Many Christ followers use 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 to judge those who they know fall in this list.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. – 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

It could not be any more straight forward, right? If you are sexually devious, you won’t go to Heaven. If you are covetous, you won’t go to Heaven. If you cheat people out of money, you won’t go to Heaven. That is clearly what Paul is teaching here. Or is it?

What if, when you take this verse in context, it means something completely different…

Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud, and that your brethren. Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. – 1 Corinthians 6:7-12

At the start of this quote, Paul tells the Corinthians that they themselves wrong and defraud people, even their fellow Christ followers. Then he goes into this list of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God. After this list of the unrighteous, he tells them that they WERE like that, and that they WERE washed, sanctified, and justified because of Jesus. But they ARE like this… that is why he is writing to them!

What if Paul is not telling these Christ followers that they are going to Hell for being fornicators, thieves, or drunkards. What if Paul is telling these Christ followers that they are no longer defined by those terms, that they have a new definition, found in Christ. That they should stop behaving as if they were defined by their old terms and start behaving by their new definition, found in Christ. What if Paul is telling them that they can do whatever they want in Christ because Christ doesn’t see their sin anymore, but that they shouldn’t do whatever they want, because Jesus has empowered them to live righteous lives.

A friend of mine asked on Facebook, “What are the characteristics of a disciple? How would you know if a person is one?” which led me to search for the term μαθητης (Greek word for disciple) in the New Testament. The word μαθητης occurs 261 times between the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts. Here is what I found:

1. Disciples eat with IRS employees and other sinners – Matthew 9:10, Mark 2:16, Luke 5:30
2. Disciples do not like to skip meals – Matthew 9:14, Mark 2:18
3. Disciples have authority over unclean spirits and can heal every kind of disease and sickness – Matthew 10:1; Just kidding – Mark 9:18, Luke 9:40
4. Disciples do not observe the Sabbath – Matthew 12:2-3
5. Disciples do not understand parables – Matthew 13:36, Mark 7:17, Luke 8:9
6. Disciples do not wash their hands before they eat – Matthew 15:2, Mark 7:5
7. Disciples do not like to waste expensive perfume – Mathew 26:7-8
8. Disciples like to sleep – Matthew 26:40-45, Luke 22:45-46
9. Disciples betray Jesus – Matthew 26:8, Luke 22:47-48, John 12:4
10. Disciples will be like Jesus – Luke 6:40
11. Disciples sometimes can get a little postal – Luke 9:54
12. Disciples don’t know how to pray – Luke 11:1
13. Disciples hate their father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and themselves – Luke 14:26
14. Disciples carry their own cross – Luke 14:27
15. Disciples give up all their own possessions – Luke 14:33
16. Disciples don’t like kids, but should – Luke 18:15
17. Disciples abide in Jesus’ words – John 8:31
18. Disciples like pedicures – John 13:5
19. Disciples love one another – John 13:35
20. Disciples lie about knowing Jesus – John 18:17-27
21. Disciples comfort their mothers, sometimes – John 19:27
22. Some disciples take a lot of convincing – John 20:25
23. Some disciples do not like to serve tables – Acts 6:2
24. Disciples are continually filled with joy and the Holy Spirit – Acts 13:52
25. Um… and one to grow on…

Obviously this isn’t a complete list of what a disciple of Jesus looks like, but it should get you started on your journey.

I have recently been spending a lot of time developing the IssueM plugin for a company I do a lot of contract work for. IssueM is an issue manager plugin for WordPress, to manage issues for online magazines, periodicals, and such. The idea for IssueM started a couple years ago, and even started as a plugin, then morphed into a theme, and now it is back to a plugin. There was a lot of reasoning for these changes, but the biggest was that we wanted to make a plugin that could be used in any theme. Since the IssueM theme didn’t suit everyone’s needs, it was much easier to turn the functionality into shortcodes and widgets. Plus, since WordPress 3.1, we have all the capabilities we need to make a plugin extremely useful and successful in this arena.

Anyway, since this is a premium plugin we need a way to notify people of plugin updates. Frankly, I have never needed to do this, so I needed to figure it out. Luckily, I have a copy of Professional WordPress Plugin Development and in Chapter 9 there is very simple example of exactly what I wanted to do. Unluckily, the example doesn’t work… well, not entirely. It was always reporting an update, even if it was on the latest version. But I had enough information to trace down what was happening and figure out what I needed to change. By the way, the example code for the book is available from the publisher’s website.

