New Pawn Shop Item

Click here for same lousy prices. Pheh.

Things Change

The t-shirt for the blog has changed. It's time to change your t-shirt.

Please.

Flacking for Challies

In spite of his mother's fears that I hate him, I have received Challies new book, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, as a promo copy, and I'm on the bandwagon.

Look for a full-scale review here, and on Jan 16, Tim and I will have a little blog chat at TeamPyro about his book as part of his "blog tour".

Too Late for Christmas

You could pay for Premium shipping and get it by Christmas, but that's a massive waste of money. But it's always in style. Now at the Pawn Shop.

Because it's the holiday season

Christmas sale at the Pawn Shop. Get it on.

New Junk

Same ridiculous prices.

Telling the Truth

New junk. Same old prices.

The New Biggest Thing

The presbyterians are really going mad over them, and I have to thank faithful reader Martin Downes for the idea.

Shamlessness

I also wanted to mention today that you can buy really cool Father's day gifts right now and still have them delivered in time for actual Father's Day.

You know: if you needed a gift idea or something.

CafePress: evil

CafePress just sent me an e-mail saying that they had some kind of catastrophic system failure and they lost a lot of the images at my cafePress store. That means the Pawn Shop will have some slow service as they and I try to restore all the images they lost.

That's what I pay $6 a month for: losing two years worth of graphic snark.

Get 'em while they last

Destined to be the all-time best seller at the Pawn Shop.

Boo. Yah.

Stuff

Now available at the Pawn Shop.

Where are they now?

So I was on the phone with this guy I know (to whom I am a lousy friend -- completely useless), and he tells me that I should read this link to find out about a mutual acquaintance.

Give it a visit, but I'm not sure that the FDA has approved all the health claims made on that site. And I have no idea what shipping and handling costs. And I am sure he's not building a well with the profits. And he really does believe this stuff. All of it. Even the regular blog posts.

So whatever.

Seriously now ...

The Jolly Fat Man may hate me in spite of my defense of him, but CafePress has no mercy. Order today by midnight and choose overnight shipping, or wait 2 FULL WEEKS to get your order fulfilled.

2 WEEKS. That's crazy. I ordered something for a friend that I thought would get there but New Years, and it turns out it will barely be there by the Super Bowl. And I paid for that.

Who's naughty and who's nice now?

* CONTEST *

HeavyDluxe almost had a great idea for a t-shirt contest, but I put all the pieces together and here we are on a Thursday with 10 shopping days until Christmas unveiling a great end-of-year idea.

Who can tell me how fierce my wife is? Just how stunning and amazing is she? I was the one who said, "Don't mess with her or she'll take you out like cheap chinese," but who can top that?

Note: this is not an "insult" contest, but an "exalt" contest. Who can come up with the most stunning compliment for my wife as a one liner?

Contest begins now, and runs through the Friday before Christmas. We will read them all at my house on 12/24 and post a winner on Christmas day -- maybe the day after. Duplicate entries will be ignored; first one with a one-liner is the owner. Insults will be deleted; multiple insults will get banned. And no sexual inuendos -- keep it clean.

My wife is so hot, she's a cause of global warming. Let's see if you can do better.

The other Christmas

I've been blogging about the actual celebration of Christmas, and I have 2 posts left in that series, but since Christmas can get a lot of traffic, I thought I'd also make a post or two about the other Christmas -- the one for which a lot of people are spending crazy money for junk that we probably will have thrown away by next year at this time.

I have a new section of the Pawn Shop "For Women Only", and it's my own take on the matter of purity and chastity. This line is called "Chastity Athletics", and has an aged look with a somewhat-demanding moral message for those who are too engrossed with the, um, artwork.

Take a look. I think it's a breakout category for the Pawn Shop.

Session 2: What a blog is

You thought I forgot about this, but I didn't. We're in the middle of my personal GodBlogCon with everything you need to know about blogging, and the deal is this: we're only going to talk once about the medium of blogging, and the rest of the time we are going to talk about the method and objective of blogging.

