Inductive study of the Message!?!

By: Augusto C.  at photo.net

"Beer is good and sex is better, but never should they go together". This was one of the refrains of our freshman orientation at the libertine liberal arts college I attended. Upperclassman (perhaps some with considerable hypocrisy) chanted the rhyme to remind us not to mix inebriation with lechery. I suppose there was some wisdom there [emphasize some, not wisdom].

Now fast forward ten years... This trimester I'm teaching a course on the book of Ephesians, as a means of looking at the teachings of the primitive Christian communities, and also as a sort of introduction to Christian ethics. I've taught similar courses twice, and have used the opportunity to present some basic tools of inductive Bible study (as popularized by Intervarsity: observation-interpretation-application).

All good and well, except that this year I chose to use the text of Eugene Peterson's the Message, instead of the ESV as I've previously done. I personally love the Message with all its quirks and Americanisms and poetic pastoral wisdom, and last trimester with these students, the Message was an effective means of bringing color to the narratives of Jesus' life and teaching. But this last week as we were digging into Ephesians 4:1-16 together, the Beer&Sex refrain was brought to mind: "The Message is good, and inductive Bible study is better, but never should they go together!"

What a mess. Where the ESV calls the Ephesians to be "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace", Peterson calls for "pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences". Ignoring the fact that the Message omits the Spirit (although, can we really ignore that?), how do I explain to these EFL students what "mending fences" means? Do we have to bring the whole Robert Frost poem in, and exegete that, in order to properly exegete Ephesians 4? Also, doesn't the whole concept of "good fences make good neighbors" contradict what we were reading in Ephesians 2 the other week about the wall of enmity being torn down? Maybe not.

My students got snagged around verse 14, too, where Peterson translates "No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up". It sounded like intolerance to my students, rather than the culmination of the gift-giving of Christ as in the original structure.

I still love the Message and find it useful. I also just came across the wikipedia article on the Message where Peterson is quoted as saying "I would never recommend it be used as saying, 'Hear the Word of God from The Message.'" So it's likely that Peterson would join me in affirming: "The Message is good, and inductive Bible study is better, but never should they go together!"