Worshipping the Version?

I've been seeing more churches using the label KJV-Only to describe themselves.

Publicizing which translation they use is neither an accident nor any inconsequential theological thing. In a world without standards or values, KJV-Onlys are adamant about proclaiming the KJV alone to be God's inerrant & inspired word.

In a nutshell, KJV-Onlys believe the KJV was divinely translated, and is thus a divine preservation of the original divine texts. All other translations are therefore imperfect and will inevitably corrupt readers (and churches) by misleading them with false doctrines.

"God has always given His word in just one language. The OT in Hebrew, the NT in Greek. When these two were put together, He chose English." -source

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If God truly chose English as the language for his word, well, does that mean every non-speaking person in the world won't be receiving God's word, a "real Bible," at all ... but merely a translation that's second best?

Was that what God intended by choosing the KJV?
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It's funny. Two different people can read the same KJV text yet still arrive at vastly different interpretations. Each person could cite the same verses to support their position ... and each person could argue themselves bluebook in the face that only their position was "literal and not an interpretation."

Just look at all the conflicting traditional religions around the world that describe themselves as Christian and identify themselves as Protestant or Baptist or Faithful-something else. They fight each other with one hand and preach KJV from the other. Each one is adamant the others got it all wrong ... and each one blows dust from the KJV's 400 year old pages into their brothers' eyes --- not to witness and win souls for Christ ... but to prove I'm Right.

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Does God really mean for believers to slam each other upside the head with each others' codices, flawed versions and translations to prove who's right?

No. Publicly announcing "We're a KJV-only church" on a church's outside translates to acting like "God likes us more and we're holier than you" on that church's inside.

And that translation of scripture is among the most flawed interpretations of all.

Mo' MoCap

OptiTrack Motion Capture Studio

Monday Morning Musings ...updated, photo

1. Black Thunder coughed & rolled to a stop on the church parking lot yesterday morning ... and subsequently died altogether on the Hanna parking lot. Seems like I got a factory recall letter last week about a camshaft sensor problem that might cause "the engine to suddenly stop in traffic with no warning." Hmmm.

2. Got to hang out a little bit with Brent Sears, Joe S., Ben, J. Folsom, David J and Ken yesterday afternoon.

3. I'm back to driving the Grouchmobile till Black Thunder gets back from the diesel doctor.

4. Seems like there was something else; I forget. Oh yeah, Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Chicago River dyed green for St. Patrick's Day.

Fantastic Finish

Lewis wins pole-to-pole victory in crash-marred Australian Grand Prix

Melbourne (dpa) - Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren-Mercedes on Sunday won a crash-marred Australian Grand Prix in which just seven of the 22 cars finished.

The race also saw three safety car phases.

Germany's Nick Heidfeld in a BMW-Sauber was second ahead of his compatriot Nico Rosberg in a Williams.

Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso in a Renault was fourth, while the second McLaren of Hekki Kovalainen finished fifth. Rubens Barrichello in a Toyota was sixth, ahead of Kazuki Nakajima in a Williams.

The next race is the Malaysian Grand Prix on 23 March in Kuala Lumpur.

-Bangkok Post

"Ferrari vowed to fight back after a chastening season-opening Australian Grand Prix failure with Lewis Hamilton and fierce rivals McLaren ruling the roost here on Sunday.

The Italian giants endured a disastrous start to their title defence with world champion Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa both failing to finish the 58-lap race in intense heat."

-afp

Ridin' Dirty

A few minutes of watching headline news this morning reminded me there's a presidential election coming in November ... and that some folks are ready to pull out all the stops to make sure their candidate gets elected.

Lots of those folks are ready to mix politics with their faith, too.

Over the past few weeks I've had believers from both sides of the political spectrum admonish me for not "getting involved" and/or supporting their candidate. Because now more than ever, the choice for believers seems so clear.

Each side argues the other is corrupt; each side argues the others' agenda is certain to ruin the country financially, culturally, morally and every way else; each side argues the others' candidate is selfish, deceitful, controlled by outside interests; each side seems to believe that believers can only support their candidate ... because clearly the other guy (or woman) is the worst sort of low-down awful sinner.

But I still haven't changed my mind: Politics is a dirty, dirty business.

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I doubt God spent last night pacing back and forth across Heaven worried that folks don't understand that the US presidential election is his biggest priority, or wishing more people would get out and vote, or wringing his hands about whether "his" candidate will ultimately win.

