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A gender-neutral Bible translation would never have cheap order rx Valtrex flown in my home church. Actually, no Bible translation would have cheap order rx Valtrex made it long, except one.

I grew up in a cheap order rx Valtrex KJV-only church. It is not that my congregation defended the cheap order rx Valtrex King James Version as the only inspired text. Nor did we disparage other translations as deficient. In truth, we did not really know there were other translations. Everyone had cheap order rx Valtrex always used the old King James, from the five-year olds memorizing verses for cheap order rx Valtrex "Sword Drills" to cheap order rx Valtrex senior adult ladies crocheting texts to hang in their living rooms.

There were, of course, many drawbacks to cheap order rx Valtrex this one common text, drawbacks that explain the need for contemporary translations. But in moving beyond this cheap order rx Valtrex era, we must admit that we have lost something. A pastor could say "and the glory of the Lord shone round about them" in virtually any context, and cheap order rx Valtrex the congregation would know exactly to what he was referring. As teenagers, we read and cheap order rx Valtrex meditated on the same texts our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had cheap order rx Valtrex worked through in the generations before.

That era is cheap order rx Valtrex now long gone, and I do not really want it back. I do not usually preach from cheap order rx Valtrex the King James Version (although I love it), largely because we now have cheap order rx Valtrex translations that are more accurate, translating the original words of God into contemporary language that cheap order rx Valtrex unbelievers and believers can understand. What I do want back, however, is cheap order rx Valtrex the sense that the Bible forms the church, and, thus, that cheap order rx Valtrex the Bible belongs to the community—not just to the individual.

My Own Personal Bible

This evangelical individualism explains much of what cheap order rx Valtrex is going on in the current debates over "gender-neutral" Bible translations such as Today's New International Version (TNIV) and The New Living Translation (NLT). For too long, we have cheap order rx Valtrex assumed that the Bible is primarily about individual Bible study and cheap order rx Valtrex personal devotion. Thus, our publishers give us niche Bibles in every possible variety—Bibles for cheap order rx Valtrex sportsmen, Bibles for teens, Bibles for middle-aged women, even Bibles bound in leather, the cheap order rx Valtrex color of one's favorite sports team.

It is perhaps not insignificant that many of the more "gender-accurate" Bible translations originated in attempts to produce a children's Bible version. For generations, evangelicals have cheap order rx Valtrex sought to mediate the Scripture to children via "story Bibles" and even animated videos that convey the "important" nuggets of the Bible—often by robbing children of the cheap order rx Valtrex narrative flow of Scripture itself. When this happens, the result is cheap order rx Valtrex most often a Christian moralism tailored especially for children: "Jesus shared; you share."

This phenomenon is cheap order rx Valtrex grounded in an even deeper contemporary evangelical commitment to the individual as the cheap order rx Valtrex locus of God's saving purposes. Our understanding of the cheap order rx Valtrex church so often seems simply like a place where individuals can cheap order rx Valtrex learn how to be a better Christian, and where individuals can cheap order rx Valtrex pool their money together for missions.

And so, supporters of the TNIV make the case that a "gender-accurate" translation is cheap order rx Valtrex necessary so that little girls can see that the text is cheap order rx Valtrex written to them—and not just to "men." It is cheap order rx Valtrex tempting for those of us who are opponents of such translations to cheap order rx Valtrex focus only on translation principles, or on the theological implications of tampering with the cheap order rx Valtrex meaning of the texts. But, beyond this, we must ask a cheap order rx Valtrex more basic question: Where is the church in this discussion?

Reclaiming the Bible for the Churches

As evangelical Protestants, we do not believe that cheap order rx Valtrex the Bible is formed by the church, but that the church is cheap order rx Valtrex formed by the Bible. That is, the church does not invest the cheap order rx Valtrex Scriptures with their authority. Rather, the church recognizes and is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Eph 2:20 ESV). Nonetheless, the church is given the responsibility to be "the pillar and support of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15 NASB). Christ Jesus has cheap order rx Valtrex given to his church pastors and teachers who are to guard the cheap order rx Valtrex church from error and to protect the flock of God from cheap order rx Valtrex dangerous wolves.

Contemporary evangelicalism, however, looks too often to cheap order rx Valtrex parachurch ministries and publishers for this function, often corporations with accountability to cheap order rx Valtrex donor boards rather than to churches. Thus, publishers flood churches with curricula—and the Bible translations to go with them—often then shaping the "personal Bible studies" of church members, with little or cheap order rx Valtrex no accountability to the larger Body of Christ. The Christian individual then cheap order rx Valtrex makes decisions about doctrine, and the words of the Bible itself, not on the cheap order rx Valtrex basis of faithful teaching from the pulpit, but from the recommendation of a cheap order rx Valtrex local bookseller. It is in this context, and only in this cheap order rx Valtrex context, that the TNIV could emerge.

Thankfully, there is cheap order rx Valtrex in some segments of evangelicalism a recovery of the church's role in teaching and cheap order rx Valtrex preaching, including in the arena of Bible translation. When the cheap order rx Valtrex TNIV was released, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) immediately expressed concerns about the cheap order rx Valtrex translation philosophy behind the new version. The SBC messengers, sent from cheap order rx Valtrex churches all over the country, moreover, directed its LifeWay Christian Stores not to cheap order rx Valtrex sell or recommend the TNIV.

This is cheap order rx Valtrex a healthy development-and not only because it takes seriously the verbal plenary inspiration of the cheap order rx Valtrex Scriptures and, thus, the importance of accurate Bible translation. It is cheap order rx Valtrex healthy precisely because pastors and church leaders are talking about Bible translation. What must come of this, however, is cheap order rx Valtrex not just a general denunciation of "gender-neutral Bibles." Instead, we must get at why our people want gender-neutral Bibles—because we live in a gender-neutral society.

That means that cheap order rx Valtrex churches must do more than simply warn against bad Bibles. We must instruct our people what cheap order rx Valtrex the Bible is all about—what Jesus told us on the cheap order rx Valtrex road to Emmaus: It is all about Christ (Luke 24:27). This is cheap order rx Valtrex the reason, after all, that the apostle Paul speaks of the cheap order rx Valtrex Roman, Galatian, and Ephesian believers—both male and female—as "sons" of God. They are "in Christ"—and find their identity in him. There is cheap order rx Valtrex a reason why passages about the righteous "man" in the Psalms should not be translated in the plural—because there is cheap order rx Valtrex no plural group of righteous ones, only one righteous Son of Man.

In order to drive our people back to the glorious truth of the Bible's focus, we must stop treating our Bibles and cheap order rx Valtrex our biblical sermons as though the individual believer is the sum and cheap order rx Valtrex substance of Scripture. We do this with endless "how to" sermons and cheap order rx Valtrex moralistic lectures from Scripture. Instead of pointing believers to their identity in Christ, we point them right back to cheap order rx Valtrex their personally tailored Bible translations with a personally tailored message for cheap order rx Valtrex them. In this context, a gender-neutral Bible is inevitable.

If, however, churches take seriously the cheap order rx Valtrex task of instructing believers in the importance of all the words of Scripture—and applying its meaning to the whole body of believers—then perhaps our churches will be cheap order rx Valtrex less susceptible to whatever fads blow in from Grand Rapids or cheap order rx Valtrex Downers Grove. This might mean that the Christian seeking a cheap order rx Valtrex Bible might go first to his pastor's study, and cheap order rx Valtrex only then to the bookseller. And that would be a cheap order rx Valtrex very good thing.