How do you say "Christ" in Armenian?
I now sit in the same room with 4 lawyers (the so called Legal office). The work is done simultaneously in several languages, so at any given moment someone might be writing a contract in English, someone else - constructing an offer in Russian, and a third – translating something from English or French into Armenian. Naturally, everybody needs help now and then, and phrases like "How do you spell 'territorial'? What's 'continuity' in Armenian?" fly around all the time.
Today, my coworker is translating a Habitat for Humanity contract.
-How do you say: "to build houses where people can experience God's love" in Armenian, asks she. A minute later: -And "to promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ".
-Dont they know we are the first Christian country? - chimes in another coworker. We were the first to "promote the Gospel".
-Yet we none of us have these expressions ready in Armenian, I say. Isn't it sad?
-Well, we are not religious people! returns the first coworker.
The conversation then quickly switches to sects (which in Armenia means any demomination except the Armenian Apostolic Church) and how everybody hates them.
The head of Legal service walks into the room a few minutes later and is asked about the translation.
-Oh, for God's sake! Tell them to throw those parts out! - he suggests. - The state bodies might think they are registering a religious organization and there will be difficulties unlooked for!
How do you witness to people like these?
posted by Mariam @ 6:18 AM
5 Comments:
While the fact that people take propaganda slogans seriously (how dare they promote Christianity to us when we were the first nation become Christian), the most disturbing section of your post is their worries about the government's reaction to faith based passages in the contract.
The government, based on the constitution, has no business in religious affairs and should not have a reaction to such contracts. Let people follow any faith they want and do whatever they want. That's none of the government's business.
BTW, don't these lawyers know who Habitat for Humanity are and what they stand for?
You wanna know the rest of the story? The same coworker just walked into the room, and her first sentence was:
-After translating all that Habitat stuff yesterday I had some really satanic dreams!
To Nazarian: I think they do, but I wouldn't vouch for it - a lot of people know Habitat builds houses, but don't realize it's a Christian organization.
What really bugs me, is that no matter how friendly you are with people, the minute you mention you DO NOT belong to Armenian Apostolic, they turn serious and even angry and start shunning you (oh, those sect people! and YOU are one of them?) This coming from people who do not read the Bible, do not regularly attend the church and have a vague idea of what God is all about to start with. They are just ARMENIAN, and that makes them - what? Holy? Above reproach? Automatically Christian? I don't know.
I agree with you about the government, but same is true here - if Habitat was promoting ideas of Armenian Apostolic church, they would probably have no trouble!
I guess the church has been successful at demonizing the rest of the religious thought. They know that they cannot compete with a lot of the Christian denominations and non-christian religions out there so they have two choices. Either make themselves more competitive through improving their delivery of God's word(better preaching, less corruption among the ranks, etc.) or demonize the rest. They have chosen the second and have been successful.
There is actually a lot of experience from past and present to prove that it works. The same is true with the Greek Orthodox church. The Catholics tried it a few centuries ago.
too true...
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