Our guy, and not some imperfect political candidate, will ultimately win ... and he won't need any stinkin' man-made election to do it.

Roberto Cavalli Tespi 380 S c.B5

The Snake Sunglasses


"The RC eyewear and shades has been taken in for a mysterious sensual and blinding woman. This critical womanhood can be related to that of the most recent RC eye glasses collection’s leitmotif: the snake, with sensuous bends adding true fascination to the collection. The snake, the icon of this tag and the motif of the collection, adds a distinguishing and exclusive element to the frames." - Roberto Cavalli online store

Wow ... right there in plain English, too.

Dr Mac & Dr John Rigby

Relaxed this morning at the range with Dr. Mac ... and a 416 Rigby.

If Christ had been here yesterday ....

I'm going back to the "Traditional Church" vs. "Contemporary Church" thing again.

OK, let's suppose Christ had lived here on earth yesterday. What would his church look like today?

Would stern-faced preachers complain that the "real" account of Christ's ministry won't exist until it's written in 400-year old English?

Would worship leaders race through music libraries, thumbing through 18th and 19th century compositions to find "real" music to set with "religious" themes?

And shoot, minarets and stained glass windows wouldn't even exist outside of mosques ... so what on earth would a "church" look like?

What's my point?

Christ never wore a suit and tie, sang to organ music or preached from behind a pulpit.

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I started off asking, "Suppose Christ had lived here on earth yesterday" because so many "traditional" churches act not only as though Christ had lived two thousand years ago ... but that he died 2000 years ago and the crucifixion ended the story.

So how do you worship if you believe Christ is alive today and with us right now?

If Christ is alive then why go backward a hundred years to find him inside a man-made Old Time tradition? Why act as though Christ spoke in an archaic language full of Thee's and Thou's? Why believe Christ only lives one day a week inside a man-made building with organ music, stained glass n' a steeple ... and that it's a requirement of your religion to keep him there?

Why go backwards in Christ?

Christ-like, or not?

7:37 AM

The other day I watched a youtube video recently posted by a preacher in Tempe, Arizona.

The preacher spent almost eight minutes criticizing a church he's never attended, and mocking and insulting people he's never met.

His ridicule was based on hearsay and upon his selective interpretation of cherry-picked video clips from the church's web site.

Stunned to learn that he defines a "liberal church" as one that has a "rock band" and uses the New International Version translation (instead of the KJV translation), I watched several other videos posted by the same pastor.

Some of the titles include "Joel Osteen Exposed," "The Old Fashioned Way," "The Truth and Sodomites" ... and "Why Billy Graham is Going to Hell."

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Whatever happened to "church" anyway?

The Apostle Paul never wore a suit n' tie, heard organ music, read from an Elizabethan or any other English translation of The Bible, went to Sunday School, attended Wednesday Night Prayer Meetings, sang all seven stanzas from a Victorian hymnal, formed a Steering Committee or visited a church with stained glass windows n' a steeple a single time in his life.

Not one time, ever.

But those traditions are what "church" is supposed to mean (never mind that stained glass windows and steeples were "borrowed" from Muslim architects, and that Modern English didn't even exist until the 16th century).

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This preacher continues, "When I was a teenager we went to these liberal churches where they have like a a rock band on stage and they have the NIV. Nobody ever got baptized. Nobody ever got saved."

After I finished watching his videos I went to this preacher's blog ... and read that as of November 2007, his church had baptized eleven people for the year.

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The only times I find Christ mentioned with either "mock," "insult" or "ridicule" is when the texts describe how the elders, Gentiles, chief priests, teachers of the law and Roman soldiers treated Christ during his trial and crucifixion.

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Rodomontade.

I'm not a Bible scholar or historian ... but it's hard to miss noticing pride and arrogance in the pulpit. Especially when a preacher steps back from the Gospel of Jesus Christ to inflate his own ego through mockery, insult and ridicule.

Or when a preacher's words glorify self-righteousness and embrace man-made rules and traditions ... instead of the Holy Spirit.

No assembly required

"Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity."
-1 Timothy 5:1-2

Would YOU wanna be Carlos Slim?

OK maybe that's an unfair & misleading question. Chances are you're like me, and don't even know who Carlos Slim is.

So be patient & let me try again:


Who would you rather be: Bill Gates, or Carlos Slim Helú?

