playing telephone....

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the church. You regular readers already know this.

It has come to my attention that there is a movement that is calling itself the Emergent Church... If you arent familiar with this, do a little study. provocative stuff.

Part of this movement is the updating of the language in the bible that we have been reading. I am not certain what my thoughts are on this. To me, the idea of changing the words in the bible seems a bit out there. Who do we think we are? Are we so high and mighty that we feel that we can just mess with the words of God?

This is not the first time that this has happened. Actually, we mere humans have been "updating" the language for millenia. Dont forget, the thing wasnt even written in English in the first place. And unless you have done extensive study in greek, you arent likely to be able to read the initial version...

I trust that the scholars who are doing this rewrite are far smarter, or more well schooled in linguistics that myself. I also trust that thier hearts are in the right place. And I trust that the church is supporting the move. What i dont trust follows.

When we were in Kindergarten, we all played a game called telephone. We would sit in a big circle remember? One person would whisper a silly message to the person next to them, that person would pass it to the next, and so on all of the way around the circle. By the time it got back to the person who started, it was a totally different message. Maybe the original message was "Bobby has a big bucket of fish." And likely the final message would have been "Betty thinks her ham sandwich got switched" There wasnt usually even a semblance of the original idea.

I think you may understand at this point what my concern is with changing the language of the word of God. I would love to know how many times we have screwed up our own message.

Now. Whether or not you believe that this newest iteration is a good or a bad thing; remember that you havent been reading the original anyway. You dont actually believe in the original word of God. You have been raised through the updated word for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And. Even if you have a strong opinion about whether or not it should be changed; you also have to realize that it has the potential to change for the better.

Here's why.

We are in the process of moving to a post-literate state in this world. What language we speak, how we write, how we read, all of these will cease to matter within the next 100 years, primarily due to our adoption of technology. What this means is that for most of us, the idea of even caring what words are in the bible will become obsolete within the lifetimes of our own children. Our own language, both written and verbal, is changing today at a pace that was considered to be inconceivably fast even ten years ago. Consider how much of what you send in a text message is not even a word. Think for a second about some of the slang words that have become common in our speech within the recent past. Our spoken word, and our methods of communication, are changing at a blindingly fast pace.

Where does this leave us? When we begin to work in a written language of icons, abbreviations, and electronic media; how will we even access the word of our lord?

I will say that I cant answer the question. I also dont know whether or not our changing of the words in the bible matters.

What i can say is this. The word of God represents a way of being. An Ideal. A Goal. In the same way that my corrections of my own childrens behavior does not address every single behavior in their lives; my corrections act as a guidebook for them to understand what the proper way of being looks like.

I guess, to me, if installing some new language in the book is done in a manner that makes it a more contemporary defintion fo what our way of being should be, I think that it is ok with me.

I pray that we arent playing telephone. The biggest problem for our own future will come if we think that we should change Betty's ham sandwich instead of helping bobby catch fish.