νόες σχεδίων

Durmiendo

2012-01-04T12:06:00.002-06:00

Νόες σχεδίων is hibernating until further notice. Life is busy.

IETester: Finding the pitfalls of Internet Explorer

2011-11-02T12:22:00.000-06:00

I just came across a wonderful tool that needs to be shared. IETester is a benevolent program that allows developers to view a webpage in all extant versions of the world's worst browser simultaneously (and without having to install several Virtual PC's on your computer). It's free, and relatively compact - 110 MB when fully installed.

By clicking on the IE options in the big red box, you can choose in which version of IE you'd like to view a webpage. The address bar is found in the little red box.

If you have to work with Internet Explorer as much as I do, I think you'll find this to be a very helpful tool.

A Prayer for Guidance

2011-10-13T07:26:00.000-06:00

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being.
Guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares
and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may
remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(BAS, A Prayer for Guidance, 130)

iframes CAN have 100% height

2011-09-20T17:01:00.001-06:00

I made a handy find the other day: a simple script that allows your iframe to expand to 100% of the page. This is currently impossible with CSS, but with a few lines of javascript, when you shout, "Expand!", your iframe will ask, "How high?!"
I found this script at: http://www.activewidgets.com/javascript.forum.10948.6/is-there-any-way-to.html

<script language="JavaScript">
 <!--
function resize_iframe()
{
	document.getElementById("info").innerHTML='iframe offsetTop: <b> '+document.getElementById("glu").offsetTop+"</b><br>body.offsetHeight:<b>"+document.body.offsetHeight+"</b>";//display some information on the screen
 
	var height=window.innerWidth;//Firefox
	if (document.body.clientHeight)
	{
		height=document.body.clientHeight;//IE
	}
 
	document.getElementById("glu").style.height=parseInt(height-document.getElementById("glu").offsetTop-8)+"px";//resize the iframe according to the size of the window
	//document.getElementById("glu").height=document.body.offsetHeight-document.getElementById("glu").offsetTop-26;
}
 
/*
	//Here is another way to define the function (this function reloads the page whenever the user resizes the page)
	window.onresize=
	function (e) 
	{
		location.reload();
	};
*/
 
window.onresize=resize_iframe; //instead of using this you can use: <body onresize="resize_iframe()">
//-->
</script>

I wanted my iframed page to appear to take up the entire page without displaying scrollbars of its own. The script on its own was displaying secondary scrollbars, but with a little CSS, I was able to get rid of them, leaving only one scrollbar:

<style type="text/css">
*, html, body {width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0; padding: 0;}
body {width: 100%; overflow: hidden;}
#glu {border: 0;}
</style>

Here is the iframe code you need:

<iframe src="YOUR_WEBPAGE_URL" frameborder="0" id="glu" onload="resize_iframe()" scrolling="auto" width="100%"></iframe>

And presto! You will have an iframe that takes up the entire window, which will resize to your browser window's size.

Demo: http://lukejohnson.ca/code/iframe-100-height.php

Anglican Liturgical Calendar PHP Script

2011-07-29T20:15:00.003-06:00

For any Anglican webmasters out there, this is a great find! A PHP script that determines which day it is on the liturgical calendar (of the Church of England). It can be placed within any tag. The author has it set in h3 tags, which can be formatted easily with CSS however you wish.

Kudos to Don C. Warrington, https://www.vulcanhammer.org/anglican-calendar-script/

View code here: http://phpscripts4u.com/calendars/php-anglican-calendar-script/

"Berrying" Jesus

2011-07-26T23:48:00.003-06:00

Here is a grammatical quandary for you:

Why is "buried" or "bury" so often pronounced as "berried" or "berry"? This is a very irregular pronunciation of the English "u". It would be odd to say, "I like Sehbway sandwiches," or, "The good, the bad, and the 'ehgly'".

Similarly spelled English words follow the normal pronunciation of "u", such as "hurry" (which, at least in colloquial speech, actually sounds a little more like "er" as in "her"). I'd even accept "uh" as in "up" or "oo" as in "rude". But this "eh" pronunciation is just a little unnatural.

This comes to mind every Sunday as we recite the Apostles' Creed, and I hear 80-some voices say, "He was crucified, died, and was 'berried'", as if somehow Jesus was made berry-like after death, or trounced by a horde of berries (just like a mob "mobs" somebody).

If there is a grammatical guru out there with an explanation, I'm all ears!

UPDATE:

Dr. Rhoda Cairns, English professor at Briercrest, kindly set me straight:

I'm not a phonetics expert by any means, but the OED gives the pronunciation of "bury" thus: /ˈbɛrɪ/. According to one elaborate phonetic chart I found, the symbol for the "u" is pronounced as a short "e," as in "eh" and "head." If the symbol were flipped horizontally, then the pronunciation *would* be the "er" sound, as in "urge" and "heard." So it is perfectly correct to "berry" Jesus, as far as I can ascertain. There is an obsolete English noun,"bury," that comes from the Old English word "burh"; the OED definition is "manor house or large farm." So you could "bury" ("berry") Jesus on a "bury."

It's Time to Dance!

2011-06-30T10:03:00.002-06:00

I have the most wonderful news! Briercrest is now offering a new degree in the Seminary, and it makes my spine tingle. What is it, you ask?

MA Biblical Languages and Exegesis
Download the program sheet. Do it.

Let the heavens rejoice!
Let the students be glad (and enroll)!

Cars, Cares, and χάρις (charis)

2011-06-22T20:54:00.002-06:00

Our car died on Friday. More accurately, our car experienced catastrophic engine failure which ultimately rendered the car useless. Upsetting news? Well, for the first five minutes or so it was, until I felt an odd sensation of relief. Sure, it's a pain to be without a car in Caronport. But the car is 21 years old, fraught with parts soon to be in need of attention. So, when I told my wife, "The car's dead," I was able say it with a laugh. "That's the last dollar I'll ever spend on that old thing!"

Being car-less has made me think about the attention I give to the stuff I own. Being a North American is expensive. I often find myself hating money. First it's expensive to buy something like a TV or computer or car, but then more money has to be spent to protect the stuff, which is ongoing in case anything ever happens to it. First-world civilization tells us that we need a lot of things to live properly: like couches, kitchen appliances, computers, phones, decorations, bookshelves, sporting equipment, entertainment electronics . . . It turns out that the more stuff you have, the more you're weighed down. Have you ever moved? Nothing indicates how much stuff you have as moving it all from the house to a truck (several times) into another house. It takes a lot of stuff to live in Canada.

I can appreciate a story told by one of my Seminary professors. Dr. Marty Culy had traveled to Thailand (for ministry or work I can't remember), and was shown hospitality by a happy older couple who lived out in the jungle. When he arrived at their 'house', which was a platform with no walls and no possessions to speak of, they greeted him warmly, and immediately began a half-hour search for a cup so that they could serve him water. The ancient Spartans' living arrangements must have looked like Buckingham Palace in comparison. Put a North American in that jungle house, and it would instantly be regarded as intolerable poverty. But this jungle couple were incredibly honored to have a guest, and remained permanently, inexplicably happy. Their poverty had nothing to do with their happiness. They trusted the Lord for everything. They lived to serve Jesus, and had no care for bolstering their financial portfolio, or for establishing some kind of financial stability. I think about that couple from time to time whenever I look around at our apartment and realize how very rich we are.

Now, I'm not intending to follow suite... I'm quite certain that one winter in Caronport on a platform without walls would not be 'intolerable poverty', but certain death. It might be easier to get by with little in a place where it's always warm, but the tractor beam of the lust of wealth draws warm-climated folk as much as the colder kind. I know I'm guilty of it. I'm a web developer. I like shiny devices that do fun things. But losing a car is a healthy reminder of the place wealth needs to hold in my life. Things are just things. They don't hold any promise. Neither Jesus nor Paul said anything like, "You are justified by wealth, but stuff alone." So why do I act like that? Why do I think of things I could buy, and look for jobs that pay well, and plan for the future with my fancy spreadsheets?

Well, that's the irony I suppose. Just like my doomed car, I too am fraught with parts that need attention, and am destined for the wrecking yard. But unlike my doomed car, I'm not doomed. Luckily I have a Redeemer who is willing to fit me for a new engine, and fix the rusty exterior, and realign my tires . . .

And the only proper response is one I've repeated often as a new Anglican:

"Thanks be to God."

Things I Learned at Prairie Dev Con 2011

2011-06-15T09:24:00.002-06:00

I attended Prairie Development Conference this year in Regina. It definitely qualifies as a "hoot". 167 programmers, web developers, and nerds were in attendance. Here is what I learned:

It's cool to use Twitter to ask questions during class sessions.
The quirky, quasi-antisocial stereotype of techies actually exists. (e.g., Don't ask two guys who happen to look alike if they are brothers...)
I am a "web dev".
Programmers love chicken wings.
HTML5 is the miracle the web has been praying for.
There are other people out there like me who think that talking about code is fun.
Microsoft might be a big scary monster, but it can also be helpful, and even innovative. (The folks at Microsoft are investing millions of dollars into developing HTML5. Needless to say, this "web dev" is happy.)
According to David Alpert, our front-to-back approach to web planning gets an A+. (Don't start with databases; they only store data, not feelings. Always design with the end user in mind.)
In the world of web development, I'm still very much a padawan. As much as I've learned, I'm still just a Marshwiggle wandering in the Wild Lands of the North.

Confirmation

2011-05-23T18:02:00.001-06:00

At church this weekend my wife and I (and three friends) celebrated our confirmation. It was a really great service. We have such wonderful leaders in the Diocese of Qu'Applle. Our priest, Fr. Allen Doerksen, has been such a formative influence for my wife and I throughout these past 12 months of exploration. And this area is very fortunate to have the very wise (and hilarious) Bishop Gregory at the helm.

It's interesting that after growing up in free-church traditions, such as Mennonite Brethren and Christian & Missionary Alliance, I've really come to feel at home in an Anglican context. Liturgy has a way of gluing itself to your bones. Once it's in you, it's there to stay.

A few funny moments from the morning:

At our rehearsal before the service, we were up at the front, reading through the confirmation liturgy with the Bishop, and I realized I had accidentally turned to the "Ordination of Bishops" section. Woops! A little ahead of myself... I got that straightened out before "showtime"...

Also, after the service concluded, a sweet old lady came over to me, shook my hand and said, "Welcome to the club!" I love old people! They are an inspiring bunch, those who have remained committed to their faith for almost as many decades as there are seasons of Smallville! What better "club" to be part of than one full of these kinds of folks!

During the Bishop's sermon, he noted that "the Church is always one generation away from extinction." One elderly man told us, "It can be discouraging to imagine what will become of the church in the next generation, but when I see young people like you doing this [becoming confirmed], I'm filled with hope."

I doubt I'll ever sign up for ordained ministry, but I'm definitely in for the lay-person long-haul. I'm excited by the need for leadership in the church today, and the great challenges that are sure to come.

It's a good day to be Anglican!

The Expiry Date of the Universe: Saturday?

2011-05-16T22:05:00.003-06:00

Have you heard the news? It looks like in less than 100 hours, we're rocketing off this little troublesome ball while the rest of the world deals with scorpions, plagues, and wrath. So, I guess I won't need to pay the rest of my seminary bill, and pressure's off at work: I won't have to finish coding Briercrest's new website after all! What a relief!

I've been following/enjoying a bit of the "May 21/Judgment Day" stuff online. The eisegesis employed is simultaneously horrifying and downright entertaining. This is the magic of ahistorical interpretation. As I've been reading through eBibleFellowship's carefully crafted bulletin, two questions come to mind: 1) Why does this keep happening? 2) What should we do about it?

The first is easier to answer. These sorts of groups have made these sorts of statements for centuries. But the real problem is improper focus. Jesus said quite clearly in both Mark and Matthew that "about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son; only the Father" (Matt 24:36; Mark 13:32). Our time and energy is not best spent upon deciphering when it's all over. (Nor is it best spent arguing over how we got here.) It's simply something we cannot, and will not, figure out. Only the Father decides when he will wrap up history and fulfill the promises he has made throughout time.

It's important to realize that we, as Christ's followers, are an eschatological people. We're supposed to live with our eyes on the horizon, always expecting Jesus' return. However, that constant watching is supposed to inspire our living, not our leaving. The constant frenzy to determine the expiry date on the universe takes our focus from living lives that mirror Jesus' mission, and replace our dreams with those of escapism. There is real work to be done in the world. The Kingdom is here. That should cause us to rejoice, not to look up in the sky and wish the Enterprise could beam us away.

So then, this brings us to the second question. What should we do with people who cling to this sort of interpretation? Well, there are obvious things we can do, like offer solid teaching, and coming along side them as confused, unfortunate people.

But is that all?

I think I have a constructive, effective solution. Those who are committed to this Saturday's Judgment should be allowed to enjoy it. Why not? Furthermore -- this is the meat of it -- since they will likely also assume that they will be leaving the Earth this weekend, they should be allowed to do so.

