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A woman who used to live in an evangelical compound under controversial pastor Tony Alamo says she believes the allegations of potential sexual abuse of minors in Arkansas are true.

The story of the Kuduk Bible translation has been nagging at my mind this week. According to reports, this translation so offended the people of the Indian province of Jharkhand that people were rioting in the streets, debating it hotly in the political assembly and the local Bible Society quickly responded by apologizing and removing the Bibles from circulation. As a Bible translator, I can only look on with a mixture of envy and regret. First, envy that a translation could make such a splash. How often do translations come out in other parts of the world and scarcely cause a ripple? And second, regret that the Bible Society would pull the offending books so quickly. But at the same time, I expect that a Bible society walks a fine line in a region like Jharkhand where a tiny minority of Christians live in a delicate balance with a majority Hindu and Islamic population.

This brings up for me what is a very troubling question: Why doesn’t my Bible offend me? The carnage and ethnic hatred portrayed in the Old Testament is not much different from the ongoing scenes of centuries old ethnic hatreds in Georgia. So why do I revere the story in The Book but despise the situation in the news? And the tacit approval of slavery in the New Testament is not so much different from the passivity of the vast majority of professing Christians in the face of the genocidal abortion of this century. Why am I not offended?

Far more offensive is, or I should say ought to be, the plain teaching of Jesus Christ which somehow we have managed to spiritualize into insignificance. The materialism and worldliness of American churches ought to shock us. It ought to cause us to run from our prosperity-soaked self-help sessions shouting Ichabod!, “the glory of the Lord has departed.” Our failure to either be offended by the Gospel or to align our lives with it has put us in a particularly weak bargaining position with the world. This was highlighted for me during the recent spate of online debates about homosexuality. Advocates of gay rights in the church ask very rightly why they should be asked to give up their lifestyle choices when straight Christians have not denied themselves anything. Rates of premarital sex and divorce are not appreciably different within the church when compared to the world at large. Our materialism as Western Christians is the aspiration and model of prosperity theology throughout Africa. Yet we want gays to renounce their lifestyles while we justify our own.

So perhaps we need to look at the Bible again and seek to understand its pacification in our time. Have we tamed and spiritualized the Message to the point where it is as sharp as a two-edged wet noodle? Should our activism directed at the world instead be turned inward so that judgment might begin in the family of God? Should our seeker-centrism be transformed into seeking the lost and visiting orphans and widows in their distress?

I hope I haven’t offended anyone…

On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. —Acts 8:1-4

Persecution is nothing new to the church—the above passage describes a campaign of persecution launched in the earliest days of the Christian church. Persecution of the church (sometimes even at the hands of fellow Christians) of some sort has been present in every century since Jesus’ time. And it’s a reality today, even if those of us living in relatively free Western societies find it hard to believe.

There are several ministries in the Gospel.com community that focus on the plight of the persecuted church around the world. Perhaps most prominent is the Lausanne World Pulse newsletter, which has some excellent articles describing the state of the persecuted church today:

• Lessons from the Persecuted Church, which lists five important things we can learn from the existence of persecution—and which suggests that persecution should not be seen as an abnormal part of the Christian walk.
• Essays about the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world, Indonesia, North Korea, and elsewhere.

Perhaps the most well-known instance of persecution took place under the Roman Empire in the early centuries of the church. For a good rundown of that era of persecution, this transcript from Christian History Institute goes over the basic history.

Over at Sermon Index you can find a classic George Whitefield sermon exhorting Christians to hold firm under persecution, whatever form it takes. Also at that site is the inspiring story of John Cennick, who suffered greatly for his faith.

There are many other resources on the topic of the persecuted church within the Gospel.com community; if you’ve checked out the above links and want more, see the Persecuted Church page.

We asked you last week to vote and tell us which Biblical languages, if any, you’ve studied. Here’s how the results broke down:

• 40% of you have studied Greek. This was a pleasant surprise, and suggests that many of our readers are pastors or church leaders. Or just really smart. (Or both.)
• Coming in at second place are the 38% who haven’t studied a Biblical language but would like to at some point. To you I say: go for it! It’s not as frighteningly difficult as you might think (until you get to Participles).
• 31% of you have studied ancient Hebrew.
• An honest 13% say that they haven’t studied a Biblical languages and have no plans to. Fair enough.
• And finally, 3% say they’ve studied Aramaic. Truly my friends, you are the Jack Bauers of the theological world.

Chris just posted about the challenge of getting people to switch Bible versions. Taking off from that post, then, is our new poll: How long have you been reading your current Bible version? Or to word it slightly differently, when was the last time you switched Bible versions? (And I’m asking about the Bible you consider your “primary” go-to Bible version—I know all you Greek and Hebrew scholars probably have bookshelves weighed down with different Bible versions.)

Vote in the poll off to the right, and use the comment section below to tell us what Bible version you’re using right now, why you chose it, and how long you’ve been using it!

How Sherwood Baptist Church became a hot spot for making Christian movies–including ‘Facing the Giants’ and the upcoming ‘Fireproof,’ starring Kirk Cameron.

Evangelical church leaders plan to circulate letters to presidential candidates.

State Department blasts China on religious freedom.

Polling data are muddled by issues of how to define this key voting bloc.