Holy Writ, Bat Man!

I've been through some Bibles in my day, from my first Precious Moments-bound NKJV devotional Bible, to my sleek, sophisticated leather-bound ESV.

I remember growing up in church that there was always a big deal made over which translation Christians used. There still is, but in my current church the worry seems a little deflated, whereas in my childhood chapel it was quite the to-do.

Most of the older church members preferred the Old King James version ("If it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me" said an elderly congregate at a friend of mine's church). The kids were expected to read the New International Version because supposedly "it was easy to understand" (there were no more young theologians than there were older ones at my church, I noticed). My own family harbored a lot of suspicions about it, and we mainly kept to the KJVs, and my parents taught me to not be afraid of "thees" and "thous" so it was never a problem.

As early as middle school I learned to love the poetry and cadence of the KJV-- its big words and lyrical rhythms. When I began studying English in college, I gained an appreciation for it as the earliest comprehensive work of the modern English language post-Chaucer. It was something to be revered, honored, and loved...if, um, not always clearly understood.

Fast forward over the years and Eugene Peterson came out with his palpable Scripture translation titled The Message. 

Recently I've begun using it for my morning readings, and I've  come to love it. Its readability is fluid, and its literary-ness--its ease of finding recurring themes and wording-- is wonderfully clear. Right now I'm reading the New Testament and for once I don't feel like Paul was speaking in hieroglyphics (even if he did speak Greek... BAHahahahaha....#Christianjokes.com). His message and intentions make sense now, they even seem consistent rather than confusing.

But...why? I wondered.

Why is it so good? Why I can understand this when I have trouble with other, more revered translations? My inner conservative pressed the matter.

I read Peterson's introduction and found my answer in a story:

"One well-educated African man, who later became one of the most influential Bible teachers in our history (Augustine) , was greatly offended when he first read the Bible. Instead of a book cultivated and polished in the literary style he admired so much, he found it full of homespun, earthy stories of plain, unimportant people. He read it in a Latin translation full of slang and jargon. He took one look at what he considered the 'unspiritual' quality of so many of its characters and the everydaynes s of Jesus, and contemptuously abandoned it. It was years before he realized that God had not taken the form of a sophisticated intellectual to teach us about highbrow heavenly culture so we could appreciate the finer things of God. When he saw that God entered our lives as a Jewish servant in order to save us from our sins, he started reading the Book gratefully and believingly."

The KJV is beautiful and good and true; it was translated that way because Truth is beautiful and good. But Truth is also ordinary and daily, "homespun" as Peterson says. If we forget this about the Gospel then we'll miss the message of how to live our ordinary, daily lives.

I love the KJV, I love the bigness of it. But by being lost in mystery and beauty, my stupid humanity often neglects the practical message. And so here's where The Message has come in for me.

Peterson encourages reading other translations for indepth studies and deeper meanings, but he says his translation is for reading. Start there, he says, just read.

"My intent here...is simply to get people reading it who don't know that the Bible is read-able at all, at least by them, and to get people who long ago lost interest in the Bible to read it again."