How?

Well, Endeavor already left, so that won't work...

I was thinking of a more earth-bound solution. I think a good way to discourage this kind of irresponsible eisegesis is to cancel all their earthly identification. Credit cards, driver's licenses, health cards, house deeds, passports, etc... If leaving is what they want, then this method will be quite effective. Truly, they won't be citizens of this world any longer.

Additionally, I think this might also help with rebuilding their lives after the disappointment of May 22 hits. Without ID or homes, they'll be free to move where they please and become whoever they want -- to truly start over, which might be an attractive option, given the embarrassment of returning to work on Monday morning... So really, this is a merciful, redemptive option.

An Epic End to a Super Story

2011-05-14T15:35:00.004-06:00

After 10 seasons and 218 episodes, Smallville finally came to a close last night. That's roughly 165 hours total - almost enough to watch 24 hours a day for a week straight.

As sad as I am to see the show wrap up, I'm happy that after 10 years, the producers of Smallville were able to end it so well. Not many shows last a decade; not many shows should. But Smallville's strong plot and well-developed characters enabled a good idea to become not only a great show, but a worthy contribution to the larger legacy of the Superman mythos.

I think Smallville's success can be chalked up to the producers' and writers' motivation in the creation of each week's episode. In an interview promoting season 8 of Smallville, executive producers Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders said they considered their job well done if their viewers were left thinking, "I want to be like Clark Kent."

A show based on the early life of Superman is fun to watch. It's got to be one of the most wholesome, inspiring hero stories around. And, since Smallville inevitably points toward Clark Kent donning the cape, the end is in sight from the beginning; from the very first episode, the conclusion is sure. The fun is in watching all the struggles and triumphs that shape Clark along the way.

I could say more, but I'd rather that you just go and watch it for yourself. It's fun, it's charming, and now it's over.

Challenging Words at the Royal Wedding

2011-05-01T15:42:00.002-06:00

I'm a big fan of clergy who assertively speak their minds within our increasingly relativistic culture. Two of the clergy who spoke at the Royal wedding, Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Cantebury) and Richard Chartres (Lord Bishop of London and Dean of Her Majesty's Chapels Royal), made strong statements about marriage and the place God holds in people's lives.

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable

Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury,

Primate of All England and Metropolitan

The Archbishop said this directly before leading the couple through their vows:

"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's word doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their matrimony lawful."

The Right Reverend and Right Honourable

Dr Richard Chartres KCVO,

Lord Bishop of London and

Dean of Her Majesty's Chapels Royal

Next, the Lord Bishop of London, who gave the homily, said this about marriage and God's place in the lives of Western people:

"As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We're all incomplete. We all need the love which is secure rather than oppressive. We all need mutual forgiveness in order to thrive. But as we move toward our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us, and can increasingly fill our lives with light. And this leads on to a family life, which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can receive and exchange those gifts, which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit whose fruits are love and joy and peace."

Good and challenging words.

(via http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/royal-wedding/8479433/Royal-wedding-the-Order-of-Service-in-full.html)

Royalty

2011-04-30T12:53:00.000-06:00

As a good colonist and enthusiastic Anglican, I was excited to watch the Royal wedding yesterday. What really struck me was what all of this meant for Kate Middleton, HRH Duchess of Cambridge.

She grew up as, more or less, a "regular" person. She just happened to attend the same university as the future king. I wonder if she ever imagined that she would be Queen one day? Or that her children will be heirs to the British crown?

With that in mind, I can't help thinking about the (perhaps obvious) parallel to our destiny in Christ. We are joint heirs with him (Rom 8:17). In the very same way that HRH became royalty by being the bride of an heir to the throne, so will we be presented as the bride of Christ, and thus will be "royalty" by our marriage to Christ (Rev 21:2,9).

And while we wait for Christ's return as King, we speak and act as joint heirs with him, grafted into royal life with Jesus through the mercy of his cross.

Congratulations, Grads!

2011-04-21T17:11:00.001-06:00

Please, browse responsibly: Drop Internet Explorer!

2011-03-23T17:20:00.003-06:00

This isn't me, but I certainly made this face today...

This is a service announcement from your local webmaster. I have been fighting browser wars today, and must take a moment to make an earnest plea.

Do you use Internet Explorer? Many people still do. Web statistics show that more than 40% of people on the internet use some version of IE. The primary reason is that Internet Explorer comes pre-installed on your Windows PC. This is how the sneaky bandit named Bill Gates tricks unsuspecting people into using poorly made, truly frustrating software.

This is my plea:
Stop using Internet Explorer and, please, download anything else!

Nowadays, there are a plethora of better options.

Mozilla Firefox has been around for a while now, and just released Firefox 4 this past week. It's great. I love it. It's my primary browser. It offers thousands of add-ons to make your browser into a superhero of the internet.
Download it here.

Google Chrome is also a good one. It's faster than Firefox, and insanely faster than Internet Explorer... Chrome is solid and blissfully simple. The latest version, Chrome 10, is great, fast, and fun.
Download it here.

Safari is another solid choice. It's an Apple product. It's not as fast as Chrome, but like Firefox, Safari has thousands of add-ons to make your browser do whatever you want. It's reliable, clean, and speedy.
Download it here.

Opera is less well-known, but it is built on a similar engine to Chrome. It offers all the speed and user-friendliness of Chrome.
Download it here.

You might be asking by now, "Why all this fuss?" Well, it's very simple:

Modern browsers follow web standards, but Internet Explorer does not.

The internet is very young. It's only been around since the mid-80's. In the past 20 years or so, the internet has matured very quickly. We use web standards now in the construction of websites. These standards are very important because if every browser follows the standards, then the internet stays a happy, properly structured, safe, and pretty place to play.

The reason why I'm cyber-bullying Internet Explorer is because it refuses to follow web standards (HTML5/CSS3). Try as they might, Microsoft just can't put a decent version together. Even the latest version, Internet Explorer 9, fails miserably. Sure, it picks up on a few things that earlier versions didn't, but it is still a horrible browser, and a bad waste of your harddrive space (and sanity).

The only way that Microsoft will change its evil ways is if upstanding citizens, such as yourself, choose to throw off the IE chains that bind you, and embrace a much better way to view the web. (And you'll be making my job easier.)

Please, browse responsibly.

Notepad++ inactive tab-color fix

2011-03-17T14:37:00.004-06:00

If you use Notepad++ as your primary source code editor, you might share my annoyance with the background color of inactive tabs. (The default color makes the inactive tab titles very hard to read.) Even more annoying is that when a person tries to edit the colors by going to Settings / Style Configurator, the changes don't stick. Here's a handy fix:

The file you need to alter is stylers.xml, which in Windows 7 is found in: C:\\Users\[your user file]\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\stylers.xml.

Right at the bottom of the document, the very last WidgetStyle, is the following:

WidgetStyle name="Inactive tabs" styleID="0" fgColor="555555" bgColor="f0f0f0" 

I've already changed the hex colors to what I like. The fgColor controls the text color ("foreground"), and the bgColor controls the background color. Set those however you like, restart your code editor, and you should be in business!

via: Sourceforge bug support

Mot and an Overreading of "Starship Mine"

2011-03-03T23:17:00.003-06:00

Exegesis is a funny thing. To misquote the apostle Paul, exegesis infiltrates the mind like "a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough" (1 Cor 5:6). My life, and television-viewing for that matter, has never been the same since I've become a student of biblical exegesis. For the most part, as it pertains to TV, an interest in interpretation and narratology has been very fruitful, resulting in greater engagement with plots and character development.

Sometimes, however, I "find" things the writers didn't intend...

I was recently inspired by a friend to stroll again through the memorable seasons of Star Trek: the Next Generation. In the episode "Starship Mine" the Enterprise is taken over by a group of bandits who are after some of the ship's propulsion components, which they attempt to steal while the ship's crew is on "shore leave", on a starbase. Only Cpt. Picard remains on board, unnoticed by the bandits.

When Picard is discovered, they demand to know his name, and he answers, "Mot. My name is Mot. I'm the barber." It makes sense for Picard to give a false name, because it's fairly evident that, should the bandits learn he is the captain, they will kill him. But what comes next caused my exegetical ears to perk up.

As the episode proceeds, Picard kills most of the bandit crew. Picard uses an uncharacteristic amount of lethal force in this episode. Picard is a diplomat, usually relying on his ace negotiating skills to to diffuse a tense situation.

The combination of his stated name, "Mot," and the great amount of death Picard causes got me thinking, "Do the writers of Star Trek know Ancient Near Eastern mythology?!"

In ANE mythology (which includes the Old Testament), "death" or מות (mōt) is personified, and often functions in stories and poetry as a character. Since Picard took the name of "Mot", or "Death," I naturally became very intrigued with the writers' apparent mythological prowess. Since Star Trek: the Next Generation already makes frequent reference to Greek mythology, and since Picard is always telling Commander Riker, "You should really read more history," a further reference to Ancient Near Eastern mythology didn't seem like too far of a stretch.

Mot the Barber

That is... until I watched through several more episodes and found out that there actually is a barber on the Enterprise named Mot...

So, rather than expertly perceiving a subtle allusion to מות, I had rather unintentionally performed a classic case of 'eisegesis'; I had read an obscure mythological reference into the story. Sorry, Mr. Mot. I had you all wrong.

The Heart of Ezekiel 11

2011-02-28T20:28:00.003-06:00

Yahweh makes an amazing, and well-known, promise to Israel in Ezekiel 11: He promises to return them from exile and to “remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezek 11:19). Whenever I have read this passage or heard it preached, I’ve usually understood Ezekiel’s contrast to have been based on the physical qualities (softness/hardness; warmth/coldness) of “flesh” versus “stone.”

While their physical qualities are likely in the background, an interpretation more sensitive to Ezekiel’s use of language places the focus upon the contrast between the worship of Yahweh and that of Israel’s detestable idols. Earlier in Ezekiel, the rebellious idol-worshippers are described as having foreheads “like the hardest stone, harder than flint” (Ezek 3:9). They are people whose “adulterous hearts” have turned away from Yahweh, and whose eyes have “lusted after their idols” (Ezek 6:9). The connection between a “forehead as hard as stone” and a “heart of stone” is fairly concrete (excuse the pun...). The connection between Yahweh and "flesh" is less so, but arguable nonetheless. As in many prophetic texts, Yahweh is declared to be superior to idols and pagan gods because he is alive and has command of his senses and achieves mighty deeds for his people. Though there is no direct literary link between Yahweh and the “heart of flesh”, such a link can be suggested since the contrast Yahweh draws between "stone" and "flesh" comes in a passage which discusses where Israel's worship and allegiance should lie.

So then, given Ezekiel's use of "stone" and its contrast with "flesh," Yahweh is communicating that the make-up of Israel's heart will mirror the characteristics of the sort of deity they serve. They have worshiped lifeless idols made of stone, and so they receive a lifeless heart of stone. When their worship returns to Yahweh, he gives them a heart of flesh: a living heart from the living God.

"Don't Do as the Romans Do": Anti-assimilation and Old Testament Narrative in Revelation

2011-02-26T07:30:00.000-06:00

This week I got to engage in some academic fun. I was invited to share a paper at Briercrest College and Seminary's Bible/Theology Colloquium. For those interested, here is a summary excerpt from the paper:

John’s use of Old Testament narrative in Revelation is united in purpose. His primary concern is to warn the churches of the grave danger of entering into the sexual immorality and idolatry so aggressively prescribed by the surrounding culture. His goal in alluding to Old Testament characters and narratives is to firmly assert the vital importance of remaining faithful to Jesus in the face of severe (and even deadly) persecution. Examples from Israel’s past are called to mind as both admonition against assimilation and motivation for repentance and endurance. John’s use of the Old Testament beckons, “Do not imitate the practices of the nations around you! Remember how Jezebel, Ahab, Balaam, and Pharaoh suffered on account of their wickedness, and Israel for its unfaithfulness!”

From the stories of Jezebel and Balaam the churches are reminded of the destruction that falls upon those who are unfaithful to the Lord. From the stories of Daniel and Exodus, they are instructed to remember that God delivers those who remain his faithful servants. Though they might be crushed under an enemy’s heel now, they will ultimately receive vindication and restoration. God will not allow a beast to conquer them nor a Pharaoh to enslave them forever. He will utterly destroy these satanic enemies, and will set up his people in a place of authority, even to rule with him. John’s message is one of concern and hope. His desire is for all the churches to be included among the overcomers, those who will make up the faithful bride of Christ.

If you are interested in the rest of the paper, it can be downloaded here.

