A meme and a dilemma

Jeff has tagged me with Brother Maynard's meme to name my favorite book in the Bible. It's been interesting reading the responses of the bloggers I follow. Anyway, mine's easy, and totally unoriginal (both Cindy and Grace have mentioned it, too). It's John's Gospel. I love the Gospels, the different aspects and flavors each brings to the life and teachings of Jesus. But it's John who makes me love Jesus and want to believe He's the Christ. John makes Jesus someone I can relate to. It's John who captures the heart of Christianity in one sentence. So that's my response to the meme.

But here's my dilemma and it's been ongoing for a long time. I am somewhat of a Bible translations freak (and in fact now own probably three or four more Bibles since I wrote that). My first journey away from Christianity was triggered by discovering Biblical criticism - how could I believe in God and Christ if I couldn't believe in the texts proclaiming them? It took two decades to recover from that, but the echoes still linger. Just the other day I was reading in John in my TNIV The Books of the Bible (which I like, a lot) and discovered in a footnote that the following passage is considered suspect because it isn't in any of the earliest translations. And yet it's one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible. I love the Jesus presented here:

but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

"No one, sir," she said.

"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

What to do? What to think? (And what was He writing on the ground? I've always wondered.) Anyway, that's my deal to figure out. It's things like this that actually make me shrink back from learning more about theology - I can see it just killing my belief deader than a doornail (again). I wonder how pastors get through school with any of it intact?

Back to the meme. I nominate the following folks. Make sure to link back to Brother Maynard's original post.

• Chris
• Tom (maybe pastors aren't supposed to play favorites but I still wanna know :o)
  
• Dan (ditto - here's something else positive you can write about! :o)
  
• Sam
• Tina