The Message: A paraphrase, not a translation

A friend emailed me and asked what I thought of the Message
as a Bible, and these are the thoughts I shared with her...

I do have a copy of the Message. It is an interesting thing
to me in our culture is that so often we want things to be
easy for us.  The Message is a paraphrase.  When it first
came out, everyone knew that and looked at as such.  But,
with the popularity of The Purpose Driven Life (which
doesn't differentiate between translations and paraphrases,
but says at the back of the book how good it is to read
different versions so that we can understand it differently),
the message came to be viewed (I think) in popular Christian
culture as much more of a Bible that can be read as a
primary Bible, essentially as a translation.  That is
disconcerting to me.  I believe that it is God and the Holy
Spirit that help us to understand the Word.

I don't think the NIV or ESV are culturally irrelevant and
hard to understand.  But, I think it is easier to read and
digest the message, there isn't a lot of gnawing and
chewing or meditating on that has to be done to get the
meaning of a passage.  I've seen more and more Bible studies
using the Message as the version that they quote (or the
NLT) and it unsettles me.  I did a Bible study back in
September on my own that was like that and I wasn't crazy
about it.  The Bible study I'm doing now compels you to
look up the verses (passages rather than verses) and is
really good. =) But, the biggest difference between the
two studies is that the first encouraged the reader to
infer and read into what the Bible said and the second
that I'm doing now doesn't.  I think it's dangerous to
infer and put yourself in the shoes of the people in
the Bible.  It doesn't bother me if it's a few times in
a study, but when it's throughout the whole thing, it
unsettles me.  This is important to me because a few
years ago when I read a book about Bathsheba and then
went back to the scripture, I realized I had inferred
so much about the story over the years that isn't in
the Bible!  I was shocked, but took it as a caution to
be careful and to know what is in the Word.  And
that's the same reason I get concerned about para-
phrases.  I don't want to read things into the Bible
that the Bible doesn't really say.

As far as paraphrases go, I do like the Message much
more than the NLT (New Living).  I discovered this
year that the NLT chose to revise the Living Bible to
include gender neutral language =(  It came out at the
same time as the TNIV, but didn't get the press that
the TNIV got for going with gender neutral language. 
Chris and I do particularly respect Eugene Peterson
and his writing is solid theologically.  That is why
I trust it as a resource, just not as a primary Bible.

The remix version is essentially only different from
the original in its formatting.  It numbers each verse
rather than just each chapter like the original version
did.  That would be very helpful.

One last note, there are times when I may struggles
with a passage and I do like the study Bible helps in
the NIV, because they help with background and under-
standing without paraphrasing the Word.