Hebrews 4:16

I am working my way through reading the entire bible this year along with my church.  My church makes these bookmarks every month that have each day’s reading on it. So what if I’m nine days behind!

The other night I was reading Hebrews chapter 4. Hebrews is a fairly popular book if you grew up in church like I did, so I have read it a hundred times or more. I recently bought a new bible so as to read everything fresh, without all the notes and underlines and pages falling out of my other ones. Anyway, apparently they updated the New Living Translation in July 2004. (I have no idea why, but I actually read the first page after the table of contents that says “A Note to Readers.” – this is how I found out about the update). My last NLT bible was the 1996 version. So, this one is a bit different. Some of it bothers me. Actually maybe that began with the horrible typo that was included in “A Note to Readers” – things like that mess me up inside. Typos in your holy bible. I mean – if they are gonna honk up a simple elementary school level letter to readers, how do you know the rest isn’t honked up…you know what I mean?

Hebrews 4:16. This is a fairly popular verse in the circles I used to run in.
“So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. there we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”
For some reason, it sorta stuck out in my mind this time. The word “boldly.”
Who, in their right mind, will show up boldly to God’s throne and ask for mercy…like they deserve it? Like I deserve it? I took out the dictionary (okay, actually I used the dictionary app on my iphone) and looked up the word bold. Here is what I found.

BOLD:
1. not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff; courageous and daring
2. not hesitating to break the rules of propriety; forward; impudent
3. Necessitating courage and daring; challenging
4. beyond the usual limits of conventional thought or action; imaginative:
5. Striking or conspicuous to the eye; flashy; showy;
6. Steep; abrupt
and so on..

I struggle with this. It says to come boldly to the throne of our gracious God, but scripture also teaches humility, repentance…and the like. When I think of repentance, I think of brokenness, of regret, remorse; Not BOLD, Courageous, without hesitation,  or daring.

Things like this make me question interpretation as a whole. Not because I believe it is necessarily flat out wrong, but because I wonder if the author truly meant something different. Something our language doesn’t translate into powerful meaning, or any meaning at all.

I remember when I was a young teenager, still attending the church I grew up in, sitting in my youth pastors office going over this same issue. About how it seemed everything was up for interpretation. I remember telling him “I don’t care what I think, what you think, or what someone else thinks about it…all I really want is the truth.” The fact of what was supposed to be conveyed.  Sometimes when I read scripture, I wonder if we are all playing one big huge global game of “telephone.” Someone starts with a simple sentence or phrase, “Jonny is wearing blue socks,” and passes this message on to the next person and the next and the next and eventually someone says “Suzie has long new locks!” And to be honest, it’s usually not even that close!

I guess it will always be this way. I will always be reading someone else’s interpretation of the bible. Hoping they got it right. Hoping there were no ulterior motives in the translation process, all the while wondering, questioning and yes, sometimes even doubting.

Advertisement