A little less heat, a little more light, please

Christianity Today reported recently on the controversy surrounding the latest version of the NIV Bible.

Seems the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution against the 2011 version, which is slated to replace the now venerable version from 1984. Too much gender neutral language, apparently, the same complaint that was lodged against the Today's NIV, which had a stated goal of producing a more language inclusive translation.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood joins the SBC in its contempt for the new version, which they believe is an inaccurate translation because of the gender neutral issue.

I should point out that no version of the NIV uses gender neutral language for God -- in any aspect of the Trinity. God is still father, Jesus is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is a he. But the CBMW believes that  some of the NIV's neutral translations should have been translated using male terms because they would be more accurate.

More particularly they object to the translation of I Timothy 2:12, where Paul says he doesn't allow women to have authority over men. The NIV uses the word "assume" instead of "have." They detect an egalitarian bias in this translation.

For the uninitiated, there are two kinds of conservative Christians -- those who believe men and women are equal before God but have different, God-ordained roles in the church, and those who believe men and women are equal. Period. The former are complementarians, the latter egalitarians.

The CBMW cares not that the committee that produced the translation stoutly denies any bias, pointing to members who hold a complementarian view that were OK with the translation. Nope, the bias is there, the naysayers insist.

I spent some time with the old NIV and the newest NIV and applied the little bit of Greek training from seminary that is still useful and found some translations I thought were better in each edition. The worst part for me was the use of the execrable singular "they." You know: Anyone who believes they are better than someone else is a fool. Ick.

Now, I spent 12 years of my life studying five languages other than English. And I've spent a good deal of time studying English and how to communicate in it. With that background, I'll say this.

All English translations are by their nature a compromise. Translators have to figure out how to translate the context of words from another language and time into English that is understandable to a modern reader.

Context determines whether the use of a word is slang or whether a phrase is an idiom without an exact equivalent in English. The historical and cultural context imbues words with meaning as well. Go back and read a King James Bible to see how this works.

The most "literal" translation keeps these concepts in mind. Find a good interlinear Greek-English Bible, and you will see the translators sticking in English words that aren't in the Greek or Hebrew text because they are implied by the word being translated, and it's the only way to make a sentence intelligible in English.

I never recommend one specific Bible translation because of this. I also don't dog on translations. The translators are doing their best, given their training and available tools to produce a translation that will speak to readers.

What we should do is have a variety of translations at our disposal, a feat that's relatively simple now through the Internet. We should read the same passage in two or three -- or more -- versions, noting the differences and ask ourselves what insight we can gain from those differences. Done prayerfully, the exercise could lead us to a deeper appreciation for the message of the passage.

And really, isn't that the point of reading Scripture?

On The Texas Independence Trail -- San Antonio Missions

We spent Sunday at Sea World. The morning passed fairly comfortably, but the wind died in the afternoon, and even though it only reached 100, the afternoon was pretty hot.

We enjoyed the shows -- especially the clown act at Azul, and of course, Shamu. At one point in the afternoon, we returned to the car, where we'd left a cooler full of drinks and fruit. We sat in the car with the air

conditioner running and recovered, which enabled us to spend pretty much an entire day at the park.

Not much more to say about the park. If you've never been, you should go and have a good time.

Monday marked our return to the quest for Texas history and stamps for our passport.

Beginning in 1718 the Spanish established five missions along the San Antonio river to evangelize the native population. According to a film the National Park Service shows at the main mission, San Jose, their work would fuse two cultures, resulting in a new culture.

Mission San Jose is the oldest and largest of the missions. The walls were fortified to protect against attacks, so you'll see gun turrets and gunports for defense. The outer wall are also where the Indian barracks were located. Each family had two rooms, one with a fireplace.

In the courtyard each barracks was fronted by a water well and community ovens, one for every three or four families. In a lot of ways it reminded us of an apartment complex with community barbecue pits.

The worship area is being restored so we couldn't go inside, but a functioning congregation still meets in the building, as is true of the three other missions open to the public.

