marklwardjr

I applaud Bob Jones University, my alma mater, for stating this clearly in a statement released today:

Bob Jones University has existed since 1927 as a private Christian institution of higher learning for the purpose of helping young men and women cultivate a biblical worldview, represent Christ and His Gospel to others, and glorify God in every dimension of life.

BJU’s history has been chiefly characterized by striving to achieve those goals; but like any human institution, we have failures as well. For almost two centuries American Christianity, including BJU in its early stages, was characterized by the segregationist ethos of American culture. Consequently, for far too long, we allowed institutional policies regarding race to be shaped more directly by that ethos than by the principles and precepts of the Scriptures. We conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear Christian counterpoint to it.

Praise the Lord for the humility and wisdom of BJU President Stephen Jones. I have prayed for him and the University in the past to do the right thing with regard to this issue, and I prayed for him during the small (Facebook) controversy which gave rise to this statement. My prayers were answered beyond what I expected, and I rejoice.

My ship has come in!

BibleWorks 8 is coming!

A few weeks ago a fundamentalist pastor I deeply respect told his congregation that the King James Version is an “impediment to many if not most of the Lord’s people in really understanding many passages of Scripture.” (I leave his name out only so as not to create trouble for him.) He said this despite the line I most often hear: “Oh, well, I grew up on the KJV so I can understand it.” I used to think that way myself.

So let’s get specific. Take my three-question open-book quiz! The book you may open is the KJV, no others. What do the following two phrases and a sentence mean? (And no looking at others comments until you’ve formulated your own!)

1. We’ll start easy: “…he is able to succour them that are tempted” (Heb 2:18)
2. “…not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh” (Col 2:23)
3. “Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil” (Ps 37:8)

I love the English language. I read and write it for a living. But I have no idea what the second and third items mean in English (even though I helped multiple Wilds campers memorize the latter!).

Extra Anecdote

And here’s an anecdote I can’t resist passing along: my brother-in-law, when he was a little Awana clubber in Tennessee, asked his leader after memorizing Psalm 23, “If Jesus is our shepherd, why shall we not want Him?”

Alan Jacobs, in his new book Original Sin, lists “five distinct beliefs” which make up an Augustinian anthropology (or a belief in original sin):

You must believe that everyone behaves in ways that we usually describe as selfish, cruel, arrogant, and so on. You must believe that we are hard-wired to behave in those ways and do not do so simply because of the bad examples of others. You must believe that such behavior is properly called wrong or sinful, whether it’s evolutionarily adaptive or not. You must believe that it was not originally in our nature to behave in such a way, but that we have fallen from a primal innocence. And you must believe that only supernatural intervention, in the form of what Christians call grace, is sufficient to drag us up out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves.

I wrote a review of the book here, and William Edgar wrote a similarly appreciative—and more substantive—review here in Themelios.

“Original Sin: A Cultural History” (Alan Jacobs)

I just finished Original Sin, an excellent book by Wheaton English professor Alan Jacobs (heretofore of Books and Culture and First Things fame).

It’s obviously appropriate to argue for the doctrine of original sin via direct scriptural exegesis. But Jacobs’ book, though it does a (helpful!) bit of that, builds up a supplementary, inductive case. He tells many stories that demonstrate the truth of the doctrine. Many of those stories involve thinkers or activists who directly denied original sin—and then suffered the sad but fascinating consequences.

I was particularly taken by the story of Robert Owen (1771-1858), a poor Welshman with a genius for organization who by sheer force of will transformed a mill in New Lanark, Scotland, into a model community. He thought that he was merely providing man an environment in which his natural goodness would shine forth, but when he tried to expand the scale of his work by starting a utopian community in Indiana (the city he founded still exists), his faith in human goodness led to drastic failure.

Another gripping story was that of Rebecca West, a left-wing intellectual whose infatuation with Yugoslavia in the 1930s led her to research and write voluminously on that country and the Europe it typified. She had just written a biography of Augustine, of all people, and came to see with utter clarity that only that saint’s doctrine of original sin could explain Yugoslavia and Europe as a whole. But she could not accept, as Jacobs puts it, “the faith within which that doctrine is articulated and makes sense.” (227). Original sin, but no grace. West’s was a despairing position indeed.

Jacobs finds multiple obscure—and for that all the more interesting—stories to tell in this book. I highly recommend it.

