As I’ve been reading blogs and news articles lately, I’ve seen quite a few articles on the subject of breastfeeding. That’s kind of a strange observation, I know, but I’ve seen it as a recent theme in the media. I guess society is still negotiating whether or not it is appropriate to nurse a baby in public. This reminded me of an article I once saw in a Florida newspaper where the author discussed a fascinating situation involving Victoria's Secret.

Victoria's Secret became the target of breast-feeding activists this week after women in Racine, Wis., and Quincy, Mass., went into the popular women's lingerie store and were told they couldn't breastfeed their children on the sales floor.

It's hard to imagine that Victoria's Secret, of all places, could be anti-breast--or at least squeamish about the partial exposure of a woman's breast amid the racks of revealing peekaboo attire on sale.

But it happened. The result: Victoria's Secret was the target of a nationwide 'nurse-in' protest this past weekend called for by a group of angry breastfeeding women.

You can’t help but note the irony: Victoria's Secret, a company that has done so much to commodify the breast (along with pretty much every other aspect of a woman’s body), refused to allow women to breastfeed on their premises. As the article says, "Victoria's Secret, after all, is all about partial, and more-than-partial exposure of a woman's body." The company's advertising shows a lot more exposed breast than you are likely to see when a woman nurses her child. And what's wrong with a woman feeding her child in public?

Until about eleven years ago I had never thought much about breastfeeding. My mom, with still a little bit of hippie in her blood (you should see those early photos of her as a mother), raised five children and each of us nursed for at least a year or two. I was the second child to be born into the family and so, for at least five or six years of my life, I saw little sisters nursing. I thought nothing of it; it was as natural as breathing. Babies needed to eat, so mom fed them. If they needed to eat at home, mom fed them at home, and if they needed to eat when we were out, mom fed them in public. She was discreet about it, of course, but was certainly not ashamed to fed us when we need to be fed. There was nothing complicated about it.

Back in 2005 I wrote about the seeming arbitrariness (but not the unimportance) of celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25. But even if that date wasn’t the actual calendar day of Jesus’ birth, it’s still interesting to understand why we have come to commemorate it then.

A few years ago Elisha Coffman posted a short article on Christianity Today’s Christian History site about how December 25th became the day. Here’s a good summary of what determined it:

December 25 already hosted two other related festivals: natalis solis invicti (the Roman “birth of the unconquered sun”), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian “Sun of Righteousness” whose worship was popular with Roman soldiers. The winter solstice, another celebration of the sun, fell just a few days earlier. Seeing that pagans were already exalting deities with some parallels to the true deity, church leaders decided to commandeer the date and introduce a new festival.

Western Christians first celebrated Christmas on December 25 in 336, after Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity the empire’s favored religion.

Elisha ends with a helpful thought addressing the concern that too many Christian Christmas traditions are “just paganism wrapped with a Christian bow.”

Reports of the blogosphere’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Another year has come and (just about) gone and the blogosphere continues to be an integral means of communication, and this despite many predictions that blogs will soon go the way of the dinosaur (or the newspaper, as the case may be). 2011 was a great year for blogs, at least here in the Christian blogosphere. Before the year comes to an end, I want to point to a few of my 2011 blogging heroes.

Here are seven of them, in no particular order.

Practical Shepherding - When I speak to people who are considering blogging, I always talk about the importance of identifying a niche and then filling it. It is far easier to gain authority in a niche than it is to gain authority broadly. The example I always use is Brian Croft and his Practical Shepherding blog. Brian identified his own passion and gifting and then found that there was a void in the Christian blogosphere that he could fill. He has done a great job of doing just that. Writing primarily to pastors, he humbly offers advice or teaching that is both practical and biblical. It’s a must-read for any pastor.

The King’s English - 2011 marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and Glen Scrivener decided to mark the occasion by looking at hundreds of phrases coined by the King James translators that have since passed into modern parlance—phrases we now take for granted: "labour of love", "beast of burden", "wits' end" and "scapegoat"; and also phrases that perhaps should be a bit more popular, like "filthy lucre" and "gird up thy loins". He did a phenomenal job of it. I am looking forward to seeing what he does in 2012 and beyond.

The Cripplegate - The Cripplegate is a new blog produced by a team of writers connected by their association with [John MacArthur’s] Grace Community Church. It offers a place for “like-minded Christians and pastors to share their thoughts about ministry, theology, and issues that affect the church today, in a way that will bring encouragement and clarity to those that read it.” The writers have done a good job of addressing current events while also writing about issues relevant to ministry or just being part of a church. I appreciate their willingness to be blunt when bluntness will help a conversation progress.

