Tuesday, October 1, 2013

I Don't Care about Plainer Translations of Scripture

I believe scriptures tell us how people from the past viewed God and his relationship to them - and not much else that truly is objective, when it gets right down to it. It's really important to know how others view(ed) God, but it doesn't say much about how WE view God and his relationship to US. Absolutely, scriptures can and should influence us, but I believe in an evolutionary model of understanding that includes religious understanding - that "further light and knowledge" and "ongoing revelation" are FAR superior to past pronouncements of scripture, with the exception of the words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. I think that is axiomatic to Mormonism - that even now there still are "many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God" that are yet to be revealed.

Thus, while I value scriptures highly (from all faith traditions), I don't really care much about spending time trying to translate them more plainly - since, in the end, I believe those translations reveal much, much more about our own worldview than they do about the worldview and intent of the original authors (whoever they actually were) and abridgers (whoever they actually were).

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