A strange thing has been
happening, lately – or maybe not so lately. I was first clued in a week or so
ago when my wife pointed out to me that modern translations of the Bible had
removed John 5:4. Christians condemn Jehovah’s Witnesses to eternal damnation
for taking out verses, but no one has ever mentioned this to me. The verse so
disagreeable that it was removed without a whimper? “—and they waited for
the moving of the waters. 4From
time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The
first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever
disease they had.”
It’s in the story of Jesus healing
the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda. I thought I remembered reading that
bit when I was younger (I read in the KJV to be like my mother) but thought
maybe that was somewhere else I’d heard it.
The second time was at church last
week, when our pastor pointed out that Jesus, hanging on the cross, cried out “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But in the original Greek, the word
translated “cried out” was closer to “shrieked.”
Then, last Thursday, I was looking
up a verse for a post I was going to do, and it ended up putting me in mind to
write this post. Romans 8:28 is a much-loved verse among Christians as a means
to comfort those suffering hardship. “We know that in all things God works for
the good of those who love Him.” How wonderful to know that whatever might be
going on, it will end up for our good.
Then I saw the footnote: “Or that
in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is
good—with those who have been called according to His purpose.”
“Stop helping God across the road
like a little old lady” I hear Bono sing. And I hear many other things, most of
them just frustrating sounds that aren’t really words. We claim and assume that
God’s Word cannot be tampered with, that it is just as perfect now as it was
when it was first penned. And yet we have the glaring example of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses who have removed whole verses with no fire, brimstone, or lightning
to strike them down and correct Scripture to its original perfection. It can be
done. It has been done. Writers are doing it now.
God will work in, around, or
through us according to His purposes. But everything we do to resist Him will
rebound onto us – even if we’re softening His Word to make it just a little
more palatable. And in case you’re wondering what a hypocrite I am writing
fantasy – I’m trying to bring people to His Word, that they might find Him in
there. My fiction is primarily meant to move people off of whatever
La-Z-Boy they’re on, and not onto anything else more specific than
Scripture.
Now I wonder if they’ll even find
Him there. Christians are not immune to the effects of sin, not yet; Satan’s
first and last ploy is to take God’s words and twist them to our eternal
destruction. And as a Christian, my only foundation outside prayer is His Scripture,
and now that is beginning to shake because of the arrogant pride that we
know better how to give His message to the world.
And the Western church is getting
it wrong. People are leaving it in droves.
I’m wondering why less and less.
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