OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

With this issue we conclude 38 years of publication, counting six years of Bible Talk which preceded this paper. We are now prepared to announce definitely that with the January 1991 issue we begin our final two-year cycle and will cease publication of this journal with the December 1992 issue, if the Lord provides us the strength and the resources to continue for two more years. I will turn 74 the same month we send out the last issue, and 40 years is long enough to do this sort of thing. The Lord willing, Ouida and I will for a time after closing down this journal issue a newsletter to all those on our mailing list, if for no other reason to keep in touch for awhile longer. Subscribers should continue to renew, but starting next year we will post the two-year renewal rate on a pro rata basis. We are hopeful of increasing our circulation for the last two years. You can help by sending us a list of new readers at the club rate.

There were 17 of us gathered around two tables on Thanksgiving Day at our house. Most of them were Mother Pitts’ children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, but she was not able to celebrate festivities with them. She now appears to be clinging to life by a thread. Ouida amazes me in that she is not only able to do all these things with such grace but to make it look easy. Two of Ouida’s kin who were here, a young otorhinolaryngologist and his talented bride-to-be, are members of the Boston Church of Christ in Los Angeles, who told us their church is adding 25 members a week. They radiate joy toward each other and toward the Lord. I was up early Thanksgiving a.m., and after my daily run and a few hours of study, I thought I’d check on the company upstairs. I found the Boston couple sitting on their legs, facing each other with an open Bible between them, studying the book of Ruth. The rest were in bed! I asked the bride-to-be to give us her testimony, which was most impressive. She was riding high as an economic officer in the U.S. Embassy in Paris when she was converted by the Boston group in that city. It radically changed her life. Her parents, supposing she had been brainwashed by a cult, sought to have her deprogrammed. But she was too much for the deprogrammer, and he at last apologized, deciding she was for real. If one wonders why the Boston churches grow as they do, the answer is really simple: They believe they are to make disciples for Jesus and they work at it. The young doctor told me that making disciples is what gives meaning to life.

The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is now available to the public. It is a revision of the 1952RSV. Thirty scholars, both men and women, did the work, one being a member of the Church of Christ, a professsor at Princeton Seminary. Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, and Eastern Orthodox all worked together on the project. Seven different publishers will issue the new Bible in various editions and sizes. While thousands of changes were made, some are especially interesting, including those that seek to correct flagrant sexist language, such as Jn. 12:32, which now reads, “And, I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself,” instead of men. And Jn. 2:10 now reads, “Everyone serves the good wine first” instead of “Every man . . .” It sometimes reverts to the old King James translation after departing from it in 1952, one significant passage being Ro. 9:5 where Paul seems to be calling Christ “the eternally blessed God.” The new version agrees with the KJV that that is what Paul said. Some changes have a touch of humor, as in Ps. 50:9, where “I will accept no bull from your house” is changed to “I will not accept a bull from your house” (The KJV also had that one right!). And in the new version Paul was not stoned (!) but “received a stoning” (2 Cor 11:25). Gen. 1:27 now reads, “God created humankind in his own image,” but there are no such changes made of Deity. God is still “our Father who is in heaven,” not Father-Mother or Parent as some have urged. The committee says it is the Bible teacher who is to show that God transcends masculinity, not the Bible translator.

Dallas Seminary has published a booklet on pornography that points up the severity of this evil in our society. There are nearly 900 theaters in our nation that show X-rated films and more than 15,000 “adult” bookstores, outnumbering McDonald’s restaurants. Nearly 100 pornographic films are produced each year. Extensive research indicates that pornography has a profound effect on behavior, such as the large number of sexual-assault cases it has influenced.

John O. Humbert, general minister and president of the Disciples of Christ, has issued a statement on “Who Are The Disciples?” in which he lists twelve essential identifying marks. One reads: “This church is a movement for Christian unity, our ‘polar star.’ The church of Jesus Christ is ‘essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one’.” Another says: “This church is historically a movement away from sectarian, narrow exclusivism to a spirit of open, accepting Christian charity. Our watchwords have been: ‘Christians only, but not the only Christians; in essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty and in all things charity.’ There is an acceptance of diversity.”

In the summer issue of Image, a Church of Christ journal published in West Monroe, La., Jo Ann Gibbs of Escondido, Ca., has an article on fellowship in which she says, “Fellowship is banqueting with our friends in the church. This is good. Or it is inviting into our homes the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, who cannot return the favor. This is better.”