The New Bible for the "Market-Oriented" Church

The Dutch have a new approach to the Bible. The Western Bible simply removes passages that may cause some problems for people or deal with subjects that Jesus apparently didn't understand (according to the Bible's publishers):

A new publication of the Bible by a Dutch organization could take a lot of the stress out of reading the Holy Book's instructions for contemporary Christians, according to its publisher.

That's because those troublesome verses about justice for the poor, responsibility for the rich to address their neighbors' needs, and all that talk about money, are gone. Not just edited out, cut out.

A report from Assist News Service said the Western Bible Foundation published the book to meet the "growing wish of many churches to be market-oriented and more attractive."

"Jesus was very inspiring for our inner health, but we don't need to take his naïve remarks about money seriously. He didn't study economics, obviously," said a Mr. De Rijke, the chairman of the foundation, in a news release obtained by ANS.

After all, no serious Christian takes such texts literally, he said.

"What if all Christians stopped being anxious, for example, and started expecting everything from God? Or gave their possessions to the poor, for that matter. Our economy would be lost," he said.

It must be nice to be able to rewrite the Bible from the perspective that Jesus was not an all-knowing, omnipotent God, but just a local guy who "didn't study economics".

I'd hate to have to explain that to His face, as the publishers will have to do someday.