This post is almost impossible for me to write. How do you use the very thing that is your weakness for good? Is there a 12 step program for pride? Can I work through it online?

Like most inventions, the blog is really not a new idea…

Nothing was more characteristic . . . in the thirties than the little notebooks with black covers which he always carried with him in which he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of “pearls” and “coral.” On occasion he read them aloud, showed them around like items from a choice and precious collection.”

~Hannah Arendt

This is a good thing, and I believe the public blog makes for a good tool to do just this. You get a chance to collect the thoughts of others, organize them, and present them for others still to appreciate. The medium of the blog lends itself well to this practice, unfortunately it also facilitates an open confessional of everything I would like to attach to my e-persona. I am one of those persons that easily becomes lured in by any opportunity for ego inflation… and the obvious nature of www.shanesevo.com becomes pretty incriminating towards these ends.

He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

~Proverbs 28:13

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Categories: Repentance, Blogging, Confessions, Technology, Mars Hill Audio
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Dennis Prager has a regular hour of his radio show dedicated to relationships, male / female in particular. Dennis is one wise Jew in my opinion…

Recently he has been making the case for public humiliation being the worst of all possible offenses in a marriage and believed it to be more detrimental to the integrity of a marriage than even adultery. At first it seems silly… being made a fool of by your partner is worse than having them cheat on you? But the more I thought through the implications of being on the receiving end of either offense (a single incident of adultery or regular public humiliation) the more I sided with his perspective.

In one moment he described the public (or private) verbal humiliation of someone as being fueled by contempt. I was struck with a horrible feeling, I know I have been on both sides of contempt… giving and receiving… it never feels good.

A quick word study reveals the following definitions…

• lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike
• a manner that is generally disrespectful
• open disrespect for a person or thing
• Contempt is an intense feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless—it is similar to scorn.

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Categories: Confessions, Introspection, Relationships
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By the very act of arguing, you awaken the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention form the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’.

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

I have been wrestling for some time with the effort to put words to my current anxiety. Per usual, I don’t have to; someone much wiser than me has already done so half a century ago. The only thing I think I have to add to this is perhaps some present day context, and the commitment to bring this conversation to the table of my friendships and community.

I believe this is a serious problem, and the sting of the indictment needs to be felt by my generation. I plainly admit that I am chief among sinners in this regard, but it is my sincere hope that such an admission does not detract from the potency of this reproof.

We have been gleefully swallowed up by our technology into a sea of superficial life cataloging endeavors. In this unconscious transaction we have forfeited the depth of our relationships for a paper thin surface of familiarity and before long that familiarity will breed contempt.

They still connect thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.

In 2009, let us pray for the wisdom to unplug in a profound way.

Go deeper with fewer people.

Start with Jesus.

Categories: Challenges, Confessions, Technology, Relationships, Books
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…or,

How FaceBook is killing my friendships.

Let me just come out and say right up front that the real murderer is not FaceBook, or any other social networking technology, the actual culprit is none other than… me. I am the guilty one who perused your profile, made a cursory summation of your life, and decided to shoot you dead with a knowing glance the next time we should meet in person.


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Categories: Confessions, Technology, Criticisms
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Yes, its true…
I would rather upgrade my technology than actually use it…
For example, I recently thought to myself…

I would like to put a picture in my blog, wouldn’t that be neat?

Like this… ->

And there it is, but I was not satisfied with the process and the options. So I did some research online about how to put a picture in my blog (which is really just putting a picture on a web page, something I learned how to do about 10 years ago) this quickly turned into about 2 hours of research and ended with the explicit conviction that I had no other choice than to setup my own image gallery site with its own database on a seperate sub domain and then integrate this new website into my existing word press site via a special plug-in.

This is ridiculus…
journaling… who was I kidding, more like a web design thesis project for a doctorate in computer science.

Hey, I wonder if there is a spell check plug in…

Categories: Confessions, Technology, Criticisms
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