Favorite Facebook Apps
by Jon Ritterbush, Associate Librarian

Google has become synonymous with web searching and is used as both a noun and a verb.  In many ways, Facebook has become similarly associated with social networking on the Web.  As indicators of Facebook’s prominence its creator, 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, is said to be worth $3 billion and was the subject of a 60 Minutes interview on January 14.

Facebook is a free website where users can create and customize a personal profile with contact information and favorite activities, TV shows, and websites, and also connect with current and former classmates, co-workers, and friends.  One of the newest features in Facebook is the option to add so-called “Applications” to one’s profile.  These mini-programs allow Facebook users to easily share photos, videos, favorite books, or play online games with friends.  These applications typically require no special downloads to a user’s computer and run entirely within a web browser.

Here is a sampling of some of the favorite Facebook Applications of Regent Library employees:

MediaMaster Radio – Upload your music collection to your free MediaMaster account to enjoy tracks from any web browser. Let your friends enjoy your virtual radio station.  Note, this is not a file-sharing application, so you cannot save copies of other users’ music collections.

Visual Bookshelf – Use this application to show friends what’s on your reading list and see what other friends may be reading.  Read and write book reviews or send recommendations to your Facebook friends.

Scrabulous – Try your hand at this online version of Scrabble and challenge your friends to a game.  The best part: you don’t have to be online at the same time.

Rock Your Firefox – For tech-heads who aren’t satisfied with customizing their Facebook profile, this application lets users advertise their favorite Firefox browser add-ons, such as ForecastFox, Foxmarks, and AdBlock.

Oregon Trail – Gen Xers will remember this classic game from their school days using Apple II computers and monochrome monitors.  Now relive your cross-country adventure with friends via Facebook!

Cities I’ve Visited -- Place a pin on this online map to share the places you’ve traveled.

If you already have a Facebook profile, click on the links above to add these to your profile.  If you’re not a current Facebook user, click over to Facebook.com to create a free profile and test the waters of Web 2.0.

In October the library conducted the Library Educational Enhancement Survey to assess the library’s research instruction program and to gauge faculty awareness of the instructional services offered by the library.  We would like to thank the fifty-eight faculty members that participated and congratulate Dr. Corné Bekker of the School of Global Leadership and Entrepreneurship for winning the $50.00 American Express gift card.

From the survey, we learned that approximately 75% of the Regent University faculty get their information about the library from the Library Link newsletter.  In response to this news, a new column, “Faculty Service Spotlight,” has been created to highlight library services and programs of interest to the university faculty.  The first column will focus on the Library Liaison Program.

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Library Faculty Recommendations
by Sara Baron, Dean of University Library

Resolutions and Recovery Bibles

Happy New Year! Did you make resolutions to change your life this year? We probably all want to live better, more constructive, productive, and spiritual lives. And we probably all have habits, character traits, and routines that could be changed to make life better. Recovery bibles help people who are trying to improve their health and well-being. From simply attempting to live a better life each day to battling the most serious addictions, recovery bibles help bridge the Word of God with a new way of living.

The brand new Celebrate Recovery Bible offers “freedom from life’s hurts, hang-ups and habits.” It is based on the Celebrate Recovery program developed by John Baker and Rick Warren (http://www.celebraterecovery.com/). This Christ-centered recovery program focuses on eight principles established in the Beatitudes. As Baker states, when these principles are applied, “we begin to grow spiritually. We become free from our (destructive) behaviors. This freedom creates peace, serenity, joy and most importantly, a stronger personal relationship with God and others.” The bible features devotional readings, character studies, and recovery stories.

With millions of copies sold, the most popular recovery bible is The Life Recovery Bible. It features notes throughout the text highlighting significant scriptures related to recovery, 12-step and Serenity prayer devotionals, profiles of biblical characters who offer recovery lessons, and reflections and themes focusing on recovery. For example, a cornerstone of recovery is coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves, Jesus Christ, can restore us to well-being. Romans 1:19 tells us “For the truth about God is known to [all people] instinctively. God has put this knowledge in our hearts.”  The recovery note associated with this scripture reminds the reader that “Looking at the condition of our life, we realize that we don’t have enough power to overcome our (difficulty)… When we are quiet enough to listen, we hear that still, small voice inside us saying ‘There is a God, and he is extremely powerful’” (1343).  In addition to the recovery notes and a topical index, readers are offered three devotional reading plans on the Twelve Steps, recovery principles, and the Serenity prayer.