Background reading for my dissertation has focused much upon Jonathan Edwards and his Religious Affections. Yale has placed the entire work—the second volume in its own august series—online, including the lengthy introduction by John E. Smith.

The Banner of Truth edition follows a slightly (?) emended text, the Worcester edition. The Yale edition follows the first edition of Edwards’ work.

I just posted a Music page here on my blog with special widgets provided for you to listen to some of my favorite CDs on LaLa.com.

Enjoy!

I just bought another case of The Books of the Bible, a special Bible edition which I’ve discussed here on the blog before. My first case sold out fast, and I didn’t even want it to. I wanted to keep a few of the Bibles!

You can buy one from IBS for about $15.

You can buy one from me on Amazon for about $15.

Or you can buy (a sage green) one directly from me for $10.

You’ll have to pick it up at my place in Greenville, I’m afraid, unless you go to my church or work at my office.

Let me know in the comments if you want one or know someone who does.

Click here to read all my posts about this edition.

Here’s a sample page (look closely!):

Even lost people can have their affections toward God raised high if they think that God is making much of them, says Jonathan Edwards.

But the exercises of true and holy love in the saints arise in another way. They do not first see that God loves them, and then see that he is lovely, but they first see that God is lovely, and that Christ is excellent and glorious, and their hearts are first captivated with this view, and the exercises of their love are wont from time to time to begin here, and to arise primarily from these views; and then, consequentially, they see God’s love, and great favor to them. The saint’s affections begin with God; and self-love has a hand in these affections consequentially, and secondarily only. On the contrary, those false affections begin with self, and an acknowledgment of an excellency in God, and an affectedness with it, is only consequential and dependent. In the love of the true saint God is the lowest foundation; the love of the excellency of his nature is the foundation of all the affections which come afterwards wherein self-love is concerned as a handmaid: on the contrary, the hypocrite lays himself at the bottom of all, as the first foundation, and lays on God as the superstructure; and even his acknowledgment of God’s glory itself depends on his regard to his private interest.

(The Religious Affections, Banner of Truth edition, p. 172)

Vern Poythress’s book “Symphonic Theology” is available free at his site. Today I was searching my hard drive for a summary of James Barr’s list of common The Semantics of Biblical Language. I regularly employ the third and fifth concepts below. I consider them very important. Take a look at Poythress’ summary:

James Barr has published a long catalog of mistakes made by biblical scholars. Without going into detail, I list six of the most common errors that he cites.

Attempts to deduce theological conclusions directly from the grammatical structure of a language. For example, Thorlief Boman tries to deduce a philosophical concept of time from the Hebrew tense system (pp. 79-81).

Attempts to deduce theological conclusions directly from the number and relation of vocabulary synonyms. For example, Edmond Jacob attempts to deduce the fluidity of the concept of miracles from the fact that several different terms are used (p. 147).

Attempts to use etymology instead of the current meaning of a word, even when the current meaning is well known. For example, “holy” and “healthy” are etymologically related, but they do not now mean the same thing, and it is just confusing to say that they do (p. 111).

Attempts to deduce a particular world view on the basis of combining the various senses of a single word. The Hebrew word dabar sometimes means “word,” sometimes “matter” or “thing,” depending on the context. But Thomas F. Torrance wrongly draws the conclusion that often it means both at the same time (p. 133).

“Illegitimate totality transfer.” The various meanings that a word has in all its contexts in the Bible are all read into a single passage (p. 218). For example, because the Bible teaches in various places that the church is the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, and a manifestation of the kingdom of God, people may think that ekklesia (”church”) means all of these things together whenever it occurs.

“Illegitimate identity transfer.” Because two words refer to the same thing, the two words must mean the same thing (pp. 217-218). For example, the Hebrew word dabar (”thing”) is sometimes used to refer to a historical event, and the word “history” can also be used to refer to the same event, but it is wrong to conclude that dabar means “history.” As a parallel illustration, note that we can designate the same person both as “the brightest student in the class” and as “the only redhead in my family.” Although the two descriptions refer to the same person, they do not have the same meaning. “Student” does not mean the same as “redhead,” or “class” the same as “family.”

[From TWELVE MAXIMS OF SYMPHONIC THEOLOGY]

Parents sometimes force a child to say something nice about the sibling with whom he just finished a death match.

That is not the way John McCain spoke about Barack Obama, as evidenced by his gracious speech last night—and it’s not the way I feel like speaking, either.

