Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes E-Book

E. Randolph Richards

• Herausgeber: IVP
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 405

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Over 100,000 Copies Sold Worldwide! Understand Scripture on Its Own Terms What was clear to the original readers of Scripture is not always clear to us. Because of the cultural distance between the biblical world and our contemporary setting, we often bring modern Western biases to the text. For example: - When Western readers hear Paul exhorting women to "dress modestly," we automatically think in terms of sexual modesty. But most women in that culture would never wear racy clothing. The context suggests that Paul is likely more concerned about economic modesty—that Christian women not flaunt their wealth through expensive clothes, braided hair and gold jewelry. - Some readers might assume that Moses married "below himself" because his wife was a dark-skinned Cushite. Actually, Hebrews were the slave race, not the Cushites, who were highly respected. Aaron and Miriam probably thought Moses was being presumptuous by marrying "above himself." - Western individualism leads us to assume that Mary and Joseph traveled alone to Bethlehem. What went without saying was that they were likely accompanied by a large entourage of extended family.Biblical scholars Brandon O'Brien and Randy Richards shed light on the ways that Western readers often misunderstand the cultural dynamics of the Bible. They identify nine key areas where modern Westerners have significantly different assumptions about what might be going on in a text. Drawing on their own crosscultural experience in global mission, O'Brien and Richards show how better self-awareness and understanding of cultural differences in language, time and social mores allow us to see the Bible in fresh and unexpected ways. Getting beyond our own cultural assumptions is increasingly important for being Christians in our interconnected and globalized world. Learn to read Scripture as a member of the global body of Christ.

Leseprobe

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E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O'Brien

www.IVPress.com/books

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InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2013 by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O'Brien

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved worldwide.

While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Cover design: Cindy Kiple Interior design: Beth Hagenberg Images: young man: Alexander Ryabov/Getty Images open Bible: © Soren Pilman/iStockphoto globe: © DNY59/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-6347-1

For our sons:

Josh Richards

Jacob Richards

and

James David O’Brien

Contents

Introduction Coming to Terms with Our Cultural Blinders

PART ONE

-1- Serving Two Masters

-2- The Bible in Color

-3- Just Words?

PART TWO

-4- Captain of My Soul

-5- Have You No Shame?

-6- Sand Through the Hourglass

PART THREE

-7- First Things First

-8- Getting Right Wrong

-9- It's All About Me

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Resources for Further Exploration

Author Index

Scripture Index

About the Authors

Introduction Coming to Terms with Our Cultural Blinders

On a warm, clear afternoon in the summer of 2002, we stood among the few visible stones that remain of the ancient city of Laodicea. Randy was the professor and Brandon a student in a class earning biblical studies credit by walking for several weeks “In the Footsteps of Paul” through Turkey and Greece. While we were in the neighborhood, we also visited the cities that were home to the seven churches in the Revelation of John. Laodicea was one of these. Of that now-ruined city, the risen Lord had said, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Rev 3:15-16).

I (Brandon) heard plenty of sermons on this short passage growing up. My religious leaders generally interpreted the words hot, cold and lukewarm as designations of spiritual commitment. Eugene Peterson calls this the “Laodicean spectrum of spirituality.”[1] This interpretation suggests that Jesus wants us to be hot with spiritual zeal but that unfortunately many of us, like the Laodiceans, are lukewarm. We believe in Jesus, but we fail to take our faith seriously enough. This will not do, since Jesus would prefer that we were altogether cold—lost—than lukewarm in the faith. I never understood why this was the case, but since the meaning of the text seemed plain, I strove to keep the gospel fires burning.

In the summer of 2002, however, standing there among the then-unexcavated ruins of Laodicea, another interpretation of that famous passage presented itself. Several miles northwest of Laodicea, perched atop a small mountain, is a city called Hierapolis. At the base of Hierapolis is an extraordinary geological formation produced by the natural hot springs that surface around the city. Even today, the city is known for its steaming mineral baths. Over the centuries, the subterranean springs have created a snow-white calcium deposit known in Turkish as Pamukkale, or “cotton castle,” that cascades down the slopes like ice. From our vantage point in Laodicea, Hierapolis gleamed white like a freshly powdered ski slope.

About the same distance from Laodicea in the opposite direction is Colossae. The city was not yet excavated in 2002, so we couldn’t see it; but it is almost certain that in the first century, you could have seen Colossae from Laodicea. Paul’s colleague Epaphras worked in Colossae, as well as in Laodicea and Hierapolis (Col 4:13). It was a less notable city than Laodicea, but it had one thing Laodicea didn’t: a cold, freshwater spring. In fact, it was water—or the lack thereof—that set Laodicea apart. Unlike its neighbors, Laodicea had no springs at all. It had to import its water via aqueduct from elsewhere: hot mineral water from Hierapolis or fresh cold water from Colossae. The trouble was, by the time the water from either city made it to Laodicea, it had lost the qualities that made it remarkable. The hot water was no longer hot; the cold water was no longer cold. The Laodiceans were left with all the lukewarm water they could drink. Surely they wished their water was one or the other—either hot or cold. There isn’t much use for lukewarm water.

