Race

Shows are meant to be consumed in front of the curtain—not behind it. Behind are the things you don't want the audience to see or know because it would ruin the performance.

Bible translations are hammered out behind the curtain, and for good reason. It wouldn't give people confidence in the trustworthiness of the English Bible they read to watch the arguments and votes over how to translate this or that Hebrew or Greek word or phrase. Other parts of the Bible publishing business may be even more disconcerting, but let's focus here on the academics' work.

Although the scholars who produce Bible text for their Bible publisher are paid for that work, most of their income is from tuition paid by seminaries whose curricula require those students to spend years studying Hebrew and Greek. So these scholars have two priorities at odds with each other.

First, in order for their publishers' investment in their translating work to realize a profit, scholars must not stop assuring church people that every last word of the text of their version is precisely what God Himself inspired. Nothing has been changed...

The play will never be forgotten. It was during the 2005 AFC Divisional game between the New England Pats and the Denver Broncos. Watch the video. Pats tight end Ben Watson got his man. Watson is at it again, posting this excellent response to all the sturm and drang over North Carolina passing a law that forbids men from crashing the ladies room. Here are a couple excerpts:

...claims that gender and race are analogous ...could not be further from the truth.

After seminary, my father and mother were in campus ministry in New England. It was right after the Second World War when Germany had decided Jews were unwanted and her government implemented her Final Solution in her abort-the-Jews clinics across Germany and the Bloodlands. Dad was at an international student conference where Christian students who had served in the German army under Hitler told of their conscientious Christian witness during the war. What was that witness?

Dad writes...

Think about it with a Christian mind. Rachel Dolezal first sued historically black college, Howard University, for discriminating against her as a grad student because she's white. She said her whiteness caused her to be treated unfairly in the issuing of scholarships and the awarding of teaching assistantships. But this was back in 2002 when she still lived at the station in life God placed her by birth: Caucasian. In time she learned her lesson and, deciding to forsake her God-ordained station, started claiming she was African American. Not surprisingly in North America today, her new identity proved lucrative, allowing her to become an agent provocateur for African Americanism. They say Dolezal is "transracial."

Bruce Jenner first won the gold medal in the men's decathlon competition at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, setting the world record. Back in 1976 Jenner still lived at the station in life God placed him by birth: male. In time he learned his lesson and, deciding to forsake his God-ordained station, started the morbid defacement of his sexuality, and now claims he is a woman. Not surprisingly in North America today, his new identity is proving lucrative, getting him on the cover of Vanity Fair in a bustier...

John Blake wrote a piece titled "Lord of the Flies Comes to Baltimore" in which he laments the absence of older men in his native city, Baltimore:

...I talked to a 27-year-old black man named Juan Grant. He knew Gray, whose death in police custody lit the fuse in Baltimore. Grant stood no more than a foot from me, but as he talked, he yelled at me in frustration, spittle coming from his mouth. He said Gray's death had convinced him and his friends to stop "ripping and running" the streets. They wanted boys to respect them as men. But they didn't know how to get that respect because their fathers had never been around. He described their dilemma with a bitter laugh: "It's men learning on the job trying to teach young men how to be men."

Blake quotes Robert Boyd, pastor of Beacon of Truth Church and Ministries in West Baltimore:

Now we as men are fearful when we walk through a group of boys. When we were boys, when we walked through a group of men, we felt secure. Something is wrong.

Blake summarizes Baltimore's shame...

I remain amazed that abortion could even become a political issue in a country with pretensions to being civilized. It is as if we were to debate the merits of legalizing cannibalism, with the liberal side chanting the slogan "Keep government out of the kitchen!"

There is no danger that the other side will ever be persuaded that it is wrong; there is, however, the very real danger that we will become discouraged, worn down, and inured to an evil that should always horrify and sicken us. The erosion of our consciences is surely part of the destructiveness of this abominable "procedure."   - Joe Sobran

(For the choir director; a psalm of David.) In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, "Flee as a bird to your mountain; for, behold, the wicked bend the bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD'€™S throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; the upright will behold His face. (Psalm 11:1-7)

(Forty-two) years ago today, on January 22nd, 1973, the Supreme Court of these United States issued its infamous ruling, Roe v. Wade, in which the Court declared that a mother's intentional killing of her unborn child was a fundamental right guaranteed under our Constitution. Since that ruling, it has been a commonplace to observe that Roe v. Wade, the Court's repeal of the laws prohibiting abortion on the books of all fifty states, was simply the exercise of raw judicial power with a legal justification based upon a mist and a vapor--€”or as the Court itself might put it, emanations from penumbras.

The Supreme Court drowns in blood...

Since 1973, no one has made a name for himself defending Roe. v. Wade’s history, biology, ethics, logic, or justice; and only a few have been foolish enough to claim this ruling will stand the test of time...

My friend, Juergen, sets a significant part of my reading list by giving me a book each time he visits. Recently it was a copy of The Circle which Juergen described as 1984 updated saying he found it chilling. Just finished reading it myself. I recommended it to the family on Thanksgiving Day. If you've read it, note this headline at the top of the Google News page just now:

Obama wants more police wearing body cameras...

Honestly, why not require body cameras on the President himself? He's our public servant and we haven't the slightest idea what wickedness he commits in our Oval Office, let alone our Lincoln's Bedroom or our Air Force One. So I say not one single body camera for the police and armed forces until the Commander in Chief is wired up. The damage he does to our nation by his crimes against the Constitution is out of all proportion to the damage done by police and soldiers. Maybe the shame of being caught in the act will keep him from further corruptions of our national commons. So join the movement:

Citizens for Transparency demand President Obama wear a body camera.

Harriet Beecher Stowe ended slavery in America by writing Uncle Tom's Cabin which returned negroes to their rightful place as full persons bearing the image and likeness of God, fully equal to their white masters. It took a well-written novel to bring Americans to our senses, and in time our African brothers and sisters were restored to the equality our forefathers had robbed them of through corrupt laws and judges who feared man rather than God.

I'm not saying the work is done. To this day racism is alive and well and Ferguson has it on full display, although the moral is not at all what anyone is saying.

Today, though, our national life is corrupted by evils worse than slavery and racism, and chief among them is the slaughter of unborn children we call "abortion." Slavery killed its millions but abortion kills its billions. And hard as it was for men with dark skin and thick noses to be viewed as God's image-bearers by men with light skin and long noses, no one but no one today views unborn children as men made in the image and likeness of God. No one today agrees that unborn souls are equal to born souls...

Just got an e-mail from the Edwards Center at Yale promoting a summer course on Edwards as missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. I've put the course description at the bottom of this post. It looks like an interesting course.

Edwards's move from Northampton to Stockbridge is one of the things I respect most about Edwards. For the love of God and His sheep, he stood against the Halfway Covenant and tried to discipline the Covenant children of Northampton. Inevitably, this resulted in the ruling elite kicking him out of Northampton. Edwards knew it was a large risk to warn his flock, but he trusted in God and stood firm for the protection of the souls under his care. After he was exiled from Northampton, he moved to a very small church in a very small village serving a few ruling elite and the Indians. There too, his commitment to the souls under his care caused conflict with the ruling elite.

Then he died.

Reformed academics and the pastors they train are dismissive of Edwards for a number of reasons...