Ah! I am Leopardized. If you don’t know what that means, it means that I upgraded the iMac to Mac OS 10.5. The upgrade was smooth as silk. No problems, no hiccups. No rebooting 18 times. The only application that stopped working (that I know of so far) was Photoshop Elements 2.0. Time to upgrade that anyway.

The only reason that I wanted Leopard was for Time Machine, an incremental backup and recovery utility built right in to the OS. The video made me drool. I have been using SuperDuper every month but that leaves some spaces. Time Machine does hourly back ups. So just after Steve Jobs announced Time Machine would be in Leopard, I bought a 250GB LaCie USB 2.0 external hard drive so I’d have something to back up to.

After the upgrade was finished I made sure the hard drive was up and running and told Time Machine to save it there. It tried and then errored out. I fixed the error but then it wouldn’t error out but it wouldn’t back up either. I monkeyed around with it quite a bit and finally got it working. Here’s what I had to do in case anyone else is looking for the fix.

1. Get rid of any previous attempts, even if they didn’t do anything. Open up your hard drive and then hit the Time Machine icon in the dock. When Time Machine is up and running, click on the icon at the top of the Finder window that has a gear in it. Select “Delete All Backups of <Your Hard Drive>”. Just in case.
2. Turn off Time Machine. Right click on the Time machine icon in the dock and select Time Machine Preferences. Turning it off should be obvious.
3. Format the external drive. Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility. Make sure you select the correct drive and then hit Erase. Format it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The drive will unmount, format and then remount. Make sure the drive name doesn’t have any weird characters in it like “/” or “#”.
4. Restart Time Machine. Just turn it back on then hit “Change Disk…” and select the external disk you just formatted. Close the System Preferences window.
5. Back it up now. Right click on the Time Machine icon in the dock and select “Back up now”. This would be a good thing to do right before bed time. It is going to take a while to do it on the first back up.

That’s it. Now I have the LaCie connected through a USB hub and Time Machine is backing up every hour. I found this discussion on the Apple Support boards helpful.

The other little tweak I did had to do with the download stack in the dock. Safari is set to automatically download files to it but Firefox isn’t. Since I wind up with a ton of downloads on my desktop I was pretty happy to see this included. To make Firefox play nicely, open Firefox and Firefox -> Preferences. In the Main tab select “Save files to” and choose the Downloads folder in your profile. This should dump them into the Downloads stack.

Next, I have to figure out how to get Screen Sharing working with my work Windows lappy.

Update: I did it. Turned on Screen Sharing and added a password. Then I checked the IP address of the iMac and typed it in to the VNC client on lappy and bang! I’m controlling the iMac. Sweet. Don’t know why it didn’t work the first time, probably because of the password thing. Next time there is a computer problem at home I can fix it from work.

Another Update: According to this PC World article, Apple says:

Macs running on PowerPC processors should reformat the drive with Disk Utility, and repartition it using the Apple Partition Map scheme; Intel-based Macs, on the other hand, should select the GUID partition scheme. “Once the external hard disk is reformatted, select it again in Time Machine preferences and use it for your backups,” Apple added.

Ok, although they didn’t ask me, I thought I’d answer the seven questions Touchstone asked about evangelicalism anyway.

How do you define “Evangelical” in a way that distinguishes Evangelicals from other believing Christians? And has this definition changed over the last several years?

The nomenclature ‘evangelical’ has taken on a very wide definition today. It encompasses a diversity of theological positions yet there remain traits essential to the position. One of the defining principles of evangelicalism is the acceptance of the Bible as God’s infallible, inerrant word and the sole source of authority in the church and in the Christian’s life. Another central principle is an emphasis on the need for a personal encounter with and saving faith in Jesus Christ. Something that has set evangelicalism apart from Christian fundamentalism from which it came has been a desire to engage the culture rather than separate from it.

Has Evangelicalism matured since the 1950s, and if so in what ways?

In some aspect I suppose it has. We’ve distanced ourselves even more from our fundamentalist and revivalistic roots. In our movement away from fundamentalism we’re even more involved in the engagement with culture than we were before. Carl F. H. Henry and others who were leaders in the evangelical movement in the 1950s were good at that but throughout the movement many of the people and churches were not so good at it. In other words, the real heart of the movement hadn’t trickled down as thoroughly as it should have.

As we outgrow our revivalistic history we’re getting better at seeing evangelism as a process and not an event. The idea of pre-evangelism would have seemed pretty strange back int he ’50s (perhaps because our culture had more of a lingering memory of Christianity than it does today). We’re outgrowing things like the Four Spiritual Laws as a method of evangelism and doing more to engage the whole person with the gospel.

Has Evangelicalism lost anything in the process of maturing (if it did)?

Tragically, yes. The way the leaders engaged culture in the 1950s tended to maintain the distinction between the culture and the church. What we see today in the seeker-sensitive model and part of the reaction to it in the emergent church is, in many ways, capitulation to culture. Where our fundamentalist roots shied away from anything that appeared liberal or that could be confused with a social gospel, the reaction to it in megachurches and emergent churches often seem to blow past the middle ground to blend with the culture.

Are there any fundamental differences within the Evangelical movement today, and do you think they will deepen into permanent divisions, or even have already? How might they be healed?

The term ‘evangelical’ is now applied to a wide variety of people and churches, many who would never have been considered evangelical in the 1950s (I blame the media who cannot keep terms straight. Islamists aren’t fundamentalists, they’re religious extremists.) As the term spreads thinner there will be divisions. The fact that some emergent churches identify themselves as “post-evangelical” (along with many other ‘post’ things) demonstrates that the split is already taking place.