The mission houses a large granary and a grist mill. The mill was used to grind wheat and was powered by water diverted from the river. After powering the mill, the water returns to acequias, ditches essentially, that carry it to the fields for irrigation

We stop back in at the main office and ask how to get to the next mission, and the park ranger ac

ts like we're idiots. We have a brochure with a map of locations that also has a bunch of colored lines with no legend that explains what they are. Turns out the dotted line is the one you're supposed to follow. Then she tells us to just follow the brown signs.

Big mistake.

We take off, following the brown signs as instructed and soon come to a turn off to go to the southernmost mission, Espada. My plan is to go to Mission San Juan, then go back to Espada and finish at Mission Conception, the turn-off for which we passed on our way to Mission San Jose.

The only problem is that we became so focused on following the brown signs, we're not paying real close attention to what they say. It's remarkable how similar San Juan and San Jose are. In case that line didn't tip you off, we wound up back where we started. Grr.

We start off following the signs again, only this time we take the turn off to Espada. Espada is the least well preserved of the missions, but the grounds surrounding the chapel are nicely maintained by the friars who run the parish, with some gorgeous flowers. Espada is one of the two missions near the labores, or farms that provided the grain.

We follow the brown signs again, paying close attention to their content and arrive safely at Mission San Juan. The park service provides a hiking trail at this mission to take you to the river, more like a small stream at this point. When you return to the mission, you face what was the main entrance.

This mission is also small compared with Mission San Jose but is better restored or was maintained better than Espada.

Next on our tour was Mission Concepcion, closer to downtown than the other missions. We

follow the brown signs again, and everything seems to be going swimmingly until one of the signs directs us to go a particular direction, and then we run out of brown signs. Soon we find ourselves on the edge of downtown, having completely missed Concepcion.

Using the park map, we start to head back to San Jose and wind up right next to Concepcion. Not too bad.

The church and convent sections of Concepcion are the best preserved of any of the buildings, with some of the original stucco still in existence. You become accustomed to seeing these buildings without the covering they had, in which frescoes had been painted.

If you've ever seen buildings in Mexico with bright, vivid external colors and patterns painted on them, then you have an idea of how these buildings probably looked long ago, not the drab, brown and gray stone structures you see now.

One of the park rangers is talking to a couple as I walk by, but he grabs my arm and tells me how to take a shot of the mission that he thinks it particularly striking. I go line up the way he's instructed and

wind up agreeing that it's a nice shot. You can see sky in all the window of the towers.

After our visit to Concepcion, we eat lunch and head for Gonzales. We are determined to obtain the passport stamp we missed the last time we were there. We roll into town and find the chamber of commerce, located in the old jail, which is also a tourist attraction.

After obtaining the stamp, we walk through the jail building, looking at the cells, which no one in his right mind would want to spend any time in, and viewing the reconstructed gallows. You can walk up on the gallows platform if you want, and I suppose you could even stick your head in the noose, but that seems a bit too creepy for me, and we skip that highlight.

Afterward, we jump in the cube and head for home, sweet home. Someday soon we'll plan a visit to the final sites on the 175th anniversary tour: San Felipe de Austin and the San Jacinto battleground.

On the Texas Independence Trail -- The Adventure Continues

The time came, after too much overtime for Sharon, with more in the future, for a road trip. Take a weekday off, combine it with a weekend, and go in search of fun.

We're still trying to collect all the stamps in our 175th Anniversary passport, so we decide to head for San Antonio, where we can pick up the one for the Alamo and where we can visit the missions again. We'd been to them a couple of decades ago and always wanted to go back.

We'd top the trip off with a run to Gonzales, which we'd visited over the July 4 weekend. We didn't get a stamp there because you have to go to the Chamber of Commerce, which was closed, and we couldn't find anyway.

The summer decided to be freakishly hot, but we were encouraged to hear that a tropical storm was bearing down on Texas, and its path would take it close enough to San Antone to dump some rain and make it cooler during our stay.

Then TS Don came on shore and the Texas heat sucked the life out of it. Still, Internet weather prognosticators said we'd have clouds and somewhat cooler temps, and for the most part, they were correct. They neglected to mention the winds would be light, dying off in the afternoons and evenings, with enough humidity to suck the life out of us.

I determined we should hit the road by 10 a.m. Saturday. We woke too early and ended up leaving a bit after 9. But given my track record for getting lost and having to drive in at least one circle despite owning and using a GPS, I figured we wouldn't actually arrive any earlier.

