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Before you do anything with this post, visit www.zoecarnate.com and bookmark it. For several years, it has been an amazing resource for anything outside mainstream Christendom, and it continues to improve.
Now. Mike Morrell is one of the founders, and blogs at zoecarnate.wordpress.com. Currently, as part of a wide-ranging conversation that is occurring among emergent bloggers related to Pentecostals and charismatics, he is hosting a dialogue with John Crowder, a prophetic evangelist who wants to be “wasted on Jesus.” The dialogue is respectful, insightful, and is really a blessing to read.
An aside on the “wasted on Jesus” part of John’s message. I have often described experiences with the Spirit with that term, depending on who I was speaking with. I think it really is a valid, powerful metaphor for intense, life-changing encounters with the Spirit, and I never want to discount, forget, or stop desiring those encounters. Being a Post-charismatic should never negate the desire for these encounters, and I hope we who look at that term as a valid term will always make that clear.
On another note, though, I believe that one should not expect one who follows the Spirit to always exist in a “wasted” state. There are times of wilderness and darkness and suffering, and those times do not negate the presence of God even though we may be gripping with our fingernails for evidence of it. I have spent time in the wilderness, both because of the leading of the Spirit (Hosea 2:14) and because of my own laziness and stubbornness, and I have learned wisdom and patience and peace from those times (not that I am always wise, patient, or peaceful, but more so than I would be otherwise).
Pentecostals and charismatics have often struggled in leading a balanced life in the Spirit. They have often sought to live in the clouds, wasted, above the messiness and pain of real life. Non-Pentecostals and non-charismatics have often resisted intoxicating experiences with the Spirit because of this (and other, less noble reasons). Both sides have lost, and both sides have much to learn.
Like some others, I do see a link between the worldwide pentecostal movement (counting Pentecostal denominations, and charismatic churches and movements, it now numbers more than 500 million people) and the emerging church. I believe that the emerging movement, as it develops around the world alongside postmodernism in the West and postcolonialism everywhere else, has the potential to be one of the steps that the Holy Spirit takes to resolve this tension and lack of balance that exists in the church.
Recently, I’ve been reading Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change.
I have also read The Secret Message of Jesus, which is meant to be read as a companion volume. If you have not read The Secret Message of Jesus, feel encouraged to click the link and pick it up, as it is on sale for $6.99 at Amazon.
In any case, as I have been reading Everything Must Change, I have found much to be challenged by, to remember, to share with others, and to allow Jesus to shape my life by. Most of the things that he presents are at least familiar to me, if not things that I’ve thought, prayed, discussed, taught, been taught, and been convicted by. Often, though, he expresses these things in ways that I have thought but not expressed, or have forgotten, or particularly in ways that bring up new implications for my life.
As an aside, there is a review of this book that Jonny Baker wrote several months ago, and it is worth reading. Jonny Baker is one of the people that is most aware of what God is doing in Western culture, and he has a brilliant mind and spirit. The post indicates that much of the thinking is already established in the U.K., although it is certainly radical in the United States. Brian McLaren has an insightful comment on the post, as well.
The strength of this book lies in the insights that it presents into what powers the world, especially America and those who are impacted by the American Empire, and in the insights that it presents into what Jesus has to say to that power. The “framing story” that Jesus offers really can and should change everything, in my life and your life and in the ways we interact with the world around us.
There are countless examples and quotations (and misquotations) floating around on the internet, and a quick search will bring up many of them. But there are a few things that have really shaken me, and inspired my imagination.
Communism, [Rene Padilla] says, specialized in distribution but failed at production. As a result, it ended up doing a great job of distributing poverty evenly. Capitalism, he says, was excellent at production but weak at distribution. As a result, it ended up rewarding the wealthy with obscene amounts of wealth while the poor suffered on in horrible degradation and indignity…
The twenty-first century began in the aftermath of the defeat of Marxism. The story of the coming century will likely be the story of whether a sustainable form of capitalism can be saved from theocapitalism [the religion-like seeking of prosperity], or whether unrestrained theocapitalism will result in such gross inequity between rich and poor that violence and counterviolence will bring civilization to a standstill, or perhaps worse.
There is an amazing amount of depth in that paragraph. and it helps introduce the “suicide machine” and its systems that this book is attempting to deconstruct. Certainly it is not an optimistic statement, but the book is constantly balancing it with statements like this:
If we believe, the decadent and self-indulgent West can be converted from overconsumers to creative stewards, from empire builders to community builders, from sex-obsessed and self-indulgent couch potatoes to people like Graciela, Luiz, and Leticia and their family - who along the way through their life, discover a magnificent vision and a sacred mission that give their lives unimagined meaning.
And this is the kind of statement that challenges everything about the way I live, and inspires my visions about the way I want to live. This is the kind of thing that makes the book a valid challenge to those of us who claim the story of Jesus.
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My favorite FTP client is FileZilla. In the last year or so, it became cross-platform. For myself, I currently run it in Windows and Linux, which in my system reside on separate hard drives. I share the data between the two.
This would also work for networking environments, where multiple designers or developers need to share FTP data from a central server or other system.
FileZilla has a file called fzdefaults.xml. On Windows systems, it resides at C:\Program Files\FileZilla FTP Client\fzdefaults.xml. Note that, when you first install the program, there will be an fzdefaults.xml.example inside the /FileZilla FTP Client\docs folder instead. Simply duplicate this file, move it into the main FileZilla FTP Client folder, and rename it to fzdefaults.xml.
On Ubuntu, if you install FileZilla from the repositories, the file resides at /home/username/.filezilla/fzdefaults.xml. The same process works, if there is an fzdefaults.xml.example. I have not yet had the pleasure of installing FileZilla on a Mac, but I suspect it is similar to the Linux path.
When you have this file in the right location, open it up. There is a line that reads
<Setting name="Config Location">$SOMEDIR/filezilla/</Setting>
Change the $SOMEDIR/filezilla/ to the centrally located folder where the data will be stored. An example is /media/shared/Filezilla_Profile/. Save.
Then, you should copy all of the files that are inside C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\FileZilla\ (Windows) or /home/username/.filezilla (Linux, but do not copy fzdefaults.xml) and move them to the above folder.
In the central folder, open up sitemanager.xml. This should be all of your FTP data. FileZilla will use this file the next time it opens, and from here on out it will update this file as you add new information.
Probably because FileZilla was originally a Windows program, there are few if any issues that will commonly arise.
On Linux systems, FileZilla requires that the central location (on another hard drive, or another server, or wherever it may be) have specific configuration when it is mounted. The current user (you, when you are logged in) needs to be able to read and write files in the mounted drive, or you will receive lots of errors when you try to open it.
For example, if you were trying to mount /sda5 as the external drive that FileZilla needed to use, you would do it like this:
In your terminal, type:
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
This file controls what media (hard drives, CD drives, etc.) that the system mounts when it boots. Start a new line at the end.
/dev/sda5 /media/shared vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000
This would name your new drive “shared”, put a link to it in the media folder, and give it the proper permissions for your user. To get the proper uid, type id in a terminal window. Replace uid and gid, if necessary.
FileZilla, as well as other programs that could share data across systems and operating systems (Firefox, for example), will now be able to use the data properly.
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