Killing Kids for Jesus (Why I Use a Modern Language Version of the Bible)

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"Wilt! Wilt! That man Jesus touched the poor guy. Look! His leg has wilted. He can't even walk. Ahh!"
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The day I realized the King James Version would not be a fit for the ministry to which God had called me was the hot summer afternoon I assisted with a Vacation Bible School for the neighborhood children in Fresno, California in my first church assignment out of Bible college.

In our denomination, the Children's divisions for Bible instruction are carefully crafted. They often include multiple teaching props. One prop that is traditional for teaching the younger children--and is also often used by our missionaries in teaching simple truths to the illiterate in far away places in times gone by--was the Picture Roll. The Picture Roll is a 2 foot wide by 3 feet high roll, with a new picture on each page. It sits on a wooden stand, and the pictures can be show as needed by simply lifting those not in use over the top of the stand so the appropriate scene is revealed. Eager young minds could see the picture and learn the verse printed beneath it, while the teacher would tell the story from which the text and the picture were taken. It was simple, colorful, attractive teaching technology--a tool of the trade for child instructors. Pretty much anybody could use it.

Except me. I ran into a snag. With a room full of forty ghetto kids sitting around listening, I turned to the trusty Picture Roll's first scene with a feeling of conscious competence. I'd just completed four years of Bible school a matter of weeks before. Teaching these simple Bible stories to mere children should be a snap.

The picture showed Jesus bending over a lame man, his hand outstretched. The lame man was saying, "If Thou wilt, Thou canst heal me." I read the verse aloud, had the kids repeat it after me. Then, resorting to the Socratic method of instruction, I asked, "What does this mean?"

Immediately the children began chorusing, "Wilt! Wilt! That man Jesus touched the poor guy. Look! His leg has wilted. He can't even walk. Ahh!" I was so appalled at what they'd just taken from a straight forward reading of the King James, I said, "No! Oh, no! It doesn't mean 'wilt, wilt'. It means, "If you wish, you can heal me." The cheerful little chirpers with dirty faces and ragged clothes kept grinning and waiting to learn more. They liked stories about witches who live in gingerbread houses and catch kids and keep them in cages, and cook them. They liked stories about giants who shouted "Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman! I'll beat him, I'll eat him, I'll pound his bones to bread. Then I'll spread him on toast with jam and eat him for breakfast!" Or something similar.

The neighborhood kids who had come to Vacation Bible School liked my stories about Jesus, too. He could just touch people, and they would wilt. Only, I, as storyteller, they were certain, was keeping the secret for dramatic purposes. I said "wilt" meant something else. Of course, they all knew better. But they would play along until the story unfolded more fully.

Only, I knew how that story was going to unfold. I saw I was in deep water, and that maybe I didn't know how to swim as well as I'd thought. Exegeting tenses and participles in Biblical Greek and delving into eschatological distinctions concerning end time events hadn't prepared me for this. I abandoned that page of the Picture Roll as a lost cause, and moved on to something else—flipping to another page at random.

There was the same Jesus as in the first scene, only this time with children crowding around him on every side. He was laying his hands on their heads. Whew! We'd get this matter of Jesus being a hero instead of a villain cleared up quickly, before we sent these little munchkins on to cookies, punch and crafts with an entirely wrong impression.

I held forth boldly again. "Now kids, let's look at this story. Here is our memory text. Everybody say it after me, 'Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not.' They all chimed in, in the best tradition of an audience at a melodrama, repeating the text after me. Then I asked, “What does this verse mean?"

Immediately forty squirming hopscotch theologians began parsing and exegeting the text at hand, as instructed. "Suffer? Suffer? Oh, its Jesus again--that man who touches people and wilts their legs. Yes. He's touching the children so they will suffer! He is putting his hands on their heads. They're going to be wilting like dead daisies!" Suffer the little children. Plain as day. Right there in the King James Version Picture Roll text. If you read it for yourself, you know its true.

I was struck speechless, which for a preacher at any stage of his development, is a remarkable thing. I looked around at all those grinning faces beaming up at me with such good will, expecting me to tell them the truth about Jesus---and I saw they thought I was doing a marvelous job of it, so far.

Finally, I stuttered, "Suffer? Suffer? No, it doesn't mean Jesus touches them and they all suffer and wilt like the man with the lame leg. Suffer doesn't mean 'suffer'. It means 'let'. Jesus is saying, "LET the little children come unto me, don't keep them away." They all looked up at me, grinning. By now they were coming to realize I truly believed the lies I was telling them about words meaning different things than words actually meant. I could see in their eyes they knew I was a total idiot, but they liked me anyway. Because even if I didn't have a clue on God's green earth about the things I was saying, I at least had come and tell them whopping good stories. About Jesus wilting people's legs and making children suffer like dead daisies by simply patting them painfully on the head.

Any teacher who doesn't learn more from his students than they do from him, isn't fit to continue teaching. That week, I purchased a reliable modern translation of the Bible. I didn't want to keep on telling little ghetto kids--who hadn't grown up speaking 500 year old King James English as their second language—more lies about God. I've used a reliable modern language version in my preaching, teaching, and storytelling ever since. It is the only way I could keep looking God in the eye.