Another portion of the movement that might divide comes from the recent rise of Reformed theology within evangelicalism. I’m a Reformed believer so I see this as a good thing (the rise that is) but I know that with strong theological convictions (regardless of the stripe) there can also arise pride in the heart and a desire to separate from those we disagree with. I want to stress that this is not restricted to Reformed theology nor is it a necessary component of embracing Reformed theology. At this point the leaders in the new emphasis on Reformed theology within evangelicalism (John Piper, CJ Mahany, Al Mohler, et. al.) have done so in a pretty humble fashion. Still, pride rises too quickly in the human heart and though there are no cracks yet, I fear there could be some here.

Finally, the Open Theism movement might yet develop into its own identity. Theologically, the position stretches and perhaps breaks the boundaries of what evangelicalism is. This could be a bigger threat to the movement than the others, though it is not currently as widespread as, say, emergent church.

How can we heal? That is a tough question because the term ‘evangelical’ has diluted so much. I wonder if we really need to heal with everyone who currently calls themselves evangelical. The reason is because I would like to see us define the name again in a way that helps us understand what is really important to us.

That said, there are some cracks that need to be mended. What we need in order to heal is to restate the center. The heart of evangelicalism isn’t Reformed theology or seeker-sensitive methods or televangelism. It is, as I said at the beginning, a commitment to the inerrancy of the Bible and the need for personal conversion. We need leaders like John Piper who demonstrate what it means to have strong convictions and yet work with others who hold to the central issues. We need to follow men like Wayne Grudem in their generous love for the central truths. We need more leaders in churches who, like Josh Harris, embrace a humble orthodoxy. In short, God needs to give us strong, humble leaders to shepherd us to greener pastures and we need him to grant us humility of heart and a passionate concern for truth.

What does your movement, speaking generally, fail to see that it ought to see?

For this I turn to what I think my own blind spots are. Fundamentalism reacted (rightly) against the social gospel. The result was to largely abandon anything that even remotely looked like the social gospel. What we don’t see (yet) is that true religion consists in serving the poor and widows and orphans. Salvation by faith alone in Christ alone? Yes! But don’t forget that saving faith isn’t alone, it will necessarily produce fruits. We need to be known for our love for the weak and marginalized. The church’s reaction to the devastation of New Orleans by Katrina has been a welcome sign that we might be getting this.

What has Evangelicalism to offer the wider world that it will find nowhere else?

At its best, evangelicalism offers an emphasis on personal conversion to Christ. When you consider other Christian traditions such as Roman Catholicism or some forms of Orthodoxy, there are a lot of people in them. Not all of them have had an encounter with Jesus. Those traditions don’t emphasize it. This might be seen as “sheep stealing” or evangelizing the church but I don’t think it has to be. My personal testimony included conversion to Christ followed by years in the Roman Catholic church.

What else would you like to say?

I have mentioned Fundamentalism a number of times and so it might sound like I’m criticizing that movement. I don’t intend to. Obviously I have differences with Fundamentalism since I am not a Fundamentalist but I would echo John Piper in his appreciation of the movement.

I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! – Luke 12:4-5

If you didn’t already know it and I haven’t already clearly stated it, Luke is an amazing author. Ok, so he had the singular advantage of being inspired by God, but he was still involved there. The major section I’m currently reading is an example of this. It runs from 11:29 to 13:9 and the theme is about greed. Greed can manifest itself in a number of ways including hording or fame-seeking. “It is all about me” in both cases. The way that Jesus’ addresses this to his disciples, and the way Luke teaches us Jesus’ approach to resisting greed is surprising and arresting to me.

What Jesus and Luke stress is dependence on God but it is more nuanced than that. Jesus promises throughout that God will meet our physical needs (11:13, 12:22-30). I think this is the lesson often learned about battling greed, but that isn’t all Jesus has to say. The section begins with the Lord’s Prayer. We’re not just supposed to believe that God will provide, we’re supposed to ask and trust that he will.

The part of this section that really caught my attention this morning, however, is 12:49-56. Suddenly, it seems, Luke jumps to eschatology and at first glance, it seems out of place. But it really isn’t. Jesus’ dealing with greed has had an eschatological element in it all the way through. See the quote at the beginning of this post. Threaded all the way through this teaching has been an eye to the future.

So eschatology is another element in this greed battle. There is a day coming when the Master will return and judge his servants. We don’t know when he will come back, but when he does he’s going to sort things out in a most graphic manner (see verse 46). So Jesus is kind of fencing us in on either side here. Trust that God will provide (the carrot) and don’t forget that Jesus is going to return and bring judgment (the stick).

Neither of these are very surprising to me. I mean, we’ve heard both of these before. What occurred to me this morning was that there is a third thing in this: the measuring stick. The Pharisees and lawyers had the people fooled into thinking they were pretty good (11:33-34) and were, I’m sure, convinced themselves that they were doing the right thing. The illustration Jesus uses to show that they were rotten on the inside is how they care for others. The lawyers load people down with burdens (11:46) and do nothing to help them. They studied the law, figured out all the little details of how much to give and what to do and not to do and when to not do it and how often you had to… Bah. They accomplished all that and yet had no love for God or people (11:42). In the parables Jesus tells to illustrate this he speaks of a servant abusing his master’s goods and other servants (12:42-48).

So Jesus encourages us to trust God and not be greedy, to recognize that the greed inside us will be judged, and he gives us a diagnostic to see if we are being greedy without realizing it. How are you doing? I am convicted by the fact that I’m slow to care for others and actually (subconsciously) judge some as unworthy of my time and energy. I wonder if the outside of the glass isn’t sparkling clean while the inside isn’t still dirty.