NWO

I just finished reading the intro chapter to Wikinomics in preparation for our Theology Salon tonight. Reading it reminded me of reading Emergence by Steven Johnson and the small snippets I've read of emergence theory. I'm fascinated by all of it and think there might be room for my contribution somewhere in there as it relates to all the -ologies of being a Jesus follower. It really stimulates those geek neurons that got me studying engineering; only now more open and life giving. There was a related scriptural reading of 1 Corinthians 12 and it intrigued me as well. It spoke of the body of Christ and the spiritual gifts. Paul goes on about the importance of all of us. As in our entirety we make the body and bride of Christ. Couple this with the book I just got from Frank Viola about God's ultimate passion, in which he describes the mission of Christ to go after in His bride. In a sense His Bride was created through His sacrifice. There are a couple things from this that are marinating inside of me - 1) Paul's exhortation to desire the greater gifts, 2) choas theory, mass-collaboration, emgernce theory as they relate the goodness of the world and the community of The Way, 3) how I might combine these two things in my life and my work. I can recall reading Emergence and being fascinated about the concepts and remember back to my graduate school days when one of the projects I was going to under take was the open collaboration of robots. No small feat of a project and part of me now wishes I had jumped into it. At the time I couldn't see the merit in spending hours upon hours of developing code and robots when all I was interested in was the high level principles. It's interesting though, I now think the high level principles are discovered and cherished through working them in the details. My mind now spins on socialogical experiments that further unwrap some of these theories.

In relation to Paul's letter to the Corinthians, I found it interesting to read 1 Cor. 12:31 in the NIV & NAS and compare it with Eugene's translation. The NIV & NAS have the same basic translation: But earnestly desire the greater gifts.

Eugene comes back with: And yet some of you keep competing for so-called "important" parts. Interesting paradox.