Winter winds blow whilst ye still remain

2011-02-03T22:57:00.000-06:00

I often wonder what scholars of the future will say about the things we experience everyday here and now. In much of the reading I've done on the historical Jesus or on the historical background of the New Testament, or on the formation and identity of first-century Judaism, I find that scholars make a lot of estimations about how life and culture worked long ago. Maybe the Jews of Jesus' day spoke Aramaic, or maybe they spoke Hebrew. Maybe Judaism was a very strict, legalistic system. Or, maybe it was full of grace and facilitated the understanding of God as a loving Father that Jesus taught. These sorts of academic estimations are part of the game. It makes me wonder how scholars of the 27th century will try to reconstruct daily life in the Canadian prairies.

Take, for instance, our winters. Five months of snow, sun dogs, blizzards, frozen batteries, mittens, ice rinks, and sub-zero temperatures. Maybe that's an unfair list, but they are definitely elements of winter. But suppose at a certain point in history, global warming does away with our frigid part of the year. What if, by the middle of the 22nd century, winter has seen its last snowflake, and November-March becomes an extended Autumn and slow transition to Spring. Suppose no one has seen a snowflake in many generations, and natural ice becomes a thing of legend. "Your great-great-great-great grandfather was a hockey player. He had an ice rink outside his house where he and his friends would play for hours. They called it 'scrimmage'."

I wonder if, perhaps, historians would negotiate on the actual whiteness of the snow, or quibble on how cold it really felt, or if the winters were really five months long. What effect did sub-zero temperatures, apparently dropping as low as -45C, have on the common combustion engine? Was hockey really a common pastime, or is that only a generalization? There is certainly evidence of many ice rinks in the Canadian prairies: archaeologists even unearthed what appears to be a "Zamboni," though its precise function and pronunciation is still a cause of great debate among historiomechanists.

Once in a while, usually through the reading I do for Seminary, I ponder the great expanse of time that separates us from truly understanding some of the events and people that have shaped the understanding of the world, and of ourselves, that we hold today, and I get to thinking about (admittedly ridiculous) things such as these. Anyway, while history's ever-advancing charge allows, enjoy the mundane, the normal, and even the winter.

Reaching for the Stars: Star Trek and today's hand-held devices

2011-01-29T13:33:00.005-06:00

I love techy innovation. I don't mind Facebook, though many like to hate it, because Facebook pushed us to think about online communication in new ways. I like Gmail because the folks at Google blew open our old (Microsoft-based) conceptions of what an email account can do. I like Apple because they might be the most innovative company around these days. I think the biggest reason I like Apple is because I like Star Trek, and it seems like Apple are the folks who are helping us catch up to Kirk and Picard.

"What in the world are you talking about?" you might ask? Well, consider how far our technology has come in the past few decades.

First of all, here is Cpt. Kirk, back in the sixties, using a flip device to communicate with the Enterprise. Does this look familiar? Back in those days, a flip-phone was pretty inventive. I remember even back in the mid-90's, my dad's cell phone was enormous -- bigger even than most wireless house phones today! But nowadays, flip-phones are not only common, but even being left behind by other devices, like smart phones.

The next great Star Trek innovation in communication was the "communicator", a little A-shaped device worn by everybody in Star Fleet. With a click of the device, a communication channel is opened to the ship orbiting above. But is this so futuristic anymore? We have ways to communicate with a little click of a wireless device: Bluetooth. It might be worn on the head rather than the chest, but the idea is basically the same. (Though the Star Trek communicator might have had better range... So far I haven't heard of Astronauts using Bluetooth to communicate with Houston...)

One more futuristic innovation: this is where Apple comes in. Each day, Commander Riker comes to Captain Picard's ready room with the daily report. He offers Picard a tablet device, upon which Picard uses his finger to navigate through the various reports. Back in the late-80's to mid-90's, this hand-held, slim computer was pretty amazing. After all, in 1984, only a few years before this scene with Picard was filmed, Apple had released its first ever Mac. Picard's tablet looks a little more advanced... But, now 27 years later, Apple has caught up to the good captain, and offers a pretty futuristic device that anybody (or perhaps everybody) can (or perhaps should) use: the iPad.

The first-ever Mac, 1984

So, in a few communicative ways, we've caught up to the Star Trek universe. But one key ingredient remains: warp-drive! According to Star Trek lore, it's the warp-drive signature left in space by the first warp-drive engine that attracts the attention of the Vulcans and prompts them to make first contact with the people of Earth, ushering our little planet into a bright future of intergalactic proportions. Much like Kip from Napoleon Dynamite, I must confess that "I love technology," and the innovations of people like Apple have raised my hopes that one day we'll find people with pointy ears and bumpy foreheads, and Soong-made androids, and neutral zones, and delta quadrants.

Alright, enough nerdiness for today.

School of Webcraft

2011-01-27T10:50:00.004-06:00

Mozilla and Person 2 Person University have partnered to establish the School of Webcraft, a wonderful environment in which leaders in the web development world are invited to host classes for anyone who wants to learn. There is a fairly broad selection of classes, which will only continue to grow as this project matures, and it's all free!

The sign-up date for some classes has passed, but there are still plenty of classes accepting new students. I'm enrolled in "Introduction to PHP," which delves into the (introductory) depths of database-driven websites using open-source coding.

If you have any level of interest in internet things, you should check it out! You might find something you like and learn something cool.

Info from Mozilla: http://www.drumbeat.org/p2pu-webcraft
Registration site: http://p2pu.org/webcraft/

St. Aidan's new internet home

2010-11-15T21:10:00.000-06:00

St. Aidan Anglican Church has a new website. Check it out: mjanglican.org.

Nebby the Vulcan (well, almost)

2010-10-18T20:14:00.003-06:00

Perhaps it's all the Star Trek I've watched this past summer, but as I've been working through the Aramaic sections of Daniel, I have found that Nebuchadnezzar's benediction to the peoples of the earth makes him sound almost Vulcan:

First, upon witnessing how superior is the God of Shadrack, Meshak, and Abednigo in comparison to the gods of Babylon, he "made Shadrack, Meshak, and Abednigo prosper in the province of Babylon" (Dan 3:30).

In the next verse, Nebuchadnezzar declares to all the peoples, tribes, and tongues who dwell in all the world, "May your peace grow greatly" (Dan 3:31 MT; Dan 4:1).

These things together sound a little like Mr. Spock's, "Live long and prosper" (a line which Leonard Nimoy adapted from the kohanic blessing in Judaism).

Of course, Nebuchadnezzar's Vulcanhood is precluded by his unabashed display of emotion when he realized that the three men were not burning to death in the furnace, but were able to emerge unscathed. If Nebby were a true Vulcan, he would have taken one look at the scene, raised an eyebrow, and respond, "Fascinating."

Unlikely Origin (2)

2010-08-19T23:20:00.000-06:00

The other volume arrived this week. Nothing too special to report about it. Unfortunately not from Briercrest Bible College like its counterpart... This one comes from the Lewis & Clark Library in Helena, Montana.

Unlikely Origin

2010-07-17T13:53:00.000-06:00

Yesterday my copy of The Death of the Messiah (vol. 2) by Raymond E. Brown arrived in the mail. It came quickly, and for a very good price. The strange thing is where this book originated... The bookseller, kbooks, shipped the book from Toronto, Ontario, but when I opened the book, a most curious stamping greeted me. The inside cover was stamped "Archibald Library." That sounds awfully familiar! I turned the page to find:

Archibald Library

Briercrest Bible College

Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada

So, after going through Abebooks and a week of shipping, I end up with a book from a library that I can see from my house. I'm very interested to see where volume 2 comes from in a week or so!

Now that's innovation!

2010-07-15T20:27:00.002-06:00

Many interesting things came into the world around the 1830's: Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the rapture theory... but most notable of all, without a doubt, is --- the mustache cup! In our visit to Elbow, Saskatchewan today, we stopped in at the little museum of Elbow, and this gem was just waiting to be found:

Because of the glorious mustaches of those days, a clever 'mustache guard' was put into place, more visible in this angle:

φωνὴν μεγάλην (Mark 15:37)

2010-07-11T09:53:00.001-06:00

I'm currently researching Markan motifs for the Gospels class I took at the start of June. In some of the reading, I've come across some very interesting interpretations. The most noteworthy thus far concerns the centurion's confession at Jesus' death. Robert H. Gundry explains that the centurion's confession that Jesus is Son of God is not brought about by seeing Jesus suffer and die (he had probably witnessed that a hundred times), but is "evoked and defined, rather, by the supernatural strength that enables Jesus at the moment of his death to shout with a superhumanly loud voice and with exhalant force so powerful that it rends the veil of the temple. . . he sees Jesus die in a way that defies naturalistic explanation. It is Jesus' overcoming the weakness normally caused by crucifixion, not dying itself by crucifixion, which evokes the centurion's declaration." (Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross. Eerdmans, 1993, 974).

Programming Code and Gospel Motif

2010-07-10T07:10:00.000-06:00

An odd combination for sure. I guess that because these are my two worlds right now --- tracing Markan motifs that climax in Jesus' death, and immersing myself in the various coding languages of the internet --- I've begun to see parallels between how the two of these things operate. Both seem to ebb and flow like well-written classical music. Just yesterday I was listening to CBC Radio 2, whose host was playing John William's score from "Return of the Jedi". I found the flow of the music so interesting. Elements of the highly recognizable themes of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are introduced and pulled back, repeated, reinforced, interwoven, and finally brought to a climax that makes goosebumps suddenly form. There is foreshadowing and echoing and finally full-blown revelation.

I have found that Gospel motifs work like this too, as the author introduces a theme, develops it slowly, and in the case of motifs leading to Jesus' death, brings them to such a head that they can hardly be ignored. Maybe an analogy to Visual Basic programming is a bit of a stretch (and I don't know if I understand it well enough yet to give a very helpful explanation), but here too, the first module contains a sub-routine that points forward to the next module containing the actual commands referenced in the first module. The second module's sub-routine might include a reference which propels the program to the third module, and so on. With each move forward, the program always returns to the beginning to find its instruction, forming a continuous cycle of forward and backward movement until the program fulfills its mission and the program ends.

If nothing else, thinking about similarities between code syntax and narrative development helps to keep coding interesting. (And I think I'm beginning to understand how Dr. Karen H. Jobes of Wheaton College made a transition from computer science to exegesis...)

Dominion Day Adventures

2010-07-02T21:33:00.005-06:00

Canada Day this year was spent with our good friends Paul and Darcie. We headed up to Regina Beach for the afternoon and contentedly browsed through the boutiques, basked in the sun at the beach, enjoyed some frisbee and Bocce Ball, and helped some drunkards get their car started. As it grew dark, we headed to the Legislative building for Regina's fireworks show, which was great because it happened to be the retirement celebration of the man who has put on the fireworks for the last 25 years. Very impressive!

But the best light show happened on the way home... Toward the end of the afternoon and throughout the evening we saw lightning in the distance. On the road home to Caronport, the storm met us full on. I haven't been in a storm like that in years! A wall of water and hail came on hard, thunder roared, and so much lightning flashed at once that we had to shield our eyes! It was amazing. I love being in the grip of such power, knowing that at any moment my life could be threatened. I've always, secretly, wanted to be a storm chaser. I'm absolutely thrilled by violent storms. To top all of this off, we saw a funnel cloud begin to form. It never really materialized, but we saw the beginnings of a cone shape start to swirl and angle toward the ground before it dissolved. (The picture above is of the same cloud that was over us, but the picture doesn't do the storm justice. You really had to be there.)

It's like canoeing to Japan with only a spoon for a paddle.

2010-06-29T16:55:00.000-06:00

What am I referring to? Web development, obviously! Today I met with one of my supervisors to discuss what my training will entail, and how much new information I'm to consume in the next couple of months. The title of this post pretty much sums it up.

Prayers for Oliver

2010-06-13T21:50:00.003-06:00

This afternoon a mudslide hit my old hometown (and present home of my brother), Oliver, BC. It sounds pretty fierce. A wall of mud from a blocked up creek in the mountains came crashing down the mountainside, sweeping away more than 10 homes, and destroying many acres of vineyards and orchards. But God is merciful: there are no reports of injuries or deaths. Pray for Oliver, if you think of it. This sort of destruction will take years to restore. Check out CTV for more.

Musical Chairs

2010-06-12T15:26:00.001-06:00

The last few months I've been playing musical chairs with employment. I've gone from construction to educational assistant to security to Prairie South sub desk to Academic Services. And now, one more switch. It wasn't an easy decision, but I've made it. Starting first thing in July, I'll be assistant to the Webmaster at Briercrest College & Seminary, to eventually take the main seat myself. It will be a few rigorous months of training because of the steep learning curve, but I'm very excited! The new position allows me to pay for Seminary as I study, and to gain some pretty awesome experience that will allow me to make money while I wait for that proverbial academic post in the future... whenever that will be. Anyways, web development is fun, so I'm looking forward to digging in.

