Eph429
About me
I am a Christian who likes to code and blog and think. I like writing about the Bible, coding and any other topic that interests me.
Why the name?
My favorite verse is Ephesians 4:29
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. (NIV)
Blog
Here’s a list of all my posts. I try to post every Saturday (Future posts).
- Train of Thought #14 - On Sin
- Observations About Stages of Learning
- On Trust
- Covid-19 and Faith
- Story #3 - Last day of school
- Finding The Right Hills To Die On
- 2021: A Year of Renewal and New Beginnings
- Perelandra
- Story #2 - The Night Sky
- Trains of Thought #13 - Wonder
- Take up your cross
- Abstract thinking
- Train of Thought #12 - Things I’ve learned in HS
- Abolition of Man
- Wings of Fire - Empathy
- Wings of Fire - Teamwork
- Train of Thought #1 - Busy
- Train of Thought #6 - Communication
- Train of Thought #3 - Confidence
- Train of Thought #6 - Conflict
- Train of Thought #9 - Core Thoughts
- Train of Thought #2 - Forgiveness
- Train of Thought #11 - My Voice
- Train of Thought #7 - Nature
- Train of Thought #6 - Communication
- Train of Thought #10 - Story Fragment
- Train of Thought #5 - Time For Change
- Train of Thought #4 - Writing
- That’s How You Change the World
- Let’s Dream
- Here’s why you can make a difference
- ChatGPT Knows the Bible
- Deadness
- God is Able
- ChatGPT Wrote A Screwtape Letter
- ChatGPT Conversations - Talking With Gandalf
- ChatGPT Conversation - Screwtape Letter
- ChatGPT Conversations - Talking to Ronald Regan
- ChatGPT Conversation - The Bible in the Style of Shakespear
Quotes
“I would rather be corrected than wrong”
— A whiteboard at a church
“We have privatized morality for so long that none of us are willing to look our friends in the eye and say they are wrong”
— John Stonestreet in Challenging Conversations (p. 19)
“Envy is sorrow for another’s good”
— St. Thomas Aquinas
“Reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself”
— C. S. Lewis
“You don’t need to read the news. If anything important happens, far too many people are sure to tell you about it”
— C. S. Lewis
“Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Nothing of eternal significance ever happens apart from prayer”
— Jerry Falwell
“Pursuing the unity of the church does not mean that we should stop caring about theology. But it does mean that our love of theology should never exceed our love of real people, and therefore we must learn to love people amid our theological disagreements”
— Finding the Right Hills to Die On by Gavin Ortlund (p. 36)
“Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers.”
— Crazy Love by Francis Chan (p. 115)
“Dating advice: be radically sold out for jesus and find someone radically sold out for Jesus”
— Becoming Something Podcast
“Sin is like leprosy. You think you can handle it but it eats you away from the inside until you start falling apart”
— Paraphrased from an elder at my church.
“I continue to be stunned by the level of deadness that most people consider normal and seem to be contented to live with.”
— The Journey of Desire by John Eldredge (p. 165)
“Prayer doesn’t replace action; it sparks it”
— Unquestioned answers by Jeff Myers
“In every encounter we either give life or we drain it; there is no neutral exchange.”
— Brennan Manning
“[Regarding worship] Don’t overthink it, be confident in The Lord, don’t take yourself too seriously and have fun!”
— A worship leader at a church my friend goes to
“I don’t want to be known as someone who does no evil, but as someone who does much good.”
— me
"Your circumstances don’t stop you from growing in God
— The pastor at my church
“A person overestimates what he/she can do in a day and underestimates what he/she can do in a year”
— Something I saw on a random comment on hacker news
“It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the plan God gave me”
— The youth pastor at my church (I think)
“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”
— Charles Colson
“A lot of the divisions among churches are because of pride, not because of holiness” — Truth Unites
“When God wants you to go somewhere, the enemy will always have a ship going the opposite way”
— An elder at my church (during a sermon about Jonah)
Interesting things to read or watch
Here are some things I have found interesting.
- This C.S. Lewis Book Predicted the 21st Century
- Theological Triage: Why It Matters
- Childhoods of exceptional people
- A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
- in Bb 2.0 - a collaborative music/spoken word project
- Some places where you could search for personal blogs
- Looking for Alice
- On limitations that hide in your blindspot
- The Risk of Dying Doing What We Love
- My Business Card Runs Linux
- Need for a National Identity
Random stuff
You can read some of my ChatGPT Conversations. I find them entertaining.
Here's a script to extract a ChatGPT conversation
console.log(
[...document.querySelectorAll(".whitespace-pre-wrap")].map((v) =>
v.querySelector(".markdown") ?? v
).map((
v,
i,
) => (i % 2 === 0
? "<p><b>Me: </b>" + v.innerHTML
: "<p><b>ChatGPT: </b>" + v.innerHTML.slice(3))
).join("\n\n"),
);
Run this command and paste any HTML and press `ctrl+d` and it will convert it to markdown.
pandoc -f html -t markdown -o output.md