To start talking about medium, read this state of the blogosphere report from Technorati. It has some nifty charts and a lot of really-boring junk. BORING. But this kind of information only comes sandwiched between the stale bread of statistics.

Let me give you an example:

The Low Authority Group (3-9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

The average blog age (the number of days that the blog has been in existence) is about 228 days, which shows a real commitment to blogging. However, bloggers of this type average only 12 posts per month, meaning that their posting habits are generally dedicated but infrequent.

The Middle Authority Group (10-99 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

This contrasts somewhat with the second group, which enjoys an average age not much older than the first at 260 days and which posts 50% more frequently than the first. There is a clear correlation between posting volume and Technorati authority ranking.

The High Authority Group (100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)

The third group represents a decided shift in blog age while not blogging much more frequently than the last. In keeping with the theme of the maturation of the blogosphere, it seems evident that many of these bloggers were previously in category two and have grown in authority organically over time. In other words, sheer dedication pays off over time.

The Very High Authority Group (500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)

In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer – a year and a half on average – and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati and we’ve grown up together. Some of these are full-fledged professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic.

A note on Ranking

For those of you who are new to Technorati's ranking systems, we establish a blog’s authority (or influence) by tracking the number of distinct blogs that link to it over the past 6 months. In this chart, we’ve looked at folks with at least 3 links or more and grouped them into four separate categories. In total, we’re looking at about 1.5 million blogs of the 57 million total. Even though I labeled the first group as the "Low Authority" group, given that these people are in the top 2% of all of the blogs that exist, the concept of "low" is purely in relation to the other groups above.

Now, for some of you, your eyes have already glazed over -- and you people will never be better bloggers. It's a shame really, because some of you are really cool people.

But here's the deal: regardless of the TTLB ranking system, Technorati is the gold standard of measuring influence in the blogosphere. Why? Because they are earning a living exploiting the way the blogosphere works -- and N.Z.Bear, whom I respect as a pioneer, is simply part of one clan in the blogosphere which is quickly becoming irrelevant. So the way Technorati measures influence tells us something about how we must -- if we are going to use blogs as a medium -- operate to gain influence and authority in (for lack of a better term) the discussion.

Let's get serious for a minute: PostSecret has almost 12,000 unique inbound links. Don't pretend you don't know what that is -- you've read that blog. It's not even designed very well -- it uses a standard Blogger template, which is serviceable, but it's completely no-frills. But in that, it's in the top 100 blogs based on the Technorati influence metrics.

There's nothing at PostSecret that's changing the world, and it's only interesting is a very skank, reality TV kind of way -- the way the first MTV "Real" show was "interesting". Yet it's got 12,000 inbound links?

Listen: Mark Driscoll's site theResurgence.com has "only" 1,100 inbound links -- and it is 10,000 times more edifying than PostSecret. What's up with that? Has the word simply not gotten out about Pastor Driscoll's blog, or is the problem that we Christians are actually ill-informed about how, exactly, to make get a blog distributed in the bandwidth?

Personally, I think it's the latter. And we're a funny lot. We're willing to call Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin and Scrappleface "GodBloggers", but on the flip side those kinds of "GodBloggers" are completely unwilling to link to (for example) aomin.org or TeamPyro. Their reasons are, well, their own, but the bottom line is that they want to be affiliated with the political idea of God and not the actual person of God because frankly, somebody might get hurt.

In that, Mark Driscoll ought to have a broader platform than he does -- but he needs a network of people who are like-minded to get him circulated.

Here's the real rub: there's a guy out there who calls himself "Arklahomboy", and his blog -stinks-. Content? Nope. Design? nope. Train of thought? Nope. So how does this guy have over 300 blogs linking to him, placing him in the top 8,000-ish blogs in the blogosphere?

