Eddie Arthur is a great guy, and the director of Wycliffe UK. He doesn't remember, but we ate pizza together at Greenfields in West Africa several years ago. To be fair, there were about 20 of us sitting at one long table and I was at the other end.
Anyway, his blog is great, this post is great, and the series is going to be great.
The links at the end of his post are also great. My personal favorite is the one where he answers the very good question "Why not just teach everyone English?" You even get to hear him talk. Which is great, because he's British and has a great accent.
Why Give the Bible? by Eddie Arthur (who is just great)
This is going to be a little mini-series on why we translate the Bible for minority peoples around the world. I have already written about this subject more than once and I will put a link to some of the earlier posts at the foot of this one. However, in this series I want to answer a specific objection that is often raised when we talk to people about Wycliffe’s work. When we ask people to make some sort of contribution to Bible translation work to receive a reply something along these lines:
What’s the point of giving the Bible? Why not give water or food? Anyway, I don’t want to be involved in something that can take years to see a result, I would rather give my money where I can see an immediate impact.
Perhaps you have had similar thoughts, yourself. Over the next few days, I’d like to respond to this challenge under three headings:
- Making Disciples
- Long term change
- Quicker doesn’t mean better
In the meantime, here are some of my earlier posts on the subject of why we translate the Bible. These are arranged roughly in chronological order – the first one going back to 2005.
Thanks for the links Nora, and apologies that my pizza addled brain is so forgetful.
I hope the rest of the series doesn’t disappoint!