I can say this out of a true heart of love: I am happy that the African-American kids I know from long-term outreaches in my community have now been given hope that they can climb higher than the inane and profane entertainers who otherwise comprise their role models. Joshua and Sheeq and Nyesha and Brittney don’t know the ins or the outs of fiscal policy. (At least one of them didn’t even know that Obama supported abortion—and he was shocked by it!) But what they do know is that a black man can go to the top in this country. And that’s worth something, something good, to these kids I love.

I want to say to some of my Republican friends: The world is not over.

And to some of my Democratic friends: The world has not just begun.

The Most High still rules the kingdom of men and gives rulership to whom he will (Dan. 4:17).

A few days ago I offered five points to the first person to note in the comments why this juxtaposition was counter to my expectations:

NIV 1Co 7:26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for you to remain as you are.

TNIV 1Co 7:26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is.

One Mr. Brian Collins of Taylors, SC, got it right:

Because the NIV translated ἀνθρώπῳ in a gender-neutral way and the TNIV translated it as “man.” Of course, the TNIV’s translation is obviously correct since the next verse says, Δέδεσαι γυναικί; Μὴ ζήτει λύσιν. Λέλυσαι ἀπὸ γυναικός; Μὴ ζήτει γυναῖκα.

On the other hand, in 1 Cor. 7:29 the NIV translates Τοῦτο δέ φημι, ἀδελφοί, ὁ καιρὸς συνεσταλμένος ἐστίν• τὸ λοιπόν, ἵνα καὶ οἱ ἔχοντες γυναῖκας ὡς μὴ ἔχοντες ὦσιν as, “What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none,” and the TNIV translates it as, “What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who are married should live as if they were not.”

Did you catch that? One of the tools in the TNIV’s translation toolbox is turning third-person singulars (which must carry gender: he, him, she, her) into second persons (which don’t carry gender: you, your). But here it’s the NIV doing that while the TNIV specifies masculinity.

To be a good judge of the quality of a translation you need to be an observant exegete—like Mr. Brian Collins. And you can’t just call the TNIV “gender-neutral” and leave it at that. The issues are more complex.

This Brian appears to be a regular reader of my blog. Thanks for the enlightenment, faithful reader! Five points for you!

BTW: One commenter, one Duncan Johnson, one next door neighbor of one Brian Collins, asked if the TNIV is on BibleWorks. Answer? I put it there for myself, and you can, too. E-mail me for more details.

My wife was listening to an otherwise good sermon which happened to run afoul of my dissertation’s thesis. We’d talked about the issue at hand (the definition of love) many times. As we passed each other in the hall, she said with a smile…

“You’ve ruined my ability to listen to a good sermon!”

When I was a summer camp counselor at a Christian camp in 1999, I once had a cabin full of younger junior high campers.

One of my campers at least was only in sixth grade, and he was a bus kid. That means his parents were lost, but that the church came by every week and took him to Sunday School in a big bus full of other kids. Obviously, this kid knew very little about the Bible—only what he couldn’t help learning once a week on Sunday mornings. But here he was at camp, in my cabin on the first day.

Another kid made it to my cabin from perhaps even worse circumstances. He came from a single-parent family and had bounced around to different churches until his mom ended up at the one that brought him to camp. He hadn’t been there long, and knew next to nothing about the Bible.

He brought with him a little dark blue NIV that he had probably never read more than five words from (including “Holy Bible, New International Version”). The first boy, the bus kid, saw that Bible on the first day of camp and said, “Oh, man! Get that thing out of here! You should burn that!” Dan did not take kindly to this Bible-burning order, and there were shouts fired. Naturally, I came in to resolve this dispute. and I told the bus kid that he was wrong, and that Dan could use his little Bible just fine.

Here was a bus kid who didn’t know Jacob from Jerusalem or Jericho from Joash. But he knew that the NIV was wicked, fit only to be burned! This is what he learned at church! This is what a sixth-grade bus kid learned when he went to church once a week.

“Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels.” 2 Tim. 2:23

Five points to the first person to note in the comments why this juxtaposition was counter to my expectations:

NIV 1Co 7:26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for you to remain as you are.

TNIV 1Co 7:26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is.

