Rethinking the Translation

A translation like the New American Standard has served me well for many a year, but after repeated readings there's a tendency to begin to slide over what the text is saying, and it no longer hits the mark. I've been reading The Message version (Eugene Peterson) this time round, and Peterson has a real knack of hitting between the eyes, and waking you up to what's in the text.

Here's Galatians 5: 19-23 in the NASB, for example.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

All good stuff, but a number of the words in the first list particularly aren't common to everyday speech.

Here's Peterson (I've broken up the list):

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time:
repetitive, loveless, cheap sex;
a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage;
frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness;
trinket gods;
magic-show religion;
paranoid loneliness;
cutthroat competition;
all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied-wants;
a brutal temper;
an impotence to love or be loved;
divided homes and divided lives;
small-minded and lopsided pursuits;
the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival;
uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions;
ugly parodies of community.
This isn't the first time I've warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.
But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard - things like
affection for others,
exuberance about life,
serenity.
We develop a willingness to stick with things;
a sense of compassion in the heart;
and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people.
We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments,
not needing to force our way in life,
able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Yes, there are a lot more words, but the first list particularly strikes home in a much more hard-hitting way. And he doesn't reduce the language to pap: few words in his list would be unfamiliar to the average person.

Walker Percy

For those who sense that we've moved from modernism to postmodernism - or to something else altogether..!

What does a man do when he finds himself living after an age has ended and he can no longer understand himself because the theories of man of the former age no longer work and the theories of the new age are not yet known, for not even the name of the new age is known, and so everything is upside down, people feeling bad when they should feel good, good when they should feel bad?
What a man does is start afresh as if he were newly come into a new world, which in fact it is; start with what he knows for sure, look at the birds and beasts, and like a visitor from Mars newly landed on earth notice what is different about man.

From page 7 of The Message in the Bottle by Walker Percy

No single gospel message?

If I had to put this [the Gospel] outline in a single statement, I might do it like this: Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.

In an article in the Leadership Journal online, Tim Keller writes that while there may only be one Gospel message (which he's tried to put into a single statement form above), there are many forms of the message. After discussing the different 'forms' and the possibility of there being more than the ones he mentions, he goes on to talk about preaching the Gospel in different ways, as follows:
1. I don't put all the gospel points into any one gospel presentation.
2. I use both a gospel for the "circumcised" and for the "uncircumcised."
3. I use both a "kingdom" and an "eternal life" gospel.
4. I use them all and let each group overhear me preaching to the others.