July 2004

And speaking of Jesus' words in Luke 14:35 quoted below, while looking them up I happened to notice the Greek word 'kopria' which means "dung" or "manure" has been altered by the New Living Translation to "fertilizer." What soft man came up with this travesty?

Here is the same verse, first from the translation I use for study and preaching, the New American Standard Bible, Updated (1995) Edition, and second from the New Living Translation:

New American Standard Bible, Updated (1995) Edition:

It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

New Living Translation:

Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor for fertilizer. It is thrown away. Anyone who is willing to hear should listen and understand!

This is just one among many reasons why Christians must be discerning in their choice of Bible translations, and obviously I recommend what I use--the New American Standard Bible, Updated (1995) Edition. Although at times the English is not quite English, its very stodginess is its best quality. You know you're getting it straight.

And what better place to show it than the translation of the Greek word for "manure?"

PS: Yes, the ESV gets it right and is a good translation, but for reasons I will not go into here, my own Bible remains the NASB95.

Because of its reputation for muckraking I don't read the American Spectator, but a friend passed this piece on to me and I highly commend it: "Kennedy's Benchmarks" by Mark M. Trapp, an attorney practicing in South Carolina.

Trapp's piece is a case study of the betrayal of our Constitution by our nation's judiciary, most specifically the Supreme Court, as that betrayal has been perfectly illustrated by Justice Kennedy who, over the years, has hopped all over the place on the matter of whether or not sodomy is a private act protected by our Constitution. Here in a short piece Trapp perfectly illustrates the "growth" we've seen in most of the Republican appointments to the Supreme Court over many years, now. In fact, Kennedy himself was appointed by that revered father-figure of all things conservative, President Ronald Reagan.

Check it out and you'll find that the Court's Lawrence decision, by which sodomy was declared to be a fundamental right protected by our Constitution, was the product of a six member majority, and that four of the six were Republican appointees.

Which brings to mind something Joe Sobran wrote four or five years ago that stuck in my head:

Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me; Fool me three times, I'm a Republican.

Some years back, I was on the phone with Marvin Olasky and we were talking about the Republican primary candidate, George W. Bush, then-governor of Olasky's own Texas. I expressed skepticism at Bush's recent (at the time) statement that abortion would not be a litmus test for his appointees to the Supreme Court.

I protested, saying I could not think of any matter of jurisprudence even close to the significance of whether the most innocent and defenseless of our citizens were to be protected by our civil authorities, and that it was my considered conviction that our nation's leaders had no moral authority because of their betrayal of this fundamental duty. Civil authorities are to be judged on the basis of their defense of citizens at the margins of society (and life); not their latest foray into the infinitely less important matter of tweaking copyright law so Mickey Mouse will be able to continue laying golden eggs for Disney.

Since then, I've watched as the members of the Court continue to betray the Constitution, violating the vow each took to submit to, and uphold it. I have come to the conclusion that nothing less than the impeachment of these men will suffice.

Let me be clear: The Constitution of these United States provides not one iota of legal basis for the Supreme Court's Lawrence and Roe v. Wade decisions, and the solution to this constitutional crisis is not any presidential election and subsequent Court appointments, but impeachment--now! The Republican party is a joke, hoodwinking Christians as government grows, the national debt bloviates, states become even more impotent, and unborn babies die.

Here's an excerpt from a reader's comment under another of my posts:

From my understanding, poor nations have higher birth rates because they see more economic support for the parents when they are old, and because they know there is a higher risk of their children dying before they can support the parents. I don't think they are necessarily trying to "obey God's command to be fruitful and multiply."

It's hard for the western world not to think about actions solely in monetary terms. And although I agree there is some truth to the statement that children in poor countries are understood to provide parents pensioner security, to reduce the motivation of the poor to this level is both a first-world habit, and utterly wrong-headed.

Across time and nations, the poor have children because "children are a blessing from the Lord" and "happy is the man whose quiver is full" (Psalm 127). The fact that many of these souls do not know the True God is no contradiction of this truth--God's goodness is such that He makes the rain to fall both "on the just and the unjust" (Matthew 5:45). To reduce this blessing to a monetary matter demonstrates a quite uncharitable judgment, similar to those feminists who claim that traditional heterosexual marriage is simply the exchange of sexual favors on the part of the woman for financial security--prostitution with society's imprimatur.

Back in April of 1992, First Things published an article by John Coons titled, "School Choice as Simple Justice" arguing that the provision of school choice is a matter of simple justice, particularly for the poor, given that it is through their children that the poor have their principal influence on the world. I've never forgotten the article because it helped me come to an understanding of the glory of large families in Third World slums and First world inner cities. A professor at Boalt Hall, the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, whose expertise is in education history and law, Coons wrote:

The machinery of public monopoly was chosen specifically by Brahmins like Horace Mann and James Blaine to coax the children from the religious superstition of their barbarian parents. Today, that antique machinery continues its designated role, and if this function was ever benign, it has long since ceased to be so. What has endured is the public school system's peculiar legacy of intolerance, racial segregation, religious bigotry, discrimination against the poor...[and] the careful buffering of the freedom of the rich to decide for themselves.

The rich pit kids against uninterrupted television and decide to go with the tube; the poor are blessed by God with right thinking about the fruit of the womb and have never been willing to defer to the browbeating of the rich that they limit their reproduction. About the only thing that changes the poor in this regard is their coming into wealth, at which time they too choose the tube.

If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:31,32

It's no accident the move to legitimate sodomy has experienced its greatest success precisely during the past decade when AIDS has decimated the homosexualist community. From Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity, to legislators in Washington D. C., to the National Institutes of Health, there has (quite properly) been a surge of compassion for the sick and dying, but this compassion has provided perfect cover for the entry of same-sex intimacy into the mainstream of public approval.

Why kick a man when he's down? Sensing the political advantage victims possess in our culture, the sodomy lobby's rhetoric has been successful, and wrongheaded compassion has trumped God's Moral Law.

Similarly, compassion for victims of domestic abuse has been a potent weapon in the hands of those opposing God's universal law of father-rule or male headship. Consider this from a 1998 release by Baker Books: