The Bible Translation Spat – A Story

Working as an Administrative Pastor (Executive Pastor was the title, but I have no idea why it was titled that), I had the opportunity to lead our staff. One of our staff members was convinced that the only bible translation that could be used was the English Standard Version (ESV). In my quest to understand his point of view, I poured through pages and pages of scholarly writing to determine what version of the bible God would want us to read. The outcome of this study session was that I came up inconclusive. And then became a lightning rod for strikes against me. Not only had I not made a determination about which translation was the ‘right’ translation, I was not solid in my own opinion.

We spent hours in meetings trying to determine the correct answer to the question. The timing was not great to be having the discussion as the New International Version had just released their new version, updating some of the pronouns in the text meaning that it was unclear as to whether male and female were clearly distinct in the text. The change caused issues in our very conservative and legalistic church culture. The culture was one that put men on a pedestal of leadership because of the way that the bible was read and interpreted. We needed a different translation, in our context, to avoid certain confusion that the new version inherently bring to our congregation.

There were other competing values in this conversation as well. For instance, our Lead Pastor was concerned with the amount of money that it would cost for us to replace all of the pew bibles with new bible translations. He understood that replacing hundreds of bibles would be thousands of dollars, and was not convinced that the change from NIV to the updated NIV was worth thousands of dollars. Nor did he think that completely changing the translation would be helpful either. The staff member that was convinced that the ESV was the only way to go argued passionately for the ESV to be the only version that we should use across the board.

Is God really God?

Looking back on this argument that went on for months, into years, I realize that it was a time waster and an incredibly damaging conversation to be having as Pastors. When there were so many people that were part of our congregation that were hurting and reeling from life’s woes, we were discussing which words were put together correctly. We were so worried about ‘errors’ in our bible that we were unaware of pain that people were going through. We didn’t shepherd people well. We didn’t lead people well. Instead, we became completely inward focused on a topic that we didn’t trust God with.

Had we just left the bibles that we had in the pews, and taught scripture the way that our convictions led us, we might have discovered that God can work in spite of the English translation of his bible that he has given us. We might have found that if we had offered some education on the history of translation, people would discover something new and rich in the way that the bible was realized. Could it be that there is actually no ‘perfect’ translation? Is it plausible that the only ‘perfect’ bible is the one that was written directly from God’s Holy Spirit to the authors that he spoke to? There is no way that I am going to learn Greek or Hebrew so that I can try and read God’s ‘more perfect’ word. I’m not smart enough, nor do I have the capacity to do so.

Translations offer an interpretation from human authors on how they view scripture, theology, and history. While we can debate the validity of english translations, one must realize that all translations are just that. They are translations. They take one language and change it to another, thereby completely changing the meaning of the words in some cases.

Our real problem in this argument is that we don’t believe that God is really God. We say that he can heal the sick, make the blind man see, and raise the dead. Couldn’t he also interpret his word into the ears of the hearer, regardless and transcendent of language? We have an example of this in Acts 2 where people could hear the Word of God spoken by the apostles in their own tongue. How much more could he do that today?

The Argument for Faith and Practice

Maybe it is time to spend less time debating the intricacies of words on a page and more time teaching toward faith and practice. The heart and soul of any translator is to ‘get it right.’ There is not one translator that sets out to change a document from one language to another with the intent to completely change the meaning. There are over 450 translations of the bible, and if you look at each of them critically, you find the same basic meaning throughout each of them. Sure, there are interpretations that you might not agree with found on the pages. But there are robust tools and handholds that can help to navigate through these interpretations.

Church, it may be time to have our Pastors be who they set out to be. People who shepherd people, walk alongside of them, and lead them in the ways of Jesus. Spending 45 hours per week on the discussion of bible translations doesn’t seem like a great use of time to me, especially with my spat story that I think about from time to time.