It's finally summer time. How do I know this? Well, it's rather difficult to tell by just judging by the weather here. See, back home we have seasons. The summer is hot and humid. The fall is cooler, and tree leaves turn pretty colors and for some reason I have the urge to walk in graveyards. The winter is cold, and in the spring flowers bloom everywhere and you sneeze a lot.

Not here. Quiet, you Southern California people. You'll say there's a difference, but there isn't a real one. I remember on Christmas day walking outside and seeing all the flowers blooming and green plantlife everywhere and wondering if it ever stops looking like spring break. I usually keep up with the seasons by the calendar and by calling friends back home, enjoying storms and cold days vicariously through them.

So how do I know it's summer time? I had the undeniable urge to make kool aid.

In the early days after my conversion I was confused with the whole doctrine of election. All of my influences at that time were quasi-Arminian. Some would have said that eternal security was true, but none of my aquantances would ever concede to Calvinism. It was a taboo word. Calvinism was the "wrecker of churches" and the "doctrine of devils." They would say, "To say that God predestines people to hell is heresy." I even agreed that Calvinism seemed "unfair," because a just God would not show partiality—choosing some to have eternal life and others to have eternal damnation. It seemed to me, and those with whom I associated, that if Calvinism were true, the elect was some special group of people, probably people who bahaved better, because God chose them and not others.

As I grew in Christ and began reading the bible in totality, I found that I had many misconceptions with reference to election and Calvinism. I realized that it is not about God predestining people to hell. Everybody, especially myself, is worthy of hell from birth. We were all born depraved. If God were to be silent in regards to the affairs of men, and every person died and went to hell, God would be just. Yet God did actively participate in the affairs of men. He sent his own son, whose divinity is not in question, but his son poured himself out, humbled himself, became a man and died the shameful and painful death of a criminal so that grace may be extended on some. The focus should not be on God sending people to hell (for we send ourselves to hell), but the focus should be on God's grace being extended on people who are clearly undeserving of it. Therefore the Scriptures do not present a God who is unfair, but a God that is merciful!

One of the radio stations that I listen to (and Wendy abhors), had people vote in for the top classic rock bands of all time. Their list consists of 93.1 bands, but the top five were:

1. Beatles
2. Led Zeppelin
3. Rolling Stones
4. Eagles
5. Aerosmith

My own all-time favorites are:

1. Beatles
2. Steely Dan
3. Fleetwood Mac
4. U2 (if it genuinely counts)
5. Creedance Clearwater Revival

You know those dance video games at arcades? The ones where you're supposed to keep up with the footwork on the game, where there's really cheesy music, and for some reason, there are always people loitering around watching? I know why. It's because it's hilarious. Only a certain brand of creepy teenage boy plays these games, and they all look the same doing it. Their faces are serious and unblinking. Their shoulders don't move at all. Their arms are pretty much limp, swaying at the bottom, while they stomp away on the floor of the game in perfect timing. But they are all very territorial. It's not uncommon for one to fill the game with quarters all night long, ignoring rude little kids standing at arms length saying "I want next game." But here's the great thing. I really think this is how they get their glory. I think they mistake the curious stares and barely hidden giggles aimed at them for awe and respect. So they will continue their rituals, probably until a caring acquaintance breaks it to them that they are only hurting themselves, and probably making themselves prime suspects for school violence acts. Until then, go see them, it's great!

What's New? Wendy seriously hates her job. Brandon is upset at the electricity company, and Pizza Hut is going to get it.

Congratulations to Corrie and Erick, who got married today. Sorry we couldn't make it to the wedding. Me having to work along with 2,500 miles makes it a bit tough... Hope you two have a happy marriage. :)

So we went to see the Matrix Reloaded with some friends last night. I hadn't heard reviews from a christian standpoint yet, so I didn't really get a warning for that one five minute scene, but other than that I liked the movie. No, I'm not saying I'm holding myself responsible for recommending it to you.

Anyway, I was thinking about the fight scenes. Maybe I just wasn't watching hard enough, but with Neo it was pretty much guarenteed that he wasn't going to get hurt all that bad and he would beat the snot out of his opposer. In the few other action movies I've seen it's always annoyed me when the hero was always getting beat so badly and somehow fighting back (though it appeared he probably was all mushty inside). Hmm... Nearly perfect hero or seriously flawed and hungry for more... isn't there a happy medium? Ah, well. I don't really like movies with fight scenes anyway.

