The line at the end of this paragraph is brilliant, brilliant! Thank you Lev Grossman of Time! This is a truth I’m convinced our generation of Bible students and pastors must get, or we’ll miss out on true riches.
[Google] Wave isn’t actually an e-mail killer. In practice, it’s more like an insanely rich IM client. E-mail is asynchronous; you can wait an hour or (if you are, like me, a bad person) a week to answer it. But because Wave operates in real time, it demands immediate attention like an IM or a phone call or, for that matter, a crying baby. When Wave is up, it’s hard to focus on anything else. That isn’t a defect, but it does narrow the scope of its usefulness. Getting more information right away isn’t always the most efficient way to work.
Having 250 potential articles and excerpts fed to you by Logos’ Passage Guide is helpful only if you can maintain your focus on the question you originally asked. Sure, I enjoy the serendipity of running across a neat article on “Linguistics” while reading a dictionary article on “Love.” But rabbit trails lead to Rome just as surely as roads do! Follow that cute little bounding animal, and before you know it you’re standing in a 3-D Coliseum and your wife is saying it’s time for dinner. Your study time is done, and you never read a lick about love.
Reading about love? Lol.
For heavens sakes, do love! Besides its sung about all the time, or that is its false imposter is sung about everywhere. The Beatles False Gospel of Easy Love has invaded the church bigtime, whereever I look.. Reading about love for me constitutes reading (or listening) to one of the Gospels again.
I would have to say I disagree in part with your friends wise saying. I would like to extend it. “Getting” more information right away is ‘never’ the most efficient way to work. Earning it is the best. “Buy the truth and sell it not” seems like an extinct idea But heh, yeah, its a great idea for a non-biblicist, haha.
So afer all that, speaking of altruism and love on the one hand, and then the cost of truth on the other, I’m gonna go for a Hegelian Dialectic:
If I bring an older friend from Easley to Bible works this Saturday, who is only now, after thirty years, getting back to Christ and (as a contractor who recently turned off his fax for financial reasons) is quite poor as am I, can he get a special discount to attend your meetings – so he does not have to buy the truth exactly? I am calling him a “beggar” which, as a Biblicist you know is what the first Beatitude is all about?… in spirit though?
BTW, The website is my sons. 🙂
Great stuff, thanks; and good night to ya.
Warmest regards, Roy