I suspect that the meaning of the Lord’s warning was clear to the Laodiceans. He wished his people were hot (like the salubrious waters of Hierapolis) or cold (like the refreshing waters of Colossae). Instead, their discipleship was unremarkable.

The point of this story is that where we stand influences how we read—and ultimately apply—the Bible. In the revivalist traditions of North American Christianity, the text reads as a warning against nominal Christian commitment. Eugene Peterson explains what this interpretation demanded of the religious leaders of his youth (and mine): “High on every pastor’s agenda was keeping people ‘on fire’ for Jesus. Worship in general and the sermon in particular were bellows for blowing the smoldering embers into a blaze.”[2] “Hot” (committed) was best, but “cold” (lost) was preferable to “lukewarm” (nominal), because it was honest! From the marble streets of Laodicea, hot and cold are equally acceptable. In both places and times, the meaning may seem plain, even though the interpretations are plainly different. In whatever place and whatever age people read the Bible, we instinctively draw from our own cultural context to make sense of what we’re reading.

The Foreign Land of Scripture

Christians always and everywhere have believed that the Bible is the Word of God. God spoke in the past, “through the prophets at many times and in various ways,” and most clearly by his Son (Heb 1:1). By the Holy Spirit, God continues to speak to his people through the Scriptures. It is important that Christ’s church retain this conviction, even as it poses certain challenges for interpretation. We can easily forget that Scripture is a foreign land and that reading the Bible is a crosscultural experience. To open the Word of God is to step into a strange world where things are very unlike our own. Most of us don’t speak the languages. We don’t know the geography or the customs or what behaviors are considered rude or polite. And yet we hardly notice. For many of us, the Bible is more familiar than any other book. We may have parts of it memorized. And because we believe that the Bible is God’s Word to us, no matter where on the planet or when in history we read it, we tend to read Scripture in our own when and where, in a way that makes sense on our terms. We believe the Bible has something to say to us today. We read the words, “you are . . . neither hot nor cold” to mean what they mean to us: that you are neither spiritually hot or spiritually cold. As we will see, it is a better method to speak of what the passage meant to the original hearers, and then to ask how that applies to us. Another way to say this is that all Bible reading is necessarily contextual. There is no purely objective biblical interpretation. This is not postmodern relativism. We believe truth is truth. But there’s no way around the fact that our cultural and historical contexts supply us with habits of mind that lead us to read the Bible differently than Christians in other cultural and historical contexts.

One of our goals in this book is to remind (or convince!) you of the crosscultural nature of biblical interpretation. We will do that by helping you become more aware of cultural differences that separate us from the foreign land of Scripture.[3] You are probably familiar with the language of worldview. Many people talk about the differences between a Christian and a secular worldview. The matter is actually more complicated than that. Worldview, which includes cultural values and other things we assume are true, can be visualized as an iceberg. The majority of our worldview, like the majority of an iceberg, is below the water line. The part we notice—what we wear, eat, say and consciously believe—is really only the visible tip. The majority of these powerful, shaping influences lurks below the surface, out of plain sight. More significantly, the massive underwater section is the part that sinks ships!

Another way to say this is that the most powerful cultural values are those that go without being said. It is very hard to know what goes without being said in another culture. But often we are not even aware of what goes without being said in our own culture. This is why misunder­standing and misinterpretation happen. When a passage of Scripture appears to leave out a piece of the puzzle because something went without being said, we instinctively fill in the gap with a piece from our own culture—usually a piece that goes without being said. When we miss what went without being said for them and substitute what goes without being said for us, we are at risk of misreading Scripture.

Sound complicated? An example will help. When Paul writes about the role of women in ministry in 1 Timothy, he argues that a woman is not allowed “to teach or to assume authority over a man” because “Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Tim 2:12-13). The argument may strike us as strange, since Paul’s point hinges on the implications of being first. But what difference does birth order make in an issue such as who is eligible to serve in ministry? To answer that question, we instinctively provide a bit of information that goes without being said in our context; we read into Paul’s argument what first means to us. For us, first is better. We express this cultural value in lots of ways: “No one remembers who finishes second,” or “Second place is the first loser” or “If you are not the lead dog, the view never changes.” We have a strong cultural value that first is preferred, more deserving and better qualified. What goes without being said for us—and thus what we read Paul to be saying—is, “Adam was first, and thus better, than Eve.” That is, by virtue of being “formed first,” men should be pastors because they are more deserving of the office or better qualified than women.

