I am enjoying the christmas break, but as a compulsive blogger how can I resist the urge to at least do a quick "blogspotting" post? Its been quite a while since my last.

Popularised by The Curator blogspotting is quite simply a way of thanking other bloggers for taking notice of this one. So what have people been saying?

Interviews

The Josh Harris interview has been linked to extensively, and many are very gracious about it claiming it to be a significant contribution to our understanding of discipleship. Thanks to Sharper Iron, James Paul, Advancing blogs, Baxters boy , Tim Challies, Reading Deeply, Brian Chesemore, Chris Giammon , Girltalk, Katherine today, .Josh Harris himself , Hantla & Justin Taylor who all linked to the post- check it out if you missed it in the pre-christmas rush.

Meanwhile, my other pre-christmas interview with Richard Cunningham head of the UK's answer to the Inter-varsity fellowship was also linked by Sven, Richard Welshie, Baxters boy, Ant, Floyd, Bluefish & Mark and is IMHO probably worth a read if you are a student or involved in a church which has a local university nearby.

On Counselling (or counseling for our US readers!)

Bowden McElroy lists all my old posts on counselling and graciously said that they had helped him to direct his own blog. Meanwhile Weekend Fisher has me sussed, believing I was "stirring up a conversation on Christian Counseling" although given the Christmas break and the relative lack of response I would probably say I was trying to stir up such a conversation!


Bible Translations
Over at 42 David Warnock has a good post about our inter-Warnock disagreement over Bible Translations and in it indirectly makes crystal clear the nub of our difference. For me, I would rather have a bible that used masculine language where the bible uses masculine language even where the bible uses masculine language inclusively and our modern culture would not understand that language inclusively. Why? Quite simply because for my main translation I do not want one that does the work of interpretation for me. I want one that simply translates word for word, not concept for concept.

A quick comparison of any of the more interpretive translations will demonstrate that on verse after verse the meaning given in the translations differ - often the more literal versions are ambiguous and could contain both meanings. Thus, by reading the literal translations and then consulting the interpretations one is protected from seeing interpretations as having the same authority as the actual words that God used. Of course, ideally I should learn more about how to read the original greek, but failing that I want a translation that sticks as close to those words as possible. If I then have to explain to my daughter as I did recently that when the bible uses the word "man" it often means "man and woman" then that is what I will do - infact I had exactly that kind of conversation with Tamasin the other day which went something like this:

"Well Tamasin, its like cows and bulls. The word "cow" is used to describe both the male and the female but also to describe the female cow. Also, the word "dog" is actually the word for the male dog, and female dogs are called "bitches"! If you think about it, the words "woman" and "human" have the word "man" in them anyway. Its kind of like Adam when he first saw Eve went "Wow Man" "

(More updates on Bible Translations in a blogsearch I have put together)

Other links
John Shroeder links to my post on a survey of British kids. Meanwhile the Charismatic debate seems to have gone right off the boil and only got the one link in the 10 days before christmas. Perhaps the impish Scotty B was right after all to declare a victory in the debate to the charismatics, or perhaps the season of goodwill reduces the desire for a so called "theological pillow fight"