The Grey Shadow

I would like to comment on some news related to the Bible. I intended to comment on some of those for a long time; thankfully, now I can

1. ESV Sales Growing at a Fast Clip Worldwide. It is no secret that I am very fond of the ESV, which I regard as the best contemporary English Bible translation available. This post on the ESV blog says that I am not alone on my appraisal. Right now the ESV is distributed through partnerships with such powerhouses as the British and Foreign Bible Society, the American Bible Society, the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, and the United Bible Societies. Furthermore, it is being increasingly used by Anglican and other churches worldwide; for example, in Singapore, the ESV is the selected translation at national cathedral of the Anglican Church. For once, it is heartwarming to see such «mainline» organizations and denominations turning to a literal, conservative translation.

2. Daily Office Lectionary from the Book of Common Prayer Available Online in the ESV. The folks at the ESV website came up with this wonderful new service. From now on, you will see a link to it under the «Liturgy» section of my sidebar. So, if you are liturgically minded, this is a great way to read the Bible daily.

3. Cheyenne Bible dedicated. Wayne Lehman of Better Bibles Blog fame recollects the wonderful time they had dedicating the Cheyenne Bible after several years of hard work. The Lord blessed the efforts of the translators, and now the Cheyenne people have the Bible in their own language. Kudos to all of them!

4. Words and Relevance: Removing Repentance is Unjustified. In this post, as well as in its sequel, Language: Don’t Lose It – Use It, Catez (of Allthings2all fame) makes a great case for the forensic/theological specialized terminology found in the Bible, and especially in the New Testament. (Incidentally, this is a response to a statement made by Wayne Lehman.) I was wondering about taking the subject for some time, but Catez said everything I wanted to, and much better. Therefore, this is strongly recommended reading.

Hat tip goes to Tim, who tagged me.

A- Available or married? Married.

B- Best Friend? I got great friends, but the one that really shines through is my wife. How she was able to selflessly give so much of herself to me without asking anything in return is simply astounding.

C- Cake or Pie? Usually, pie.

D- Drink of Choice? Tereré (yes, there is even a Wikipedia article for it!).

E- Essential Item? A good book.

F- Favorite Color? Blue and gray (does it show…? )

G- Gummi Bears or Worms? What???

H- Hometown? Asunción, Paraguay, South America,

I- Indulgence? Reading.

J- January or February? Difficult choice. Two unbearably hot months where nothing happens.

K- Kids & names? None yet…

L- Life is incomplete without? Besides God (obviously): A Bible, good books, a computer, my belowed wife.

M- Marriage Date? June 7th, 2003.

N- Number of Siblings? Two sisters, one half sister, and one half brother.

O- Oranges or apples? Oranges. All the time.

P- Phobias/Fears? Syringes’ needles, to be hospitalized… oh well.

Q- Favorite Quote? It depends. I like this one:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2 [show]Ecclesiastes 1:2 [2]Vanity(1) of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. Footnotes 1. [1:2] Hebrew 'vapor' (so throughout Ecclesiastes)
)

R- Reason to Smile? GNU/Linux, no phone calls, no TV, silence, a great book, excellent music…

S- Season? Fall, especially at the NE USA, with all those beautiful trees…

T- Tag three people! Well, anyone liking my blog and reading this should consider himself/herself tagged.

U- Unknown fact about me: I hope to be proficient in building model planes someday…

V- Vegetable you hate? Cabbages, broccoli, and similar ones.

W- Worst habit? Procrastinating.

Y- Your favorite food? Too many of them. Let me mention, however, a good barbecue and Passover spinach pie (Tarta Pascualina).

Z- Zodiac? Sorry, won’t comment on this. Goes against my faith.

It has been a long time since my previous post. One of the reasons for my lack of posting was something that never happened to me before: I was hospitalized.

On Monday, January 22, I began to feel ill. Around 10.00 (am) I started to develop high fever with temperatures on the ~40 C (105 F) range, and I felt extremely tired. Several visits to physicians established a strong suspicion of dengue fever.

The fever wouldn’t go away on the next days. Things got to a head on Friday. I was becoming too dehydrated for my own good, so my physician ordered my hospitalization. On the hospital, I got 5000 ml of mixed dextrose/physiological solutions over 24 hours via an IV catheter. There is just one word to describe it: atrocious.

On Saturday I felt much better, so the physician released me under strict orders: rest and extensive hydration. Meanwhile, IgM tests confirmed the suspicions of dengue fever.

I never was hospitalized in my life before. It was a difficult time, but the help and the provision of the Lord were there. Thankfully, I was able to cover my hospital costs, and I feel much better now.

The WordPress folks released version 2.1 just some days ago. I just upgraded my WordPress sites to it; and so far, so good. Upgrading is recommended, if only for the more than 550 bugfixes. Yay!

Early this morning I saw an article on First Things magazine written by Professor Timothy George of Beeson Divinity School: Evangelicals and the Mother of God. The article begins by telling us,

It is time for evangelicals to recover a fully biblical appreciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the history of salvation-and to do so precisely as evangelicals. The question, of course, is how to do that. Can the evangelical reengagement with the wider Christian tradition include a place for Mary?

The article is well-written and researched, and I found it useful as an explanation of the overall Evangelical (and Reformed) position on Mary, the questions we must face, and the opportunities and difficulties it presents for the current Evangelical-Roman Catholic debate/dialogue.

