The Poosey Digest: Some wiggle room

Greetings from the Poosey.

In case you hadn’t heard, "booty" has been booted from your Bible.

The newest edition of The New American Bible, has replaced booty with "spoils of war," to avoid any modern giggles in the congregation.

In the new edition "holocaust" will become "burnt offering," and "cereal" is ground down to "grain," lest anyone confuse his catechism with his cornflakes. In some cases the authors have reverted to older, more poetic wording as "I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" returns to the 23rd Psalm instead of the 1970’s version, "dark valley." I must not be up on the last changes. I thought Dark Valley was a Cary Grant western.

Of course any new translation of the Bible is touted as a "return to the original meaning." You’d think in a couple thousand years we could get it right, but it does seem strange that we tweak the word of God to match the current sensibilities.

After all, if we’re going to try to align the scriptures with our present-day thinking, there are some other rather major changes we might want to consider… like this little tidbit from Matthew: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." Uh – hold it a minute, Matthew. I hope this is just some sort of exaggerated metaphor. In any case, we’ll not be inviting you to any tea parties in the near future.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness" might need a little editing while we’re at it. Perhaps something along the lines of "Thou shalt not lie unless you’re selling something, claiming deductions on your IRS form, or running for public office."

And of course the "Love thy neighbor as thyself" surely wasn’t meant to apply to all peoples in all situations. You know them as well as I do – those who are just unlovable. They’re usually ahead of me in the checkout lane. Surely there’s a legal mind out there somewhere that can come up with a list of acceptable exceptions. Perhaps something along the lines of "Love thy neighbor unless he disagrees with my politics, doesn’t share the same ethnic background, or religious affiliation." Of course many of us have already found a way around this strict injunction from God. In order to love our neighbors we just change neighborhoods.

And can’t we do something about this whole business of coveting? The Bible seems to be chock full of admonitions about what we shouldn’t covet. Whoever wrote this bothersome list of no-no’s has never seen my neighbor’s SUV. He didn’t hear about their winter getaway cottage in Orlando, and he certainly hasn’t seen the shoes that my friend Marcella wears to church. If we’re going to tweak the scriptures then what’s a wee bit of covetousness going to hurt?

And when Proverbs talks about "The righteous man is concerned for the rights of the poor; the wicked man does not understand such a concern," surely there’s some wiggle room there somewhere. There are about 400 biblical references about tending to the rights of the poor so it’s obvious that the previous translators of the Bible had some sort of liberal agenda. Can’t we temper this just a bit with some good old-fashioned American pull-your-own-self-up? Maybe we could use a whole new book of scripture tucked in neatly somewhere between Exodus and Leviticus. We could call it "The Book of Self Sufficiency."

Perhaps the solution to all this might be found in the Internet. When I make a purchase from Amazon.com, the company’s bank of astute computers log the purchase, categorize it, and when I log in tomorrow I’ll be greeted by a screen suggesting further purchases designed for my tastes. Maybe we could submit our political, religious, and financial status into some sort of Bible-bank and the thing could spit out a version of the scriptures that will make us sleep better at night.

I once heard an elderly saint complain in Sunday School class. We’d just read the portion of scripture dealing with honesty. He closed his Bible, shook his head and said, "The trouble with the Bible – it’s just so darned … well … biblical!"

You ever in Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.