myself (too sad), or find a replacement for Jon.  And so, the last few years my friend Matt has filled in admirably for Jonny.

But life moves on, whether I want it to or not.  We graduated, Matt moved to Virginia, I became a missionary, Matt moved to Africa, I grew out my beard, Matt moved back to Virginia... you know the drill.  Sadly, it just dawned on me last night that Matt is now out of V-Day Predictions, and so I had no time for a real replacement search.

If Christmas Eve Eve is any indication, when a friend drops out of a cherished holiday tradition, my sister is usually waiting in the wings to fill in (read: is willing to patronize me and prevent my traditions and dreams from dying).  And so, as of last night, for at least one Valentine's Day, my sister is my co-predictor.


What about you?

Are you a 14-18 year old gi--- um, that is, do you like Valentine's Day?

Do you have any awesome or hilariously awful Valentine's Day stories?

Jon

Facebook birthday wall posts: part 3/3

[Part 1: At what time did people post happy birthday?]
[Part 2: Who posted happy birthday on my wall?]

And now, the epic conclusion to my facebook wall research.  I hope you've appreciated the unimportance of this exercise and sensed my overall mistrust of statistics and people's presentation of them.  And yet, it's so fun to make graphs and talk about numbers.  Seriously.

With that barrel of monkeys in mind, we move to the best facebook birthday topics I can give you -- questions about what people wrote on my wall to wish me well.


What did people post on my wall for my birthday?

It was much easier to create categories for this than for people's closeness to me (it just felt horribly wrong to toss around the idea of a "people I despise" category for my facebook "friends").  There were four natural categories that emerged (with a few sub-categories) as I looked at my birthday wall:

Standard  The very, very basics.  Ex.:

• Happy birthday!!
• Happy birthday man.

Standard plus  The above, plus an additional platitude.  Ex.:

• Happy birthday, Jon!  I hope you have an awesome day!
• Jon, it's your birthday!!  I hope it's a blast!

Entertaining  Anything bizarre, silly, or fun that isn't personalized.  Ex.:

• A video of a giraffe licking someone's face
• A philosophical rambling about the meaning of a facebook wall post

Personalized  An inside joke or recalling of a memory.  That's pretty self-explanatory, right?

So, obviously there is a demarcation between "standard plus" and "entertaining."  The first two categories (which we might call Level 1) require absolutely no thought or effort.  The latter two (we could of course call them Level 2, but I'm now tempted to go with Latter 2, because it occurred naturally in the sentence) require thought, effort, and/or some level of actual friendship.

In summary, then, insofar as facebook birthday wall posts can be said to have any quality or value whatsoever, Level 2 posts come across (at least to me) as much more thoughtful and meaningful than those in Level 1.  So, how did my recent birthday wall break down?

So, the sad reality of my social network, humanity, America, and Gen-X is that only 14% were willing to rise to Level 2 for my birthday.  Kudos to those people.

About half the posts (52%) put me to sleep instantly, while another third (34%) caught my eye for a brief moment before causing me to doze off.

Another interesting factor(!)

Surely, you might think, there are ways to show you're excited for someone's birthday on shis wall other than creativity or personalized messages.  No, you're mistaken.  But a popular attempt to do so is to throw in some number of exclamation marks.  I decided to monitor the concentration of this powerful punctuation on my birthday wall:



This chart shows the number of people (y-axis) who used the indicated number of exclamation marks (x-axis).



If the presence of exclamation marks can be trusted (it can't), at least 98 people were really excited for my birthday!!!  One person, as seen on the chart, was ecstatic enough to somehow use 13 exclamation marks in one birthday post.

In total, 190 of these bad boys were thrown down for my birthday, for an average of 1.57 exclamation marks per post on my wall that day.

(Un)important conclusions and questions for you

If we can learn anything from my study (we can't), let it be this-- if you're going to write on someone's wall for shis birthday, take the extra minute to give a Level 2 message.  If you can't reach L2 for that person, you probably have no business writing on shis wall.

Also, when it comes to exclamation marks, go big or go home.  With an average of over 1.5 marks per message, tacking on one obligatory "!" at the end just isn't going to convey any excitement.

• What is your practice when it comes to writing on people's walls for their birthday?

Jon

Facebook birthday wall posts: part 2/3

[Part 1: At what time did people post happy birthday?]
[Part 3: What did people write on my wall for my birthday?]

This tangent, we move forward to the second installment of Facebook birthday analysis: who, exactly, posts on one's wall on shis birthday?  You might be thinking, "I have my own birthday and my own facebook wall.  Why would I need this study to answer that question?"

Well, let me answer your fictional thought-question with a question: Do you have the time or inclination to scour through dozens and dozens of posts and think through how many ridiculously non-friend people show up or from which eras of your life the people hail?  Assuming you have a job or a life, your answer's probably "No."  My answer, however, is "yes."

Enough guesswork Q&A.  I give you the two questions of today's tangent, both of which look at the personnel of my online birthday:


1. How close to me were the people who wished me a happy birthday?

This is, I think, one of the most interesting and pressing questions in our whole study of Facebook b-days.  There always seem to be people showing up on your wall once a year whose name is barely recognizable, or whose last real-life interaction with you was a violent blood feud.

To answer this question, I had to (somewhat morbidly) assign closeness categories to my wall posters.  Everyone fell into one of the following categories:

Family: relatives through blood or marriage.
Friends: people who have a consistent, positive presence in my life and from whom a wall post on a different day of the year wouldn't seem strange.
Barely: this weird limbo exists for people who are distant acquaintances or people who were in my life years ago.  A wall post from them on any other day would be odd.
None: these people have absolutely no part in my life, and their post to me, even on my birthday, is somewhat mystifying.

Well, it's a pretty even split between Friends and Family (48%) and... everyone else (52%).  It really goes to show how powerful a force the Facebook Birthday is -- it can create a social interaction that would otherwise never be there.

One final interesting note on this is that one person who posted on my wall existed on shis own special level of "No relationship."  This was a person (friend of a friend) with whom I have literally never had an in-person OR online interaction.  How we became facebook friends in the first place is an enigma.  How a birthday post came about might literally make my brain explode with mystery.


2. From which phase of my life did these well-wishers first know me?

They say high school will be the best years of your life.  Then when you're going off to college, they hope you've forgotten that statement and tell you the next four years will be the best.  Middle school, well, everyone pretty much concedes that's going to be a dramatic, hormonal disaster.

But when it comes time for the annual "crawl out of the woodworks" online fiesta, which era will represent?  In my social network, there are three 4-year time spans that figured to make solid birthday contributions: high school, college, and "Pittsburgh" (the four years I've spent here in grad school and with my current ministry job).  And here's what happened:

As you can see, the general rule was that the more recent the era, the greater its contribution.  There's a logic to that, as these are people I've met, become facebook friends with, and interacted with more recently.  So the relationship, as "distant" or "non-existent" as it might have been on the previous chart, is fresher.

The one meaningless but funny exception to this law of diminishing wall posts was the dreaded middle school.  We must have really all tried to blot that crap out of our memories.  Except for my perennial locker and homeroom neighbor Cherie.  The alphabet has a funny way of affecting unimportant parts of your future.

Help build momentum for the dramatic conclusion

Next time we'll look at the most interesting topic -- what, exactly, did people post on my wall?  Until then, please tangent with me:

What's been your experience with super-distant people or mortal enemies wishing you a happy birthday on facebook?

Was middle school as bad for you as it was for everybody else?

Jon