Farhad Manjoo recently wrote a provocative article for Slate in which he argued that we shouldn’t support our local independent bookstores. According to Manjoo, “buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you.” Those are fighting words!

You may have heard of Amazon’s recent promotion. If you walked into a retail outlet and used Amazon’s app to buy that product through Amazon, they would give you a 5 percent discount. That was good for Amazon, but bad for everyone else—especially the salesperson who used some of his time to tell you all about that product. Not surprisingly, this promotion generated a lot of anger.

This caught Manjoo’s attention and got him thinking about local bookstores. He looks at a New York Times op-ed penned by Richard Russo and says this:

Rather than focus on the ways that Amazon's promotion would harm businesses whose demise might actually be a cause for alarm (like a big-box electronics store that hires hundreds of local residents), Russo hangs his tirade on some of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find: independent bookstores. Russo and his novelist friends take for granted that sustaining these cultish, moldering institutions is the only way to foster a "real-life literary culture," as writer Tom Perrotta puts it. Russo claims that Amazon, unlike the bookstore down the street, "doesn't care about the larger bookselling universe" and has no interest in fostering "literary culture."

Manjoo goes on to show how much Amazon has done for readers, writers and publishers: “As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books. … Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store--whether it's your favorite indie or the humongous Barnes & Noble at the mall--offers a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you're looking for, and a dubious recommendations engine. Amazon suggests books based on others you've read; your local store recommends what the employees like. If you don't choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?”

Here is something to consider: Do you think it would change your life if you were to read 3,650 chapters of the Bible over the course of the next year? Let me explain why I’m asking the question.

It was a little over a year ago that I discovered Professor Horner’s Bible-Reading System. His system is intense: you read 10 chapters per day, every day, all year round. Not only that, but each of the 10 chapters you read in a day comes from a different book of the Bible. You do not study these chapters and over labor every word, but read at a good pace and count on repeated readings to do the same kind of work as fewer, slower readings. I have not followed the plan every day since then, but have enjoyed it for months at a time. Recently I’ve been doing the plan by listening to the Bible instead of reading. This provides 2 benefits: it redeems my commute and it also slows me down to a better pace (I tend to read too quickly).

A new year is approaching and I got to thinking about doing a program like this in some kind of community. I’m wondering if you’d be interested in banding together, perhaps linking up through Facebook over the course of the year.

Professor Horner’s plan calls for 10 chapters per day. Spread over a year, that equals 3,650 chapters. So again, do you think it would change your life if over the next year you were to read or listen to 3,650 chapters of the Bible? That would mean that over 2012 calendar year you would read through (or listen through) all the Gospels four times, the Pentateuch twice, Paul's letters 4-5 times each, the Old Testament wisdom literature six times, all the Psalms at least twice, all the Proverbs as well as Acts a dozen times, and all the way through the Old Testament History and Prophetic books about 1.5 times.

The program is not for the feint-of-heart. But for those who have the time and those who are able to stick to it, there is a lot of joy in drinking from the biblical firehose in this way.

I have not yet decided if this will work, so this is not quite an invitation to join me. Rather, I am simply trying to gauge interest. So…would you be interested in banding together to do Professor Horner’s plan with me in 2012? We can meet up via Facebook or some other network to share what we’ve been learning, to encourage one another, and so on. Leave a comment if you are at all interested.

Last week I posted a short guide to the public reading of Scripture, and I sought to show how we emphasize Scripture reading at Grace Fellowship Church. I was a little bit taken aback at some of the reaction, especially after one popular blogger linked the article to her Twitter followers; this generated a lot of response and, in many cases, quite an energetic response. Many people were offended to learn that I believe that this is a ministry that ought to be reserved for men.

Had I anticipated this reaction, I would have dedicated more effort to explaining why I believe this is the case. Operating under a philosophy of "better late than never," let me do that today. Let me tell you why I believe the Lord would have the public reading of Scripture in worship services be led by men.

There are different ways we could go about this, but let me show it just from 1 Timothy--a book that has a lot to say about how worship services are to be conducted.

Over the years there has been near-endless discussion and disagreement about 1 Timothy 2:11-12. There Paul writes to Timothy and says, "Let a woman learn quietly and with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet." He goes on to ground this in God's Creation ordinance. "For Adam was formed first, then Eve..." Some people hold that when Paul says, "I do not permit," he is speaking from a personal perspective and his words do not carry the weight of God's authority. Some people hold that this is a cultural command that is no longer relevant today. Some hold that the kind of quietness he advocated was limited to very specific circumstances that do not apply to our churches. What we can all agree on is that these words, whatever they mean, are in the Bible and are, therefore, given by God for our instruction. These are not sexist words; they are God's words.

