Author: W. Keith Brenton

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.

Great-Great Grandpa Alfred

/ W. Keith Brenton / 16 Comments

I never met the fellow. (Actually, I never met his grandson – my grandfather – who perished before I was born.) I love and respect him, and especially the fact that great-great-grandfather Alfred Ellmore felt a keen calling to preach from a young age.

But I would not agree with all of his beliefs.

For someone known as a great Restoration preacher – someone who was pierced by the older preacher Ben Franklin’s personal advice to him to “do all the good you can and no harm” – I think he did harm.

His position on Sunday schools: “It is another society and one of which the New Testament knows nothing. … transfer the Sunday school into the worship and give to every child who is able to read a New Testament … have the bishops and others who are safe teachers to spend fifty minutes, more or less, upon the lesson: continue the worship without intermission to the close.”

His position on mission organizations: “The Lord made the church for this work.”

His position on those baptized, at any age, in any other church: “[they should] be reimmersed for the remission of their sins.”

His position on churches which worship with instruments of music: “If there were but one congregation in the United States which worshiped as did the primitive church, I would hold my membership in that church. And were I so remote from it that I could but seldom, or never meet with it, I would send [it] my fellowship, and my Christian greeting, and do my praying at home. And if there were no such church, and I were a preacher, I would go immediately to work and create such a body.”

His newspaper’s mission (The Gospel Echo, merged with the Gospel Advocate in 1901): “… there are, we believe, two things which have been sadly neglected, viz.: the supporting of true ministers, and the cleansing of the sanctuary.”

The title of his first book, 1877: “Which Is the True Church?.”

I have no doubt in mind or heart that Alfred Ellmore’s mind and heart were zealous for the furtherance of God’s truth. I disagree with many of his perceptions of it.

I believe he was, in many ways, typical of the gospel preachers of his day. I’m afraid that is why I read so much rancor in the writings of their various publications.

If you’re of an eastern philosophy, you might be thinking “Whew! That’s a lot of negative family karma to bear toward the next life,” and I would agree with you.

At the same time, I am certain that Alfred brought many people to know Jesus Christ, and His is the eastern philosophy to which I have given my life.

Whatever else he believed or taught or wrote or did, Alfred Ellmore could also write: “A majority rule is not the rule of Christ. Christ and no man rules in all things in His church.”

His poetry was soulful and heartfelt:

Pray, earnest soul, what hast thou done
In the battle and the strife,
This short expanse from sun to sun,
To scatter seeds of life?
The poor have trod the stony road,
The rich for wealth have striven,
But who has sought to ease their load,
By pointing such to heaven?
– the last stanza of “Sunset” from his Maple Valley Poems

And one of his “Wheat and Chaff” columns from the journal Word and Work wistfully observes: “I suppose every matured Christian in looking back over his life sees somethings he did, which if presented now he would not do.”

Not long ago I observed on salguod’s blog that

“We’re probably always (in this life) going to have … people with vision, charisma, energy and genuine dedication who will try to make good ideas into doctrine instead of just letting them be good ideas.

Maybe they are part of God’s plan for encouraging us to study, think, meditate and pray for ourselves about what’s best; to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.”

I seem to remember that Paul was grateful even for those who preached from selfish motives because Christ was preached.

I’m going to have to think about that again for a while!”

I have chewed on it a little since then.

I’m grateful for Alfred Ellmore.

He also did a lot of good.

Taking Things Too Literally ….

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

Who would read Paul saying that “I beat my body” and conclude that beating one’s own body must be the one and only way acceptable before God to keep from “disqualifying for the prize”?

Who would read Jesus saying “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out” and conclude that blinding one’s self in one eye would be the one and only way acceptable before God to “enter the kingdom of God”?

Who would read Paul saying that “… women will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” and conclude that this is the one and only way that any woman can be saved?

Who would read Jesus saying that “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” and conclude that asceticism and carrying (or just wearing) a wooden cross is the one and only acceptable way to follow Him?

