Part 1: The Paradox of Choice
Many people are excited about the variety of Bible translations available. A major new translation every few years, a niche publication of an existing translation every few months, the thrills keep coming. Many factors go in to the translation of the Bible. This isn’t about those factors. There are a couple, or a half dozen, or a dozen (depends on who’s counting) ‘good’ translations of the Bible in modern English. This isn’t about which one is best or why one is better than another. This is about the cost, the downside, the harm of having so many ‘good’ translations.
What could possibly be wrong with it? I’m glad you asked.
To begin with, there is the cost of choice. We’re used to choices. We like them, assuming the more the better. 32 flavors of ice cream, 500 cable channels, let the good times roll. Unappreciated amongst all this choice is the psychological toll of choosing, and it’s huge. A friend from the mission field was home on furlough. She went to the store to get some yogurt, she left empty-handed and deeply frustrated. Why? All she wanted was yogurt. Where she lives, you go to the corner shop and ask for yogurt. They give you yogurt. You pay for it. You eat it. All is well. What she encountered in an American supermarket was a wall of yogurts: low-fat yogurt; low-cal yogurt; high-calcium yogurt; low-sodium yogurt; Organic yogurt; fair-trade yogurt; live culture yogurt … different brands with different flavors in different sizes at different prices. The unexpected burden of identifying the ‘best’ yogurt, the right kind, the right flavor, the right price, was too much. The downside of making choices is the weight of making the ‘right’ choice and the nagging fear, after deciding, that you could have chosen better. If it sounds trivial think outside the yogurt. Your shoes, your house, your job, your spouse, your time, your toys, your car, your church – they’re all choices. Did you make the best choice? Is it still the best?
Have you chosen the right Bible? Certainly a weightier question than the right yogurt. We’re talking about God and the devil, life and death, heaven and hell. Woe to those who walk away from the wall of Bibles empty-handed. Now you may say, “Well they’re all good so it doesn’t matter.” I’ll talk about the significance of conflicting meaning in another post. For the moment consider, if it doesn’t matter, why do they exist?! Surely one is (or purports to be) better, truer(?), clearer, more accurate, more accessible than another. Since we don’t live on bread alone but on every WORD that comes from the mouth of God (Mt. 6:4) we’d better find the best, truest, most accurate, most accessible words (BTW the Greek term translated ‘word’ there is rhema, which means specific literal words, not meaning in general).
You’d better choose the right Bible. But just choosing the right Bible isn’t good enough. You must keep choosing it. Perhaps you chose the best Bible in 1999. Congratulations. That Word of God you chose was a lamp to your feet and a light for your path (Psa. 119:105). But as you ambled down that path time passed and you know what that means — new translations appear. Although you chose the best Bible in 1999, is it still the best Bible in 2009? Four major translations have appeared in the meantime (ESV 2001, HCSB 2004, NET 2005, TNIV 2005). If they’re not improvements, why do they exist? And if they are improvements, shouldn’t you upgrade to them? Or more precisely, one of them. But which one? Why, the best one of course! Just pick the best one and let it be a lamp to your feet and a light for your path … until a new, improved version arrives. Then choose it, onward and upward ad infinitum.
The unprecedented number of choices we face are a double-edged sword. On one hand they offer the opportunity for expressing individuality, finding fulfillment and experiencing excellence. On the other hand, consciously or unconsciously they exact a psychic tax – the burden of wondering if we made the right choice and the angst of deciding, moment by moment, whether to stick with our choice or choose again. Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice: How the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction” is a great read on this problem as a whole.
The significance of the problem as it relates to any aspect of our lives is in proportion to the significance of that aspect. Yogurt – not very important. The Word of God – of utmost importance. It is eternal (Psa. 119:89), life (Phil. 2:16), truth (John 17:17), like fire and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces (Jer. 23:29), living and active, sharper than a double-edged sword (Heb. 4:12). It is more essential to our lives than food (Mt. 6:4). So what to do? I have no illusions about fixing the problem. The genie is out of the bottle, the eggs will not be unscrambled. What we can do is be aware of the problem and conduct ourselves in a way which minimizes the downsides rather than amplifying them.