We didn't wind up making a circle, but we did have to contend with I-35 traffic, which can come to a standstill for no apparent reason and usually does. We arrived at the hotel precisely, or nearly so, at check-in time. After stowing our stuff, we headed for the Alamo.

We parked in a nearby parking garage associated with the River Center mall, thinking it would be easy to return to.

At the Alamo, I forget to take my hat off when we enter the main building. A volunteer catches my eye and quite sternly says, "Sir. Your hat." From his tone you would think I committed some unspeakable act. Then I see the sign that reminds me this is a "shrine" and "hallowed ground."

I know the story, what happened there 175 years ago. Depending on your perspective, the battle was either an amazing sacrifice for freedom, or a preventable waste of good lives. Given my Texas birth, I know which side I'm supposed to be on, but honestly this shrine and holy ground stuff is a bit much.

Only the one area qualifies. The rest of the grounds and buildings can be wandered at will -- with a hat on -- and no one minds, even though Texians and Tejanos died everywhere. Later, in a video, we're told the state Lege passed a law declaring the site to be a shrine. Oh, well. If it's a law.

I behave for the rest of our stay, and then we head for the Riverwalk. We'll spend a couple of hours walking about, grabbing some Mexican food and then head for the car. Now we're in trouble.

We return to street level in the wrong place and don't recognize the surroundings. We have a map and head the direction we think we're supposed to be going, but nothing is familiar. We try a different tack but that's not helpful either.

We stop and sit on a concrete pylon to try to puzzle out from the map where we are, and small, quite inebriated Hispanic woman comes up to us, wanting to know what we're doing. Sharon tells her we're trying how to figure out how to get to the River Center garage, so she calls over her equally inebriated husband, who has prosthetics on both legs and is wheelchair bound.

He gives us directions that almost make sense and asks for money for food. I know he's not going to use the money for food, but I give him a couple of bucks just so the couple will quit bothering us. They shout directions at us as we move off in the indicated direction, but decide not to cut through another parking garage as they've urged us.

Downtown San Antonio is awash with people moving from who knows where to somewhere else. Eventually we spot a gang of bicycle cops hanging out on a corner, chatting or just staring. I walk up to one of the starers and ask how to get to the garage we're looking for.

He tells me to keep going the direction we're headed, and it'll be on our left. Sure enough, we spot the sign in a couple of blocks. Relieved that we've finally arrived and needing to sit and recover from the now oppressive heat and humidity, we head for the tier our car is located on.

Only it's not there.

In fact, the parking spot is not there. We quickly discover there are two parking garages with the same name, and we're in the wrong one. Back to the street.

Once we figure out where the Alamo is, we're in good shape and find the garage. Our first few minutes are spent just sitting, enjoying the air conditioner. The next challenge will be finding the hotel. The GPS has lost its signal, and we don't have a good map. We'll have to exit the garage and drive around a bit until the GPS reacquires.

When it does, it leads us down a busted-up road through an industrial section of town but finally delivers us to a recognizable highway and back to the hotel. Our first adventure is over. We're exhausted and will sleep very well, but we've had a good day.

In Part Two, we'll visit Sea World and the Missions, where we'll have another travel adventure.

How to lose weight in three easy steps

A co-worker I know asked me a month or so ago how much weight I'd lost.

She was suitably impressed by the amount and then asked me about my exercise regimen. She knew I was climbing the stairs at work, but was I doing anything else? I told her that I walked and was trying to get back into running.

That, fortunately, derailed the conversation. She knows my knees are bad, so she went off about how strange it seemed that I would want to return to running. I was glad, though, because it meant I wouldn't have to tell her stuff I knew she didn't want to hear.

I've been asked the question a lot, and I usually just say I'm doing Weight Watchers with my wife. The questioners know just enough about the program to tell me they don't want to put that much effort into counting points and wander off, thinking there has to be a simpler way.

Actually, Weight Watchers and most of the other successful programs work off three simple concepts.

First, you must become aware of how much you are actually stuffing in your mouth. Make no mistake, our capacity for self deception is enormous. My co-worker, eats enough for breakfast and lunch to take care of my caloric needs for the day. I've no idea what she does for supper, but given that she's a foot shorter than me and female, she's already eating too much. But she tells people she really doesn't eat that much.