Hint: Carlos is the second "richest" man in the world. Bill Gates is #3.

J. Peterman's blog?

Peterman's Eye
"daily brief for curious minds"

Thar be monsters ahead

I anchored out at Horseshoe Island this weekend. Things looked foggy Monday morning when time came to head back in.

Then the fog rolled in.

Calypso has GPS; lake monsters, not so much.

OK so I stole this ...

... from a site Ken mentioned over at AVCLUB.

It's quizzes like this one that make me stop & look at kids in a completely new & terrified way. Wow. Swarm-combat counts for lots. Yikes.

19

Sounds like the wind

Travis Barker

More here.

one day I'll find a perfect church filled with people who think just like I do

Oh sure I may have to wait till I get to Heaven ... where everybody's perfect.



But then, what if everybody started pointing & asking, "What's he doing here?"

I'm just glad salvation isn't based on good works, committees, campaign pledges, voting ... or majority decisions of any kind.

Be successful!

I like these quotes a lot:

"Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time."

"An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied. "

"Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope."

"Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance."

"Improvement begins with I."

-Arnold H. Glasow

The Romance of Senseless Waste & Tragedy

Spoiler Alert: The potato seeds weren't poisonous

Back in August of last year I mentioned John Krakauer's book Into the Wild and urged you to read it.

"What would possess a gifted young man recently graduated from college to literally walk away from his life? Noted outdoor writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer tackles that question in his reporting on Chris McCandless, whose emaciated body was found in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992." - from Amazon.com

In a nutshell, Krakauer "saw in the cross-continent wanderings of [Chris] McCandless and his final, tragic Alaska death the footprints of 'the grip the wilderness has on American imagination, the allure high-risk activities hold for young men of a certain mind, the complicated, highly charged bond that exists between fathers and sons.'” - source

Wednesday I watched Sean Penn's film version on DVD.


The film portrayed Chris McCandless as a heroic figure and, according to Wikipedia, "By 2002, the abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail where McCandless camped had become a tourist destination."

But film-making is an art ... and the necromancer's craft, like story-telling and schizophrenia, often has little to do with the thorny issue of Real Life:

"Unlike Krakauer and many readers of his book, who have a largely sympathetic view of McCandless, some Alaskans have negative views of both McCandless and those who romanticize his fate. Because he had no maps, McCandless was unaware that a hand-operated tram crossed the impassible river only 6 miles from the Stampede Trail. There were also cabins stocked with emergency supplies within a few miles of the bus, although they had been vandalized and all the supplies were spoiled, possibly by McCandless himself, as detailed in Lamothe's documentary.

"Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: 'I am exposed continually to what I will call the ‘McCandless Phenomenon.’ People, nearly always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are practically nonexistent […]

"When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he [had] had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament […] Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.” [emphasis added]

"Judith Kleinfeld wrote in the Anchorage Daily News that 'many Alaskans react with rage to his stupidity. You'd have to be a complete idiot, they say, to die of starvation in summer 20 miles off the Park's Highway.'" -quoted text passages sourced here


His body was found in his sleeping bag inside the bus, weighing just 67 pounds.

Renouncing Christ

The church we went to when I was a kid had regularly-scheduled annual Revivals.

A Revival meant going to church every night of the week ... and that meant missing just about everything on TV for that week (no VCRs in those days).

But it was usually during Revivals that we heard the most harrowing tales of how others had suffered for Christ. Stories of Christians who'd been persecuted, tortured and murdered rather than renounce their faith in Christ.

Revival messages often left us tearfully challenged, "What would you do? If you had to make the decision, would you deny Christ to save your life? Or would you put yourself aside, and die for him instead?"

Of course none of us hopes to ever be put to such a transcendent test, and merely pondering the possibility of having to make such a choice leaves us feeling queasy.

Shoot, we don't need to be persecuted or confronted to know where we stand ... because we already know how much easier it is to deny Christ than it is to deny ourselves.

Like when facing the choice of denying ourselves, or denying Christ so we can:

- get the raise or promotion we covet
- lie to avoid the consequences of our actions
- church-shop till we find one promising to soothe every need
- pursue a romantic interest or relationship
- seek ambition, wealth, or popularity
- avoid creating friction or inconvenience in our hectic "lifestyles"

"Jesus replied, 'If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.'" - John 14:23

"Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.'" - Luke 9:23

BassMaster Reflection