It took a couple of days of searching—mostly due to struggling with how to formulate the right search string, putting my Google-fu to the test—but I finally discovered the solution for WordPress stripping the angle brackets ‘<’ and ‘>’ from incoming code published remotely using Windows Live Writer. So when I publish this:

<p>Wit is educated insolence.</p>

What ends up getting published is this:

pWit is educated insolence./p

It seems that the problem is produced by a bug in the version of the LibXML2 software library that our site is running, which mangles XML-RPC requests when parsing XML. If you are running anything less than PHP version 5.2.9+ with LibXML2 version 2.7.3+ then you are likely to experience this problem. (Obviously this sort of stuff is way over my head, so you can see why I struggled with my searches.) I talked to the technical support staff with our web hosting company but they were either unable or unwilling (I could not interpret which) to update the version of PHP and LibXML2 that we are running. But surely there had to be some kind of fix available.

And there is! Thanks to Joseph Scott and JoeWare.net the solution is very simple. Scott wrote a WordPress plugin that magically fixes the problem. From the Plugins menu at your WordPress dashboard, click Add New and search for LibXML2 Fix. Or you can click on the following link to download the plugin:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/libxml2-fix/

Many thanks to WordPress Answers, Joseph Scott, and JoeWare.net!

• “WordPress and Windows Live Writer,” WordPress Answers (14 Sep 2011).
• “WordPress sites working incorrectly with Windows Live Writer (WLW),” JoeWare.net (21 Oct 2011).

I have noticed that there are some in the blogosphere who are looking back over the last year and reporting on various stats generated by their blogs, such as Josiah Concept Ministries and others. They talk about page view totals for the year, which pages were the most popular, who their top referrers were, the most popular browsers used to view their site and so forth. So I thought I would likewise take a look back over the last year and see what some of our totals were. The following information was pulled from the data collected by the company that hosts the Aristophrenium.

Total number of page views for 2011 were in excess of 201,200, which actually topped our 2010 total of 197,700.

For those who prefer visit counts, last year’s total pushed upwards of 65,400, beating the previous year’s total of 48,900.

And the amount of bandwidth we have used over the last two years is 22.3 GB.

The most active month surprisingly was December (24,131 page views).

The most popular operating systems are not a surprise: Windows (74%), Macintosh (16%), and Linux (7%), with the remaining three percent comprised of Other (which I suspect are things like smartphones and mobile devices).

And the top web browsers used are likewise not much of a surprise: Explorer (29%), Firefox (28%), Chrome (21%), Safari (16%), Opera (3%), and Other (3%).

And the top five most viewed articles for 2011 were:

1. Adam Morgan, “We don’t hate sin so we don’t understand what happened to the Canaanites.”
2. Luis Dizon, “The Trinity in the Torah.”
3. Adam Morgan, “Do homosexuals have equal rights?”
4. Mathew Hamilton, “Abortion images: Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s just ignorance (or worse).”
5. David Smart, “Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011).”

And finally, the top ten referrers for 2011 were:

1. atheistforums.org
2. 4simpsons.wordpress.com
3. www.facebook.com
4. hereiblog.com
5. www.choosinghats.com
6. urbanphilosophy.net
7. www.reclaimingthemind.org
8. apologetics315.blogspot.com
9. sydneyanglicanheretics.blogspot.com
10. www.newcovenantforum.org

John Piper, “12 Reasons for Christmas,” Desiring God (1991, December 9).

1. “For this I was born and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37).
2. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8; cf. Hebrews 2:14-15).
3. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).
4. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
5. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
6. “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5).
7. “For God so loved the world that whoever believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:16).
8. “God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).
9. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
10. “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against . . . that the thoughts of many may be revealed” (Luke 2:34f).
11. “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).
12. “Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarches, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:7-8; cf. John 12:27f).

This resonates strongly with my love of Psalm 51 and serves as a reminder that we are all of us in good company.

