If it was So Simple, God would have Given Us a Picture Book

 

 There is an old joke which goes something like this:

Did you hear about the optimist who fell off the roof of a tall building? As he passed the eighth story he called out: ‘I’m all right so far!’ As he passed the fifth story he cried out again: ‘I’m all right so far!’ and as he flew past the second story the same cheerful cry was heard. Then he landed headfirst and hadn’t a word more to say. 

How’s Wycliffe Associates’ Bible translation experiment going?

So far, so goooooood.

Wycliffe Associates seems to believe that faster is better, no matter the cost, when it comes to Bible translation. But this is the Word of God we’re talking about here, not the Harry Potter books. This is the Bible, the love letter from the Lord, the scriptures that were given to us over a period of centuries. Jesus Himself, God incarnate, walked the Earth for three full years, taking the time to make sure he got it right.

If God’s reason for giving us the Bible was simply to transmit information to us, couldn’t He have just snapped His fingers, like the bad guy Thanos in the Infinity Wars movie? I mean, this is God. He didn’t need to take centuries. He intended to take centuries!

This isn’t to say that Bible translation should be done as slowly as possible. It certainly doesn’t mean we should avoid new technology and new techniques, as WA seems to suggest WBT and other Bible translation organizations do. Responsible Bible translators have always adopted new technology and new techniques, as fast as they could. The only aspect of translation which rates higher than speed, at least for these experienced, highly trained translators, is accuracy. WA claims their translations are accurate, but nobody alive could drive a car at the speed of a bullet and not get into at least a few accidents.

Let’s play a silly little game, then. Let’s speculate on what would have happened if other people in the Bible had placed speed over everything else.

God: Joshua! March around the walls for 7 days, then blow your horns and the walls will fall!

Joshua: Seven days? Really? I have a 9:00 tee time tomorrow morning. We’ll just march around today and blow the horns at sunset. That oughta do it!

[next morning] Joshua: God! Why didn’t the walls fall?

God: …..

Or how about this?

Noah: [to his sons] It finally stopped raining! Now we will wait on the Lord.

Noah’s Eldest Son: Cool, dad. By the way, we let all the birds go already. That’s fine, right?

Noah: What?! Why would you do that? God has not told us to do that!

Noah’s Eldest Son: So? I was tired of cleaning their stupid cages. I mean, it stopped raining, right? What’s the worst that could happen?

Noah: …..

Perhaps I’m having too much fun with this. Let’s get more recent, and more personal.

What would have happened if the Nabak New Testament, the translation project to which my mother, devoted her life, and for which my father gave his life, had been done using the MAST process?

The New Testament in Nabak is called “God’s New Knot.” This breakthrough, as I have discussed at the beginning of this book, took a long time, and required a deep, nuanced awareness of Nabak culture and history. This critical breakthrough would simply not have happened if the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Nabak co-translators had been rushed to completion. In fact, if we had used the MAST process, we would already have been done with the translation, and the New Testament we presented to the Nabak people would probably be called “The New Testament” or something similar. That might seem okay to you, but the unspoken cultural power, nuance, and meaning would have been lost. Imagine if Les Miserables was translated as The People Who Suffer, instead of The Miserable Ones.

Regardless of what WA wants to believe or, more importantly, wants you to believe, their MAST based translations will have errors, and this will lead to important misunderstandings.

These errors don’t need to happen but happen they will. I shudder to think how many errors future missionaries will need to correct. And what for? What is gained by this needless haste?

Let me give you one final example of how the world would be different if the MAST process had been used to translate the Nabak New Testament. What else would have been lost in this needless pursuit of haste, no matter the cost?

·        We wouldn’t have, Outrageous Grace, my mother’s autobiography.

·        Kondo and Zumbek would never have come to the Lord. Zumbek would never have become a Bible scholar, preacher, and teacher.

·        The Nabak would be confused by the book of Matthew. When they learned that book was written by the same Matthew talked about in that book, they would wonder what he was trying to hide. To them, the third-person language of the book meant Matthew didn’t want others to know he was the same Matthew who was a tax collector and became a disciple of Jesus. The entire book had to be rewritten from Matthew’s first-person perspective.

·        Ephesians 2:8-9 would say that we are saved by works.

·        It’s very doubtful my brother, Jonathan, would have met his wife and had his seven beautiful children. I wouldn’t have met my husband, Matthew. There is little chance that my sister, Heidi, would have met her husband, or had their three children.

·        And Miliŋnâŋe would never have murdered my father, Edmund.

My family and I have decided to trust that God, in His time, knew what He was doing. Certainly, I experienced pain, tears and upheaval in my life but what was the long-term results. Don’t you find it refocusing to think about the eternal perspective? Knowing that the Nabak people have an accurate Bible translation in their own language is a powerful legacy.

The Nabak people are fond of a very complicated type of string art where they make incredibly complex constructions which would put any American child’s game of Cat’s Cradle to shame. What God has done in, around, and through my life is like this. At best I, a mere mortal woman, can perhaps understand how to do a simple Cat’s Cradle. But the Lord has pulled on so many threads, directed them with his calm, steady hand, that I can never understand all He has done. The story is too complex, the weave too intricate, and I will never understand it. But God does.

I trust in what the Lord is doing.

I wish I could feel the same way about Wycliffe Associates.

I simply can’t.