This is why I think missions like New Tribes, Faith Comes By Hearing and Gospel Recordings are on the right track to focus on the New Testament, and repackage the Bible in specifically Christological terms. Their materials are effective in bringing the essence of Christian belief to many people in a way that simply dropping Bibles on a culture isn’t.

Contrary to what you might think, this leads me to the conclusion that Wycliffe Bible Translators should focus more on Bible translation and not less.  Our mission is marked by a tight focus on a single objective. When we start straying into New Tribes’ turf, we become less effective and we do the global church a disservice by not fulfilling our humble role. I’d dearly love to pastor churches, teach discipleship courses, develop Bible study materials and the like. But when I do that, I’m hampering the Church’s efforts by reducing the amount of effort I’m expending on the complex, laborious and time-consuming task of Bible Translation.

Paul told Timothy, “Preach the Word!” What I would say to personnel involved in Bible translation is, “Translate the Word!” It is not an end in itself but it is one humble and blessed effort in the Church’s effort to redeem lost humanity.

• What Does Bible Translation Achieve?
• Bible Translation Makes A Difference
• The Bible and British Society

I also found out that Bob C. is reading at least Eddie’s posts so now I’m really in up to my neck. So since I’m hanging myself with my own rope I thought I’d stick my neck out even more and try out this idea on you.

Related posts:

1. Low-Tech Bible Study
2. "Why do you call me Lord?" Part 1: Introduction
3. Commentary on Cyber-Psalm 16

Thanks to all of you who responded to the recent poll. Expect new angles on an old friend in the near future.

Related posts:

1. Are you a friend of God?
2. Hymns or choruses?
3. The survey results are in

I’m so crazy in love with my wife. It’s not even our anniversary but I just can’t stop humming this song and thinking how lucky we are to be blessed with a happy marriage.

Related posts:

1. 1992
2. Cyber-Psalm 62
3. Who put the spaghetti on my waffle?

After over a decade of making a living on balloon twisting, I decided to design this website to help rookie balloon twisters who are trying to get into the field of balloon modeling and have no one to teach them the skills necessary to advance as a professional balloon twister.

Source: Balloon Twisting Fun

No matter how I twist the balloons these days, they all come out shaped like question marks.

I’ve been fuming for days about Queen Victoria. It’s not her exactly but the chain of events that should have led to a different Victorian England but didn’t. You see, Tyndale got his wish and every ploughboy understood the Bible better than the bishop. Soon England was flooded with the Bible in everyone’s heart language. But then my model of Bible translation goes all wobbly. Instead of a culture transformed by the presence of God’s Word turning bad people into good we see societal trends, urbanization, human self-interest and downright evil holding sway for another two centuries and beyond. We let Jane Austen tell the story when we should be listening to Charles Dickens. 200 years after the King James Bible was published, children were working in coal mines, and slaves were being beaten in the empire where the sun never set.

The guiding legend of our mission is William Cameron Townsend trying to sell a Spanish Bible to a Guatemalan Indian. The Indian quipped, “If your God is so great, why doesn’t he speak our language?” This encounter set in course the largest Bible translation movement in history. Now in thousands of languages around the world, Wycliffe personnel can answer that question in the affirmative, “But he does speak your language!” Still there have been disappointments in following this mad quest. First, translated Scripture has not always resulted in the type of cultural transformation Townsend hoped for. And as a Mozambican translator told me, “Translating the Bible is like sifting rice. The more you do it, the more pebbles you find.” As the task was undertaken it became increasingly complex. And not only that, language groups kept popping up where we didn’t know about them and disappearing just as a translation was going to press. This is certainly frustrating for a movement that is vaguely based on an apocalyptic motivation for Bible translation, to wit, “This gospel shall be preached to every creature and then the end shall come.”

But, and this brings us back to Queen Victoria, the “heart-language” theory of Bible translation leading to societal transformation is a rather clunky collection of non sequiturs if you think about it. Did the Cachiquel Indian actually want God to speak his language or was he just putting off a salesman? Did Uncle Cam translate the Bible so that its words might speak in the heart-language of Guatemala or so that he could sell more Bibles? These kinds of cynical ruminations are not heresy in Wycliffe. Instead, people have been trying to prop up the shaky bridge between Bible translation and spiritual change for a good long time. These days the buzz words are “Scripture Use” and “Scripture Impact” which are in essence problem based management approaches to Scripture. Moving away from the franchising of the Bible and its mass production in the 50’s, Bible translation now looks a lot like a “felt-needs” campaign in which issues of social injustice are addressed by specialty publications based on Scriptures. It’s a good trend. Still I’m bothered by the coal mines and sweatshops of Victorian England. If I could see somehow that Wilberforce, Nightingale and the like were in fact motivated by Christian theology rather than secular humanism I might be able to breathe easier. But I’m not seeing it. And even fast-forwarding to our present situation I’m seeing ample evidence that Bible translations are routinely ignored while self-interest and materialism fuel the ambitions of pagans and church-goers alike.

