Age 23, in the Navy, in Japan, following Jesus wherever he leads. This is an undetailed chronicle of the journey.
{ Monthly Archives }
If you’re subscribing to Americable out here in Japan (or wherever), you’ll definitely want to hit up Fewl’s latest post, where Jim investigates exactly who owns the company and what they’ve been up to. For one, they’re not owned by the government. Second, they’re ripping you off.
Now that I’ve read this, where would I really want to acquire an ecclesiastical endorsement?
Public overreaction to drills with fake rifles are nothing new on college campuses. In my four years of college, I saw enough incidents ranging from temporary confiscation by police officers who didn’t know the policy all the way to a Gunnery Sergeant having his NCO sword confiscated. But they never took the program down. Good gravy.
I only changed the address of this blog like…two days ago?…and already I have a link from a major blog. Interesting.
The more major news on that blog, however, is the ESV Study Bible, which is said to be scheduled for an October 2008 release. Their blog has a good list of blog posts regarding the recent website launch. Unfortunately, I have to say that I’m personally more skeptical of this effort than I was about the Literary Study Bible.
I definitely relate to Richard’s comment at the Boar’s Head Tavern:
I think if you have more editorial words than actual bible text you don’t have a Bible anymore but a commentary. A commentary which (Matthew is correct) seeks to promote a Reformed perspective. Nothing wrong with that but perhaps it should be pointed out.
I’m still trying to understand the whole Calvinism / Arminianism divide. You’d definitely be able to tell that if you’ve seen my latest purchase lists from Amazon.com. For Calvinists, there’s already the Reformation Study Bible with R. C. Sproul at the conn.
What is this junk about people needing a study bible from “one’s own tradition” anyhow? Shouldn’t we be open to whatever God wants to communicate through the Word? And do such commentaries possibly take away from the Word? If I want commentary, I’ll read another book.
Meanwhile, I did finally receive an audio ESV the other day when we finally received some mail. This is also very much a blessing.
ADDITION: If they’re able to illustrate Solomon’s temple, how will they illustrate pre-Moses events which remain in theological or archaeological dispute as related to new-earth creationism vs. evolution, and variants thereof? Are we in for illustrations of the Garden of Eden or Noah’s Ark? (As a matter of record, I’m an evolutionist.)
PurityPeople has announced that the full site will be up and running May 1st. This is very good news. Being an “insider” and author on the site, I’ve been given a sneak preview of what it’s going to look like. They created a completely unique Joomla template for it. Very good looking.
Given the ship’s restrictions on posting on personal pages while underway, the site also serves as a proxy to my posting things on the Internet, which is nice to have. The plan earlier was to have stuff written for regular release through underway periods, but that hasn’t really come to pass as I had planned.
I’m hearing words across numerous sources that American Idol had some sort of event when the contestants sung “Shout to the Lord.” Something made mention of a Dolly Parton relation or something.
Do I sound like I never watch television? Good, I’m not putting forward any false fronts.
Worship Matters and Josh Harris have put forward some very good analysis of the whole thing. I only wanted to put in a couple of personal cents into the matter.
Seventh grade was when I really started to read the Bible. I was entering my third year living in Hawaii, and my parents did not want to send me to a public school. Complicating that was that my Dad was very Catholic at the time and didn’t want to send me to a Protestant school. His priest even warned him that the school would turn me into a Protestant. He was right.
And while overall I did learn much from the Bible, the baggage included very unhealthy views in regards to anti-Catholicism, drinking, smoking, relationships, witnessing, CCM, etc. The vast majority of the teachers were recruited out of Bob Jones University. Knowing that alone, I probably won’t ever send my kids there. I still am a Protestant, mind you.
That CCM part utterly confused one of my female friends over there. I won’t mention her name, but I do hope she reads this. Her position was that as long as the lyrics glorify God, what’s all the opposition for? Ultimately, the school would only permit hymns, despite that the band had been practicing secular music. Mixing faith and “rock music” was not morally right. I, of course, in my militaristic followership, didn’t back her up. She would bring this up often in her justifiable utter confusion.
Accordingly, it seemed rebellious, almost wrong, when another open mic day came, and the entire student body of the campus’ intermediate (junior high) and high schools assembled in the auditorium. They always called me “future pastor” because I was able to put out a long message on the fly. Three of my female friends got up there and sung “Shout to the Lord” a capella.
I don’t think they got in trouble, and I didn’t really have anything against the song, but it seemed so modern. That just wasn’t what we did around there.
Fast-forward to 2007, and the World Wide Web, previously the domain dominated by Netscape 2.0, was now in full Web 2.0 mode. I started finding many of these old friends on Facebook, hoping to reconnect. As I typed in this particular female friend’s name, a group (not a profile) popped up. Why is that? I had apparently been paying to little attention to popular media to notice that someone of her name had been a finalist on American Idol. The pictures were too small to really tell it was her. I clicked the link over to Wikipedia, and it was definitely her. Things have changed, certainly.
There’s no telling whether she’s following the Lord at this point in her life, and that certainly doesn’t make her alone among kids raised as Christians, but perhaps having “Shout to the Lord” on American Idol was a way of calling her and others back, at minimum to that memory.
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!Praise the Lord!
-Psalm 150 (ESV