Reprinted by permission from the author Paul Frank
Linguistic and cultural diversity are often assumed to be the curse of Babel. But we’re mistaken if we conclude that the resultant diversity of languages and peoples was contrary to God’s eternal purposes. The scene that the Apostle John saw around the throne of God was what God intended from before creation. Without the diversity of nations, tribes, peoples and languages, God’s purposes are hindered, not helped.
I believe that God designed cultural variety in the world just as He designed a variety of gifts within the Body of Christ. The body would not be the body unless there were many parts, each with its own unique role. Though we are all created in the image of God, no one of us is capable of expressing all that God is.
So it is with language and culture. I believe that no one culture is capable of expressing all of God’s character. In its own way, each culture captures and expresses one aspect of God, His ways, and how we should worship Him. In the same way, no one language is capable of expressing all that God is. Each language is necessary, both as a means for expressing a people’s unique identity and as a means for saying things about the world and about God that cannot quite be said through any other language.
God loves, accepts and affirms us exactly as we are. When we affirm the people we serve in their unique languages and cultures we express the grace and love of God towards them, and we celebrate the craftsmanship of God in His creation. In reality, Bible translation is just a means to an end. It opens the gates of the Kingdom to the peoples of the earth so that they can walk through without having to abandon the unique languages and cultures in which God has placed them.
We want the people we serve to know God within their languages and cultures, not in spite of them, honoring them through our research, affirming them through literacy, building them up through training and loving them as God loves them.