If I sound confused it’s because I’m genuinely puzzled. I want to believe that Tyndale and Townsend’s premises were correct and that Gospel light will dawn on a bright era of cultural transformation but I’ve got a nagging suspicion that Bible translation and evangelism are most effective when they are subversive and revolutionary.

Related posts:

1. Lost in the translation
2. Go away!
3. Beware of men in high lace collars

Related posts:

1. The beautiful people of Mozambique
2. No Comment
3. What will they say?

ARTESIA, NM – Weekly World News exclusive: Michael Jackson has been spotted in a diner with Elvis!

At roughly 3am last night patrons at a diner outside Artesia, New Mexico, saw what was undeniably Michael Jackson dining with Elvis Presley.  The two arrived just before 3 at The Sunshine Diner on 285.

Source: Weekly World News, “MICHAEL JACKSON SPOTTED WITH ELVIS”

What wouldn’t you give to know what they talked about?

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1. Cat or bear?
2. Stories are meant through retelling
3. Sunshine Hippo

God bless you, man, in the change of plan.
That’s a bridge you bought. There’s a change of plot.
Crossing the river, now a deep sea diver.
Swim! I see a fin.

Jesus juggles when we struggle.
Soft-touch master of our self-made disasters.
Bending what we break into a beautiful mistake.
…

Related posts:

1. Cyber-Psalm 62
2. Dinthi Day 13
3. Dinthi Day 21

When a person comes to faith in Christ, his conscience becomes acutely sensitive to sin. No longer as a Christian can he sin with impunity. The story is told about an old Indian chief who was converted. Later a missionary asked him:

"Chief, how are you doing spiritually? Are you experiencing victory over the devil?"
"It’s like this," the chief replied. "I have two dogs inside me: a good dog and a bad dog. They are constantly fighting with each other."
"Which dog wins?" asked the puzzled missionary.
"Whichever one I feed the most," retorted the wise old man.

Source

Related posts:

1. Snickerdoodles: Zwingli, row your boat ashore
2. Ker Family Update
3. Dinthi Day 6

Gonzo’s acts frequently attempted to combine bizarre performance art with high culture: "I shall now eat a rubber tire to the music of ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’…music, maestro!" Another famous performance is best summed up by his quote, "I shall now defuse this highly explosive bomb while simultaneously, and at the same time, reciting from the works of Percy Byshee Shelley." Other acts include dancing "Top Hat" in a vat of oatmeal, hypnotizing chickens, and being hammered feet first into a railway tie by two American Gladiators on Muppets Tonight.

Read more

Gonzo walks the high trapeze line between high art and absurdist entertainment. His offstage antics (love affairs with Madeleine Kahn, a cow and several chickens) and troubled past (his mother died before he was born) add a touch of pathos to his character which Fozzie the Bear lacks.

I am strolling down Memory Lane without a single thing to remember.
I am strolling down Memory Lane without even a dying ember.
Some folks remember their mothers and others their girlfriends behind.
But I am strolling down Memory Lane without a ding-dong thing on my mind.

See one of my favorites here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE3KNaxijaQ

This song was written by Abe Burrows with more vulgar lyrics. You can read a 1946 article about Abe in Time here.

I am a recovering English Lit major. For four years I was subjected to deconstructions, symbolism, and social criticism in which every book was a Da Vinci Code to be deciphered but not read for enjoyment. English Lit classes asked all the wrong questions and studied all the wrong books. No one ever stopped to wonder why As I Lay Dying is such a boring book and Grapes Of Wrath is such a good one. I’m sure it’s different now. But when I was at the University of Oregon, books were not entertainment but encrypted tracts of feminism, Marxism and whatever. We had to dig behind the obscure and arcane language of Shakespeare and Alice Walker and convince ourselves how amazing they were.

Which brings me to Barbara Kingsolver. I have read Kingsolver in reverse. My first taste was The Poisonwood Bible, which is almost universally loved by missionaries because of, not despite, its unflattering picture of a Fundamentalist Baptist family self-destructing under the hot sun of Africa. If Poisonwood errs it is because it drags in the latter half of the book trying to live up to its literary ambitions (switching perspectives and first-person narration also hamper the author). Two weeks ago at the beach I read Pigs In Heaven not realizing it was the sequel to The Bean Trees which I had also brought with me. It was a happy accident because Pigs is the sweet spot between the freshman effort of The Bean Trees and the more pretentious Poisonwood. I laughed all weekend long sometimes because of the humor but more often with joy over Kingsolver’s sublime metaphors. I felt like the fly who had switched from a diet of vinegar to honey. Kingsolver seduces her readers with her prose, her characterization and her firm hand on the dramatic arc of the novel form. The Bean Trees, a small book, is planted firmly on Aristotle’s Incline (see here for a brief description). She is thoroughly preoccupied with topics of social justice but she never brow-beats you and never forgets that the first responsibility of the artist is to entertain. If Kingsolver is decidedly feminist, her masculine contemporary might be Ivan Doig, a firmly masculine voice that is likewise saturated with location and dialect.