It's simple: he joins aggregators. That's not very complicated, is it? He sends out an e-mail, drops a piece of code into his sidebar, and viola: he becomes "more influential" at the drop of a hat.

Now, I have said all of that to say this: the key to having an influential blog is shameless self-promotion. If you cannot do that, you will never be an "influential" blogger. And for some people, I think that's fine. What we do not need in the world today is more "Aklahomboys" who make one-line posts and belong to 6 aggregators and somehow turn up on the radar but have nothing to offer.

Shameless self-promotion is easy if you have a radio show or a nationally-syndicated column. Or a really large church. Or you have published a book. Having a blog after you have one of these things is really a self-promotion of an almost-egregious kind. Seriously now: we buy your books, and we listen to your radio show. Did you not get in all the things you had to say? But there they are: blogging for some reason, and the reason is transparent: to maintain a certain level of public awareness and hype. One talks about his blog on the radio show, and then about the radio on the blog, and about the book on the blog, and then about the blog in the book ... geez, bub: is it about you or what?

I take a like of ribbing from my internet friends about my blog because the self-promotion is so obvious. Listen: DUH! The only way -- the only way -- to get part of the podium in this medium is shameless self promotion. Some people take the coward's way out and join 2 or 3 (or 6) radically-different aggregators to get as much coverage as possible, and others of us -- me in particular -- join one reasonably-large aggregator (so my blog is not constantly timing out trying to run the javascript for the aggregators) and then promote the junk out of what we have.

It sounds tawdry, doesn't it? A little earthy and shameful? Listen: if, after the commensurate level of self promotion, you turn out a blog like "Rant Fever", it is more than a little tawdry: it's downright narcissistic. No questions asked.

But if, while you are tossing out hooks to see where you can get some linkage, you are blogging about Christ, and about the Gospel, and about sinners, and about the church, and about the Gospel, and about Christ, and about marriage in that context, you got your hands a little dirty for the sake of raising Christ up for sinners to see him.

So your medium is this: get your blog connected to the blogosphere -- don't hide it under a bushel. All the other stuff you do has to be done in a public way, but if you're going to get connected, do it with gusto. Just do it.

That's the medium. In the next session, we're going to talk about methods. There's meta open for Q&A, so step up to the mike, speak clearly, and remember to ask your question in a way the panelists can answer.

UPDATED: JD Hatfield pointed out, by way of Socratic questioning, that the right thing to do for this session is to establish an aggregator to show everyone how cool and easy it is to join one, and to get a blogroll going for people who are actually blogging about God. So I'm about 30 minutes away from having an aggregator ready for public consumption, and when it is actually ready, you can find out how to join right here.

JOIN MY BLOGROLL!

Yeah, so what's a "blog roll" and how, exactly do I join?

A "blog roll" is a scrap of javascript code which, when you place it in your web page, lists all the member links of people who are, in turn, running the blogroll on their web page (usually: their blog). It's useful for improving your visibility on the web, especially in Technorati rankings (hubba hubba).

To join, e-mail me at the e-mail listed at my Blogger profile (click on my picture in the sidebar for my blogger user page to come up). But before you do that, make sure you understand the following:

[1] Your blog must be at least 6 months old and demonstrate some current level of activity. You don't have to post every day, but you do have to post weekly.

[2] Your blog must be a blog about the Gospel. By that I mean this: I'm going to google your blog, and if you never mention Jesus, or the Gospel, or the Bible, or God -- or if you only mention them as explitives -- you're not going to get added to the blogroll. If you want to know what I mean when I say "the Gospel", I have a statement of faith linked in my sidebar. Read that, and if you can't say you agree with it, you probably don't know what the Gospel is.

[3] Your blog must show the aggregator on it. What that means is that you are going to add the code for the aggregator before you send me your e-mail request, and when I google you for content, I'm going to check your homepage for the blogroll. That way, when I activate you on the blogroll, you will already be up and running.

