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It's been a busy time recently; Christmas is coming, and though I work through the rest of the year too, there is an inevitable yuletide increase to my work. Exciting times, lots to do (and redo, as Jon's latest entry may suggest). Thought I'd nab a quick blog to share something I've been chewing over recently.

Christmas is twice exciting really - Carols and a holiday! Woo hoo! 10 days in all, and back to the wild west to spend some much needed time with the family and my dad's new toy - a Sky+ box. Good news of great joy!

Ok, so it's not the Good News, but it does make me happy. Why? Because it means that I feel safe to go home and watch TV. For years, I, like the rest of you, have struggled time after time with seeing something on the TV which I've regretted. There's plenty of stuff in my mind that I'm ashamed to have watched, and struggle ongoingly with their unannounced reappearances in my brain's inbuilt surround sound home cinema.

And just like the rest of you, I doubt very much that with the majority of these things I've seen, that I've ever really intended to watch something I shouldn't. It might start with MOTD2, then a quick channel hop before bed, then a 'oops! shouldn't have seen that...', then back to the safety of Adrian Chiles*, then a cheeky 'I'll just check to see if that's finished yet...'.

We've all been there (right?). And personally, I've had enough. Now, I know that that Christians aren't meant to admit to enjoying television; and are really meant to say 'Oh the digibox? That's just for watching news24, really... I bearly watch any TV...'; but I do. I like TV. I'm not going to say that I like it because 'it gives me 'a way in' with non-christians' and that it's an evangelistic tool (though in reality, I'm not certain if the majority of people would have anything to talk about if it were not for the X-Factor). The truth is, I just enjoy it, find it relaxing, and I hope that there's a safe way to watch without the fear and regret.

And that's where the Sky+ box comes in. A couple of months ago, I was home at dad's and programmed the little beast to record all the TV that I want to watch over the coming 10 days. When I get back, I'll have a flick through the Radio times and do it again with the Christmas TV. Right here, right now, I promise that should I find myself alone, I'll only watch programmes that I've recorded before hand. 

I want to be holy, I want even the stuff that I watch as entertainment to be done with my Saviour in mind as I reach for the remote. If any of you see me over the holiday, you have my permission to ask how the experiment's going.
 
*he just doesn't do it for me. Even when he's naked and standing in the middle of Bristol.

I've been thinking about the Facebook thing. Interesting isn't it? Gossip, flirt, stalk. Or find old friends and keep in touch with family around the world. Or maybe a bit of both. The choice is yours.

Choose friends, ignore friends, control what other people can see about you. Choose what information you give out, and manufacture a profile. Add to your friends, look popular. Communicate with them as often as you wish (which may be never) but you can still have a look at their holiday pictures. A virtual community for a virtual generation. Virtual relationships have been epidemic for a while, but now they just got global.

Isn't Facebook terrible? No, not really. At least, not if the concept of demand and supply has any truth in it. At the end of the day we will put it to whatever use we feel the greatest need of. Facebook is popular because it gives people what they want. If anyone is to blame then it's uncomfortably nearer home. I'm not sure we need to blame anyone actually, it's hardly the purge of our generation. But it's an excellent snapshot of it.

On a different note, I came across a couple of Facebook groups the other day which worried me. I've referred to one already, (in the comments on my 'Golden Compass' blog). The second group which worried me is called 'Let's get Tim Hughes to number one', and it's reason for existence is as follows:-

Firstly, can I be very clear that I have nothing against Tim Hughes at all, he has written some great songs that we would do well to use in our churches for the building up of God's people. Secondly, I really, really don't want to be a heresy-hunting, grace-killing, sniping critic of brothers and sisters in the Lord. I sincerely believe that the organisers of this group have the very best of motives. But at the same time, I do see a lot here to worry me. I have some questions:-

• Precisely why is it "about time some Christian music was all powerful in the charts and therefore on our national airwaves"?
• Why have we chosen Tim Hughes and why is this song deemed most suited?
• How exactly does this qualify as a "mission"?
• Is quoting Colossians 3 v 23-24 as justification for this venture, really a great use of Scripture?

I imagine I'm preaching to the converted here, but in all seriousness, does this kind of thing help to present the gospel to people? Or does it make Christians look rather... well... 'cult-ish'? Unless I'm mistaken, what is being proposed here is the manipulation of the music charts to prove... to prove... well what exactly?

It's tempting to rant about what alternative charitable use 5,000 x 79p's could to be put to, but my own failure in stewarding money would make me a hypocrite.

But here's an idea... How about we all got our heads out of the Christian music ghetto for 5 minutes? What if we got 5,000 Christians to spend 79p on iTunes to download a song their work-colleagues are loving, spend a bit of time thinking about how it relates to the gospel, and trying to start a gospel conversation? (Now we might start using Colossians 2 in a bit of context...)

