The New NIV is far worse than the old NIV. The old NIV got rid of the sacraments, but WELS and Missouri did not mind. The Missourians wonder why their own clergy are fleeing to Rome. The latest unloading of Marian piety by Weedon and McCain suggest that the next exodus is being prepared at this moment. A segment of the LCMS is now celebrating the Assumption of Mary. Perhaps they are downplaying the actual event, but oh how delicious it was to have the Assumption fall on a Sunday, to mark the Virgin Mary as one of the saints.
Magic comes down to this - misdirection of the eye. Nothing magical ever happens on stage, but we enjoy someone getting us to look in one direction while he opens latches or switches objects. A good magician makes us see something other than the truth.
For instance, for a small fee, I bought coins that snapped together perfectly. They were solid and one was real. With practice, I could push them together so that the double-faced coin (the deceiving one) locked into the real coin. The concept was simple. Show the audience the big, heavy coin. Show the face of the deceiving coin but not the obverse. When they snapped together, the deceiving coin disappeared. They called this trick "Scotch and soda" because people would say, "I can make a coin disappear if you buy me a scotch and soda."
The magic at Mequon and P. U. (Pewaukee Universalists) Towers is similar. First they say, "All literal translations are bad." But no translation is absolutely literal. Just watch the video above, linked in the caption. When the action of the video is sung in the lyrics, everything is nonsense. That is called a literal video, and I find them fun to watch. The KJV is not absolutely literal but it is precise, word for word.
In contrast, a paraphrase like the NNIV can go anywhere with the meaning of each verse. The NNIV is Gnostic, because the hawkers are grabbing the Holy Spirit by the shoulders and shouting, "This is what you really meant! Right? Right!"
Once they get people to recite, "All literal translations are bad," the congregations have no choice but the awful new paraphrases being marketed by greedy publishers.
Readers are disgusted that Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary is hotter than Georgia asphalt for the New NIV. Once Ninevah is installed at Northwestern Publishing House, doctrinal clarity is doomed. That will be no different than proving Stalin was right because Pravda said he was correct.
