Jesus — A Level 5 Leader

If you’ve nev­er read any­thing by Jim Collins, he’s a for­mer prof at Stan­ford who’s hit it big (huge would be a more accu­rate term) in the world of busi­ness writ­ing. His two books Built to Last and Good to Great are devoured by busi­ness lead­ers hun­gry for an edge.

In the lat­ter book, Collins talks about the cru­cial­i­ty of lev­el 5 lead­er­ship. Lev­el 5 lead­ers com­bine humil­i­ty and strength in a sur­pris­ing­ly potent pack­age. I found this excerpt from an inter­view with him fas­ci­nat­ing:

I have absolute­ly no reli­gious back­ground at all, which gives me more con­fi­dence in the find­ings. If I had come from a strong reli­gious back­ground, I’d be more sus­pi­cious. After the book came out, I kept hear­ing peo­ple say to me, “There was this ulti­mate Lev­el 5 leader who lived 2,000 years ago. The things he talked about in the Gospel have great com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with what you say.” Of course I had heard about Jesus, but as a result of find­ing out about Lev­el 5, I was inspired to begin read­ing the New Tes­ta­ment to see for myself. read the whole inter­view

How Many Students?

I just ran across this infor­ma­tion and found it inter­est­ing: there are 6,636 col­leges in Amer­i­ca (2,543 are full four-year insti­tu­tions) [source].

I just ran across this infor­ma­tion and found it inter­est­ing: there are 6,636 col­leges in Amer­i­ca (2,543 are full four-year insti­tu­tions) [source].

Also, there are over 15.5 mil­lion col­lege stu­dents in Amer­i­ca [source]. To give that num­ber some per­spec­tive, con­sid­er that near­ly 75% of the nations in the world are small­er!

P.S. Hap­py St. Patrick­’s Day!

Another Online Accountablity Tool

I’ve men­tioned Covenant Eyes and X3watch before.

Now NetAc­count­abil­i­ty joins the pack of online account­abil­i­ty pro­grams.

If you’re strug­gling with pornog­ra­phy online, you should check it out. It’s not a filter–it just records where you go and reports it to some­one you choose. It’s a very slick solu­tion.

The Interview With God

There’s a neat mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion called “The Inter­view With God” out there. Check it out.

Dis­claimer: yes, I think it cross­es the line into cheese a few times. I like it nonethe­less.

Cool Products Expo 2003

Just read a neat arti­cle about the Stan­ford Cool Prod­ucts Expo 2003. Lizard­like robots, hyper-cool bicy­cle seats, and a cus­tomized scooter–that’s some pret­ty cool stuff!

Just read a neat arti­cle about the Stan­ford Cool Prod­ucts Expo 2003.

Lizard­like robots, hyper-cool bicy­cle seats, and a cus­tomized scooter–that’s some pret­ty cool stuff!

A Unique Perspective On Housing Prices

A friend of mine (Jim­my Tate) just emailed me an arti­cle that offers a very unique per­spec­tive on the hous­ing prices in Palo Alto. It’s by Thomas Sow­ell and it’s called “Diver­si­ty” for Thee, Not Me.

A friend of mine (Jim­my Tate) just emailed me an arti­cle that offers a very unique per­spec­tive on the hous­ing prices in Palo Alto. It’s by Thomas Sow­ell and it’s called “Diver­si­ty” for Thee, Not Me. Here’s an excerpt:

Because hous­ing prices are so high in Palo Alto — and up and down the whole San Fran­cis­co penin­su­la.

This is not due to sup­ply and demand in a free mar­ket. It is large­ly due to rich busy­bod­ies who have pro­mot­ed severe restric­tions on the build­ing of hous­ing under a vari­ety of high-sound­ing names like “open space” or “envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.” I don’t begrudge such peo­ple the inher­i­tances that have allowed them to live their whole lives with­out ever hav­ing to lift a fin­ger to sup­port them­selves. But it is galling that they are impos­ing huge costs on hun­dreds of thou­sands of oth­er peo­ple who have to work for a liv­ing.