Overcoming hurts, hang-ups and habits through New Year’s resolutions has become routine for many people. Sometimes we are steadfast in our resolve and other times we are just going through the motions. It is comforting to know that “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil, 2:13). The bibles described here are designed to help people live better, Christ-centered lives one day at a time.


Sources
Celebrate Recovery Bible: New International Version. (2007). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishers.

The Life Recovery Bible: New Living Translation. (1998). Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Recovery Devotional Bible: New International Version. (1993). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishers.

Serenity: A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery: Complete with New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs (New King James). (1990). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

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Collection Spotlight-- Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, by A. N. Wilson
Reviewed by Dr. Graham H. Twelftree, School of Divinity

When Oscar Wilde was at Oxford his examiners asked him to translate Acts 27, that difficult passage with many nautical terms in the story of Paul’s shipwreck. "That will be all, Mr. Wilde," said his astonished examiners hearing the effortless translation. "Oh, please!" expostulated Wilde. "Do let me go on—I am longing to know how the story finishes!" Like Wilde, Wilson’s book is for those who want to know how Paul’s story ends, as well as how it begins and what happened in the intervening years.

There is theology aplenty, but there is no detailed assembling and exposition of Paul’s theology. Beginning with Tarsus, then guided by chronology, the cities of Paul’s life provide the focal points of most chapters. Sketches of these cities back light the discussion of Paul’s letter writing and theological genius, connecting Paul to his culture.

We are reminded that there is no Damascus Road experience in Paul’s letters or a speedy entry into the Jerusalem church. Instead, Paul says that, after a unique and personal revelatory experience of the Risen Jesus, he went to Arabia. Paul did not exchange Judaism for Christianity, still less for Calvinism or Catholicism. Paul’s revelation—his apocalypse—was infinitely more strange and radical: he was trying the contradiction which lay at its heart, that it both drew people to itself and shut them out.

Apostle Paul (1410-1420)
Andrei Rublev

If Jesus saw his death as the beginning of the End, says Wilson, picking up on a still-defensible position, it was Paul who turned the cross into the gateway of salvation, and refashioned Jesus a Jewish Messiah into the Savior of the world. Paul is not just one of the most important and influential figures who have ever lived, but the Founder of Christianity. The essential things of this religion were the certainty of human unworthiness before the perfection of God, the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the glorious promise of the Resurrection and everlasting life.

For Wilson, Romans is one of those books, like Rousseau’s Contrat Sociale or Darwin’s The Origin of Species, which we perceive to have changed the way we regard ourselves: "the most profound book ever written" (Coleridge). And what makes Romans—a work of poetry more than logic—so important is that it sails into the heart of our deepest metaphysical questions. Wilson says there will be those who will suppose that these questions are answered by the "opium" of organized religion, whether it is Bible Christianity or Shintoism. A smaller number know that the religious experience and struggle is an intensely personal one leading to exclamations of despair and to "the ecstatic and mystical knowledge that in a human heart of flesh, God’s love can be known and experienced."

But Wilson is unable to solve the problem of the ending of Paul’s life; Acts ends with Paul in prison in Rome. What Wilson fails to see is that if Luke ended with Paul’s death there would be an unintended closure to his narrative. Instead, apiece with a practice of the time, Luke leaves the ending open expecting his readers to take up the story in their lives. Though he dies, he lives in their ministry; the end of Paul’s ministry is the beginning of ours.

Free of the habits and game plans of academics, there is a freshness here in Wilson’s throwing open the windows on Paul, letting some air into stuffy Pauline studies. Paul is also rehabilitated: he was not gay, he was not puritanical, he was not a misogynist, and he was not an Evangelical. A decade after its publication, and relying too much on books that were old then—ones he probably discovered when he was briefly at Oxford—this remains a valuable, and at times, exhilarating book.

Dr. Graham H. Twelftree is Distinguished Professor of New Testament in the School Of Divinity.

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