What us Protestants are missing...

I decided today, that what we miss as protestants is our own football team. If you are Catholic, you can just cheer on that Dame of Notre, but who as a protestant am I supposed to cheer? Who can I get a big foam finger for that promotes my belief system. I'm telling you, it's a huge shame, a crying shame if I dare. Anyway. Just a thought.
It's funny, cause I don't even watch football, but maybe that's because I don't have a protestant team.
I wonder what their mascot would be? I'll leave that up to you...

Top Ten things I wish I Knew When I was a Freshman:

This was a top ten I did for youth group this week, talking about fitting into what God wants of you instead of what everyone else wants...

10. Senior Cheerleaders have boyfriends - and even if they don’t, they don’t want to date you…
9. Your hair isn’t as cool as you think it is…

8. Books are for reading, not drawing in…
7. You should never, and I repeat NEVER where underwear on your head, no matter what…
6. If an upper classman invites you to go with a bunch of his buddies out to a field to do something you’ve never heard of, you probably shouldn’t go…
5. Your glasses are not as cool as you think either…

4. While showering after gym is embarrassing, smelling like rotten trash could be worse…
3. Girls are not impressed with burps, farts or spitting…
2. You should always, always, always wear deodorant. Lots and lots of deodorant…
1. You will never be cool enough…

For Some Strange Reason He Guided Me to Tennessee

I'm on my way to TN, gonna miss my wife, friends, dogs, the church kick off and probably a lot more. I leave you this video as a token of my adventure...

Well, perhaps I will update you on the trip and my progress, if I see fit... Have a good week...

"Headliner, I challenge you to a game of horse shoes, a GAME OF HORSE SHOES...."

Thoughts Spawned by a Rabbi

So I have been listening to this podcast by Rabbi Mintz in New York. They are very interesting. The class is a study in the history of Jewish and Rabbinic Law. I have learned a lot and been very interested. It has been interesting in the way an art gallery full of replica paintings would be interesting. It is like seeing an origional and yet not having the same depth or character as the origional. I mean no disrespect. It is after all a study of the history of Law not of Yahwey. What the Jewish law makers set out to do after the period of the judges, kings and prophets was to take the torah and explain it. They did this through the Talmud and the Mishnah. These documents set out general explanations of the law found in the pentatuch (the first five books of the Old Testament- their only testament or covenant). What happened was, they Jewish community, after returning from exile, no longer had prophets to tell them what God wanted. They had a temple where they could sacrifice to him, but all they had to live by was the previous prophetic message, the law of Moses, and the oral tradition (said to be handed to Moses on Sinai and passed on orally). The early pharisees, the predisesors to the Rabbi's, would take a law like "You should keep the Sabbath holy", and they would say, "Ok, we understand that we need to keep the Sabbath holy, and that we are not to work on the Sabbath, but what constitutes holy and work." The Talmud and the Mishnah are authoritative works that define these types of open ideas. The Mishnah was created in the early 200's ad and it is the written oral tradition, the Talmud came shortly after and it is a commentary of sorts on the Mishna, it not only contains the tradition, but seeks to define the tradition even more by presenting differing Rabbinical arguments. An example of a law in the Torah that needed this kind of definitive process in more recent years is that they were not allowed to start a fire on the Sabbath, this was considered work. So, in modern days the Rabbi's argued and debated whether or not you could flip a light switch or not on the Sabbath, because when you flipped the switch they were not sure whether you were starting a fire or not. These laws are the replicas I spoke of in my annalogy. We are quick to dismiss this kind of legalism, but it comes out of a deep respect for God, it comes out of trying not to overstep what God has commanded. But as Jesus would say, you uphold your traditions and forget the great things of God's law, love and mercy. At the time of Jesus these laws were still in an oral form and you would go to a Rabbi to get his take or argument, his "Talmudic" type saying. When Jesus comes he takes the oral tradition and the teachings of the Rabbi's and turns them of their heads. He says in Matthew 23 some harsh words concerning they way they handle the law of God, vs 23-24:
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."
You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. It is such beautiful imagery and such fierce words. Jesus is attacking a not just a tradition, but something they believe to come from God on Sinai with Moses. He might as well have spit in their eyes. But, that is not the point of what I am saying although I do like to watch a good fight. What I am saying, I guess what struck me about listening to this Jewish Rabbi talk. Was just how little any of it had to do with God himself. The whole enterprise became so focused on the law that it forgot the lawmaker. It became so rigid in principles it set out that it could not conceive of a God who went beyond their principles. The tradition was to be fluid, it was to change with it's context, but it was always about the tradition, never about God, not really. I mean, that is what most of the prophets are screaming out. That is what Jesus came to rail against. This is why we needed a new covenant, because in the old, the law that was to only be a school teacher became the stumbling block... Anyway. This was very interesting to me, hope it makes sense. It is very long, and probably needs editing to make sense seeing as how it is 7:14 in the morning, but alas, I am to lazy and I figure you can grasp my meaning without me fixing my mode... Hah, I hope so anyway...

Rocky...

Man, I love Rocky, I can't wait to see this movie when it comes out. Here is a preview for those of you who haven't seen it yet...

Vongo

I recently signed up for vongo, free 14 day trial... It is a movie download service. So far the quality of the movies is pretty nice, we will see if it is worth the $10 a month or not. If so, it may be better than netflix... Although you can't get TV shows which is a major draw back. The nice thing is that you don't have to wait two days for your movie...

The New Nintendo Wii

Have you seen this? http://wii.nintendo.com/. It is pretty crazy. A whole new way of doing video gaming. I wonder if it will take off. I would be concerned about the usability of the remote and nunchuk. I wonder how hard they are to get used too. I have always liked the idea of games based off of real motions, but you always end up feeling goofy, I wonder if this will be the same. We will see. Maybe Matt will buy one so we can all play!

A Cool Resource

I downloaded this program recently, it integrates with Firefox and IE 7, it's pretty nice www.browster.com. It preloads links on pages and allows you to view them without having to click on a link, you can search pages incredibly fast with it. I really dig it!

Barth's Burgers

there's nothing like a little "You Can't Do That On Television" to get ya going...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_aLKlG0yuuw