Who would read Peter saying that “… this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also ….” (1 Peter 3:21) and ignore the word “also” and – apart from any other scripture about belief, confession, repentance, grace, His sacrifice – conclude that baptism alone is the one and only acceptable way to be saved?

We can take things too literally. We can take them out of context. We can skip what we don’t like, don’t comprehend, and/or don’t want to deal with.

We can even take the absence of any mention of furniture in New Testament churches and conclude that the one and only acceptable piece of furniture in the Lord’s house is a table – and that must be all right because the gospels mention it at the Last Supper.

However, we do so at our own peril. And that peril is not from physically beating ourselves, physically half-blinding ourselves, or physically failing to reproduce …

… but spiritually.

Sound Doctrine … or Just A Good Idea?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 14 Comments

Does anyone have a really good goof-proof method for determining the difference between what is sound doctrine and what is just a good idea?

And what may not be a very good idea?

I’m really asking. I really want to know.

Just saying “If it’s in the Bible, it’s sound doctrine” won’t cut it. We all know that. Satan wasn’t shy about using scripture to tempt Jesus.

How can we know what is the desire of God’s heart for us, apart from all of the ditherings about language and meaning and definition and law and command and example and necessary inference?

How much can we rely upon His grace to cover our lack of understanding?

Is it possible to know God’s will in every conceivable circumstance?

Or is it arrogance to think that we can? That we do?

Is it possible God intentionally built a level of mystery, seeming contradiction, translucence – rather than opaqueness or transparence – into His word so that we would constantly struggle, study, pray, attempt, fail, repent, learn, experience the light that we seek in perfect clarity?

To keep us humble?

To keep us seeking?

To draw us closer?

Filmmaking Fanatics

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

As a lapsed Star Trek fan, I’ve only recently become aware of a fan activity that goes beyond wearing costumes and wielding props at science fiction conventions: the fan film.

Paramount, the studio which owns the franchise, used to come down hard on folks who attempted anything without their express permission (and without paying their franchising fee) but apparently looks the other way at these efforts nowadays.

I’m talking about sites which stream these home-made classics, like Hidden Frontier, the New Voyages, and Starship Exeter. These brave souls have sunk a ton of money, effort and pixels into “filming” their visions within the Star Trek cosmos, and they’re getting better at it all the time.

Hidden Frontier goes where no Trek has gone before in chronicling the voyages of gay crewmembers – with appropriate restraint and 24th-century sensibility.

It made me wonder what might happen if followers of Christ became film fanatics. I’m not necessarily talking about worthy results like The Jesus Film Project or even The Passion of the Christ. I mean … well, more like ….

What if filmmakers armed with the latest, relatively inexpensive digital tools set out to chronicle what a Christ-like life would look like today or tomorrow?

What if they put their emerging genius into telling something that could be called The Ongoing Story of Christ?

Would helpful fellow-fans donate their time to build CGI models if needed, or stitch together costumes, or build props, or write scripts?

Is that an exciting thought, or what?

Humble Pi

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

Today has been humble pi. “Humble” because it has been an humbling experience … first, in Bible class this morning, being humbled by the confession of a brother who has been giving in to his addiction to pain medication following a back injury a couple of years ago. The thirty or so of us in class just gathered around him, put our hands on his shoulders, hugged his neck, and prayed as two elders led us.

Then, this evening, being humbled by the courage of a close friend sharing the lamentations he and his wife shared ten years ago this week at the loss of their infant son.

I will never forget the words the minister shared at that funeral that the two of them had shared with him:

“We don’t know why God took our son home. But we also don’t know why He blessed us with a beautiful older daughter, and family and friends to love and support us.”

Such wisdom; such eternal perspective.

Why “Pi”?

I guess that eternal perspective. God’s unending love glimpsed so clearly for those moments in all its length and breadth and heighth and depth that nothing could separate us from it.

That, and the inexpressible nature of the feeling of humility it gives you, and the perception of His greatness. Like the exact value of pi, you can just go on and on adding expression after expression to describe it, but you would never reach the end.

Never ever ever.

Amen.