Lessons from a Back Porch in a Bad Neighborhood
I once stood on the back porch of a run-down home in a neighborhood your realtor wouldn’t even take you to. (Trust me.) I was the leader of an evangelistic outreach ministry, and I was with a college freshman I was mentoring. I wonder now if we were talking to a middle-aged prostitute... After many years of trying to understand, I never did fully grasp the world of that neighborhood. I’m sure I got laughed at for missing obvious cues. Anyway, one obvious fact I didn’t miss was that this woman...
A Vow Regarding the KJV
An online interlocutor with genuine intellectual acumen engaged me graciously but firmly on a recent post I wrote promoting the use of multiple Bible translations. He's essentially KJV-Only, though his professed allegiance is actually to Scrivener's Textus Receptus. He linked me to a lengthy bibliology statement by one Thomas Ross which he affirmed. To my knowledge, I have made two vows in my lifetime: 1) a vow to love my wife with the true love of delight (with all the attendant vows of a...
A Question about the New King James Version
A friend wrote me (and I have his permission to post this): I have a serious interest in using the NKJV as the ministry Bible of choice for our congregation. It corresponds to my textual preference for TR/MT/Byzantine tradition (though I appreciate good CT translations on a scale). And it provides a more relevant form of English expression, which motivates me greatly (which gains your empathy, I am sure!). Furthermore, the vast majority of our congregation would support such a change (a major...
Christian’s Dangerous Book
Reading can be dangerous because a good book never leaves you unchanged. That was certainly Christian’s experience in the famous story of his Progress away from his hometown, the City of Destruction, to the City of God, the Celestial City. Christian’s book was dangerous because it predicted the uncomfortable truth that his city would live up to its name. And Christian was certainly changed by his reading; he was terrified. “O, my dear wife,” said he, “and you the children of my bowels, I, your...
Scientific By-ends
“Scientists will often portray the Big Bang as if it were known fact, but it isn’t,” says Brian Clegg, a Cambridge-educated science writer. “It’s a theory within a very speculative field of science, cosmology, which is about as speculative as it gets. I’m not saying the Big Bang theory isn’t true, but it’s a work in progress.”[1] Time magazine asked Clegg, “What are some of the theory’s major flaws?” Clegg answered, “There’s an expectation that the Big Bang should have produced a rippling...