Beth Moore recently likened the author of The Message “translation” – perhaps the worst Bible translation in the history of mankind – to Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, and Ludwig von Beethoven. If you know anything about Bible translation, this is face-palmingly stupid.
Beth Moore is to a serious theologian what Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez is to a political scientist. She’s a woman who’s lived well past her cuteness when she first got attention as a church aerobics instructor in tights. It’s become increasingly apparent that Lifeway writes her books and Bible studies and slaps her name across it as a marketing tool because when Beth Moore speaks without the filter of an editing board, her vast ignorance of theology is palpable.
Eugene Peterson, who died in October of 2018, came out in support of gay marriage in 2017. He walked back his comments after Lifeway threatened to pull his material.
There is no one – and I mean no one – who thinks that Peterson “meticulously translated” the Scriptures. The Message is famous for exactly how bad a paraphrase it is (calling it a “translation” is stretching it). Peterson merely took the Biblical text and made it say what he wanted it to say, much like Beth Moore does in her preaching.
Consider this example provided by Answers in Genesis, which provides a side-by-side comparison between an actual Bible translation and Peterson’s subjective butchering of the Text in passages related to homosexuality.
The Message intentionally twisted God’s Word to take away references to homosexuality, or instead, interjected lust and love into the Text to ensure that pro-gay preachers (like Moore now seems to be) have an interpretive way out.
Peterson also endorsed Rob Bell’s Love Wins, and embraced Rob Bell as a brother in Christ because he “had been baptized.”
An advocate of the now largely defunct Emergent Church, Peterson actually encouraged people not to read or study the Bible. Peterson created a Bible paraphrase that was as least like the Bible as humanly possible, because Peterson wanted people to avoid God’s Word as much as possible.
Peterson once said in an interview…
The importance of poetry and novels is that the Christian life involves the use of the imagination; after all, we are dealing with the invisible. And, imagination is our training in dealing with the invisible, making connections… I don’t want to do away with or denigrate theology or exegesis, but our primary allies in this business are the artists… One of the Devil’s finest pieces of work is getting people to spend three nights a week in Bible studies…
Well, why do people spend so much time studying the Bible? How much do you need to know? We invest all this time in understanding the text which has a separate life of its own and we think we’re being more pious and spiritual when we’re doing it. But it’s all to be lived. It was given to us so we could live it. But most Christians know far more of the Bible than they’re living. They should be studying it less, not more. You just need enough to pay attention to God…
Study is normally an over-intellectualized process… I’m just not at all pleased with all the emphasis on Bible study as if it’s some kind of special thing that Christians do, and the more they do the better
And yet, this isn’t’ the first time Beth Moore has said such glowing things about this pro-gay, Emergent Bible-butcherer. When he passed away, Moore said that she hoped God would meet him in Heaven with a citation from The Message.
It may sound elitist. It may sound misogynistic. It may sound sexist, but…Beth Moore is a twit. She’s a simple-minded woman who would best serve humanity by going back to being an aerobics instructor. She’s not fit to teach, to preach, or to have an adult doctrinal discussion. She’s a wild-eyed lunatic with way too much make-up, who is being abused by evangelical elitists who feel that her popularity among housewives might help them pull evangelicalism to the left. No one takes Beth Moore seriously. No one thinks she’s a decent Bible teacher, except those who’ve never had one.
Beth Moore needs to crochet and maybe make sandwiches, but she does not need to be preaching.