The Importance of Syllabi

2010-05-24T20:29:00.001-06:00

I'm in the last week of preparation before my first Seminary class begins, and I just realized that I have become far too prepared... Part of the requirements of the upcoming class on the Gospels is to lead an hour-long seminar on one of the various topics given in the syllabus. Over the past several days, I dug (hundreds of pages) deep into all sorts of secondary sources to get to know my topic (reader-response criticism) very well, only to find out that the one most important source I should have read was: my syllabus.

If I had started there, I would have learned that the seminar is to be based mostly on the three articles for the seminar topic in the required reading. It's not exactly an 'open-ended' assignment. So, I guess this will be much easier to prepare for than I anticipated... At any rate, I guess I'll be (overly) prepared if people have questions outside of what the syllabus requires!

Grace

2010-05-20T06:52:00.000-06:00

I'm pretty grateful today. I've been sick the past couple of days, and am back at work today. Knowing that my work partner is gone today, I thought I'd have a crazy day, having to do the work of two people in my short morning. But when I arrived to work today, it seems that another worker had mercy and decided to fill in for my partner, thus eliminating all of the stress I was anticipating. This is a small little occassion, but I'm very grateful!

Oily Mess: this is not subduing the earth...

2010-05-05T08:33:00.003-06:00

When God commanded Adam to subdue the earth, I doubt he meant, "Lubricate my fish in a slimy haze." But that is what has been happening the past few days. Resulting from an explosion on an off-shore oil drill on April 20, 750,000 litres of oil spew up into the Gulf of Mexico every day. This spill hasn't yet reached the catastrophic levels of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 (40.9 million litres spilled), but it is expected to become the worst in history if a solution isn't found soon. Today the placement of a compression dome is being attempted to cap the leak in the underwater oil well. (See Vancouver Sun's article for more.)

Hopefully this sort of diaster will get people moving on the fuel cell so we can leave behind such a nasty dependence on crude oil. Sorry, little fishes.

Congratulations, Grads!

2010-04-24T11:43:00.002-06:00

Illinusian Excursion

2010-04-23T12:08:00.008-06:00

Last week Jenn and I jumped in the car and drove the 20 hours down to Wheaton, IL to visit Tyler and Tamara and to take in Wheaton College's 19th Annual Theology Conference: Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright. Click here to listen to/watch/download audio and video from the presenters. There was quite a good cast this year, including N.T. Wright (of course), Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer (whose paper I strongly recommend), Jeremy Begbie, and Richard Hays. Most notable for me was to hear, in his own words, why N. T. Wright does what he does (you can hear if for yourself in his first lecture).

Since we got to Wheaton a day early, I was able to tag along with Tyler to a couple of classes: Hebrews with Doug Moo and Systematical Theology: Atonement with Kevin Vanhoozer. Very excellent. Hebrews felt familiar as I've taken a lot of exegesis classes, and Atonement was a lot of fun because of the jovial nature of Kevin Vanhoozer.

As at most of these 'academic resorts,' as Jenn put it, there was a fairly good book sale. Not a huge amount of publishers were there, but a few: Baker, Wm. Eerdmans, IVP, and one more that I can't recall. I'm the happy owner of a few new friends: Holmes' Apostolic Fathers, N.T. Wright's NTPG, the Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, Snodgrass' Stories of Intent, Bailey's Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, and Perrin and Goodacre's Questioning Q (one of the free books for being one of the first 400 to check in!).

We also had a load of fun traipsing around Wheaton and area, exploring and eating funny American food, like a Buffalo salad, which was a Buffalo burger patti slapped onto some lettuce with a little US flag sticking out of it!

All in all, a super time in Illinois!

Caronport is on the (Google) Map!

2010-04-02T21:17:00.002-06:00

Does this look familiar to anyone?

View Larger Map

While looking ahead to our upcoming Wheaton trip, I accidentally clicked a link bringing me to a "street level" view of Caronport, which I didn't think would actually load. But lo and behold, it appears the Google Cam has made its way through our little town. All of Caronport is navigable. A little creepy, perhaps, but very interesting. This would be an excellent tool for the school's website, I bet, to give newcomers a virtual walk-around. Google, you amaze me more and more every day.

Seminoid

2010-04-01T13:20:00.004-06:00

I'm in! This morning I received my confirmation email telling me I'm an official seminary student. Good news to receive on the day I found out that I can have the week off of work to take Wes Olmstead's Gospels class. Full steam ahead!

"Expletive"

2010-03-31T20:11:00.006-06:00

"An expletive is a word which serves no grammatical function, but which fills up a sentence or gives emphasis."

- Moreland and Fleischer. Latin: An Intensive Course. University of California Press, 1977 (p. 15).

Dodd

2010-03-28T15:20:00.000-06:00

Here's a fun quote from a lecture by D.A. Carson:

There once was a man named Dodd
Who was thought to be rather odd.
To spell his name he used three D's
When one was enough for God.

Superman, the Illegitimate Savior

2010-03-28T00:17:00.002-06:00

I've been a fan of Superman for a long time. In the comic book world, he's usually recognized to be the greatest of all heroes. Though the original creators of Superman didn't aim to connect Superman with Jesus, over the past 70 years the mythos has taken on attributes that make allusions to the Gospel. However, there is a fundamental difference that negates any of these connections. But first some similarities.

Superman, or Kal-El, is the only son of Jor-El. He was sent by his father from Krypton to the earth in order to save its people. In the 1978 movie, Superman, Jor-El tells his son, "They're a great people Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son."

Kal-El is raised on the earth by human parents, Jonathon and Martha (in place of Joseph and Mary), who give him the name Clark Kent. They teach him virtues such as peacemaking, the sanctity of human life, and the importance of self-sacrifice. Superman spends his life saving people from calamity and defeating evil doers by amazing feats of physical strength. Ultimately, Superman dies in a battle with the great Kryptonian destroyer, Doomsday, but, because of his unique heritage, he is resurrected some time after.

In the more recent movie, Superman Returns, Superman sacrifices his life by hurling a mountain of kryptonite off of the earth to foil an evil plot of Lex Luthor's. As the poisonous mountain fades into space, Superman floats back toward the earth in crucifixion pose. After a few dramatic scenes, we find that Superman has been resurrected once again, alive once more to save earth for another day.

In the pilot episode of the TV series Smallville, Clark is strung up on a wooden cross like a scarecrow, as part of a high-school hazing ceremony. He hangs there in a noticeably cruciform pose. In the show's 9th season, Clark is described as the one who gives hope to the world, and is compared to Jesus Christ by Tess Mercer (a hench-woman of Lex Luthor's). She desires to see him fight Doomsday (whom she likens to Judas Ischariot), claiming that once he has overcome his great betrayer, he can go on to accomplishing his greatest challenge -- that of saving the world.

Superman first 'took flight' in the early days of WWII, as many wished for a mighty hero who could defeat the Nazis and end the growing war. This savior was born of the wisdom of man, wishing for a strong savior who could defeat any enemy just by sheer force, perhaps much like what Jesus' disciples hoped for in a Messiah. However, the Savior God has sent was humble and meek, and, with regard to the world's understanding, weak and helpless, as a lamb led to the slaughter. The words of the Lord to Isaiah ring very true here: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways" (Isaiah 55:8).

Here is the fundamental break-down precluding any legitimate connection between Superman and Jesus. The 'salvation' that Superman brings is accomplished through power and strength -- his "powers far beyond those of mortal men." In this way, Superman is quite distinctly opposite to Jesus. Jesus came in weakness, putting away his heavenly glory. He refused to enlist the help of the multitude of angels who would have raced to his aid in Gethsemane, had he called for them. He submitted to a passive death, not defending himself. He was born in shame, to a mother accused of adultery, and died the most shameful way possible, on a cross. The hope of the world is bound up in a crucified Savior, rather than in a mighty Superman.

However 'cool' the comic book world may be, I'm glad I live on this side of the page.

Official Things

2010-03-19T18:37:00.000-06:00

Today two good and official things happened that spur on my plans for the next little while. My passport arrived, which allows me to go to the US, which allows me to attend the Wheaton Theological Conference in under a month. Secondly, I completed my application to Briercrest Seminary. I'm hoping to start my seminary studies with Wes Olmstead's Gospels Seminar, which kicks off May 31. It's nice to have these important details down. Now I can just focus on getting the necessary reading done.

Learning the Basics of Biblical Greek... with Stephen Harper?

2010-02-18T23:15:00.005-06:00

I made a shocking discovery today. I realize now why Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament. It was to release the 3rd edition of his best-selling Greek grammar, Basics of Biblical Greek! Or wait... didn't Bill Mounce write that? Well, the mistake is an easy one to make. Look for yourself:

I don't know about you, but this creeped me out a little -- and also made me proud to be Canadian. You have quite the doppelganger, Mr. PM!

Vocational Trifecta

2010-02-18T10:29:00.000-06:00

Well, the dust has settled. My employment search is finished, and I think I've emerged the victor. I am now a Faculty Assistant (as I have been for some time), Campus Safety/Custodian for Briercrest, and a brand-new member of the Prairie South School Division. In that post I'll call in subs in the early hours of the day and spend the rest of the time cleaning up the paper work I created in the first hours. All these varied shifts leave me with free time in the afternoon, which, hopefully, will be a perfect time for reading and studying (and Olympics-watching).

I'm grateful for the work that has been offered to me. Our needs have been very providentially met and exceeded!

10 Baptisms Today!

2010-02-07T23:55:00.001-06:00

Today, church at The Gathering was truly wonderful. I always greatly enjoy baptismal services -- it's always so encouraging to hear people's stories, and to watch those who care about them come around with encouraging words of edification and scripture. This morning was more memorable than many others I've witnessed. Originally there were five people to be baptised. Interestingly, the first two quoted the same scripture, Acts 22:16, in which Paul asks, "And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptised, and wash your sins away, calling on his name." Taking this as a cue, Kevin and Sean (pastors) announced to those gathered, "If anyone of you feels led to respond to these words this morning, then, 'What are you waiting for? Get up, be baptised, and wash your sins away, calling on his name'!"

The result was powerful. As the remaining three 'originally scheduled' people were baptised, five more came forward! It was wonderful to see these ten people declare their union with Christ today.

I love these services. Watching each one go under, and resurface anew, I felt a deep sense of gratitude for what God has done through his Messiah for us. What a powerful image Jesus has left us with in baptism, that of entering into his death with him, and rising again.

Lectio Sodalitas

2010-02-05T13:00:00.001-06:00

Two books just arrived today that will pave the way to the Wheaton Theology Conference I'm attending in April: NT Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God and Richard Hays' Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. Since NT Wright (keynote) and Richard Hays are speaking at the conference, I thought I'd pick up two notable books to acquaint myself with both scholars before I show up to hear them speak. These will have to wait, though, until I'm through Westerholm's Perspectives Old and New on Paul: the Lutheran Paul and His Critics, which has been really helpful in catching me up to speed on Pauline perspectives (and is also hopefully preparing me to think about what I will hear at the conference).

Name That Passage!

2010-01-20T12:34:00.002-06:00

It's been a while. I've updated a couple of things, and uploaded a new title image. Can anyone guess what passage it is?

How It Should Have Ended

2010-01-08T07:20:00.000-06:00

Here are a couple of hilarious 'alternate ending' videos by the good people at howitshouldhaveended.com.

Superman: The Movie
In the world of Superman, some make him vulnerable to pain, and cause him to completes great feats with obvious strain. Some make him wildly powerful and (nearly) impenetrable. While the former makes for more interesting (and perhaps easier) story-telling, the latter is fun to watch now and again. Such as this clip:

Terminator/Back to the Future
Doc had no idea what he started...

Believe the hype: Windows 7 works

2010-01-06T18:20:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago, Jenn and I took advantage of a student deal with Microsoft Canada and snagged a couple of copies of Windows 7. Just the laptop has it running for now; our rather slower desktop is awaiting a gig of RAM before I upgrade it. So far I'm very pleased. With Windows 7, the laptop 'resumes' much faster than with Vista (now it fires up in under 5 seconds!), and the irritating security warnings that made Vista a headache are gone. It looks like Vista, but the filing system is nicer, and everything seems to run a little faster.

I'm looking forward to upgrading the desktop to see how the home network thing will work. If you're still contemplating the upgrade, it's worth the trouble. (The only downside so far is the work of having to reinstall all my programs and back up all my files. Vista Home Basic and XP don't upgrade cleanly, so you have to start from scratch.)

Fast Food Taco Song

2010-01-05T07:45:00.002-06:00

This comic duo is quickly becoming one of my favourite internet stops. Enjoy this Fast Food Taco Song, especially with reference to the amazing server who actually remembers their whole order!

The Foggy Steps to Come

2009-12-30T08:00:00.004-06:00

Around this time of year, everybody is thinking about the future. We begin rolling the sound of the new year in our minds: "Twenty-ten, or two thousand and ten, or how shall I say it?" Sometimes the arrival of a new year is accompanied by a sense of bewilderment, in wondering just where the year has gone, and in pondering just what this next year will hold.

