Translating the Bible for Native Populations: A Conversation with Terry Wildman

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Terry M. Wildman. He is the lead translator, general editor, and project manager for the First Nations version. He also serves as the director of spiritual growth and leadership development for Native InterVarsity and is the founder of Rain Ministries. He currently lives in Arizona, and we're going to be talking today a little bit about a couple of his projects. One is The Birth of the Chosen One, which is a retelling of the Christmas story, as well as just the First Nations version in general and probably a lot of other topics as they come up. So, Terry, welcome. Thanks for being here. It's good to be here. Let me give you an introduction in Ojibwe. Just a few words of the language. I am not a language speaker, but I have memorized an introduction that I often do. So what I said in Ojibwe was, hello, my friends who share this life together with me. I said my name is Terry Wildman, but I also said my Ojibwe name that was given to me by my mentors is which is Voice of Great Thunder with a good medicine spirit. So I was born and raised in Michigan. My ancestry includes Ojibwe from Ontario, Canada, Yaqui from Sonora, Mexico, as well as English, German and Spaniard. I'm married to Darlin Wildman. I have five children, eight grandchildren, four great grandchildren. My wife and I currently live in Maricopa, Arizona, on the traditional lands of the Pima and the Tohono O'odham people. And was it was it ministry that brought you to Arizona? Yes. Yeah, it was ministry that brought me here to Arizona. And I have I have ancestral connections out in this region, but also around the Michigan area of the Great Lakes region would be the Ojibwe or the Anishinaabe people. And then out here would be the Yaqui people of the Sonora, Mexico border and up into into Arizona near Tucson. And then up up here in Phoenix area, there's actually a small reserve up here called Guadalupe of the Yaqui people. Yeah. Well, before we dig into the First Nations version and Birth of the Chosen One, I'm wondering if you could just talk and give us a little bit of insight into Native InterVarsity. That was a new thing for me. When I saw your bio, I looked it up. And so I'm a little bit familiar with it, but I think it'd be better if you talked about it and just understand what you do and what that role entails. Sure. Did I see on your website that you that you were involved with CRU? I was. Yeah. I came to faith through Campus Crusade for Christ. InterVarsity and CRU are very similar. Campus, college campus ministries that share the gospel mostly through Bible study, from what I understand. And so InterVarsity of Christian Fellowship, InterVarsity has a native branch now, Native American branch that's headed up by Megan Krishke. She's an Oklahoma native. And so I what we do is we really work on connecting with native students in colleges and campuses. We want to focus mostly on those campuses where there's a native population in the area. And also there are many colleges and some universities on Native reservations. So working with Native InterVarsity, I work with kind of mentoring a lot of the staff. I do like a monthly Zoom meeting with them and pray with them and talk about culture and connection to Christianity and Native spirituality and Native culture. And where's the common ground? How can we better share this good story, this this good news of Jesus with our people and stuff like that? So and then I also serve on the leadership council for Native InterVarsity. I've been with them for, gosh, since 2020, I think it is. So about four or five years. Is it a are they mostly non-Native folks who are working with native campuses in InterVarsity? No, it's mostly we have mostly native staff. We have native staff. 90 percent would be native. And so that's what makes it a little bit unique. Yeah. And such. And I think it's a it's really says good things about InterVarsity and CRU. CRU has a CRU nations, which is the connection to the Native American. And I know Donnie Begay, who is part of CRU. Renee Begay served with CRU for many years. She was on our translation council for Psalms and Proverbs. So we have some good connections there. And Donnie Begay also has just graduated with his Ph.D. from. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. which is an indigenous learning community that grants master degree and Ph.D. degrees. We actually have our own Native American theology programs now for Christian theology. Yeah, and it's really something that's happening kind of behind the scenes for many people, but more and more it's coming out in the open. And I feel like we're in a season of interest and where there's a willingness for theologians and pastors and Christian leaders to actually take a look at our Native people. What what happened? What went wrong in a sense in the way that we approached the gospel with Native people and such? And so we're working on all that, you know, as a people and as followers of Jesus, the Jesus way, we say, you know, you started out with the Ojibwe introduction. And if I'm saying that, if I'm mispronouncing that, just let me know. That's good. Ojibwe. That's right. So you started out with that. How how much is that spoken? I mean, I think when I when I think about culture immediately, I think about language and you know, it's such a ingrained part of every culture language is. And so I'm wondering how frequently is it spoken and do the various