Uncle Bob Says, "Samantha, NIV is the DEVIL!"

I have pinned up on my wall a sheet I tore from a tract. As a new youth pastor, I had the exhilarating job of sifting through all of the stuff that had accumulated throughout the previous youth ministries. One pull of a file cabinet drawer revealed something that I did not expect to see: a "This Was Your Life" tract. Only God knows how long it's been since I've seen one of these; it was most likely a hazing missions trip day on some non-descript urban street, passing them out to homeless people and affluents alike. The point of the tract is simple, and the illustrations are humorous (intentionally? Probably not.) Essentially, a man that sinned his whole life dies. He is then shown his life of sin and is cast away. The last page is a "don't be like Harry" (let's just call the man in the tract Harry) page that outlines a simple salvation process.

Actually, I do remember the last time I saw one of those. It was in a bathroom. I thumbed through it and noticed something strange: on the last page, over the part that led in a sinner's prayer, a white sticker was placed and inked by hand were the words "GET BAPTIZED." (!!!) Hmm... the tract leaver must have been Church of Christ.

There were maybe forty or fifty of them in the file cabinet. Underneath, there were a couple of tracts that were obviously made by the same company. The sheet on my wall is from the one called "Samantha the Witch." You see, Samantha liked Harry Potter. Her and her friends were dealing with stuff in their lives and because of the fact that they couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and real-life, they decided to try witchcraft. The dialogue and portrayal of the girls looked more like a storybook for SNL. Frankly, it was absurd. I could almost see the little white-haired woman or rosy-cheeked Southern Preacher typing out those laughable lines("Harry Potter does it, I think I can too!"), nodding a bit to themselves because they had truly captured the process by which a normal group of girls gets caught up in witchcraft.

Samantha is saved by "Uncle Bob" (Who's slicked back black hair and thin pencil mustache mirrors the Fred Armisen's Fericito in the SNL skit "!Show Biz Grande Explosion!") and he gives her a coupla pointers. His best one is the one on my wall. I will type it out EXACTLY as it's written: "Samantha, you'll need a Bible to read every day ... a King James Bible. It's the only English version Satan hasn't messed with."

Wow. The first thing that came to mind when I read this was when I worked at a Christian Bookstore my senior year in High school (oy, that feels like such a long time ago). I was working with a woman who was looking for a Bible. I could tell that she was very traditional, so I pulled out the NASB and New King James and began telling her about the differences and the similarities. She nodded for a moment; I don't think she was really listening. Without warning, she scoops the bible up and reads the spine. " NEW King James? No thank you, I only read the real Bible." Here is where she throws the Bible back on the counter and storms out of the store.

I really don't understand this viewpoint. Okay, I grew up making this argument, but that was because I made it out of ignorance. It was what I was told. "Only read the Authorized 1611 KJV, Aaron. All the other ones are written from inferior texts." I didn't know any better, so I'd nod and accept this statement as gospel. Turns out that it's not true, and if anything, it's the other way around.

Okay, having a favorite translation is fine. Mine's the NIV (it's the first one I actually read). Many people older than me grew up in churches that only used KJV out of tradition or the fact that there weren't really any other options. There were paraphrases, true, like the Living Bible, or the Cotton Patch Bible, but these were inferior, essentially they were a man sitting down with the KJV and rewriting what he thought it meant in contemporary english. The effort is commendable. Jesus didn't speak in the high language as portrayed in the KJV. He was a carpenter that talked like a carpenter.

My home church used to have an Easter production. They went all out, rebuilding the sanctuary and bringing in sheeps, goats, and camels. Funny, though, everyone in the production spoke normal english, but when Jesus spoke, he spoke in King James English.