"We don't twist God's Word to suit ourselves…"

Think of this as one of those games where you look at two pictures side-by-side and try to figure out what's different between them. For our game, we will use the text from 2 Corinthinans 4:1-6, both from the ESV and The Message. You can also compare them here.

2 Corinthians 4:1-6

I thought that this would be a good passage to look at, especially considering the reference to twisting/tampering with God's word. First off, I am not a KJV only guy, or even an ESV only guy, so I won't go on and on about how *this* certain translation is better than all the rest. :"(The ESV is my current translation of choice, having replaced the NIV that I read for many years. I like the 'word-for-word' style of the ESV, compared to the 'thought-for-thought' approach of the NIV because the NIV is more succeptable to similar author bias errors as The Message, though not nearly to the same degree. For more on the ESV, you can go here.)": But, c'mon. How can anybody take The Message seriously?

Thirty seconds of googling will reveal that there are plenty of passages out there that The Message doesn't exactly get right, but I'll stick to just this passage for our purposes here.

How does "Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart." become "Since God has so generously let us in on what he is doing, we're not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times"? Apparently receiving 39 lashes on five occasions, being beaten with rods three different times, being stoned by a mob, and experiencing multiple shipwrecks (2 Cor 11:25-25) would all be lumped into the "occasional" hard times Paul is talking about. Or, as the context indicates, Paul could be talking about the apparent failure of the gospel in some cases.

Why is the proclamation of the gospel not always productive? Well, obviously it's because "people are looking or going the wrong way and refuse to give it serious attention." Sounds like a case for bum-bum-ba-bum… Ritalin! I thought this verse said something about "those who are perishing," but I don't see them mentioned in The Message. Peterson does mention that "all they (the perishing?) have eyes for is the fashionable god of darkness," which is probably why it is so difficult for them to understand the gospel, or should I say the "dayspring brightness of the Message that shines with Christ" That darn "fashionable god of darkness," always messin' stuff up.

That's really too bad, too, because Christ "gives us the best picture of God we'll ever get." I'm sure that, when God inspired Paul to write this epistle, by describing Christ as "the image of God" he actually meant that Jesus gives us a pretty darn good idea of what God looks like, not that he is "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15). Oh, and in John 14:9, when Jesus says, "whoever has seen me has seen the Father" he probably meant that he had given them the best shot they would ever have of seeing the Father. Right?

One of the motifs that you see time and again in the Bible is God's authority as the Creator being used as a starting place for an argument or statment of some kind. That is what Paul is doing here. Paul uses an a majori ad minus argument to point out that the same God who said, "Let there be light" (Gen. 1:3) now illuminates our hearts so that we can see and understand the gospel of Christ as Lord. Like the formless creation, we are left in darkness and blindness until God acts, illuminating the truth of his word in our hearts and minds.

In The Message, the reference to God the Creator is gone. Instead, Peterson maintains that "it" (whatever he is refering to) "started when God said, 'Light up the darkness!' and our lives filled up with light." I'm assuming he is talking about the illumination that comes with regeneration, but who knows… The phrase "our lives filled up with light" sounds like something out of a really bad yoga class, not from the pages of the Bible.

When did our lives fill up with light? Well, it was "as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful." The God of Isaiah and Job, whose "understanding is unsearchable" and "the thunder of his power who can understand?", is now understandable. All you need is the "bright and beautiful" face of Christ. Makes me want to grab some apple juice and a warm blankie. Again, I see where Peterson is coming from. Nobody can know God without illumination, and Christ, as the image of God, provides this illumination for us. But, don't forget that it is the *Lord* Jesus Christ that Paul is talking about, not a fluffy, cuddly, politically correct "Jesus" that is easy on the eyes. But, to re-word it like this seems like nothing short of "twist(ing) God's word to suit ourselves."

The only way we can know God is by his revelation, and the way that he has revealed himself to us is through the Bible. When you start to mess around with the Bible, you are in very dangerous territory. If the god of *your* Bible isn't the one, true, Living God of *the* Bible, then your "worship" is really idolatry, and that's a big deal no matter what translation you read.

So, what have we learned? Don't read The Message. It's bad for you.