“The Massage” – Remixed (?)

I’m playing with the idea of a spoof on The Message.

The Massage: A Satirical, Postmodern “Relaxation” of the Good Book.

I think Eugene Peterson’s retelling of the biblical narrative, while well-intentioned, is too-often an oversimplification of much more complex source material.  It’s also full of laughable (yes, also well intentioned) idioms that were out of vogue before his translations were ever published.

Moreover, Scripture itself is full of all sorts of problematic texts.  Spong calls these the “sins of Scripture.”   Phyllis Bird refers to “Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities” throughout the canon.  The marginalization of women, as well as racial and sexual minorities are constant themes throughout the Bible.

And science?  Well that’s just it: it’s so silly to ask an ancient collection of texts to support modern constructs that hadn’t even been fathomed yet: gravity?  Time and space?  Spherical earth?  Evolution?   C’mon.

So if Eugene Peterson can “modernize” the Bible with “hip” Baby-Boomer-relevant language, why can’t we have some fun playing with scripture from a satirical, liberal, postmodern vantage?

Relax, that’s what a massage is all about…