At the beginning of the month I posted my essay entry to the Energion Essay Contest called, “What should a congregation following Jesus Christ in ministry look like?”

There were seven total entries in this contest. With a total of 93 out of 150 points, I won third place plus the “popular” vote. This entitles me to a 20$ gift card to Barnes & Noble and a free book from Energion Publishing. Since I already have The Jesus Paradigm (see review) I choose Dr. Black’s newest book, Christian Archy. I hope to get my loot sometime next week!

With a total of 99 out of 150 points, the second place winner was Arthur Sido. He beat me by a whopping 6 points. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anything bad here… I just think it’s an odd coincidence that the number was “6″.

With a total of 108 out of 150 points, the first place winner was Lionel Woods. Lionel beat Arthur by 9 points and by addition beat me by 15 points. I am really surprised the scoring was so close.

Congrats Arthur and Lionel and thank you Energion for putting on this contest. It was really interesting and there were some really good essays.

If you want to read them, here is a link to all of the submissions:

A. Amos Love

Arthur Sido

Lew Ayotte

David Blanton

Lionel Woods

James Lee

Christopher Larson

This is a rambling update…

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve changed up my blog. It still works under http://the-pursuit.net/, but it won’t for long. I haven’t decided how long… but if you follow my blog at all, I ask you to update your readers and bookmarks. I’ll hopefully be posting more, now I feel like I have the freedom to post more than just theology related items. Although, I won’t stop posting about theology. I want to post more stuff about my life, things I love, my family, videos, photos, etc…

So the new site is: http://lewayotte.com/

and the new RSS feed is: http://lewayotte.com/feed

I’ve also added the store back to my site and a contact form.

Let me know what you think about the new design too!

Yes, I know I post like once a month on this blog. Actually I’ve been pretty busy with work and more work, plus I’ve been doing a little technical blogging over at my companies website – http://fullthrottledevelopment.com/. But recently I was listening to a sermon on the radio and heard something that started to make me think.

The preacher said, “In your walk as a Christian, if the world doesn’t hate you, then you should think about your walk.” (or something to that affect)

I’ve heard these sentiments before, in fact, I once agreed with them. There are some scriptures that might even support this idea. But the reason I disagree with this is because I do not think it is a hard-and-fast rule – in either direction.

When I was listening to this preacher, I thought back to everything I’ve read about Jesus, everything in Scripture. I remembered Jesus hanging out with the people who we think should hate us – but they didn’t seem to hate him. Oh, there were people who hated Jesus… the religious people hated him. Especially the religious leaders. You might argue that the governmental leaders hated him too, but I think it’s safer to say they were just trying to keep the peace.

Now, later on, the government persecuted the Christians. Even today some governments persecute Christians. With these persecutions you will see common folk who hate Christians. Not because of the Gospel, but because of their dedication to their government’s ideals.

So, after listening to this preacher, I’ve further developed my opinion about our interaction with the world. We’re not called to be hated, we’re called to follow Jesus’ example.

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler–not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.

- 1 Corinthians 5:9-13

If you’re interested, I know of 3 places giving away 199$ Apple Gift cards to purchase a new iPhone 3G S.

QuickPWN is giving away one gift card (ends today) – http://www.quickpwn.com/2009/06/win-a-free-iphone-3g-s.html

SquareSpace is giving away one gift card every day until the end of the month – http://www.squarespace.com/iphone

Trackle is giving away one gift card every day until the end of the month – http://www.trackle.com/about/iphone

If you know of anymore, post them here.

Thanks.

Four Georgia college presidents have signed on to a national initiative to fight binge drinking by their students — by lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.

Launched in July 2008, the Amethyst Initiative is made up of chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges across the United States. These higher education leaders have signed their names to a public statement that the problem of irresponsible drinking by young people continues despite the minimum legal drinking age of 21, and there is a culture of dangerous binge drinking on many campuses. 1

As it currently stands, 18 year olds are allowed to smoke, drive, join the military, get married, open lines of credit, vote, etc. but you are not allowed to drink a glass of wine with dinner, or have a beer with friends. The Amethyst Initiative was started as a way to prevent Alcohol abuse among young adults. Their theory is that if 18 year old College Students are allowed to drink, then they will drink more responsibly. The reason why they do not drink responsibly now is because they’re not allowed to do it at all.

I started to drink when I was about 16. We drank and got drunk. It wasn’t a weekly occurrence for me, but when we drank, we did it with the idea that we were going to get drunk. I believe the Amethyst organization believes that if we were allowed to drink, then we wouldn’t need to find excuses to buy an excess amount of alcohol to get drunk. It would be a more casual thing for everyone. It seems to make sense, in a way.

By the way, Amethyst “is derived from the Ancient Greek words meaning ‘not’ (a-) and ‘intoxicated’ (methustos). According to mythology, Amethyst was a young girl who incurred the wrath of the God Dionysus after he became intoxicated with red wine.” 2

Personally, I think that drinking at 8 is fine. There are whole countries that have no limit on the drinking age, many of which have lower alcohol related tragedies than America. I also believe that God does not condemn drinking alcohol.

What are your thoughts on all of this?

Here are some more articles about this:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/18/college.drinking.age.ap/
http://gpbnews.blogspot.com/2008/08/ga-college-presidents-want-to-cut.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,418822,00.html