How many times have you read verses like this and thought little of them?
“To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.”
Those are the opening words of Psalm 25:1, not even the whole verse. I usually think of words like these as the Psalmist saying hello, but look at what Charles Spurgeon wrote about these words. Read more on cbmc.com.
The word for today from the Wordsmith is bibliolatry, used in this sentence: “Fifty percent of college graduates expect Jesus to be here any day now. We are, says Paul Boyer, almost unique in the Western World in combining high educational levels with high levels of bibliolatry.” Martin Gardner; Waiting for the Last Judgement; The Washington Post; Nov 8, 1992.
Bibliolatry is defined as “excessive devotion to the Bible, especially to its literal interpretation.” It’s also the worship of any book, but sticking to the first definition, I have to laugh when I see references to a literal interpretation of the Bible. I hesitate to use labels, but I’ll do it anyway. The idea in the example sentence is the essential thing conservatives think of when defining academic and some other types of liberals. They tell us if we would use our brains we would see the nuance, the deeper meaning, the shades of gray in the situation and not be so cock-sure of ourselves, but when pressed for a good answer, they don’t have one. They can only criticize the answers the conservatives have given.
Bibliolatry in this sense does not exist. There can be no excess in devotion to the Word of God. See Psalm 19 and Psalm 119, but don’t take them literally. Take them poetically. Your soul may not “cling to the dust,” because you can have life in His Word.
I’m not a great one for end-of-the-world prognostications, but all my life I’ve heard of this (or something like it) as being a sign of the Last Days:
Protestant translators expect to have the Bible — or at least some of it — written in every one of the world’s 6,909 spoken languages.
“We’re in the greatest period of acceleration in 20 centuries of Bible translation,” said Morrison resident Paul Edwards, who heads up Wycliffe Bible Translators’ $1 billion Last Languages Campaign.
Portable computers and satellites get the credit for speeding things up by about 125 years.
Full story here, from the Denver Post.
Apocalyptic or not, it’s good news.
A PASTORAL LETTER
From Bishop Judith Hardanger-Hansen
Dearly beloved,
There has been considerable dissension in our fellowship recently, and a number of hard words have been spoken, causing much pain. I feel it my obligation to address the matter directly, exercising openmindedness and charity, both to the enlightened, Christ-like people who agree with me, and the knuckle-dragging Nazis on the other side.
From its inception, the Merry Pride movement has been like the wind of the Holy Spirit, breathing new life and new ideas into the church. Sadly, however, some people do not welcome change, and run from the challenges of a new day.
In case anyone reading this is unaware of recent history (home-schooled people, perhaps), the term “Merry” was adopted by the oppressed group formerly known as “adulterers,” employing a pun on the word “marry,” to give their lifestyle a more positive public face. They felt it intolerable to be forced to live any longer with a name that bore the weight of centuries of misunderstanding, prejudice, and oppression. Continue reading Pastoral letter from the future
I attend a Lutheran congregation in north Minneapolis, one that belongs to the church body I work for. It’s large but not huge. The senior pastor has made himself visible in the media for a number of years as a critic of the liberal church, and of modern trends such as universalism, women’s ordination, higher criticism of the Bible, and the normalization of homosexuality. He is a single man.
Last night, while watching local news on television, I discovered that he’d been “outed” as a homosexual.
He was not discovered in a “gay” bar. He was not discovered having sex with another man in a public rest room.
According to the news accounts I’ve seen (emanating from liberal sources) he was discovered attending a support and accountability group in a Roman Catholic church. He was speaking honestly, to men he trusted, about his struggles, slips, and temptations.
In other words, he was doing precisely what people on our side of the argument say a man in his situation ought to do. He is the very opposite of a hypocrite.
On the basis of the accounts I’ve read, the “journalist” who produced the story infiltrated this accountability group, lied about his purposes, and then broke the promise of confidentiality he made to get in.
The television story pretended to be a high-minded think piece about whether it’s ever appropriate to “out” someone against their wishes.
I don’t believe that was the real purpose of the story. I believe it was to splash my pastor’s picture all over TV screens in our state, with a metaphorical scarlet letter on his chest.
My pastor has my full support, and my prayers. God bless him, and all godly men in his situation.
To really write properly on this subject, I should have read all five articles, but I only read the first in this series linked by Grim at Grim’s Hall. It’s about scientists who are studying the mystery, not only of not knowing, but of not knowing that we don’t know certain things. In other words, problems we don’t solve because we’re not aware of any problem—even when we have to live with the consequences of not solving it.
DAVID DUNNING: Well, my specialty is decision-making. How well do people make the decisions they have to make in life? And I became very interested in judgments about the self, simply because, well, people tend to say things, whether it be in everyday life or in the lab, that just couldn’t possibly be true. And I became fascinated with that. Not just that people said these positive things about themselves, but they really, really believed them. Which led to my observation: if you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent.
Over at Townhall Magazine, Prof. Mike Adams tears into Don Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz:
The only problem with this story is that it isn’t true. Oddly, Don came back to visit that Christian camp just a few years ago. When he did, he was confronted with his very public and untruthful account his time at Summit Ministries.
In response, Don just said it wasn’t a big deal. He fabricated the story just to make a point. He was confronted privately but was unrepentant, which was not too surprising. Remember that Don thinks Christianity is not about rules. It’s about a relationship with God.
Jared Wilson has a Bible study called Abide: Practicing Kingdom Rhythms in a Consumer Culture and answers a few questions about it here. Here’s a bit from the first part of the interview:
Your book has much to say about the influence that our consumer culture has upon us as Christians. How would you describe its impact upon the being and doing of today’s evangelical church? In other words, is the influence of consumer culture hindering us from being the church, and, if so, how?
Yes, consumer culture has enormous impact on the evangelical church, and the “root” way it hinders us from being the church is how it appeals to and feeds our innate self-centeredness. Consumer culture urges us to see ourselves at the center of the universe. From self-service to self-help, everything about consumer culture makes convenience, quickness, and comfort idols that are difficult not to worship. And of course the more self-centered we are, the less inclined we’ll be to see the great need of experiencing the gospel community of the church. And consumer culture affects the “doing” of the church, as well, which is fairly evident in the way many churches not only don’t subvert consumerism but actually orient around it and cater to it. From some of the more egregious forms of marketing to the way church services are designed to the way many preachers prepare the messages, the chief concern appears to be to keep the customers satisfied.
As you’ll note from the comments on my last post, Dr. Hunter Baker (fiend in human shape that he is) heartlessly refuses to engage in a public exchange of insults with me, appealing, apparently, to some principle of non-retaliation or something. Thus am I stymied in my ploy to try to raise interest in my books through a blog feud.
I need to find somebody to fight with. Somebody who’s actually a published author, but not so venerable (like Dr. Gene Edward Veith) that my insulting him would seem impertinent. As my mama always told me, “Keep your hair combed, wear clean underwear, and always be pertinent.” Continue reading Of conflicts and critics
From FrontPage Magazine, an article on the vulnerability of Islam, if courageously challenged.
One answer is that you do all you can to force Muslims to question their faith in Islam. As Mark Steyn observes, “there’s no market for a faith that has no faith in itself.” He was speaking, of course, of the more mushy versions of Western Christianity—the post-Christian Christians who seem anxious to dialogue themselves into dhimmitude. But there’s no reason the concept can’t be applied to Islam. Surely the average intelligent Muslim has occasional doubts about the founding revelations. And just as surely he keeps them to himself, not only because he fears his fellow Muslims, but also because the rest of the world seems to be going along with the pretense that he belongs to a great religion. It may be time for the rest of the world to drop the pretense.