In Paul’s day, however, something quite different went without being said. The law of the primogeniture stated that the firstborn child received a larger inheritance, and with it greater responsibility, than all other children—not because he or she was preferred or more deserving or better qualified in any way, but merely because she or he was firstborn. Esau was the firstborn (until he sold his birthright), yet the Bible indicates clearly that Jacob was the more deserving brother (only a lousy son sells his birthright for a cup of soup). And the firstborn is not always the favorite: “Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons” even though he was the tenth of twelve brothers (Gen 37:3). In other words, Paul’s original readers may have understood him as saying that men should be pastors not because they are innately better qualified or more deserving but simply because they are the “firstborn.” In this case, we need to know what we take for granted—as well as what Paul’s audience took for granted—to keep us from reading “males are more deserving than females” into this passage.

In other situations, what goes without being said for us can lead us to miss important details in a Bible passage, even when the author is trying to make them obvious. Mark Allan Powell offers an excellent example of this phenomenon in “The Forgotten Famine,” an exploration of the theme of personal responsibility in what we call the parable of the prodigal son.[4] Powell had twelve students in a seminary class read the story carefully from Luke’s Gospel, close their Bibles and then retell the story as faithfully as possible to a partner. None of the twelve American seminary students mentioned the famine in Luke 15:14, which precipitates the son’s eventual return. Powell found this omission interesting, so he organized a larger experiment in which he had one hundred people read the story and retell it, as accurately as possible, to a partner. Only six of the one hundred participants mentioned the famine. The group was ethnically, racially, socioeconomically and religiously diverse. The “famine-forgetters,” as Powell calls them, had only one thing in common: they were from the United States.

Later, Powell had the opportunity to try the experiment again, this time outside the United States. In St. Petersburg, Russia, he gathered fifty participants to read and retell the prodigal son story. This time an overwhelming forty-two of the fifty participants mentioned the famine. Why? Just seventy years before, 670,000 people had died of starvation after a Nazi German siege of the capital city began a three-year famine. Famine was very much a part of the history and imagination of the Russian participants in Powell’s exercise. Based solely on cultural location, people from America and Russia disagreed about what they considered the crucial details of the story.

Americans tend to treat the mention of the famine as an unnecessary plot device. Sure, we think: the famine makes matters worse for the young son. He’s already penniless, and now there’s no food to buy even if he did have money. But he has already committed his sin, so it goes without being said for us that the main issue in the story is his wastefulness, not the famine. This is evident from our traditional title for the story: the parable of the prodigal (“wasteful”) son. We apply the story, then, as a lesson about willful rebellion and repentance. The boy is guilty, morally, of disrespecting his father and squandering his inheritance. He must now ask for forgiveness.

Christians in other parts of the world understand the story differently.[5] In cultures more familiar with famine, like Russia, readers consider the boy’s spending less important than the famine. The application of the story has less to do with willful rebellion and more to do with God’s faithfulness to deliver his people from hopeless situations. The boy’s problem is not that he is wasteful but that he is lost.

Our goal in this book is not, first and foremost, to argue which interpretation of a biblical story like this one is correct. Our goal is to raise this question: if our cultural context and assumptions can cause us to overlook a famine, what else do we fail to notice?

Reading the Bible, Reading Ourselves

The core conviction that drives this book is that some of the habits that we readers from the West (the United States, Canada and Western Europe) bring to the Bible can blind us to interpretations that the original audience and readers in other cultures see quite naturally. This observation is not original with us. Admitting that the presuppositions we carry to the Bible influence the way we read it is commonplace in both academic and popular conversations about biblical interpretation.[6] Unfortunately, books on biblical interpretation often do not offer readers an opportunity to identify and address our cultural blinders. This can leave us with a nagging sense that we may be reading a passage incorrectly and an attending hopelessness that we don’t know why or how to correct the problem. We hope that Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes will offer a positive corrective by suggesting that there is a discernible pattern by which Western readers read—and even misread—Scripture. Becoming aware of our cultural assumptions and how they influence our reading of Scripture are important first steps beyond the paralysis of self-doubt and toward a faithful reading and application of the Bible.

In the pages that follow, we talk about nine differences between Western and non-Western cultures that we should be aware of when we interpret the Bible. We use the image of an iceberg as our controlling metaphor. In part one, we discuss cultural issues that are glaring and obvious, plainly visible above the surface and therefore least likely to cause serious misunderstanding. In part two, we discuss cultural issues that are less obvious. They reside below the surface but are visible once you know to look for them. Because they are less visible, they are more shocking and more likely to cause misunderstanding. Finally, in part three, we address cultural issues that are not obvious at all. They lurk deep below the surface, often subtly hidden behind or beneath other values and assumptions. These are the most difficult to detect and, therefore, the most dangerous for interpretation.

