Some Jolly Good Links 6-7-08

Getting ready to go to Dallas for our denomination's General Assembly and I haven't been quite the cyber-surfer this week that I often am.  But here's a few things I found interesting this week.

1. Gadget-Palooza.  I like gadgets, I wish I could own them all.  My favorite gadget place is Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools.  But the true gadget freak for whom one source is not can find links to all the gadgets in the world (ok, that my be a bit of hyperbole) at Gadgets at Alltop.

2. The Clowd or Big Brother.  Seth Godin sees the future:

So, very soon, you will own a cell phone that has a very good camera and knows where you are within ten or fifteen feet. And the web will know who you are and who your friends are.

What happens?

Well, when you take a photo, you can automatically send it to the clowd. The clowd can color correct and adjust the photo based on the million other photos it has seen just like this.

The clowd can figure out that this was the high school graduation (same time, same location), and realize that you were there with fifty of your closest friends, and automatically group the photos together... leaving out the people it's obvious you don't like.

The clowd can also find pictures taken of the same person, but by other people, and show them to you. Or cooler still, introduce you to those people. So, you take a picture of Keith Jarrett at Carnegie Hall and the clowd introduces you to other people who took his picture in ther places. (No, you shouldn't have to tell the clowd it's Keith, it should know. But yes, you will opt in to all of this... you ask before it takes these matchmaking liberties).

Seth Godin says this is inevitable:

This is going to happen. The only question is whether you are one of the people who will make it happen. I guess there's an even bigger question: will we do it right?

Jolly says that sounds a bit creepy.

3. Cars are killing us in more ways than one.  This from Kottke:

The average U.S. citizen completely ignores the regularity with which the automobile kills him, maims him, embroils him with the law and provides mobile shelter for rakes intent on seducing his daughters. He takes it into his garage as fondly as an Arab leading a prize mare into his tent. He woos it with Simoniz, Prestone, Ethyl and rich lubricants -- and goes broke trading it in on something flashier an hour after he has made the last payment on the old one.

By last week, this peculiar state of mind had not only sucked thousands of American oil wells dry, stripped the rubber groves of Malaya, produced the world's most inhuman industry and its most recalcitrant labor union, but had filled U.S. streets with so many automobiles that it was almost impossible to drive one. In some big cities, vast traffic jams never really got untangled from dawn to midnight; the bray of horns, the stink of exhaust fumes, and the crunch of crumpling metal eddied up from them as insistently as the vaporous roar of Niagara.

Oh yeah, did I mention this was written in 1947?

4. The Curious Case of Aiden Wilson Tozer. I have always benefited from reading the writings of A. W. Tozer and so was particularly curious when Tim Challies reviewed a new book about him called A Passion for God by Lyle Dorsett.  Here's a summary from Tim's review:

Tozer was a man who dedicated himself to reading, study and prayer and who delighted to be in the presence of God. “There is no way to measure the hours he spent in a typical day or week reading books and wrestling with ideas, but it was substantial. In a similar vein, we know that he increasingly devoted many hours each week praying, meditating on Scripture, and seeking deeper intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ. During the 1930s Tozer read voraciously, and he also developed a magnificent obsession to be in Christ’s presence- just to worship Him and to be with Him.” Yet he was a man who was emotionally and spiritually distant from his own wife. “By early 1928 the Tozers had a routine. Aiden found his fulfillment in reading, preparing sermons, preaching, and weaving travel into his demanding and exciting schedule, while Ada learned to cope. She dutifully washed, ironed, cooked, and cared for the little ones, and developed the art of shoving her pain deep down inside. Most of the time she pretended there was no hurt, but when it erupted, she usually blamed herself for not being godly enough to conquer her longing for intimacy from an emotionally aloof husband.”

These strange inconsistencies abound. Tozer saw his wife’s gifts for hospitality and encouraged her in them; yet he disliked having visitors in his own home. He preached about the necessity of Christian fellowship within the family of Christ; yet he refused to allow his family or his wife’s family visit their home. For every laudable area of his life there seemed to exist an equal and opposite error. This study in opposites leaves for a fascinating picture of a man who was used so greatly by God, even while his life had such obvious sin.

To add to that picture Sean Michael Lucas also reviewed the book and writes:

Perhaps the most damning statement in the book was from his wife, after she remarried subsequent to his death: "I have never been happier in my life," Ada Ceclia Tozer Odam observed, "Aiden [Tozer] loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me" (160).

And while I might be tempted to become disillusioned with the story of yet more warts from one more great leader, this is more a cautionary tale for me than anyone else.  As a minister I know all too well the temptation to make a mistress of the ministry and to evaluate your family in terms of how they affect your ministry. 

The longer I go on the more I think the craving for success in ministry is a killer, a killer to one's family, one's own relationship with Christ and ultimately a killer to ministry. 

Fortunately for A. W. Tozer, his wife seems to have soldiered on and helped him enjoy a fruitful ministry while he was alive, and stuffed her own emptiness.  That's not always the case.  It may be hard to find now, but if you want to find one of the best "cautionary tales" of wrong priorities, I recommend the book "Days of Glory, Seasons of Night,"  by Marilee Pierce Dunker.  It's the story of Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision and Samaritan's Purse. 

There is no doubt that much good came from the lives of Bob Pierce and A. W. Tozer, you just have to wonder if it was worth the cost to their families and if God couldn't have accomplished the same good through others who didn't sacrifice their families along the way.

Comments

[Cindy Swanson]

David, I was fascinated with your post about A. W. Tozer. I confess I've never known much about the man, only having read wonderful quotes by him--but being a preacher's kid and married to a preacher's kid, I know a little something about preacher's wives. I'm afraid the Tozers' story may be more common than we know, especially when a pastor is consumed with the ministry or even consumed with God---the latter being admirable, but one can still be on fire for God without neglecting one's helpmeet.

Didn't know that the "A" stood or Aiden--cool name. (Of course that's neither here nor there!) :)

Have a wonderful time in God's Country--I mean, Texas...:)

[Tim Morrison]

"Fortunately for A. W. Tozer, his wife seems to have soldiered on and helped him enjoy a fruitful ministry while he was alive, and stuffed her own emptiness. That's not always the case."

I'm not sure that's an admirable thing, to be honest. As ministers, our first and foremost responsibility is to our family. I have a hard time believing that any "fruitful ministry" at the expense of our family is truly honored in the sight of God.

[Philip Walker]

Hmm, I hadn't heard that about Tozer. It has to be said, I've never really got on terribly well with quotes from him; he always sounded a little more mystical and intense than I thought particularly comfortable, and now I begin to understand where that drove him.

[Dan Phillips]

"Didn't know that the 'A' stood or Aiden--cool name"

Evidently, he didn't think so!

[Jen]

Interesting about A.W. Tozer. I think many pastors forget that marriage is a ministry, too, and a covenant one at that.

[AR]

Anyone with spiritual insight having read any of Tozer's works and seeing their depth can only say, "there are things i just can't understand". To think we have stumbled on a fault and to judge him will only make us as Job's friends. God is the only one who knows why a man who knew Him so well can have the seeming appearance of many inconsistancies. I feel it might be safer to stand with a man whose fruit is still today that to stand with a family we really know very little about and hear little of, which if were of a similar spiritual nature God would make them know as well. Those that critisize often do so to justify their spiritual position, lack of fruit, zeal and minisry and just don't understant the heart of a David.