Fathering in Faith

As most everyone who reads my blog knows, I’m a youth minister. Just in the last few years, I’ve really been burdened by the fact that some of the best translations are still too wordy and formal for the common student to engage with and understand easily.

I remember back in 2020, some youth ministers got together and built a devotional where they called it “the Gen Z Bible.” The devotional would put a fun “translation” of a Bible verse and place it next to the ESV. Then the devotional would go on to properly exegete the text. The devotional was set to be released by Lifeway and then BOOM… the common theobro complained too much (having not read it but viewing it as a mockery) and Lifeway took it down.

Since then, many people have parodied the fun translation work on social media or knock off books. But they all continue to use funny key words like “no cap” or “yeet.”

When I made the title of this blog, I am not asking for that. And honestly, we are too late to have a translation for Gen Z anyway. We need to start thinking about the future now. The reality is that we are finally hitting a generation that has more people growing up without going to church or reading the Bible than any other generation. But at the same time, I’ve found that this generation is craving knowledge about faith and spiritual things. But when the average generation Alpha student picks up their ESV, they leave more confused than they started.

I only have a masters in Biblical Languages. I do not in any way argue I’m an authority on this subject, but I would argue that although word for word translations are most accurate to the original language, they are extremely outdated because some of the words aren’t used in every day life anymore.

Generation Alpha wants people to give their information in a concise way without using big words. No, I’m not asking we put “skibidi” in the Bible. I’m just asking for something like translation John 1:14 from “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” to “the Word (Jesus) became human and lived among us.”

One of the biggest barriers to modern translation work is the KJV. Now, before either side of the KJV only argument comes out of their hiding places, I’m hoping to avoid that debate when I talk about this. The KJV was extremely accurate for its time and the resources available. But accuracy is not the worry here. Language is the worry. Kids are talking differently now. Language is always changing and with technology entering the world, language develops at a faster rate than before. We don’t need a more or less “accurate” translation, we need an accurate translation for modern and young readers. I’m not advocating losing accuracy. I’m not advocating, changing the true meaning. Shoot, this new translation can do what the NET does and have footnotes explaining translation reasoning even. Do you think our translators can pull this off?

Why am I writing this? And why am I writing this on a blog primarily about grief. Well, part of this blog (and the name hints at it) is purposed with my main role as a dad to Ramsey.

Ramsey asked me two weeks ago “Is heaven real?” And for several months he has asked me “when is Jesus coming back?” As a dad, I’m tasked with the role of teaching my son what God’s word says but teaching it to him in a way a 3 year old would understand. I think when we are working on modern translations, are translators and editors are too worried what the people with money think about the translation. Cause at the end of the day, we gotta make a living, right? And these bibles need to be sold and used, right? So then we translate in a way where we don’t stray too much from the KJV structure because that prevents what happened to the Gen Z translation devotional back in 2020.

For my son’s sake, and the sake of our next generation, will we do the work to help our children understand the greatest and most important message of Jesus?