tribes maintain some sort of unique language to themselves or is it a little more mixed nowadays? How does that that is quite a complicated question, but I'll try to give a simple answer to that. Thank you. There are over 250 distinct languages and many sub-languages, dialects, you know, that exist in North America only. So what happened was because of the colonial takeover in a sense and the boarding schools, see, in the boarding schools, they didn't want us speaking our language. We actually got punished for speaking our languages. And some of those were Christian boarding schools. Matter of fact, most of them were actually run by some kind of Christian denomination, which makes it difficult again because of the way the gospel was presented to us was in a good way. But so what happened was you've got missionaries that are translating the scriptures, Wycliffe and other translation organizations into our native tongue. But we're not being taught how to read it because we were an oral people and we didn't have a written language. So if our boarding schools don't want us to speak the language, do you think they're going to have us read our language? Are they going to teach us to read our language? They're trying to get rid of that, you know. And so in some sense, the left hand and the right hand of the Christianity didn't didn't know what the other one was doing, but this time not in a positive way, but in a more negative sense, you know.

And so because of that, I estimate and others have estimated that less than 10% of our Native people in North America can actually speak their language. Some can partially speak it. Some can understand it, but not speak it. It's quite a mixture of, depending on where you live, how well the tribe was able to overcome the colonial devastation that happened and maintain their language at the same time with all the boarding schools and things happening. So many of our tribes are trying to reclaim that language now, and we're at different levels of reclamation and restoration of our languages. And that's one of the reasons we did the First Nations Version in English, because our people aren't reading those Bibles that were translated. Very few of us. We're estimating maybe 2% to 3%, maybe less, can actually read the Bible that was translated years and years ago into our native tongue. And since language changes over time, those older translations are no longer speak well today to the people. So even those Bibles that were translated into our language need updating. And very few people are working on that process right now, but we hope to see that change. And the First Nations Version, we didn't want it to replace our language, but we wanted it to be kind of a gap in between, since we're all speaking English now. We have a common language, but also, you know, we look into the cultural side. We'll talk about that, you know, with the First Nations Version. Why is it different than other translations and things like that? It's interesting. I mean, as I started looking into the First Nations Version, it kind of took me back to the Reformation and when Martin Luther translated the Latin and Greek text really into German. And one of the things you find that Martin Luther did was he had to, he couldn't translate exactly what everything was. He had to take some liberties. I remember, I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I think it was a lizard and he had to translate that, I think, into a weasel because the German people wouldn't have known what a lizard was. They just had no clue what that was. And as I've looked at other translations, I did some work on the, I did a piece on the Gen Z Bible, which is sort of, it's AI generated and sort of interesting. And so it does a lot of Gen Z slang throughout the scriptures. But my sort of my conclusion of it was, it's almost unnecessary changes. Like my kids are Gen Z, but they don't, they can speak normal English. They don't actually need the Gen Z slang. So it was kind of an unnecessary innovation. But as I look at what you guys are doing, I see it more akin to what Martin Luther had to do, is bridging this gap between what the people knew, the resources they had available to study, and then how that needed to be contextualized so that they could really understand what was going on in this translation that he's giving them. So it's just a sort of a fascinating way to think through all that goes into Bible translation and how you're having to do some real deep interpretation, I would think, as you're translating this into the First Nations version. Yeah. So go ahead and maybe just talk a little bit about how the First Nations project, First Nations version project came up, and what the process is for the translation. Wow. Okay. Well, the short story is my wife and I lived for five years on the Hopi Indian Reservation in northern Arizona, serving as missionaries. We served with Youth With a Mission. We served with the American Baptist churches. We weren't American Baptist, but they allowed us to pastor an American Baptist church on second mesa called Sunlight Mission, Baptist Mission. And so, you know, we basically became immersed there, but I can't, I went in not really understanding what had happened, you know? And so as I meet different Hopis and I hear they're, you know, oh, if you're traditional, you can't go to church. If you go to church, you can't do traditional things. And there's this big separation between the Hopi culture and the people who are in that culture and the church. And also, while I was there, I began to try to understand what had happened because as I talked to traditional Hopi people, I felt this resistance to this message, and I found out that it had to do with the colonial takeover, with, you know, children being forcefully removed from our people by the government and how that Christian churches got involved. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. to kind of what they call civilize our children or Christianize the children. And so it actually created in me a little bit of a crisis of faith. What's going on? What's happened? And so it took a lot of, you know, self-reflection, different things like that. But what I finally wanted to do, I began to notice we did Bible studies in the Hopi jail and a lot of the men would come to these Bible studies. And because, you know, it was a small group and they were bored out of their minds just hanging out in the jail. Yeah, it's just something to do, you know. You're the entertainment. Yes, totally entertainment. But I noticed how they weren't getting involved, the leaders that I saw and the attempts I made myself, kind of from a Western Bible study perspective of the way we do Christianity and the way we understand how it's done and what we think is, which is actually contextualized to America. It's contextualized in a European way, but in a Euro-American way. But we started a talking circle. And in that talking circle, which is done in a native way, I found a much more openness to talk and share and different things. And I began to share scriptures and I began to realize, I try to get a response and they're always trying to respond in a way that was kind of try to make us happy with how they responded because they're such genuine people in the sense they're kind, they're generous. And so they want us to feel good and they want to get the right answer to us, you know, even if they don't believe it or anything. What do they want to hear? I want to tell them what they want to hear. But I noticed they weren't responding to the scripture. We use the NIV and a lot of the churches on the Hopi Res use the NIV. But I found that, you know, it's English, it's plain, it's understandable. None of them couldn't understand it, but they didn't relate to it. And there's where even that Gen Z Bible you just talked about. Yeah. There's things that scientists that have studied language and studied communication, you know, words can be very precise and very educational, but after a while, those words don't impact a person's, a person. And sometimes when you change the word and put it more into the way they're used to hearing things, even though it says something, the same thing, basically, it says it in a way that impacts the emotions. And so that's what began to happen as I began to work with some of the Hopis and we just reworded the scriptures and very simple things, nothing complicated, nothing that required Greek or Hebrew. You know, the word God, we put in great spirit or maybe creator, depending on the context. And we began to use terms like instead of disciple, you've got follower or ones who walk the road with.

Jesus. So yeah, the Jesus way rather than just, you know, and so just the simple wording that I was picking up from other missionaries who had been experimenting with things, I found it was really profound. It had a profound effect. It opened up conversations. I had some of the Hopi men who aren't believers help me reword it to make sense to Native people. And they thought that was fun. And to do it, they had to really think about what it was saying. And I love that process, you know, and everything. So that's, that was the beginning of the seeds of the idea. And I, in my wildest dream, I didn't think I would ever translate the New Testament. Come on. You know, I'm just this guy's kind of missionary guy. And I was raised in Michigan outside of my own culture. I've had to reembrace my culture. I've had to learn. I've had to go to the elders. I've had to go through naming ceremonies and study and listen to how how our Anishinaabe people think and how they look at the world and how, you know, even though you have the NIV native people that are traditional will read words differently than other people do because words, words reflect culture. And like you were saying, so, so this is a kind of a cultural translation is what I would call it. It's not going from one language. It is going from the Hebrew and the Greek, of course, but it's not, it's really going from a one style of English to another style of English in an indigenous sort of vocabulary that touches in a general way some of the way our Native people word things and think about things traditionally. Now, there's modern native kids on the res who they'll have, they would have their own res version, you know, res talk and things like that. But this is, this is more of a formal translation that brings the elders, the way the elders would tell the stories to us. And so that was the goal of it. It took me about from 2003 to about 2012 before I committed myself to actually doing a translation. So, I mean, that's how far it was and stuff like that. So that, I don't know if I answered all the question there, but that was kind of the, yeah. And then I can talk about the process if you want, how we did the translation, but yeah, that'd be great. But I, I just throw in, I mean, yeah, even just the way you described, you know, the disciples, his followers. And then I think you said it, it was those who walked with Jesus on the way or walked with