Back in 2003 “The Street Bible” by Rob Lacey was published by Zondervan(!). Before that, someone named P.K. McCary wrote the Black Bible Chronicles (published by the African-American Family Press in 1993). Both books are listed and reviewed on Amazon. I wonder if you’d be willing take a look at those Amazon pages and let me know if your analysis of them is as harsh as your analysis of my Bronx Streets version.

There’s also an Aussie Bible, written in Australian slang (published by the Bible Society of New South Wales in 2003) that was a best seller Down Under. I also found reference to a slang translation of the bible put out by the Christian Surfers International.

Can I get you to agree, at least, that most of the books in the bible, in their original language, were written in the style of speech as it was spoken by common people?

Can I also get you to agree that all the main translations used in churches were prepared by scholars who went to pains to smooth out the English and make it sound uniformly proper throughout the old and new testaments, even though the language of the texts they were translating from were widely divergent in their level of sophistication?

From what I understand, scholars did not hesitate to fill in missing words and correct grammar when they felt the original text was just too choppy and awkward. Speaking for myself, I prefer my bible choppy and awkward (as long as it’s accurate).

If you’re interested in universal salvation, and I believe there is a case to be made (though I believe it to be incorrect), we could talk. However, if I were to make the case, I wouldn’t do it here, in the comments section of YAR.

I appreciate that Barth quote. I’m going to start using it, to reinforce my contention that the doctrine of the trinity is a church-created myth. And that Rabbi Jesus was 100% human, because there can be no such thing as a god-man. Thanks. And wow. Talk about synchronicity … my flip-through technique just took me to a verse in Numbers which explicitly says God ain’t a human being, nor a mortal (23:19). I suppose that’s why christians can never get Jews to accept Jesus’s divinity.

You’re right, I don’t speak the “Bronx Streets” dialect, personally. But I do hear it every day as I’m walking to and from work in my neighborhood (near Fordham University and the Bronx Zoo, not far from my where I spent part of my childhood, Kingsbridge Heights). I enjoy hearing the little juvenile delinquents, rapscallions, knuckleheads, and other riff-raff on my block as they curse and scream at each other (the girls as well as the boys) in the mornings and the evenings. Music to my ears. But that’s just me.

Hey, I’m fascinated by your statement that you could make my case for universal salvation better than I have, without even believing it yourself. May I take you up on that? I am quite serious. I swear, I am not yanking your chain. I would love to hear you make an argument in favor of universal salvation, with the understanding that it will not be your real view.

Is it more important for a person to know the contents of Matthew or its location? Honestly, I don’t know how you could know the former without the latter. One needs to find his shoes before he can put them on.

I’m sorry you didn’t learn much in Sunday School or college. I don’t find this surprising in the least. For the last several years I have been very vocal about my dissatisfaction with youth programs in church. It amazes me how the church can have a child for 18 years and that youth can come out of church without a basic understanding of the faith at all. They know Jonah, Noah, David and Goliath, Zaccheaus, Daniel, and little else. They have no idea how different parts of the Bible interact with each-other. They have no clue that Psalm 22 exists, they can’t tell you why Abraham sacrificing Isaac is important, or during what Jewish holiday Jesus was hung on the cross or the significance there-of. These things seem basic to me but the church doesn’t teach them. Sadly, the church is one of the last places to go if you wish to grow spiritually in the Christian faith.

I appreciate your urge to use the brain God gave you. However, when we use our brains without the Gospel it is no longer God we worship, but ourselves. As Karl Barth said “God is not ‘man’ said in a loud voice.”

God may very well save everyone. I don’t believe that will be true, but I do pray that it is. I seriously and honestly pray that I am wrong on this issue but I do not possess the keys to the Kingdom. However, your case, as you’ve framed it, is weak. Sadly, I could make your point better than you have here, and I don’t even believe it. You’ve used a horrible non-translation of slang you wrote yourself, in a dialect you likely don’t speak, using texts that really don’t support your case. And I find that just really infuriating. My pet peeve with the Bible, and Tim N can vouch for me on this one, is when people use it to justify whatever they want. If you’re going to do that, at least pretend to understand the text.

Watch out, I think you might have just laid out your anti-agenda agenda there. But seriously, you’re totally right. No one comments much around here anymore unless its to argue with you. Which is too bad. But like you say, interesting novels and books always have some sort of conflict. As angry as they sometimes make me, your comments usually force me to think through my position more clearly.

I’m glad to have you lay out your YAR manifesto. I’m going to file the url for future reference.

Listen, people talk this way. (Though I believe the term “ebonics” has fallen out of fashion.) And usage determines correctness. English changes over time based, not on what experts or books say, but on what everyday people say. The “proper English” you and I speak today was the slang of a century ago. The English your great-grandchildren are going to speak would hurt your ears.

But tomorrow’s English, as much as it bothers you, will be based on the slang spoken in today’s urban neighborhoods. It’s an insult to call people whose use of language differs from yours stupid. (And I’ll agree to not call you a racist if you’ll show me the same respect.)

Let me ask you a question: Is it more important for a young person to know where in the bible to find the book of Matthew, or to know the contents of Matthew?