The ghetto might be a lovely place to hang out, but nobody else is listening.

We're not talking languages in the international spoken sense here, (personally, I wish everyone spoke one language - English - blast those Babel guys!) what we're talking about here is the languages used in the Bible, Greek and Hebrew. So why is it important that we know them? And I'll offer a few tips on how can we know them. So if you don't know your theos from your huios, then either you have bad Christology or you should read on!

I'm going to give one simple reason why it's important that we know Greek and Hebrew, and that is that we can go deeper into God's Word. Knowing the languages helps a person see the reasons for differences between translations, they help a person see patterns and structures to different passages and authors, they help a person engage with more technical commentaries, they enable a person to see emphases that an English translation may not highlight and they slow down a person's reading so that you spend more time thinking about it. So the one reason, that you go deeper into a text, actually has a lot of sub-reasons. If you want somewhat more detail on reasons for knowing the Biblical languages, look here, here and here for some good ones!

Now I know that not everyone is a languages person. I know that because I certainly am not a languages person. I do like to play with language (so long as it's English) but I'm not the sort of person who understands grammar (apart from intuitively) or who picks up foreign languages easily. So I'm not going to say that everyone should kill themselves trying to be fluent in both Greek and Hebrew. But for a minister, it is an incredibly useful tool to have, even if it's a fairly basic grasp. And because not every minister is a languages person, if you are a languages person and not a minister, then why not pick up these languages so you can be a tool for your minister. That way whenever they come to a complicated text, they can come to you for an explanation.

Our good English translations are very good (into this category I would include the ESV, NASB, NIV and the many others) so we can have a good and clear understanding of the original text. With the use of commentaries and reliance upon scholars and their language tools this is brought deeper and richer, but with the use of our own original languages it is brought even deeper and richer still.

So if I've convinced you to at least have a stab or a dabble at the originals, i guess there are three main ways you can start learning. First is take a Bible college course/module either by distance learning or by actually attending. I guess this is the most interactive and personal option but is also the most expensive at upwards of £367 per module at WEST. Another option is to buy a book. This would take some motivation and means you can't ask further questions when you find topics to be quite difficult. I bought a book to help with my Hebrew recently that cost me £15.82 at the Book Depository. And the final option which is by far the cheapest option, since it is free, is by learning through the Information Superhighway that is the World Wide Web, A.K.A. t'internet.

First if you're looking to learn Greek (which I'm sure is the easier one of the two), then there's the online animated lessons by Ted Hildebrandt at Gordon College. I can't work out whether his voice is computer generated or not, but in 28 lessons you can learn all you need to get the basics of the language down. You get to watch this funny little computer animated bloke dancing around the page pointing at bits and pieces and at the end of each lesson there's a vocab. section. I've only watched one lesson in full which lasted around an hour, so you should be able to go through all the lessons in little over a day, (though I'd recommend spacing the lessons out so that you've got time to learn paradigms and vocab.) Click on the image to see a screen shot.

Then, for Hebrew, there's a brilliant series of animated lessons by Charles Grebe at Animated Hebrew. Charles takes you through 40 lessons, working through Introducing Biblical Hebrew by Allen P. Ross (though it's not essential to have the book). Each lesson lasts anything from 15mins to 1hr 35mins (though on average they're about an hour) with a grand total of 35hrs 7mins. Again I'd recommend you space your learning out, (I tried doing four lessons a day and my brain refused to take anything in for a few days!) Charles draws most things out to engage your mind in ways that are a real help for people like me who learn visually. He's got this neat little program as well that's such a great tool for his lectures (you really need to see them just to see how cool this program is!) He also has a fantastic vocab. flash card program that fits his lessons (and Ross' book). Click the image for a screen shot.

So have a go, even if you can spare just an hour a week, it may well pay richly in years to come, or you might get nothing more than a basic understanding of the principles of the original languages, but hey, at least you can say you've tried!

Some people may be more aware than others, but we also have an account over at youtube. If you don't know, youtube is a cool new site all the kids are going crazy about where you can upload your own videos (time limit of 10min) and where other people can view them, all completly free.

So if you enjoy Youtube, check us out, we're proGnosisvideos, and we've got a few things up there.

Most recently is a set of 'dramatic readings' of Titus. There's also interviews with World renowned preacher Kevin Adams, UCCF's (and now WAG) Alison Williams and a few tit bits from our authors. These interviews were conducted during the UCCF summer mission in Ammanford. There's more to go up but I haven't edited them all yet.

Let us know what you think, especially with the reading, I know some people love them some people hate them.