I’ve now persuaded even my wife to get into LaLa.com (she’s usually a bit skeptical of my technological forays). We’re enjoying it very much. I wrote this in my profile description for the site:

I love choral music. God created beauty, and even those who rebel against Him have been left with His image. Their ability to create incredible beauty reflects God’s own creativity. So whether Tavener, Pärt, Vaughn Williams, Hillier, Rutter, Joseph Jennings, and those fantastic King’s Singers acknowledge God’s rule through Christ or not, they bring glory to God.

The past was supposed to be better than today. I’m a conservative, aren’t I?

Did you know that people in America used to memorize poems and read stuff longer than a blog post? Did you know there was a day when kids’ brains weren’t full of Hannah Montana—or Eminem, for that matter? I always assumed these factors would create a higher level of discourse in the nation. But, if anything, political ads in 1952 were worse than today. Click that link for a fascinating site.

Obi-Wan Kenobi delivers a line in the final Star Wars movie (III) which has achieved some level of fame. It appears 8,270 times on the Web, including as the name of a blog.

Anakin has just informed him, “You’re either with me, or you’re my enemy!”

Obi-Wan replies with that now-famous line: “Only a Sith deals in absolutes!”

I love Anakin’s reply. He stops, cocks his head, smirks, and says, “Obi-Wan, are you absolutely sure?”

Ok, no, he didn’t really say that. I think that was Ravi Zacharias and D. A. Carson in chorus.

Such a saying, however, does reveal something about the melange of philosophy which has melted into Star Wars. Here’s another, a comment Qui-Gon Jinn makes to Anakin’s mother as they watch young Anakin serving others:

“He gives with no thought of reward.”

This line is a little harder for Christians to process than the first, I think. We Christians all know that truth is absolute, but it sounds nice when someone works for no reward.

But that idea is not Christian. It’s anti-Christian. Simply put, God offers rewards.

I didn’t say you could earn your salvation. I didn’t say that it’s up to you to muster up some spiritual strength or work up some grace or alter your will. That’s all God’s work. But Jesus says you should rejoice and be exceeding glad when people persecute you for His name’s sake—because great is your reward in heaven! I seriously doubt that God intends for you to forget about that reward while going through your trial. The reward is the reason (γαρ) for the joy you’re supposed to have during persecution!

And God offers other rewards:

ESV Ps 19:11 Moreover, by them [God's words] is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

ESV Pr 22:4 The reward for humility and fear of the LORD is riches and honor and life.

ESV Heb 11:26 [Moses] considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

ESV 1Co 3:14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

ESV Gn 15:1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

The NIV and KJV render that last one with God telling Abram, “I am your shield, your very great reward.” Whichever rendering is correct, both are true. God is the ultimate reward for His children. Don’t deny yourself this reward. Sell all your possessions to get it, if necessary. Ask God for grace to want this reward, to never let it leave your mind and heart!

I am dedicating this post to DN and all of the faithful BJU Wellness Program devotees who won iPod Touches and now—congratulations—have them in hand! May the Lord help you to use this helpful tool to His glory!

I got a free iPod Touch with my iMac. I had had my eye on it for a while because I needed a Palm replacement—after using a Palm IIIxe through seven years of grad school. Here are the applications I have installed right now (I’ve put especially useful ones in bold in the list below):

1. Air Sharing: Turns your iPod into a wireless flash drive.
2. AOL Radio: self-explanatory. Many stations available over a wireless connection.
3. CheckWord: Check words to see if they are in the Scrabble dictionary.
4. Dual Level: Use your iPod as a level (it works because of the internal sensors).
5. eReader: Read books in the eReader format. Eh…
6. Evernote: Good for sermon notes or any notes because it automatically syncs your notes or images on the web and your iPod.
7. Firemail: Type e-mails in landscape format. Handy if you don’t like portrait’s narrower keyboard.
8. Google Mobile: Search Google and your own iPod.
9. Holy Bible: Try to find the one with this exact icon. Others cost money. I still want to get the ESV and polytonic Greek, but this is the first one I’ve found with a free GNT of any sort. With a wireless connection, you can get nearly anything. But my church has (wisely!) blocked users from accessing the wireless signal during Pastor Minnick’s sermons.
10. Instapaper: Save articles while surfing the Net on your computer so you can read them later.
11. O-Marks: Synchronize your bookmarks in Safari with those in Mobile Safari.
12. Pandora Radio: Pretty cool and innovative music-streaming site.
13. PayPal: Haven’t used it, but I may and it’s worth keeping around.
14. Remote: Very cool! It’s a fully-featured iTunes remote. I can turn the music down in my house without ever moving more than a finger!
15. Simplify Media: Haven’t used it, but it promises to stream my iTunes library from my desktop to my iPod if I ever need that.
16. Text Guru: More features than Notepad.
17. Units: Convert different weights and measures.
18. WeatherBug: Not very pretty looking, but has more features than the included weather app.
19. WordPress: For my blog. I haven’t really found this useful in my situation.

