Not Of This World

My field of study, linguistics, has an interesting little overlap with my faith in the domain of Bible Translation. Many linguists work as Bible translators. Many people who want to get involved in Bible translation become linguists to do that work better.  However, academic linguists (that's me) and so-called missionary linguists don't always see eye-to-eye. This weekend, at a linguistics conference, I overheard one professor telling a graduate student how they work with SIL (that's a Bible translation organization) linguists when doing fieldwork, but they actually do good work , she said, as if that would come as a surprise. In class, once, we spent the seminar ripping apart this paper that had several big problems with it. It was co-authored by two people, a woman and a man, with the same last name. As we left the room afterwards, one of my classmates remarked, I betcha they're missionary linguists . I looked it up later. They weren't--they were anthropologists....

It's easy to sing When there's nothing to bring me down But what will I say When I'm held to the flame Like I am right now I know You're able and I know You can Save through the fire with Your mighty hand But even if You don't My hope is You alone -Even If, by MercyMe I almost decided not to write a blog post today. I thought, hey, even God rested on the seventh day, and I've written thirteen whole posts so far. But then I thought, maybe I'll just tell you about my crazy week instead and why  I almost didn't write a post today, and also why I decided to anyhow. So here goes. I've been in a pretty tough place mentally. On Friday, it came to a head when I realized two hours too late that I totally forgot about a meeting with my supervisor while... let's just say, not working. I had been in a funk all day... really, all week. So I sent her an apology email and then went for a run. And while I was running, I cried a little bi...

There has been a lot on the news about the separation of Church and State, as Trump has signed some new order that blurs that line. To be honest with you, I haven't read more than the headlines on this issue, so I won't write much about the order, but I thought I'd share some of my thoughts with you about the separation of Church and State. First, I would like to point out that moral law and state law are not the same thing. Moral law defines the difference between good and bad, whereas state law defines the difference between legal and illegal. In our society, moral and state law do not coincide. There are many discrepancies between what our society, as a whole, deems good versus bad, and what they have decided is legal or illegal. For example, it is not inherently wrong to drive 101 km/h rather than 100 km/h on a certain stretch of highway, although it may be illegal. On the other hand, it is not illegal to cheat on your partner when you have agreed to a monogamous rela...

This past weekend I spent coaching my church's Bible quizzing team at the final tournament of the year. Bible quizzing is a game show-like tournament for youth based on word-for-word knowledge of Bible verses from a particular passage. ( Here  is an example of a quiz from another district; they are quizzing on Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. The first quiz starts at 15:28. Our district doesn't have the software with the cheesy sound effects...!) I competed in Bible quizzing when I was in high school for four years, and have coached for another seven now. I first started because my friends were doing it, but it soon became much more important to me. I wasn't all that good at it (I was decent; I just could never manage to memorize the volume needed to really do well), but the verses I did memorize managed to sink deep and change who I was. The first time I used a quizzing verse in everyday life was in grade nine. We were doing a rock climbing unit in ...

On Wednesday, I had the honour of watching the Canadian premiere of the first episode of the new series  The Handmaid's Tale,  followed by a Q&A with the author of the book the series is based on, Margaret Atwood. I found the episode to be well-done, if horrific, and Margaret Atwood to be both funny and perceptive. Overall, the event touched on the themes of this blog, so I thought it would be appropriate to share some thoughts with you here.  The Handmaid's Tale  is a dystopia about a futuristic totalitarian pseudo-Christian government in the US. The society is heavily tiered, with some people basically having slave status. When the book first came out, Americans scoffed and said,  this can never happen here . Now, just over thirty years later, under the current political climate, people aren't quite so quick to dismiss it. Some of the rules and systems of the dystopian society seem far-fetched and surreal. But Margaret Atwood had a rule--she included...