kata Drew

The second presidential debate is tonight starting at 9:00PM (EST) at Belmont University.

C-SPAN is offering a live video feed for free.

Here’s a link which you can paste into VLC or WMP:

http://play.rbn.com/play.asx?url=cspan/cspan/wmlive/cspan1v.asf&proto=mms?mswmext=.asx

Alternatively, you can watch with the players I’ve embedded below:

Read more..

I should be reading…but, yeh…

Though confused and unbiblical theologically, this song is worth listening to and accompanying video worth watching (video becomes rather graphic towards the end [not safe for children]). I trust you’ll find it at least interesting. The video, while not the official music video, is one man’s telling interpretation and artistic depiction of the mash-up bearing the authorial name Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip.

I had my ESV opened this morning and sitting to the left of my laptop while finishing up some homework for my summer Old Testament II class. At one point I picked it up to get a better look and then set it back down. Upon setting it down, it began dancing as I happened to capture in the video below. To be honest I was considerably spooked out. I quickly grabbed my cell phone to record the action.

This may be silly but what immediately came to mind were the innumerable accounts of supernatural happenings in the middle ages. I, however, unlike a scribe of yesteryear, had the means and technology to record my preternatural experience. I could go to class this morning and share with a classmate my dancing, pneuma-filled ESV and prove it with a video, whereas a scribe in the 13th century going to class (or wherever a scribe would go to hang out with his buddies) after experiencing something like I did, would have to rely on his integrity as a truth-teller alone to gain an audience. You can imagine a scribe going to Haplography 102 and reporting his morning supernatural experience to his friends, the conversation being overheard by the class historian, and the account of a dancing scroll finding its way into the annals of Christian history as a mighty act of the pneuma of God. You can imagine it, right?

Well, unfortunately, I have to report that my dancing, pneuma-filled ESV has a natural explanation: the side fan from my laptop. Check it out (sorry so small; it’s my phone’s camera):

Are you a real man?

HT: Codex: Biblical Studies

Check out this sermon on the phrase “him that pisseth against the wall” from the KJV of 1 Kings 14:10. The phrase also occurs in 1Sam 25:22, 25:34; 1Kings 16:11, 21:21, and 2Kings 9:8. The rendering by the KJV, while perhaps vulgar to modern ears, is a word for word translation of the Hebrew.

While I — along with this preacher — lament modern translations that simply render the Hebrew idiom with the English term “male” I do so for very different reasons. In absolute contrast with the meaning of the passage, the ludicrous message the preacher takes from the phrase is that “real men” pee standing up (and I would add, should never lift the toilet seat!). If this preacher would have cracked the cover of even the most useless Bible Commentary, he would have discovered that the expression is contemptuously comparing males to dogs who “piss against the wall.” Thus, I don’t think modern translations bring out the connotative meaning of the original Hebrew by the non-vulgar translation as “male.” See my post Dogs, Urine, and Bible Translations (On the Importance of Translating Connotative Meaning).

“We got pastors who pee sitting down. We got the president of the United States who probably pees sitting down. We got a bunch of preachers, we got a bunch of leaders who don’t stand up and piss against the wall like a man…That’s what’s wrong with America.”

“A man needs to be a man not a male…It’s because the editors of the NIV pee sitting down.”

Look, the road is narrow and hard to find
With secret battles inside our minds
Who can last
God we need your strength to find
Your light to guide us into the night
You’re our only chanceMessiah, Messiah, Messiah save us

Run, I want to run to your open hand
But father I can barely stand
On my own
Now, like the children of Abraham
We’re reaching out for the promised land
For our home

You are our only hope
You are our only hope

Neat video concept of going around the world, dancing to two sweet house tunes:

Hillsong London Christmas 2007 from Drew Maust on Vimeo.

Your love O Lord is like the oceans
Deeper than endless seas
Your faithfulness is like the mountains
And Your Word never fails

Glory to God
Let every heart sing
Glory to God
In the highest