I have finally bought my English Holy Bible about a couple of weeks ago. Why bible? Because I am a learner, and I have always been searching for meaning. If I have to tell the story of my spiritual journey, it could be dozens of posts and might still not complete, let alone understood by the reader, so I‘ll just write a quick summary.
I was an inherently frustrate man – or boy perhaps – about the way I was, and the way I should had been; I never feel comfortable in the way of people in general, and even in the way I was or still am now; I never quite satisfy with the common answer about the purpose of all thing, and about how things should be, for the world, people, and me, anything, you name it. Well of course, many shares my frustration at some certain level, but trust me when I say that it is very different in my case. Many choose to shut their eyes and deny the frustration, or do nothing about it, some even don’t realize that they are frustrated and carry on with their lives. But for me the frustration never stops and it was like “I can’t go on living like this”.
So there came the start of my journey of self-discovery. It had brought me a long way and start from life-enhancing novel like Paulo Coelho’s (particularly The Alchemist) and Mitch Albom’s books, which are good, but once I get their main idea – seriously – there aren’t much left for me to learn from them anymore, but those still offer good reading tough. I scour through martial arts philosophies, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, histories of great men, self-assessed psychiatry – a little bit of a lunatic I guess – ,and finally Awareness – Which by far is the most influential reading of mine – and other Anthony De Melo’s books, and some long discussions with colleagues who share about the same level of frustration. And in the end my search has brought me right to the one that I have always avoid, Catholic Christianity. Why was I avoiding it? Because at that point, I thought that religion acts like doctrines which truth can’t be questioned, and to have questioned it, is considered infidelity – Which I think are the most fucked-up opinion of many religious fanatics. And those years of searching are the one that helps me shaping my spiritual maturity so that I am ready to finally learn about the religion that had been fated to me since the day I born without the same prejudice that I once had, and also thanks to it, I will not fall into some religious fanatics – which in my opinion have hampered the beauty of the sacred teaching and successfully mislead many devotees into shallow and false theological understanding by manipulating their insecurities.
Now why English? Because in learning something, I always tend to be an idealist. I think that a source of translation is always less tainted and unbiased compare to the translation itself. And since I will never be able to speak in Greek or Hebrew-Aramaic, the closest I can get is the direct translation from it, which is an English bible, and even our local Indonesian Holy Bible is a translation from the English one. And the other reason is because I simply love English. I think as a language, English is at a whole new level compare to Bahasa, so expect me to post some new-learned vocabulary from the Holy Bible.
So I discuss my options with a friend of mine whose uncle happens to be a Catholic priest and a Holy Bible scholar at the same time about which version of translation that offers both the combination of unbiased translation yet at the same time manage to retain the literary beauty of the language. So here it is, The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) Catholic Edition: Anglicized Text Holy Bible. Now that I finally have got one, and fortunately actually reading it at least until now, hopefully this bible really helps me in understanding His way.
Trivia: It is interesting to me that this version is a result from a team of translator that includes Catholic, Protestant, Judaism, and Orthodox representatives. The difference is that both Catholic and Orthodox Christians agreed to keep the Deuterocanonical – A.K.A Apocryphal, written in Greek instead of Hebrew-Aramaic – books, and try to keep it in its original order – instead of putting it in separated section like Indonesian Holy Bible does –, while the rest, doesn’t. And of course, Judaism will not include the Gospel and the New Testament in their holy bible since they are the one who actually crucify Jesus. Hahaha…