“The bows of the warriors are broken, but those who stumbled are armed with strength.” – 1 Samuel 2:4

There is an oxymoron throughout the Bible. It says that brokenness is strength. How can this be? How can brokenness be strength? In order to use men and women to their fullest extent, the Lord has to break His servants so that they might have a new kind of strength that is not human in origin. It is strength in spirit that is born only through brokenness.

Paul was broken on the Damascus road. Peter was broken after Jesus was taken prisoner. Jacob was broken at Peniel. David was broken after his sin with Bathsheba. The list could go on of those the Lord had to break in different ways before they could be used in the Kingdom.

When we are broken, we see the frailty of human strength and come to grips with the reality that we can do nothing in our own strength. Then, new strength emerges that God uses mightily. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Do not fear brokenness, for it may be the missing ingredient to a life that emerges with a new kind of strength and experience not known before. Pray for a broken and contrite heart that God can bless.

by Os Hillman

As I am re-reading this book by Douglas Groothuis, this brief excerpt jumped out at me as bolstering a point I have been making over the last few months; namely, that since God is the author of both Scriptures and nature, the two cannot disagree with each other. I think his point is quite instructive (p. 79):

Truth … is systematic and unified. Truth is one, as God is one. All truths cohere with one another as expressions of God’s harmonious objective reality—of his being, his knowledge and his creation. Something cannot be true in religion and false in science (or vice versa), or true in philosophy but false in theology (or vice versa). There is only one world, God’s world; it is a uni-verse, not a multi-verse.

• Douglas Groothuis (2000). Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

We at The Aristophrenium are always looking out for ways in which our readership community can remain in touch. While the majority of our readership remain connected to our content via the RSS Feed, we also publish to our Twitter account, Facebook page and allow readers to receive our articles direct to their email Inbox. More recently, we’ve started posting a few videos to our YouTube channel as well.

If you haven’t already done so, please connect to us via one of the following avenues:

Or Subscribe via eMail to have articles emailed direct to your Inbox.

Individual author RSS feeds

Along with the above we also have individual author feeds. What’s an individual author feed? It’s a regular RSS feed that you subscribe to in your RSS feed reader (i.e. like Google Reader) that only receives content from one specific author from the site. Instead of receiving all articles from all authors, you’ll get only those articles of the author you most like to follow.

These feeds were made available under the Subscriber Feeds panel to the far right of the page, but we have since removed them to clear up unnecessary clutter.

If you subscribed to an individual author’s feed, don’t worry – it’s still active.

If you haven’t subscribed to an individual author’s feed because you weren’t aware of them and would like to, you still may by using the links below. In the (hopefully near) future we intend on listing the individual author feeds at the bottom of each author’s post.

• Fisher (RSS)
• Mathew (RSS)
• Adam (RSS)
• Duane (RSS)
• Ryft (RSS)

Thanks for being part of our readership community. We enjoy the interaction with our members – challenges and all. Do let us know if there are other ways in which you’d like to stay connected with us.

It’s twelve months to the day that myself, Ryft and Duane embarked on this joint-venture under The Aristophrenium brand to proclaim the truth of the gospel and centrality of Christ in all things. One year on and I think we’ve achieved a number of milestones along the way that, humble though they may be, surprised even us to have reached. We’d like to share a few of the milestones with you here:

• 26 posts in our first month
• 190 posts in the first year
• breaking 80+ subscribers to our RSS feed
• enjoying some attention and kudos thrown our way from other, more well-established Christian bloggers
• attracting some great regular readers who engage / challenge us and others in our community in the comments sections of the blog
• the addition of two new staff writers during the course of the year – Adam and Fisher
• and we’ve learned a few new ways in which to build effectual networks for the sharing of the gospel message of our Lord Jesus Christ

This is our opportunity to say “thanks”. Thanks to you, our readers and community members, for making this past year an especially rewarding experience.