As for my understanding of how God works, it’s true, I didn’t learn much in 17 years of growing up in the Mennonite church and 4 years as an EMC bible major. Wasn’t till I chucked all that and used the brain God gave me to reason things out that I came to where I am now. Just like with the English language, usage determines correctness. My personal theology is usage-based, I don’t rely on experts or books.

Let’s face it: there are as many different versions of religious truth as there are people who’ve lived. God has to respect an honest seeker, even if their version of truth is a little off. At the same time, there are those who don’t seek, because the brain chemistry they were born with doesn’t incline them to do so. God has to respect them too, because God created them.

There will be no final separating of the sheep and the goats, no matter how much the early church leaders wanted it to be true, when they commissioned the writing of the gospels decades after Jesus’s death. When Jesus said that whores and IRS agents are at the head of the line to enter the kingdom of heaven, I believe he was saying: Everyone gettin’ in! That’s my slangy usage-based theology in a nutshell.

I don’t know what you mean by God is either all merciful or all judgmental. What is mercy? What is judgment? By who’s definitions are we applying those definitions? God sits in the seat of Judgment and He alone is Judge. The whole story of the Bible seems to sit on that principal. It’s about the perfect creation of man, the fall, faith, the law, and redemption. I don’t know how you can get around that. Your idea that mercy and judgement are mutually exclusive just isn’t true. True, the Church has done a piss poor job of explaining anything remotely important so what else should I expect? I mean, I go to churches where high schoolers can’t find the book of Matthew after spending their whole lives in the church, so no wonder I find myself constantly battling Biblical illiterates. It’s simply not their fault. I shouldn’t get mad at them, but I do.

Your Bronx translation is really bad. That world isn’t foreign to me, I spent my childhood growing up in South Baltimore and the last few years living in NE Baltimore. You can read about it sometime.

No, I dislike your Bronx translation because illiteracy isn’t something to be proud of. Because Ebonics keeps those who speak it from getting any sort of job where speaking with customers might be remotely important. Because language and IQ are directly correlated, and someone’s mastery of language allows them to process thought. Legitimizing stupidity isn’t compassionate or anti-racist. In fact, I can think of few things more racist.

You quote the portion of Exodus that says children and grandchildren will be punished for the sins of their parents and grandparents. I have a question for you: Do you really believe that? Is that how you see God operating? If so, how do you sleep at night. Aren’t afraid you might be one of those children who will be punished, unfairly, for sins committed by someone else in your family tree? Or that your descendants might get punished for your sins?

Let’s get real. God is either all-merciful or all-judgmental. There’s no middle ground. God can’t be mostly merciful but a little into judgment. Nor can God be mainly into judgment but willing to extend a little mercy. The Divine Judgment Paradigm and the Divine Mercy Paradigm are mutually exclusive.

So you must choose, which one you gonna believe. The fundamentalist wing of American christianity (which includes large sectors of the Mennonite church) have bought into the Judgmental God. So, according to them, the majority of God’s creatures are going to burn eternally.

On the other hand, there are those who’ve come to realize that God is not, and never has been, in the rejection business, and that eventually God will draw all creatures together under Her protective wings. This comforting perspective makes it a lot easier to sleep at night.

So then, how do we read the bible? It’s simple. Anything that reinforces the mercy, compassion and love of God is worthy of taking to heart. And anything that describes a vengeful, jealous, vindictive God can be easily dismissed. Makes bible interpretation something even a child can do. In fact when most children read the bible they intuitively know which parts give faulty descriptions of God - those parts where God does bad things, things he tells us humans not to do.

As for my Bronx translation: How many bible translations are out there? A hundred, two hundred? I don’t know. It seems like there’s a translation for every possible constituency group. But I’ve never seen one for inner-city youth, in language they could relate to. And why shouldn’t they have such a thing? It’s a little insulting for you to describe it as third-grade level. This was not aimed at people with an elementary-school vocabulary. It’s written in street slang, that attempts to make the bible sound the way kids would speak it themselves. Thereby making it more accessible than if they were handed the NRSV or the NIV or, heaven forbid, the KJV (which I find totally incomprehensible).

I’m sorry you don’t like the BST. It’s just a little experiment on my part. Of course I didn’t write it for you. I wrote it for people who inhabit a world that apparently is foreign to you, and that would make you feel uncomfortable. Maybe you could work on that. Since the kingdom of heaven is going to be inhabited by lots of slang-speaking street people.

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[Facepalm]

Exodus 34:7 “7 keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear `the guilty’, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.”

I guess I could keep going…I’d start by using a translation that’s not idiotic. I find this site just so hard to deal with because, believe it or not, I often agree with the concepts and thoughts shared here. But the way the arguments are laid out are just infuriatingly insane.

Can you give some specific examples of how God has challenged your core beliefs?

You say

“These are the norms that Jesus is turning upside down. Because we’ve heard the beatitudes so often, they don’t have the surprise impact they did back then.”

but in all my years reading this site, I’ve never seen the author say something out of character. Maybe Jesus isn’t as upside-down as you suggest.

Same old, same old Jesus. Pushing others outside their comfort zones, and leaving me still.

The Bruderhof house in London is the farthest I know of that a communal, plain dressing has gone in this direction. Because the Bruderhof quite publishing on the internet en mass in the mid-2000’s, I don’t really know much more about that experiment.