I have always felt Christians should be as accurate as they can be in everything they say. This applies whether you have three university degrees or whether you barely got out of high school. It’s not a matter of education, it’s a matter of truth.
And there has been so much stuff floating around the internet lately somebody needs to blow the whistle and say those simple words, “Is this really accurate?”
Why does this matter? Well, it matters because we don’t want the world to confuse our opinions with the truth of the Gospel. If in their eyes we’re blowing smoke about other things, maybe the same is true with what we’re saying about the Gospel.
Let me illustrate this out of an experience I had a very long time ago.
Over the years I’ve had the privilege of working with Biblical scholars who could best be described as taking picky to the next level.
The pickiest of them all was my doctoral supervisor, Professor Charles Cranfield. One day I sat in his living room in Durham, England, for yet another dreaded interrogation. Over a cup of coffee and some unbelievably tasteless cookies which are misleadingly marketed in the UK as “Nice,” he harangued me over the correct placement of the word “surely” in a sentence. Did you know it makes all the difference in the world to say “I was surely right,” as opposed to saying “Surely I was right”? One of these phrases is far more assertive than the other, but unfortunately after all these years I can’t remember which one it is, so I have rarely used the word “surely” ever since out of fear of getting it wrong.
My frustration eventually surfaced, and that was when I made a fatal mistake. I decided to contest something he had said on the grounds it was one step too far in the world of picky. He paused for a moment. Then he looked straight at me, and I knew something really bad was coming. What he said next completely floored me. “David, the primary purpose God created language was in order that the Gospel should be proclaimed. Do you not think we should be careful in how we use it, so that the Gospel is proclaimed accurately?”
I was defeated, shamed, embarrassed and generally destroyed all in one moment. I can’t remember what I said, but whatever it was amounted to “Yes sir. I’m sorry.”
It’s depressing to me when I hear people preaching out of paraphrases that are not proper translations of the Bible. They are peoples’ opinions of what the Bible says. I say to preachers, “Stop it!” But that’s only the beginning of it. Far too many Christians are out there offering their opinion on all manner of subjects they know little or nothing about. And to them also I say, “Stop it!.
Jesus claimed to be the truth. We are people of the truth. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, stay silent and listen to someone who does.
People can be picky for all sorts of wrong reasons, and they can often be a pain to be around. But it’s never wrong to be picky about the truth. I don’t mean being legalistic, I mean insisting on accuracy.
Next time you open your mouth, remember why God created language. You might find yourself saying a whole lot less.