A few tips:

1. I keep my iPod on the lowest brightness setting to save battery, since I mainly use it as a handheld computer.
2. Turn off wireless whenever you’re not using it so you don’t drain your battery.
3. Learn to type well and you can really get going fast. I’ve been surprised what a little practice has done for me. I take more notes on Pastor Minnick’s sermons now than I used to on my Palm (and that’s saying something), and I can switch over to the GNT quite quickly.

A few links for you to add to your home screen:

(Just go to these sites in Mobile Safari, then click the plus sign, then add them to home screen.)

• NPR Mobile. Great during pledge drives! =)
• Neat alternative ESV Bible site.
• Don’t Waste Your Life (free online eBook I recommend; formatted for iPhone / iPod Touch).
• The Weather Channel for my zipcode (just replace my zipcode with yours).
• Facebook for iPhone (I promise I do not waste time on this! But I do want to keep up a bit with old friends.)
• I also have links for Google Reader mobile (very cool), my Amazon Wishlist (in case I’m in a store and want to check Amazon’s prices), and various Bible sites.

lala.com—you’ve got to check it out. I just added to my playlist a huge number of Chanticleer and King’s Singers tracks, most of which I’ve never been able to listen to in entirety.

I win, because I get to listen to some excellent choral music. lala wins because I may just buy some of these tracks now that I’ve been able to listen to them. I can “buy” a whole online CD for $1.00. I can’t take it with me, but it will be wherever the web is.

What a great way to find and try new choral music!

(Or, ok, any kind of music you may like.)

I’m afraid the hype proved too much for me, and I succumbed. I bought an ESV Study Bible. I got the Brown TruTone for $48 at my church’s bookstore.

I used the rest of my birthday money.

It literally hurt my back in church yesterday because, at almost 2,800 pages, it’s practically a stone tablet.

But it’s an impressive piece of planning, typography, scholarship, devotion, illustration, printing, design, and, yes, viral Internet hysteria.

On my first major read in the thing I found I liked the single-column paragraphed format very much—but I missed the totally uncluttered text in The Books of the Bible.

I encourage you to check it out. It’s something I want my family to have long-term. And as for me, I decided it was worthwhile to have maps, charts, good articles, an online version, and sound scholars’ quick summary interpretations of passages I may not have looked at recently. I resisted (for four days) buying the Bible because I know I shouldn’t be relying on these notes; I should read the commentaries and journal articles of the men who wrote them! But it was in fact good conservative commentators who wrote notes on books they know well. That is bound to be valuable.

This is what the Catholic church claims:

In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a “supernatural sense of faith” the People of God, under the guidance of the Church’s living Magisterium, “unfailingly adheres to this faith.”

The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful—who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. . . . The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter’s successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium,” above all in an Ecumenical Council. When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine “for belief as being divinely revealed,” and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions “must be adhered to with the obedience of faith.” This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself.

[From Catechism of the Catholic Church]

Check out the Vatican’s official site sometime. It’s good to be aware that it exists, and I have to admit I think the design is pretty cool—even though it hasn’t changed much for a long time.

I highly recommend this new site and the method of exegesis it explains. I use it, too, though typically in a different format more suited for my tools (namely Word and Excel). But now that I have an online tool I might switch! Going through a closely-reasoned epistle, isolating propositions, and naming their relationships forces me to ask questions of the text that even a careful reading may not have raised.

You could use the arcing method even as a high school student. If you’re a seminary student and don’t yet know about it, this site is perfect for you. Make sure to benefit from the extensive training regimen they’ve provided, including instructional videos!

Let me also recommend for the same purpose Interpreting the Pauline Epistles by accomplished exegete Thomas Schreiner. It was Pastor Mark Minnick’s text for the one exposition class I got to take with him in seminary.

I’m now at work on my first online arc:

Duncan Johnson has provided a noteworthy comment on my Ubiquity post: he links to his brand new esv-insert command.

I subscribed to it right away. It works great!

