God's Word Keeps Up with the Times

Spirituality Column # 22
April 10, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

God’s Word Keeps Up with the Times
By Bob Walters

Words change in meaning or even disappear over time and generations.

Gay meant happy during my youth. Groovy means something to me that is opaque to my teenage sons. Going back further, thee and thine have been you and yours in popular parlance for a couple of centuries now.

Words change and languages evolve. Yet God’s word, the Bible, does a remarkable job of keeping up with the times.

To a Christ-centered believer – pick any denomination: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, all the Baptist and Bible-based Christian independents – the Bible is the living, infallible, eternal word of God. Traditions endure, liturgies and worship styles come and go, but the Bible’s message lives and breathes (Hebrews 4:12) with us.

Still, the Bible “changes” with new translations constantly. BibleGateway.com currently has 69 versions of the Bible in 30 languages, including 20 in English. There are literally hundreds of versions in existence.

How does God do that? How can they all be right? How can we trust something that changes so often?

And here’s a better question: how can we believe in a God that gives us so much advice that is so difficult to follow?

The living and personal God that occupies ones heart and mind doesn’t have a tough time keeping up with cultural idiom. He knows what we’re up to. Bible versions can be spiritually and theologically solid whether the Catholic Bible’s 73 books or the King James and its Protestant iterations with 66 books (Catholic and Protestant each has 27 New Testament books).

The eternal truth of Christ Jesus crucified, dead and risen for all mankind is the same in both. People and technology change, but God – our relationship with Him and what He has to say to us – doesn’t change.

Why is following God’s word so difficult?

I’m not sure. But I’m glad He wrote it down.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) lives in Carmel and hasn’t used the word “groovy” in a sentence for several years.