Qoheleth

In the beginning? #CEBTour

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃

Genesis 1:1

In the beginnning, God created the heavens and the earth...  

(most translations)

In the beginning of God's creating the skies and the earth...

(Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah)

When God began to create heaven and earth...  

(Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses)

When God began to create the heavens and the earth...

(Common English Bible)

First this: God created the heavens and the earth--all you see, all you don't see...

(The Message)

In the beginning, when God created the universe...  

(Good News Translation)

Here we are, six words into the Bible, and it's already difficult for translators to agree on what the text really says!  Some of my Christian brothers and sisters who are more conspiratorially minded will no doubt accuse those who disagree with their favorite translation to be at best wrong, and at worst, deliberately leading people down a false path.  I disagree.  I think anyone reading the Bible as it truly is will have to notice that it isn't all black and white, despite how it appears on the page.  Right off the bat, there is confusion, somewhat like the chaos before creation that the book of Genesis describes.  Yes, God creates order out of the confusion, but he doesn't simply give us the answers in a neat, tidy format.  The Bible is most emphatically NOT "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth (B.I.B.L.E.)"!  We would do well to remember that whenever we approach the Word.

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality

Chances of dying

This is interesting, but it occurred to me, why has no one worked out an infographic on chances of living?

 

<br />Source: Best Health Degrees

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality

Easter resolution

I don't know if I've ever heard of anyone making an Easter resolution, and I didn't make this one on Easter Sunday, but nevertheless, here it is.  During this Easter season (from Easter to Pentecost), I am trying to kickstart my self-study in Greek and Hebrew.  Frankly, it hasn't gone real well thus far.  I have been practicing reading Hebrew words, to really get the alphabet (or alefbet, rather) into my brain.  But I think it's finally time to tackle the grammar for real.  I've heard that Hebrew grammar is not particularly difficult once you get the hang of it, but we'll see.  As far as Greek, I did take a couple semesters of New Testament Greek in grad school, so I need to review, and then try to go further.  We'll see how it goes.  I have all the tools I need; I just need to use them.

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality

A new, faithful spirit to go with a shorter beard? #CEBTour

"Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!"

Psalm 51;10, CEB

Oh, if only our sins, our worries, our fears, our prejudices, etc., could all be trimmed as easily as a forty-day growth of beard hair!  Trimming the Lenten beard was a matter of about a half hour with clippers (I also cut my hair.)  Bingo, all that extra hair ended up in the trash can, and I'm a new man...on the outside.  Extra growth (of the bad sort) on the inside may not be quite as simple.

As the psalmist asks, may God put a new, faithful spirit deep inside of me.  Or as the text I grew up with said, "Renew a right spirit within me."  I like that idea of renewal, and I like the CEB's rendering of God putting a new, faithful spirit "deep inside of me."  Fortunately, we read these words in the New Testament:

"So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!"  2nd Corinthians, 5:17, CEB

May it be so.  Amen.

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality

Last day of the Lenten beard! #CEBTour

You must not cut off the hair on your forehead or clip the ends of your beard. 

(Leviticus 19:27, CEB)

Yes, this is the last day I shall have the beard I have been growing throughout Lent!  I shan't be shaving down to bare skin, as I prefer having a trimmed beard.  But I shall be losing this Charlton-Heston-as-Moses-style beard that I have been cultivating for the past 40-odd days.  Oh what a relief!

People have asked me, when I have told them I have abstained from trimming my beard, "How is that giving something up?  Isn't it just easier that way?"  Maybe for some men it would be, but for me it has been a trial.  The mustache gets in the way of eating; my infant daughter loves to tug on the beard.  Every time I see myself in the mirror, I think, "Who is that old guy looking back at me?"  It's not that I'm all that vain about my beard.  It's just that, in general, I have a mental image of what I look like, and it's easier for me if I keep things pretty close to that image.

Tomorrow, when I actually trim this thing, I will post Before and After pics for my readers' entertainment.  

Meanwhile, have a meaningful Good Friday!

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality

My big girl

Su just seems to get smarter and smarter every single day.  A week ago, we noticed Lucy really loved to play with a ball that looks a bit like this:

I told Su it wasn't really strictly a ball, as it has 24 sides.  We looked online to see what a 24-sided polygon would be called, and one of the terms for it was "icositetragon."  The next day, I said to Su, "Can you get Lucy's whatchacallit?"  Su said, without pausing, "It's an icositetragon, Dad...remember?"  Wow.

Sometimes Su says things that I have only ever heard adults say.  For example, the other day, she announced, "I ate broccoli, and it gave me the gas!"  What five year old calls it "the gas"?  Funny.

Being a parent can be frustrating and exhausting.  I believe anyone who tries to tell you it's all joy upon joy is being highly selective with their memory.  But it can be extremely rewarding much of the time--watching them develop their own personalities, watching them learn, knowing that some day they won't need you, not the way they once did.  Sunrise, sunset...

Posted via email from Daddy's Little Girls

Wrapping up Lent #CEBTour

Here we are, and it's already Maundy Thursday!  The end of Lent is only a couple days away.  Where has the time gone?