In short, while this is a book about biblical interpretation, our primary goal is to help us learn to read ourselves. At points in this book you may wish that we offered more detailed exegesis of a biblical text. But that isn’t our purpose. Before we can be confident we are reading the Bible accurately, we need to understand what assumptions and values we project onto the Bible: those things that go without being said and that make us assume that some interpretations are self-evident and others are impossible. We do not spell out new, non-Western interpretations for every passage that we discuss. Instead, we are happy to raise questions and leave to you the hard work of drawing conclusions.

Taking stock of the cultural assumptions that affect our interpretation of Scripture is important for several reasons. To begin with, we can no longer pretend that a Western interpretation of the Bible is normative for all Christians everywhere. Christianity is growing at such a rate in South America, Africa and Asia that soon the majority of Christians worldwide will be not be white or Western. In The Next Christendom, Philip Jenkins notes, “By 2050, only about one-fifth of the world’s 3 billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Whites. Soon, the phrase ‘a White Christian’ may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surprising as ‘a Swedish Buddhist.’” In terms of sheer numbers, then, non-Western interpretations of Scripture will soon be “typical” and “average.”[7]

These changes in the global distribution of Christians are also taking place closer to home. Many sociologists estimate that by 2050, the majority of U.S. citizens will be nonwhite. Demographic changes in the United States population in general are changing the face of Christianity in the U.S. The “average” American church will look very different twenty years in the future than it did twenty years ago. “Contrary to popular opinion,” writes Soong-Chan Rah, “the church is not dying in America; it is alive and well, but it is alive and well among the immigrant and ethnic minority communities and not among the majority white churches in the United States.”[8] We need to be aware of the way our cultural assumptions affect how we read the Bible so we are prepared to hear what our non-Western brothers and sisters have to teach us about Christian faith and practice.

Moreover, the question about how our cultural and historical context influences our reading of Scripture has practical and pastoral implications. If our cultural blind spots keep us from reading the Bible correctly, then they can also keep us from applying the Bible correctly. If we want to follow Jesus faithfully and help others do the same, we need to do all we can to allow the Scriptures to speak to us on their own terms.

In 1988, I (Randy) moved with my wife and two sons (ages two and eight weeks) from Texas to Sulawesi, an island north of Australia and south of the Philippines. We served as missionaries to a cluster of islands in eastern Indonesia until returning in 1996, where I taught at a small Christian college in Arkansas. While in Indonesia, I taught in a small, indigenous Bible college and worked with churches scattered from Borneo to Papua.

One day, I was sitting in a hut with a group of church elders from a remote island village off the coast of Borneo. They asked my opinion about a thorny church issue. A young couple had relocated to their village many years before because they had committed a grievous sin in their home village. For as long as they had resided here, they had lived exemplary lives of godliness and had attended church faithfully. Now, a decade later, they wanted to join the church.

“Should we let them?” asked the obviously troubled elders.

Attempting to avoid the question, I replied, “Well, what grievous sin did they commit?”

The elders were reluctant to air the village’s dirty laundry before a guest, but finally one of them replied, “They married on the run.”

In America, we call that eloping.

“That’s it?” I blurted out. “What was the sin?”

Quite shocked, they stared at this young (and foolish) missionary and asked, “Have you never read Paul?”

I certainly thought I had. My Ph.D. was in Paul.

They reminded me that Paul told believers to obey their parents (Eph 6:1). They were willing to admit that everyone makes mistakes. We don’t always obey. But surely one should obey in what is likely the most important decision of his or her life: choosing a spouse.

I suddenly found myself wondering if I had, in fact, ever really read Paul. My “American Paul” clearly did not expect his command to include adult children deciding whom to marry. Moreover, it was clear that my reading (or misreading?) had implications for how I counseled church leaders committed to faithful and obedient discipleship.

Thus, because we are well aware that all questions of interpretation are, in the end, questions about application, we will comment throughout the book on how we understand the implications of our Western (mis)readings for our piety, worship and ministry.

There will also be a historical element to our presentation. Culture changes according to place, to be sure. But culture also changes across time. Twenty-first-century America, for example, is a very different place than eighteenth-century America was. As a church historian, I (Brandon) am regularly forced to try to understand the presuppositions—what went without being said—of Christians of previous eras. This means I am constantly identifying and challenging my own cultural and historical assumptions. Church history is a two-thousand-year-long conversation about how the eternal truth of Scripture applies in different cultures at different times. Whether we think they had it right or wrong, earlier Christians’ interpretations are invaluable for helping us identify what goes without being said for us. So, when appropriate, we will bring in historical perspectives to round out the discussion. Additionally, since habits have histories, we will try to point out not only what we assume when we read the Bible but also why we assume these things.