So, without further adieu, this is a modified version of what I did:

This is the code I added to my plugin:

function my_plugin_plugins_api( $false, $action, $args ) {

	$plugin_slug = plugin_basename( __FILE__ );

	// Check if this plugins API is about this plugin
	if( $args->slug != $plugin_slug )
		return false;

	// POST data to send to your API
	$args = array(
		'action' 	=> 'get-plugin-information'
	);

	// Send request for detailed information
	$response = $this->my_plugin_api_request( $args );

	return $response;

}
add_filter( 'plugins_api', 'my_plugin_plugins_api', 10, 3 );

function my_plugin_update_plugins( $transient ) {

	// Check if the transient contains the 'checked' information
	// If no, just return its value without hacking it
	if ( empty( $transient->checked ) )
		return $transient;

	// The transient contains the 'checked' information
	// Now append to it information form your own API
	$plugin_path = plugin_basename( __FILE__ );

	// POST data to send to your API
	$args = array(
		'action' 	=> 'check-latest-version'
	);

	// Send request checking for an update
	$response = $this->my_plugin_api_request( $args );

	// If there is a new version, modify the transient
	if( version_compare( $response->new_version, $transient->checked[$plugin_path], '>' ) )
		 $transient->response[$plugin_path] = $response;

	return $transient;

}
add_filter( 'pre_set_site_transient_update_plugins', 'my_plugin_update_plugins' );

function my_plugin_api_request( $args ) {

	// Send request
	$request = wp_remote_post( http://api.url/location, array( 'body' => $args ) );

	if ( is_wp_error( $request ) || 200 != wp_remote_retrieve_response_code( $request ) )
		return false;

	$response = unserialize( wp_remote_retrieve_body( $request ) );

	if ( is_object( $response ) )
		return $response;
	else
		return false;

}

Then I setup a WordPress install for my API and created a custom template for the API page

/**
 * Template Name: API
**/

$action = $_REQUEST['action'];

// Create new object
$response = new stdClass;

switch( $action ) {

    // API is asked for the existence of a new version of the plugin
    case 'check-latest-version':
        $response->slug = 'my_plugin_slug';
        $response->new_version = '1.0.2';
        $response->url = 'http://plugin.url/';
        $response->package = 'http://plugin.url/download/location';
		break;

    // Request for detailed information
    case 'get-plugin-information':
        $response->name = 'my_plugin_name';
        $response->slug = 'my_plugin_slug';
        $response->requires = '3.3';
        $response->tested = '3.3.1';
	$response->rating = 100.0; //just for fun, gives us a 5-star rating :)
        $response->num_ratings = 1000000000; //just for fun, a lot of people rated it :)
        $response->downloaded = 1000000000; //just for fun, a lot of people downloaded it :)
        $response->last_updated = "2012-04-15";
        $response->added = "2012-02-01";
		$response->homepage = "http://plugin.url/";
        $response->sections = array(
            'description' =>  'Add a description of your plugin',
            'changelog' =>  'Add a list of changes to your plugin'
        );
        $response->download_link = 'http://plugin.url/download/location';
        break;

}

echo serialize( $response );

This isn’t exactly what I did, but it’s much more basic. Here are some things you can think about. First, the IssueM plugin uses an API key, so I send the API Key to api to verify the user has the right to update the plugin (say they don’t pay next year or something). The download_link setting is dynamic, for IssueM, it’s something like http://api.url/download/location?api=API_KEY. Then I have a separate script at the download location that will also verify the API Key and will send the latest IssueM plugin (which is located in a hidden directory). I also didn’t hard-code the downloaded argument, I actually track the downloads by using the dynamic download script. So my $response->downloaded actually equals get_option( ‘my_plugin_downloads’ ).

