Happy Reformation Day

The Godly Mill (1521)

It's a holiday

Happy birthday to me! I'm 32 years young. I'll celebrate it with my family with a game of bowling. :-)

Oh, and today's also the first anniversary of Typhoon Ketsana/Ondoy. :-(

My pastor is my shepherd, I shall be protected

The Gospel lectionary reading this past sunday was Luke 14:25-33:

25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple. 27 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29 For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30 saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' 31 "Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. (NIV)

The church I go to uses the NIV both for liturgy and for the pews, and it was the bible I was reading when the pastor started reading the passage. Only he didn’t use the NIV, he used the GNT, which worded it differently:

25 Once when large crowds of people were going along with Jesus, he turned and said to them,26 "Those who come to me cannot be my disciples unless they love me more than they love father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and themselves as well. 27 Those who do not carry their own cross and come after me cannot be my disciples. 28 If one of you is planning to build a tower, you sit down first and figure out what it will cost, to see if you have enough money to finish the job. 29 If you don't, you will not be able to finish the tower after laying the foundation; and all who see what happened will make fun of you. 30 "You began to build but can't finish the job!' they will say. 31 If a king goes out with ten thousand men to fight another king who comes against him with twenty thousand men, he will sit down first and decide if he is strong enough to face that other king. 32 If he isn't, he will send messengers to meet the other king to ask for terms of peace while he is still a long way off. 33 In the same way," concluded Jesus, "none of you can be my disciple unless you give up everything you have. (Luke 14:25-33 GNT)

What's striking with this shift in translation usage is that the GNT seems to "sanitize" the harsh saying of Jesus. Most translations use the word hate for misei (μισεῖ) in verse 26, which is the accurate translation. Of course some people might misunderstand what the verse means (that Jesus advocates familial strife) so the GNT translates (interprets?) it as "love [Jesus] more", which while not literally accurate, does seem to make the message more understandable (or more palatable) to our ears.

For Christians: Is our pastor being disingenuous in quoting scripture by using the GNT? Should he have used a less "dynamic" translation? Do you think Jesus' harsh sayings should be sanitized for the pew sitters?

For atheists: Should we give the Christian scripture the benefit of doubt when we encounter harsh sayings? Should we force Christians into affirming the most literal reading of any passage or can we allow some elbow room for more allegorical or symbolic interpretation? Does the above passage have only one possible literal reading (Jesus is anti-family)?

New book giveaways

Sorry for the lack of new posts. I am feeling a bit under the weather. It’s been raining pretty consistently for the past few weeks, which is a good thing since we had a very long dry / sunny season (late January to late June), and our water reserves are (still) dangerously low. Anyway, here’s a couple of new book contests to join:

1. JasonS is giving away a Holman KJV Minister’s Bible.
2. CBD is giving away five copies of Lukan Authorship of Hebrews. (US residents only)
3. [Edited to add] Timothy at Catholic Bibles is giving away four books! All you need to do is write a witty slogan for the new Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament.

Blogger stats

 

Enlightened bloggers who use Google’s Blogspot service are now able to view stats from within Blogger’s Draft Dashboard. Just login to http://draft.blogger.com and click on the Stats link or tab. Now I can dump the third-party stat counter that’s sometimes slowing down my blog. Good job Google, I praise thee. :D

No more church anniversaries for me

Today our church celebrated its 58th foundation anniversary and it’s packed! On a typical sunday the third service (which is the one I attend) manages a meager 100-120 people. But for the anniversary the church hosts a joint service wherein all attendees of the four sunday services are requested to attend. So for a church was filled to the rafters with people. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 450 or so people in a church built for 350.

Also the service was way too early for me. The third service starts typically at 11 AM but for today the service started at 9! Add to that the fact that the church I attend is a good 30 minutes’ drive from our house, and I had to pick up my mom and sister (dad’s not the churchin’ type); that I had to wake up at an ungodly hour. And I had to park two blocks away with so many people attending.

And as for the service, the guest sermon was delivered by a folksy academic (working on his doctorate) who delivered an hour long sermon on today’s gospel lectionary reading:

38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the LORD's feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "LORD, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself ? Tell her to help me!" 41 "Martha, Martha," the LORD answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed--or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42 TNIV)

How he could manage to find an hour’s worth of sermonable material from that is beyond me.

I’m sorry but I’m used to 30-40 minute sermons, and even then I would doze off at the end. No luck today, since the place was crowded, hot and humid, and I’m seated between a retired pastor and a major church patron. The sermon itself is a forgettable piece of expository preaching liberally sprinkled with anecdotes and warmed-over stock stories from the pastor’s handbook (I’ve heard them all).

There was a special song number from our church’s (retired) first choir leader. She’s 90 years old and her voice was no longer its angelic best. I still applauded her for the effort but hope that she won’t be singing in front of the congregation again. The other hymns sung by the full choir weren’t good ones either, and boy they sang a lot of those today.

All in all, the entire service was three and a half hours of boredom. Not a real shining moment for the church IMO. I’m not going to attend future church anniversaries. Maybe I’ll attend a megachurch. At least they have airconditioning.

David who?

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Personal best

This is not me and the family!

(Better late than never…) Last sunday, after church and lunch with the family, we went to the local tenpin bowling alley for a few games. My son’s almost four years old and he’s been playing bowling since he was two. I myself play the game recreationally from time to time but I was never good at it. He must’ve gotten the urge to play from my dad who is a local bowling shark in the senior leagues.

I average a meager 150 back when I was in a league and rarely scored over 190 (less than five times). So imagine my surprise when I scored 245 using a ten pound house ball. I was in the groove, pocketing almost all the time. And for a light ball, it had a lot of carry, smashing through the pins like they were nothing. I rolled a respectable 225 game after that. I’m so impressed with my game that I went to the counter and asked them to have my score printed as proof. I was on cloud nine driving home. I may never roll a perfect 300 game in my life, but if it feels anything like the 245 game I played last sunday, then I’d be more than eager to play again.

Frame	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
	3/	X	8/	9/	8/	X	X	X	X	XX8
Score	20	40	59	77	97	127	157	187	217	245

Pretty soon, I’ll be playing in the PBA Tour! :-)