Jesus on the road. Yeah. Like that impacts me differently than just. Yeah. I mean, it's just a beautiful way to think about it. And, you know, the, the way was what the original folks were called for a very long time until, what is it? Acts 11. I think when they're first called Christians, you know, and so there is this interesting sort of even biblically tradition where it wasn't the church, the way we think of a church, you know, it wasn't a different sort of ecclesia. I did, I did listen to an or read an interview that you talked a little bit about church and the way that church was negatively received. And so finding a different way of conceiving of the ecclesia and what does that mean? And, you know, how does that work? And I just think it's such an interesting and challenging project. And I'm fascinated just before you go on to the process, I'm fascinated to know, you think about all the different things that happened to Native Americans and how still the stories and the elders survived all of it. Yes. And all of it passed down orally. So there, I'm assuming there aren't a lot of written documents. Am I, am I wrong about that? Of like stories of Native Americans written down and, you know, like we would have textual evidence for Old Testament, New Testament or what have you. Yeah. So over the last, you know, over the years as our native people, uh, began to, some of the stories have been recorded. Some of them have been put in books and writing and things like that. Uh, but since we have, you know, uh, you know, 500 federally recognized tribes, you've got a lot of differences there, you know? So you even have to, we had to look for commonalities, but, but we hoped, we'd hoped to inspire more tribally specific kind of English versions. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we hoped to inspire. But we were surprised at how well this particular kind of, pan Native American translation, how well it does relate and it has related in many ways to our people. We've gotten really, really good response. And also from other countries, other indigenous peoples. They're using this in Africa. They're using this in Iraq with the, some of the indigenous tribes in Iraq. They're using it in Mexico and Brazil. And I, it just, it surprised me that it's, it actually does speak into other indigenous cultures and they like it translated over to their indigenous languages better than the NIV translated over. Yeah. You know, so they relate to it better. So those... Do you think the commonality is just sort of a different, a fundamental difference in worldview between what would normally be referred to as like an enlightenment, modernism, heavy logic, you know, um, cause and effect sort of rationality versus more of a phenomenological worldview where you're looking at the world in a, in its relationships more holistically? Like, is that a fair way to describe it? Oh yeah, it truly is. I mean, we don't, I, I think, you know, for me, going through this process and learning about another worldview, worldviews, and then Oh, what if I put the, those worldview glasses on and read the scriptures with those glasses? How would I read it differently? Because we've been formed, many of American Christians have been formed by whatever, whatever worldview they were brought up in and whatever kind of Christianized worldview they were presented and formed in and which, which there's many different kinds of those. Right. You know, a lot of times we, we over... Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. I think we've overemphasized the unity of Christianity. I believe that we're supposed to be unified, but when you have 40,000 denominations and groups, you begin, and Native people, that was one of the first things they critiqued Christianity about. Well, you guys, you're reading one book, but you all argue and read it differently. Right, right. Which one are we supposed to believe? Do we believe the Baptists or the Methodists or the Episcopalians? Which Christianity, which Jesus do we follow? The dark side of the priesthood of believers, right? Yes, yes, absolutely. No centralized authority. Very interesting. Yeah, let's dig in. I'm interested to hear about the process a little bit and how you went about it. You mentioned that this week, you know, it's not a translation from the Greek or the Hebrew, and so it's a rewording. Oh, it is. Okay. In the beginning, that's what we started with. I started with those original. Gotcha. Sorry, I heard you wrong. Okay. Yeah, but then we did delve into the Hebrew and the Greek when we did the translation. Very cool. Yeah, so what did you find as you were going through that? I mean, because, you know, Greek and Hebrew scholars, they, I would think, would kind of gel with this. They, you know, finding interesting ways to express, I would say, I was more Old Testament, so I did my PhD in Old Testament, but Hebrew, you do have these words that don't cleanly translate over into English in any way. You know, you're always doing some damage to them when you're pulling them over. And so I would think that being freed out to say, yeah, forget that translation, rethink it, especially with a Hebrew worldview, which I would guess would jive very well with more of a Native American perspective. Yeah, there's more commonalities there for sure. Yeah, yeah, I would think so. So yeah, so how was that? How did that work? How did that, is the whole thing translated from Hebrew and Greek and then sort of rephrased into this different form of English? Well, since...

