“As we have opportunity” and the 100,000
The licensing practices of believers make a difference.
I was sitting in a fast-food purveyor of fine food when an older woman pulled into the handicapped parking spot right outside the window. She came inside and took a seat, and what caught my eye was the blue cast running up her left arm from her wrist. She was a woman near my mother's age who was still driving and getting out and about, though slower than most of us. But now I felt a deeper empathy as this woman reminded me of my mother, who had recently moved from living alone to a memory care facility.
Why do I feel the weight of responsibility and even empathy so easily for some and not others? Is it the context, the closeness of the person who is hurting, or their experiences that mirror my own more closely? Do I feel compassion more intensely when it's my family?
It is the very essence of God's nature to care deeply for those in need—those who struggle to care for themselves: children, widows, and orphans. Embrace Paul’s wisdom: "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially to those in the family of faith." (Gal 6:10)
However, there is often a blind spot in our practice of empathy in a crucial area. It is with my brothers and sisters in the 3,500+ language groups worldwide who still lack complete scriptures in their native tongue. We can easily overlook their appalling lack of Biblical resources while we enjoy abundant content ourselves. More than half of the world's languages still lack a translation of God's word—unthinkable in this digital age.
In 1890, A.B. Simpson penned the words to the poem "A Missionary Cry."
A hundred thousand souls a day,
Are passing one by one away,
In Christless guilt and gloom.
Without one ray of hope or light,
With future dark as endless night,
They're passing to their doom.
It's still just as accurate today; only the numbers are higher. Men, women, and children are dying without hope, never hearing or seeing the precious words of our God in their mother tongue. Don't they deserve better?
Meanwhile, our practice of adopting modern secular copyright laws to claim God's word as our intellectual property often causes unnecessary delays in translating the Bible for those who have nothing. I doubt the Global Church finds our Western secular notions of copyright and our need for control amusing. Should a language group need permission from the West to use our translations as a source for translating God's word into their language? Will bad things really happen if we don't control them? Or will we see the kind of revivals that characterized the earlier days of rapid Bible translation in Church history? I suspect the global church would welcome free and open Bible translations that are without restrictions. And put them to good use.
For now, we might ask ourselves these questions:
• Do we feel enough compassion for the lost to be willing to give up the control and financial gains the world promises in exchange for eternal riches?
• Can we recognize someone with spiritual needs and be moved by the same emotion we feel when we see their physical needs?
• Do we still have the same empathy and concern when it costs us something?
The world is lost, and time is short for those facing a Christless eternity. “They're passing to their doom.” But Jesus came to offer hope and a path to the lost. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Lk 19:10) The message we, as believers, share is one that cannot be contained by all the laws of the world. It's time we turn to God's Word to learn what He says about these possessions we call copyright, instead of just living by the world’s standards. The Global Church deserves that.
Bruce Erickson – 2025