However, I must point out a problem with George’s otherwise excellent survey: Professor George unfortunately leaves the global picture out. The article is a great description of the state of the question on countries of the non-Romanic European tradition. However, when you cross the invisible border of the Alps, Rhine, Pyrenees –or the Rio Grande– the state of things is not as idyllic as Professor George would have us believe. (I am not implying that George is being idealistic, or that he has overlooked or is unaware of the serious issues surrounding the “Mary question” in Evangelical-Roman Catholic dialogue, by no means. I am certain that had he been aware of conditions in Latin countries, he would have written in a very different tone and outlook.)

As a former Roman Catholic –and former numerary member of the Opus Dei to boot– Reformed Christian; as the husband of a devout Roman Catholic wife; and as the resident of a strong, traditional Roman Catholic country of Latin America, let me tell you that there are issues more serious than a mere disagreement over dogma.

All over Latin America, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is thoroughly imbibed with the Marxist poison of the so-called “Liberation” theology, and have adopted a postmodernist-deconstructionistic approach to liturgy and popular belief. If you question most priests, they will come to you as standard Second Enlightenment types, with all the philosophical flaws common to that movement, and privately they find easy to deny many sacred tenets of Catholicism.

But they aid, abet, and promote Maryan idolatry. Yes, I said idolatry. They promote massive pilgrimages to Maryan “sanctuaries” to worship certain images of Mary, and the practice of promesas, i.e., vows made to obtain a special favor from the Blessed Virgin. People not only kneel openly in front of images of Mary; they come walking in their kneels (!) to obtain a special favor. The hierarchy benefits from that condition: although its members are largely unbelievers, the Maryan practices allow for a way to have the control of the people’s mind and souls. The priests are the ones who have the keys of those Maryan “sanctuaries”, and they have the opportunity to preach their Marxism in the sermons of the solemn Masses celebrated there.

I cannot blame Professor George for the small degree of naïveté that pervades his assessment. In fact, I do not hesitate to recommend George’s evaluation gladly as an excellent piece on the question. However, please take it with the required grain of salt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… The good folks at WordPress have released WordPress 2.0.7. This release contains several bugfixes and a potentially important security issue, so upgrading is again recommended.

It’s just ten days after a previous release, but I appreciate the attention given to security and fixing bugs. So, despite al my groans, kudos to the WordPress team!

I am growing more and more fond of Slax. Slax is a “live” (as in “live CD”) GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware that is simple, fast, powerful, and flexible. Its worth was evident to me right from the beginning.

As of now, I do not have internet access on phoenix, my new home desktop system. Therefore, when I get online for purposes that are not directly related to my work, I must seek to get online elsewhere: Internet cafés, or even the computer at my parents’. The problem is that all those systems run some incarnation of Windows, and thus they are annoyingly limited in their abilities to do something meaningful. Plus, I need my toolbox to be handy .

For all those cases, Slax lets me have a full, working GNU/Linux system in a USB Memory Stick, and even provides a 4MB boot CD image for use in systems unable to boot from USB. The standard software collection is useful but rather limited; but then, there are a lot of “modules” that work more or less like packages to customize your environment. You can convert Slackware’s *.tgz packages to modules with a handy tgz2mo utility. And all in all, Slax is based on Slackware, the distribution I use on my systems, so everything is familiar territory.

Thanks to Slax, I was able to get meaningfully productive almost everywhere without touching the underlying Windows installation of the host computers. You simply carry your system in your pocket to be used as needed. This kind of convenience is priceless. Don’t leave home without it .

I just finished upgrading my WordPress sites to WordPress 2.0.6. It includes a number of fixes, and an important security issue among them, so upgrading is highly recommended.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David,
…
because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:68-79, ESV [show]Luke 1:68-79 [68]"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people [69]and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, [70]as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, [71]that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; [72]to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, [73]the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us [74]that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, [75]in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. [76]And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, [77]to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, [78]because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us(1) from on high [79]to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." Footnotes 1. [1:78] Or 'when the sunrise shall dawn upon us'; some manuscripts 'since the sunrise has visited us'
)

Among the Christmas texts, the Song of Zechariah is a gem that is rarely explored for all its worth and yet, there are incredible riches in it. I especially like the emphasis on redemption, deliverance from darkness, and God’s mercy. The image of the sunrise (with obvious echoes of Malachi 4:2 [show]Malachi 4:2 [2]But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. (ESV)
) is especially fit for our Christmas. We need the light of the Sun of Righteousness!

As you might already guess, we live a Christmastime that is very different from the usual practices of the Northern Hemisphere. Here Christmas happens at the beginning of summer, among scorching hot days full of sun, light, and lush garden colors. That was another reason for choosing this text. It almost looks like it was written for our Christmas.

We spent a nice Christmas Eve with my in-laws, and we went to my parents for the Christmas Day noon dinner. On New Year, the arrangement was reversed. All in all, the Lord blessed us with a happy, quiet time of reflection among our loved ones, and we are thankful. Thankful for the salvation brought by the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, thankful for countless blessings, and your fellowship among them.

Dear reader, may you have a blessed Christmas time, and a truly happy New Year.

(Photo: Dusk at River Paraguay. Photo by kind permission of Paraguayan photographer Alfredo Zucotti)