Bread, Rice, and Bible Translation

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So I'm reading Psalm 102, and verse 4 says, "My heart is struck down like grass and has withered; I forget to eat my bread."

But my bible has both English (ESV with British spellings) and Chinese (Chinese Union Version, simplified characters) side by side. The Chinese version ends verse 4 with "我忘记吃饭", which, hold up, means I forgot to eat rice.

Or, not exactly. See in Chinese, "吃饭 [chī fàn]" means eat a meal. But the "饭 [fàn]" part comes from the word for rice, because, you know, if you're eating a meal but there's no rice... what are you doing?

You're confusing this baby, that's what you're doing. Image source.

(That's not entirely true. Noodles are a common substitute for rice. And I can think of a few other common Chinese meals that normally wouldn't include rice.)

But my point is, in modern Chinese, "吃饭 [chī fàn]" means eat a meal, which may or may not include rice, though the origin of this term assumes that you're eating rice.

So why does the ESV say "I forget to eat my bread"?

Well let's have a look at some other English translations. Here, I found a whole list. Some say "bread," some say "food," and there's even one that says "I have lost my appetite."

So I'm thinking, the original text in Hebrew probably said "bread" (yep, confirmed), but some translations changed it to "food" because they want to get across the idea that this is a staple food that is not being eaten, and in modern Western culture maybe bread is not as staple-y as it was for the psalmist.

And in Chinese culture, nope bread is not a staple at all. Rice is your staple. Bread is kind of like a dessert.

But my stomach needs bread every day or I don't feel full, so I'm always making sandwiches for myself (it is HARD to find decent sliced bread here!) or going to bakeries to get little bread-type pastry things (though if you're coming from an American/western perspective, whatever you just imagined when you read "bread-type pastry things" is definitely NOT what they have in the Chinese bakeries).

And I get Chinese colleagues asking me all the time, "How can you eat so much bread???!!!" and "You need to eat other things too!" No, seriously guys, Americans eat bread every day. Chinese people eat rice every day. It's the same idea.

But anyway. If the Chinese translation of the bible said bread here, that would totally miss the point of the verse. (It would be like if the English one said "I forget to eat my rice." Us Americans would read that and go "so? I mean we eat rice sometimes but no big deal, you don't like need to eat it.") In that case, "吃饭 [chī fàn]" is a good translation.

But hey, let's check out some other Chinese translations!

Chinese New Version: "我連飯也忘了吃。" "I even forgot to eat." This one again uses that word "饭 [fàn]" which means meals in general but people will assume you're talking about rice with a side of something.

Chinese Contemporary Bible: "我茶饭不思。" Hey this is a fun one! Apparently "茶饭不思" is a 成语 [chéng yǔ], a four-character Chinese idiom! "茶 [chá]" means tea, "饭 [fàn]" means, well, we talked about that, and "不思 [bù sī]" means not thinking about something. So together, it's an idiom that means you totally lost your appetite. Kind of a fun modern translation there, I guess.

In summary, translation is hard. But also really interesting. Maybe the more literal the translation is, the more culture you need to know to actually get the meaning.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 102. To read other people's posts, click here: Do people of faith struggle with pain?

God's actually not our Defender

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Samantha Field's writing is always great, and this part of one of her recent posts really hit me:

However, we’re also asked to think of God as our “Defender.”

I have a problem with that, mostly because God doesn’t defend us.

He promised to do a lot of things– love us, never leave us, forgive us, save us, prepare us, mold us– but he never once promised to “protect us from danger or harm.” My life– all of our lives– is living proof that he doesn’t do this. I was abused. I was raped. Even when the abuse I experienced was done in his name, he did nothing to stop it. Believing that God would “protect me from harm” almost shattered any belief I had because it is so obviously a lie.

Today, I believe that I can trust God, but it’s what I’m trusting him for that matters. I trust him the same way I trust my partner: I trust in his character, in who he is. I don’t trust my partner because I believe that he’ll be able to protect me from all harm– and neither do I trust God to do that. I used to– and when he didn’t come through on this “promise” I believed he’d made to me, I was devastated.

Wait, stop the presses.

I thought Christians were supposed to believe, you know, God protects us. But then bad things happen to good people, and some of us rebels start asking "Where the hell is God?"

I've written about that many times before. Stuff happens that's totally NOT OKAY, and why didn't God do anything, and what the hell does "trusting God" even mean if we can't trust him to not let violence and death happen...?

But here's Field's post, saying God is actually not our Defender, and she seems totally calm and okay with it, and even has a reasonable idea for what "trusting God" can mean, given that God doesn't defend us.

I just totally never heard anything like that before.

And it actually makes sense and is based in reality. Because, as I've said before (and felt like some kind of heretic for saying it), look around you. Look at the world. God doesn't protect people. Well maybe sometimes, but SOOOO not enough.

