Friday in the wild - September 2, 2005

Welcome to a Katrina-free installation of Friday in the Wild. It's hard to believe that anything else has gone on in the blogosphere, especially since Tuesday, and there have been some excellent words written about the disaster in New Orleans. I have written some myself that were less than excellent. Nonetheless, here's an opportunity to escape the crisis.

While responding to Richard Abanes, whom one blogger has coined Rick Warren's "excuseologist" for his tireless efforts at defending all things Purpose Driven^®, Frank Turk aka centuri0n has provided an excellent apologetic for the proper administration of baptism as a side effect:

There is a huge gap between saying "I don't 'get it'" and saying "rebaptism is a problem." For example, I "don't get" why Baptists are juice-users and not wine-users in the Lord's Supper. There is no theological reason on earth for it that can pass the sniff test. BUT using juice does not denigrate the ordinance - not any more than sprinkling when a deep body of water is not available or practical denigrates the ordinance of baptism.

I "don't get" juice use - but I let it slide because it is nothing compared to remembering the Lord's death and the covenant He established as a community. The matter with rebaptism is not that I "don't get it": the matter is that it is changing the substance of the ordinance from initiation and identification to merely something else - and I will avoid choosing a word for what that is because apparently doing such a thing makes me a mean person.

[Read Abanes, abanetis, abaneti, etc.]

The following blog posts (and their ensuing comments) are very helpful background reading:

1. 15 Things I Learned at Saddleback at Fide-O
2. The followup, Saddleback Lessons Unabridged, also at Fide-O
3. The controversy continues with 15 Things I Learned at Saddleback at Challies.com

I am pleased to promote Steve Camp's blog, CampOnThis, to my blogroll, after he pulled off the daunting feat of impressing me for two weeks in a row. Actually he's been on a roll all week, but his post on Biblical worship struck a chord, since I am involved with a parachurch ministry where some of the same issues arise (and since I wrote the doctrinal statement, I sometimes get asked the tough questions):

A few years ago I was ministering in concert at a prominent Midwest Christian college. During the concert of about 2,500 people attending, a young man stood up in the middle of the auditorium and shouted to me, "Brother Steve, I have a word from the Lord for you." Taken a bit back by his rudeness, but impressed with his courage, I asked him politely, "OK, what Bible verse did you want to share with me?" He said, "Oh no, this is a word directly from God for you personally." I said back to him, "I know every verse is penned by the Lord - it is all directly from Him to us . . . So what Bible verse did you want to share with me?" Becoming more and more frustrated at his inability to "woo" me to his words of "divine revelation," I finally agreed to let him speak with one condition (and believe me, I was being generous in letting it go this far); I told him, "Everything you say must agree perfectly with God's final revelation in His Word. If anything you say, no matter how trivial, disagrees with Scripture, then I will have to rebuke you in front of all these people and then we will all have to take you outside and stone you to death!" With those ground rules stated, he thought for a moment and then said these profound words, "Maybe it was a feeling I had?" I said, "Good answer man - now sit down."

[Read Worship Wars]

Daniel Phillips of Biblical Christianity calls Pat Robertson one of the Church's "unpaid bills" for his reckless call for the assassination of Hugo Chavez:

And so here he is again. Pat Robertson has just caused inestimable headaches to the Bush administration with his latest loose-lip attack. Worse, he's given Christophobe editorialists and cartoonists days and days worth of fodder by which to make themselves feel better about not believing Christ. After all, Pat Robertson has never been roundly disowned as one of the most visible public faces of (here's the word again) "evangelical" Christianity. Now, yet again, he has given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme (cf. 2 Samuel 12:14).

What will be the consequences to him? James 3:1ff. certainly warns us that teachers will rightly incur more severe judgment, because an uncontrolled tongue can case a world of hurt. What will Robertson suffer for this latest gaffe?

Nothing. . . .

[Read Pat Robertson: another unpaid bill]

This is cool: Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata reports on a 16-year-old Brit who has harnessed the power of his hamster to recharge his cellphone.

Finally, J. Mark Bertrand posts a quickie review of his New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, the latest "official" revision of the venerable Authorized Version:

The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible is the answer to one of my long-running prayers: a scholarly edition of the King James Version with updated spelling and punctuation, set in modern type with a single-column format. To add to the fun, editor David Norton painstakingly researched and restored the textual choices of the seventeenth-century translators, which makes the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible the most faithful edition in terms of "original intent." In a sense, Cambridge has delivered the best of both worlds.

[Read Beautiful, but (Very) Big]

My question: I wonder how the revisers decided how to break the paragraphs for most of the New Testament? After all, the original translators gave up placing paragraph marks (¶, properly called a pilcrow) after Acts 20:10.

No weird searches this week. I guess all the weirdos are fixated on CNN watching the news in NOLA unfold.

Until next time, enjoy.