Ah, self deception.

Second, you have to become aware of what you're eating. I could down a large cheeseburger with bacon and a pile of French fries with ease, then polish my evening off with a couple of Pop Tarts. During the day, my intake wasn't much healthier. That's changed, and I don't feel all that deprived. I'm not even going to discuss what my co-worker eats beyond saying that she regularly patronizes the grill in our building, and they don't carry much in the way of health food -- though you can make healthy enough choices if -- and this is a big if -- you pay attention to what and how much you are eating.

The third step is exercise. Lots of exercise. Intensity seems less important than duration. Start small and work your way up, but you have to work your way up and up and up. None of this stroll around a block after dinner and, whew, I think that'll do. The only activity other than cleaning house I've heard my co-worker talk about is yard work, and she gave most of that to a lawn-care service this year.

Now, I'm not trying to pound my co-worker. She's not really any different from anyone else who asks what I'm doing and then blows the whole idea off because they don't want to put out the effort.

Yes, in the beginning, you have to keep track of what you eat, how much you eat, and how much you exercise. Yes, you have to form new habits. Yes, it takes some efforts and will require permanent changes. But hey, do you want to lose weight or not? And the answer to that determines whether your attempt will be as simple as one, two, three.

Out, damn'd fat

A funny thing happened on my to losing weight. I began to understand something I'd failed to understand before.

Facebook friends, fellow church members and family know that I've lost a significant amount of weight recently. My wife decided to start Weight Watchers, and because I needed to lose some weight to be able to fit into my clothes, as well as try to have an effect on my blood pressure, I decided I would follow the program as well.

I've gone well beyond my original goal, having lost about 20 percent of my starting weight. New clothes have been purchased, which was not part of the original plan, and blood pressure medication has been cut drastically, even more than I'd hoped.

You would think that nothing remains but to celebrate. But I've noticed that while I'm dressing, I cannot fail to see it. The fat.

Oh, sure, I can see how skinny I am -- I've not weighed this little since the '80s. But when I see myself in the mirror my eyes are not drawn to the now prominent clavicles in my shoulders but to those resistent little pockets of underlying fat somewhat lower down on the anatomy.

Now, I'm not obsessing about the remaining fat. I have no desire to try to eradicate it from my body. In fact, I'm trying to adjust my intake to maintain my weight or even to put on a couple of pounds so my newly purchased pants will fit better.

But I better understand why some folks become obsessive about those remaining pounds.

During my time as a pastor, I was privileged to minister to college students for a time, and I encountered a couple of young women who believed they were "fat" and unable to attract boys because they were "fat."

Later, while attending a country church located not too far from an eating disorders clinic, I had the joy of knowing a couple of young women who found our church and attended while being treated at the clinic.

None of these women were by any sane measure obese or even what I would consider overweight. All were attractive and drew stares from young men as they passed by. The two women from the clinic were as thin as models, most probably, from what I knew about the clients of that facility, because when they looked at themselves in a mirror, they saw the fat, not the beauty the rest of the world saw.

I had profiled that clinic in a story I wrote while doing my journalism studies, along with some other eating disorder clinics, in an effort to understand the "why" behind the problem and as a way of doing something useful with journalism. The story would be published in a college newspaper and would have the chance to reach young women just like those I'd dealt with as a pastor.

The clinic director was blunt and attacked me almost as much as she helped me during my interview with her. She pointed out that I was a male, which meant I didn't suffer the societal stigma of having to be thin. She pointed out that I was thin and had probably never had a weight problem in my life.

I had slipped in to my 40s and was, in fact, actually beginning to have to struggle with my weight, though I exercised enough for it to not be a huge problem, and when I told her that, she scoffed at me. I didn't and couldn't understand, she declared, and I was just another do-gooder journalist without a clue.

I did have the opportunity to interview one of her clients, who did try to help me understand. Again, this was an attractive young woman who simply did not see what I saw. And so I really didn't get it.

Now, a couple of decades later, I have an inkling of what they were trying to tell me. And I can see how easy it would be to slip over that line. The pressures on men have increased, though not to the level they are on women. Six-pack abs are all the rage. Dweebs were featured in a reality show, but that only lasted a short while, and the hunks continue to dominate the bachelor shows, one of which has been on way longer than I ever thought it would be.