Any­way, I found it inter­est­ing. I do think he over­states the case some­what (there is a huge demand), but he’s cor­rect that the sup­ply has been arti­fi­cial­ly supressed. Food for thought.

Reflections on Atheism and Amorality

In that class that I guest-lec­tured in I field­ed some ques­tions from athe­ists. I’ve been reflect­ing on athe­ism since then, and I’d like to offer a refine­ment of my thoughts.

First, a dis­claimer. It is pos­si­ble that some­one could find this hurt­ful or offen­sive. I do not seek to delib­er­ate­ly offend, but I do seek to be hon­est. It seems to me that athe­ism has sev­er­al seri­ous prob­lems, and I am about to address one of them: athe­is­m’s intrin­isic divorce from moral­i­ty. This is not a per­son­al attack on anyone–in fact, you can be an athe­ist and also be quite a moral per­son. But if you are an athe­ist you do not have a com­pelling rea­son to be moral (or even to believe that moral­i­ty is a mean­ing­ful con­cept), and that is what I want to address.

I can sum up what I’ve been think­ing in one phrase: athe­ism is amoral. Amoral­i­ty flows direct­ly from a rejec­tion of all non­ma­te­r­i­al real­i­ty.

Allow me to explain: a moral law is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sort of thing than a law of physics. You can­not get a moral ‘ought’ from a mate­r­i­al ‘is.’

If all we are is a col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles arranged in a com­pli­cat­ed fash­ion, then there is no com­pelling rea­son to sup­pose that any motion of those par­ti­cles is log­i­cal­ly prefer­able to any oth­er. Say, for instance, a col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles dri­ving a knife through anoth­er col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles ver­sus a col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles nurs­ing anoth­er, small­er col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Reflec­tions on Athe­ism and Amoral­i­ty”

I Got To Teach At Stanford

Okay, maybe the title is a lit­tle mis­lead­ing. It’s not like I’m a pro­fes­sor or any­thing. I did get to give a lec­ture, though. Let me tell you about it…

Okay, maybe the title is a lit­tle mis­lead­ing. It’s not like I’m a pro­fes­sor or any­thing.

I did get to give a lec­ture, though. Let me tell you about it…

Jim­my Lim, a grad stu­dent who helps lead wor­ship for Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is tak­ing a class called Vol­un­tary Social Sys­tems. The class basi­cal­ly seeks to describe a max­i­mal­ly free soci­ety, one in which all laws flow from the max­im that “peace­ful, hon­est peo­ple have a right to be left alone.”

Any­way, each stu­dent who is tak­ing the class for full cred­it is required to bring in an out­side speak­er, and Jim­my chose me!

It was real­ly an astound­ing opportunity–I was able to talk about “Reli­gion and the Max­im Soci­ety” to a group of most­ly unbe­liev­ing grad stu­dents. In fact, I think the bulk of the stu­dents were athe­ists.

In case you’re won­der­ing, the lec­ture went real­ly well (at least, that’s my take on things). They applaud­ed when I was done and we had a won­der­ful time of ques­tion and answer. I was able to talk very forth­right­ly about my faith in God, the cen­tral­i­ty of reli­gion to human expe­ri­ence, and to present the gospel in a high­ly con­tex­tu­al­ized man­ner.

Woohoo!

Please pray that these stu­dents (and the pro­fes­sor, Ron Howard) would become sen­si­tive to God’s pres­ence in their lives. Pray also that Jim­my and Lynn (the oth­er Chi Alpha stu­dent in the class) would have oppor­tu­ni­ties to talk with their class­mates about spir­i­tu­al things.

Also, please pray for more cool oppor­tu­ni­ties to share the gospel at Stan­ford!

In case you’re curi­ous, a com­plete set of notes from my pre­sen­ta­tion is avail­able. I warn you–unless you have a back­ground in lib­er­tar­i­an or objec­tivist polit­i­cal thought it may seem kind of weird. Trust me–it made sense to my tar­get audi­ence.

Religion and the Maxim Society

These are notes from a lec­ture I pre­sent­ed on “Reli­gion In the Max­im Soci­ety” in Ron Howard’s class on Vol­un­tary Social Sys­tems (no class web­site that I could find).

