Sometimes, I sit back and wonder what it would be like if certain things stayed exclusive and were not ruined by an attempt to make them widely accessible. Hipsters who delight in following underground bands can empathize with me.
However, when I daydream about denying people access to certain things, my fantasies of exclusion often involve disallowing the general public from reading the Bible. Yes, I am talking about the Holy Bible, which I enjoy being able to read in my first language, English, but I also wish I could it take away from people in a manner similar to the way the CIA took away the dignity of Guatemalans in the 1950s.
The problem is not that everyone can read the Bible, but that it is so easy to read the Bible. The Bible is a rough translation of texts that were written for different people, different mindsets and different cultures. Often, one book in the Bible could contradict another, leaving Christians to try and hash out what any of this could mean.
However, how many people are going to take time out of their day to research the historical circumstances of the ancient state of Israel and their desire for a strong, warrior god to protect them from neighbors who could conquer them at any time? The stark difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is something any Christian may struggle with, but unless proper research is done into the motivations of the writers of each text, nothing good may come out of these struggles.
So, ask yourself, since Martin Luther gave humanity its second taste from the Tree of Knowledge, would you say you’ve respected the text you read? Historically, lesser persons seeking to justify their life have often manipulated the Bible. Slavery has been justified as the curse of Ham, and many books out of the Bible have been used to justify discrimination against sexuality. I’m not sure that any amount of justifiable good has been brought about by the translation of the Bible into common vernacular, unless you count the destruction of the unified Christian religion a positive event.
If there were a substitution text that could be given to people today that could perhaps be written without contradiction that reflected proper Christian beliefs, I could easily see that given to more the average person with little chance of anything going wrong. Christianity could use a set of updated texts to fully explain what it means to be a Christian in the western world in the 21st century. Such a project might not be well-received, but if were such a project to occur, at least it wouldn’t have as negative of an impact as the Protestant Reformation.
John Valdespino is a music industry major.
He can be reached a [email protected]
