Month: October 2005

The Christianity Code, Pt. 2: <HEAD>

/ W. Keith Brenton / Leave a comment

The next tag that appears after <HTML> in the source code of an HTML page is <HEAD>.

A browser needs that tag to tell it some information about the page that search engines and their spiders need to know: the document’s <TITLE>, who wrote it, the world language (English, French, etc.) it’s written in, how recent it is, a quick summary of its key words and concepts. It tells the search engine how long to remember a page before coming back to check it again.

Sometimes there are CSS style sheets or javascript (.js) instructions linked there that tell the page how to behave.

Then it’s all closed off with a </HEAD> tag.

Nothing inside those tags shows up on the page. It’s all background information.

I grew up at a time when the invisible, background information was about all that mattered in Christian communication. We rarely or never got past the appropriateness of the Bible’s title, its authorship, languages, etymology, key words and concepts, how to behave, and the fact that we needed to check back Sunday night and Wednesday night for updated information – we rarely if ever got to the <BODY> of what was being communicated.

It’s no wonder most folks never saw what we were trying to communicate. It was all <HEAD> language.

We weren’t living out the <BODY>.

The <BODY> is where the essence of the communication is. It has the real content of the message; not a summary or a few choice words or a concept or two.

As I was growing up – even while I was in college – we rarely if ever recognized that our <HEAD> – Jesus – lived His short, truncated life among us so that we would become His <BODY> for the rest of history; so that we would literally flesh out the concepts that He outlined and exemplified.

And it was truly an occasion if we ever considered what would happen when the </BODY> would be closed out in the resurrection to come and it would be confirmed whether we had lived the language of love that we were intended by our Author to live.

</HTML>

” You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.” – II Corinthians 3:2

“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” – I Peter 1:23

Bring It Over To My Place

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

I’m a donkey on the edge! I’ve got a dragon, and I’m not afraid to use it! – Shrek (actually Donkey)

Donkey just needed a place to verbalize; his own little place in the swamp, where he could have a conversation and not get on anyone’s nerves.

You need a place like that? I’ve got one for you. It’s the new Bulletin Board on my site, and it’s free and open for business. No strings attached. No registration. No ID check. No monthly fees. No guarantees. No refunds.

Feel free to post a suggested time and topic on your blog and go after it!

If it gets too bawdy or brawly, I may have to shut it down – but I doubt that’ll happen.

I’m off to the kids’ homecoming game. Have fun!

The Christianity Code, Pt. 1: <HTML>

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

John Alan Turner has blogged well recently about his take on the DaVinci Code and the questions it has been raising in the minds of so many – and I wouldn’t try to surpass (or duplicate) his scholarship on the subject!

But his posts – along with some enticing promises from bloggers Travis Stanley and Greg Kendall-Ball about a “super-secret project” that speak of the personal impact of blogging, the fellowship-wide impact of blogging, journalism in the Restoration heritage, its editor-bishops – and maybe even my own reflections about one of them who was my ancestor – have intrigued me with the many facets of the word “code.”

Blogs and other Web pages are ultimately written in HTML code. That’s HyperText Markup Language for the novitiate, and this code tells your browser how to display the pages created: how wide the columns are, how big the letters appear, what the background and text colors will be, etc.

It’s nekkid code that you can look at through one of your browser features, “View Source.” Go ahead! Find it in your tool bar at the top. I’ll wait.

Isn’t that gobbledy-gook absolutely fascinating? And daunting, too, if you want to master it.

Each page of source code begins with the tag <HTML> … or something that includes it, or some version of it. This tag tells the browser what kind of language it will be using.

I’ve been trying to get acquainted with XHTML – the next generation, if you will, of markup language; a language that is a subset of XML, eXtensible Markup Language. The rules get stricter as the language matures. With XHTML you have to close (with a “/” or slash-tag) every tag that you open. And it has a pal, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), that handle the page-design aspects of the language.

The pages on my newly-redesigned portfolio site have a tag featuring those letters at the top.

So many folks with better credentials and sharper minds than mine have written about the language peculiar to Christians that I won’t attempt to out-do or re-do their scholarship, either.

