A Family Bung

We concluded our last village trip with a ‘family bung’ (a family meeting). The meeting was the brain-child of several of our co-translators. They have all attended various training courses and have started to develop an interest in Bible translation, but their families have not. Their families sometimes struggle to understand why we bother to do this work. After all, it requires extra time, extra effort, loss of income, and less family time. Why should they be supportive if all they see are the sacrifices?

We were so excited that they wanted to hold this meeting. We strive to minister as a family and we hope that our co-translators and their families will want to do the same.

I was asked to share at this meeting, and so I prepared a short devotion.

First, I tried to explain what the Bible itself has to say about Bible translation. We read lots of Scripture starting with Creation, moving to Babel, and then on to Pentecost. We tried to show them that God wanted people to spread out and to fill the earth, but people disobeyed. So God gave people different languages to help force them to follow His good design for His creation. And when the Holy Spirit fell on the apostles at Pentecost, they spoke the languages of the people, the people did not miraculously hear and understand a different language. No, the preachers miraculously spoke the languages of the people. God wanted the hearers to encounter him using their own languages. And He still wants us to know and to worship him in our own languages.

Second, I wanted people to understand why the Bible is so important. We looked at many Scriptures to see what the Bible has to say about itself. It is the foundation of our belief (Rom 10:16-17), it is our life (Matt 4:4), it is eternal life (Jon 6:68), it is sweet like honey (Ps 119:103), it prepares us for gospel work (2 Tim 3:16-17), it is truth (John 17:17). And of course, it so much more.

After I finished sharing, I invited everyone to respond and to share as well. Perhaps most surprising to me was that they all seemed so surprised that I addressed these issues mostly by just reading Scripture itself. They told me that when they have issues or questions, they just talk about it among themselves until they come to a consensus about what to do. They never think to ask what the Bible might have to say about it.

One of our prayers is that this work will help people to see that Scripture is the source of wisdom and truth and that people will begin to look to Scripture for the answers they seek. We want the Domung people to run to the God of the Bible and to His Word when they encounter struggles and questions and doubts.