You know you can write out your prayers, right?

Y’ever meet someone who’s articulate on the internet, but when you meet ’em in person they stumble all over their words? Very same thing happens when talking with God. It’s not because God’s intimidating; he’s actually not. It’s because verbal communication isn’t their thing! It’d be better if they had a script.

For such people, rote prayers kinda appeal to them. But they’d prefer it be their words, not just those of some well-meaning God-seekng saint. And they’d like to be specific, whereas rote prayers tend to be more generic. But they struggle to get the words out. Sometimes we all have those moments.

If you’re one of those people, relax. Load up your word-processing app, or grab a pen and paper, and start writing your prayers. Stop thinking of prayer as a phone conversation, and start thinking of it as texting. You can text, right? Then you can pray.

Write out your end of your conversation with God. Or write a monologue: A whole prayer of your own thoughts and feelings and requests and praise. Write what you’d like to pray. Then pray it. Aloud or silent; up to you.

Didn’t realize this was an option, didja? Lots of Christians haven’t. And lots of Christians have; where’d you think all our prayer books came from? People have been writing out their prayers since the bible. It’s why we have prayers in the bible. And it’s something you can do too: If you struggle to pray aloud, start writing to God.

The King James Version: Its history and worshipers.

Most of the verses I’ve memorized were in the King James Version.

Hey, it’s my upbringing. The hundred English translations of the bible that exist nowadays? Weren’t around back when I was a kid. (’Cause I’m old.) There were maybe a dozen in the Christian bookstores.

But my church used the KJV, so that’s largely what’s in my brain. I later got a Good News Bible, then a first-edition New International Version, but when it came to memory verses my Sunday school teachers drilled us in KJV.

In adulthood, for a lot of years I memorized verses in NIV. (Which they’ve updated three times since, so sometimes my memory verses won’t match the current NIV. Thanks guys.) After I learned biblical languages I translated the verses myself, and memorized ’em that way—which makes it particularly tricky to look up memory verses in my bible software. Google isn’t so picky.

Still, I quote KJV a lot, which surprises a lot of people. They assume I’m more postmodern than that (whatever they mean by that term; I know what I mean by it) and supposedly a with-it guy like me should think the KJV is old-timey, or out of date, or not reliable. That once I left my Fundamentalism behind, I also abandoned the KJV.

Nope. I still like the King James Version. It’s a good translation.

Not infallible, of course. None are; there’s no such thing as an infallible translation. Yeah, there are people who insist the KJV is the only God-inspired infallible bible; not just the only reliable English bible, but the only reliable bible, period. I’ll deal with them in a bit.

But y’notice whenever I write about the scriptures and use my own translation, I usually compare my translation to the KJV. For four main reasons:

1. I am not declaring my translation superior to every other translation. We’re supposed to compare multiple translations when we study the bible. So since I gotta use some translation, why not the KJV?
2. For better or worse, the KJV is still the English-language standard for bibles. Including for pagans—if you don’t use proper KJV “bible English,” they’re gonna think you’re paraphrasing.
3. Loads of Christians, especially Evangelicals, still consider it the authoritative translation of the bible. Even when they like other translations better; even when they think it’s out of date.
4. Nearly every translation has, when in doubt or whenever possible, deferred to the way the KJV originally put it. They’re not gonna stray too far from that version.

“The bible says…”

I grew up hearing preachers, pastors, and Sunday school teachers use this phrase: “The bible says…” before directly quoting a verse, loosely quoting an idea, or claiming to refer to an extapolated “biblical principle” as found in the scriptures.

It’s a common phrase among American Christians. I don’t know who coined it. I know evangelist Billy Graham used it constantly; whenever he’d visit the San Francisco Bay Area, local TV stations would broadcast his services, and his sermons would include more “The bible says” in ’em than Raisin Bran has raisins. “Your friends might tell you such-and-so, but the bible says…” and again, sometimes a direct quote, sometimes a general idea, sometimes what he considered a principle.

And sometimes, sometimes, an address. “John 3.16 says for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son….” But it was rare.

In my experience the reason preachers say “The bible says” is because they don’t know those addresses. Or maybe they do, but it’d take ’em a minute to recall them, and they don’t wanna spend a minute on stage, or at the lectern or podium, trying to remember precisely where in the scriptures Jesus or Paul or Isaiah or David said that pull quote.

Or even whether it was Jesus or Paul or Isaiah or David. Plenty of statements of “The bible says” would be, more accurately, “Jesus says.” In fact wouldn’t it be better to state it’s what Jesus says? You realize there are people out there who don’t care what the bible says, but they do generally approve of Jesus, and if you told ’em Jesus said it, they’d perk up and listen.