Now you can insert any ESV passage into a Gmail message. Thanks, Duncan!

I have a post planned in which I will urge you to listen to preaching by my pastor, Mark Minnick. One of the major reasons you should listen to him, especially if you’re training for the ministry, is that he is aware of the theological currents swirling about, and they inform his exegesis.

He spoke strongly on Sunday morning against the following view (without ever naming names; that’s not his way):

No act of obedience, preceding or following faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, such as commitment to obey, sorrow for sin, turning from one’s sin, baptism or submission to the Lordship of Christ, may be added to, or considered part of, faith as a condition for receiving everlasting life (Rom 4:5; Gal 2:16; Titus 3:5). This saving transaction between God and the sinner is simply the giving and receiving of a free gift (Eph 2:8-9; John 4:10 ; Rev 22:17).

[From Affirmations of Belief of the Grace Evangelical Society]

This may seem remarkable: Mark Minnick denies that salvation is a free gift? No, he simply argued cogently from Scripture—he was preaching from Mat 19’s account of the rich young ruler—that repentance is necessary to salvation. He showed that this is not salvation by works. But, as I told a young black woman in a run-down apartment complex just hours later, Jesus demands access to every room in your heart.

John Frame’s Doctrine of the Christian Life is a very helpful book, perhaps a better introduction to his (so-far) trilogy than the one that came out first, the Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. Leastways, as Bilbo might say, I found it easier!

Frame argues that non-Christian ethicists fall into three camps, three ways of deriving an ethical “ought” from an empirical “is,” the things they see and experience. The best of them inhabit all three camps, but all tend to privilege one over the others:

1. The Teological Principle: A good act maximizes the happiness of living creatures.
2. The Deontological Principle: A good act is a response to duty, even at the price of self-sacrifice.
3. The Existential Principle: A good act comes from a good inner character.

Christian ethics employs all three principles in a pleasing balance.

I admit it: for years I have been tending to privilege the first principle, though the third was not far behind it in my thinking. The second I acknowledged and had a place for, but I have in the past overreacted to those who stress it.

The biblically conservative circles in which I have grown up and still travel emphasize the second principle, that of duty, as highest—reflecting their (our!) commitment to the normative value of the Word. But that Word teaches that morally good acts come only from right internal motivations (principle 3, the existential; see 1 Cor 13:1-3). Sometimes that is forgotten.

And I fear that we Protestant evangelical fundamentalists have almost entirely neglected the first principle, at least in our formal theology. I believe we sever the key motive power of sanctification when we tell people not to consider their own happiness, when we define love as mere self-sacrifice. Perhaps I’m overreaching with “key,” but I think not.

Mozilla Labs’ Ubiquity is working on me. The day it came out I was foolishly dismissive because it isn’t as fast as Firefox’s Keyword Search. That’s still true, but it does more than keyword searching, and even for keyword searching it provides some helpful added functionality.

Here are four tools I like:

1. Amazon Lookup

I’m forever looking up books on Amazon. Sometimes I just need a full, exact title. I don’t need to go all the way to Amazon to get it, and Ubiquity helps me get just that much info.

I’m not sure, however, why an Amazon search for “John Frame” in Ubiquity brings up the image below, while regular Amazon search brings up all of Frame’s books:

2. Gmail Tool: “TinyURL This”

I like TinyURL. I don’t trust all of my e-mail recipients to realize that 1) they need to turn on HTML in their e-mail client and 2) they need to copy a whole URL into their browser’s address bar if their e-mail client has split it up into two or more lines. So I highlight the URL I want to use, invoke Ubiquity, and turn it instantly into a Tiny URL. (If you’re worried that TinyURL will run out of free URL’s, do the math: 36⁶ = 2,176,782,336 possible URLs).

3. Gmail Tool: “Word Count This”

I use Gmail for all my e-mail except for business junk e-mail (I use Allmail.net for that). With Ubiquity, I can select my reply and figure out how long it is. Cool.

4. ESV Lookup

Need to look up a verse quick? I use the ESV website with Firefox’s Keyword Search multiple times a day. But if I want to look up a string of verses, I can use the “esv” command:

One of the best blogs I read is GetReligion. They give me a bit too much good material, but I do try to at least scan most of it. Their aim is to cover coverage of religion in the mainstream media (MSM, they call it). Incisive stuff.