Since I am not a trained translator, we ended up connecting up with, just because when I committed to the project, I didn't know, how am I going to do this? How is anyone going to take this seriously? I mean, I knew I had Hebrew 101 and Greek 101. I knew a little bit about what you're not supposed to do and things like that. And I have a good Bible software. I use Logos Bible software. And I'm able to delve into, I have, what, 40 translations into English. I have maybe as many commentaries from the Hebrew and the Greek that I can look at. So I'm depending on the scholarship that's already there. And people don't realize today that most of our Wycliffe translators are translators that have translated the Bible into other, in South America and Africa and other places. They weren't Hebrew scholars, but they knew how to access the Hebrew scholars. And that was what I did, is I trusted, but I didn't trust just in one. I looked at different sides of it. But one thing that became really helpful was the United Bible Society has a translator's guide. And that translator's guide was done by Hebrew and Greek scholars to help translators who are translated into other languages and other cultures. So it actually began to address some of the very things. Oh, you might, if it's this type of culture, you might want to use this kind of wording to first make sense. And I found that after I had already been quite a ways into it, so I had to go back and double check my work through them and stuff like that. But it was so helpful. And also, we were working with a Bible translation organization called One Book in Canada. And One Book was founded by Dave Olson, who was the head of Wycliffe Canada for many years. And he has 50 years of translation experience into other cultures in the Philippines and other places like that in translating the Bible. And so they, he became our initial consultant to help us with this. But what we liked about the One Book was, One Book has a philosophy that it is the indigenous people that get to make the final decision on how it's supposed to be worded, not the missionary. Okay. So they empowered the indigenous people to do the translation and gave them tools and funding and help. And that's, and they connected with us and they said, we like what you're doing, Terry, which was a, yay, you know. I've got, I could get some credibility here, you know. And I've got someone that's looking over my shoulder saying, am I doing this right? Is this really what the Hebrew and Greek means? And am I going to, am I being too loose with it or whatever? And so that was very helpful. And they also helped us in forming, they decided and we decided we needed, since this is an indigenous translation, we do things in community. So we had, we formed a small community of indigenous people from different tribes all over the continental U.S. We call that Turtle Island. All over Turtle Island. We brought them together and we had the same idea and the same vision. I made sure through these two relationships I had built over the years of traveling and sharing with all these different tribes. We had Navajo, Choctaw, Kiowa, Cherokee. I mean, we had, by the time the First Nation version was done, we probably had 25 different tribes, people from those tribes have input into it. And some of them were college students who were just reading it and giving feedback. College, Native college students. But we also, we also had a few scholars look at it and give us feedback and such. So, and that process, we actually, we spent two weeks in Canada at a retreat center bringing all of our council together to work on how we're going to do this translation. And we had 185 words that Wycliffe identifies for the New Testament says, you have to get these words right. They're the most important theological word and thing. And so we took those 185 words and we said, okay, how are we going to translate kingdom? How are we going to translate church? How are we, you know, all these different words that are important. How are we going to translate priest? And things like that. And so we just worked through them all, came up with a way to translate, to convey that in English. But look, we got 40 English translations that have already done the work. Right. You know, and as I would look down through there, all the different translations, I didn't always feel like I had to delve deep into the Greek for every single thing. Right. But there are certain words I did need to. And I think that's what good translators do. They know there are theological issues. There are, you know, where you have to, where a translator actually has to make a theological decision. Yeah, yeah. But you get a feel for it, so you're not doing it every time. That's right. That's right. And so, and you try to remove bias, but you know you're biased. And that's why we had people from different Christian denominations work on this together to kind of hopefully minimize bias, at least reduce it somewhat. So, you know, that was, so what we decided finally was that that I would do the initial translation work, and then they would all review it. And we did it over the internet on Google Docs. Yeah, yeah. And every so often we would get together maybe on Zoom or something like that and actually, or on the phone, we would talk to each other when there was something that was, that we may not have all seen exactly the same on. So we're going to work through that process. And so we did that over the years. And so Google Docs was our, you know, our modern smoke signals, you know. It really sounds like a labor of love because, I mean, I can't imagine that didn't take, I mean, how long did it take you from start to finish? Well, if you don't count the work I did prior to starting this, which was several years of work, the actual project took five years with the translation council to get finished. So you can see that took some time. And in the meantime, I was pastoring a church for four of those years. Wow. So a small Native church in Michigan. And so I was, you know, I was only. