June 2017

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Pusillanimous: Chancellor Merkel and Gospel Coalition...

Reading Sobran's article just posted reminded me of the word "pusillanimous."

Keep track of the words that have died. They tell us what we've become.

Public leadership in the church and uncivil society today is forevermore pusillanimous. The word had to be killed. If you're fighting under cover of darkness, you don't provide the enemy night vision goggles.

Pusillanimous is the perfect word to describe what Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel did earlier today. After showing her truest heart to a woman's magazine where she answered a question about sodomite marriage by emoting about a recent visit she'd had with a lesbian couple and their foster children, Merkel suggested the issue be put to a vote...

Joe Sobran: Buzz Lightyear for president...

Another great article by Joe Sobran. I pity young men today who work in the pastorate and have to mature in their pastoral care and preaching without benefit of the weekly reading of Sobran I was blessed with in my mid-life.

Here's an excerpt to encourage you to click through and read the whole piece:

Utopian reflexes have become part of the job description of the American presidency. We take them for granted. The idea that the president is merely an "executive," that is, executing the laws passed by Congress, seems pathetic and pusillanimous. Today the president is supposed to think big, like Buzz Lightyear: "To infinity - and beyond!" 

Not so long ago, the writer Henry Allen has observed, politics was a rather narrow specialty: fat guys in three-piece suits cutting deals in those famous smoke-filled rooms. Politics pretty much left you alone. Now it encompasses absolutely everything: the food you eat, the air you breathe, the clothes you wear. Nothing is off-limits. Politics is life! 

 

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How to fix a broom handle...

Went into the garage yesterday and found my push broom broken. Second time. Looking to save money, found this video and I'm stoked. Can't wait to get home and get to work.

Responses (3): It all depends on whose ox is gored...

(This is the third in a series responding to critics of my post pointing out Denny Burk is wrong and the Atlantic got it right in their reporting that Southern Baptists' Christian Standard Bible is gender-neutered.)

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up!

Seven years ago, back before the Holman Christian Standard Bible was neutered and "Holman" was taken out of its name, Denny Burk saw things more clearly. Follow this.

Back in 2010, Denny's preaching pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Jim Hamilton, wrote a blog post explaining that he had been asked to contribute an article to a new dictionary and the publisher had sent him these rules his article was to conform to:

[Your] articles should avoid referring to “man” (likewise “mankind,” “men,” “he,” “his” and so on) generically. Language often regarded as patriarchal should be modified to avoid giving wrong impressions. Similarly, translations of biblical and other texts, when made by the contributor, should be no more gender specific than the originals are judged to be. Citations of standard translations of the Bible should not be altered, of course, but where contributors create their own translations of the biblical text, they may find strategies for effectively and responsibly avoiding gender-specific translations by consulting the New Revised Standard Version.

"Who pays the piper calls the tune," the old saying goes, so Jim Hamilton was going to avoid the male inclusive if he wanted his publisher to pay him. And if he was going to do any of his own Bible translating for the article, he needed to delete the Bible's male inclusives "adam" and "adelphoi." 1 

This got Pastor Hamilton thinking and he asked this question... 

Daddy is blessed...

Just received this pic along with an e-mail of thanks for writing Daddy Tried. Ain't she beautiful? I'd tell you her name but I want to protect her own and her parents' privacy. Congratulations to the proud father and joyful mother!

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward. (Psalms 127:3)

Responses (2): but "brothers" often means "brothers and sisters"...

Here is another argument against my post pointing out Denny Burk is wrong and the Atlantic got it right in their reporting that the Christian Standard Bible is gender-neutered in hundreds of places.

A reader writes:

[The translators] are simply trying to communicate the Scriptures in a clear way. Adelphoi does often mean brothers and sisters, so it's not wrong... There is an example in Euripides, Electra, line 536, where adelphos refers to both brother and sister...

