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Sorrow Like My Sorrow – Lamentations 1:12
Can we really understand the suffering of another person or they ours?
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What Is Biblical Literacy?
We complain about it, write about it, claim it’s important or even critical, design programs to create it, but what is it? I don’t mean that none of us know what we mean when we say “biblically literate” or “biblically illiterate,” but do we all mean the same thing? I don’t think we do, and…
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Fences: Mending or Rending
The following is a sermon I presented at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Pensacola on September 11,2005 and originally posted here on September 13, 2005. I’m reposting it because when I went to look for it, I found that the original post had somehow been truncated, and also because there is a one word at a…
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Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit
This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences…
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Church Sign Theology – Sorta Saved?
OK, I said the last church sign was theologically incorrect, and I stick with that, because the sign seems to be providing a definition of faith. As a definition, it’s incorrect. Faith may help you not to panic, but it is not the same as not panicking. What’s got me on this is looking for…
Demonstrating Statistical Deception
Wesley Elsberry nails it in this post. He also mentions the great book How to Lie with Statistics, which everyone should read.
On Moderating a Political Discussion
One of the great joys of being a publisher is that I’m able to meet and work with some very intelligent and interesting people. As the election comes up, I find that my company, Energion Publications, has two authors who have written books for our new politics category, one a progressive and one a conservative….
Theologically Incorrect Church Sign
I took this picture because I wanted it for the Megabelt book site. In the book Megabelt (a cross between Megachurch and Bible Belt) the lead character Gil has a real thing about trite church signs, which covers most of them. In looking for church signs to post on the book site, I’ve found any…
Bible Reading
Nell Sunukjian from The Good Book Blog has a post on reading the Bible. He’s particularly emphasizing the one year bible plan. I’d call attention to my own recent post Reading the Bible Frequently and Thoroughly.
Confronting Critical Issues in Church
I’m using “critical” here in two senses: 1) critical study of the Bible, as in using the methodologies of the historical-critical method and 2) critical in the sense of “of key importance. I believe that issues such as the inspiration of scripture, the nature of scripture, historicity (or not) of various passages, and creation and…
Jazz and Absorbing the Bible
Kent Eilers posts at Theology Forum on biblical interpretation and jazz. A critical sentence: “A key element is respect for the tradition, learning from it without merely repeating it.” I used a different title because I’m thinking about a particular element–the familiarity with the tradition. Jazz must become part of the musicians fundamental being. I…
Curiosity on Mars
… and on earth too! 🙂 You can see some images on the NASA project site. I stayed up last night until I knew it landed. Those who know me will realize how rare this is. I didn’t feel inclined to blog about it in the middle of the night, but I’ll be looking regularly…
Kitten and Doberman – Cute!
Enjoy! (HT: Why Evolution is True)
Quote of the Day – Chicken Sandwiches or Daily Bread
From Allan R. Bevere (author of The Politics of Witness): [W]e Christians in America need to ponder the reality that while we were arguing over eating chicken sandwiches this past week, that there were people in many parts of the world who were, at the very same time, hoping only for a morsel of daily bread.
Interactive Covenants and Prophecies or God Has a Plan B
It’s interesting to me how we (and I definitely include myself) often read scripture. One concept can easily override another. For example, I recall a conversation in which someone was claiming that no human being was ever righteous. I brought up Job, who is described as righteous in Job 1. “Oh, but that is only…
July Biblical Studies Carnival Posted
… at Reading Acts. This is one of those rare occasions when there is a link back to this very blog!
Psalm 51 in The Voice
I’ve been including The Voice Bible in my lectionary reading for the last couple of weeks. My early impression was that it was fairly good as a paraphrase, though the italics, while fairly consistent, were a bit distracting. I thought they were unnecessary. I was wrong. I have yet to do any sort of objective…
Scot McKnight on Dominion Theology
Well, actually he’s summarizing Paul C. McGlasson. I recently wrote about hearing Dutch Sheets speak and mentioned what he had to say about the term “dominionism.” There is something that concerns me here, and that is that Rushdoony and those who agree with him are lumped in with folks like C. Peter Wagner, and of…
Real vs. Hypothetical Evil
In an article on the Huffington Post, Aaron Taylor suggests a variant of the famous saying, All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. His variant? “Sometimes evil triumphs not when good people do nothing, but when good people fail to distinguish between hypothetical evil and real evil,…
The Other Extreme on Explanation in Translation
Yesterday I complained a bit about the explanation that The Voice provides to readers, informing them that since Bathsheba had just completed purification after her period, Uriah couldn’t be the father of the child. Today I was reading the same passage in the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), and there we get the opposite. In…
Italics in The Voice – The Story of Bathseba
Last week I mentioned that while I found the italics in The Voice more logical than I usually do in the formal equivalent translations that use the device (e.g. KJV, NKJV, NASB), I still found them annoying in the text. One goal of a dynamic equivalence translation is generally readability, and for me the italics…
Italics and The Voice
I’ve always regarded the use of italics to indicate words that “aren’t in the Greek” one of the sillier notions in translating. Considering there are no English words in the Greek text, one could put everything in italics. On the other hand, if an English word isn’t in some way justified by the Greek (or…
Psalm 89: When Eternal Doesn’t Last
This week’s lectionary (RCL) texts for this week (Proper B11) form an interesting set, complete with the occasional weird cut-off for the scripture. For example, 2 Samuel 7:1-14a chops off the last part of Nathan’s message to David, the part about both the eternal covenant and the potential for God’s discipline. As I read this,…
Shades of Outrage but Comments Closed
I pointed earlier to a post by J. R. Daniel Kirk responding to the post at The Gospel Coalition by Jared Wilson. Wilson has now responded to some of the outrage generated by his original post. But generally his new post says we shouldn’t read his excerpt as saying what it actually says, but should…
Responding to TGC on Sex and Power
Well, I’m not responding. I found someone who wrote a better response than I could manage. That is J. R. Daniel Kirk. The payoff quote: When Jesus came and showed us what Christian manhood was all about, he did not conquer, but allowed himself to be conquered; he did not pierce, but allowed himself to…
Measuring Liberal Christianity
There have been a number of posts around the web regarding the decline of liberal Christianity. It got started by Ross Douthat in the New York Times. There have been a number of good responses, including Rachel Held Evans (which connected best with me), Chaplain Mike, and Diana Butler Bass. All these responses are good….
Inconvenient Passages Flowchart – Funny!
… on Exploring Our Matrix.
The Fanatic Illustrated
In a previous post I used the relationship between essentials and non-essentials to group ways in which Christians (and Christian groups) operate. One of these approaches to doctrine was labeled “the fanatic” (see image). With some help from Joel Watts, I’ve found a good illustration of this, and it’s The Berean Library, which lists as…