Don Carson credits his late father for saying “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text”. What that basically means is that if you don’t provide the context for a sentence or quote then you can interpret it or make it say whatever you want.
A further way of looking at that is to say that words only make sense in sentences, and sentences only have meaning in paragraphs, etc. Within biblical poetry that can be extended to include that a word or sentence only has meaning within a stanza. Without context, without an environment then a group of words can be construed or misconstrued to suit different purposes.
I had a thought this morning – not always a good thing – that if I were creating a website where the purpose was to present Biblical truth regularly, then it would be hard to go past the name “Bible Butcher: Fresh Meat Daily!”
Perhaps it is a good thing that I’m not creating such a website, otherwise biblebutcher.com may have been registered.
Further to my most recent post about board game purchases, 2018 has so far been filled with playing those games that have been acquired in the past decade. We started off in January with Killer Bunnies. Because there are so many rabbits about, we kept that going through February as well. March saw a change of pace as we went back in time to produce 7 Wonders. As Wonderful as that was, we holidayed in the French medieval city of Carcassonne for April. Having built that city, we then reverted back to the Stone Age for May. We’ve got “all aboard” in June for Ticket to Ride: Europe. July and August will be sharing the spoils of Dominion and Alhambra. September just needs to wait.
Around a month ago I decided that it would be a good idea to begin to learn and use Vim as my primary text editor. Prior to that I had used Notepad++ on Windows-based machines and either Mousepad or Leafpad on my Linux-based machines.
Vim (pronounced, not surprisingly to rhyme with “him”) is an updated, improved version of a program called Vi (pronounced, somewhat surprisingly as “vee-eye”). Vim stands for Vi-improved.
Vim is a standard offering on linux machines and works in console mode whereas many other text editors such as Leafpad, Gedit, Mousepad etc work only in Linux desktop or windows environments.
Fascinating – that a lady in America in the 1940s, Frances Glessner Lee made dioramas of murder scenes to assist in the training of homicide investigators.
I called it to the local library this afternoon seeking something in particular – not so much a specific book as a type of book. And what may that type of book be? A travel guide. You know, like Rick Steves, Lonely Planet, DK and Michelin (close, but not the restaurant guides).
But why, I don’t hear you ask? Because I need a holiday and I have too much annual leave accumulated (close to 10 weeks now).
I wrote about my history of Linux Distros here. At the time I indicated I was using Ubuntu 16.04 with the Gnome 3 desktop. That was true (and technically is at the moment), but it won’t be for long.
I find frequent issues with my current setup. Nautilus (the file manager) simply refuses to start when I first fire up the machine three times out of four. It will eventually start – perhaps one or two minutes after I need it. I receive regular crash report notifications telling me something hasn’t worked and inviting me to send some information to someone so they can think about fixing it never. I receive crash reports for programs I’m not even running, or need to run. And sometimes (once every five or six boots) my wifi network isn’t found. It hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s just that Mr (or Mrs) Ubuntu can’t find it.
[Below is the text of a sermon I preached at our church on Easter morning, 1st April 2018.]
Matthew 27:46
Aramaic – Heart Language
My offering today is half sermon, half reflection. As I pondered and prayed about what to speak about a couple of weeks ago a phrase came to mind. I gave God the opportunity to change His mind but I kept coming back to this particular phrase.