Raised an Atheist, now a Bible translator

From atheism to faith
When Far­rokh was grow­ing up his coun­try was part of the So­viet Union. He was taught in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that there was no God. As a teenager he was a bit of a rebel, get­ting into trou­ble and even abus­ing al­co­hol and drugs.

Then he be­gan to won­der if there re­ally was a God: “I tried to think, what’s go­ing on? Why are peo­ple talk­ing a lot about God? If there is a God, then I have to obey. If there is no God, like we learned in school, then I can con­tinue to live how I live.” He then be­gan to ex­plore what it might mean to be­lieve in God.

First, he ex­plored Is­lam, since many peo­ple in his coun­try ad­here to that faith. He read the Qur’an in Russ­ian. He also looked into Hin­duism, be­cause there are some peo­ple in his coun­try who wor­ship Kr­ishna. Fi­nally, Far­rokh met a Russ­ian man who had come to his coun­try to lead peo­ple to Christ, even while Far­rokh’s coun­try was in the mid­dle of a ter­ri­ble civil war:

“He came dur­ing wartime to tell peo­ple about Christ. We had a lot of con­ver­sa­tions. Days, nights, days, nights. When I be­came a Chris­t­ian, my re­la­tion­ship with my par­ents de­te­ri­o­rated.” They were dis­ap­pointed that he be­came a Chris­t­ian be­cause they wanted him to be an athe­ist like other good cit­i­zens of the USSR.

The call of Bible translation
Far­rokh then went to Rus­sia to study the­ol­ogy. There, he met a woman who worked for the In­sti­tute for Bible Trans­la­tion (IBT): “She talked to me about Bible trans­la­tion. I started to work for IBT and I was trained how to do Bible trans­la­tion. We started with John’s Gospel.” How­ever for var­i­ous rea­sons this pro­ject had to be stopped.

Far­rokh re­turned to his home coun­try still car­ry­ing the con­vic­tion to trans­late the Bible into his own lan­guage. For­tu­nately, he soon met a man who had just started work­ing on a trans­la­tion into Far­rokh’s lan­guage. There is tech­ni­cally al­ready a Bible in this lan­guage, but it is writ­ten in highly aca­d­e­mic lan­guage. This ver­sion is so heady that it is dif­fi­cult for most every­day peo­ple to un­der­stand it prop­erly. That is why Far­rokh joined the pro­ject to make a new trans­la­tion,  in­volv­ing a num­ber of part­ner or­ga­ni­za­tions. He was en­thu­si­as­tic about the opportunity:

“Now I’m happy that God used me. He first saved my heart, and my life, then he used me to do this work for oth­ers who are not saved yet, in moun­tains and villages.”

Keeper of the peace
Far­rokh’s love for peo­ple goes back to his child­hood, when he grew up in the So­viet Union. He told me that when he was in pri­mary school, other na­tional boys would bully Russ­ian boys be­cause they felt like they didn’t be­long. Far­rokh was the one who would act as peacekeeper:

“The Rus­sians were afraid. I was one who al­ways stood up for Rus­sians. I said, ‘No, you will not beat this person.’”

He re­counted grow­ing up in the USSR and how over­all it was a good ex­pe­ri­ence. The Cen­tral Asian So­viet So­cial­ist Re­publics saw a lot of im­prove­ments to their in­fra­struc­ture and in­dus­try. In fact, many of Far­rokh’s coun­try­men rem­i­nisce about the times un­der com­mu­nism as the good old days: “We lost what we had in So­viet times,” Far­rokh said, re­fer­ring to a steady work­ing in­come and a health­ier econ­omy in the coun­try. He then re­flected on his peo­ple, and their affin­ity to­wards peace:

“[My peo­ple] lost their au­thor­ity po­si­tion in Cen­tral Asia be­cause they are not ag­gres­sive. They are po­ets. They love the tra­di­tions. They are peace­mak­ers, I think.” The cul­ture of his coun­try has a big fo­cus on mu­sic and lit­er­a­ture. That is an­other rea­son why this Bible trans­la­tion is so im­por­tant to Far­rokh. He told me how he be­gan his con­tri­bu­tion to the project:

“I tried to trans­late [the Gospel of] John from Russ­ian and Greek. Greek is sim­i­lar to Russ­ian… He­brew is much more dif­fi­cult than Greek. I still re­mem­ber a lit­tle Greek but not He­brew.” Know­ing Russ­ian as a sec­ond but flu­ent lan­guage proved to be a huge help when learn­ing New Tes­ta­ment Greek.

From St Cyril to Farrokh
The Cyril­lic al­pha­bet, used for Russ­ian and sev­eral other lan­guages in East­ern Eu­rope and Cen­tral Asia, was de­vel­oped from the Greek al­pha­bet, just like the Latin al­pha­bet was. St. Cyril and his brother, St. Method­ius, brought it to the Slavic peo­ples from Byzan­tine Greece in or­der to preach the gospel to the Slavs, and to teach them how to read and write. Cre­at­ing or­thogra­phies for Bible trans­la­tion, thus, has a very long his­tory in the world of shar­ing the Gospel.

While he did not need to cre­ate an or­thog­ra­phy, Far­rokh is car­ry­ing on that tra­di­tion of Bible trans­la­tion for his peo­ple in Cen­tral Asia:

“It was God’s call for me to do this work, and I love it. I try to do good a trans­la­tion of the Word that will help oth­ers be­come Chris­tians.” Please pray that Far­rokh will be able to see the fruits of his labors with a new, con­tem­po­rary, ac­cu­rate Bible trans­la­tion, that his work can con­tinue in peace, and that the trans­la­tion will soon be fin­ished and dis­trib­uted with­out hindrance.