I got a splinter yesterday for the first time in years. Those things are so annoying. The more you try to get it out, the more it hurts. But you just can't let it stay.

So I was thinking today about how different eating out in southern CA is than in my home town. I was so limited there. We had two chinese restaurants (when they were both open that is), one "real" mexican restaurant (if you consider any mexican food cooked without cilantro to be real), a Wendy's, KFC, McDonald's, Hardee's (that's ghetto Carl's Jr to you non-southern people), a Subway, and a Burger King. And a place that served chicken fingers (which was very good). That was it. Wanna go out to eat? Well, there are your options.

Here in Southern CA it's a bit different. Without too much effort you could eat at a different restaurant every time you go out. And I realized this: the more options you have, the pickier you get. It only took one trip home to make me realize that. And it only gets worse. At this point I'm so picky about ice cream that even Baskin Robbins is falling short. This could get expensive.

I added a small section to the site called "Reviews." You can see it in the navigation to the left. I'm not sure what all we will be reviewing, but now I have a place for it.

We had a book in our library at work called the Complete Jewish Bible. Then a pastor from Africa visted our ministry and was amazed at this book that the powers that be decided to let this pastor have the book. On the one hand, I was quite happy to see it leave, yet on the other hand it depressed me that the state of the pastorate in Africa would find such a book as amazing. So what is the Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)? It is a translation of the Old Testament (Tanakh) and the New Testament (B'rit Hadashah). Actually it is only what I call a "partial translation" because the author thought it so necessary to Hebrewize the English Bible. It is one thing to do that for the Old Testament because the OT was at least originally written in Hebrew (for the most part). Yet why would anyone want to Hebrewize the New Testament? It was written in Greek for crying out loud. If anything one would want to Hellenize the English Translation of the New Testament. But that, too, would be dumb. Why say kyrios when you can say "lord." Or why say "agapê" when you can say "love." It does not help the English reader at all. The reason why people learn Greek and Hebrew is so that they can read what the original says. When a translator transliterates a word instead of translating them it gives the readers a false confidence in the original language—or in the case of the CJB New Testament it's not even the original.

Let quote from CJB's translation of the book of Philippians. First of all, it calls the book "The Letter from Yeshua's Emissary Sha'ul to the Messianic Community." This is how it represents Paul's claim for a right to boast:

• b'rit-milah on the eighth day,
• by birth belonging to the people of Isra'el,
• from the tribe of Binyamin,
• a Hebrew-speaker, with Hebrew-speaking parents,
• in regard to the Torah, a Parush,
• in regard to zeal, a persecutor of the Messianic Community,
• in regard to the righteousness demanded by legalism, blameless.

A person should not have to look up every other word in a dictionary in order to read their bible. And the translator is clearly mistranslating certain words and ideas. I found one quote from the introduction to be of special value:

". . . rather than transfer vagueness from one language to another, the word "ADONAI" is used in the B'rit Hadashah wherever I, as the translator, believe "kurios" is the Greek representation of the tetragrammaton."

First of all, the reason that I used the elipses is that the author incorrectly used a parenthetical thought and so the complete sentence is an anacoluthon. What he does make clear is that instead of translating kyrios as "lord" or "Lord" as all other English translations do, he decided to translate it as Adonai when it represents the tetragrammaton. The tetragrammaton is the four letters YHWH that represent the divine name, mostly referred to as Yahweh. Now Instead of representing the Greek references to Yahweh as being Yahweh or even YHWH the translator decided to use a completely different Hebrew word. He chose Adonai for some strange reason, in order to decrease vagueness. What ends up happening is that it becomes more ambiguous because it is hard to know what the actual word is referring to based on his translation.

There are a lot more issue with this translation, but I do not the time on my lunch hour to go into them. It is sad, however, that people try to Judaize the faith—which is, to a lesser degree, what Paul had so earnestly fought against in his epistle to the Galatians. No, I don't recommend this translation/transliteration of the Bible because it leads to more people like David Hocking who thinks that it is more proper to say Yeshua than Jesus.