We hope that you will not only encourage us by your ongoing participation in The Aristophrenium community but that you would also hold us accountable to our Mission & Beliefs. If we at all lose sight of these we have ceased to perform that to which the Apostle Paul in 2 Cor 10:5 exhorts us to do: demolish the foolishness of the world and hold every thought captive and obedient to Christ.

Following is a handful of the thought-provoking pieces from us here at The Aristophrenium that summarizes our official “first year in review”. We are very pleased to have you celebrating the year with us.

Read the rest of this entry

It is today that we celebrate one of the most important dates on the Christian Calendar; the birth of Jesus Christ. Notice I said it is the day we celebrate Jesus’ Birthday. Historians are not able to determine or agree upon Jesus’ actual birthday as accurately as they can His death and resurrection.^[1]

But when Christians celebrate Christmas is not nearly as important as why. You see, Christians celebrate Christmas (that is, the birth of Christ) every day. The day that Mary became pregnant by the Holy Spirit; the day that God (the Son) became a man, is called the Incarnation. Don’t get hung up on the ‘Christianese’. Just as Chilli Con Carne means “Chilli with meat”, the incarnation basically means God with “meat” or flesh. God became like one of us. This does not mean that Jesus began to exist at the incarnation, for He is the Creator of all things and existed before all things (John 1:1-3, 10). This also does not mean that Jesus ceased being fully God at the incarnation, but that He also became fully human (John 1:14). Only in this way could He pay for the sins of men (Col 1:16-20).

Accepting this is part of what makes us Christian. But understanding it is another thing altogether. So I wanted to try and explain as simply as I can, and as best as I understand it: 1) What is so amazing about this; 2) Why Christians celebrate it, and; 3) Why God did such a thing?

Read the rest of this entry

(The following is an excerpt from remarks on lighting the National Community Christmas Tree, December 15, 1983, by President Ronald Reagan at the South Portico of the White House during the annual Christmas Pageant of Peace, a great statesman who never forgot the reason for the season.)

Many stories have been written about Christmas. Charles Dickens’ “Carol” is probably the most famous. Well, I’d like to read some lines from a favorite of mine called “One Solitary Life,” which describes for me the meaning of Christmas. It’s the story of a man born of Jewish parents who grew up in an obscure village working in a carpenter shop until he was thirty; and then for three years, as a preacher. As the story says, he never wrote a book, he never held an office, he never had a family, he never went to college, he never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He never did any of the things that usually accompany greatness.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for the only piece of property that he had on Earth. When he was dead he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave.

Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone, and today he is the centerpiece of much of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together have not affected the life of man upon Earth as powerfully as this One Solitary Life.

I have always believed that the message of Jesus is one of hope and joy. I know there are those who recognize Christmas Day as the birthday of a great and good man, a wise teacher who gave us principles to live by. And then there are others of us who believe that he was the Son of God, that he was divine. If we live our lives for truth, for love, and for God, we never need be afraid. God will be with us and we will be part of something much larger, much more powerful and enduring than any force here on Earth.

• Woolley, J. & Peters, G. (n.d.) Remarks on lighting the National Community Christmas Tree, December 15, 1983. Retrieved 24 December 2010 from the The American Presidency Project web site: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

Merry Christmas to all of our readers
and your families, and may the grace
and blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ
carry you in the coming New Year.

Just a quick public note to let people know that I have been under a demanding work schedule over the last couple of weeks and will continue to be for at least the next two days (tomorrow and Thursday). I have been putting in roughly 70 hours a week, and tonight just finished working a 16-hour shift. My apologies to people here and over at AtheistForums.org for falling behind on my responses, but I simply have not had the time available for online activities. At the end of my day I just want to collapse in bed. But as I said, the work schedule should ease back to more sensible levels over the next couple days so hopefully by this weekend I can get caught up here, too.

While I am here, though, I might as well respond to Joe.