Suffering Little Children
Wayne Leman on his Better Bibles blog, created an exceptional entry on the need for having translations that put the Bible into comprehensible, current English.
Too often in the church we assume that people know things. We assume they know how to find the church, when services are, what is appropriate for them or for their children, what to do in church, where to find a Sunday School class, and many other things. We do the same thing with many of our doctrines. People are assumed to understand justification, sanctification, glorification, atonement, expiation, and so forth.
But many people don’t understand these words, and they don’t know our ways. They may not be willing to expose themselves to potential ridicule by asking what may seem to be a stupid question.
I’m going to refer you to Wayne’s blog for more, but let me suggest quickly that there are two ways we can address this. First, we can translate what we say on a daily basis into real, everyday English. This is something I need to work on! Second, some of the things we do may be incomprehensible because they’ve lost their meaning. Perhaps we need to change our ways, so that we can communicate God’s love more effectively through our actions.
I think churches have stuck by the King James Version for much too long. The funny thing is most people actually believe that the KJV is the same KJV as published in 1601, when in fact it’s been revised more than a few times since then. Most people today wouldn’t be able to muck through a 1601 KJV without serious assistance. In any case, if you wanted to stick to the “original” translation, you’d have to go on back past the Latin Vulgate into some really obscure languages. Perhaps the hardest-core conservatives would have us all learn Greek and Aramaic.