ANYONE WHO HAS LEAFED through The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language and read a line or two knows that Eugene H. Peterson has an ear. Check that, two ears. Operating in a kind of stereophonic semantic/spiritual mode, connected to the deep hum between sound and silence, Mr. Peterson has one ear for the beauty and truth of everyday language, and another for the timeless and practical spiritual message that filters through the Bible's ancient texts.
Take the familiar third verse of the 23rd Psalm, which the King James Version translates, "He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake." Perfection. But hear how Peterson crafts the same passage: "True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction." Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Spirings, Colorado: Navpress, 2002), p. 937 .
Simple and pure, right? I first came across that line some years back when feeling down and out and at a crossroads. I'll never forget how revitalized I felt. The Message's message got me. It restored my soul. Like an online "instant message," God's eternal message of comfort and guidance felt familiar and alive.
Peterson tells us in his introduction to The Message: "The reason that new translations are made every couple of generations or so is to keep the language of the Bible current with the common speech we use, the very language in which it was first written. We don't have to be smart or well educated to understand it, for it is written in the words and sentences we hear in the marketplace, on school playgrounds, and around the dinner table." Ibid., p. 10 . And he views the significance of everyday life through the special lens of the pastoral life, which has shaped his endeavors. Between receiving degrees in Semitic studies from the Biblical Theological Seminary in New York (now New York Theological Seminary) and from Johns Hopkins University and teaching for five years at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Peterson spent 29 years serving as pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. As he has noted, "A central challenge of the pastoral life is to take people seriously just the way they are and to look at them, to enter into conversation with them and to see the glory that takes place right there, in that person's world, the glory of God present in them." www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title-2274, reprint of David Wood, "Eugene Peterson on Pastoral Ministry." The Christian Century, March 13–20, 2002, pp. 18–25 .
Not surprisingly, The Message has stirred up controversy. Even though Peterson has translated directly from the original Greek and Hebrew texts, some Bible commentators accuse him of distorting God's Word. Others, with varying degrees of admiration, regard The Message more as a takeoff on the Bible than as the Bible itself (more like West Side Story than Romeo and Juliet, as one observer put it See Allen Smalling's Spotlight Review at www.amazon.com's listing for The Message.). Maybe so. But still, for many, The Message inspires. It strikes us as a beautiful complement to the KJV and right for our lives in today's world. (And we appreciate Peterson's beautiful, informative intros to each of the 66 books.)
I think this work reaches so many because The Message taps into language that runs deep and transcends translation—the language of the Spirit. By demonstrating that the spiritual import of the Bible has marvelous, unexpected elasticity, Peterson shows that not only does he have an ear attuned to the nowness and naturalness of the divine Spirit. So do we.
MATTHEW 6:34
King James Version
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
The Message
Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.