Personally and practically it means choosing one Bible translation and sticking with it. Hanging your life on that particular expression of the Word of God. Which translation should it be? I think the act of primarily using one translation is more important than which translation you use. As Napoleon put it “One bad general is better than two good ones.” The point being it’s better to follow one consistent source of direction (even if inferior) than to waver between two ‘good’ ones. Sort of like “No man can serve two masters…” But someone will object “They’re both translations of the Bible, there’s no real difference.” If there’s no real difference do you really benefit? But they are different. And the degree to which they are different is the degree to which the problem festers. To some it may seem like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. But the more the cultural whirlwind of information, choice and fragmentation increases, the more desperately we need a consistent, unchanging point of reference.
We don’t need a new or better Bible translation. We need to submit ourselves to the eternal power of His unchanging Word. I’ve written here about just one of the downsides of multiple translations: the cost of choosing. In an upcoming post I’ll consider how it erodes the practice of hiding His Word in our hearts (Psa. 119:11).
One of the arguments advanced for evolution is that time and chance, enough of them, would eventually produce the world as we know it. This is often illustrated by saying if you gave enough monkeys enough time (and typewriters) they’d eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. And apparently, many people find that persuasive. I don’t. I find Genesis 1 and Romans 1 provide all the explanation I need. I don’t imagine that a skeptic would be persuaded by the following, but one day I sat down to crunch the numbers on monkeys and Shakespeare.
Take a simple quote from Shakespeare, “To be or not to be,” (Hamlet Act 3, scene 1). This profound question is posed in six basic words. Five of them two-letters, one of them three. Two words are repeated. By considering this very simple quotation we’ll keep things manageable. But even so, the numbers quickly become mind-boggling.
I don’t know how fast monkeys type but let’s assume one keystroke per second. That’s 3,600 keystrokes an hour; 86,400 keystrokes a day (24 hours, not 8, we want to get this done quickly); 31,536,000 keystrokes per year. At 31.5 million keystrokes a year, how long would it take a monkey to randomly type “To be or not to be”? One year? Five? Twenty? A hundred? Maybe you’re familiar with probability and think in terms of thousands or millions of years. Even then you wouldn’t be close. It would take one monkey 3.5 quintillion (a one followed by eighteen zeros) years to randomly type “To be or not to be”. To bring it into a realm of numbers we’re vaguely familiar with, it would take a billion monkeys 3.5 billion years to crank it out.
With such numbers the eyes glaze over and the mind begins to wander – it sounds like a government program – but the math is pretty simple, and instructive. There are 26 letters in the alphabet, add a space bar and a shift key for a total of 28 keys. The odds of hitting any single key on a stroke are 1 in 28. The odds of hitting two particular keys in succession are 1 in 28 times 1 in 28 or 1 in 28 squared. The odds of hitting three particular keys in succession, e.g. “T”* then “o” then “space” are 1 in 28 cubed (i.e. 1 in 21,952). The phrase “To be or not to be” is 18 characters (counting ‘space’ as a character). The odds of randomly typing these 18 characters in succession on a 28 character keyboard are 1 in 28 to the 18th power or 1 in 111 followed by 24 zeros. Not bloody likely! as the Bard might say.
The numbers are so big, the likelihood so small, it’s difficult to envision. Try this on for size – though I have no idea how old the universe actually is, the currently accepted scientific number is 13.75 billion years. At that age it would have taken 258 million monkeys typing from the beginning until now to randomly produce “To be or not to be.”
Yet Shakespeare didn’t merely write ‘To be or not to be’. He wrote:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”…
“To be or not to be” is the beginning of one of the most famous passages in history, Hamlet’s soliloquy. It’s 276 words, 1,504 characters (including spaces and punctuation). Life’s too short to bother calculating how long it would take monkeys to produce it! Yet it’s a single speech by a single character in a single play. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Love’s Labour’s Lost … thirty-seven plays in all. And don’t forget the sonnets!
