The bad news: Monday comes the FNM/FRE bailout and VTSMX is up 1.5%. I end up buying $700 worth of VTMSX at the new NAV. Tuesday comes and it’s down 3.14%. Bah!!

The good news: Losing 3.14% in NAV the next day is a hell of a lot better than the Franklin Templeton fund I was using last year that charged a 5.75% load (Somebody please kick me in the balls). Long live low-cost index funds!

• Why is education a Federal issue? What can the President do at the federal level to improve teacher pay or increase test scores? Why is there virtually no relationship between spending per student and student performance? Why do we keep acting like there is such a relationship? Why isn’t education mentioned in the U.S. Constitution?
• In place of the word “education” in the bullet above, try other things such as “health care,” and “disaster relief.”
• Why is the national border the exception to the above?
• Why do both sides act like there’s a biblical passage about Jesus confronting Caesar?
• Why do people like Ann Coulter?
• Why can’t I find my other sock?

Those poor political attack dogs. They get used up and thrown by the side of the road. If my mind was a little more creative right now, I’d come up with a fake advertisement for adopting them.

In short, the organization is moving to Las Vegas and is going to need a boatload of money in order to support the operation, in the total three-year sum of THREE MILLION DOLLARS.

Hence my pride comes tumbling down.  I make a great salary, so when I see the donation numbers accumulating with the monthly donations, I would get a sort of rush as if I was really doing a good thing.  Then again, even if I gave all of it and completely disregarded food and clothing, it would pale to what’s needed here.

Chew on that the next time you think you’re good enough not to need the Cross.  We’re all even more inadequate than any financial resources we could put into an operation such as this one.

Next post is on a related topic, namely the need for ministry as observed in Pattaya, Thailand.

Public overreaction to drills with fake rifles are nothing new on college campuses. In my four years of college, I saw enough incidents ranging from temporary confiscation by police officers who didn’t know the policy all the way to a Gunnery Sergeant having his NCO sword confiscated. But they never took the program down. Good gravy.

The more major news on that blog, however, is the ESV Study Bible, which is said to be scheduled for an October 2008 release. Their blog has a good list of blog posts regarding the recent website launch. Unfortunately, I have to say that I’m personally more skeptical of this effort than I was about the Literary Study Bible.

I definitely relate to Richard’s comment at the Boar’s Head Tavern:

I think if you have more editorial words than actual bible text you don’t have a Bible anymore but a commentary. A commentary which (Matthew is correct) seeks to promote a Reformed perspective. Nothing wrong with that but perhaps it should be pointed out.

I’m still trying to understand the whole Calvinism / Arminianism divide. You’d definitely be able to tell that if you’ve seen my latest purchase lists from Amazon.com. For Calvinists, there’s already the Reformation Study Bible with R. C. Sproul at the conn.

What is this junk about people needing a study bible from “one’s own tradition” anyhow? Shouldn’t we be open to whatever God wants to communicate through the Word? And do such commentaries possibly take away from the Word? If I want commentary, I’ll read another book.

Meanwhile, I did finally receive an audio ESV the other day when we finally received some mail. This is also very much a blessing.

ADDITION: If they’re able to illustrate Solomon’s temple, how will they illustrate pre-Moses events which remain in theological or archaeological dispute as related to new-earth creationism vs. evolution, and variants thereof?  Are we in for illustrations of the Garden of Eden or Noah’s Ark?  (As a matter of record, I’m an evolutionist.)

Given the ship’s restrictions on posting on personal pages while underway, the site also serves as a proxy to my posting things on the Internet, which is nice to have. The plan earlier was to have stuff written for regular release through underway periods, but that hasn’t really come to pass as I had planned.

Do I sound like I never watch television?  Good, I’m not putting forward any false fronts.

Worship Matters and Josh Harris have put forward some very good analysis of the whole thing.  I only wanted to put in a couple of personal cents into the matter.

Seventh grade was when I really started to read the Bible.  I was entering my third year living in Hawaii, and my parents did not want to send me to a public school.  Complicating that was that my Dad was very Catholic at the time and didn’t want to send me to a Protestant school.  His priest even warned him that the school would turn me into a Protestant.  He was right.