Related posts:

1. The mocker who died a saint
2. Read the Bible 4 times in a year
3. Mulange Mountain and Flame Trees

Related posts:

1. A corny story
2. Dinthi Day 8
3. God's Big Foot

I need a miracle. Lyrical and elusive.
Mirages and memories simply won’t do.
Proximate and intimate not ancient intangible.
In your face, before your eyes, mystic magic trick.

Supernatural sight and sound. Transformation. Trick of physics.
Not a happy correlation with fuzzy causality.
Not a happenstance parking space near the mall entrance.
I’d like some boom and whoosh, Ta-da and trumpets.

Where has gone the Spirit on the water?
Why no flames and mighty rushing wind?
Has the Spirit gone into hiding?
Ephemeral, intangible, internal, unverifiable?

Faced with the facts yet still so hopeful.
Praying and believing and thanking and seeing.
God’s hand in the chaos. Christ gigantic inhabiting the heart.
Chasing Bigfoot in the forest. Seeing ships fly in the stars.

Christians are crazy. Talking-to-the-invisible-rabbit kind of crazy.
I’d like to introduce you to my imaginary friend.
This joy-filled existence is a crazy miracle I believe in.
A spirit bursting with sweet fruit where death and dark held sway.

Related posts:

1. Dinthi Day 6
2. A trick for speeding up Yahoo! Mail: Y! Mail
3. Cyber-Psalm 17

7:6 Do not give what is holy to dogs or throw your pearls before pigs; otherwise they will trample them under their feet and turn around and tear you to pieces. ⁸

⁸ tn Or “otherwise the latter will trample them under their feet and the former will turn around and tear you to pieces.” This verse is sometimes understood as a chiasm of the pattern a-b-b-a, in which the first and last clauses belong together (“dogs…turn around and tear you to pieces”) and the second and third clauses belong together (“pigs…trample them under their feet”).

(Matthew 7:6, NET Bible)

What’s interesting to me about this verse is that the standard exegetical methods fail to help you understand or apply this passage.

1. Look at the immediate context

This doesn’t help for a couple of reasons. First, this is a section of Matthew in which a series of parables or sayings are strung together (like pearls) but only by the most tenuous thematic string. I fail to see how verse 6 is related to verses 1-5 or verses 7-12.

2. Look at parallel passages

There are none. None of the other evangelists include this saying.

3. Look at cross references

Possibly Matthew 15 could be considered a related passage. Possibly Luke 15 and the Prodigal Son. But there is no clear thematic tie to this passage anywhere in the Bible. 2 Peter has a clear collocation of pigs and dogs:

Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”

(2 Peter 2:22, NIV)

4. Dig into the Greek

Possibly there is something in the structure of the passage that indicates that it is connected to what precedes or follows it. Unfortunately, the section seems to be self-contained. If most translations, and in fact most Greek editions, have put verse six at the end of the preceding passage it is only because it clearly doesn’t make sense at the beginning of the next passage.

5. Historical context

Dogs and pigs are common props in the New Testament. They are unclean, scavengers and, metaphorically, dog is a pejorative term for non-Jewish peoples.

This verse is quoted in the late 1st century in the Didache:

But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs."

The Didache, Chapter 9

6. Commentaries

There’s a nice selection of older commentaries at Biblios.com: Matthew 7:6. But I’m not seeing anything very helpful there. At this point I would usually dig into some modern commentaries and tools like the IVP Bible Background Commentary. IVPBBC doesn’t have any thing to offer. Morris is likewise uncertain of the position of the verse in the context and it’s interpretation.

Morris does mention an interesting reference:

An interesting use is for the utterances of a great person: “The mouth that uttered pearls…” (Qidd. 39b).

7. Grasp at straws

1. Ask a child what it means
2. Google it on the Internet
3. Blog about it and hope someone comments with an insight
4. Admit you don’t know what it means (Very progressive and postmodern position, these days… )

So, I don’t know what to do with this verse. Any ideas?

Related posts:

1. Who knows whom in 1 Cor. 8:3
2. Grasshopper Greek: Getting Focused #1 (wide-angle)
3. Grasshopper Greek: Getting Focused #2 (telescope)

Chocas del Mar, near Nacala, Mozambique

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Even though the Gospels appear first in the New Testament they were actually composed after the epistles. There’s something counter-intuitive about this. Memories grow rosier over time. Saints become more saintly and flaws are suppressed. But here the opposite has happened. The epistles of Paul and Peter strongly affirm Jesus’ divinity and underplay his humanity. Then the Gospels come out and they do just the opposite.

