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Bible Technology

Living waters flowing through technology

bibletechnology

October 2007 - Posts

  • Technology and spiritual growth

    Centuries ago only the liturgy had scripture, and the scripture they had was Latin - often poorly translated Latin, and they did a poor job of bringing any understanding of God and the Lord Jesus to the people in the pews.  Church tradition ruled and knowledge of the word of God and the Lord was extremely restricted.  These days are often referred to as the dark ages.

    Then over many years we had men like Luther, Tyndale and many others who challenged the status quo and over many, many years and through much bloodshed and tears brought the word of God to the people, and along with it a better understanding of the meaning of scripture, and knowledge of the Lord. 

    Inventions such as Gutenburg's printing press, made it easy to create volumes of scripture quickly and get it into the hands of the people.  This technological breakthrough is probably the most important in the history of the church.  With the invention of the printing press, knowledge was able to be documented and shared en-masse like never before.  It allowed many of the great church leaders of the time to get their knowledge and understanding out to anyone who could read - and it changed the social class of those who could read from the elite to almost anyone.  These changes revolutionized not only the church but the world. In England the increased availability (and acceptance) of the word of God was one of the key drivers behind the "right of every man" to read, and the institution of free public schools.

    Since these days the church has been slowly taking all the knowledge of the smartest men in the world and building up the understanding of scripture amongst the church broadly.  This process started with the likes of Luther who challenged the traditions of the Roman Catholic church and declared that scripture alone was the authority - not the church. 

    Since then the church has worked through the doctrines of salvation, the church, creation, the trinity, and more recently eschatology and have nailed down many of these doctrines reasonably thoroughly and with a degree of consistency.  Of course there are still many things that many believers don't agree on, but technology has enabled these discussions to be recorded and thought through by many people over many years, so that the basics are widely agreed on and the details are also becoming more widely accepted.

    I was reading Ephesians 4 this morning and this passage jumped out at me:

    And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

    If you think about this passage in the context of the global church, technology is a key enabler to helping believers grow together.  The printing press allowed the thoughts of many pastors, teachers, evangelists and the apostles to be collated and published for many to consume and understand, and build on, growing the body of Christ as a whole.  Today too, the understanding of the word of God is being propagated by mechanisms such as podcasts, RSS and similar technologies.  However we are only at the beginning of what is possible.

    The goal is to unite the church so that "we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God".  Technology, and the Internet have much more to offer through centralizing the understanding of godly pastors and teachers into a repository that allows the examination of scripture and the interrogation of thought in a collective where all the understanding of the church is stored, scrutinized and drawn upon by believers in order to build up their knowledge and understanding of Christ.

    Of course this is not all.  Believers must open their hearts to one another and allow each other to have a part in each others lives for accountability and growth - this too can be done with technology, but the offline world has a lot to offer that technology cannot do as well in this role at this stage.  Perhaps in the future this will change, but in the meantime, we can concentrate on growing individually, and helping each other globally using technology to reach out with our understanding and the lessons we learn as we live for Christ.

  • Audio messages from Max Lucado

    The internet is a great source of study material. But here's one for when you're in your car, or exercising. Max Lucado publishes a one-minute message every day, and they can be great for getting your mind back to God. Why not download them, put them on your MP3 player, and then interrupt your music occasionally with a short devotional. Max Lucado is a great teacher, as anyone who has one of his books or videos will know - and here's a chance to have him interrupt your day with a short message. It's available as a podcast through an RSS feed too, so syncing it up should be no problem.

  • Modifying a Logos annotation file

    Tonight I had cause to modify an annotation file from inside Logos. 

    The story was that I'd given a friend one of my annotation (note) files and he'd then updated it and given it back to me with his annotations in it.  When I opened Logos with the annotation file in the right location (<My Documents>\Libronix LDS\Annotations) Logos knew nothing about the file - it was the same name as one I already had there and the one I had was more recent so Logos didn't recognize it.

    So I opened the annotation file using EditPlus (a favourite text editor of mine from the old days) and found (happily) that the file is simply XML with a custom schema.

    It turns out that each annotation is encapsulated by <annotation></annotation> tags.  So - to drop an annotation into an existing file all you Annotations File Textneed to do is copy the tags and everything in between them at the end of the existing annotation file just before the </lbx-annotations> tag.

    Simple.

    Typically you wont need to do this, but in case you do  - now you know how to do it.

  • Ecumen - Bible to your mobile

    The Ecumen website's About Us page says:

    Ecumen provides mobile content with a reassurance that we will not act in any way that is unethical. We aim to enable Christians to express and develop their faith, whilst giving our customers the confidence that the material we provide is family friendly and free from offensive content.

    We provide such items as ringtones (many of which are derived from popular or contemporary Christian music or worship songs), wallpapers, screensavers and other graphics with Christian themes or motifs, family friendly games and daily Bible readings.

    To ensure our customers have confidence in our products and services, we operate according to our SAFE criteria.

    Ecumen is a service provided by Teimlo Ltd., a company based in South Wales, UK. We supply Christian Mobile Content both directly and through our partners. We conform to the standards of behaviour set out by the Mobile Marketing Association.

    Like it says on the page, they provide Christian content to your mobile - assuming you live in the UK. For 25p a day, they will SMS you a Bible Reading. Obviously this is nothing like the iPocketBible in the range of functionality, but this doesn't rely on having an iPhone.

    I will be really curious to find out if this service catches on, and whether they'll expand it to other countries.

  • New Microsoft Zune Players

    imageThere has been much criticism of the original Microsoft Zune players, so when I first met one, I was greatly surprised to see how cool the device actually is.

    Now MS have released new models with a distinctly iPod-like look -- well, old iPod-look anyway. And why not, since the iPod has been such a raving success.

    Check this link here 4 more.

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