Understanding Confusion

Mark 4:13 “And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?”

Have you ever felt like a stranger in a strange land? Have you ever felt like everyone around you is speaking a different language one that you don’t quite understand? I imagine that that is what many felt like when Jesus was out there speaking in parables and they just didn’t get the message.

I understand their confusion because that’s what gets me confused when I see fifty different translations of one verse in the bible. That is why I only read the King James Version because it is the most understood version by ME. Take for example the simple verse below:

King James Bible
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

New International Version
For God is not a [God] of [disorder] but of peace--as in all [the congregations] of the [Lord's people.] 

Isn’t that basically changing the words of God?

New Living Translation
For God is not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the meetings of God's holy people.

English Standard Version
For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,

Berean Study Bible
For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints,

Berean Literal Bible
For He is not the God of disorder, but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,

New American Standard Bible 
for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.


There were too many more to list but you get my meaning, right? Why all of the translations?

Here I go digging and researching. I apparently am not the only one confused by so many translations, apparently hundreds of years before me there was confusion on the rewriting of the original bible.
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/

This link led me to more digging and understanding. Not that my brain can store all of this information but on some level, I’ve had it stored already for many years, go figure. I found it interesting that the original bible contained 80 books instead of the ones we’re fed, 66. 

“Up until the 1880’s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books, not 66! The inter-testamental books written hundreds of years before Christ called “The Apocrypha” were part of virtually every printing of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible until their removal in the 1880’s”

Not everyone was happy with the inclusion of the Apocrypha. Before my internet days I had read the Apocrypha and had no idea that they were part of the original KJV of the bible. I didn’t have the enormous amount of information at my fingertips as I do today. 

I found this paragraph most interesting from greatsite. Com:

“As Christians, we must be very careful to make intelligent and informed decisions about what translations of the Bible we choose to read. On the liberal extreme, we have people who would give us heretical new translations that attempt to change God’s Word to make it politically correct. One example of this, which has made headlines recently is the Today’s New International Version (T.N.I.V.) which seeks to remove all gender-specific references in the Biblend whenever possible! Not all new translations are good… and some are very bad.”

And this:
“Let’s be ever mindful that we are not called to worship the Bible. That is called idolatry. We are called to worship the God who gave us the Bible, and who preserved it through the centuries of people who sought to destroy it.”

I think people miss this point entirely thinking that the book is to be held as a sacred piece of paper even if it was a newly printed version of all that they believe in. That made total sense to me; we are not to worship the Bible we are to worship God alone. I think that is a fact many lose sight of in their search to be Christ-like and preaching ‘the Word’.

In conclusion I’ll end with this: We must decide whom it is we worship. Do we worship words, man or God? We are allowed free will so really we can worship whom we want, do what we want and believe what we want. But remember, your soul is counting on you to do the right thing whatever that means to YOU!