In case you’re won­der­ing, a max­im soci­ety is one in which every law flows from the max­im that “peace­ful, hon­est peo­ple have a right to be left alone.” It is a the­o­ret­i­cal soci­ety with­out any coer­cion and with max­i­mal free­dom. If you weren’t in the class, this won’t make much sense to you–my apolo­gies. I put this online to help out the stu­dents from the class, not to edu­cate the Inter­net at large about my hypo­thet­i­cal mus­ings on the­o­ret­i­cal soci­eties.

If you were in the class, these notes should be close to what I said but not com­plete­ly iden­ti­cal. Two rea­sons: I did­n’t deliv­er my notes ver­ba­tim and I tweaked one or two points in response to some of the ques­tions that let me know where I had been unclear. Also, in these notes I have attempt­ed to pro­vide all my sources and to hyper­link any ref­er­ences to make it easy to check me out.

Aca­d­e­mics Often Ignore Reli­gion (fool­ish­ly)
In the world of aca­d­e­mics, reli­gion is often over­looked. This point is illus­trat­ed quite strik­ing­ly by British econ­o­mist Ernst Schu­mach­er in the open­ing lines of his book A Guide For the Per­plexed:

On a vis­it to Leningrad some years ago I con­sult­ed a map to find out where I was, but I could not make it out. From where I stood, I could see sev­er­al enor­mous church­es, yet there was no trace of them on my map. When final­ly an inter­preter came to help me, he said: “We don’t show church­es on our maps.” Con­tra­dict­ing him, I point­ed to one that was very clear­ly marked. “That is a muse­um,” he said, “not what we call a ‘liv­ing church.’ It is only the ‘liv­ing church­es’ we don’t show.”

It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been giv­en a map which failed to show many things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and uni­ver­si­ty I had been giv­en maps of life and knowl­edge on which there was hard­ly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the great­est pos­si­ble impor­tance to the con­duct of my life. I remem­bered that for many years my per­plex­i­ty had been com­plete; and no inter­preter had come along to help me. It remained com­plete until I ceased to sus­pect the san­i­ty of my per­cep­tions and began, instead, to sus­pect the sound­ness of the maps. (E.F. Schu­mach­er, A Guide For the Per­plexed page 1)

Today I want to help you take a look at the like­ly nature of reli­gion in a soci­ety in which all laws flow from the max­im, “Peace­ful, hon­est peo­ple have the right to be left alone.”

Or, to flesh out the terms in the max­im: “Peo­ple who do not use force on oth­ers and who ful­fill their con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions to oth­ers have the right to not be coerced.”

Such a soci­ety is a sta­ple in the genre of sci­ence fic­tion. As a sci­ence fic­tion fan, I’m always amazed at the wide­spread assump­tion in such tales that reli­gion will have at most a mar­gin­al role in future soci­eties, and that if reli­gion does sur­vive it will be in a vir­tu­al­ly unrec­og­niz­able form.

The rea­sons for such an assump­tion are myr­i­ad, and I could spend the rest of this class peri­od rais­ing and coun­ter­ing them.

I’ll give you just two rea­sons why such an assump­tion is naïve.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Reli­gion and the Max­im Soci­ety”

The Message at Gospelcom

Hey– the Bible Gate­way now includes The Mes­sage trans­la­tion!

Hey– the Bible Gate­way now includes The Mes­sage trans­la­tion!

This is great–I used to use Quick­Verse for my ser­mon prep, but then I got a com­put­er with Win­dows XP and Quick­Verse would­n’t run under XP. Short­ly there­after, we moved to Palo Alto and got broad­band access.

As a result, I use online tools all the time in my ser­mon prep. My sole regret has been that I haven’t been able to access the Mes­sage in all that time. That’s a big­ger deal than it would be with most trans­la­tions, since there is no con­cor­dance to the Mes­sage. Either you search it elec­tron­i­cal­ly or you just rely on your mem­o­ry.

Now the three trans­la­tions I use most often are avail­able using the same online tool: The Mes­sage, the Con­tem­po­rary Eng­lish Ver­sion, and the New Liv­ing Trans­la­tion.