It is my conviction that these words are meant to be read and understood in the simplest sense. Speaking with God's authority, Paul is saying that women are not to exercise teaching authority over men. In other words, it is men who are charged with authority in the church and the most important component of this authority is to declare the words of God. This puts me firmly in the complementarian camp which says that God has created men and women equal in value and dignity and worth, but different, complementary, in function. Men have been called to exercise headship in the home and in the church while women are called to different and complementary functions.

The Bible is the very Word of the living God, breathed out by God and given to us to train us in all that is necessary for life and godliness. As God's people we are deeply reliant on Scripture, trusting that the Bible is the only infallible and inerrant means through which God speaks to us. For this reason Scripture must be central to our worship services. We ought to read it, sing it and preach it every Sunday! Reading Scripture is not something we do out of duty or obligation, but something we do in delight, trusting that it is a means by which the Lord blesses pursues, convicts and draws. To stand at the front of a church and read the Bible is to stand in the place of God and proclaim his Word.

Because of the importance of the Word of God, at Grace Fellowship Church we ask certain members of the church to be involved in a Scripture Reading Ministry--a ministry of those who are specially trained and equipped to read the Word of God and to read it well. We consider this a teaching ministry, which means that it is a ministry reserved for men.

Here are some of the things we seek to teach the men who participate in this minstry. I’m hoping this may serve you as you consider reading Scripture in a public setting. It assumes that the person reading Scripture has some time to prepare himself!

Understand

In order to read a passage well, you first need to understand it. You need to understand the genre, the tone, the purpose for which it was written, and at least have a general comprehension of what the passage means. Is this a triumphant passage proclaiming the glories of God? Is this a poetic, meditative passage reflecting on pain and persecution? Is this God speaking to man or man speaking to God? Is this a story or a letter? What is God seeking to communicate to us in it?

I have always loved language, and the English language in particular. In fact, part of the reason I love to read is not to learn new things, but to learn how other people use words. When I read an author like Malcolm Gladwell, a very gifted writer, I learn more about language than about the topic of his book.

While I have always enjoyed using words and studying language, my love of English grew during my college years when I studied other languages, primarily those from which English is derived--Latin, Greek, and to some extent, French. I also studied linguistics and, of course, the English language itself. I came to love understanding how people use words to craft ideas. There is a good reason that people continue to study Shakespeare in high school despite increasingly antiquated language. Shakespeare was a master of the language, a master word crafter, and we can all benefit by reading what he wrote. The same is true of Dickens or any other number of authors.

Let me jump from Shakespeare to Bible translation. Whenever I take the time to read the Bible slowly and meditatively—and this is particularly true of reading the Old Testament—I am struck by the beauty of the language. While I do not know Hebrew, I often hear people speak of the poetic nature of the language which leads even the prose to have poetic qualities. And I see this reflected in the English. At least, I see it reflected in the English when I read it in certain translations. 

For day-to-day reading I tend to rely on the English Standard Version. Now, I’ve heard it said that to be one of today’s New Calvinists you pretty much need to use the ESV. Let me say that I am not ESV fanboy. However, I do find that it is a superior translation and one that does a wonderful job of seeking to capture the beauty of the language. This cannot be said of all Bible translations. I have come to love the little literary devices, the metaphors and phrases used by the ancient writers and find that they add so much to the reading of the text. Without a translation that accurately rendered these sayings we would lose so much of the flow and meaning of the text.

There is so much beauty in the prose of the Old Testament and I love that I can have access to a translation (and to several translations, really) that carefully and accurately renders the metaphors and phrases used by the original authors. Let me provide you with a few examples from Kings. I am going to use the ESV as my standard essentially-literal translation. I do this not necessary to indicate that it is superior to the others within the category, but simply because it is the translation I use the most.

I’ll begin with 1 Kings 2:2 where King David gives his final wishes to his son Solomon. The ESV renders David’s words like this: “I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man.” The other essentially literal translations agree with this translation and the NASB, KJV and NKJV are all very similar. There are two constructs here that I love: “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” and “show yourself a man.” Let’s see how several other common translations render this particular verse:

• “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said. “So be strong, show yourself a man.” (NIV)
• “I am going where everyone on earth must someday go. Take courage and be a man.” (NLT)
• “My son, I will soon die, as everyone must. But I want you to be strong and brave.” (CEV)
• “I’m about to go the way of all the earth, but you—be strong; show what you’re made of!” (Message)

As we see, the NIV renders the verse in a way that is consistent with the original text. The NLT deviates a little bit, expanding the meaning of “the way of all the earth” to “where everyone on earth must someday go.” It also says, “be a man” rather than “show yourself a man.” The CEV further interprets the verse, removing any sort of literary device in both parts. The Message does a little better, maintaining the first half of the verse but removing the “show yourself a man.”