But, as they almost universally point out, it can be a lingo bewildering to “outsiders” – full of terms like “salvation” and “baptism” and “communion” and “redemption” – just as HTML code appears to someone who hasn’t learned it yet. And as the language has matured, its rules have become more strict as well; and the tags more abstruse: “eschatology,” “ecumenicism,” “epistemology” – and that’s just a sampling of the “e” words.

And, as you might expect, every browser interprets HTML terms a little differently. One might draw a one-pixel CSS border on the inside of a box of text; another browser draws it on the outside. Microsoft and Netscape become the Stone and Campbell, the Armenians and Calvinists of this code’s doctrine. XHTML was created because HTML wasn’t “good” enough; wasn’t “pure” enough to do what Internet geeks want to do with it. And XHTML/XML will only stand until supplanted by the next standard – whatever it may turn out to be.

The problem is, it all gets so difficult to memorize and implement, that the average guy just says to blazes with it, and so all the new browsers continue to read even the earliest implementations of HTML and the simplest code.

(Simple code is the best, in my book. It’s the easiest to trouble-shoot. Engineer Scott of Star Trek once quoth: “The more they overcheck the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”)

But complex code is required to deal with complex matters, I realize.

Still – when I encounter a page of Christian code – instead of having to delve deep to look for tags like “epistemology” to clue me in, I sometimes wish there was a tag at the top and bottom that would let me know which language I’ll have to try to read.

</HTML>

Am I All Wet?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

Before you automatically answer “Yes, Keith, you are!”, remember ….

  • God’s Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the waters before composing new life on this world

  • He put the consummation of that new life – Man – in a garden from which four great rivers flowed

  • He rescued Noah and his family from the evil surrounding them by floods of water

  • He helped Moses and his people escape from the evil pursuing them by holding back the water no longer

  • He sustained Israel in the desert with water from a rock

  • He healed Naaman using water from a second-rate stream

  • He brought thousands into His fold in century one with the gift of baptism and millions since

And when any of them have been in trouble after all that salvation, it was because they had towelled off and gotten dry and forgotten from Whom it had come.

Adam and Eve invented sin. Noah’s daughters strayed. Israel complained about water, and Moses boasted when striking it from a rock. The church of century one had every kind of challenge imaginable after selling what they owned and sharing what they had left, defying imperial orders to worship a man, clinging to their first love.

When they were still wet behind the ears, they went through what Mike Cope calls the “mounting-up-on-wings-like-eagles stage” and then through the “run-and-not-grow-weary stage” and eventually through the “walk-without-fainting stage” until finally the love of most had grown cold and their skin had gone dry and they wandered in a desert without even wondering where they had left behind their salvation.

So maybe it’s worth asking ourselves from time to time: Am I all wet?

“Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. … Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” Psalm 51:2, 12

I Hope You Dance

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

One of my elders, Steve Stevens, began our Bible class Sunday morning describing an adorable little girl that he sees on his daily drive to work. She waits for the school bus by her apartment complex, her books and lunch on the ground.

I knew what he was going to say next, because I used to see her on my daily commute too:

“And she dances.”

She dances with pure, unbridled joy to music unheard by others – not because she’s plugged into an iPod, but because the music is in her head and her heart.

Steve taught a lesson about Moses dancing around God’s request that he lead his people out of Egyptian slavery … just as we often do, even when we know in our heads and hearts what God is asking us to do.

His conclusion? “I want to hear the music God puts in my heart, and then dance.”

Steve said some kind things about my blog to me before that class. He said he wished he could keep a blog, but he didn’t think he could write. I don’t know about that.

He sure can teach.

Setting My Sites Higher

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

I’ve been working 10-hour days this last week to redesign and revamp my personal portfolio site, so that prospective employers won’t see a sadly-neglected and out-of-date relic of 1998.

I’m pretty happy with the results at www.keithbrenton.com.

My final day working at UALR was a week ago last Friday. I’ve had a very good preliminary interview for a position offered at my church; am arranging a phone pre-interview for another at an outstanding local Web design firm; and Thursday I’ll interview for the position of Internet Director at Family Life, a Campus Crusade for Christ ministry headquartered here in Little Rock.

Those of you who have been praying about my job safari – among other, much more important concerns like hurricane victims – for the last several weeks: you have my deepest gratitude. I am convinced that your prayers have done wonders.