The problem with The Message 'Bible'

The first thing that everyone must consider when approaching the Word of God is 'for what purpose am I using this translation?'  If the use is clearly to see what one individual thinks the Word of God says then you are OK with The Message and other terrible translations like it.  But anything else ranging from devotional readings or serious Bible study we need to use something that at least tries to have some dynamic equivalence.  When someone takes a scripture and says it in a nice, different or poetic way, we must make sure it is not losing what the passage was supposed to mean.  Worse case scenario is that believers take on board The Message and develop doctrine around this.  This is happening now.  Has this ever happened before?

Jesus slammed the Teachers of the Law because they had created the Traditions of the Elders. These were fence laws or oral law that had nothing to do with what God has said. The Scribes first did this.  They produced sub laws to make sure people didn't break the 613 actual Laws from God.  Then the Teachers of the Law came, around the time of Jesus, they made the scribes fence laws equivalent to God's Law.  So they taught that the laws made up by men were as authoritative as Gods 613.  Jesus was in all out war against this massacre of God's Word.  Who do we think we are to take the Holy Scripture of the New Testament and declare it valid and authoritative when it has been reworded?  Yet many church leaders are desensitised to this issue because church growth, public profile and personal status have become the goals and aims of 'church.'

Amos 8 speaks of our times. 

11 11 “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
    “when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
12 People will stagger from sea to sea
    and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the Lord,
    but they will not find it.

In the same passage it speaks of the 'grain becoming less but the shekel high.'  Today less leaders care about the quality of the grain (word of God) and care about the money.  When the first coming of Jesus occurred, John the Baptist preached from the desert.  Now, as we anticipate the second coming of Jesus the true Word of God will also be preached from the desert.   You don't have to live in a literal desert to qualify, you just have to be preaching and teaching truth in the place what Amos describes, a place where the true Word of God is scarce. 

I know the author of the Message will receive a glorious reward for the things Jesus was able to issue forth through him.  I don't think Peterson was responsible for the way lazy church leaders allowed The Message to become a valid source of God's word.  But what has come from the misuse of this commentary, wrong doctrine and practices, is a mess. 

Gary Ward