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But what about what the bible says? Psalms is full of verses about how God is TOTALLY our refuge, and how if we follow him, he will always take care of us.

But the bible is also full of stories of bad things happening to good people, and God not protecting them.

You know, just like the real world.

So maybe now we have an answer for "where was God? where was God?" The answer is that protecting people is just not what he does.

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Also you want to go read the rest of Field's post.

Well that's a mission trip.

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Today I was talking with one of my students, Charlotte. I mentioned something about going to church, and she said, "Oh, you believe Yesu?" (That would be Jesus' Chinese name.) And she said she'd met a new American friend that day who was also a Christian, and had asked her if she wants to have a relationship with Jesus. Charlotte told me, "I don't know if I can understand what she means."

And also, this "new American friend" is part of a group of college students who are visiting Charlotte's university.

For one month.

To study Chinese.

Yep, that's a mission trip.

(Like, could it be more obvious?)

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And I feel a lot of things. First, wow could it be that God is working in Charlotte's life? She just so happened to have a conversation with someone else about Jesus, and then I just so happened to mention to her that I'm a Christian... but wait, I'm not sure what I believe about that whole "God is working in their life!" thing.

Like where did that thought even come from? That's like, straight out of the days long ago when I was "on fire for God."

Also: oh man I want to meet these people! They are me from a few years ago! I really miss being with other Christians- even though I also fear they'll judge me when/if they find out I don't believe all the correct things.

I first came to China on a mission trip and well, you can see I kind of got sucked in. And maybe I want to meet them and tell them how awesome China is! (And when random friends ask me to donate money so they can go on mission trips, I totally do. Because I've been that person asking for money before. And going to China totally changed my life.)

But wait! Charlotte, look out! The real reason they're here is to make people Christians. Should I warn her? Am I supposed to keep the secret as some kind of group loyalty thing? (And also the threat of missionaries being kicked out of China- but I bet the Chinese government also knows it's a mission trip. They weren't born yesterday.)

Uhh... there's nothing to warn about though- I totally expect the mission trip kids to be loving and nice to all their new Chinese friends. They won't do anything disrespectful to her- at least nothing that she would be aware of.

And on that note, hey hold up! Don't treat Charlotte like some kind of mission-trip-project. She's a whole person and she's really great. She's one of my most kind and enthusiastic students. She helps me study Chinese. She's studying art at her university, and she gave me a painting she made. Isn't that the nicest thing ever?

There's nothing wrong with her, nothing that needs to be "fixed" by getting her to find Jesus.

Is somebody excitedly telling their friends, "I shared the gospel with Charlotte!" I don't know how I feel about that. Treating people like some kind of sneaky secret mission.

Like I get it, I did that. You know, I was excited about Jesus and excited about the idea of my friends becoming Christians, so yeah I told other Christians when I "had an opportunity to share the gospel." But now I kind of feel like... isn't it a little weird to talk about people (and speculate about their souls and deep needs) and say things you TOTALLY don't want them to hear you saying?

(Yeah I'm not sure how I feel about evangelism... hmm...)

But anyway, yep, that's a mission trip. Charlotte was so happy to meet them and make friends with them (even though they'll only be here a short time). I know that's a good thing- I just don't know where God fits into it. Or if he even wants to.

Blogaround

1. Series of posts from The Slactivist: Unlearning the lies we learned from the theologians of slavery. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.

2. Why Wright is Wrong About Same-Sex Marriage. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

3. What is Virginity? (posted July 9)



4. This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps (posted July 8) "One time, an old, kind-looking man with a bit of a hunch was standing behind me with just a six-pack of soda, waiting to check out. The entire contents of my cart were splayed out on the conveyor belt. When he noticed the flash of large white paper stubs in my hand, he touched me on the shoulder. I was scared that he was going to give me money; instead he gave me a small, rectangular card. He asked me to accept Jesus into my heart so that my troubles would disappear."

5. I Was A Female “Nice Guy” (posted July 9) "If a relationship started with me doing the asking, it was doomed to fail because that was not God’s plan." A-freakin-men to this.

6. How It Feels to Love and Hate a Sex Offender (posted July 7)

7. God’s triune sovereignty as provider, victim, and rebel (posted July 7) "Jesus stands in solidarity with all the people I have hurt directly through my participation in the world’s injustice and indirectly through my idolatry which is the source of all injustice."

8. Christians worship a child who fled violence in his home country (posted July 11) "But protesters have screamed epithets at them and blocked buses carrying them to processing centers, despite the fact that it is not illegal for people to cross the U.S. border and ask for protection under U.S. law."

"To use naturally occurring events"

From Can Christianity work with a Mr. Rogers God? (Wrestling with “moralistic therapeutic deism”), on Morgan Guyton's blog:

Largely because I’m the son of a scientist, I don’t share Piper and Robertson’s Biblical inerrantist perspective. I suspect that the drought during the reign of King Ahab happened as part of a naturally occurring ecosystem, just as the conquest of Israel by Babylon occurred as a reasonably predictable sociological event in the story of ancient empires. To me, the fact that prophets attributed these acts to God doesn’t mean that the mysterious creator of the universe who is the source of being of every atom is an infinitely large invisible man who gets angry a lot and dives into history at some particular moments to punish people, but not at others. It is rather that the Holy Spirit inspired God’s prophets to use naturally occurring events in his cosmic order as teaching tools to call out God’s people on their idolatry and injustice. I would say that these inspired words of scripture are God’s accommodation of our need for divine teaching in forms that we can grasp. Where I am going to part ways with the inerrantists is when I say that God’s punitive acts according to the testimony of Old Testament prophets are provisionally conditioned to the historical needs of his Israelite people at each phase of their development and should not be analyzed as a primary window into God’s eternal character, for which Jesus is the fully developed, perfectly sufficient revelation. 

Because, wow, I have never ever heard that idea before and wow, now THAT MAKES SENSE.

(the rest of his post is worth reading too)

Evidently this was the site of a horrific mannequin massacre

Just walking through a mall near where I live (in China). Actually it's pretty common to see naked or dismembered mannequins at little shops here, and it's really common for people to just leave huge messes when their store closes.

Oh China.

How Not To Love

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[content note: we're going to discuss a bunch of anti-trans prejudice here]

Okay, you guys, we need to talk about "the Christian response" to transgender people.

Because I read this article, When the Transgender Issue Comes Home, and this needs to stop.

The writer, Josh Bishop, explains that his "sister" has just come out as a transgender man, and Bishop is giving some advice on how Christians should address this "issue."

Basically, the issue of whether trans people can even exist. Bishop speaks of the need for a "response," how the "response" is unavoidable because you have to use either "he" or "she" to talk about him.

And Bishop says he decided he "would call my sister by her new name, Jace. Yet we haven’t transitioned to masculine pronouns, because we can’t refer to her as a man without embracing the claims about sex and gender that make possible her transgender identity."

You guys. If someone asks you to quit calling them "she" and start using "he" and you refuse, you just keep going on with "she" this and "she" that, even though he TOLD YOU TO STOP, we have a word to describe that. It's mean. That's just mean.

That's not standing up for God's truth or anything of the sort. That's just mean.

And speaking of God's truth, this whole article is based on the assumption that oh, we all know that "the transgender issue" is obviously wrong and sinful. There are a few bible verses thrown in here and there, but none of them say, "God made them male and female, which means whichever genitals you have determine what gender you should present as and it's a sin to step outside of that box."

Because, you know, we all know this is wrong. And we should respond to transgender people with our rock-solid ideas and lack of experience and say "no no no, you are wrong. I understand you better than you know yourself."

And don't let actually getting to know trans people change your view! Oh no, wouldn't want to be led astray by emotions like love and compassion! SERIOUSLY???? "Don’t respond only according to personal experience or feelings. Many people 'evolve' in their beliefs about gender and sexuality when someone they know and love comes out of the closet. Yet we must be careful to allow God’s revealed truth to shape how we understand our experiences, rather than the other way around."

In other words, we already know we're right and you're wrong, and we will not listen.

I guess it was pretty clear which direction this article was going to go when, near the beginning, Bishop asked, "How do we resolve the tensions between loving my sister on the one hand, and, on the other, training up our children in the way they should go?" 

Umm... so... why the hell are you trying to teach your children something that's in conflict with "love"?

But oh... oh it gets worse.

He's cutting his trans brother out of his children's lives. In a loving, Christian way, of course.

Oh, you guys. Writing this post, I tried to be nice at first, and then I switched to sarcastic, and now I'm just sad.

Because nothing says "I love you" like "your very existence is harmful to our children and we will not let them meet you ever."

But here's the thing, and maybe this is even sadder. "Good Christians" who do this ACTUALLY GENUINELY BELIEVE THEY ARE BEING LOVING. They really do love those "sinners." They really care about them a lot and feel a lot of love towards them. Bishop says that to respond to this "issue," you must "begin with love" and I really do believe he loves his trans brother.

But the attitude of "I already know the right answer and God agrees with me and I know your life and what you should do better than you know yourself" just completely ruins it.

That's not love, you guys.

That's not love. 

Run, run as fast as possible from any religion that defines love that way.

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See also Libby Anne's response: So This Is Love.

And this video, which gives some actual useful information about being trans:

Blogaround

Image source.

1. What makes a word “real”? (posted June 19) "I’m struck as a teacher that we tell students to critically question every text they read, every website they visit, except dictionaries, which we tend to treat as un-authored, as if they came from nowhere to give us answers about what words really mean."

2. Index to Creationist Claims. I've never seen all this stuff addressed so systematically and thoroughly. This is a really eye-opening site for me.

3. Young Earth Creationism Isn’t Science (posted June 28) "When doing science, you have to be willing for your hypothesis to be wrong."

4. Sex-ed for the religious right: Conception does not occur at ejaculation (posted July 1) "But this, um, misconception fuels a lot of the opposition to emergency contraception in the US."

5. Hobby Lobby Wasn't About Religious Freedom. It Was About Abortion. (posted Jun 30) "Basically, he's making the case that abortion is unique as a religious issue. If you object to anything else on a religious basis, you're probably out of luck."

6. How to Breastfeed Appropriately (posted July 1) "Real life stories: 'I saw a woman breastfeeding in a park and was overcome with desire. I left my wife the same day.' - John, 34, Nebraska"

7. God Loves Human Beings (posted June 18) "While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves real people without distinction. God has no patience with our dividing the world and humanity according to our standards and imposing ourselves as judges over them."

8. This video (h/t to Shaney Irene)

9. 'Seinfeld' at 25: Five reasons nothing is everything (posted July 5)

10. And Bad Theology Beaver.

Leaving purity and knowing the "right answer"

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I have a lot to say about purity culture. It's all about shame and fear, it says a lot of things about God which it has no business saying, it promises a happily-ever-after which is totally not realistic, and basically makes everyone feel like they ruined their whole life by having a crush.

But.

Should people have sex before marriage or not, Perfect Number? Well, best to not. Because, like, God wanted it to be for marriage. And what if it makes you too attached to the person, and then you break up? And you could get pregnant. And and and...

But the truth is, I'm just saying those things because subconsciously, I can't let go of "the right answer," which is of course NO.

Basically, I'm terrified.

I know the right answer has to be NEVER have sex when you're not married. Because it's just far far too scary to think about the alternative. So I grasp around for arguments, but they're just a smokescreen. I can't bear to consider the idea that it could be okay to have sex.

In my heart I still fear that it's true: What if I have sex and regret it for the rest of my life? What if it makes me dirty and broken? What if it means married sex won't be special?

What if purity culture was right?

I know "the right answer"- or rather, the only answer I'll allow myself to think about this topic. There's so much I hate about purity culture, so much we should get rid of, but I can't imagine rejecting this one "right answer."

Is it all connected? Is it true that as long as I believe this is "the right answer," I won't be able to develop an outlook on dating free from fear and shame?

In theory, I don't believe in purity culture. But in practice, I'm too scared to let it go.

Could he really accept me as I am? I mean, REALLY ACCEPT.

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"Come as you are", right?

We read in the bible about how Jesus accepted the tax collectors and prostitutes. Isn't that great. He accepts everyone.

But.

But. When I was a "good Christian" I totally believed that Jesus wants everyone to come as they are, and he accepts them, BUT. But then, you know, after meeting Jesus and starting to follow him, they would change, you know, change so they agreed with the "good Christian" view of things.

Throw open the doors, everyone is welcome! But once they're in, they'll realize the error of their ways, they'll realize how they were so wrong, and they will change to fit in with the party line.

That's "God's work in their lives."

He accepted the tax collectors and prostitutes. Of course. Which means when they first came to Jesus, it was perfectly fine for them to be tax collectors and prostitutes. But surely they would not stay that way. No, that wouldn't be okay.

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And they say Jesus loves me and accepts me as I am. But I don't want that.

Perfect Number, he accepts you as you are, and he will guide you and give you time and help you to change into a "good Christian."

He'll take you back to the way you were before, forgiving all this straying, all this questioning and the blasphemous things I've said on my blog.

Yes, he accepts you as you are, even though you don't believe in purity, and you don't oppose gay rights, and you *gasp* have even been deceived into thinking abortion might sometimes be okay.

It's okay, Perfect Number. Come back to Jesus.

And I fear that's the deal. And that's why I don't want to come back to Jesus.

I won't give him everything. I don't surrender. Obedience to God is not the highest thing in my life.

You guys, I want love to be the highest thing.

And life. And freedom.

And no matter what Jesus says, I won't go along with anything that is, as far as I can tell, incompatible with love and life and freedom.

It was easier back when I belonged to God and God only. There was always one clear answer. But now I exist in opposition to that god, rebellious toward him.

And they say yes, he loves me so much, and he accepts me no matter what.

Would he accept me if I never change? Would it be okay if I go on believing all this crap about feminism, if I spend my whole life arguing that yes, a person can be Christian and support issue XYZ, if I never have a single regret about the "impure" things I do with my boyfriend...

They say he accepts us as we are. But if that means he accepts that yes, beginners are going to be kind of clueless and they need a lot of work, then no deal.

Then I'll keep Jesus at arm's length. And I'll keep wishing I could be with him, but I'm sorry, love comes first.