I am no longer planning to post my new posts here. Please visit https://kentbrandenburg.com, the new What is Truth? site, to read my Friday posts from now on. Thank you.
Hey everyone, this is Kent Brandenburg. I'm not posting here anymore either. This will be available to use, but nothing new is coming here. It's all at the new site, which really isn't new anymore.
My wife and I worked hard for several months on various things without much of a break and we could get away for a day or so. Utah is a beautiful state. Little did Brigham Young know, when he said, "This is the place," that it meant five national parks, two of which are thirty minutes apart, Arches and Canyonlands. They both deserve national park status.
Arches especially means hiking, because you've got to hike to see the greatest scenes. They laid these out with well done trails. My wife and I walked miles, people passing us, we passing people, people walking along side of us, and crowds of people together with us looking at amazing views.
I want to take this moment to announce a trigger warning. Trigger warning to women. I'm preparing to talk about women wearing skirts or dresses. In all of those hours, besides my wife, I never saw another skirt. Not a single other woman in the entire time we were at those two national parks did I see a woman in a skirt or a dress.
I did see many women in skin tight leggings or pants. Loose ones too. The temperatures were cool, so there weren't so many shorts, but there were even some of those worn only by women, none by men.
A big occurrence this Sunday night before my wife and I left on our trip was the Academy Awards in Hollywood. My phone notified me that Will Smith punched Chris Rock. It came with an unedited video.
The comedian Chris Rock, who apparently hosted the show, added an ad lib joke about Smith's wife, Jada, an actress sitting with Will Smith, who suffers from a hair loss disease. She's essentially bald, and Rock sarcastically joked about her upcoming appearance in G. I. Jane, making fun of her hairless state. Some might call this joke, tasteless, because it made fun of a woman's medical condition over which she has no control. In other words, it's not funny to joke about that, or it shouldn't be. It's off limits.
Whether you think it was right for Smith to walk to slap Rock onstage in what some might think a chivalrous manner, it's an issue of women's hair length. Someone in Hollywood slapped someone else for making fun of a woman's hair length. Being called a "G. I. Jane" was insulting. None of this means anything if hair length on a woman isn't a symbol of identity, like a skirt or dress is a symbol of identity.
The Bible mentions visible symbols as they relate to identity. People know they matter. It's why you see a transgender "woman," biological male, wearing a dress. The dress is a symbol, as is hair. "Look at me, I'm a woman."
The girl, who wants to be a boy or thinks of herself as a boy, wants to get rid of her breasts. Or she prevents them with hormone blockers. The boy, who wants to be a girl or thinks of himself as a girl, wants those breasts. Breasts are symbols, even if they don't function except as a symbol. The Bible treats any kind of reversal of these symbols as an abomination and against nature. It's also the view held by professing Christians through their entire history until very recently, and one never rescinded by God.
The symbols that speak of identity are not arbitrary symbols. They aren't a social construct. They are the "laws of nature and nature's God" of the Declaration of Independence. Writing about this in 1762, Abraham Williams of Boston said:
The law of nature (or those rules of behavior which the Nature God has given men, . . . fit and necessary to the welfare of mankind) is the law and will of the God of nature, which all men are obliged to obey. . . . The law of nature, which is the Constitution of the God of nature, is universally obliging. It varies not with men's humors or interests, but is immutable as the relations of things.
Rebellion against the laws of nature is rebellion against God in a fundamental or root manner. The person violating these laws involves himself in a personal offense against the nature of God. In many of these instances, especially the ones I'm describing, they become an abomination to Him. You can deny that, but you'll still face God.
Our world reacts to symbols. The Swastika. The Hammer and Sickle. The Gay Flag. Men wearing skirts. The symbols mark identity in an elemental way.
The downfall on identity began first with the abdication and then the repudiation of symbols. Identity confusion and chaos starts with renouncing the symbols. If you think they're meaningless, then why do they trigger such strong reactions?
The model prayer of Matthew 6 and Luke 11, Jesus didn't pray. He was teaching His disciples how to pray. Certain few times the New Testament records that He spoke to His Father, He didn't ask for anything. He prays for one thing in John 12:28, "Father, glorify thy name."
On the cross in Luke 23:34, Jesus prays, "Father, forgive them." He prayed three times in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26, two of which He requested essentially the same thing, and the third time it says he prayed the same thing as the first two. In verse 39, He prayed, "Not as I wilt, but as thou wilt," regarding His suffering and death, and then in verse 42, "Thy will be done," which was about the same thing.
14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. 18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. 20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.