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. to give half my time. You know how when they say that I was pastoring halftime? Right? Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine that wasn't actually full time. There's no such thing as halftime pastoring. There's only halftime pay. There you go. So, yeah, and so it was a challenge and it got stressful for me at times. As a matter of fact, I had to make a decision around four years in because of a heart attack that I had at the time. I made a decision that I'm going to move out of pastoring and really dedicate myself to finishing the translation and getting it published. And that's where InterVarsity Press came in part of the way through. And Native InterVarsity staff got involved in becoming reviewers for the translation also. That's great. Yeah, it's very cool. You know, obviously, it's for a particular audience. I mean, your target market is pretty established. But have you seen other people outside of the native setting pick this up and appreciate it? I mean, I know you mentioned.

You know, sort of the overseas and the international, you know, churches in Africa, those kind of things. But beyond that, you know, do people resonate with what you're trying to do? Have you gotten good response from it? Yeah. Can you believe that the chaplains at prison ministries get a hold of it? The different organizations that are not necessarily Christians, but they might have Native Americans in their group, in their things like veterans. The US Veteran Association actually orders boxes of it because they found it to be very welcomed among Native people. But here's what they said, but non-Native people are liking it. Yeah, that's what I wanted to know. It's helping them in a different way to hear the words of Jesus in a way that's different than the television evangelists and all these different ways they've heard it in the past. And it comes across more organic, more fresh. And what many of them, most people, I would say a lot of people that have gone to church and maybe been uninterested, left church, have come back. You wouldn't believe how many people have said they were in a process of deconstruction and that they couldn't read the Bible anymore. But they said, I found the First Nation version and I've fallen in love with the Bible again. This is the kind, you know, so yeah, surprisingly, in some sense, even though our target audience had been Native people, it tells me something. It tells me that our Native people have something of incredible value to offer outsiders. And so we say that we did this for our Native people, but all are welcome. You know, it's our gift also to the dominant culture to look at us differently and begin to think about Native people from a different perspective. And because of this, I've done hundreds of podcasts like this one and able to tell the story. And sometimes I run into people who really have no idea of what our Native people have been through, why Christianity hasn't taken root deeply among our people, why so few are attending church and responding to this message. And why is that the case? Is it because of their Native spirituality or is it because of the bad way the gospel came to us, you know, and the misinformation that was presented to us? And even loving people got caught up in doing the wrong things, thinking they were helping us in the long run, they were hurting the gospel message. Because when you take something as beautiful as this gospel, the story of the son of our creator offering and giving his life so that we can have life. You know, when you tell that story the right way, it resonates with our Native people. We understand self-sacrifice. We have stories of those who gave their lives on behalf of others to bring life. And even looking at the whole animal world, every animal is offering its life so that we can live. It's a sacrificial gift that we should respect and honor among. You see, that's a Native viewpoint that I think our westernized viewpoint has kind of, you know, set aside a lot. And I believe we can speak into that and bring out ways of understanding. If you read the Hebrew Scriptures and the parables of Jesus, you'll find there's an incredible connection to the creation around us, to the plant world, to the animal world, and everything like that, to the sun, moon, and stars. It's all there, but we tend to gloss over it in our Americanized Christianity, where our Native people don't. We say, oh, look at this. And so we find that common ground, and then we build on it. Yeah, I think that's great. I was just reading a book here recently, and this gentleman was talking about the sacred authority in all things, and he's really doing more political theology and those kind of ideas. But the way he talks about the sacred authority as being natural and real and embedded in just the intrinsic reality of everything that's there, it leans into something that I can envision being in something like the First Nations version, where you'd have this