Turn up the Volume

I enjoy editing and creating digital videos. I have used several different programs, but the one I use most often is iMovie. iMovie has its limitations, but if you have a Mac, it comes free, and for a free program, it's pretty cool.

A problem that I run into sometimes when working with digital video is low sound volume. Video cameras usually don't capture sound too well, especially if there's a lot of background noise going on, and when you import video onto your computer, sometimes you can barely hear what you want to hear. You can also run into this issue if you are trying to create your own audio, but don't have a very sensitive microphone on your computer (a problem I ran into earlier this week).

Now, you can always turn up the volume of the sound clip, but usually there is a limit to how high you can turn it (with iMovie, you can only turn the volume up to 150%), and sometimes that just isn't enough. Here's a screenshot with a sample audio file turned up as high as it can go:

One easy way to get around this problem is to duplicate the sound clip itself, which effectively doubles your sound volume. If your sound is still combined with the video clip, you will first have to extract the audio from it (use cmd-J). After you have the audio extracted from the video, select it, copy it, and then paste it at the same playhead (if you don't place it exactly at the same playhead, the clips will echo each other and it will sound terrible). Here's a screenshot after the sound clip has been copied and pasted at the same playhead:

You can repeat this process over and over until you get the volume as loud as you want it (you can place one sound clip over another), but the more sound clips you have, the more difficult they are to keep track of.

Probably the neatest thing about this little trick is that you can do several creative things with it once you get it figured out. For example, if you have some mp3 files that are quieter (or louder) than others, you can import them into a video editor, tweak the volume of the sound clip like you want them, then export them back out and re-insert them into your library. That way, you won't have to risk hearing loss everytime you listen to your iPod and you have very quiet and very loud songs back to back.

This is not the Gospel

Several days ago, I was flipping through TV channels late one night, and I stopped to listen to televangelist Mike Murdock. I had never heard of him, but there wasn’t really anything on TV and I thought he had an intriguing voice, so I stopped to listen to him.

Now at this point, I’ll admit that I don’t usually watch televangelists, and didn’t really know what to expect, but I knew that he claimed to be a Christian of some sort, and so I expected his message to be about, well, Christ.

Yeah, not so much. I listened to him for several minutes, but his message didn’t focus on telling others about Jesus, or the problem of sin, or even any doctrinal issue. Instead, he talked about money. See, according to Mr. Murdock, God intends for His people to be financially prosperous in this life.

I kept expecting him to qualify his message by adding that while being wealthy might be a great blessing from God, this life and material possessions were not what was really important.

But he never did. Instead, he went on to basically guarantee that anyone who had enough faith would be blessed with prosperity and riches.

All of this seemed a little crazy to me, but apparently this “Prosperity Gospel” message is pretty common among televangelists like Murdock, Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland.

I didn’t think too much about it until last week, when it was brought a little closer to home while I was at a luncheon for local ministers. An idea very similar to Mr. Murdock's was presented, but this time it was not by some unknown evangelist on late night TV; the guest speaker was from a church of Christ.

Though he called it by a different name and clothed it with quotes from Jesus and ideas from Proverbs, his message was the same: that God wants us to be happy now, and that by following principles from the Bible, we can be financially successful. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Before I give anyone the wrong impression, let me make a disclaimer: I do believe that God wants us to be happy (or at least, content) in this life, I don’t believe that it is wrong to be wealthy, and I believe that God blesses some people with the ability to make money easily. However, I don’t think that how much money we make is a big priority with God, and I think any teaching that says God wants us all to be wealthy and explains how to be so is completely wrong. It is not God's will that all Christians be rich.

Otherwise, Jesus wouldn’t have told His disciples in Matthew 19.23-24, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Jesus came to earth to bridge the gulf that sin had placed between God and man. As Christians, our job is to tell others about what Jesus did for us, and why.

It is not to unlock Biblical secrets on how to get rich quick or to tell people that if they will serve God, He will make them rich. This is not the Gospel.