What is lost in the NLT and the CEV is the metaphor “the way of all the earth.” It is an important term, beautifully poetic, and one that is worthy of some time in meditation. There is a depth of meaning to that phrase that is clearly missing in words like “I will soon die, as everyone must.” Readers of the NLT and CEV have no access to this phrase and miss out on the wonderful opportunity to meditate upon it and learn from it.

I went to bed at 10:05 last night, and wouldn’t you know it, my site went down at 10:10 (or so I learned in the morning). I’ve had to dedicate some time this morning to trying to resurrect it. At this point it seems a little bit stable—stable enough to try to post this. However, it may well crash again. There is a team of people trying to fix it and they seem to be making a little bit of progress.

Trying to get the site running stole from my writing time. So instead of posting something spiritual and profound, I found this post, a work in progress, that tells you why you shouldn’t live in Canada. Don’t get me wrong; there are hundreds of great reasons to live in Canada. But I can’t deny that there are also some good reasons not to live here. Here are a few of them.

Amazon Hates Us

Amazon offers only a small portion of their total catalog to Canada. They offer CDs, but not MP3s, DVDs but not streaming video. They have a few other categories of products, but overall it’s a rather sad collection compared to what Americans can take advantage of. As if this is not bad enough, they also have no equivalent to Amazon Prime (which is the greatest deal in tech, don’t you know).

3-Year Cell Phone Contracts

All of Canada’s major carriers will only offer their good best smartphones with 3-year contracts. The only alternative is to buy the phone outright which incurs a large up-front cost. You might think the 3-year contract would then mean that the carriers could offer lower monthly rates, but the opposite is actually true: Canada is one of the most expensive countries for cell phone use.

Hockey Obsession

A long time ago someone invented a silly game that involves slapping a puck across an icy surface. For some reason most of my fellow Canadians are obsessed with this game. While I can grant that it makes an occasional entertaining distraction, and especially so during The Olympics, I simply cannot understand why people get so carried away with it.

Apples iOS continues to mature as a platform. It has now spawned hundreds of thousands of apps, many of which are very useful to Christians. Along with my friend Travis Carden, I’ve gathered a pretty good list of some of the best of the best. Unless otherwise noted, all of these apps are free.

• Accordance - You can get several of the most essential reference tools here for free: Easton’s Bible Dictionary, Nave’s Topical Bible, some Greek and Hebrew helps, and Matthew Henry’s complete commentary.
• Christian Creeds and Reformed Confessions - Handy for catechesis or reference.
• ESV Bible (free) and ESV Study Bible + ($14.99) - This is my favorite app for Bible reading. You can listen to the ESV audio, too, if you’re online.
• YouVersion - An app version of the popular web site. It offers all kinds of translations and other resources.
• Fighter Verses ($2.99) - From Desiring God.
• Free Bible Study Tools - The BibleStudyTools.com app has an impressive array of resources, including dictionaries, commentaries, and encyclopedias, and the longest list of available Bible translations I’ve seen.
• Grace to You - A nice enough interface to the audio and video on gty.org.
• Ligonier Ministries - An interface to ligonier.org with plenty of audio, video and other resources.
• Husting Pocket Hymnal (formerly Popular Christian Classic Hymns) - This is a decent little app, for all its simplicity. Maybe a little niche, but if it’s a free Christian hymnal you want, this is the best I have for you.
• Logos Bible Software - It tends to be slow, quirky, and unstable, but it syncs with the desktop software--which can also be slow, quirky, and unstable at times! If you just want to read books in your Libronix library, I recommend Vyrso (below) instead, which is basically the same thing without the Bible reader and study tools.
• Olive Tree BibleReader - You can read the Bible on this app, but I use it for the many good free books you can download through it, from such authors as Spurgeon, E. M. Bounds, and John Piper.
• OnePlace.com - A podcast buffet, serving some delicacies and some garbage. (At least they don’t host Joel Osteen anymore!)
• PocketSword - I’m impressed with this little gem! The interface isn’t pretty, but it gives simple access to lots of great free resources--most of all commentaries!
• PrayerMate - Quiet Time Organiser ($2.99) - I use this to organize my prayers. Very useful.
• Reformation Study Bible ($9.99) - Just what the name says. Note that this is licensed to a third-party and is not created by Ligonier.
• Vyrso - This is pretty much the Logos app (above) without the Bible reader and study tools.
• Reeder - The best way to access your Google Reader account and digest all those blogs ($2.99).
• Kindle - Keep an eye on my blog and others to find great deals on Kindle books that are of interest to Christians. It’s not unusual to find great books selling for just a few dollars each.