[4] You will be patient. I will update the blogroll weekly, and if you can't wait until the weekend to get added, you are probably addicted to the internet or have an urge control problem. My time as blogroll administrator is on a volunteer basis, and you need to respect that.

[5] You will also keep it clean. If I get any complaints about the content of your site, you'll get delisted. Keep it clean. If you don't know what that means, or you want to test the limits, don't submit your site.

The name of the blogroll is "Scum of the Earth" -- a reference to 1Cor 4. That's what's going to pop up when you load this blogroll on your blog, so if you don't like that title, you prolly shouldn't ask to be on the blogroll.

I know I sound somewhat prickly about this, but here's what I think: I think we ought to have some idea what we're standing for and talking about when we call ourselves "GodBloggers" or somehow try to self-identify with Jesus. If you think you have something cool to say about current events also, that's sweet: just don't forget that we're banding together to blog for Jesus here, and if you want to be a Malkin or a Hewitt, go join Pajamas Media.

The code for the blogroll is this:
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=7aa7eb5ad9c3180c47a4e2ae3f58e274" ></script>

Drop it into your blog, e-mail me, and let's get busy.

Session #1: practicum

This is what I'm talking about -- honest to God blogging.

[#] The Atonement in John 3 [2 of 2]

Another programming note this week is that my computer at my day job needs the tires rotated and the data fascists need to check my HD for incriminating evidence the oil changed, so you will have the opportunity to grandstand here at the blog until I can get my digital mojo back sometime tomorrow.

That said, what's up with "whosoever"? It's like a universal translation in John 3:16, so all appeals to the Greek have to account for a somewhat-broad section of translation committees agreeing that the right translation of "hina pas ho pisteuwn" is "that whoever believes".

Let's start with the dictionary meaning of "whoever": "whatever person : no matter who -- used in any grammatical relation except that of a possessive". And that's fair enough, right? There's no reason to debate the fact that anyone who believes shall not perish but have eternal life. I believe that; any arminian would believe that. No questions asked.

"Well, hang on there you crypto-presbyterian pseudobaptist," says the man with the radio program in the back row, "You're a 'calvinist', right? It's your view that none of the non-elect are able to believe. In that respect, you do not mean 'whoever' – or 'whatever person'. You mean only the ones God has already chosen. This verse doesn't say, 'only the ones God has already chosen': it says 'all that believe' – or as the translation committees have translated, 'whoever believes'. Those are not the same thing."

Well, you're right in that this verse does not say specifically, "in order that all the ones God has elected from the foundation of the world." It says that the believers shall not perish. In fact, it says all the believers shall not perish. That's mighty strong talk if you ask me.

But mighty strong in what way? For the Arminian, what this verse also does not say is, "in order that all the ones who consider the options and choose based on free will shall not perish". To get there, you have to adopt a reading of the participle "pisteuwn" which changes the word from descriptive – that is, indicating a class based on a characteristic – to a word which is prescriptive. It also places a larger connotation on this word than is warranted by this verse, this passage, and frankly the theology of the book of John.

The strength of this passage is the scope of assurance it is offering. Jesus is discoursing with Nicodemus, and in speaking to this Pharisee he first gives an example of God delivering the Jews (and only the Jews) from the curse of the snake bite in the desert. But then Jesus says, in the same way when the Son of man is lifted up anyone (not just Jews) who believes in Him shall have eternal life.

The scope of salvation here is radically different than what Nicodemus is expecting, but it is also not the salvation of every person or even the atonement-in-potential for every person: it is the assurance that those whom Christ will save are saved in fact and saved without any doubt.

And those who are saved are the ones who believe – both Jews and Gentiles alike. One doesn't have to do grammatical contortions over the word "world" here to get that: one has to simply read the passage as it comes, in the manner which Jesus delivered it, and see the method of reasoning He was using with the Pharisee Nicodemus.

And now, before the data Nazis shut me down, the meta is open and you may take your wacks.