This year, as I look out upon the on-coming year, I can't help but feel a bit overwhelmed not only at the thought of what might come to us in 2010, but in all the years that follow. In a lot of ways, I still feel like a kid. Sure, I've finished college (did well, too) and got married. Those events were the effective conclusion to many questions I had about my life earlier on. I don't have to worry about who to marry or what to study. But my questions have changed and broadened, and leave me feeling smaller than I felt I was six or so years ago: When it comes time to have children, will I have the strength to be a good father? Can I really strive hard enough to last through an MA and PhD? How long will I be able to continue my studies until my eyes fail on me? Where will we end up? What sort of job can I find in the end? How will I ever manage owning a house? Do I have what it takes to be a family leader and a provider?

Maybe I've had too much time to myself to think, but all these questions (and others) have been sharply on my mind. I do find much comfort, though, in reflecting on the story of Jesus' birth during this season--especially with reference to Mary and Joseph, and Zachariah and Elizabeth. These everyday people had their lives disrupted and realigned for a great purpose. The Lord was working dynamically in the world, and their lives, at least at first, would bear the brunt of it. Whatever plans they had were very much redirected. What a task it must have been for Joseph to care for his wife and her baby as he uprooted his family at Gabriel's beckoning; and Mary submitted her body, life, and reputation to God's bidding. What must it have been like for a couple old enough to be elderly grandparents to be suddenly thrust into childrearing (and to think of it, though it was a joyous occasion for her, Elizabeth had no say in the matter--the angel spoke only to Zachariah).

I can't possibly relate to the gravity of the challenges they faced. I'll certainly never raise a Messiah nor a prophet like John. My actions won't be the stuff of legend, and won't affect the course of history. And for this I'm grateful. But what I can relate to is standing on the threshold of many unknowns. All these questions I have, they aren't the kind of things that will alter time and space, but they are the kind of things that will directly affect the kind of life and service my wife and I and others will experience.

But along with all the unknowns comes comfort. I'm not alone in my unknowns. On one level, I have a kind and understanding wife who regularly reassures me that, in her own words, "I'll follow you to the ends of the earth." And on another level entirely, the same Most High who tore into the lives of Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, and Zachariah, holds in his hands the pages of my own life.

(I'm not struggling to find the specifics of what the Lord desires me to do; I've laid to rest that childhood question of "What is God's will for my life?". To quote a friend, it's all about the "How" and "Why" of life rather than the "What?" "How shall I live?", rather than, "What will I do?" If I'm seeking to live a life that is worthy of the Lord, then I'm not too concerned about whether or not the specifics will line up. My assumption is that they will; that is, that they will 'line up' with what He has in mind, not according to what I think those future specifics should be.)

Basically, this is it: I don't care what I do. I'm not sure it matters what exactly I end up doing as a career, or where we end up living. All I want in life is to know that I am contributing to the Lord's working in the world. I want to contribute to the changing of lives, on whatever level it may happen by my influence. I want to take seriously the call he places on our lives as his children to live as children of light. Whether I end up as a professor at some prestigious school or a small one, or whether I end up as a pastor, or whether I end up working in a small town doing something completely unrelated to academics, I want only to have a sense of belonging and purpose in what I do.

I want to be a good leader to my family, a good worker, and an obedient son in Christ. All these things are what God wants of me as a man. All these things are difficult to accomplish, taking great attention and discipline. All these things are impossible to do well without God's mercy and enablement. My greatest desire for the fleeting years of my life is that they should be spent in pursuit of the things the Lord honors. I want my life to be counted as useful to him. What else matters?

Well, this has been therapeutic for me to think through. I suppose this post has been more for me than for you. At any rate, those are my honest thoughts, and my most earnest prayer.

Peace.

Collective Disjointment: a Rex Murphy Christmas

2009-12-29T13:05:00.005-06:00

It's been a great Christmas holiday. Jenn and I enjoyed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Caronport with my parents, sisters, aunt, uncle, and our soon-to-be-brother-in-law, and then jetted off to Montreal for Boxing Day until New Year's Eve. It's such a nice time to slow down.

One of the funniest things this year has been running into Rex Murphy in the Toronto airport! I've always enjoyed his "Point of View" segments on the news, and his radio show. I'd recognize that face anywhere. I joked to Jenn (after we were out of ear-shot, of course), "Yep. He's definitely as ugly in person as on TV!" He's the third sort-of-celebrity I've seen in an airport. So far, Regina's mayor, Pat Fiaco, Brent Butt from Corner Gas, and now Rex Murphy.

It's been a lot of fun here in Montreal with Jenn's family. Lots of relaxing, eating, visiting, music, and napping. All things that make a holiday festive and restive.

I think one of my New Year's resolutions is going to be getting back to exegetical posts...

Firstborns and Christmas Lights

2009-12-22T19:41:00.005-06:00

Tonight on a walk to deliver some popcorn to my wife who is babysitting some fun little kids, I saw four little girls--all sisters--busily and happily clearing away the freshly fallen snow from an elderly couple's driveway. They were outfitted in matching pink wool toques, each with a snow shovel in hand, and singing "We Want to See Jesus Lifted High." I can't think of a nicer place to be during the holidays than Caronport. After the semester is done, and exams are over, and many of the town's inhabitants have flown wherever home is for the Christmas break, there is a holy quiet that descends here. Especially on nights like these, blanketed under fresh snow.

Caronport is nicely lit up now with Christmas lights. As I look out at all the light-adorned houses, my thoughts wonder to the Exodus. Enslaved Israel prepared their houses with blood to ward off the plague of death threatening their firstborns as they anticipated their salvation. We decorate not to save a firstborn, but because we were saved by one. Our own plague of death has been warded off by a little baby who used his own blood to save us.

New Home

2009-12-22T06:45:00.003-06:00

Welcome to the new (and hopefully) improved νόες σχεδίων. Everything from Wordpress has been transplanted here. Blogger seemed a happier home, so here's hoping it is!

Long Live Back to the Future!

2009-12-17T10:53:00.003-06:00

All right, I wasn’t going to say anything, but this has become too strange to ignore.

There seem to be an unprecedented number of Back to the Future fans on the internet. Back on November 5, I posted about BTTF because that day happens to be the red-letter date in those movies. Since then, that post has been inundated by web-searches. Over 90% of all web searches that lead people to this blog are related to Back to the Future, such as “Marty McFly,” “Doc,” “Delorean,” “2015 clothing,” “flying car,” “Biff,” “clocktower,” ect… The number of views on that one post have exceeded the views on all other posts combined!

Frankly, I’m shocked! I’ve met a few people who really love the trilogy, but I thought the enthusiasm for the movies was restricted either to the few who grew up on the movies, or to those who really love 80’s movies. Either that perception is wrong, or there are many, many people out there who fall into those two enthusiastic groups.

At any rate, long live Back to the Future! (If you classify yourself as an especially ardent fan of BTTF, you should check out it’s web home: BTTF.com. Enjoy.)

"It's the most edible time of the year!"

2009-12-13T12:14:00.002-06:00

Christmas is here in our little abode. On Friday evening, after Jenn finished a particularly nasty exam, we celebrated by zipping into Moose Jaw to pick up a Tree. We also grabbed all sorts of things to put on it — most of which are edible!

Back before I was married, I lived in Regina with some good friends, and each Christmas we decorated the tree with lots of chocolate, candy canes, and other edibles that make the tree both shiny, because of the tinny wrapping, and interactive, because people can snack from the tree throughout the holidays.

That tradition has transfered into our keeping. Last night my little sisters came over to help us decorate the tree, drink some eggnog, and watch some Smallville. Just a couple of weeks until the big meals and get-togethers! Can’t wait!

In Need of De-dragoning

2009-12-03T23:21:00.009-06:00

Today I got to spend the day with my wife at her university. The roads were frightening, so I drove her in rather than sentencing her to the highways alone.

While she sat in class, I did some marking and reading in the picturesque student area of Campion College. As I worked, I couldn’t help but overhear the conversations going on nearby. One in particular caught my attention, and despite my attempts to shake it, I couldn’t. Two young women sat just down from my table, and talked for a couple of hours about a great many things. But as the minutes stretched on, and one hour turned into two, it became apparent that the content of their chatter wasn’t substance; it was nothing. To be more specific, it was an egocentric, preferential, stating of opinion that didn’t have any (helpful) shape or direction (or purpose).

Now, I’m being rather harsh here. I’m certainly no stranger to this sort of interaction. When speaking to another person, what is more natural or familiar than to speak about myself? It’s a basic mode of communication for individuals in relation to one another. As Gabriela, the nice lady with whom my sister and I stayed in Mexico, used to say, that sort of chatter is “siempre sobre mi” (“always about me”).

I suppose the conversation I overheard at Campion caught my attention because lately I’ve been thinking about Jesus’ call to discipleship. In the days of the first century, the basis of one’s life seemed to be in the family structure, and breaking ties with that structure seemed unwise and unthinkable. Today, I wonder if the basis of one’s life is no longer the family structure, but the self, the ego. “I” is the foundation on which everything that is achieved is mounted. I’m sure this was quite prevalent in Jesus’ day too, for Luke includes the emphatic “even your own life” to the list of relations we are to hate or renounce.

It’s undeniable that individualism drives our North American world these days. I guess I thought I’d come across different sorts of conversations while sitting in a Catholic college student area, in a school that boasts of classical learning. But what have I to boast? I’m just as egotistically driven as those two young women at Campion when it gets down to it. I realize that afresh each day as I live alongside my wife. There seems to be no greater task than that of divorcing myself from myself. It truly is a death, a daily death, that I must go through in order to rid myself of my own desperate grasp. As personal freedoms go, I don’t think there is anything quite so full of bondage as considering myself to hold the key to my own free will.

The obvious direction here is to turn to Jesus and ask for help. “Take hold of me and rip my self away as Aslan did for poor old dragoned Eustice, and grant me the freedom that exists only in total submission.”

Delirious?, your future starts today.

2009-12-01T11:21:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, Delirious?, a band of five men from Littlehampton, UK, who have led the Church in song and cried out for 17 years for people to get out into the streets and change the world for the kingdom, have hung their hats and their guitars.

Delirious? always said that they would never stop until they had created their very best work. It is clear now that their “best” is beyond the music. Lead voice Martin Smith, along with his wife Anna, have started a charity, CompassionArt, “dedicated to seeing works of art generate income for the poorest of the poor.” Last year they brought together their friends of the music world, and produced a CD full of songs adding commentary to the injustice experienced in so much of the world. 100% of those proceeds went to specific charities funded by CompassionArt.

Martin Smith stated, “As a song writer and a person with a microphone I made a promise to try and do something about it. What better than to call on my friends and do something together. To be people that can make a change rather than just singing about it.”

This is the future for Martin and his family.

I’ve been listening/following Delirious? since their early days in the early 90’s, so it’s incredibly sad for me to watch them exit the stage for the last time, knowing the world has heard the last D:tune. But I’m proud too, knowing this band was never about the fame or the money. They felt called to make a change, to turn hearts toward God, and provide a voice for those who couldn’t speak for themselves. Now they step out of the concert spotlight, costumes, and equipment, and into the world of direct service.

Here’s a song for you from their latest live DVD, in Bogota, Columbia. It’s called “Break the Silence,” which is a call for the Church to find its voice and stand for those who can’t stand on their own.

Citizens with a secret in our hands
That could ignite our shadow lands
Light it up and let it go
Let it shine with love and grace and a redesign
A ray of hope for the common man
Light it up and let it go

Oh, oh, oh,
We’ve got to give it away
And there’s a price to pay
When we give it away

Break the silence, break the silence,
Cross ever boundary that divides us, divides us
Break the silence, break the silence,
Cross ever border that divides us, oh, unite us

We turn the page, to a future just begun
If heaven is real then let our heaven become
Peace on earth, let it flow.
We raise our voice where the colours all but gone
Paint the world with redemption songs
Stir it up let it flow.

‘Love’ and Discipleship in the Gospel of John

2009-11-24T23:05:00.002-06:00

Here’s a question for you: Does the use of “love” in John match the use of “hate” in Luke?

That is far too broad (and probably inaccurate) a question to ask. My question is specifically about John 21:15-17, in which Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”

As explored in my last post, in Luke 14:26 μισέω (“hate”) is used as a term of renunciation, renouncing one’s family as the foundation of security, belonging, and living and taking on Jesus as that foundation instead. In this sense, to hate my family means not that I harbor psychological hostility toward it, but that I no longer belong to/with my family, but belong to/with Jesus.

With this in mind, my question is: Since “love” is usually regarded as the opposite of “hate,” does Jesus’ question in John 17 have anything to do with the call to discipleship? Is this three-fold question of love a way of reinstating Peter as a disciple after he denied Jesus three-fold? Does “love” in this context mean the opposite of what “hate” means in Luke 14? In other words, does “love” in John 17 mean “proclamation of loyalty and belonging” while “hate” in Luke 14 means “renunciation of loyalty and belonging”?

