Not Down With 'The Message'

One of the more common movements in Christian circles is citing "The Message" when reading Scripture. It's becoming a popular translation, and I feel like in 20-30 years it might be one of the most dominant forms of Scripture read at church.

That bugs me. I know what the version is trying to do. Eugene Peterson, who transcribed "The Message" translation, was looking for a way to make the Gospel fresh to connect with modern adults. He said, "While I was teaching a class on Galatians, I began to realize that the adults in my class weren't feeling the vitality and directness that I sensed as I read and studied the New Testament in its original Greek. Writing straight from the original text, I began to attempt to bring into English the rhythms and idioms of the original language. I knew that the early readers of the New Testament were captured and engaged by these writings and I wanted my congregation to be impacted in the same way. I hoped to bring the New Testament to life for two different types of people: those who hadn't read the Bible because it seemed too distant and irrelevant and those who had read the Bible so much that it had become 'old hat.'"

So he started working on this new translation, releasing it in chunks for about a decade beginning in 1993. Twenty years later, it's really caught on. It is even the translation of choice at some churches. And no one is more surprised about that than Peterson. He said, "When I'm in a congregation where somebody uses [The Message] in the Scripture reading, it makes me a little uneasy. I would never recommend it be used as saying, 'Hear the Word of God from The Message.' But it surprises me how many do."

I don't have a problem is people want to look at passages a new way, but I see "The Message" as the Biblical equivalent of something too common in this country and our culture — watering down literature to make it hip. This is the Biblical equivalent of taking a Shakespeare play and saying, 'you know this would be a whole lot better if it was written in the style of 'Twilight.'"

We don't need to dumb things down for people or put it in a way that makes them feel more comfortable. The Gospel isn't comfortable. It's challenging — and if part of the challenge is pouring over the words to understand the meaning, so be it.