How to See

My first "real" Bible was the black small print King James Version I got in second grade. That was MY Bible until my college years and I started shifting to 20th century translations. Because the KJV was MY Bible in those formative early years of my faith, most of my memorization begun in that era is in that version.  English translations through the centuries pay attention to and draw from previous translations. Very rarely is there radical change from version to version. The changes we do see are usually based either on discovery of more ancient texts (like the Dead Sea Scrolls), deepened knowledge of the original languages, or changes in English itself.

You may be familiar with Proverbs 29:18, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." That's the KJV. Business and leadership teachers (inside the church and out) have grabbed onto that verse as a basic leadership principle: organizations without vision will go nowhere. In leadership lingo, "vision" is "the picture of a desired future." It's a picture of where the leaders imagine the organization will be some years in the future.

I primarily use the NIV as my English translation these days. That version's translation of Proverbs 29:18 is rather different: "Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint." You
can tell how different this is. Business and leadership teachers have no interest in revelation – and outside force (in the Bible, that's God) is essential. For people like us who aim to be biblical, revelation is absolutely necessary. We know that we don't have the capacity to see and understand the current world (let alone the future) from our own abilities and resources.
Because this is the case, we need God and not just leaders who can imagine some BHAG ("Big Hairy Audacious Goal" – a term popularized in the work of Jim Collins).

That's the first part of the verse. May I suggest a tweak of the second part, based on consideration of the Hebrew and other translations? "Perishing" (KJV) and "casting off restraint"
(NIV) are both problems. But another way to put it the whole in English might be "Without God's perspective, people do their own thing."

If we are in agreement that we need God – and God's perspective – to see clearly, not only what is now, but what we should aim for in the future, then we won't be satisfied with interpretations of reality and visions of the future imposed on us by our culture, by our institutional habits (what we've always done), or by our own desires. We need to pray (sing?), "Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart!" Through prayer we must learn to see things through Jesus, who he is, what he's done, and what he intends to do.

1 Corinthians 15:58
Rev. Richard Heyduck