Last week I proposed a definite link between Ben & Jerry's new ice cream, Hubby, Hubbyand Zondervan's announcement to revise the NIV.
"How in the world...?" you say. Not that Bibles and ice cream have much to do with each other, directly. Come to think of it, the only dairy product mentioned in the Bible (besides milk) is curds...
But both announcements demonstrate how our culture is in the grip of the same homogenizing spirit of the age - that tendency of our modern world to reduce all true variation and diversity into a single featureless mass.
Keep in mind that the creation story in Genesis one is an account of God starting with a featureless mass and creating a livable world by bringing about variation and diversity.
We read there that "the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters" (1:2).
The Hebrew phrase rendered "formless and empty" (NIV) is found elsewhere only in Jeremiah 4:23 where the prophet foresees the destruction to be wrought upon Israel by Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon's armies. Their scorched earth policy leaves the land in ruins (Jer. 4:20) so that it is "formless and empty" - uninhabitable.
But in Genesis one God creates a wonderfully habitable world by creating distinctions in the elemental mass: in v.3 light and darkness are differentiated to create day and night; next the waters on the earth is separated from the waters in the sky by an expanse called "sky" or "heaven"; then, the waters were caused to gather into one place so that dry land appeared.
The point is it is the very distinction of one thing from another that creates the edenic habitability out of the original chaotic formlessness. It is at this point, within the elements so differentiated, that God then sets living things - plants and animals. Significantly, among the living creatures the only ones in which this same distinction is highlighted is in human beings.
In their case God says, "'Let us make man in our image'... So God made man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them" (Gen.1:26-27). Again, this distinction among the sexes is part of the variety that makes for habitability and which God calls "very good" (Gen.1:31).
This brings us to Ben & Jerry's and proposed revision of the NIV. Both of these stories represent an inability to recognize - if not an outright rejection of - the created distinctions which make for a habitable world.
Homosexuals (because they do not differentiate sexually) cannot reproduce - the most fundamental step in creating a stable (habitable) society.
The NIV revisions likewise, will (most likely) involve abandoning the sexual distinction between male and female (so explicit in the Genesis account) involved in a gender neutering of the biblical text.
Though the chairman of the translation team, Douglas Moo, is not an ideological feminist who would advocate gender neutering, the Christian Postarticle cited states "those on the revising team cannot predict what will happen with gender usage when they begin their work on the new NIV." It will most likely accommodate the political correctness of gender neutrality which has been long forced upon English speakers as if it were a natural linguistic development.
Final word: Jeremiah laments the destruction upon Israel in terms he purposely borrows from Genesis - "formless and empty." Why? Because in the peoples' idolatry they were unable to make the distinction between what was holy and what was unholy - between idols which their hands created and God who is uncreated. Therefore, their society is destroyed and their land is ruined - the very creation is undone.
The church today is suffering the same willful blindness in abandoning those distinctions which make society habitable. Changing the text of the Bible makes it all the easier.
