Not like Santa's grotto

A God like Santa? Church like Santa's grotto, then - full of hardworking slaves who keep themselves to themselves and dish out the rewards or punishments? Au contraire:

To follow a God who came down to a village, and into a womb, to draw our stinking selves to himself... leads to practices such as Eddie Arthur describes in the Guardian. Nice one, Eddie!

Quote of the day: Our hearts are no longer heavy

'Our hearts are no longer heavy, they are light.' The Kimyal people receive printed copies of the New Testament - which some of them had worked long and hard to translate, others working on literacy or teaching the Bible. This moved me to tears. They know God has given them his Word, through his Son, and they receive it with joy. May it bear much fruit, even as it already is doing.

The Kimyal People Receive the New Testament (from UFM Worldwide)

Their hearts were heavy, because they didn't have all of God's word in their own language. My heart is all too often heavy because I don't read it and believe.

Escapable meaning

If Screwtape had been considering things in a multi-cultural situation, perhaps he would have given this tip: 

So, you have failed. You tell me that your man insists on hearing the Enemy's book read and taught each week - and now, despite your 'best efforts', has a copy to read daily! But there is still hope. You must keep him content to read it, and hear it - keep him from considering believing it and changing. And this is your main hope for this:

If I'm not mistaken, his copy of the Enemy's book, and the teaching he hears, is in his country's national language. This is not the language in which he berates his wife (competently done, by the way). It's not the language in which his wife complains. It is not the language his friends use to joke as they drink after a hard day's work. It's not the language he heard his father use when he learned trade from him. So there is still hope: we will avoid having the Enemy's word take root in his heart and transform his life, because he won't hear it. By all means, don't let them get the idea of translating it - let them be content that they have it, and hear it, in their national language.

Alternatively, read what God's doing through his Word, translated: one story here. '...when he heard it in his own language, the meaning was inescapable.'

English - not what God would do

My generation have grown up with English as the global communication language. The French resent it - the history of Africa is marked with what the English saw as colonial expansion and the French perceived as a linguistic war with English. Chinese and Arabic are indeed on the ascendancy - the popular languages to be learned in Sixth Form or university, because of the changing world market. Of living languages, it's still handy to read German, French and Dutch if you read theology, and there are many new computing languages to be learned; and text-spelling to be lamented. But by and large, English is so common as a global language that my generation expects it.

My generation of Brits (and, I imagine, Americans) are horrified when they holiday somewhere and the shopkeepers don't speak English: how will they cope? They never thought to consult a local phrasebook - the days of stumbling through mispronouncing phrases with wild gesticulation in order to get something resembling what you want for lunch, are gone (it's assumed). You want a scientific paper universally recognised? You write it in English. You host an international meeting, run an international business, or are in an International Church in some European city? Rest assured, by international, you mean English-speaking.

It embarasses me. Perhaps I learned it in the world of IFES - that the indigenous principle doesn't mean translating stuff from English, exporting American methods, and having English-speaking international Assemblies. At this point, I can hear no-one protest: nobody seriously plans to feel English-language empirialistic, after all. It just happens, because... it works. It's possible. It's quicker and easier. Similarly, Dewi Hughes wrote about the effects of theological schools teaching in Spanish in Latin America, here.

So the question comes, why bother translating the Bible into so many languages which are spoken by so few people? Perhaps we don't voice the question, but our lives betray that we're thinking it: Why Not Just Teach Everyone English? Listen to a few minutes from Wycliffe, in which the practicalities are really a side-issue. The issue at heart, is what sort of God we portray. Register on the Lausanne Global Conversation website (above) to interact with readers and listeners around the world.

"Speak the word, and your servant will be healed."

While we're thinking about the ins & outs of yet another Bible translation in English, Viggo Søgaard has written an interesting article for Lausanne on advancing Bible translation for non-reading audiences, particularly thinking about translation into audio formats. It's well worth a read.

I find this interesting, both because I think that our culture is a lot less text-based than we might assume, and because I've been led to explore this more through seeking to serve visually impaired and non-literate people in Christian Union work, church and home. I may be known as a reader, and even write a blog(!), but it has broadened and deepened my Bible study over the years to not rely on reading text, but to memorise passages / books, sing Scripture, and listen to chunks of Scripture as well as 'reading' it more traditionally (I currently use the ESV website with its passage 'listen' function for this last).

I sometimes joked that my job with UCCF involved teaching students to read - and certainly, we regularly had the coloured pens and highlighters out for students to scribble away on printed-out Bible passages, underlining, circling, colour-coding: all tools to read properly, noting the main themes, the flow of argumentation or drama of a text, the poetry or repetition, etc. But I wanted them not objectively analyse the text, but to hear it, to drink it in, to live in it and be transformed by it. Something of that may be helped by considering it in an aural way, rather than stopping with reading & analysing.

And lest you're daunted by the task of ministering to the non-literate, an example from my own church: a married couple have been with us for a while now, whom we invited along from a council estate in the area. Thinking doesn't come naturally for him, or following a flow of thought; and he's certainly not a reader. She's blind. We got them resources on video and cassette, and a large print Bible for him. We also started 'storying' in the little meeting we have on their estate - using a short story from the gospels, telling it simply, getting the 'audience' to tell it back, contributing various bits & correcting each other, then to tell it to each other in 2s & 3s, then to reflect on bits of it with directing questions from the leader. We expected the lady to find this useful: she's fairly quick in thinking, and has the aural experience from being blind. What we didn't expect was for him to be able, a month later, to recite the story almost word for word, and to correct others. He was transformed by it. He reads the Bible to his wife every day, and discusses it, loving it. He testifies: "My mind's so much clearer when I read the Bible." Not a lot involved - just a few resources, a style of 'preaching' that didn't assume the text but instead concentrated on being able to remember the passage by the end, and patient care. But these dear people are hearing the word of God - and by His Spirit, who opens the eyes of the blind and clears the ears of the deaf, they're responding in faith.

Have a read at the article for more on the Bible for non-literate people.

TNIV going off the market

Biblica (IBS & STL merged) have announced that the Committee for Bible Translation is to revise the NIV, to be published in 2011 by Zondervan, and will take the TNIV off the market at that time. The announcement is here, and Justin Taylor as usual summarises it well here.

As I think that the NIV was too male chauvinistic, and the TNIV too far in 'gender neutrality,' this should be interesting. I wonder how much the ESV has harmed sales of the TNIV in the USA? Certainly it seems here that the NIV remained the main translation of choice, so to replace both makes commercial sense.

[HT: Rob]