January 2005

'bowdlerize': syn. abbreviate, abridge, bleach, blot out, blue-pencil, cancel, censor, clean, clean out, clean up, cleanse, clear out, cross out, cut, delete, delouse, depurate, deterge, dry-clean, dust, dust off, edit, edit out, erase, expunge, expurgate, freshen, kill, lustrate, omit, purge, purify, reform, rescind, rub out, scavenge, spruce, steam-clean, strike, strike off, strike out, sweep out, sweeten, tidy, void, whiten, wipe, wipe off, wipe out, and wipe up.

In our local paper, The Herald-Times, a young woman named Arlyn Keith is a Community Columnist. From her picture Ms. Keith seems to be in her mid-twenties and her piece appearing on yesterday's op-ed page is titled, "Rock'n'roll rejects the Bible."

Keith is responding to what she considers the non-news that Jan Wenner's Rolling Stone magazine has refused to run an ad for Today's New International Version, the new Bible put together under the patronage of Rupert Murdoch's News Corps' subsidiary, Zondervan Publishing Company.

Keith yawns as she wonders why Zondervan ever thought readers of Rolling Stone would be their market segment? Acknowledging that this chic Bible has compromised the original text, the better to reach her generation, Keith writes:

I knew that Christian leaders were concerned about the disinterest my generation and those younger than us seem to have with religion, but I just did not ever expect the mountain to come to Mohammed and plead for attention. This latest edition of the Bible aptly named Today's New International Version even features, according to USA Today, a method of translation which is meant to appeal to the 18-34 age group wherein gender terminology in reference to humans is neutral. The "truth" has been made user-friendly and packaged in a politically-correct manner. I am not an avid church-goer myself and am still struggling with my views, but it does seem that some values have been compromised in the process.

Out of the mouths of babes...

After years of hard work trying to convince my family members (owners of Tyndale House Publishers and its own gender-neutered Bible, The New Living Translation), Zondervan's executives (who are presently issuing this latest gender-neutered version called Today's New International Version), and the corporate leaders of the International Bible Society (holder of the copyright on all versions of The New International Version including Today's New International Version) of the false doctrine that is the heart of this work, I despair over their intransigence. And yes, one does begin to wonder what the application of "the love of money (being) the root of all evil" is to this Bible-selling business; or, for that matter, to Wycliffe Bible Translators, mega-churches, missions agencies, seminaries, and my own church's building program?

How lightly we consider our own motives in the light of Scripture's warning, "All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the LORD weighs the motives" (Proverbs 16:2 NASB95).

No matter how often we explain to them that the secular feminists are correct in their judgment that the Bible is "hopelessly patriarchal," hope springs eternal and these false prophets try once again to clean up God's Word so a modicum of its offense is removed and evangelism moves apace into the twenty-first century.

Over the past couple of years, Christ the Word's Rev. Dr. Andrew Dionne has created a web site called KepttheFaith exposing the assault upon God and His Word these men are carrying out. Church of the Good Shepherd has funded the site and my brother, David, and I have fought this battle arm-in-arm. Go to the site and read and pray. Secularists and seekers such as Keith can treat this matter lightly, easily seeing the charade. But Tyndale House, Zondervan, the International Bible Society, and all the reverend doctors paid to do the bowdlerizing take this matter very seriously seeing their reputations are on the line.

They're right. Were one of them a member of Church of the Good Shepherd, the elders would declare him to be in violation of his membership vow to honor and obey the inerrant Word of God, and call him to repent.

Chesterton nailed it almost a century ago:

It is remarked, "We need a restatement of religion"; and though it has been said thirty-thousand times, it is quite true.

It is also true that those who say it often mean the very opposite of what they say. As I have remarked elsewhere, they very often intend not to restate anything, but to state something else, introducing as many of the old words as possible.

(G. K. Chesterton, The Thing, p. 190, "Some of Our Errors".)

Certain books have had an impact on my life equivalent to the plate tectonic shift that gave birth to December's tsunami. Two such books were the first and
second volumes of the two-volume biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones by Iain Murray.

Having grown up among evangelicalism's founders and leaders in Wheaton, Illinois, when I read the account of the London controversy between Lloyd-Jones and Billy Graham in which Lloyd-Jones declined to take any prominent part in Graham's London crusade because of the very public compromises with liberalism Graham was accustomed to make, a new understanding of my heritage and its sins washed over me.

Suddenly I understood my fathers and their friends in a way I'd never understood them before, and I began the very slow process of repenting of such compromises in my own life.

When I read Jesus condemning the scribes and Pharisees, confronting them publicly saying, "You nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition" (Matthew 15:6), I knew that my evangelical tradition also had to be repented of. Still, much of that tradition I continue to cling to because it represents a truly biblical and Christ-honoring faith. And one aspect of evangelicalism's traditions that are biblical traditions is the concern for holiness that used to be central to this community.

So then, to return to Billy Graham, evangelicalism's patron saint, and to say something good about him, here's the one Graham quote I've used regularly in my ministry. I honor the man for these commitments related to the fairer sex...

Seeing my favorite smells-and-bells Episcopalian, Father Bill Mouser, posting an interesting comment under the piece on weddings immediately below reminds me of a quote I've kept for years that's always seemed to me to be the quintessential episcopalian quote. Wishing to offend no one, I finally bring it out of the moth balls of my hard drive for the edification of our good readers:

When William T. Manning, a former Bishop of New York, was asked whether salvation could be found outside the Episcopal Church, he replied,

"Perhaps so, but no gentleman would care to avail himself of it."

("Profile of Bishop Paul Moore, Jr." in The New Yorker, April 28, 1986, p. 46.)

Think secret was right--even down to price. No wonder Jobs was ticked. G4 1.25 mhz, 256 RAM, combo drive, no monitor, mouse, or keyboard, 40 gig HD. VERY small.

Apple's also releasing an iPod flash player called iPod shuffle, one ounce, smaller than a pack of gum, twelve hour battery, USB2. 512 KB for $99, 1 gig for $149, PC or Mac.

With popular social mores widely accepting an attitude of sexual promiscuity, many husbands and wives have asked themselves, "What would I do if my spouse were unfaithful? Could I stand the shock? The pain? The humiliation?"

But too often the really crucial questions are left unasked: "How could this terrible sin be committed by people who love God and one another? Am I capable of infidelity? When and in what ways do I place myself in danger of crossing the line?"

Unfaithfulness in marriage is not just a physical act; it's a way of life. It begins innocently enough--sidelong glances, the light brush of a shoulder, an offer to help put up the storm windows--all little things. But little things quickly grow until we discover we're in a prison built by our own hands. Seemingly without warning, we find that our wife or husband is no longer at the center of our heart; someone has taken their place.

As a pastor I have seen how easy it is for us to convince ourselves that there is nothing dangerous about developing a close personal friendship with a member of the opposite sex outside our marriage.

Some time ago I was talking with a young mother. She told me her husband was threatening to leave her. She wanted him to stay, but she knew she might not be able to convince him. He was ready to walk out on her and on their children.

My initial question brought out the usual reasons people give for breakdown: "We were married young," "We fight all the time," and "He says he doesn't love me anymore." As we continued talking, though, it became clear that unfaithfulness was at the center of their breakdown...