Monkeys and typewriters, time and chance couldn’t produce Hamlet’s soliloquy, they couldn’t even get it started. How strange then to believe that they could produce the universe. Time and chance ‘comfort’ those who don’t believe in God insofar as they imagine it accounts for a universe without Him. But nothing would exist without Him. Shakespeare and Hamlet, monkeys and typewriters, you and I are here because He is there. I’ll stick with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).” and leave them with another quote from Hamlet (Act 1, scene 5):
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
*I’ve given the monkeys a break since a capital “T” is not a single keystroke but one stroke, sustained, followed by another — no way to calculate the likelihood of hitting one key and holding it down while you hit another. So for simplicity’s sake (and making their task astronomically easier) I’ve called it a single stroke.
I’ve pitched in on some of the demolition work we’re doing for ‘Phase 2’. My ‘skill set’ lends itself better to demolition than to construction. I took bricks off the wall, one by one, hammering, chipping, prying. Sometimes the mortar was weak and they came off cleanly. Sometimes it was strong enough to tear part of the brick off with it. As I was working and sweating I couldn’t help but reflect on those who had mortared the bricks together. The building was done in the early 50s and some of the people who did the work are still faithfully serving the Lord here. Their sweat mixed with the mortar as they were laying it. Now my sweat was soaking in as it was being taken off. The story I’ve heard is that is that the volunteer labor was carefully tracked and that if you didn’t contribute your share of hours, your tithe was proportionally increased! They were a little stricter in those days.
But the mixture of sweat got me thinking. Labor putting it up, labor taking it off. More labor to come as it’s put back together. Time passing and what’s it all for? The labor goes into the building but it’s not for the building. We don’t sweat and give in order to have a building. It’s for people. The building is just a means, a tool through which God can impact people. Bricks and mortar, bathrooms and a kitchen … they’re all important parts but just parts of a tool, a means to an end. The end is the work of God in the lives of people. It’s easy to get confused. A building is tangible and material. A certain amount of effort yields a certain amount of progress. People aren’t like that. A building looks important. People often don’t. A building is consistent and dependable. People aren’t.
I remember an incident some years ago. We had just put a new rug in a room and the youth had carelessly (imagine that) spilled something and marred it somehow. We were talking about costs and consequences. In the midst of the conversation I was struck with an absurd thought. I pictured myself at the judgment seat of Christ (this is where believers will give an account of their lives to the Lord and be rewarded to a greater or lesser extent) with the rug. I imagined myself saying “Lord, here’s your rug. I took good care of it. See how nice it is. I made sure people didn’t mess it up.” The look I imagined in His eyes (if you’ve walked with Him for a while you know those eyes) was a mixture of pity and anger. “Chris,” He seemed to say, “I don’t care about the rug. I care about the people. The messy, thoughtless, inconvenient people. I already have all the rugs I want.”
So we labor on the building but we labor for the Lord. Not because He needs the building but because He desires us to use it as a means to impact the only thing He really wants – people. Once there was a temple, a literal physical building where God dwelt and met with His people. If you wanted to encounter God, you had to go to the temple. These days it’s different. God doesn’t dwell in a building. He dwells in us, we are the temple (2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Peter 2:4) and it’s as we interact with people that they encounter God.
I got an email out of the blue the other day from a college roommate I hadn’t heard from in thirty years. It’s a funny thing to have shared such a significant part of our lives, then to be completely out of touch, then to try to sum up your life in an email. Here’s my stab at it.
Dear Jay,
Yes indeed it is me and not any of the two hundred other Christopher Stuarts currently residing in the United States. Let’s see, the last time I saw you, you were shooting bottle-rockets off the balcony at unsuspecting passers-by. Or were you phoning a sports-talk show with a bogus-voice and talking up equipment manager Bob Lily as the ‘unsung hero’ of fighting Duck basketball? These things get jumbled together as the years fly by.