The download script I setup looks something like this:

/**
 * Template Name: Download Latest Version
 *
**/

$downloads = get_option( 'my_plugin_downloads', 100 );
update_option( 'my_plugin_downloads', ++$downloads );

$file = '/physical/location/of/your/file.zip';
$file_content = file_get_contents( $file );

header( 'Content-type: application/force-download' );
header( 'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="my_plugin.zip"' );

echo $file_content;

exit;

You can completely customize and expand this code to do whatever you want. By adding extra arguments being sent to your API, you could have several plugins in this same repository. You can send API key information, host information, and anything else you’d need/want.

On March 14th, I recommended that everyone buy Brian Brushwood’s Scam School Book 1. I am a huge fan of Brushwood, and he wanted to try to “scam” his way onto the Amazon best sellers list for that day by crowd sourcing his fans into buying the book. I have watched every one of his video shows, Scam School, and the e-book interested me extremely because it is filled with media.

Today, my friend sent me a screenshot of an “ad” I was in on Facebook. I have heard of Facebook using your “likes” and even your picture in ads, and I generally do not have a problem with this. I don’t even have a problem with them using my post for this ad, I said the words and I’ll stand by them. I am just shocked that they would use the entire content of my post to create an ad for one of my friends.

Here was the original posting:

This was the ad my friend saw today:

What I find most interesting is that this ad is completely out of context. Brushwood set the price of his book to half price (3.99$) on the day of launch, now the book costs 7.99$. I wonder if this should be considered “false advertising.”

If it concerns you that Facebook is using your content in their ads, you can easily disable this aspect of Facebook. Go to Account Settings -> Facebook Ads and select Edit Social Ad settings. There are two options “No one” or “Only my friends”. I have mine set to “Only my friends” — as I said, I already said this stuff on Facebook, them reusing it does not bother me. After all, Facebook (and similar services) remain free because of the ads. We are the product, the advertisers are the customers. I would not pay for Facebook, so I will allow them to use my image/content in their ads.

This post comes inspired by a recent conversation I had with a friend on Facebook. My friend posted this status message,

I repeat: Christian ladies should not wear bikinis in public.

I asked him why he felt this way, and he told me that it was an issue of modesty. Of course, being the snarky man that I am, I told him not to tell Eve. But the conversation continued and my interest in this subject piqued. I decided to do a little research in what the scriptures actually say about modesty. I was not really surprised by what I found, but you may be!

First, lets talk about the most common verse I’ve found used when it comes to scriptural modesty, 1 Timothy 2:9 – “Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel.” In my research on the internet, I found several sources citing this verse. If we take this verse as is, in a modern day scenario, it sounds like Paul is telling women to put on some clothes and quit showing their cleavage. Right? However, the verse actually describes for us what is modest and what is immodest. Let’s read the whole things! 1 Timothy 2:9-10 – “Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.” So, Paul clearly defined “respectable apparel” as “good works”. Also, he clearly defines immodesty as “braided hair, gold or pearls, and costly attire”. I’m not sure Paul is talking about bikini’s here. Of course, during his time, everyone swam naked.

1 Peter 3:3-4 also discusses modesty in a similar way to 1 Timothy – “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear — but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.”

Second, we look to the Old Testament in Deuteronomy and find “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.” (verse 22:5). Like the 1 Peter verse above, there is no mention of “modesty” per se, but at least we are getting to a point of what women should wear (or should not wear in this case).

Third… wait, there is no third. Yes, that’s right, these are the only two verses that directly speak to modesty in some way. Now, how did we get from braided hair, jewelry, and expensive clothes being immodest to bikinis. Well, it is quite simple, men like to blame women for their own problems. In Matthew 5:28 Jesus said this, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” You see, if you have a nice figure and you are on the beach, wearing a bikini, it is your fault that I am going to lust after you… right?

In the conversation with my friend, I eventually brought up Burqas. Now, I do not live in a society where women regularly wear Burqas. However, I am a man and I do know how my own mind works. I suspect that Burqas do not prevent a man from lusting after a woman. When we stop blaming women for our own problem, we just might start to see what God sees. It is not the physical dress that determines immodesty, it is our heart and actions.

With all that said, my interpretation of 1 Timothy and 1 Peter is not that braided hair, costly jewelry and clothes are immodest. Paul and Peter were talking to women who thought braided hair, jewelry, and expensive clothes showed how good they were, their worth, and their respectability. Today, Peter and Paul might write the same thing about bikinis, if there are women wearing them to show how good they are, their worth, or their respectability.