That Ain’t Right… Is It?
Well, it’s finally happened. A scripture I’ve memorized has changed enough that it no longer counts. Often when switching versions of scripture you’ll see words or phrases in a different order, but all still present. So, imagine my shock and surprise when we were challenged to do a little photo scavenger hunt at UM ARMY for the fruits of the spirit and I had them wrong. You see, the ones I memorized in confirmation (only a few decades ago) are no longer what you find in scripture. Or rather, in all scripture.
Like many, I know the fruit of the spirit to be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In pulling up four of the most popular versions of scripture… none of them is an exact match to the other. And I’m not sure why that surprises me. Words change in meaning, new versions of scripture seek to better interpret the original Hebrew or Greek (or Aramaic as the case may be) so what is it about the fruit of the spirit that we can better understand because it isn’t the same across versions?
Some fruits stay the same. In fact, love, joy, faith, and peace stay the same across many different versions. This is possibly because these have such a strong recommendation as Christ-like qualities other places in scripture even if the greatest of these is love. And that’s reassuring. Some things haven’t changed. And figuring out how to live out these fruits of the spirit may vary, but showing others love, having joy, living in faith, and offering peace are fairly straight forward in concept. But let’s look at some of the words that have been differentiated by different translators.
Patience, forbearance, and longsuffering. One of these I’m familiar with as a virtue. Being able to offer someone patience in a hurried world seems like a gift. Forbearance relates to patience, but many definitions have it leaning more towards restraint and tolerance. The outward actions of these two descriptors might not look that different. To interact with someone who has no patience, who like Veruca Salt doesn’t care how, just wants it now, you see some of the differences. Being patient isn’t just about being able to sit quietly in a waiting room or stand in a queue. Being patient or forbearing as a Christian is about not demanding your own way. And perhaps that’s where we get the longsuffering. That since it’s not about you there might be suffering and it might last a long time.
Kindness is a strong contender across the board for being what people expect it to be, until you get to the King James version where kindness is replaced with gentleness rather than having gentleness be its own later fruit in the list. King James trades gentleness for meekness and temperance for self-control. Kind, meek, gentle… it would be easy to lump all these together as traits that tend to show up together. I do not know if I have met someone who is gentle and kind that did not also show meekness and temperance. And just to be clear, temperance here is not abstinence from alcohol. It has to do with showing restraint and moderation. It is fair to say that all of these fruits are different, but somewhere in my mind if we think about the fruits of the spirit like actual fruits, these are the citrus fruits where the differences are there, but you can usually swap a lemon for a lime.
But what do we do with the swap between goodness and generosity? When I think about the goodness of God, it is tied to God’s generosity. But if I was thinking about how good a person is, it would be a more motivation-based judgment than what they have to offer. Good people are good people not because they have things they can share, but because whatever they do have they offer it up to God or in service of God. People can be super generous, but it might come with strings attached. God’s goodness has no such limitations. That’s why people’s motivations become often why we think of them as being truly generous and good people. If they give because they want to see others flourish- that’s altruism and easy to correlate with Christ. If they give to feel good, that’s a bit messier, but not all hope is lost. If they give expecting to get something in return, they are not actually being generous or good by Biblical standards, right? Probably.
When looking at your own faith journey, where have you seen the fruits of the spirit being displayed? Where have you struggled to be fruitful? What might the Holy Spirit be helping you grow in your heart so that you are transformed and exhibit the fruits, whatever they may be?