So what have I been up to these thirty years? Upon graduation (1979, University of Oregon) I set off to Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland. I took two years off to rest my brain and gather some finances. I started in the Fall of 1981 intending to get an Masters of Divinity as a stepping stone to graduate studies, a Ph.D. and a job teaching in a college or university.
For the most part it was a good experience – there’s always the problem of dumping so much wood on the fire that the flame goes out. But all in all I was more than satisfied. There was just one problem. About halfway through I concluded that I wasn’t going to be able to stand working in the ‘academic environment’. This was a very deep and specific feeling, some would call it a ‘word from the Lord.’ I dunno. I do know it’s how I felt. The reasons revolved around apologetics and epistemology. I won’t bore you with them. But I was rather stuck since I was in a ‘pastoral’ program with no intention, ever, of becoming a pastor! I soldiered on.
My burden was lightened considerably when I met Jessica Gubi (yes, that really was her last name-Goo-be). It took me about two weeks to realize I wanted to marry her. It took her two years to realize she wanted to marry me.
So 1984 was a good news-bad news year. In the spring I graduated with a pastoral degree and no intention of being a pastor. In the fall Jess and I were married (that makes this fall our 25th anniversary – God is good!). Ah but what to do? When I came to Portland in ‘79 I began attending an independent elder-led church. I was given opportunities to preach there and these, with a few other responsibilities eventually added up to a part-time job. I did some construction work and drove a truck for the rest. In 1986 I was ordained as an elder (that makes this my 23rd consecutive year of being an elder! Still, God is good.) In 1990 I went full-time in ministry. We had, and still have, a team ministry approach which permits people to operate in their areas of strength. Mine’s teaching, a t least that’s what I’m told [You can judge for yourself, the messages are available online @ trinity-fellowship.com]. I never would have survived in a more traditional model where I’d have to have been ‘Pastor Chris’ from the beginning. Although now, when I look in the mirror there is pastor Chris staring back at me.
Jess was and is wonderful but I must be brief. We get along great though we did have one defugalty (new word I learned last week-google it). I thought we weren’t going to have children and she thought we were. So we compromised and had three. Sophia (1992), Arielle (1994) and Olivia (1997). Since names are no longer reliable indicators of gender (what is?), I’ll specify they’re all girls and I’m delighted with that. I will have son(in-law)s soon enough. As you know being a parent is one of the most frustrating and delightful callings God bestows on us. I feel sorry for couples who have only one child. They must be inclined to think all the child’s triumphs are their accomplishment and all the child’s problems are their fault. You’ve got to have at least two to realize how uniquely they’re designed from the start. God makes every one of them special-order. I’m very proud of these three wonderful young women.
Serving in the ministry full-time is a privilege and a burden. There are peaks and valleys. But God is faithful and I can gen uinely say I am happy and thankful to be where I am. Dunno what the future holds but I do know Who holds the future.
Hey, I wrote a book. No kidding, it’s currently #1,646,289 on Amazon. If you’ll order it you can move me into 1,641,382nd! Seriously, it’s titled “Living in Light of the Second Coming” and it’s about er, uh … living in light of the Second Coming. I think it’s pretty good but you’ll have to judge for yourself (of course to judge for yourself you’ll have to buy it, but I digress). I’ve also compiled a book of the world’s finest proverbs (3650 of the World’s Finest Proverbs). It sells better than the other one and currently dominates position #1,333,396 on Amazon-insightful, funny, a great gift, great bathroom reading, etc. End of commercial.
Right now we’re in the midst of the teenage tornado, the culture’s unravelling faster and faster, money is tight, blah, blah, blah. I’m sure you know the drill. It’s a tough world to grow up in. I don’t envy our children. But the Lord reminds me that He thinks it’s a good idea for them (and us) to be here at this time so that we can learn to walk ever more closely with Him and others can be drawn to Him as they see the love, joy and peace we possess in the midst of life’s problems.
