Monday, February 27, 2006 

What It's All About

Some people believe that the King James version of the Bible represents the way God speaks, and a certain percentage of those people actually believe that God only speaks English. My guess is that God speaks all languages, or else he could never answer the prayers lifted up to him in so-called "foreign languages." The question is not what language God speaks, but what language you speak. If the King James sounds like Shakespeare to you, well, there's a good reason. It was first printed in 1611. The English language has changed a lot since then. The original languages were Greek and Hebrew — not the Greek and Hebrew spoken today, of course. There's also some Aramaic and traces of other languages in the Hebrew. To make things more complicated, Saint Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, and the Latin was translated into all kinds of languages, including English, by people who knew no Greek or Hebrew. You could spend your whole life studying the implications of all this, and some Biblical scholars have done just that. Fortunately, the Bible is so important that scholars have made new translations from the originals for generation after generation, and present-day translators have taken into consideration every imaginable type of reader.

On the back table at our church services there is usually a small stack of paperback Bibles. The ones pictured are a really handy sized New International Version (NIV) that is tremendously popular today. It tends to be very accurate, word for word. It's not exactly everyday language, but it's written in everyday words, if that makes sense. The Bibles on the back table are there for anyone who needs one. We're not publishers or booksellers. We're not fishing for contributions. What we do ask, though, is that you give God's Word a chance. It's not as easy as television. On the other hand, it's not rocket science, either. It takes time, but the time you spend will last you a lifetime. It's a case of eating your cake and having it too. Some of the Bible's truths are instantaneous. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There it is. Period. Others take time. Jesus died for your sins. It sounds so simple, but what does it really mean? And, finally, what does it mean for you? The Bible's a good place to find both questions and answers. The Bible is just a book, but it's also the Word of God. And that's what it's all about.

Posted by | 4:26 PM