I hear resonances of this in the Old Testament. Have you ever wondered why all the “saints of old” are painted in such a negative light? Abraham, a liar. Jacob, a deceiver. Moses, a reluctant and angry leader. David, a murderer and adulterer. Even in the New Testament the “hall of faith” might just as well be called the “hall of shame” or a rogue’s gallery. The genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke are quite the list of shady characters, loose women and blackguards. What’s going on here? Compare this to hagiographies during the Middle Ages where there is an atmosphere of tinsel and fairy tales that is far from the rough reality of the Bible.

Jesus was remarkable not for being a cardboard saint but for being a bad boy. He was a rebel and an outsider and his followers loved him for it. Jesus was the Che Guevara of his generation and he’s most potent as a counter-culture symbol of revolution not perfection.

Related posts:

1. Iconography Of The Gospels
2. Researchers make surprising discovery about the New Testament
3. Iconography Of The Gospels 3

Alas, Abigail disappeared soon after. But Dziwa lived for many years. Now Sunshine is the only one left and she lives a lonely existence out at the Croc farm. We’d like to have her nearer but she’s cranky and has a special fondness for biting children in school uniforms…

Sorry for this but I’m playing with photo galleries and discovered these pictures when looking for pictures of my Dad!

As for the story of the Hippo House, that will have to wait for another day.

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1. Sunshine Hippo
2. Dinthi Day 10
3. L'Amour on Love

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you and admire you.

Photos from January 2000

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2. But the most amazing thing to me is
3. Our house in the village

Here is a tentative list of songs. See if you can come up with some more:

1. The Brocs cry out
2. Lettuce go to the house of the Lord
3. Olive you is more than enough for olive me
4. Amazing Grapes

Related posts:

1. I Love The Lord!
2. Piece of mind
3. The Lord Is King

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

I’ve been tagged by several people for memes. Memes are what bloggers did before they had Facebook. But now they’re back.

The latest two I have received are:

1.

I can’t think of noblesse oblige without Bertie Wooster  coming to mind. And if I am some sort of nobility of the blogosphere I have inherited it and people keep me around like the embarrassing nephew  who is always besmirching the family name.

2. Books that influenced my reading of the Bible

I do want to respond to this second meme. I enjoyed reading the answers of others and their answers made me realize just what an uneducated bumpkin I am.

1. The Children’s Living Bible 

I saw this Bible recently on my kids’ bookshelf. It was my childhood Bible. Not one but two of my sisters had crossed my name out of the inside and put their own name in before I rescued it. The illustrations, the binding, everything about this edition, oozes God’s love for little children.

2. The CEV Contemporary English Version of the Bible

I know this is supposed to be a meme about books that have influenced my reading of the Bible not the Bible itself but for those who consider a translation a commentary on the Bible not the Bible itself this should come as no surprise. My a-ha moment was in reading this clear-as-living-water translation with my children and realizing that they were understanding God’s word in a way they never could when I read the NIV to them.

3. Better Bibles Blog

I loved the messy, noisy wide-open interaction of a blog where anyone could contribute rather than the exclusive btrans mailing list that I had previously followed. The diversity of contributors and especially commenters broadened my view of the Bible, leading to…

4. Bible bloggers

John Hobbins, Bob MacDonald, Iyov, Doug Chaplin, James McGrath and more continually shook my foundations. Only in writing and responding to these people did I begin to reconcile the disparity between my stated beliefs and my heart’s core and discover a reverence for God’s Word that transcends fundamentalism and infallibility.

5. African story-telling

Only in reading and hearing stories about Rabbit did I understand Jacob, the antihero. And it was in seeing history turned to myth sometimes within hours of an event did I begin to appreciate the Bible as literature rather than an apologetic collection of proof-texts.

Related posts:

1. Lost in the translation
2. A gold ring on the snout of a pig
3. Weird Worship is growing!!!

Glory, praise and thanks eternal.
Rescued from all foes infernal.
Ever thanking, ever praising.
Ever hallelujahs raising

High to heaven praises fly.
Here on earth praise fills the sky. 
Hoping though broken.
Guilty yet pardon spoken.

Loving fiercely through the hating.
Faith fading in the waiting.
All I’ve wrecked, God’s grace remaking.
Heavenly imagination in the making.

Glory bursts out from within.
Song of life redeemed from sin.
Glory all to shining king.
Song and life and tribute bring.

Related posts:

1. Cyber-Psalm 24
2. Cyber-Psalm 71
3. Cyber-Psalm 9.0