‘Hate’ and Following Jesus in Luke 14

2009-11-21T16:23:00.013-06:00

When it comes to his teachings about discipleship, Jesus says some pretty difficult things. In Luke 14, Jesus says, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters -- and even himself -- he is not able to be my disciple” (14:26).

This statement seems to contradict 'nicer' things said by Jesus, such as: "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" (Luke 6:47), or "And just as you would wish that others would do to you, do so to them" (Luke 6:31).

Why this talk of hating? Μισέω is typically translated as “hate.” According to BDAG, μισέω can also mean, to "disfavor, disregard in contrast to preferential treatment" (BDAG 653 §2; cf.Matt 6:24, Lk 16:13, John 12:25, Rom 9:13). (LSJ doesn't give any sources in support of this un-preferential treatment.) In I. Howard Marshall’s opinion, μισέω “is usually said to have its Semitic sense, ‘to love less’” (Marshall, 592; cf. Gen 29:31-33, Deut 21:15-17, 2 Sam 19:7, Prov 13:24, Isa 60:15, Mal 1:2, Rom 9:13, 1 John 2:9). This is detectable in Matthew’s parallel: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37-38).

In this way, μισέω isn’t a psychological hostility, but a renunciation, a disowning, or rejection (Marshall, 592; TDNT IV, 690). As a person chooses to follow Jesus, to become his disciple, he or she must sever the natural connections and obligations he or she has toward father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters, and to renounce even himself/herself. According to Bonhoeffer, “By calling us [Jesus] has cut us off from all immediacy with the things of this world. He wants to be the centre; through him alone all things shall come to pass” (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 95). Such a separation would be extremely disorienting. As Carson Brisson comments,

These words enter a cultural setting in which an individual was primarily defined, from birth through death, by her or his family. In such a milieu, this saying sounds a call for individuals and the community of faith to embrace discipleship to Jesus as their new and ultimate basis for personal and corporate identity (cf. 8:19-21). Such a call would have presented a radically impractical choice, not simply an emotionally difficult one, and a nearly impossible act in a cultural setting in which contemporary definitions of freedom as individual self-assertion and many contemporary forms of economic support outside one's family system did not exist. . . . If God’s invitation is so urgent and so absolute that an individual’s family ties no longer form the basis of her or his identity, what is left that discipleship may not require? (Brisson, Carson. Luke 14:26-27.Interpretation, 61 no 3 Jl 2007: 311)

The answer is, of course, "nothing." There is no more to give after a disciple renounces even his/her own life. To make this ominously clear, Jesus states, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and comes after me is not able to be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). Luke uses this language elsewhere, in 9:23 in which Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

The cross is, of course, and ultimately, a death sentence. Here, though, the cross also communicates the manner of life those who follow Jesus can expect – namely, one of shame and suffering. Just imagine, if we find it difficult today in our own time and culture to step outside the bounds of what our family members expect from us, how much more difficult would this task be within the bounds of the shame-honor culture of first-century Judea? But Jesus doesn't call us to an easy life. He calls us to a life submitted completely to him. This is why the apostles refer to themselves as δοῦλος τοῦ Ἰσοῦ Χριστοῦ, "slave of Jesus Christ." The life I live is not to be my own. In following Jesus' call, I give up my right to direct my own life. It's a total submission, an absolute resignation of self-sovereignty. If I declare that Jesus is Lord (κύριος), then that declaration has something to say about me too -- that I am his servant, his slave. Jesus becomes the anchor of our new reality. He is the mediator through whom we relate to the world and other people. No longer am "I" the lowest common denominator, but Jesus instead.

Ultimately, this order to "hate" is a declaration of where life is found. Am I so certain that there is more life to be found in my familial relations than in Jesus, or more life in wealth or in the other forms of security this world can offer? Or am I willing to let go of absolutely everything to which I previously clung to cling singularly to the one who offers life like no other can?

Joyeux Noël and the Death of War

2009-11-14T03:28:00.000-06:00

Since I wasn't able to attend a memorial service this year, I decided to observe Remembrance Day by watching a couple of movies that bear witness to the sacrifice and suffering of those who fought on behalf of their countries. One of these movies was Joyeux Noël. This film was particularly good at portraying the hardship and anguish of soldiers in the trenches of World War I. In this story, three generals -- German, French, and Scottish -- along with their units, are brought together by the celebration of Christmas.

In the dreary dark of Christmas Eve, a German officer who before the war had been a vocalist in Berlin, sang "Stille Nacht" (Silent Night). Close by in their own trenches, the French and the Scots listened to the hopeful song of the German singer. The Scots joined in with their bagpipes, and soon, all the soldiers left their trenches to meet one another in peace on the battle field.

There they shared stories of home and tears for loss they had already incurred thus far in battle. Many even exchanged addresses with the intent of taking up friendship again once the mess of war had ended. At the high point of this meeting, the Scottish priest led the who assembly in the Christmas midnight mas. Participating together, they were no longer enemies, but fellow men who were all here by the same unfortunate circumstances, forced into combat by the will of their homelands. This was a really striking picture of peace that can come by love in Christ -- even in the midst of war.

During the mas, the artillery fire booming in the distance reminded all that though they might forget war in the moment, the war had certainly not forgotten them. At this, they exchanged greetings of "Merry Christmas" and "good luck," and returned to their trenches.

One of the most memorable scenes is one in which the German singer-now-soldier confronts his general, asking if they must go on to kill again now that they had truly come to know those they had regarded enemies. He said, "To die tomorrow is even more absurd than to die yesterday." How foolish it would seem, having now experienced the peace of Christmas Eve, to die by the hands that offered friendship only the night before?

This war was to be the War to End All Wars. But really, going to war can't truly cause the end of war. The only thing capable of ending war, as was so grandly demonstrated in Joyeux Noël, is the peace that comes through love in Christ. Let love be the foreign policy that guides nations in their dealings with one another. Let love be the 'war' that is fought, and it really will be the War to end all others.

New Friends

2009-11-12T20:22:00.000-06:00

It has been another successful library book sale this year. I got there good and early this morning, and it paid off. Here are the new friends for my bookshelf (in preferential order):

Studying the Synoptic Gospels (E. P. Sanders and Margaret Davies)
I'm excited for this one because I'm planning on taking Wes Olmstead's Seminary Gospel Seminar in May. I recently picked up a copy of Aland's Synopsis of the Four Gospels (Greek-English edition). Sanders should be a good guide.
NICNT: The Book of the Acts (F. F. Bruce)
I really like F. F. Bruce. I've been collecting his commentaries.
Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (George W. E. Nickelsburg)
I don't know much about this stuff, but Nickelsburg sure does. So I figure this book is a good starting point.
What the Best College Teachers Do (Ken Bain)
This one was assigned during my college internship, but because of the heavy courseload I took on that year, I didn't get to read it very carefully. More of a panicked skim. It's a great resource, and now I can read it properly.
The Gospel According to St. John (B. F. Westcott)
All I know about Westcott is that he's a textual critic from a couple of scholastic generations ago. I haven't picked up any commentaries on John thus far, so, for a dollar, I figured I'd give him a try.
Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (James Barr)
This looks to be an interesting Hebrew resource. I've been reading Alan Black's Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek, and thought Barr's book might help round out some Hebrew reading.
Biblical Hebrew Step by Step: readings from the Book of Genesis (M. Mansoor)
Hebrew still feels like a lot of work. I'm hoping this book will help to motivate me to get reading.

Good harvest. All for $15! Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me.

Are We There Yet? Back to the Future and the year 2015

2009-11-05T23:45:00.003-06:00

Today is November 5th, which, according to Back to the Future, is a red-letter date in the space-time continuum (it's the day Doc invents time travel). So, I figure it's a great day to reflect on what Back to the Future held for the future.
Back in the mid-80's, a wonderful trilogy of movies was filmed, which is still my favorite set to this day: Back to the Future. There are many aspects of these films that set them firmly on a preferential pedestal. The casting couldn't have been better. Michael J. Fox plays the part of Martin (Marty) McFly, a cool, socially-savy, slightly insecure 17 year old who knows a lot about love, but can't stand it when people call him "yellow," and learns a lot throughout the trilogy about not allowing others' opinions to dictate his life. He (somehow) befriends an old, crazy-eyed scientist, Doctor Emmett L. Brown. Their association is never explained. How does a high school student become involved in the experiments of a fringe-scientist? I'm not sure, but I love the combination. Doctor Brown, or "Doc," is played enjoyably by Christopher Lloyd. He's the perfect picture of a mad scientist. He offers the trilogy all the techno-babble to explain just how time travel is possible. Together Doc and Marty discover the advantages and serious consequences of time travel, as they go from their native 1985 back to 1955, forward to 2015, way back to 1885, and finally home again.
Their travels to 2015 are of interest. When all the problems of the first movie have been resolved, Marty asks Doc where he'll go now. He tells him he'd like to go to the future "to see the progress of mankind." He says he'll go ahead "30 years. It's a nice round number." When Marty goes to the future in Back to the Future II, we get to see this progress.

To name a few of the 'advancements,' there are flying cars which travel"skyways" rather than highways, hoverboards, a controlled weather system, an efficient justice system (which has done away with lawyers), robotic waiters, automated gas stations, holographic advertising signs, video conferencing in place of the phone, lots of fax machines, vocal recognition, voice-activated lighting, retinal scan identification, self-drying (and automatic fitting) clothing, power-lace shoes, and hydratable foods.Also, the clothing fashion has become very bright, shiny, colorful, and all the young people wear their pockets inside out. (That's a young Elijah Wood to the left.)

So, are we there yet? We definitely haven't discovered an easy way to make cars fly, or to make skateboards hover. The weather is still as unpredictable as it ever has been. Though some parts of life have become more automated, such as self-serve banking and grocery shopping, or pay-at-the-pump gas stations, we are not yet served by robots. Our clothing is still very non-futuristic compared to that of Back to the Future's 2015. No self-drying, auto-sizing, or power lacing. Retinal scanning might happen in the most advanced corporations, but for now, it remains mostly in the movies. Our justice system is still not very efficient, and still full of lawyers. We do have many fast-convenience food items, though not quite like the hydrated pizza that starts the size of a quarter, and when hydrated, can feed a family of five.

On the other side of things, we've moved beyond the fax machine for the most part. Back to the Future's 2015 saw the fax machine as part of the communication of the future, with Marty's notice of job termination spitting out of almost 10 fax machines around the house. We do have such things as voice activated services, like lighting. Video calls are becoming more common, especially with the use of webcams. One thing the trilogy's writers did not anticipate that we do have in 2009 is the internet. The internet, as we know it now, did not exist in 1985, and is very much one of the great driving forces of our technology and convenience in this day and age.

Overall, though, we still have a lot of ground to make up if we are to achieve the vision Back to the Future has set out for 2015. We have six years to go.

A Delirious? Ending

2009-10-28T13:16:00.001-06:00

Since the early nineties, Stew Smith, Jon Thatcher, Stu Garrard, Tim Jupp, and Martin Smith have been travelling the world, and writing music to capture the vision of the church and to ignite its heart. For more than fifteen years they have shaped and reshaped the worship genre, and have tried to blur the lines between "Christian" and "mainstream" music. And now their time together is soon coming to a close. Next month Delirious? launches its final tour, "History Makers - Farewell Tour," in Europe and the British Isles. Unfortunately they aren't including North America in their final tour. I've been a big fan since 1995 or so, so there will be a big D? shaped hole in my fandom when November is over... I've had the chance to see them twice, in Edmonton and Ottawa; it's always a treat. If you find yourself in Europe next month, be sure to catch a show if tickets are still available!

Below is Delirious? playing "Investigate" at Willow Creek in Chicago as part of their Now is the Time tour. I've always thought it to be one of their most reaching, desperate sort of songs; straining to allow God to tear into the heart and purify what he finds.