Some Caveats

This sort of project has its challenges. To begin with, making generalized statements about Eastern and Western cultures is ill advised. Unfortunately, we must. But bear in mind that your authors are well aware that a term such as Eastern, which tries to account for the remarkable cultural, ethnic and sociopolitical diversity of everyone from Mongolia to Morocco or Korea to the Congo, is almost too broad to be helpful. The term Western is not much better, as there are profound cultural differences between Europeans, Canadians and residents of the United States. Even so, we are limited by space and language. We like to say that generalizations are always wrong and usually helpful. We ask you for the benefit of the doubt.

Besides scholarship, we draw on our own crosscultural experiences. Many of my (Randy’s) illustrations come from my time as a missionary in Indonesia. I (Brandon) speak more often of time spent in Europe and of insight gleaned from historical study. Anecdotes aren’t hard science, but we hope that these stories will help you see that many of the things that went without being said for the Bible’s original audience still go without being said in much of the non-Western world.

Next, we speak as insiders, and this has its own challenges. We speak as white, Western males. In fact, we always speak as white, Western males. Everything either of us has ever written has come from the perspective of middle-class, white males with a traditionally Western education. There’s really nothing we can do about that except be aware of and honest about it. That said, we write as white, Western males who have been chastened to read the Bible through the eyes of our non-Western sisters and brothers in the Lord.

For example, I (Randy) remember grading my first multiple-choice exam in Indonesia. I was surprised by how many students left answers unmarked. So I asked the first student when handing back exams, “Why didn’t you select an answer on question number three?”

The student looked up and said, “I didn’t know the answer.”

“You should have at least guessed,” I replied.

He looked at me, appalled. “What if I accidentally guessed the correct answer? I would be implying that I knew the answer when I didn’t. That would be lying!”

I opened my mouth to respond, but then realized I was about to argue him to a lower standard! I shut my mouth. My American pragmatism had been winning out over my Christian standard of honesty. What was worse was that I hadn’t even noticed until a non-Western person pointed it out. What I have found equally interesting is that my Christian students in the United States today don’t enjoy this story—because they still want to guess answers. Nonetheless, the challenges of reading with others’ eyes should not deter us. We can learn so much from each other.

Our perspective as writers implies something about our audience. The generalizations we make about Westerners will probably most accurately describe white, American males. This is not because we consider this group the most important or even the most representative of a Western worldview. But this is the group that has dominated the conversation about theology and biblical interpretation for the last few centuries. We’re trying to prod people like us—white, Western men—to think differently about the Bible and the Christian life. That’s why we talk most often about people like “us.” If you are not a white, Western male and the generalizations we make don’t apply to you, we hope that you can benefit from this book nonetheless. Wherever you disagree with our generalizations, take a moment to consider why. If you think to yourself, That’s not true of me. I don’t assume X. I assume Y: well, then you’ve begun to identify what goes without being said for you. That’s our goal, and we would consider that a success. It’s worth noting here that bicultural or “third culture” readers likely have a marked advantage in this process; your experience of navigating cultural differences can make you more aware of differences of which others are rarely conscious.

Similarly, we’ll use the words America and American to refer to the United States and its residents. We don’t mean to exclude Canadian readers, but we don’t presume to generalize about Canadian culture. Please feel free to read yourself into our observations about “Americans” where you feel they apply to you.

Because we speak as insiders, we won’t tell you how to read like a non-Western Christian. For one thing, there is no single “non-Western” way to read the Bible (just as there is no single “Western” way to read the Bible). Even if there were, we wouldn’t be qualified to tell you what it is. And we aren’t implying that all our Western reading habits are wrong. Some characteristics of the West actually help us to read some passages more faithfully, such as those encouraging forgiveness or generosity. So while we aren’t planning to point out places that non-Western Christians instinctively get the Bible wrong, we do think someone else could—and probably should—write a book called Misreading Scripture with Eastern Eyes. Our illustrations are simply intended to highlight what is normal and instinctual for us so that we become aware of our habits of reading. We want to unsettle you just enough that you remember biblical interpretation is a crosscultural experience and to help you be more aware of what you take for granted when you read.

Finally, we have been necessarily selective in what we’ve chosen to address and what we’ve left untouched. We will not talk much, for example, about the impact that sociopolitical realities have on our biblical interpretation. As interesting as it would be to consider how interpretation of Romans 13:1 (“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God”) might vary among readers from democratic America, socialist Europe or communist Asia, we simply don’t have the space or expertise to cover everything.