sort of sacred feel of all things. You know, everything has this sense of sacredness because God created the whole thing, and so there's a respect for everything that you run into, as opposed to the way we often segment it off and kind of look at it in terms of compartmentalizing this from this from this from this. I could definitely see that fitting very well with the biblical story, and I would say even the conversation I had recently with a gentleman who was writing on the beatific vision and this participation with God, being in the presence of God as the goal and aim of the Christian life. You know, again, we tend to lose that in, I think, a lot of our English translations. And God gave us creation to actually have something that we can touch and feel to draw near to him. He's his. I mean, you know, we have the Bible, a written scriptures from the Hebrew people and others that have found this incredible human being who walked among us, the creator come down. He took on human flesh. He did all these things. Our native people don't have that story. And I think it's a good story to bring into our cultures. You know, you see, the problem was the European westernized Christianity kind of said they don't have anything of value. We have to stamp out what they believe and replace it with what we believe. That doesn't work. And the result today among our Native people and how many are embracing the gospel is a sign that we're not communicating the gospel correctly. You know, and so, you know, and this works anywhere you go. You know, it's not just our native people, but we have a special situation here is that we're the indigenous people of the land. The settlers came from another place and then they're claiming the land that's not theirs and they're trying to use the Bible to justify it. Right. And so, so why would a native person want to read a book that justifies colonization of their people and restricts their people and all this kind of stuff? So there's all that is a part of what has to be overcome. And we're hoping that this First Nation version is a step in the right direction. That's our hope. It's not a perfect translation. You know, even all of our native people won't agree on how everything was translated. But it's enough to open the conversation more. And it has done that hugely. InterVarsity Press says that they've sold over 80,000 paperback and hardback versions of it. That's fantastic. Oh man, that was unbelievable. Yeah. That's great. And so there's a lot of non-natives. And I get, if you go on Amazon.com and look at the reviews, you'll see a lot of, you'll see some Native reviews, but percentage wise, you're going to see less Native reviews. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And natives aren't usually wanting to put their views out there. Sure, yeah, yeah. Where other, where, you know. Right. Yeah. That's all I get. How what they think about it, you know. Yeah. So are you looking to do the same thing with sort of birth of the chosen one? I know, I want to get to that before we kind of come up on our end time because it just seems like such an intuitive thing to start with the Christmas story, you know, Christmas story, Easter story, you know, and, and, you know, these real building blocks of the gospel, right? Christmas story, Easter story, resurrection kind of.

Interesting building blocks. So yeah, talk a little bit about the birth of the chosen one and what you're attempting there. Well, the birth of the chosen one is actually directly from the text of the First Nation version. Okay, very cool. It's just pulled out. It's pulled out and put in. There might have been a couple wording changes that we made, so we call it that it's adapted from the First Nation version. But one of the things in the very beginning of this project, before I ever committed to a translation, I started doing the Christmas story. And I shared it on the Internet, and I shared it on Facebook and things, and everyone kept saying, oh, we need a book like this. We need a book of the Christmas story. Because people were responding. Churches were using it for their Christmas programs. Native churches were using it. Things like that. So I decided to do the Christmas story. We called it Birth of the Chosen One. I actually self-published an earlier version. Okay. Okay. And that was my test, and it was so well received that that helped me say, okay, I think we're on the right track. I want to keep pursuing this. And I did another book called When the Great Spirit Walked Among Us. That's the four gospels harmonized, which I know you can't harmonize the four gospels, but we did our best to bring it together from the viewpoint of harmonizing it in a way a storyteller might harmonize stories. Yeah. You know, from a storyteller perspective. And so Birth of the Chosen One, InterVarsity Press liked what we did, but it was too long. I did both Luke and Matthew and harmonized them in my original. And they said, let's do a smaller book, and let's redo the artwork. And I had an artist that we were going to use, but he wasn't available this time. And so he says, get someone else. And so we found some indigenous from the Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana. You've got Hannah and Holly Buchanan, who we know personally. And we've done reconciliation work together with the Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana. And so they're the artists. They're sisters. And they're the artists to do this book, which has come out beautifully. