Changing God's Word?
Posted on February 8, 2012 by Pastor Tom
One great challenge for the church today is reaching Muslims for Christ. We hear of God’s incredible work among Muslims and how He is introducing them to Jesus. He has also equipped many for proclaiming His Gospel in very sensitive regions. Yet work is being done and accomplished. One way to share Christ is to pass on a copy of the Bible to a Muslim friend.
But there is quite a controversy about translating the Scriptures into languages used by millions of Muslims. There is an effort to produce translations by Wycliffe, SIL and Frontiers that remove the terms Father, Son and Son of God to use terms that the translators consider less offensive to Muslims.
To learn more about this, I encourage you to visit the site Biblical Missiology http://biblicalmissiology.org/. There is also a petition there for you to sign to exhort these Christian agencies to stop moving ahead with this.
For further info, you can contact our own Nelson.
His latest newsletter states this:
Wycliffe, respected Bible translator, and Frontiers are producing some “Muslim idiom” translations in which the words “Father” and “Son of God” are not translated directly because they might give Muslim readers “the wrong impression” that God had sex with Mary (a common belief among Muslims). Instead, translators use other words such as “Guardian” for God and “representative” for Son of God.
This practice creates readings of Scripture that cast doubt on three critical articles of Christian faith that Muslims deny: the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus and Scripture being inspired and “without error in the original manuscripts”. There is a danger of the Gospel being seen to be Islamized.
I personally know two missionaries who have protested without result to SIL about specific translations for northern India and Pakistan.
Biblical Missiology is a consortium that tracks trends in missions. After years of trying to address Wycliffe, SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics, Wycliffe’s overseas name) and Frontiers directly on this issue, it has begun circulating a petition – not to criticize the ministries, but to “plead that Bible translations ‘testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world’ (1 John 4:14)”.
I urge you to look up the petition on the web and become informed about the issue. Read the materials provided, including the reasons for the petition, statements from Wycliffe, and letters from Christians from Muslim background.
Why your neighbors (in Canada) might not like your Christianity
Posted on October 21, 2011 by Pastor Tom
You invite your neighbor to church but they never come – or they get hostile. Why? Check out this possibility.
“The second noticeable challenge that religious groups face are the negative public perceptions held by many towards Christians. Recalling the negative perceptions that many marginal affiliates have of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, religious groups should carefully heed William I. Thomas’s (1966, 301) idea that “situations
that are defined as real are real in their consequences.” The public has a justifiable negative perception of Christians because of past and present scandals by a few, the strong and offensive presence of the Christian Right in the United States (that some fear characterizes Evangelicals in Canada), and the general belief that Christians are judgmental and hypocritical, often based on personal experience. Whether or not Christians and individual congregations reflect these qualities (and some do) are irrelevant so long as the general public believes these things to be true.”
Churches Are Not Necessarily the Problem: Lessons Learned from Christmas and Easter Affiliates
by Joel Thiessen, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Ambrose University College – Calgary, Alberta
Church and Faith Trends – A Publication of The Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism: An Initiative of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
December 2010, Volume 3, Issue 3, p. 14