Aug 14

  • joshjustice
    joshjustice added a text contribution Are you experiencing peace with God?
    This was a huge question for me last year. I was going through a lot of depression and anxiety. I knew I wanted to experience peace with God, but that I wasn't experiencing it. Finally I realized that, given some of the theology I believed, it was *impossible* to experience peace with God - the theology made worry necessary. I had to go back and re-evaluate some of my views to see what the Bible *really* said about them, in order to live a Christian life in which experiencing peace was even… Read more »

Aug 13

  • joshjustice
    joshjustice added a text contribution Another Reason I Prefer the NASB
    The Greek doesn't have "test and approve" (NIV) or "by testing you may discern" (ESV) - it has one word, "prove" (NASB). The word does have both the sense of testing and approving, but the NIV makes it sounds like you do two things (which the verse doesn't say), and the ESV makes it sounds like you do one thing by doing another thing (which the verse doesn't say). Those are *interpretations* that belong in footnotes, not the translation. Read more »
  • joshjustice
    joshjustice added a text contribution Another Reason I Prefer the NASB
    The Greek doesn't say "so much immorality" (NIV) or "temptation to sexual immorality" (ESV) or "to avoid fornication" (KJV) - it just says "because of immoralities" (NASB). NKJV gets this one right, too. Read more »
  • joshjustice
    joshjustice added a text contribution "It is not good" is not about feeling lonely
    This verse says very little about whether or not singles should feel lonely. First, it is God and not Adam speaking; for all we know, Adam may have thought it was perfectly fine to be alone. Second, despite how it's usually quoted, almost every English translation says "the man," not "man" - this verse is about Adam, not about humanity in general. Third, the primary sense in which Adam was alone was *not* that he was unmarried - it was that he was the only human being o… Read more »
  • joshjustice
    joshjustice added a text contribution Did Adam walk with God?
    This verse is the source of one of my Bible-interpretation pet peeves :-) Have you ever heard someone say, "God designed us for relationship with himself - after all, Adam walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day"? I can't find that verse anywhere. The only mention of walking in the garden is this verse, where God walked *alone* in the garden, and Adam and Eve hid. There *might* be something in the Hebrew that indicates that it was a pattern from before. But there'… Read more »