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, really nice. And in the back, there's actually a note to the parent explaining about this translation and how they can help their children understand what's happening here. Because we've got teepees. You know, we've got... Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, Terry, I love it. I end these episodes all the time, and I ask every guest the same question. So I'll end the same way with you. It's a big question, so feel free to take a minute with it. But what do you think that the church today needs to be thinking about in order to be and make disciples more faithfully? What are we missing out at this point? Well, I'll say this, and I've shared this before, and often when this kind of a question comes up, I share this. And this is a personal experience I had with God through, well, I believe the Holy Spirit. Yeah. So I'm actually going to read it so I shorten it down. I once had a picture in my mind of several pottery jars. Some of them had First Nations designs on them. Some Celtic, some African, Asian, and many more. I saw a hand pouring water into each jar. It was like the Creator was saying to me that he has poured some portions of his gifts of grace into each ethnic group. Gifts of grace that can only come to others through each ethnicity and culture and in relationship with them. So this picture has remained with me for many years. This was kind of a, yeah, this is what the First Nation version was doing. So I tell people, we need to, the church today to reach people needs to begin to speak their language and understand the cultures of who we're talking to. And also, look at what's happened in the past. Has there been a bad representation of Christianity that needs to be addressed, that needs to be admitted to? And I think one of the most important things I think Western Americanized Christianity needs is a dose of humility. That we are not the rulers of the Scripture. We are not the only ones that can interpret the Scripture properly. And that Scripture might be able to be interpreted differently through different lenses. And especially as more and more as we look back at what the original culture was and how they looked at the world, we might see that the way they looked at the world might resonate more with an indigenous culture or with other people in a different way than it resonates with us. And so I think a humility of heart, a willingness to be open, a willingness to be what I call non-judgmental. See, there's been such a judgmental approach toward our Native spirituality that initially there's such suspicion that as soon as you hear something that doesn't go with how you've been taught to interpret the Scriptures, you begin to, defenses go up. And so we've got to let those defenses down. We still need to be discerning. But it's possible to be discerning but still to be very open-hearted and listeners. So I think just being better listeners would be a good thing. Well, Terry, thank you so much for being here. That's a beautiful answer. And I think a beautiful project just overall. I really love what you're doing. And so I just encourage listeners, we'll put the link to the book in the show notes. IVP has generously allowed us to do a 20% discount for both books. And so that'll be in the show description as well. And so I just encourage you to go and pick this up. I think it'd be well worth your while. The portions of it that I've been able to read, I've really enjoyed. And I think this conversation just demonstrates how important this can be for us to even think about opening ourselves up to something fresh and new and being nonjudgmental about it. And I just love that as the last word. So Terry, thanks so much for being here. It's good to be here. Could I read what we call the Lord's Prayer? Here's a sample of it, and it'll raise more questions, but that's okay. We don't have to go into that today. But let me read from Matthew where we call it, he gives his followers a prayer. Oh, great Spirit, our Father from above, we honor your name as sacred and holy. Bring your good road to us where the beauty of your ways in the spirit world above is reflected in the earth below. Provide for us day by day the elk, the buffalo, the salmon, the corn, squash, the wild rice, all those things we need for each day. Release us from the things we have done wrong in the same way we release others for the things done wrong to us. Guide us away from the things that tempt us to stray from your good road and set us free from the evil one and his worthless ways. Aho, may it be so. Fantastic. Yeah. Great way to end, Terry. Thank you so much for sharing that. That was beautiful. Love it. I always say miigwetch, bizindaweyaka in Ojibwe. Thank you for listening. Yeah. Thank you for talking. Thank you for translating. And just thanks for being here. All right. Appreciate it, Terry. We will catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care, everyone. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. I'm best-selling author John Cyidel, and I'm the Christian who became an alcoholic, not the other way around. Through the power of Jesus, I got sober, and now I'm sharing both my story and the stories of others just like me, along with helpful interviews from trauma, faith, and addiction recovery experts. If you're a fan of messy sanctification and powerful stories, join me on the Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic podcast on Life Audio or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Let's get radically vulnerable.