Lost in Translation

The other day I had a friend of mine ask me my opinion of The Message (Eugene Peterson's translation of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament into contemporary vernacular)...

After having that conversation I looked online for some of the specific critiques of The Message just to see what people are saying.  It prompted a response!

To begin with, I really like The Message, and use it in both teaching, and personal devotions, but I do not use it exclusively.  The simple truth is that points of doctrine should be established through appeals to the original language!  If we are reading an English language Bible we aren't reading the original Bible.  Comments about changing the word of God, or playing loose with the truth miss the point entirely!  The word of God was written in Hebrew and Greek!  If we wanted to affirm the word of God in a literal way, we would do what the Muslims do with the Qu'ran, and force anyone who wants to follow Jesus learn to read the Bible in its original language.

Great turn of Phrase

"There is an adage that says the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. The Kingdom of God is the iceberg to the Titanic of the world's idolatries and ideologies. I don't want to overstate the case, but I don't think the primary way the Kingdom of God functions is by being an adversary to culture. It is by "being," period.

If we are art connoisseurs looking for a great painting, and someone holds up a Rembrandt in the midst of a bunch of stick figures, then little critique of the stick figures is needed. Obsession with critiquing stick figures becomes counterproductive. Objecting to the inclusion of human images in paintings because stick figure paintings contain human images becomes outright destructive. That is why the central focus must be on who we should be not what we should oppose.

Paul (and others) does critique the empire in a variety of clever ways but I suggest that he sees the ultimate and most powerful critique as the simple presence of Kingdom of God."

I thought the above comment (taken from a conversation at the Jesus Creed blog) was worthy of reprinting:
Micheal W Kruse