Jesus Saves

There's an article on Dutch ceefax this afternoon that announced the publication of the bible in, and I quote, "text language". With text language these people mean the words we (and with we I mean not-me) use in text messages.

Usually I'm quite conservative considering my choice of words and the way to write them, but many of my fellow human beings are not. Seeing that the word 'great' is very long and takes at least 20 seconds to type, it is nowadays spelled as "gr8". You becomes "u", you get the idea. A lot of those shortened terms come from the internet, of course, and I myself am a faithful user of "Lol", "brb", "btw" and other shortened terms, but I generally keep them from papers and applications (as should u.... eh you).

And now people in Friesland (what a surprise) have decided to publish the bible.... as written in text language.

I swear to God I kid you not.

The article even included an example of how the new bible will be like. In the original bible (if you're confused, the original is the one that does not include "lol" anywhere) God introduces himself (AA meeting? blind date? court hearing? inquering minds want to know!) the following: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of everything, says the Lord", a little self obsessed, but clear. The text version, on the other hand, would be something like this: "I = A&O th bgng & th en, sz th alm8y Gd". Granted, it's shorter.

What I don't get is why they would want to make it in the first place. Last time I checked the bible is both long and quite complicated, adding &'s might make it less long but certainly not a whole lot easier to digest. I can perhaps understand where somebody would get the idea (bar, late, too many beers, annoying person-who's-not-quite-as-drunk-as-you saying it can't be done) but generally as soon as the hangover is gone so is the stupid idea.

What I do know is that it's not going to do anything. Nobody is going to read the bible because of this (confused fat high school kid with glasses... maybe, but that's it!). God knows (literary!) how much time, energy, ink and trees have been wasted on this idea. And this made me sad.

But not as sad as reading articles on the famine that will hit Kenya and other African countries in the next few weeks. According to the Kenyan president at least 150 million dollar is needed within the next month but so far hardly any money is coming in. In certain parts of Kenya it hasn't rained in years and if the April rains fail again this year, thousands (if not more) will die of hunger.

I've got an idea, maybe those bible translating morons could send God a text message (oh I'm sorry a txt mssg) it's so short they don't even have to shorten it up:

"Make it rain you f#cking bastard"