The Bible’s Impact 2

The following is the second part from an article by Mark A. Noll’s editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Friday July 7, 2006. I give you only a portion:

“Because the KJV was so widely read for religious purposes, it had also become a source of public ideals. Because it was so central in the churches, and because the churches were so central to the culture, the KJV functioned also as a common reservoir for the language. Hundreds of phrases (clear as crystal, powers that be, root of the matter, a perfect Babel, two-edged sword) and thousands of words (arguments, city, conflict, humanity, legacy network, voiceless, zeal) were in the common speech because they had first been in this translation. Or to be more precise, because they had been in the KJV or in the earlier translations, like those of John Wycliffe’s followers (1390s) and William Tyndale (1520s), that King James’ translators mined for their own version.

But during the past half-century, we have come into a new situation. For believers who read the Bible because they think it is true, a welter of modern translations compete for the space once dominated by the KJV. For the public at large, the linguistic and narrative place that for more than two centuries had been occupied by the KJV is now substantially filled by the omnipresent electronic media. The domains that have been most successfully popularized by television, the movies and the internet are sport, crime, pornography, politics, warfare, medicine and the media itself. Within these domains there is minimal place for biblical themes of any sort, much less the ancient language of the KJV.

For some purposes, it is well that the KJV has lost its hold. Roman Catholics and Jews were once victims of coercive discrimination when they were forced to recite the Protestant translation of the Bible in the nation’s public schools. And at many moment, like the Civil War, free use of this one version made it all too easy to transgress the boundary between the proper business of the churches and the proper business of the public sphere.”

I personally know of no time when Catholics and Jews were “forced to recite” a protestant translation of Scriptures in public schools. They at any point should have had the freedom to leave the classroom or the room where the recitation was taking place.

The Bible in the KJV has been a prominent part in making this nation a nation with morals, the further we get from the Bible the further we will get from God Himself.

The Nevers

Have you ever thought about all the “Nevers” you ever said?  You know, “I would never do that.”  or “I would never have that” or maybe another one or two.

I think about that once in a while.  Here are some of my “Nevers”…

The first thing I can think of is that I can remember a day when I said, “I would never pay to watch television in my own home.”

The second thing I can remember saying is that “I would never have a computer in my home.”

The third thing I can remember is “I would never have  a ‘Smart Phone'”.

On those things I can say I have done all of those now.

When we moved to the State of California we lived in a remote location, no air TV available, so the only television we could get was by cable; I paid for television.  So after that, I guess it just became the normal thing for me to do. “Never?”

In the earlier part of this 21st century I was doing our Church bulletin for every Sunday on an old electric typewriter until a good church member brought me a computer he was not using at home, and showed me how to use the word processor on the thing, and I have had a computer ever since that day.  “Never?”

Just this past Summer my wife and I went on a trip (vacation of sorts) to Kentucky to see The Ark Encounter.  It was while we were traveling I realized how much better it could be using one of them GPS systems, and Smart phones have the ability, so by the time we returned home I was convinced to get a Smart phone.  Now I have one of those.  “Never?”

There are probably many other nevers I have said, for good or for bad.  I have gotten to a place where I think a little more before I say never.  One is when I see what other people can do in wickedness…  I like to think, “I would never do that”; but then I think…

From the banks of Flat Creek,

`tim