1. We adopted another baby, which involved a month-long trip to Chicago, which is where he was born.
2. We’re trying to move from our current house to a place in a neighboring community.
3. This year in my job has been tough, from a personal growth in tech integration perspective, has been difficult… No support for further integration of blogging, podcasting, or other Web 2.0 tools. No Child Left Behind, and our site administration’s interpretation of our “Program Improvement” sanctions, have really taking a lot of energy.

All of these have kind of crowded out professional blogging (this blog) for a spot at the top of the priority list. Sometimes, I think of it like this: I should spend more time communicating with my wife and sons (people I can actually see and live with) rather than people I don’t see and probably have never met. Kinda crummy, since I really enjoy this blog.I’ve been thinking about writing a lot, though. I have grown in lots of ways. Not ways that involve giving you, my blog audience, a new link or website to try in your classroom, but growing nonetheless. Some growth has been personal, some has been professional, some has been spiritual. Through a lot of pondering, I’ve decided that learning and growth is messy, learning and growth doesn’t fit neatly into one box or the other all the time, and that I need to write about topics that don’t necessarily fit into one neat category.Some topics I’ve been pondering, that are worthy of discussion here, might even relate to the spiritual. I am a Christian, and am very enthusiastic about God’s truth, and what He would have me do with my life, my job, and my relationships. Until now, I have hesitated to branch out from this blog’s initial subtitle, “Reflections of how to empower students and other teachers with and about technology.” Perhaps this was arrogant in the first place. Perhaps it put a lot of pressure on me. Perhaps it was simply too narrow. In any case, I’ve decided to include more topics in this blog. I won’t even have to change its name (”Come follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew 4:19) So for my occasional posts about faith, I’ll just categorize my posts appropriately, so those of you who might not want to read about how faith relates to the job of a teacher, can just skip those. But those of you who’d like to explore how the Christian faith is relevant to daily life can go ahead and join the dialogue with me. In the meantime, I’ll have to figure out a new subtitle. Any suggestions?

Taking verses or passages of a text, and lifting them out of context and using them to make them appear what we want them to say, rather than what the author originally meant is called prooftexting – a dangerous, yet common thing. We need to read the Bible, or any other book, for that matter, with context in mind. If we are going to quote from it, base a decision on it, or use it to convince someone of something, then the author’s original intention must be thoroughly considered. Thus, many modern American Christians have read passages which actually refer to Israel as if they are talking about 21st Century United States.

Sadly, in my view, this leads many to a misguided form of patriotism that mixes allegiance to God and allegiance to our nation to a dangerous degree.
The notion that America was founded on the Bible, on Biblical principles, or that our judicial system was based on the Old Testament law is also wishful thinking.

These things have long bothered me.

Recently, a book by John Meacham called American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation explores this issue. Turns out, many of the Founding Fathers weren’t Christians at all – many were merely deists, believing in a deity, but not the God of the Bible (Christianity). Others were actually atheists!
John Meacham was interviewed on NPR recently about the book. Listen to the interview here.

We should have an accurate view of our nation’s beginnings, neither imagining the Founding Fathers as 100% Christians, nor 100% atheists.
While I haven’t yet read Meacham’s book, I have certainly heard & read enough to make me interested in what he has to say.
I hope I have described the book accurately. I hope to dig in to it during the Christmas break, so perhaps I will have a more substantial review in a future blog post.