Weight carries seriously medical consequences, and those need to be dealt with. But we need to grow beyond the concept that only the slender are worthy or "hot." That beauty has more to do with the number of pounds we carry than the people we are.

I appreciate it when people tell me how good I'm looking, but really I'm growing a bit weary with the comments. Did I look that bad before?

And a part of my mind thinks, "Yeah, but if you saw me without a shirt, you'd see the fat, too. And then you wouldn't think I looked so good." And that's a place I don't want to go.

I constantly remind myself that I lost weight to feel better, and I do. My blood pressure's down; my back doesn't hurt as much. I'm able to go for a jog without feeling beaten at the end of the route. And if I gain a few pounds and notice they've decided to take up residence on my waist, I'll learn to live with them.

On Fox and patriotism

Vote now! Don't let the American flag be banned in America!

That was the tenor, though not the exact wording of an e-mail I received from a friend last week. (I don't have the e-mail anymore to refer to it.)

I was directed to a Fox News website with a simple poll that asked whether the American flag should be banned. Yes, no.

The e-mail warned me that an untoward number of people had voted "yes," and encouraged me to vote, apparently so we could shoot down the unpatriotic twerps who had the audacity to want to ban the American flag.

Usually, when a news site runs a poll like this, they give some explanation or a link to the story that prompted the question. No such luck here, though I did notice the poll was about a year old. Ah, the Internet. Nothing ever dies on the Internet.

Use the keywords "banned" and "flag" on the site, and the only page you'll get is for the poll because the story that lies behind it has nothing to do with banning the flag.

Seems that last year a small group of high school students turned up at a school whose name I've forgotten and don't care to look up again wearing flag bandanas and shirts emblazoned with the flag. On Cinco de Mayo.

The school determined that the boys intended to tick off Hispanic students and made them remove the bandannas and turn the shirts inside out. The student opted to leave for the day.

Reminds me of the time a small group of students at my high school wearing Confederate uniforms. You might not think too much of that because I attended Robert E. Lee High School, but they did this early in the first six weeks of the year we integrated.

Both groups of boys were hoping a commotion. And although you might want to argue their free speech rights, schools are really not obliged to encourage students to pick fights with other students.

Regardless, my first thought was, "So much for Fox News being an unbiased source of information." Honestly, if anyone believes that Fox doesn't have an agenda, it's solely because they have the same agenda. Someone sharing your bias doesn't mean it's not a bias.

More troubling to me is the continual fuss on the part of people who worry that we're not being patriotic enough. These are the folks who react angrily to the flag being "banned," when no plot to ban the flag exists, and who believe we should have an amendment making it a criminal offense to desecrate the flag, specifically to burn a flag as a political protest.

My guess is that most of these so-called patriots have no idea that Congress adopted the Uniform Flag Code back in the '40s, which makes it part of federal law.

Too many people believe that the Uniform Flag Code is like the pirate code in "Pirates of the Caribbean," more sorta guidelines than actual rules. In practicality that's true because the law contains no enforcement measures and Supreme Court rulings based on the First Amendment would nullify some of its provisions.

But the law was developed to explain how to show proper reverence for the national ensign, surely the concern of every patriot.

Only patriots may be the worst violators of the law.

For instance, the code says the flag "should never be used for advertising purpose in any manner whatsoever." Hmm.

It states, "the flag should never be used as wearing apparel ..." which depending on how you interpret that, means that wearing bandannas that look like flags or T shirts with flags on them may well violate the code, be a sign of disrespect. Hmm and hmm.

That reminds me of the man I knew in Lockney, Texas, who was livid after seeing a teen with long hair wearing jeans with a flag on them. He didn't think the boy was patriotic; he thought the boy needed a thrashing for disrespecting the flag.

And my favorite part of the code says that the flag should never be printed or impressed on anything designed for temporary use and discard. You know, like napkins, paper plates, packaging. Hmm, hmm and hmm.

Could it be that the patriot who serves barbecue and sides during a patriotic holiday on a paper plate festooned with a flag and then wipes her mouth with a napkin that looks like a flag before tossing the whole kit and kaboodle in the trash is as disrespectful at the flag burner she despises?