15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
Today churches have gone "woke." Many accept critical race theory and same sex relations. Before contemplating those extremes, we might consider something short of that and what leads to it.
A man I know well pastors in the same city as a conservative evangelical does, and the two discussed separation. The conservative evangelical church accepts membership of many and widely varied doctrinal and practical positions. Everyone is worldly also to sundry degrees, many very much so.
The conservative evangelical graduated from Masters Seminary and in general follows their way of thinking and operation. In a conversation, the man who I know well mentioned to the conservative evangelical 1 Timothy 1:3:
As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine.
Paul besought Timothy to charge the pastors at Ephesus that they "teach no other doctrine." That's very clear. "Teach no other doctrine" is one Greek word, heterodidaskaleo. This matches up with what Paul also said in 1 Timothy 6:3-5:
If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness . . . . from such withdraw thyself.
Here's what the conservative evangelical, who went to Masters Seminary, said: "We teach that "doctrine" there [in 1 Timothy 1:3] is [or means] 'the gospel.'"
This is the kind of dealing with scripture or teaching that justifies disobedience to scripture. Is "doctrine" "the gospel" in 1 Timothy 1:3 and in 1 Timothy 6:3-5 among other verses of scripture? Of course not. Still, that's how conservative evangelicals will go ahead and understand "doctrine." "Doctrine" refers only to "the gospel" in that passage.
Calling "doctrine" "the gospel" is a type of deconstruction. Rather than a verse asserting absolute truth, a person assigns a meaning that he conceives at that moment in time. In Is There Meaning in this Text? Kevin J. Vanhoozer writes (pp. 21-22) about the deconstruction of the postmodernist Derrida, the one most associated with it:
The belief that one has reached the single correct Meaning (or God, or “Truth”) provides a wonderful excuse for damning those with whom one disagrees as either “fools” or “heretics.” . . . Neither Priests, who supposedly speak for God, nor Philosophers, who supposedly speak for Reason, should be trusted; this “logocentric” claim to speak from a privileged perspective (e.g., Reason, the Word of God) is a bluff that must be called, or better, “deconstructed.”
A teacher or preacher may dismantle Christianity by deconstructing the language. Christianity is based upon language, the language of the Bible. Rather than say you don't believe the Bible, you can just deny a "single correct meaning."
Deconstructing the biblical text allows and even instructs men not to believe and obey the Bible. They not only disobey, but they disobey while thinking they're obeying, because of the deconstruction of the language of scripture. A church can grow in numbers from the welcome of plenteous and diverse disobedience, while still labeling it obedience.
Do you know what Darwin said about evidence for design in creation? Find out in my latest post here.
I'm sure someone has made this argument, even though I haven't heard it. Someone might call the five previous editions of the King James Version an argument for another update. Four editions followed the original 1611. Why no sixth edition? Why did we stop at 1769, the date of the last edition, what is called the Blayney Edition?
Dr Blayney made thousands of changes to the text of 1611. In vocabulary he incorporated amendments from another version from 1743, for example, fourscore changed to eightieth, neesed to sneezed, and the archaic crudled to curdled. In grammar he changed, among other things, number, so that ‘the names of other gods’ became ‘the name of other gods’; and tenses, so ‘he calleth unto him the twelve and began’ changed to ‘he called unto him the twelve, and began’. There were changes in spelling, in punctuation, and in the choice of words to italicise (which had been intended to indicate words not literally present in the original languages).
By the mid-18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version, combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints, had reached the proportion of a scandal, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text. First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760, the culmination of 20 years' work by Francis Sawyer Parris, who died in May of that year. This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762 and in John Baskerville's fine folio edition of 1763. This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition, edited by Benjamin Blayney, though with comparatively few changes from Parris's edition; but which became the Oxford standard text, and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings. Parris and Blayney sought consistently to remove those elements of the 1611 and subsequent editions that they believed were due to the vagaries of printers, while incorporating most of the revised readings of the Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638, and each also introducing a few improved readings of their own. They undertook the mammoth task of standardizing the wide variation in punctuation and spelling of the original, making many thousands of minor changes to the text. In addition, Blayney and Parris thoroughly revised and greatly extended the italicization of "supplied" words not found in the original languages by cross-checking against the presumed source texts. . . . Altogether, the standardization of spelling and punctuation caused Blayney's 1769 text to differ from the 1611 text in around 24,000 places.
[1611] 1. Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore, and though I giue my body to bee burned, and haue not charitie, it profiteth me nothing.[1769] 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
[NASV] 1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
