If you can't have the Bible you'd love, love the Bible you have

I probably shouldn’t tamper with the wording of a song for the title of this post. Cee Lo Green has sparked
a lot of controversy with his New Year’s Eve rendition of John Lennon’s
“Imagine,” in which he changed “no religion, too” to “all religion’s
true.”

But in fact, what Cee Lo did with the song illustrates
the point I want to make in this post nicely. When is it OK to rewrite a
song to say what you want it to, and when is that going too far and
showing disrespect for the song and its author?

One can ask the
same question about the Bible. A certain amount of interpretation aimed
at showing the Bible’s relevance for one’s own time may be an act of
appreciation. But at some point, it crosses the line into disrespect as
one insist on reading texts against the grain.