Worldview on A Geek's Life

16. The Crux of The Matter

Wed, 18 Jan 2017 17:33:06 +0000

Love God. Love People. The End

Day 1: Define Your Core Values

Sun, 01 Jun 2014 20:42:46 +0000

These have gone through several iterations in the past, but having taken time again to consider this the five below stood out as my core values. It’s obvious I need to work on several of these to make them front and centre, given the reality of my life in certain areas doesn’t reflect these values. But don’t they say a problem identified is half solved?

Faith: God, faith and how these interact in the real world and translate to personal and worldview integrity.
Family : Nuclear and the future family :)
Continuous Improvement: In three main areas - professionally, relationally and in delivering on the stated objective of contributing to life in the civic space. The intent is to actively seek out opportunities to learn both formally and informally for self improvement and a broadened knowledge base; challenging myself in the three main areas identified above.
Mentoring: As someone who has benefitted greatly from the input of knowledgeable others both in my personal and professional life, taking an active interest in the lives of others with the aim of improving them is something I want to do more of.
Health and Healthy Living: The ‘rigours’ of being a hands on rustgeek demand that I pass a medical exam every two years. The numbers from the last check in 2013 were a real wake up call - no thanks to shed loads of pizza and salt. That prompted a rethink and serious action to get the weight and junk food binges down to good effect. Getting healthy, staying healthy, leveraging technology to identify and eliminate risk factors and all the little decisions that feed into that has to be be more of a focus going forward.

Joshua Harris on 'Sanctuary Moments'

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:15:44 +0000

Joshua Harris on ‘Sanctuary moments’ (ones where God steps into our lives to impact change in us) from the message ‘Is He Enough? (New Attitude 2004) [ mp3]

… I am not advocating for you that you wait for some sort of mystical experience. I want you to have a sanctuary moment here at new Attitude, but you know what, that’s not going to look like some moment in worship where God just wipes you out, knocks you on the floor, takes away your desire for marriage and sex, and really fills you with a hatred for the opposite sex and you stand up and say I’ve had my sanctuary moment. No…

RIP Steve Jobs...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:06:56 +0000

That iconic 2005 Standford Commencement address again..

What I learned:

Do not be afraid to start again: Apple, NeXT, Pixar and then Apple again?
Keep every decision, and every action in perspective of what’s truly important
Find what you love, love what you do, and excel at it.
Never underestimate the importance of any experience, the dots only appear to line up in hindsight
Do YOU!

Definitely one to file in my ‘Ideas for life’ folder alongside Dennis Prager’s at Pepperdine University and John Legend at The University of Pennsylvania.

Al Mohler on Vocation

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 08:00:36 +0000

A few weeks ago, ‘Jane Doe’ prompted some deep thinking by Single Nigerian, leading him to ponder if trying now and then was enough when others had sacrificed things (even their lives) to ‘get the word to the common man.’

I was listening to an old message by Al Mohler - Being Men and Raising Men [ mp3] - whilst walking to work today, and a section [begins at 51;11] struck me as being a very apt answer to that question.

Questioning the answers..

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:56:50 +0000

Having passed several chronological milestones, one increasingly has had to field questions that assume that all the basic competencies required to function as an independent contributor to life in various spheres have been achieved. Invariably these often centre on the achievement of academic, financial, material and career milestones. Amidst the focus on these admittedly essential categories is a lack of focus on the attainment of certain critical thinking skills.

I subscribe to the belief that a child is born with a blank worldview - the so called tabula rasa. Over time he/she acquires knowledge about life; typically by experience. The child thus builds up a worldview- religious, social, cultural, sexual even. At it’s most basic, this worldview is a set of answers for what constitute good, bad, the why of life, meaning, etc. Of necessity, these answers have to be gleaned from others in the early days - parents and relatives, peers, civic and religious leaders and teachers.

Trading Places..

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:40:42 +0000

I still go read this - over a year after it was originally posted…..

Almost There.....

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:29:27 +0000

… at the end of the raging storm.… finally a silver lining appears… one victory.. but it is a crucial change of momentum!

Holiness is A Harvest..

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:14:00 +0000

Spent the weekend listening again to Joshua Harris message from New Attitude 2002 - Holiness is A Harvest. Truth is I have not devoted as much time to learning God as I have to say blogging, chasing my romantic interests and stuff like that. It’s a rude reminder that if I say I want to know God, the basic Spiritual Disciplines need to be in place! An action item from my RA involves taking bible study more seriously. I need to jump on it ASAP..

Scared..... Of God?

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:58:00 +0000

I have ranted and raved for a while now about not feeling a real world passion for God, and rightly so. But in the last few days, I have finally gotten to start reading Gordon McDonald’s Forging a Real Faith and Francis Chan’s Crazy Love and I am scared. Scared of what I might see when I finally peek through the door. I suspect that there is so much I will see that my real world life, a lot of the nascent parts of my worldview will be totally altered. That thought is sobering and rightly so. I can see clearly that my view of God has been totally defective; Great in my head, but not in my heart, having the right answers but not the right attitudes, going through the motions without a real sense of awe. I am scared, but I’m still plodding on…. There’s more to life, and I want to see it!

Inter-faith dialogue: An unlikely source of advice.

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:13:00 +0000

Perhaps God still speaks to us in unlikely ways. Consider a piece of scriptural advice on inter-faith dialogue from a Muslim here.

Hat tip to the Leadership Journal.

Living your Liturgy

Sun, 31 May 2009 13:47:01 +0000

Apparently an awe inspiring 90% of Nigerians are religious. Statistics like these make the likes of Richard Dawkins claim that religion is the root of all evil. Dinesh D’Souza, Ravi Zacharias the UCCF, and a whole lot of other resources exist specifically to discuss the pros and cons of the subtle nuances of the arguments around Drawinism vs Intelligent Design and Theism vs Atheism vs Agnosticism. It is instructive to also note that atheism has not done much better either - the Soviet era is a case in point.

On Technology.... Flickering Pixels...

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:07:32 +0000

I jumped at the chance to participate in BlogTourSpot’s review of Shane Hipps new book: Flickering Pixels – How Technology Shapes Your Faith for two reasons. I was at a stage where I thought the clutter of technology was squeezing sense out of my normal life, plus I’d get a copy of the book for free.

The author’s background is in advertising, which has given him a unique insight into the working of media and how it is changing how we think, which ultimately affects how we share and live out our faith. The book sets out in broad strokes the insidious dangers that the changes media brings to our lives can generate, and by sounding out a clarion call, we can be on the lookout for them and avoid them as they arise. Several key points stand out 1. All Faith is based on communication – either from God to us or between us as adherents, and the way we primarily communicate affects our interpretation of our faith. 2. Each more ‘efficient’ means of communication we pick up has a dark side – it increases the propensity to clutter rather than clarify. 3. Media is not neutral – the message we actually get from communicating is both dependent on the message and the medium. 4. Pictures & Images (such as television) hijack our imagination. Words and printed matter however encourage us to generate our own images of the concepts being discussed, as opposed to being fed an image which in reality is one man’s interpretation of the words behind the image. 5. We have slowly become a tribe of individuals – sharing experiences on an unprecedented scale (shared experiences build community, a ‘tribal’ ethos) but yet utilizing the self same tools to build an illusion of closeness whilst in reality, it is only yet another layer of interaction, another screen between the real us and the next person. 6. For Christians, we are both the medium and the message and all other forms of communication should only be to facilitate that primary, face to face communication model, not replace it.

Piper on why we do not hunger for God.....

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:24:00 +0000

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife