The Message’s Watering Down of Biblical Womanhood
The Message’s interpretation of Titus 2:3-5:
“Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior. “
Compare this to the KJV:
“The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becomes holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”
The Message wrote “by looking at them (older women)” instead of “that they may teach the young women.” So older women don’t need to teach the younger women according to The Message. The younger women just need to look at the older women. Oh, right! I sure didn’t know how to love my husband by just looking at older women who had good marriages. I just thought they were married to better men than I was. I needed an older woman to TEACH me how to love my husband.
The Message leaves out a few words that the KJV uses such as chaste, discreet, good, and sober but I guess virtuous and pure can take the place of chaste. What about being discreet, good, and sober? Young women sure need to be taught these important qualities since I see many young women lacking them.
Then The Message changes “keepers at home” to “keep a good house.” Therefore, young women don’t need to have their lives revolve around their homes (“looking well to the ways of her household” as the Proverbs 31 woman was known for doing) but can have careers and do what they want as long as they “keep a good house.” I am sure most women much prefer this way to describe being homemakers instead of being “keepers at home” which is too restrictive in their minds.
The Message completely leaves out “obedient to their husbands” because this is offensive to women today just as being “keepers at home” is. These same women who get offended have no problems obeying their boss but there’s no way they will obey their husbands. Look, every institution has a leader and marriage is no different. God ordained husbands to be the leaders of the home for order and peace. Two leaders never work!
Wow, did The Message water down the final phrase! Instead of “that the word of God be not blasphemed,” the authors wrote, “We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior.” Blaspheme means to speak evil about. When young women fail to obey Titus 2:4, 5, their lives speak evil about the word of God. It’s a lot different than simply looking down on “God’s Message.” Make sure your lives don’t cause others to speak evil of God’s holy Word and please, don’t read The Message.
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
Revelation 22:19
6 thoughts on “The Message’s Watering Down of Biblical Womanhood”
The Message “Bible” is very New Age and pretty much changes everything to mean something totally different from the KJV. I highly recommend steering clear of The Message.
I’m having a weird crisis…
All this Biblical stuff is great but it’s not really helping me with my day to day problems and feelings.
My future husband had a bachelor party the other month. I admit to always being on edge as I know his friends are no friends of mine.
10 days before the party I get a message from his friend regarding the party being on the next Saturday and apologizing for Forgetting to Notify Me or Asking Me for Possible Dates…and hoping that we hadn’t made any plans.
I was chill and said ‘Yeah whatever’ even though we had made plans to go visit my mother for the weekend and stay overnight. But they were easily changed plans.
But there were a few other things that were important…1) I had planned some special romantic time as that was my peak fertility weekend 2) My husband hasn’t been sleeping well and Friday is late night day yet the boys wanted to come at like 6 am 3) I was working at 4 am that Saturday and wouldn’t be home to let anyone in
So at first I just hinted at the party and made it clear that for the next two weeks he needed to go to bed early.
But then the following monday, 3 days later, his parents called and said they needed to spend the night at our house.
And I was like, Your bachelor party is Saturday and all the men are going to storm the house at 6 am. You better tell your parents.
So then his friend contacted me and I told him ‘Hey I told my husband about the surprise party, he knows, just come over with the men and have breakfast’
And the friend Lost it On Me. I had ruined my husband’s surprise and was the most horrible person on the planet.
What was worse is the friend said ‘Why didn’t you call your husband’s parents and tell them privately about the party?’ (Making a dig at the fact I don’t have a relationship nor want a relationship with my husband’s divorced/remarried parents)
What’s worse is my husband agrees with his friend. I ruined his party. I ruined the surprise. Why didn’t I call his parents instead of telling him? It was just me being passive aggressive and trying to ruin HIS party (a party supposedly in celebration of being married/marrying me.)
First of all, Surprise Parties are for Children. Second of all, I don’t want to be married to a child. Third of all, This is Insane!
I’m really sitting here going…I’m in trouble for this? What the heck happened to the world?
I’m really mad.
A surprise party (the surprise part) is more important than his wife.
It’s one month before the ‘second’ church wedding and there is a part of me that says ‘RUN! RUN! RUN!!!!!!!!’
You can’t run if your already married. Woman to woman I say this to you so I know my own tendencies and they seem like yours a bit.
You had agreed to the party, you should have done it with a good attitude. You should have helped make alternate plans if it wasn’t a good time to have the party.
Surprise parties are fun at any age. There is nowhere in the Bible (or any other book about being an adult) that says they are only for children. Which leads to the next point.
You did ruin the surprise. You should just humbly apologize (key word humbly) and call his friend about figuring out how to salvage it.
For your own future happiness you should lower your expectations all the way down to the ground (lower if possible) ? Your husband probably will probably miss your expectations of maturity in some way until he is 80. That is a little tongue in cheek but just about every frustration we women have with our husbands is based on them not meeting our expectations. It doesn’t matter if you feel the expectation is so minimal a 5 year old should meet it.
Bottom line, from your account and words you are clearly in the wrong here. (I’ve been there too MANY times so don’t feel lonely). It will serve you very well in the future if you remove all your expectations and not take fun so seriously. ❤️
There are other translations that are out that are doing away with gender pronouns and referring to God as both male and female. (ie NIV 2018 edition) This is just another way Satan is deceiving Christians into supporting female pastors in the church, among other things. We need to beware and teach our children from the older translations of the Bible.
Laura,
Correct me if I’m misunderstanding this, but it sounds to me like you were living with your “husband” (fiance at the time) and having sex. Do you not understand that the Bible teaches that sex is sin outside of marriage? In comparison, the surprise party issue is quite insignificant. If faith in Christ is of no importance to you, then I am surprised you are at this blog, intended for Christian wives to transform their lives to be what God desires.
She says many times that they’re already married.