Somebody call the word police. There’s a serial killer on the loose.
The culprit? The people who publish instruction booklets for electronic devices made overseas.
Here are just a few true examples:
From the instructions for a pedometer my mother received: “Thank you for selecting pedometer. It is an effective to improve your physical strength & fitness. …Walking is not only a simple exercise method to loose weight but also a favorable solution for inadequate sports. …The following feathers and instructions would be useful to use this product properly.”
From the instructions for another pedometer: “This stepping meter can only count correctly under the flat plant. Under the following condition, the stepping meter can’t count correctly: moonwalking, wearing sandal, when walking in the tricky condition, vibration without walking.”
From an instruction manual for an Mp3 player I owned: “Thanks for purchase our digital player. To make you can operate the player expertly as early as possible, we prepare a detailed user manual accessory with the machine … we edit the manual carefully and we think that the information provided in the manual is right and reliable, while the error and missing is incident, please excuse us … .”
And here are some instructions from that same “right and reliable” booklet: “Not make strange material into the interior of the production… not fall the player down during using…It can be said to be a best works with it’s perfect sound quality, rarefied reliability and ingenious appearance. We heartily wish it could give you a transcendental enjoyment of digital age.”
That particular Mp3 player sadly didn’t give me a “transcendental enjoyment of digital age” – it was truly a dud – but I have to say that I did get a bit of transcendental enjoyment from reading the manual.
Well, enjoyment mixed with astonishment that these companies didn’t have someone who actually speaks English write their English instructions. It appears that they simply ran their instruction manuals through a computerized translation program and hoped nobody would notice.
But people notice.
Okay, let’s talk. We can learn from this. Have you ever been around someone who talks the big religious talk, but seems clueless about what it means to walk the Christian walk? It’s about as pointless as one of these bizarro instruction manuals, and a lot less funny.
Jesus got pretty ticked at the way the religious bigwigs of his day “translated” the character and Word of God to the common people. Religion had become big business and God’s message had been tragically distorted.
It still happens today. Rather than investing time and passion into a real relationship with God, we who call ourselves Christians can become simply religious, making up rules and spouting clichés to a world that desperately needs to see something genuine, consistent and supernatural.
Acts 4:13 says, “Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.”
Peter and John were the real deal because they had been with Jesus. We can be, too, if we pursue a genuine relationship with Him.
If we simply “play church,” we come across like a bad translation. We pretend and hope nobody notices that we don’t look much like Jesus.
But people notice.
There’s a warning in that Mp3 instruction book that says, “not tear, repair or recast it with yourself.”
I have no idea what that means in regards to the Mp3 player, but in terms of genuine Christianity, the Bible makes the same point this way: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. …” (Galatians 2:20).
That’s what the world is waiting to see.