OFB.biz: Open for Business - OFB.biz: Open for Business

About Ed Hurst

Ed Hurst is Associate Editor of Open for Business. Born in 1956, Ed has spent his entire adult life in the Gospel Ministry. However, that seldom paid the bills, so he took a large variety of secular jobs. Aside from a stint in the US Army Military Police and another in Field Artillery, Ed has worked in the trucking industry, public education, agriculture, and numerous semi-skilled jobs. As a disabled veteran, he is now semi-retired and pursues a ministry offering computer assistance to elderly folks in his area, and leads a house church. Currently residing in Choctaw, OK, he’s been married to Veloyce since 1978 and has two adult children.

Articles by Ed Hurst

Page 1 of 6.

Western Civilization is Not Christian: A Foot in Both Worlds

By Ed Hurst | Sep 2, 2010 at 0:39:41

The Apostle John warned us the world would naturally hate us. It should then be no surprise that, as I have argued in my previous columns, the West’s way of looking at things might be less than ideal for understanding God and his will for us.

Western Civilization is Not Christian: The Big Difference

By Ed Hurst | Aug 4, 2010 at 23:17:35

We might wonder, if it mattered so much, why Paul did not more pointedly address the huge difference between the intellectual culture of the Bible against the rest of the world. His choice not to spend too much time teaching the cultural background of Christian faith in his letters was no doubt the best choice at the time. He wasn't writing to scholars. It's quite likely he did go into detail with some of his better students, like Timothy. Apollos clearly understood it, if we accept him as the author of Hebrews, for he rejects the Alexandrian content, but uses the Alexandrian style of presentation. Still, for us to ignore how thoroughly Christian teaching assumes a radically different orientation in thought would be thoughtless.

Western Civilization is Not Christian: A History

By Ed Hurst | Jul 19, 2010 at 19:30:13

As a historian, I know what we call today “Western Civilization” was largely based on Christianity. I also know that it was a particular brand of Christianity. I leave for another day the debate whether that particular brand is now, or was then, the true Church. However, it is no criticism to note the Church of Rome which midwifed Western Civilization had not precisely the same outlook on the world as the New Testament Apostles. That is, the Apostles were Jewish men with a distinctly Semitic outlook, and Rome was decidedly Latin-Greek. Specifically, it was Aristotelian.

eComStation: Ready for Prime Time

By Ed Hurst | Jun 1, 2010 at 0:4:49

The key to teaching anyone anything is having some clue what it’s like not knowing. If you can’t guide someone across that barrier, you can’t actually teach much, because the whole process then relies entirely upon the abilities and inclinations of the learner. The best teachers don’t simply put it where you can reach it, but make you want it.

Test Driving Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

By Ed Hurst | May 3, 2010 at 23:53:5

OFB’s Ed Hurst continues his quest for the perfect UNIX or Linux operating system by looking at a recently released beta of Red Hat’s upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Is it the Linux nirvana? Read on to find out.

Jesus’s Mind

By Ed Hurst | Mar 25, 2010 at 18:56:58

Late last year, I considered what was wrong with approaching Christianity from a Western, Aristotelean perspective (part 1, part 2). It is not as if we have to completely ditch the legacy of Aristotle. We simply have to put it in its proper place. In our minds, we must recognize there is a limit, a wall.

Dehumanizing the People of God

By Ed Hurst | Feb 11, 2010 at 16:13:37

It’s the basic concept of sin: saying anything contrary to God’s revelation. As a collection of documents arising from the Ancient Near East (ANE), the Bible must be read from that ANE perspective, with an ANE epistemology. The only purpose for which He preserved the Scripture was to explain our burden of obligation to Him. Revelation's chief end is not information, but a call to commitment. If God says man is created in His image, then it places upon us the burden to respect each human. Indeed, Jesus said love your fellow humans as yourself, which is another way of commanding us to respect them. You are not greater than another. When Christians forget this truth, it encourages untold wrongs both within the church and out in the world.

Aristotle on His Head

By Ed Hurst | Dec 31, 2009 at 22:10:39

Aristotle and his friends clearly stated only philosophers can really get where we are going. Thus, it was their duty to lay it all out for everyone else. To this day, we still use a significant amount of Aristotle’s formal structure for human knowledge. Unfortunately, we carry forward his ideas without really ever questioning if they are valid.

Conflicting Kingdoms: the Biblical Worldview and the West

By Ed Hurst | Dec 10, 2009 at 21:56:38

It does no good to argue which path is better if we haven’t first discussed where we are going. The real difference between the biblical world view — otherwise known to us as Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) — and the Western frame of reference is rooted in why we bother to philosophize in the first place. The goals of the Bible and those of Western Civilization are not compatible.

Mystical Advent-ure

By Ed Hurst | Dec 1, 2009 at 0:24:27

The popular term for my faith is Christian Mysticism. I don’t participate much in what typically bears that label, but my basic approach is mystical, in that I assert nothing truly important can be put into words. Jesus taught in parables, in part because God and His revelation are ineffable. So we can’t really describe ultimate truth, only indicate it using symbols.

The Danger of Peacemaker

By Timothy R. Butler

Here is a story. The leaders of a church have a personal agenda against someone and want to quiet him, exact revenge or what have you. They not only come at him within their church, they continue by following him outside of that church to any other church he seeks refuge at and any place he works, making a wreck of his life in the process. That is the sort of thing that only happened in the past, in dusty tales of witch-hunts in Salem or the Inquisition in Spain, right? Wrong: it is happening today, perhaps at a seemingly normal church near you.

Help Us Serve You

Open for Business strives to serve up the most interesting, relevant content possible; however, we can only do so with your help. Please take a few moments to fill out our online survey so that we can learn more about the interests of our readers, readers such as you.

Tap the Power of
Snow Leopard

Looking to get acquainted with Apple's latest operating system? Mac OS X Snow Leopard Bible, the definitive Mac OS X reference, features OFB's own Timothy R. Butler alongside Galen Gruman and Mark Hattersley.

© 2001-2010 Universal Networks, All Rights Reserved. Some content rights may be held by Universal Networks' providers and used under license. Powered by ServerForest and SAFARI. Learn about our privacy policy here.