What bothers us more is that we have been forced to oversimplify complex issues. Each chapter in this book could be a book itself. Wherever we suspect readers will have more questions or need further direction, we try to offer guidance in the Resources for Further Exploration and in the endnotes.

In short, what we offer here is a conversation starter. We hope scholars, students and congregations will begin with this volume and move on to deeper exploration of this important subject. We hope, then, that you will read this book as Christians should read everything—prayerfully and carefully.

Questions to Ponder

We want this book to enrich your reading of the Bible, not detract from it. We want it to give you greater confidence, not less, in the Word of God and your reading of it. Yet the challenge to read a text

differently

can be unsettling. What risks do you see in opening yourself up to new readings?

Sometimes Christians are comfortable with old misreadings. Since we believe we are responsible to apply and not merely study Scripture, a better interpretation may challenge you to new applications. How ready are you to remove some cultural blinders and better read the text?

Perhaps you have already begun to recognize the ways in which your cultural assumptions affect your interpretation of Scripture. Take a moment to think through any biblical passages or issues you hope to understand better after reading this book.

PART ONE

Above the Surface

I (Randy) was recently in Scotland to visit an American friend who teaches there. A British New Testament scholar was driving the car and telling a story. Even from the back seat, I could see she was still quite flustered and embarrassed about what had happened. She explained that a Baptist pastor and his wife had been visiting from Georgia. As their hosting professor, she had picked them up at the airport. The pastor’s wife was going to ride in the back seat so that her husband could ride up front.

My British friend then stopped the story and exclaimed, “The wife opened the door, said the F-word and sat down in the seat!”

I looked wide-eyed at my North American colleague. He started laughing. “You know what the F-word is, don’t you?”

Pastoral ministry has changed, but I still couldn’t imagine a scenario in which a pastor’s wife would say such a thing. I was appalled. Our British friend was aghast. My friend continued laughing and said, “She means fanny.”

Our British colleague in the front seat grimaced. “Yes. The woman said, ‘I’m just going to park my’—oh, that word—‘right here on the seat.’” My British friend couldn’t even bring herself to say “that word,” since in British usage, fanny is impolite slang for female genitalia. (Our apologies to British readers.)

This story illustrates at least two cultural differences that we’ll discuss in the chapters that follow. One is language. Language is perhaps the most obvious difference between cultures. It’s the tip of the iceberg, the part of worldview that is clearly visible. Whether we are traveling from the United States to France or from Germany to the Philippines, we are well aware of the fact that one language is spoken in our home country, while another language is spoken elsewhere. That is to say, language differences come as no surprise to travelers. Granted, language differences may be more surprising if one travels between countries that share a language (such as the United States and Scotland). We use the word fanny in the U.S., but we use it quite differently than our British friends do. Even so, it is easy enough—once warned—to expect differences of this sort. We discuss language in chapter three.

This story also touches on another source of cultural differences. Mores are the social conventions that dictate which behaviors are considered appropriate or inappropriate. For example, profanity exists emotionally only in one’s mother tongue. When we learn a new language, we have to learn the naughty words so we don’t accidentally say them and offend our hosts. To us, though, it is just a list. Native speakers may blanch and have a difficult time telling us the words; even spelling the words may rattle them. Missionaries have to be careful or they can easily develop foul mouths. The fact that we know what fanny means in British English but are not bothered by writing it just goes to show that the word itself is neutral. After all, in North America, Fanny can even be a woman’s first name! It is culture that supplies the connotations of a word. This raises an important question. Paul said to avoid “obscenity” (Eph 5:4). But who defines obscenity? We address that issue in chapter one. Then we’ll take on the touchy topic of ethnicity in chapter two.

On the whole, the cultural differences we discuss in this section are harmless enough once we’re made aware of them. They surprise and may even delight us. For tourists, this is often where the fun occurs. A miscommunication due to language confusion, a taxi ride in a country where driving seems to be a contact sport, eating as a meal in a foreign land something that would be a family pet or a household pest in your own: these make for great stories to tell when you return home. In this case, what is true of traveling can also be true of biblical interpretation. Some differences between our Western perspective and that of ancient readers are obvious enough that they don’t result in profound misinterpretation.

Even so, if left unconscious, our presuppositions (what goes without being said) about the following cultural differences—mores, race and language—can lead us to misread the Bible.

-1- Serving Two Masters

Mores

Don’t smoke, drink, cuss or chew or run around with girls that do.”

This proverb served as the summary statement for moral conduct for both of us growing up in the American South. To be fair, people grinned when they said it. They knew it was an insufficient statement on Christian ethics. But make no mistake: they were serious. And they seemed to have the Bible on their side. Didn’t Paul say that your “bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19)? Doesn’t that mean we should take good care of them? Didn’t he say, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths” (Eph 4:29)? And isn’t it true that “bad company corrupts good character” (1 Cor 15:33)?