...lexicography and semantics can be tricky... When Paul refers to the churches by adelphoi, he clearly has the whole congregation in mind. ...This is common in the ancient languages, where the masculine is the so-called "standard" linguistic gender.

...we are wrong when we assume that grammatical gender and biological gender are always the same thing

The one thing obvious is this man hasn't read the very post he is criticizing...

So how did Vermeer do it...

(HT to Kelly R.) Fascinating. Vermeer was (merely?) a perfectionist tinkerer. Andrew Henry, meet Tim Jenison. (Actually, though, I'm guessing you already know all about it.) 

If you're an odd man who prefers to read, here's an article.

Responses (1): quoting Revelation's warning was over the top...

One man writes:

I am wary of suggesting (much less actually stating) what [Bayly] did at the end of the article, equating what was done to editing and changing the word of God in presumably a damnable fashion. This particular paragraph is what I have in mind:

"Denny Burk should warn the translators and publishers of his denomination's Christian Standard Bible that their removal of hundreds and hundreds of words with a male meaning component from Scripture places their souls in jeopardy of having their part in the tree of life and the holy city removed by God."

Say that is badly translated? Certainly. Call on them to change it in future editions? Sure. Say that the translators/editors are in danger of the fires of hell because of it? Why go to that extent?

Why go to that extent?

Because this is the explicit warning of the Holy Spirit. In the Word of God, He Himself warns us that those who do this very thing are in danger of not inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven. If this warning doesn't apply to the removal of...

Speaking of music in worship...

Many of you know of our musicians project creating new versifications and musical settings for all 150 Psalms. The project is named from David's phrase in Psalm 54:

My soul is among lions; I must lie among those who breathe forth fire, Even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows And their tongue a sharp sword. (Psalms 57:4)

A couple weeks ago, Caleb Samland who is majoring in classical guitar performance led us in worship with his arrangement of My Soul Among Lions' version of Psalm 4, O God of My Righteousness. I hope he'll give us an arrangement of each of My Soul Among Lion's 150 Psalms!

Speaking of Psalm 4, here is my wife's and my favorite recording of this composition....

Are your people starving for good music during worship...

What sort of music do you have leading the souls of your church in worship? Years ago, I noticed we worship God with crescendos about God's grace and how happy it makes us. Not to disparage grace, but only cheap grace: if you don't sing and preach God's judgment, the souls in your congregation don't have a clue about grace no matter how much you blather on about it and they sing about it. Preach the Ten Commandments and have your choir sing this anthem. Grace will become a reality in the hearts of the souls under your care.

We did and I promise you, it works. God is no liar and our worship shouldn't lie, either.

Christian Standard Bible: the Atlantic got it right...

The current president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is indignant over an Atlantic Monthly piece pointing out that his denomination's Christian Standard Bible has gone "gender-neutral."1

Denny Burk says it's not true.

Sadly, it is. 2

We could get lost in a discussion of a host of Hebrew and Greek words in the Old and New Testaments, but two words will suffice: one is the Hebrew word...

About that Mayweather/McGregor boondoggle...

Watching the New York Times and Washington Post play Russ Moore is like watching Muhammed Ali slap Jim Brown...

Just listening to retired boxing promoter Bob Arum talking about the upcoming Mayweather/McGregor fight. Explaining why he's no fan, he told a story.

He was introduced to Muhammed Ali by Jim Brown, a fullback for the Cleveland Browns, and Arum went on to work as Ali's promoter. Brown picked fights with every guy he could in the NFL and he never lost one. He was "a great athlete," Arum said.

Brown was planning to leave football, although at the time no one knew it. Ali was living in Europe at the time, and he was training for a fight in London. Brown was also in London shooting The Dirty Dozen. Brown met with his friend, Arum, and asked a favor: "Would you ask Ali to fight me? It would make us a lot of money and I'd like to do it."

Arum said he'd ask. So he called Ali, putting the question to him...

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