It’s really great to hear from you. Blessings on you and yours. Stay in touch.
Your brother in Christ,
Chris
P.S. It WAS you with the bottle-rockets!
Comanche Moon (2008) is a made for television movie based on the novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry. It’s the second of four parts in McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” saga. The novels tell the story of two Texas Rangers (Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae) from the beginning of their careers (in the 1840s) to the end. There’s a scene in Comanche Moon where the Rangers are out on patrol with an army unit. The army commander is Major Featherstonaugh, a fastidious Civil War veteran with no knowledge of the Comanche or the plains. He has the Rangers eating prunes because “Regular motions are essential on a mission like this.” Anyway, as they’re setting up camp he discovers he’s lost his compass. Gus offers him his own but that won’t do for Featherstonaugh. His compass was made in Reading, England and was a gift from his father. He must have it, so he rides off alone in search of it. As he rides away a Ranger comments to Gus, “It’s a waste of time arguing with men like that Captain.” Gus replies, “Agreed. Let the plains teach him.”*
The line jumped off the screen for me. What a perfect summary. Explaining, reasoning, arguing, debating… don’t waste your time. Featherstonaugh – vain, confident and clueless – wasn’t having a ‘teachable moment.’ But he would soon enough. Let the plains teach him.
Featherstonaugh was, in the biblical sense, a fool. He not only didn’t know what was going on around him. He didn’t know he didn’t know. Don’t waste your breath trying to explain it to him. Let the plains teach him.
I’m currently leading a Bible study on the book of Proverbs. It’s one of my favorite books. If Wisdom isn’t the most beautiful thing, it’s surely one of the most beautiful things God placed in creation. “Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed (Pro. 3:13-18).” Wow! How can you link up with her? The book of Proverbs tells us how: by humility (11:2), by receiving correction (12:1), by not being wise in our own eyes (3:7). And it tells us where it all begins, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (9:10).”
Call and McCrae became wise in the ways of the plains. They didn’t start out that way. The plains taught them. But they learned, and because they learned, they survived. The book of Proverbs makes it clear that we don’t start out wise (“Folly is bound up in the heart of a child” 22:15). Wisdom provides the opportunity to learn. If we take advantage of it, as we learn we’ll become wise. We’ll understand how life works and how we need to conduct ourselves in order to experience the kind of life we want. If we’re unwilling to learn, proud and wise in our own eyes, the folly in our heart grows and consumes us.
The wise and the fool are stock characters in Proverbs. They are different kinds of people on different paths with different experiences and different destinies. On the path of wisdom the wise experience security, blessing and satisfaction which culminates in life. On the path of folly the fools experience pain, frustration and disgrace, culminating in death.
Though Wisdom is beautiful, she runs a pretty tough class. It’s fair, it’s equal access, there’s no favoritism. She calls to all and offers her blessings to everyone who will listen. But she’s rather strict. If you won’t heed instruction she’ll let the plains teach you. She’s not mean or vindictive, she just knows there’s no point in trying to teach someone who isn’t willing to learn. You can roam the plains of life for a while. Run out of water, break your leg, get ambushed. Ready to learn yet? If so, pull up a chair. If not, take another trip.
It’s pretty simple. The pain of life may open us to the fear of the Lord, make us teachable and so enable us to begin to become wise. Or, if we remain proud and stubborn, we become prouder and stubborner, less inclined to wisdom, more thoroughly foolish. The process may go through several cycles but eventually Wisdom will stop wasting her breath. To confirmed fools she says: “If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you. But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you – when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you (Pro. 1:23-27).
She continues (now describing the fate of fools to the wise): “Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me. Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes (Pro. 1:28-31).
Or more simply, “It’s a waste of time arguing with someone like that. Let the plains teach him.”
* McMurtry also wrote the screenplay for the movie. The line does not occur in this scene in the book. In the movie the actual line is “Agreed. Let the plains do the arguing.” I’ve taken the liberty of condensing it to “Let he plains teach him.”