The technical term for behaviors like smoking, drinking and cussing is mores (pronounced mawr-eyz). Webster’s Dictionary defines mores as “folkways of central importance accepted without question and embodying the fundamental moral views of a group.” A couple of phrases in that definition are worth pointing out.

First, mores are “accepted without question.” That is, they are views a community considers closed to debate. People don’t think about them as closed to debate; they simply don’t think of them at all. They go without being said. This is because mores are taught to us while we are children and before we can reason them out. I (Randy) remember one example vividly. My wife and I don’t cuss—we were taught not to—and we taught our children not to. Unfortunately, we taught them by never using cuss words. This more went without being said—literally. While we were missionaries in a remote place in Indonesia, the only people our children knew who spoke English were my wife and me. On rare occasions, another missionary would visit us. When our elder son was five years old, an older, very proper, hair-in-a-bun missionary came to visit us. We introduced our son, who very politely said, “Very nice to meet you.”

After she commented on how handsome he was, Josh asked his mom, “May I go outside to play?”

The missionary asked him, “Where are you going?”

Our little angel smiled up at her and said, “None of your d**n business.”

Our chins hit the floor. We had never heard him say that word before (or since). The completely shocked look on all our faces told a five-year-old that this was unacceptable. His mom sputtered, “Josh!” Before we could say another word, he started crying and ran from the room. We communicated effectively this word was not appropriate. When he left, we were in an awkward spot with a missionary leader we had just met. We didn’t even have the luxury of shaking our heads and saying, “The things they learn from their friends!” All of his friends spoke Manadonese. I’m sure the missionary was convinced that the Richards household used spicy language at home.

We spent weeks wondering how our son could have learned a word he didn’t hear us use. Later we were rewatching a movie— there was no English television but we did have videos—and we heard the line, “Where are you going?” to which the hero replied with the now infamous line. Our son had used it exactly like he heard it. Our son had picked up a turn of phrase by watching a movie, which is one way culture is transmitted. My wife and I had passed along a cultural value by our response that such language is inappropriate, which is another way culture is transmitted.

The definition of mores also notes that they embody “the fundamental moral views of a group.” Observing these conventions is considered essential to the ongoing well-being of the community. Break them and chaos could reign. As a result, these values are guarded as if the very fabric of society depends on it. Sometimes it does. We would argue that “protecting the weak and innocent,” an American more (at least in principle), is essential to preserving American culture. More often, though, mores are less permanent, changing from place to place and, within the same culture, over time.

Within the U.S., for example, certain Christian values shift according to geography. In the South a generation ago, many folks considered playing cards to be of the devil. As you moved north, playing cards became more and more acceptable. When you reached Minnesota, you might find bridge tournaments in church.[1] On the East Coast (where tobacco is grown), smoking was okay as long as you didn’t smoke in the pulpit (this is only a slight exaggeration). As you moved west, it was less and less acceptable. When you reached California, smoking was of the devil. (We once heard a West Coast pastor joke that his church condemned adultery because it had been known to lead to smoking.) A family friend from Arkansas sent a Christmas card this year that was a collage of photos, four of which showed the husband or a child kneeling next to a dead animal they had shot. While I’m sure that it seemed very Christmasy to them, folks from other parts of the country might view this as an outrage.

Mores also change over time, causing what is commonly called the “generation gap.” Among conservative Christians in the United States today, we are seeing a shifting more. The consumption of alcohol in moderation, such as a glass of wine with dinner or a pint of beer with your buddies, was anathema for many conservative Christians a generation ago, especially in the South where we were raised. Today growing numbers of young conservatives are challenging this assumption. Now many conservative denominations are generationally split on the issue, with younger people imbibing and older people abstaining.[2]

As the examples above suggest, mores dictate everything from what qualifies as inappropriate language to what one eats and wears and even to whom one should marry and more. For example, the phrase “that was a good dog” spoken by an American suburbanite can mean “one that doesn’t chew my shoes”; by an Australian rancher, “one that herds sheep”; and by a Minahasan, “one that tastes delicious.” Our perspective depends upon what our social mores dictate is the appropriate use—and misuse—of language, the human body or our canine friends.

Serving Two Masters?

