GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 7:7
My way or the highway
For several years, I was a student at a conservative Bible school of the Reformed tradition. The teachers were sincere believers, and I am thankful for the opportunity. All instruction in the school came from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. I never heard anyone explicitly reject any other biblical translation, but when exam time came, everyone had to use the school’s Bible from a shelf at the side of the classroom—they were all KJV Bibles. There may have been good reasons for this policy—students could have written notes and other information in their personal Bibles. Cheating? Surely not Bible-school students. Well, that temptation was eliminated by requiring everyone to use the school’s KJV Bibles.
I appreciate the KJV Bible. My pastor used it, Sunday-school teachers used it, and I spent time memorizing it. But I have come to see some shortcomings of the KJV. For example, the forty scholars who worked on the translation did not have many of the early biblical manuscripts available to contemporary translators, Additionally, the seventeenth-century language of the translators has evolved, and some of the words have taken on meanings different from those of the translators. There are still some teachers, however, who hold that any biblical translation other than the KJV is unacceptable—a man made tradition.
There are many other man-made traditions taught as God-given commandments—one must dress a certain way, communion must be done in a certain way, certain prayers must be said, baptism must use a specific formula, and be done by a particular group; only certain music styles are allowed in church, or no musical instruments are allowed in the church building.
When some Pharisees and scribes came from Jerusalem to Galilee, apparently to observe and discredit the new teacher, they chose to criticize him for allowing his disciples to eat without ceremonially washing their hands. Thereupon, Jesus compared them to the people the Prophet Isaiah criticized several hundred years earlier, who were sticklers about outward tradition while neglecting inner attitudes. The prophet said of the people of his day, “Vainly they worship me, teaching the commandments of men as doctrine.” (Mark 7:7)
Jesus observed tradition; however, he never taught tradition as a commandment of God and never elevated human rules to divine status. For Jesus, a true relationship to the Father and to man begins in the heart, not in how carefully a man washes his hands, the clothes he wears, or the music he sings. The heart’s relationship to the Father governs the outward things, not vice versa.
Previous
Next
Directory