You may have heard of the Halo video game franchise. It’s quite entertaining, up to a point. It’s also anti-Christian. A major premise of the game is mocking faith in Eternity and pushing the dire necessity of advancing humanity against all resistance. We must evolve and become something else, something that we are supposed to believe is within reach.
It’s a lie from Hell. Humanity is nothing but a vapor. I’m not saying don’t watch the videos or play the game. I’m saying you should understand the message and know clearly what’s wrong with it. Because it calls out to us on the basis of everything our civilization holds sacred, it’s nearly impossible to refuse that message — until you have dismissed that whole civilization.
Over and over again: This world, this reality, is not reliable. Anything that belongs to this reality is equally unreliable. That means the flesh, and everything it can know and do. The greatest victory in human history was the Cross. Of all the examples we can imagine, this was the model of heroism to which we all aspire. Our only mission is to defeat the flesh and nail it to the Cross.
Our heroes are the people who succeed at this well enough to be at peace with things which no man can control. For each of us, that phrase — “things which no man can control” — refers to everything God did not place in your hands. The world is doomed to Hell. Those who cling to it will go to Hell with it. Let it go. Cling to Christ instead.
What grows from these roots of faith?
You cannot know God and His ways without His Holy Spirit. Without Him breathing life into your dead spirit, you are doomed. This world is all you have. No philosophy is capable of cracking the secrets of Eternity from mere intellect alone. Mine is no better. Unless He calls to you through my writing, nothing I offer here will do you any good. Having the Holy Spirit doesn’t solve all your problems, but it will put you in a position to hear from Him and begin to change your outlook on this life.
The Scriptures witness to us of Jesus Christ, His Son. They do not contain Him, but they point to Him. We are accountable to Scripture in the sense that, without starting there, we cannot hope to get acquainted with Him. That’s the starting point, the gateway, if you will.
Meanwhile, on the human level, God never operates without an element of human deniability. Dead spirits reading the Bible will not come under His convicting power. He must call them and breathe life into them. The Scripture has no power without His Presence. Anyone reading the Scriptures without the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit cannot hope to understand them. It’s not automatic that you will understand them, but that you can if you commit yourself to finding Him there. And the longer you keep poking around in the Bible, the more your perception of what it says, and consequently what you know of Him, will change.
It’s personal. It’s not in the written word itself, but in His Spirit Presence. The Scriptures aren’t magic; it’s just ink on paper. Indeed, the honest truth is that we cannot be entirely sure the versions we read reflect the originals documents. We believe they do, but there is enough uncertainty that no human will ever be satisfied with the results of the research into that question. The best you can do is recognize the sound of His voice from whatever version you read.
The relationship with Him shapes the rules, not the other way around. Paul said that, back when Israel was under the Covenant of Moses, there were countless unknown souls who found the Lord without access to any Scripture at all (Romans 2), while only precious few of the nation that had the Scriptures ever kept peace with Him. The Book will open your obedience to the privileges of the Covenant, but it cannot give you obedience.
Should you seek God’s face about which translation is best, you might get a useful answer. You may well be led to one or another. It will not be the answer He gives to someone else. It’s not a question of translation scholarship, nor even a the lifelong pursuit of which source documents are the “most accurate” conveyance of the original documents.
Sure, I can warn you that any translation that relies on the Masoretic Text is filled with pernicious efforts by rabbis to undercut Christian faith. I can warn you that all the writers of the New Testament quoted only from the Septuagint. It was the one they trusted. Yet the vast majority of our English Bibles use the Masoretic for the Old Testament. This is why so many English translations have different wording between the Old Testament passages and the way they are quoted in the New. This is why we have so many perplexing Old Testament passages that make no sense, as if part of the text is missing. The Masoretic scholars were dishonest.
But you know something? Nobody will give you a modern English translation from the Septuagint except the Greek Orthodox, and their doctrines are quite mistaken on some of the most fundamental questions. In other words, we are stuck with an unwieldy situation. If you truly believe the Bible is magical with its own powers, you are really in for a rough ride. You’ll be jerked around by the vagaries of human capabilities for something that will never offer a solid answer.
The Scriptures will help you shape a mental frame of reference for responding to the earth shattering power of the Holy Spirit within you. The Bible helps you to formulate an expectation of what your convictions will say. But the Bible is not your convictions; it is not the Holy Spirit Himself.
Pick a translation. Use it. Seek the Lord’s face. Don’t fret over those complicated questions; there is nothing you can do short of devoting your life to deep scholarship in Bible translation. That’s not very practical for most of us; God doesn’t call all of us to that.