Last night’s post on the presidential debate contained an interesting Freudian typo. Check it out:

The big issue in tonight’s debate was the economy yet again (with foreign policy as the side dish). The closest the candidates came to discussing issues of morality or faith was both candidates’ criticism of Wall Street for corporate excess and greed and McCain’s frequent calls for faith in the American people.

…

The transcript includes none of the following words: God, faith, pray(er), church, Islam, or Christ(inanity).

[From Another debate without much religion » GetReligion]

I’d have to say that’s just what we usually get from politicians: platitudinous Christ inanity. Christ was a great philosopher, but not the only way to God.

A bit of a stretch, ok, but words grab me.

I track all mentions of “Bob Jones University” via Google Alerts. Many articles are critical or dismissive. Many are not. Some criticisms are deserved—we’re sinners! Some are not. Check out the opening of this AP article, carried in SC’s The State:

Gay rights group visits Columbia, SC, campus
By KATRINA A. GOGGINS - Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C. –

More than a dozen students and faculty at a private, Christian university crossed police tape Monday to meet with gay rights activists protesting the school’s policy against openly gay students on campus.

Sitting inside a school-designated protest area with bibles opened, gay rights activists and students at Columbia International University debated scripture and the college’s policy.

It was a stark contrast to a similar demonstration at Bob Jones University in Greenville last year when three gay activists of the group Soulforce were arrested and bible toting, anti-gay protesters held signs and preached through bullhorns.

[From The State | 10/06/2008 | Gay rights group visits Columbia, SC, campus]

I was there when SoulForce came to BJU, and please allow me to point out that no BJU student or staff member had a bullhorn. Those were uninvited protesters—no more allowed on campus than the SoulForce group—who tarnished Christ’s name by their rudeness and self-righteousness. Some months later, I met for several hours with one of those sandwich-board-clad fundamentalist protesters. He is a young man who wants to serve Christ faithfully. But his pride led him to do something which I think hurt Christ’s cause.

I would happily have met with a SoulForce protester, but I very much respect Stephen Jones’ decision to keep them off campus. I was skeptical at first: why give up an opportunity to talk to lost people? But Dr. Jones persuaded me that the administration has a responsibility to parents to protect their children. Not all of the students are ready to speak to a group that abuses the Bible with such sophistication. And they were not out for dialogue but for scoring political points, as the spin on their website proved later.

I have sorrow in my heart over those men and women on the SoulForce Equality Ride. I have looked over their profiles every year, and my heart is heavy for them.

Update: A friend reminded me to point out that the SoulForce protesters asked to be arrested. I’m not going to call that a ploy: if their cause were truly just then their request for arrest would be a noble gesture. They, of course, believe that their cause is just.

The following pictures were made publicly available on the Greenville News website after the protest.

The New York Times‘ Deborah Solomon just interviewed a very wealthy Jewish man, Edgar M. Bronfman, Sr., whose new book Hope Not Fear bills itself as A Path to Jewish Renaissance.

Listen in on the conversation:

Solomon: In your book, you seek to define Judaism as something besides religious belief.

Bronfman: I don’t believe in the God of the Old Testament, but I am happy with my Judaism, without that.

If you take the spiritual element out of Judaism, what is left? Some would say the rest is just archaeology, bones in the desert.

That’s their problem; that’s not my problem. What we have left is our ethics, our morals. It was our people who developed the Ten Commandments, and civilizations all over the world are based on the Ten Commandments. Whoever wrote that—and we assume it was Moses—had a great deal of wisdom.

But every religion has an ethical system.

Well, they do now. But we were the first.

[From Questions for Edgar M. Bronfman Sr. - Keeping the Faith - Interview - NYTimes.com]

Now apply Christian apologetics to the statements Bronfman made. Let’s ignore his atheism for the moment and focus on his claim that God isn’t necessary for the existence of morality.

Of course I think first of Lewis’ opening chapters in Mere Christianity. What a writer! Don’t miss that book!

But let me stand on more solid theological ground by borrowing (most immediately) from John Frame: Bronfman has denied the personal absolute necessary for ethical pronouncements. Moses was a person, but he wasn’t absolute. Why should his ethical norms be privileged over anyone else’s? By what standard can it be said that he was wise? Maybe that what he says works? Then what goal shall we all work toward in order to be named “wise”?

Without God, a personal absolute, you cannot get to an “ought.” (You can’t even get to an “is,” but that’s another discussion!)