Translating the Bible

I do not agree with everything said in this presentation, but it gives a good introduction to the subject of Bible translating. I am reading his book, so there will be more of this topic here in the future. 

Inflation is a Tax

I had a discussion on facebook about inflation and whether or not it is a tax. I said it was. I suppose that technically one could say it is not. Let us hear from an expert in monetary policy. No Ron Paul is not the expert I have in mind. The expert is at the end of this short clip. 

The Ant and the Grasshopper

I shamless stole this from WendyMcelroy.com. 

OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green... ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, We shall overcome. Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize and ramshackle, the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.

I've sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant!

No Pie in the Sky

Blogging yesterday about the Heavenly Jerusalem led me to remember my misspent youth where I would listen to many religious broadcasters. One that I remember clearly was the Rev Ike. The cadence of his voice was almost intoxicating. The alliteration was memorable. Rev Ike had learned his trade well from Pentecostal colleges. 

One line of his I will always remember:

I do not want no pie in the sky, I want my pie NOW, with ice cream on top. 

I found it hard to disagree. I am sure that the bad grammar was his choice. Thus he would probably like a portion of what I said yesterday, with an emphasis on the here and now as manifestations of the eternal. 

It even, to a degree, has biblical roots. 

As the King James version tells us in Proverbs 23:7, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Sounds like our internal “self-talk” is important! But alas, this is an example of a doctrine based on obscure wording in the King James, that doesn’t really mean what people think it means. Here is the NIV: 

⁶ Do not eat the food of a begrudging host, 

   do not crave his delicacies; 
⁷ for he is the kind of person 
   who is always thinking about the cost. 
“Eat and drink,” he says to you, 
   but his heart is not with you. 
⁸ You will vomit up the little you have eaten 
   and will have wasted your compliments.

As you see, this passage really has nothing to do with positive thinking. (This is an example of the type of faulty Biblical interpretation used by prosperity preachers.) But there is another scripture that does relate. 

Paul in Philippians 4 tells us:

⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

It does seem to me that what we think about on the inside will manifest itself on the outside. As Jesus said in Mark 7:

²⁰ He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. ²¹ For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, ²² adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. ²³ All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

So while having a positive outlook is a good thing, it is not a magic wand that you can use to make yourself wealthy. (This concept is really a type of phony magic—“sympathetic magic,” as it is called.) Nor will sending someone like "Ike" money cause wealth to magically rub off on you. Nor is your gift to a ministry a "seed of faith" that will yield a harvest that will miraculously fill your wallet. 

I too do not want pie in the sky, I want my pie now with ice cream on top. The pie I want is not a gold plated Rolls Royce, or 15 other Rolls Royce's like the Rev Ike. The pie a-la-mode I want is this:  

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 
   for they will be filled. 

Here is the Rev Ike himself:

The New Jerusalem

The New Jerusalem is a city described in Revelation 21 and 22. It is usually interpreted as heaven. Alas, that just does not fit the chapters. Someone asked me on a private religious forum why I list my city of residence under my name on the forum as the “New Jerusalem.” In this blog post I will explain why.

When the heavenly Jerusalem is referenced elsewhere in the Bible it is not meant to be a literal city. Here is Paul in Galatians 4:

²⁵ Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. ²⁶ But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.

Paul here is making an analogy with the present city of Jerusalem and non-Christian Jews. But Gentile (Galatians is unique in that it is primarily addressed to Gentiles) and Jewish Christians do not "dwell" in that city-even if they happen to live there. Instead they dwell in the Heavenly City. We are children of the Promise like Isaac: 

²⁸ Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. ²⁹ At that time the son born according to the flesh persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. ³⁰ But what does Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” ³¹Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.

The Heavenly Jerusalem in Galatians is not a physical place. It is not even a non-physical heavenly place. It is Christians living on the earth that dwell in that heavenly city. 

Whoever wrote Hebrews had the same point in chapter 12. In this case the analogy is between Sinai and the Heavenly Jerusalem. 

¹⁸ You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; ¹⁹ to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, ²⁰because they could not bear what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.”²¹ The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.”²² But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, ²³ to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴ to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

The point that the author here is making is that we have no reason to fear, and that we can approach God. The way he makes his point is that we Christians "have come" to something. And this something is explained with a series of metaphors, all to explain something that is hard for us to grasp. Note that the author does not say we will come to the heavenly Jerusalem: he says that we have come. So here the going to the city and the church are linked as one. (The word Church is being used in the nonphysical sense.)

Does this fit Revelation 21-22? Revelation 21 tells us:

² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

⁹ One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 

So what is the bride of Jesus the Lamb? Jesus in the Gospels refers to himself as the bridegroom. But who is he to marry? Revelation 19 tells us that He is to marry the saints:

 7 Let us rejoice and be glad

                  and give him glory!

For the wedding of the Lamb has come,    

                  and his bride has made herself ready.

8 Fine linen, bright and clean,   

                  was given her to wear.”

(Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s holy people.)

So does Revelation 21 tell us explicitly what the city represents? 

9 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

So we who are the bride of Christ are collectively the city—or in the city, just as we are members in the Church, collectively we are the church. Who is outside the city? 

27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

These people are outside the city just as such people are outside the church. 

I am not denying that there must be an ultimate home of some nature for Christians out in Eternity. But I am saying that Revelation 21-22 is not talking about this. Many Christians are so stuck in a template of a literal interpretation that they cannot see the forest for the trees. 

I can hear the objections: “But in the city there is no death!” and so on. But that is because too many of us are stuck in a western literalistic mindset. In this blog I have often called this a template. Let me give you a parallel example from John 11: 

²⁶And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

I quote from the King James here as it is closer to the Greek and it makes my point. Here is the NIV makes a correct interpretation of the verse.

²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; ²⁶ and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Do we believe this? If taken literally this is obviously false, since many Christians have died. In a metaphorical way this is a deep truth, a “deep magic” to quote Aslan the Lion. I am suggesting that the parts of Revelation 21 & 22 that say these same kind of things be interpreted in the same way one must interpret John 11. 

To a degree the interpretation I am advancing here does not speak well for the church as a whole. Revelation 22 tells us that the city is to bring certain benefits to the nations. (And if the city is heaven, who are these nations?) 

1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Are we healing the nations? I think not. As the Casting Crowns song puts it: 

But if we are the Body 
Why aren't His arms reaching 
Why aren't His hands healing 
Why aren't His words teaching 
And if we are the Body 
Why aren't His feet going 
Why is His love not showing them there is a way 
There is a way

Why aren't we bringing healing to the nations? Could it be that we are so heavenly minded we are no earthly good? So I tell everyone (and myself!) that I dwell in that city as a reminder that we Christians all have a calling and we need to be about it.