# Why do people like The Message?



## Bill The Baptist (May 2, 2014)

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine on Facebook regarding Psalm 1. He is going to be preaching this Psalm, and we were discussing the Christological implications of this passage when someone else chimed in and asked if he had read the wonderful rendering of this passage in The Message. Being curious, I looked it up, and it was predictably horrible.


How well God must like you—
you don’t hang out at Sin Saloon,
you don’t slink along Dead-End Road,
you don’t go to Smart-Mouth College.

2-3 
Instead you thrill to God’s Word,
you chew on Scripture day and night.
You’re a tree replanted in Eden,
bearing fresh fruit every month,
Never dropping a leaf,
always in blossom.

4-5 
You’re not at all like the wicked,
who are mere windblown dust—
Without defense in court,
unfit company for innocent people.

6 
God charts the road you take.
The road they take is Skid Row.

My question is this, why do so many people seem to like this version?


----------



## Pilgrim Standard (May 2, 2014)

Bill The Baptist said:


> Why do people like The Message?


The only people that I have met that really like _The Message_ are people that really don't like God's Word. 
Just my experience with those I have met...


----------



## JP Wallace (May 2, 2014)

I know, it is really awful isn't it. So often, it is terrible English, but worst of all he misses the whole point of passages often actually saying the complete opposite of what is meant.

I did a study of one chapter (james 1) for our Adult Sunday School class, and the Message is just beyond poor. In the few cases where I have looked at it, it very frequently misses the point, misinterprets it, gets it down right wrong, and amazingly since it is meant to makes things easy and plain, actually confused me, or was pretty much meaningless.

Here's the text with my comments in square brackets

JAMES 1:1-12 THE MESSAGE
1*I, James, am a slave of God and the Master Jesus, writing to the twelve tribes scattered to Kingdom Come: Hello! [Tthe Kingdom Come is horrible, and completely absent from the original text - the reference is to a geographical reality - the Dispersion, Kingdom Come is a phrase used of those who have been destroyed in a bomb or something]
2-4*Consider it a sheer gift [poor, sheer? the word in Greek is ‘all’, and likewise the word in the Greek does not mean gift, it is joy or delight - isn’t even good English], friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. [The Greek is nothing to do with the direction of attacks or tests, but the nature, not from many places, but of all kinds] You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely.[There is no indication of this phrase at all in the original - not a word of it, it is pure invention - I don’t even think it is a good application] Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
5-8*If you don’t know what you’re doing, [poor - the idea is not of knowing what we’re but not understanding what is happening and why.] pray to the Father. He loves to help. [very poor - the word generous is easily understood - God’s willingness to help is not what James is emphasising but how generous his help always is.] You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers”[what on earth does this mean? I thought The Message was meant to make the Bible easier to understand?] are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.[Completely absent in form and sense in the original]
9-11*When down-and-outers get a break, cheer! And when the arrogant rich are brought down to size, cheer! [This is a terrible case of interpretation instead of translation and a terrible one at that - just awful; down and outers???? get a break?...Cheer? He misses almost every point James is making, for a start the counsel is to the poor man and how he is react not how we are to react to a poor man etc..]Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it. You know that as soon as the sun rises, pouring down its scorching heat, the flower withers. Its petals wilt and, before you know it, that beautiful face is a barren stem. Well, that’s a picture of the “prosperous life.” At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing. 12*Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life. [mighty fortunate? - pure fantasy on the author’s part - neither good theology not translation]


----------



## Bill The Baptist (May 2, 2014)

The Message rendering of John 3:16 is especially horrible because it does not promise eternal life for those who believe in Christ, but rather a "whole and lasting life." Kind of seems like he is reducing Jesus to the level of oat bran.


----------



## Jash Comstock (May 2, 2014)

The same reason people find "deep spiritual meaning" in Heaven is for real" and "The Shack".


----------



## VictorBravo (May 2, 2014)

Bill The Baptist said:


> The road they take is Skid Row.



Really? I wonder if the writer of this doggerel has spent an evening in Seattle's Pioneer Square, where the original Skid Road was (unless you are from Vancouver, and make a competing claim). Many have hoped for the time when this way "shall perish."

I know LA adopted it for a bad part of town, but this is a logging-town reference from the 19th century.

I've never read the Message, but I am amazed if that is a representative sample. I gather they were trying to make the Bible more accessible to people, but the reference is becoming dated. (I do like "Sin Saloon" and "Smart-Mouth College" as excellent examples of how to destroy the beauty of English with a club-fisted hand.)


----------



## VictorBravo (May 2, 2014)

> It is a slipper slope.



Those are the worse kind, too! No Vibram soles, no crampons, way too slick for most people.


----------



## deleteduser99 (May 2, 2014)

Bill The Baptist said:


> I was having a discussion with a friend of mine on Facebook regarding Psalm 1. He is going to be preaching this Psalm, and we were discussing the Christological implications of this passage when someone else chimed in and asked if he had read the wonderful rendering of this passage in The Message. Being curious, I looked it up, and it was predictably horrible.
> 
> 
> How well God must like you—
> ...



Sounds a hair away from, "Lord I thank you I'm not like that tax collector over there."


----------



## Pilgrim (May 2, 2014)

Probably for the same reason why people read "The Living Bible" when it was wildly popular in the 1970's--because they find it easier to read and perhaps also due to a never ending love of novelty. 

Not long ago I was listening to a sermon from a church when the associate pastor read a passage from the Message to conclude his sermon. I think I pretty much concluded my consideration of attending that church at the same time even though this church is not without its merits otherwise.


----------



## Pilgrim (May 2, 2014)

Eugene Peterson, the "translator" of the Message has even said that he cringes when someone reads from the Message in the pulpit as he never intended it to be used that way. It is probably less than a paraphrase but the publisher hypes it as a "translation."


----------



## ZackF (May 2, 2014)

Pilgrim said:


> Eugene Peterson, the "translator" of the Message has even said that he cringes when someone reads from the Message in the pulpit as he never intended it to be used that way. It is probably less than a paraphrase but the publisher hypes it as a "translation."



Unintended consequences. Is there a published translation that has not been used in the pulpit? 

I've read the most profitable parts of "The Message" are the introductions to the books though I haven't read them myself.


----------



## Free Christian (May 2, 2014)

Pilgrim said:


> Not long ago I was listening to a sermon from a church when the associate pastor read a passage from the Message to conclude his sermon. I think I pretty much concluded my consideration of attending that church at the same time even though this church is not without its merits otherwise.


 Similar thing happened to me once at a church when the pastor quoted from it saying or implying the passage version in the Living Bible explained it better. I was dumbfounded! But I had no idea or have ever heard of "the message"! I now have. The level some go to, to butcher the Word is like looking down a long steep slope with no end or bottoming out of in sight!


----------



## Cymro (May 3, 2014)

Just as the intellectual strata would vilify and jeeringly discount religion, yet
at the same time believe in aliens and conspiracy theories. David Wells wrote
that if Belief in God was removed from society it would mistakenly believe in
nothing. He rather says it would believe in everything. I think he was quoting
Chesterton.


----------