And that’s most of the reason I’m writing this piece. Using “the bible says” instead of referring to the author, or to the specific scripture address, is generating a lot of missed opportunities. We now live in a world where most people don’t care what the bible says. (Or at least are willing to confess they don’t care; in previous generations they hypocritically pretended to care, but didn’t really.) But they may care about Jesus. Or the apostles and prophets. What they say holds more weight with people… even though the apostles and prophets did write the bible.

Disciples: Students of Jesus.

The word disciple gets flung around Christianity all the time. Usually we mean by it “an acolyte of Jesus.” Someone who’s interested in him, fascinated by him, hangs around him, name-drops him. Not so much someone who actually does as he teaches; just someone in Jesus’s vicinity. A fan.

Yeah, some of you are going, “Waitaminnit, “disciple” does not mean a fan. It means someone who personally follows him. A devotee. A student.”

Oh I’m fully aware of how the popular dictionaries define the word. But let’s be honest: What Christians actually mean by the word, is demonstrated in how we live it out. Some of us “students” of Jesus are exactly like those kids who sit in the back of the room, sometimes asleep, perfectly happy to get D’s, and absolutely outraged when they find out they’re not just failing but getting held back. Somehow they never saw it coming. They figured attendance should count!

Yes, disciple means a follower, but we’re talking literal followers: They were in the crowds surrounding Jesus wherever he taught. God forbid he actually challenge them; they’d balk, and leave.

John 6.60-66 NRSVue

60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” 61 But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63 It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who were the ones who did not believe and who was the one who would betray him. 65 And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”

66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.

Or they take the more usual way out: Christianism. They follow popular Christian culture. Jesus, not so much. They imagine what they’d like Jesus to be like, project their dreams and wishes all over him… and sometimes even quit following that image when he doesn’t come through with those wishes precisely the way they want ’em.

Does this sound extremely cynical? Honestly it’s not. I’m describing all disciples; not just Christian.

Disciples should be close followers of the person they consider their master. Fans of self-help experts, fans of radical economists, fans of this or that philosophy, fans of this or that theologian. Whether a martial arts master, a philosophy or religion teacher, or any sort of authority; we should expect a “disciple of Ayn Rand” to do exactly as she’d have them do. And they don’t.

Too many of them are trying to make a name for themselves, and sometimes the way they do it is to say, “Well my master says this, but I think…” yet they insist they still follow their master. Christians are hardly the only ones with loopholes. Rand fans seldom do exactly as she’d have them do. (Like quit their jobs and go hide in the mountains till the economy collapses.) Plenty of Rand fans claim to be Christian, but Rand’s philosophy is largely based on her devout atheism, her full-on Mammonism, and her pure contempt for Christian teaching. She’s in no way compatible with Christianity… and yet many of her disciples insist they’re totally Christian. In reality, they compromise either Rand or Jesus. Or both.

There are self-described disciples of all sorts of gurus. And every time these gurus push their disciples farther than they’re comfortable, they step back, reassess, and frequently go their own way. Yet they still claim to be a disciple, ’cause they’ve invested a lot of money, time, and pride in calling themselves disciples. Yeah, it’s hypocrisy. But hypocrites are everywhere.

Happens to Jesus; happens to everyone. We really shouldn’t be surprised it happens to Jesus so often. He’s got exponentially more fans than any other guru. And no, it’s not a failing with Christians; it’s a failing with humans. It’s life.

The real Esther.

The story of Hadassah bat Abihail, or as she’s better known אֶסְתֵּר֙/Ester (KJV “Esther”), is told in the book Purim, written in Late Biblical Hebrew in the late 300s. When it was translated into Greek for the Septuagint, the translators rightly renamed it Esther. It’s actually a secular book: It never mentions God in the Hebrew version, although the Greek translation inserted God and a few prayers in several places, and those additions are either titled Additions to Esther and made a separate book in the apocrypha, or simply left in Esther as part of the text—like you’ll find in Roman Catholic bibles.

Esther takes place in Iran, which back then was called Persia. It’s about a Persian vizier named Haman bar Hammedatha, who attempted to destroy all Persian Jews, but was unexpectedly stopped by the shah’s Jewish wife. Thus it explains how the Jews celebrate the day of Purim in memory of that event.

Thing is, popular fiction of the last 30 years tries to reinterpret Esther as a romance. It’s the story of a young Jewish girl who wins a beauty contest, falls in love with a handsome king, and courageously stops the vizier from killing her uncle. Oh yeah, and all the other Jews. It’s a love story. A romance novel. Disney will make an animated movie of it yet.

It’s no such thing, but that hasn’t stopped various Christians from spinning it that way big-time.