Hmm.

Along the Texas Independence Trail -- Last Part

Planning is key to success. A failure to plan is a plan to fail.

We know the aphorisms by now, and they do embody truth, though not all the truth that might apply to a particular situation.

Take vacations, for example.

On a previous weekend jaunt we serendipitously discovered that Texas parks were celebrating the 175th anniversary of the war for independence and that they had a commemorative "passport" you could collect stamps in by visiting certain historical sites.

We decided that the Memorial Day weekend would be a good time to collect some more stamps.

Accordingly, I hopped online and looked up Goliad and Gonzales. I discovered, as I thought at the time, that candlelight tours of Presidio La Bahia would be held on Saturday, and a re-enactment of the Goliad massacre would take place on Sunday and then figured out a route that would take us to Gonzales on the way home, where we could see the cannon that sparked the "Come and Take It" flag.

All well and good, except that the date for the re-enactment was in March, not May, and the Memorial Day weekend stretches from Saturday to Monday, not Friday to Sunday, as I thought at the time. So much for plans.

Missing the re-enactment and tour wasn't such a bad thing. We spent plenty of time at Goliad and gathered the appropriate stamp.

But when we arose Sunday morning, we had hopes of seeing the cannon and receiving another stamp.

At breakfast, we had the dining area to ourselves, with plenty of freshly prepared food. One of the women working the area began a conversation with Sharon, whom she recognized from the day before. I didn't recognize the woman as one of the ladies working Saturday because she was so relaxed and happy and smiling. She called the kids from the day before "those children from hell."

We set out for Gonzales, just a short hop away, and arrived at the memorial museum where the cannon is. Only problem: This was Monday, and the museum is closed on Monday. And being Memorial Day weekend, the chamber of commerce was closed, so we couldn't have our passport stamped.

The city is also home to the Pioneer Living History Museum, which is also closed on Mondays, but as we drove by, Sharon saw that the gate was open, and a sign seemed to indicate the place was open.

We turned around, parked and walked down a winding pathway, across a couple of wooden bridges and into the main area. No one was there, so we spent time wandering about, taking photos and poking our noses inside when doors were unlocked.

A sundial inspired me to see if the time would be correct, and if I could take a picture when the clouds parted. Turns out, the dial's time was correct if you account for daylight saving time, and I snapped a shot.

We may have missed the cannon, but in Luling we are treated to the sight of a water tower painted like a watermelon. I'm sad to report we did not take a picture of it, but if you want to see it you can go here: www.agilitynut.com/food/fruit.html. Scroll down to the watermelon section. The annual festival in Luling is called the "Watermelon Thump."

Then we're off to Lockhart, famous for its courthouse and its barbecue. I vaguely remember that one Lockhart barbecue place was in Texas Monthly, and when we hit town, I pull over, fire up the iPod and discover that, indeed, Black's Barbecue is one of the mag's top 50 barbecue joints.

It being noonish, we park on the courthouse square, where the citizenry seems to have just finished a Memorial Day event, and walk the three blocks to Black's.

Its reputation is deserved. We think the food is wonderful -- though I'd quibble a bit about the potato salad. Everything is individually priced, but when we check out, the total is less than what we'd pay for the equivalent at one of the restaurants at home.

While we're waiting in line, one woman tells an employee that her friend is from England, and they've brought her to the restaurant to experience Texas barbecue. He introduces himself and chats with the pair for awhile, making sure they know how welcome they are and giving them instructions.

Having satisfied our barbecue RDA -- it's on the food pyramid, right? -- we return to downtown to take pics of the courthouse, which is supposed to be Empire II style, whatever that means. We also hike down to the town's library, the original building for which is built in Greek cross and Classical Revival style, according to the library website, although the sign in front of the building described it as French Revival. I don't know the difference in architectural styles, so it matters not. It's a cool-looking building, though.

Another of my plans goes awry when I wind up on I-35 sooner than I planned. I expect it to be a zoo because of holiday traffic, and I'm right. Still, like other plans gone wrong, the traffic only means we'll arrive home a bit later than expected.

Browning wrote that our best-laid plans often go awry, leaving grief and pain for the promised joy, but we found the joy of the unexpected discovery instead.