A couple of posts ago, I quoted from Psalm 39, about time slipping away so quickly.  I think I've been conscious of this process throughout the Lenten season this year.  As I watch my baby daughter grow so quickly, and as my five year old daughter prepares for kindergarten, I feel as if each day is going by in a few seconds.  As I've seen my beard grow into a mass of grey hair, I am reminded of my own aging.  And as I prepare to celebrate the Resurrection in a few days, I have to stop to consider that this entire life is just a prelude to a much longer, eternal process.  That is the hope of Easter, fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

As I meditate on this idea of life everlasting, these words from Job have special significance: "If people die, will they live again? All the days of my service I would wait until my restoration took place. You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for your handiwork. Though you now number my steps, you would not keep a record of my sin." (Job 14:14-16, CEB)  "Though you now number my steps, you would not keep a record of my sin."  Amen.

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality

Faith vs. Works #CEBTour

During Lent, I often ponder the connection between faith and works.  Or perhaps I should say the tension between faith and works, as this has often been a point of contention among Christians, particularly between Catholics and Protestants.  Much of the argument comes from the inherent problem of reconciling passages like the two quoted below:

We consider that a person is treated as righteous by faith, apart from what is accomplished under the Law. (Romans 3:28b, CEB)

So you see that a person is shown to be righteous through faithful actions and not through faith alone. (James 2:24, CEB)

 

It didn't help matters in the early days of the Protestant Reformation when Martin Luther added the word "alone" after "faith" in the Romans passage, leading to the famous Protestant slogan "faith alone" (Sola fide). 

The CEB kind of ties up some of the loose ends by translating the word usually rendered "works" as "faithful actions."  But this choice may be a bit too interpretive.  The thing is, there is a tension between the two ideas.  Faith is important, but so are works.  Some Protestants say the faith is more important, or that it has to come first.  Catholics may end up on the other side of the argument.  Many Christians would land somewhere in the middle.  Others, of course, will say one thing, but practice another.  For example, I have often heard Christians say that faith is the most important thing, and that works cannot save a person.  However, those same people will often tend to define their faith by listing things that they do or don't.  (I once talked to a woman who was clearly a conservative evangelical Christian, but she said, "I just hope when I die, that I've been good enough to get into heaven!"  If I had asked her if she believed works could save her, I'm sure she would have answered with a strong negative.)

The Lenten journey is often a time of taking on some task, e.g. fasting, abstinence, charity, not as an attempt to gain favor, but rather to put faith into action.  Lent is, for me, a time of getting into this tension between faith and works, letting the outward action inform the inward grace, I guess.  When it comes to that balance between faith and works, I think Rich Mullins (the late Christian musician) may have said it best: 

It's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine, 
Faith without works, it just ain't happening.
One is your left hand, one is your right,
It'll take two strong arms to hold on tight.

 

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality

Pet Shop Boys- "It's a Sin"

I don't know if I'd ever heard this Pet Shop Boys song before.  It's an interesting lyric to consider in this season of Lent.  Pay close attention to the recitation of a couple lines from the Confiteor at the end of the song.  You can hear the original Pet Shop Boys version of the song on Spotify.

"It's A Sin"

(Twenty seconds and counting...
T minus fifteen seconds, guidance is okay)
??
When I look back upon my life
It's always with a sense of shame
I've always been the one to blame
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
Has one thing in common, too

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin
It's a sin
Everything I've ever done
Everything I ever do
Every place I've ever been
Everywhere I'm going to
It's a sin

At school they taught me how to be
So pure in thought and word and deed
They didn't quite succeed
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
Has one thing in common, too

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin
It's a sin
Everything I've ever done
Everything I ever do
Every place I've ever been
Everywhere I'm going to
It's a sin

Father, forgive me, I tried not to do it
Turned over a new leaf, then tore right through it
Whatever you taught me, I didn't believe it
Father, you fought me, 'cause I didn't care
And I still don't understand

So I look back upon my life
Forever with a sense of shame
I've always been the one to blame
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
Has one thing in common, too

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin
It's a sin
Everything I've ever done
Everything I ever do
Every place I've ever been
Everywhere I'm going to - it's a sin
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin

(Confiteor Deo omnipotenti vobis fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione,
verbo, opere et omissione, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa)
[trans. "I confess to almighty god, 
and to you my brothers, 
that I have sinned exceedingly 
in thought, word, act and omission,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault"]

(Zero!)

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality

Time #CEBTour

"Time keeps on slippin' (slippin', slippin...) into the future," as the old song by the Steve Miller Band goes.  The psalmist puts it this way: "5You've made my days so short; my lifetime is like nothing in your eyes. Yes, a human life is nothing but a puff of air!" (Psalm 39:5, CEB)  However you look at it, time does indeed keep slipping into the future.  

The reason I began thinking of these verses (the psalm and "Fly Like an Eagle") is because I was contemplating how little time I have today to work on the Mahler music that I'm working with the Nashville Symphony Chorus.  The work is huge, and it takes a long time just to prepare to work on it.  Then, when I actually work with the chorus, it's amazing how quickly time passes.  Before we know it, we're out of time.  Out of time...it's something I say more and more.  I just need a little more time.  Give me some time.  And on and on...  Heck, just typing this brief blog post is taking up time that I could be spending working on Mahler!

Lent has always been concerned with coming to grips with how little time we actually have on the Earth.  "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return," goes the phrase as the ashes are placed on foreheads on Ash Wednesday.  And even though 40 days seems like a long time when Lent begins, it's often a surprise to me how quickly the time goes by.  Then we have Easter, and rebirth.  More time to celebrate, but the cycle goes on over and over again.  In less than a year, we begin to contemplate the brevity of our lives, and try to make the most out of the little time we have.  It's not a bad thing to contemplate from time to time.

Posted via email from CORYBANTER II: babble and banter, bypassing banality