One more thing. The author's name is David Stern, which happens to be the name of the National Basketball Association Commissioner. I think that the David Stern of the NBA could have come up with a more useful translation of the English. In fact, If one had to choose between the New World Translation (NWT) and the CJB, I would recommend that they used the NWT because it has less misleading points and is more usable. It's a sad day when I would recommend an NWT, but thankfully there is an overabundant plethora of good English translations of the BIble. Just read the ESV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, or even if you're crazy enough, the KJV.

Happy Mother's Day to my Mom too. We'll see you today some time after church but you don't even read our blog on the weekends so the warning isn't that significant. I love you, Mom.

Happy Mother's Day, mom! I miss you and hope today goes well for you. Thanks for always being so patient and encouraging. Love you!

A year ago today Brandon proposed to me on the beach in Destin, FL. I'm glad I said yes. :)

If must confess that I find it funny when the people that have a NASCAR sticker on their car are actually the slowest people on the road. I tend to believe that these people do not truly understand what NASCAR is all about. So what is NASCAR all about? It's about driving fast and wreckless and maybe—just maybe—there will be a crash. I've seen the movie Days of Thunder. I have the race instinct inside of me. I love to drive fast on the freeway and to see how well a car can really perform. Yet NASCAR is boring to me. It's a bunch of cars driving around in a circle. I'd rather spend my time watching Night Court and catch the crashes on ESPN's Sports Center. To me, NASCAR seems like it would be a fun occupation, but it's not a sport. Maybe it's because was born and raised as a city boy in SoCal. But I have this for the professing fans of NASCAR: at least drive ten or fifteen miles above the speed limit.

This morning, as the alarm went off, I drempt that people were arguing that it was not time to get up yet, and that I did not have to get up until later. And Brandon asks why I'm always late? I always end up working dreams into life. And then blogging about it.

Stupid McDonald's. First of all, it was hard enough to entice me to try a salad from Wendy's, which actually turned out to be good. But what are they thinking at McDonald's? For one thing, the salad has warm chicken. That's disgusting. I cannot mix temperatures when it comes to a salad. Warm chicken makes cold lettuce nasty. Not good. Then, the lettuce isn't just normal. No, they boast of like 16 different kinds of lettuce in the salad. I'm starting to wonder if perhaps they're talking about different colors of the lettuce. This is McDonald's. I'm not sure what they're trying to pull off, but it isn't working.

I thought I'd join in the fun by making my own quiz—see just how well you know me.

I don't want to work today. I don't care if I do get paid for overtime.

My husband is watching basketball. God really works in such strange ways. I remember when I was younger, nothing could repulse me like a sports fan. I explained my hatred of sports in the past, in case you missed it. Oh, but somehow I ended up with a man who stays interested as the miserable basketball game drones on.

My thing was music. If the guy was into the music I was into, we'd click. I figured that meant he was deep. Not at all. Yeah, I was wrong. For one thing, finding a guy in the south who liked the exact music I did was hard to do. My taste in music had to be compromised for pretty much any suiter. Secondly, I had other things that annoyed me besides sports-loving, such as extreme egotism, perversion, and stupidity. I know, that pretty much canceled out everyone... Everyone attracted to girls, anyway. So it all worked out well, I think. Sure my husband likes basketball and only tolerates my music. I have control of the radio. And we love each other. That's all that matters. :-D

We've worked hard to usurp the crown from Houston. You think that poluting is an easy thing? No way! There are many factors involed for being the number one metropolitan area of polution. 1) You need a lot of poluters. 2) They need to polute a lot, yet not be shut down by the authorities. 3) You need to keep the polution local. If the winds or rain just get rid of it all the time, what's the point? Southern California fits the mold perfectly. We have a lot of emissions because of the sheer amount of people living here. We've got tons of cars and tons of businesses. We also do not have a lot of winds most of the time, and rain is seldom. When the Prevailing Westerlies strike, it does not take our polution far because we have mountains to keep it local. I am glad that we've been awarded with this presitigeous prize. I just hope that we can continue the good work for years into the future. If you want to read more about smog and the Southern California situation you can read my paper.