Investigate my life and make me clean
Shine upon the darkest place in me
To you my life's an open book
So turn the page and take a look
Upon the life you've made
Always, my days, I'll praise
Fly away, where heaven calls my name
Fly away, I'll never be the same
Investigate, I can't wait
Excavate, recreate
Investigate my life and take me through
Shine upon the road that leads to you
I know you'd heard the words I'd say
Before I'd even lived one day
You knew the life you'd made
Always, my days, I'll praise
Investigate my life and make me clean
Shine upon the darkest place in me
When I go, when I return you've seen your holy fire burn
Upon the life you made
Always, I'll praise

This song appears originally on their Glo album (short for "Glory"), from 2000. About its writing, Stu Garrard says,

"Psalm 139 is one of my favorites. Whenever I read it, I'm struck by the words "God, investigate my life; get all the facts first hand." I really do want to be an 'open book' and often think about God exploring my thoughts and motives, searchlight in hand. Reading this psalm gives me a feeling of being totally surrounded by God - not being able to escape and not wanting to, either. He knows my thoughts; He knows the words on my lips before I speak. He is before and me behind me; there is nowhere I can go to flee from His presence. He formed me and knew who I was even before I was born. If I could fly away to the ends of the earth, He'd be there waiting for me. The thing is, I don't feel hemmed in - I feel liberated. Psalm 139 closes with the words:
'Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I'm about; See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong - then guide me on the road to eternal life (vv. 23-24, THE MESSAGE).'
Determined words of a psalmist on a journey, flavored with introspection and perhaps a little melancholy . . . perfect for the key of D minor, don't you think?"
I Could Sing of Your Love Forever: stories, reflections and devotions. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2007; pages 43-44

Living Offline: perhaps not a bad idea

2009-10-27T15:32:00.000-06:00

The other day I watched the fairly new movie, "Surrogates," in which everyone in the world experiences life through these machine-bodied surrogates, while the 'operators' remain in the safety of their homes.

I watched it because 1) I like science fiction and 2) Bruce Willis stars. I liked the movie. It had enough twists to keep you guessing, and the action was fairly strong throughout.

The most impacting line of the whole film, for me anyway, was spoken by the antagonist after he reveals his sinister plan to destroy the machines. He says, "Human beings weren't meant to experience life through machines!"

How very true! When computers were created, they were to save us time (and paper), but nothing seems to consume our time each day quite so much as our many electronic devices. When I think about how many hours I spend on a computer when I have some spare time or a day off, I think I'd be embarrassed to reveal the number. I'm grateful for much of what I can accomplish from my home computer, like communication with people far away, online banking, purchasing books and other items, and even searching for journal articles and things like that. But everything in moderation. The ease with which anyone can administrate their life on a computer, on the internet, is helpful. But if a person's use of these things isn't managed or moderated, it can easily become a colossal waste of time.

No wonder people back a century had such greater knowledge of things like philosophy, Latin, and Greek. They had no 'time saving devices' to eat up their every day.

Grammatical Diagram of Luke 14:28-30

2009-10-23T16:31:00.001-06:00

As promised, I went through Luke 14:28-30 and completed a grammatical diagram. Click here to see the PDF. (I used unicode with SBL Greek font, so hopefully it will show up properly for you! If you don't have SBL Greek, you can download it here. It's free, and is fun to type in.)

The Grammatical Structure of Luke 14:29

2009-10-21T18:45:00.001-06:00

Another quandary brought to you by Greek Tutorial. This week I was reading through Luke 14:25-30 with a couple of students, and verse 29 proved to be, shall we say, especially interesting. I'd like to examine the grammatical structure of the pericope to get a feel for what's going on in Luke 14:29. Here's 14:28-30:

[28] Τίς γὰρ ἐξ ὑμῶν θέλων πύργον οἰκοδομῆσαι οὐχὶ πρῶτον καθίσας ψηφίζει τὴν δαπάνην, εἰ ἔχει εἰς ἀπαρτισμόν; [29] ἴνα μήποτε θέντος αὐτοῦ θεμέλιον καὶ μὴ ἰσχύοντος ἐκτελέσαι πάντες οἰ θεωροῦντες ἄρξωνται αὐτῷ ἐμπαίζειν [30] λέγοντες ὅτι οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἤρζατο οἰκοδομεῖν καὶ οὐκ ἴσχυσεν ἐκτελέσαι.

In verse 28, τὶς (nom masc sg) is matched by the participle θέλων (nom masc sg pres act ptc), and is modified by the genitive phrase ἐξ ὑμῶν to read, "For, who among you desiring". The participle θέλων belongs to the infinitive οἰκοδομῆσαι which gives us the content of the desire, "to build." The direct object of οἰκοδομῆσαι is the accusative masculine singular πύργον, "a tower."

This phrase so far: "For anyone from among you desiring to build a tower".

Next, οὐχὶ negates ψηφίζει, "does he not calculate," which takes τὴν δαπάνην as its object, "does he not calculate the cost." ψηφίζει is modified by the attendant circumstance participle καθίσας, which describes the action that goes on as the person calculates the cost: "does he not, sitting down, calculate the cost". The next clause, εἰ ἔχει εἰς ἀπαρτισμόν, appears to be a purpose clause (though this verse is missing an infinitive like "to see" or "to determine" to nicely shape this into a recognizable purpose clause), indicating why he calculates: "if he has [what is needed] for completion".

This whole first verse is a question, noted by the interrogative form of τίς (which is anarthrous when it functions as an indefinite pronoun), and the Greek question mark ; at the end: "For who among you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down [and] calculate the cost [to determine] if he has [what is needed] for completion?" (Feel free to quibble with these conclusions; there is lots of room to move here in my understanding of the syntax!)

Moving on to verse 29. ἴνα starts this verse, which always introduces the subjunctive mood. The arrangement of this verse is a little odd, though, because the subjunctive verb, ἄρξωνται, is almost at the end of the verse. Immediately after ἴνα, the clause μήποτε θέντος αὐτοῦ θεμέλιον καὶ μὴ ἰσχύοντος ἐκτελέσαι is inserted before the ἴνα is completed. However, this arrangement may not be so strange, considering that ἴνα and μήποτε can function together as "a strengthened form of ἴνα μή" (Marshall [1978], "The Gospel of Luke," 594). And according to BDAG, this ἴνα μήποτε combination is often used for denoting purpose, "(in order) that . . . not, often expressing apprehension" (BDAG, 648-2b).

With this in mind, verse 29 looks a little friendlier. (If I had thought to look at BDAG last night with those Greek students, I could have been a little more helpful!) After the ἴνα μήποτε construction we find a genitive absolute θέντος αὐτοῦ θεμέλιον, "he placed a foundation," followed by the participle ἰσχύντος, negated by μή, "not being able," and its complementary infinitive ἐκτελέσαι, which completes the thought, "not being able to complete [it]".

So far in verse 29 we have: "In order that he does not place a foundation, and, not being able to complete it".

The consequence of this ill-conceived plan is that "all who see it should begin to mock him." πάντες is modified by the adjectival participle οἰ θεωροῦντες, "all who see," and is the subject of ἄρξωνται. ἄρξωνται takes ἐμπαίζειν as its complementary infinitive, "begin to mock." αὐτῷ likely refers to the uncompleted tower, rather than the builder.

This verse all together states, "In order that he does not place a foundation, and, being unable to complete it, all who see it should begin to mock him".

Verse 30 tells us the content of their mocking, "This man began to build and was not able to finish." (You can hear Nelson from The Simpsons in the background saying his customary, "Hah hah!")

I was going to do a grammatical diagram of this as well, but I've run out of time! Tune in next time for that.

There are many details I didn't focus on -- again, time being the issue. There is just never enough time for exegesis!

Luke 14:18, πάντες ἀπὸ μιᾶς (update)

2009-10-17T11:50:00.000-06:00

According to Liddell-Scott-Jones' Greek-English Lexicon, ἀπὸ μιᾶς means "withone accord," as found in Eu. Luc 14.18 (LSJ 492, εἷς entry). This is very similar to Marshall's "unanimously." I'm pretty satisfied now.

Luke 14:18, πάντες ἀπὸ μιᾶς

2009-10-15T11:40:00.000-06:00

In Jesus' story in Luke 14:18, a servant is sent to invite the guests for a feast, but none of them want to come. In response, Luke writes, καὶ ήρξαντο πάντες ἀπὸ μιᾶς παραιτεῖτσθαι ("and all unanimously began to make excuses"). The use of the feminine singular genitive μίας is confusing. There is no syntactical reason for it. According to I. Howard Marshall, "ἀπὸ μιᾶς is probably a Greek phrase (sc. γρώμης) meaning 'unanimously' . . . rather than a literal translation of [the Aramaic] min hada, 'all at once, immediately'" (p. 588 from Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, NIGTC, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978).

At Greek tutorial last night, students were asking about μίας, and I had no clue what to say other than, "Check BDAG and see if πάντα or ἀπό works with μία in any idiomatic ways." If Marshall is write, that appears to be the case.

Pocket Paradigms for Biblical Greek

2009-10-12T17:15:00.000-06:00

It's been a few weeks, and I'm finally finished. In my spare time I've been putting together a little book of Greek paradigms to aid me in reading through the Greek New Testament. For a few years I've been looking for a pocket handbook for paradigms, similar to Mark Futato's Pocket Paradigms for Biblical Hebrew, but haven't found anything comparable. And since it's annoying to lug around textbooks all the time, I compiled charts from a few standard textbooks, and with the magic of Microsoft Publisher, produced a Pocket Paradigms for Biblical Greek. (This confirms my descent into extreme nerdom.) If anyone has come across a paradigms book for Greek, I'd be very interested to take a look at it, to compare what it includes, and all that.

Luke 14:12-14, Dinner Invitation Etiquette and the Grace of God

2009-10-07T21:27:00.001-06:00

Last night while reading through Luke 14 with some Greek tutor students, I was struck by something Jesus said to the host of the dinner he attended. Jesus told him, "Whenever you should hold a meal or dinner, don't invite your friends, brothers, relatives, or your wealthy neighbours since they might invite you in return, and you might be repaid" (v. 12). Instead, Jesus tells him to invite the crippled, the maimed, the blind, and the poor -- those who have no means to repay the gift of hospitality (v. 13). Jesus declares to him that "you will be blessed because they do not have [the means] to repay you, for you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous" (v. 14).

This resembles exhortations Jesus gave elsewhere, such as Luke 6:32-36,

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them.And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that.And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Or like Jesus' instruction on acts of righteousness in Matthew 6:1-4,

Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

From Jesus' words in Luke 14, it seems that there is no repayment (from God) for giving to those who have the means to give back to you. Repayment is received from the friend or relative or neighbour who does for you what you did for him. But God repays those who give out of grace with no hope of repayment. From the contexts of Luke 6 and Matthew 6, it is also clear that God rewards those who do these good things in secret rather than in plain view for the sake of a pat on the back, or the elevation of one's status among his/her peers.

This is a big deal. Jesus wants us as his followers to be looking out for those who are truly down and out, to get our love working and acting in the real world. Inviting such people means also that your time is spent with them, and not only your food consumed by them. This isn't just food-bank-filling. This is ministering truly and personally to those who have real need.

And in a very real way, this action is a picture of what God, in Jesus, already has done, and does each day, for us. He has given the gift of his love, his grace, his Fatherhood, his Son, the promise of his enduring presence -- all things we can never repay. In this way in all of these passages, Jesus calls us to imitate the way the Father gives to us: out of grace.

Participial Fun

2009-10-06T22:30:00.000-06:00

Tonight was the first of many Tuesday nights that I will spend with aspiring Greek students as a Greek tutor. This evening I had a great deal of fun (I'm actually being serious!) explaining the differences between adjectival (specifically substantival) and adverbial participles. I remember when the world of Greek participles was opened to me, and so I felt very purposeful in trying to clear some of the fog looming over the students' heads. "Look for the article," I told them. And by the end of the hour and a half, they were looking, and, I hope, to a slightly increased degree, understanding. Greek Syntax is definitely the most challenging semester of the first four. Hopefully by Christmas these students will look at syntax with some measure of confidence rather than despair. That is my mission.

Greek Prose Composition

2009-10-04T14:14:00.000-06:00

I have begun to work through North and Hillard's Greek Prose Composition. It's a great little book, published over 100 years ago, that was once commonly used in schools for teaching children to write Greek. It offers exercise-by-exercise vocabulary lists, a English to Greek vocabulary list, and 175 composition exercises, beginning with simple sentences and working toward the composition of long paragraphs. This book teaches composition in what appears to be Attic Greek, which precedes Koine. Some forms are different, but for the most part it is easy enough to transfer over from Koine to Attic.

Greek composition is challenging (and humbling!), but a lot of fun! I suggest at least downloading this treasure, or getting your hands on a hardcopy.

Luke 4:22-28 and the Angry Mob

2009-09-30T21:41:00.000-06:00

In Luke 4:16 and following there is a curious and rapid shift in the direction of the narrative.

Jesus goes into the synagogue in Nazareth and reads from Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor;
he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the captive,
and recovery of sight for the blind,
and to send away in freedom those who are broken,
and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."

After which, Jesus said, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The response of those in the synagogue was bewilderment. They were amazed at his words and said to each other, "Is this not Joseph's son?"

Jesus replied to their amazement with a surprising chastisement. He said, "Certainly you will speak to me this proverb: 'Physician, heal yourself. Whatever we heard that happened in Capernaum, do also here in your hometown.'"

Then he went on to tell about how prophets like Elijah and Elisha performed miracles for those outside of Israel (or at least outside of the people of Israel) because the people of Israel lacked faith. He said this to underscore his point that "no prophet is welcome in his hometown" (Lk 4:24).