Christians face the unique challenge of being squeezed between conflicting mores. On one hand, Christians often adhere to a certain code of conduct without question and regard certain behaviors as essential to the well-being of both the Christian community and the world at large. On the other hand, majority Western culture has its own values that likewise go without being said and which are considered essential to human liberty and satisfaction. Thus, the church and the world often hold contradictory mores. Our options, then, are either to stubbornly resist the infiltration of a cultural more we consider antithetical to a Christian one or to compromise. History is full of examples. In eighteenth-century England and America, to take just one example, the theater was a popular source of entertainment and education for cultured members of society. Good Christians, however, wouldn’t be caught dead in a theater. Religious folk considered theater, with its vivid depiction of human depravity, to be morally corrosive. It excited the passions and threatened the social order. So Christian mores of the time said that theater was off limits for the faithful. For a while. Over time, however, churches began to adapt to theater culture. The dynamic English evangelist George Whitefield preached in a nearly unprecedented theatrical style during the Great Awakening, which led thousands to experience new birth in Christ.[3] Consequently, other preachers, who traditionally read their sermons from manuscripts, adopted more energetic and extemporaneous styles of communication in the entertaining vein of a theater actor. The old meetinghouse seating arrangement gradually gave way to theater seating, with a stage front and center and stadium-style seats facing forward. In this way, Christians were able to capitalize on the appeal of the theater without engaging in the aspects of it they considered questionable. In short, they compromised.[4]

Another reason Westerners are tempted to compromise is because we tend to view the world dualistically. Things are true or false, right or wrong, good or bad. We have little patience for ambiguity or for the unsettling reality that values change over time. We want to know: Is it okay to drink alcohol—yes or no? What about sex—good or bad? Tensions like these are so common in our culture that Hollywood has invented an image for it. When someone faces a dilemma, up pops an angelic image of himself or herself on one shoulder and a devilish one on the other. The symbolism is clear: our choice is always between saintly or sinful, holy or unholy. It is difficult to live in this tension. So we feel happiest when we can satisfy two conflicting mores with some sort of compromise, as our Christian fathers did with theater. This applies, of course, to other mores, including the three we will discuss below: sex, food and money.

Christians are tempted to believe that our mores originate from the Bible. We believe it is inappropriate or appropriate to drink alcohol, for example, “because the Bible says so.” The trouble is, what is “proper” by our standards—even by our Christian standards—is as often projected onto the Bible as it is determined by it. This is because our cultural mores can lead us to emphasize certain passages of Scripture and ignore others.

When I (Brandon) was growing up, pastors in our Christian tradition preached often on the evils of alcohol. We were frequently reminded—from Scripture—that “wine is a mocker and beer a brawler” (Prov 20:1). Thus, we learn, “Do not gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly! In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper” (Prov 23:31-32). It seemed clear enough to me.

So when I visited the house of a friend, a Christian of a different denomination who had recently moved to town from another state, I was shocked to discover that his parents had a wine chiller engraved with a different Bible reference: “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake” (1 Tim 5:23 kjv)! I began to suspect that my tradition’s view of alcohol consumption was at least as cultural as it was biblical when I spent a semester in Edinburgh, Scotland, where I attended a church of my own denomination. My first week in town, I was invited to a deacon’s house for dinner. He offered me a drink when I arrived.

“What do you have?” I asked.

“Anything you want,” he answered. “We have lagers, ales, stouts, pilsners, sherry, whisky, port . . .”

Our hierarchy of what behaviors are better or worse than others is passed down to us culturally and unconsciously. We might assume that our mores are universal and that Christians everywhere have always felt the way we feel about things. But they aren’t, and they haven’t, as the illustration above suggests. In Indonesia, billiards is considered a grievous sin for Christians. When I (Randy) heard this, I reacted, “That’s silly. We had a pool table in my house when I was growing up.” My Indonesian friends said nothing. Years later, I found out that they commonly thanked God that he had delivered me from my terrible past. In their mind, I had grown up in a virtual brothel.

What can be more dangerous is that our mores are a lens through which we view and interpret the world. Because mores are not universal, we may not be aware that these different gut-level reactions to certain behaviors can affect the way we read the Bible. Indeed, if they are not made explicit, our cultural mores can lead us to misread the Bible. In the story about Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:1-9), it seems very clear to us what the sin of the Sodomites was: sodomy. (We even named a sin after them!) To Indonesian Christians, the sin of the Sodomites is equally clear: inhospitality. They appeal to this verse for support: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy” (Ezek 16:49). Both groups agree that the folks of Sodom were sinful. But of which sin were they guilty? In the pages that follow, we consider three issues—sex, food and money—which are surrounded by cultural mores that can influence how we read Scripture.

Sex

Tradition has it that a few years after Jesus’ ascension, the apostles gathered in Jerusalem to make plans for the first international missions movement. Motivated by the Lord’s commandment to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19), the apostles determined that they should make a concerted effort to spread the gospel beyond the empire and to the “four” ends of the earth.[5] They cast lots to decide who should go where. The lot for India fell to Thomas (the one Westerners often call “the doubter”).[6]

Record of Thomas’s ministry in India has been preserved in oral tradition and in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas.[7]