And while overall I did learn much from the Bible, the baggage included very unhealthy views in regards to anti-Catholicism, drinking, smoking, relationships, witnessing, CCM, etc.  The vast majority of the teachers were recruited out of Bob Jones University.  Knowing that alone, I probably won’t ever send my kids there.  I still am a Protestant, mind you.

That CCM part utterly confused one of my female friends over there.  I won’t mention her name, but I do hope she reads this.   Her position was that as long as the lyrics glorify God, what’s all the opposition for?  Ultimately, the school would only permit hymns, despite that the band had been practicing secular music.  Mixing faith and “rock music” was not morally right.  I, of course, in my militaristic followership, didn’t back her up.  She would bring this up often in her justifiable utter confusion.

Accordingly, it seemed rebellious, almost wrong, when another open mic day came, and the entire student body of the campus’ intermediate (junior high) and high schools assembled in the auditorium.  They always called me “future pastor” because I was able to put out a long message on the fly.  Three of my female friends got up there and sung “Shout to the Lord” a capella.

I don’t think they got in trouble, and I didn’t really have anything against the song, but it seemed so modern. That just wasn’t what we did around there.

Fast-forward to 2007, and the World Wide Web, previously the domain dominated by Netscape 2.0, was now in full Web 2.0 mode.  I started finding many of these old friends on Facebook, hoping to reconnect.  As I typed in this particular female friend’s name, a group (not a profile) popped up.  Why is that?  I had apparently been paying to little attention to popular media to notice that someone of her name had been a finalist on American Idol.  The pictures were too small to really tell it was her.  I clicked the link over to Wikipedia, and it was definitely her.  Things have changed, certainly.

There’s no telling whether she’s following the Lord at this point in her life, and that certainly doesn’t make her alone among kids raised as Christians, but perhaps having “Shout to the Lord” on American Idol was a way of calling her and others back, at minimum to that memory.

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!

Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord!

-Psalm 150 (ESV

Earlier this year, I started off determined to read the Bible in a year. I had become a fan of the English Standard Version after having done much reading comparing it with other versions. By no means am I declaring absolute loyalty to this specific version, but it is the answer to much prayer concerning worries I had over the NIV.

I had also obtained a copy of the Literary Study Bible, which is also a godsend. I had never been able to really process the Bible in terms of entire books as opposed to individual chapters, or in particular places, individual verses. Most of us have verses that we’ve committed to memory, but how often do we really look at the whole thing? How many of us really figure out the structure of the book of Numbers? I certainly never had.

However, the most important thing that the effort taught me is that it’s bad for me to trust myself with sticking with a daily plan.

Before I elaborate on why, let’s get a certain lame excuse out of the way: “I don’t have time” doesn’t cut it. If God wants you to do it, He will allow you time. There’s twenty-four hours in a day, so figure it out. If you spend an hour a day on the Internet reading things like this article, and you’re not reading the Bible on a regular basis, stop reading this article, turn off your computer, and go pick up your Bible.

With that said, I’m here to offer you a different approach than lists that say “January 1st: read this. January 2nd: read this.” My current effort is going to focus on reading entire books. For one, it better enables the reader to process the entire book rather than series of passages. Secondly, it doesn’t have a time limit. If you take a week off, you can get back where you left off, or if you forget what happened beforehand, go back to the beginning of the book and reread.

This is not to argue that trying to read the Bible in a year isn’t a worthy goal, but for some of us it might actually be lofty. Anything is possible with God on your side, but when you’re someone like me who is constantly going in and out, not to mention waking up at “ungodly” hours for various work-related tasks, you might be better off just checking books off.

Somehow I got through the first five books of the Old Testament without a major hitch. The stumble came when I started reading Joshua, and no, that’s not Joshua’s fault; it’s mine for not relying on God to keep me going, or simply to have him direct me where I ought to be reading.

Accordingly, I’m making the switch over to Matthew, followed by possible alternation between OT and NT books. More importantly, I’ll be reading more Bible and less finance websites. That’s been swamping me over the past three weeks.