Now here the story takes a quick twist. After Jesus' first words, everyone in the synagogue was amazed by him. Now after his second discourse, they became enraged. They marched him off to a cliff because they wanted to kill him by throwing him off of it. (And somehow Jesus was able to walk through them, leaving unharmed.)

So, why the sudden change in attitude? Jesus had just claimed that he was a prophet who had come to fulfill the passage he read from Isaiah. The proverb he quoted was a rebuke for their lack of faith, and, in speaking of Elijah and Elisha, he rebuked them further, implying that they are no better than their forefathers who lacked faith in God's prophets of long ago.

Most ironically, showing a glimmer of Luke's humour and flare, the narrative immediately follows Jesus to Capernaum where he performs miracles of healing and casting out of demons. Faith is the key.

Textkit - Greek and Latin

2009-09-19T00:53:00.000-06:00

This is a great resource I came across lately. I'm sure it's not new to some of you, but if it is, do check it out! There are all sorts of downloadable resources for learning Greek and Latin. Most significant, in my opinion, are the composition workbooks. These workbooks, such as North and Hillard's andSidgwick's, have been in use for over 100 years, going back to a time when kids learned Greek and Latin in elementary school. Where's a Delorian when you need one?! I've taken plenty of Greek classes while at Briercrest College, but I still find my recall of vocabulary and verb forms to be a touch dodgey. I figure that learning to write, instead of just to read, Greek will help it all along. Do check out Textkit. It's a candy store for nerdy academic kids!

Matthew 6:8, “your Father knows before you ask him”

2009-09-04T01:12:00.000-06:00

In Matthew 6, Jesus speaks a lot on prayer: method, appropriate time and place, and even gives us an example of how we should pray. I was struck today by verse 8. Jesus said, "[7]And when praying, do not babble on like the heathen, for they think that by means of their many words they will be heard. [8] Therefore, do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

The fact that the Father knows what we need before we ask is very reassuring. I find it interesting that Jesus doesn't say, "Don't bother praying, because the Father already knows what you need." The exhortation is, "Don't babble on and on . . . for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

It's all about humility, isn't it? Earlier in Matt 6 Jesus warns us not to blow the trumpet to announce our charitable acts. And we're to pray in secret with the door closed behind us rather than shouting out in the street. Jesus is communicating how prayer is to function. It's not a show, it's an enactment of humility before the Father. Of course he doesn't need to be told what we need to live; he made life afterall. We are to do good deeds, but not for our own glorification. The Father sees what goes on in secret, and he rewards those who do righteous things when there is no one to watch. Those who 'peacock' about have attention as their only reward.

This seems to be really a call for honest intent. The idea is to be righteous in the sight of God rather than super-duper in the sight of men. Perhaps a little bit like marriage versus dating. There is so much pressure to be doing the right things and saying the right things and being the right things when two people are getting to know one another. But once that superficiality is stripped away, and a husband and wife can simply go about living life together, their efforts together are real and not for show. The result is a rich interaction in which love is the point and service is the means.

Anyway, I was greatly impressed (once again) by Matthew 6:8, and am deeply grateful to have been provided life by a God who knows how to take care of me, and who is interested in the way I live the life he has placed in me.

Remembering Ryan Chute

2009-08-22T15:37:00.000-06:00

This afternoon I took in Ryan Chute's funeral along with thousands of others. It was a beautiful service. Below is the text from the back of the program. I was able to chat with his 4-year old son, Rhett. He's an amazing little guy, who loved his dad and wants to be just like him. When I found him, he was drawing on a pie plate. When I asked what he was drawing, he said, "A picture of my dad."

Matthew 5:3,10, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

2009-08-22T12:44:00.000-06:00

Appearing twice in Matthew's Beatitudes is the phrase, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Respectively this phrase is applied to "the poor in Spirit" and "those persecuted on account of righteousness." If they receive the same blessing, is there a connection between the two groups? Maybe the experience of persecution causes a person to become poor in spirit? Or perhaps the answer is found in viewing the Beatitudes as a unified whole rather than as blessings to separate group:
Looking at the literary structure of the passage, the same blessing is given in the first beatitude as the last. There are eight blessings given in the third person:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are those who show mercy, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are those who make peace, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who have been persecuted on account of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

These blessings don't form a chiasm, at least none that I can decipher. But they are hemmed in the beginning and end by "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," as an inclusio of sorts, indicating the norms of the kingdom. The norms of this sinful world will be turned on its head.
And how does one get into this wonderful kingdom? It isn't easy, that's for sure. Obedience is absolutely required. For, "anyone who breaks the least of one of these commands and teaches men [to do] likewise, he will be called least in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 5:19). This is a direct slight to those regarded in that day as the authorities on righteousness - the scribes and Pharisees. For, as Jesus continues, "If your righteousness does not greatly exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 5:20).

So, if the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the mournful, meek, and merciful, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, those who are persecuted on account of it, and those who make peace instead of war, then it is definitely not for those who operate out of greed and hostility and selfish ambition and hate.
That's quite the list to live up to. The Lord has given us quite the standard to adhere to, and thankfully, sufficient grace to see use through. At any rate, knowing that he will return soon makes me just as nervous as it makes me glad.

Matthew 5:2, Jesus opens his mouth

2009-08-22T12:24:00.001-06:00

During Jesus' temptation in the desert, the devil says to Jesus, "If you are the son of God, say that these stones should become bread." And replying, Jesus said, "It is written, 'Not upon bread alone does man live, but upon every word that comes from the mouth of God'" (Matthew 4:3,4).

Interestingly, the next time that "mouth" (στόμα) appears in Matthew is in 5:2, in which he writes, "And opening his mouth he [Jesus] taught them," which precludes the Beatitudes. Perhaps this is reading too much into the significance of word occurrence, but could this be a subtle indication that the words Jesus opens his mouth to say are in likeness to the words that come from the mouth of God? (See also Matt 13:35 for another instance of the opening of God's mouth.)

Matthew 3:12, Asbestos

2009-08-14T09:08:00.000-06:00

Just a funny fact. Our word "asbestos" comes from the Greek word, ’ασβεστὸς. In the Greek, when this word is used with fire or laughter, it is translated as "inextinguishable, unquenchable." When used with the ocean, it describes the oceans "ceaseless flow." Interestingly, asbestos was used in construction of buildings for years because it is completely fireproof. I can see why English took a word that means "unquenchable" to name an unburnable substance. But the connection between the Greek adjective and the building material isn't perfect... I don't think Jesus was talking about what we call asbestos, since asbestos can't burn, and it's deadly to people.

Matthew 3:11-12, Fire of Baptism and the Unquenchable Fire

2009-08-07T20:01:00.001-06:00

In verses 11 and 12, Matthew uses πὺρ ("fire") twice in very striking ways. In verse 11 John the Baptist says of himself, ". . . I baptize you with water for repentance," and in contrast he says of Jesus, "but the one who is coming after me is greater than me . . . who will baptize you in (with/by means of?) the Holy Spirit and fire."

In the very next verse John continues on about Jesus, saying, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will purge his threshing floor and will gather together his grain into the barn, but the chaff he will burn up completely in unquenchable fire."

What is so striking to me in these two verses is the double use of πὺρ. In verse 11, fire is part of the means by which Jesus will baptize (‘υμᾶς βαπτίσει ’εν πνεύμα ‘αγίῳ καὶ πυρί). In verse 12, the chaff is burned in unquenchable fire (τὸ δὲ ’άχυρον κατακαύσει πυρὶ ’ασβέστῳ). The proximity of the two occurrences of πὺρ suggest there is a connection between the fire with which Jesus baptizes and that which burns up the chaff.

Perhaps it is possible that the Holy Spirit and the fire of Jesus' baptism work in us to burn the chaff, or the unfruitful parts of us, so that he may gather together the good in us as we are transformed into his likeness. Or is this a picture similar to John 15 in which the unfruitful branches are thrown away and burned? I am hesitant to see a direct connection between these passages because their focus seem to be distinct. In John 15, those who remain in Jesus are described as fruitful, and those who do not remain in him are thrown out. Here in Matthew 3, fire is used (along with the Holy Spirit -- or is the καὶ epexegetical, "he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, namely, fire"?) on those who are baptized by Jesus, so I would assume this is not a separation of the faithful and unfaithful.

Maybe this is the work Jesus does in us as we follow him; he does away with the unhealthy parts of us in suffering or in the situations we encounter, and nurtures the parts of us that are healthy and pleasing to him.

Obviously, there are holes I need to fill in. If I had the time (and maybe I'll just take the time some time soon), it would be interesting to see if there are any notable connections between John the Baptist's words here and areas of the New Testament that speak of working out our salvation, or growing, or becoming conformed to the likeness of Jesus. Oh grad school, maybe you will provide me the time for all of these things!

More to come on Matthew 3.

Matthew 3:3, εὐθυς and the way of the Lord

2009-08-07T00:34:00.001-06:00

Chalk this one up to presuppositions lingering from first year Greek.

In Matthew 3:3 I came across an occurrence of εὐθυς that surprised me. In verse 3, Matthew quotes Isaiah 40:3, "A voice crying in the desert; prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths."

"Straight" in both Matthew 3:3 and Isaiah 40:3 (LXX) is εὐθείας. In my early Greek training I memorized εὐθύς as "immediately." But it turns out, εὐθύς is very commonly used to mean "straight" when pertaining to the condition of a line or road (cf. BDAG, 406; LSJ). With this in mind, εὐθύς is the unsurprising translation of the Hebrew ׳ַשְׁרוּ, "make straight."

Just a quick note. It's past midnight. More to come on Matthew 3.

Matthew 2, Jubulant Magi and the Use of Dreams

2009-08-04T13:52:00.000-06:00

In Matthew 2, the Magi from the East arrive in Jerusalem, and inquire of Herod where they can find "the one born king of the Jews" (2:2). When they arrive in Bethlehem and see the star stand above where the child was, the Magi celebrate. "And seeing the star, they rejoiced with great and exceeding joy." The words Matthew uses makes this intense manner of celebration apparent: ’εχάρησαν ("they recoiced") χαρὰν ("with joy") μεγάλην ("great") σφόδρα ("exceeding"). They understood that this child bore great significance, so it is no wonder that they fell down to worship him, and presented him with gifts.

Another interesting thing in Matthew 2 is the reoccurrence of dreams and warnings from God. Chapter 1 told of Joseph's dream, in which he was commanded not to be afraid, but to take Mary as his wife and to name the child Jesus (1:20-21). In Chapter 2, the Magi are warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, but to return to their land by another route (2:12). And Joseph receives two more dreams, one telling him to flee to Egypt to save the child from Herod's ill-begotten search (2:13), and one to inform him of Herod's death, and that they may now safely return to Israel (2:19).

The significance of Joseph in Jesus' early life cannot be overrated. Though he was not Jesus' real father, God sent his angel to speak to Joseph to inform him of what must happen with the child. Obviously there are cultural reasons for why God would speak to a man rather than to a woman in the first century, but it is interesting that Joseph disappears from the story shortly after. I will have to pay close attention to the last mention of Joseph for any last comment on his role.

Matthew 1:19, Righteous Joseph

2009-08-02T22:40:00.000-06:00

"And Joseph her husband was righteous and, not wishing to disgrace her, desired to release her secretly."
I wonder if he is righteous (δίκαιος) because of wanting to release hersecretly, or if his desire to release her because of her pregnancy is what makes him righteous? His desire to release her secretly would be an indication of compassion more than righteousness. Maybe his adherence to the law is what makes him righteous.
There is a similarity in process between Joseph's actions here and Peter's actions in Acts 10:9-15. Peter was to preach to the gentile Cornelius' household. Normally he would have objected since Peter was a Jew and Cornelius and his people were gentiles, and Jews didn't associate freely with gentiles. However, he received a vision in which he was commanded, "Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean" (Acts 10:15), and thus he obediently went to Cornelius' home and shared the good news about Jesus with them. As a result, the entire household was baptized.

In Matthew 1, Joseph thought that the best thing to do with a pregnant betrothed would be to secretly release her from betrothal. In this way she would not be disgraced and he would preserve his righteousness. However, an angel of the Lord told him in a dream not to be afraid, but to take Mary as his wife, and to call her son "Jesus." Because of the vision, he obeyed the Lord and married Mary, and named her son in accordance with the angel's message.

Both Peter and Joseph were concerned with doing what they viewed as right. In both cases, each received a vision which communicated that the actions they were to take, though seemingly against what they viewed as proper conduct, was actually according to the Lord's will.

Perhaps also, in calling Joseph "righteous" allows the reader to expect Joseph to obey the angel of the Lord. I will be watching for more allusions to the righteousness of Joseph, and to how Matthew characterizes righteousness in other characters.

νόες σχέδιων

2009-08-01T16:04:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the new blog. This space is for my "random thoughts," as the blog's title suggests, about life, faith, exegesis, and whatever might come about.