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January 27, 2025
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.
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.
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.
Another way to say this is that the most powerful cultural values are those that go 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.
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.
I like this idea.
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?
“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]
If our cultural blind spots keep us from reading the Bible correctly, then they can also keep us from applying the Bible correctly.
Webster’s Dictionary defines mores as “folkways of central importance accepted without question and embodying the fundamental moral views of a group.”
Spiritual gifting is not reserved for the married. Perhaps instead of focusing all our attention on ministering to the needs of families, we should find more meaningful ways of equipping singles for the work of the Lord.
Outside the West, wealth is often viewed as a limited resource. There is only so much money to be had, so if one person has a lot of it, then everyone else has less to divide among themselves. If you make your slice of pie larger, then my slice is now smaller. In those cultures, folks are more likely to consider the accumulation of wealth to be immoral, since you can only become wealthy if other people become poor.
In other words, one of the ways Westerners routinely misread instructions about modesty in the Bible is by assuming sexual modesty is of greater concern than economic modesty.
It is certainly important for men and women alike to arrive for worship in attire that is sexually modest. But we seem to have no trouble turning sacred spaces into Christian country clubs. We see no dangers in the human tendency to assert our status in the way we dress.
in order to uncover which parts may be connected with cultural mores. To do that, take the time to complete these sentences: (1) Clearly, this passage is saying (or not saying) ______ is right/wrong. (2) Is (that issue) really what is condemned? (3) Am I adding/removing some elements?
Our ultimate goal should be to live the Christian life more faithfully. We need to be aware of our mores because they can contradict Christian values.
When we fail to hold our mores up to the penetrating light of Scripture, we can become lax and complacent in our discipleship. Allowing ourselves to be chastened by what goes without being said for our non-Western brothers and sisters gives us the opportunity to be more Christlike followers of our Lord.
The radical nature of the multiethnic body of Christ is sometimes lost on those of us who believe we have put prejudice behind us once and for all.
Matters become even more complex when you consider that grammar and syntax, as well as ethnicity and social class, not only reflect but also determine the way people in a given culture think and speak. While it may seem a chicken-or-egg type of question, linguists have long pondered if our worldview shapes our language or the other way around. Ever since the pioneering work of Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941) in linguistic relativity, most scholars concede that our culture (via our language) shapes our worldview, which in turn filters what we notice and how we interpret reality.[1]
our unconscious assumptions about language encourage us to reshape the biblical narrative to fit our framework.
Greek has four words for love: agape, philia, eros and storge.
Chesed is “a kindly-loyal-merciful-faithful-(the-sort-that-shows-up-in-actions) kind of love.”
Paul struggles for a Greek word to describe the fruit (singular) of the Spirit. He describes it as a “love-joy-peace-patience-kindness-goodness-faithfulness-gentleness-self-control kind of fruit” (Gal 5:22). Paul is not giving us a list of various fruits, from which we may pick a few. Rather, he gives us a list of words that circle around the one character of a Spirit-filled life he is trying to describe.
The Greeks had a word for the feeling one has when one is happy: makarios. It is a feeling of contentment, when one knows one’s place in the world and is satisfied with that place.
our English translations say, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt 5:9). Unfortunately, this introduces another problem. The English language prefers clear subjects for its verbs. So the missing puzzle piece in the Beatitudes is, How is one blessed? What goes without saying in our culture is that God blesses people. Consequently, we often interpret this verse to mean, “If you are a peacemaker, then God will bless you.” But this isn’t what Jesus meant. Jesus meant, “If you are a peacemaker, then you are in your happy place.” It just doesn’t work well in English. Alas, here is the bigger problem:
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The medieval church had superimposed certain presuppositions onto Scripture by mistakenly assuming that the Latin term for do penance was equivalent to the Greek term for repent. Because repentance is necessary for salvation (Is 30:15; 2 Cor 7:10), their mistake undermined Christian faith and identity at its core.
Joining words together, though, can be far more significant than merely vocabulary. Some words have special meanings when they are paired with other words.
(All gifts in antiquity had strings attached.[8])
The language of patronage permeated everyday life. We know well the Christian terms grace and faith, but these were common before Paul used them. They were part of the language of patronage. When the patron gave unmerited gifts of assistance, these were commonly called charis, meaning “grace/gift.”[10] The client responded with faithfulness to the patron, called pistis, or “faith.”[11]
Time and time again, the biblical writers use metaphors to connect central truths in Scripture.
Jesus made important truth claims—including being God incarnate—through his use of metaphorical language.
The birth of Jesus was no solitary event, witnessed only by the doting parents in the quiet of a cattle fold. It was likely a noisy, bustling event attended by grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.[7]
The bible doesn't say this though.
Jesus and Paul’s language about church as family was radical talk and not merely cultural convention.
If we’re not careful, our individualistic assumptions about church can lead us to think of the church as something like a health club. We’re members because we believe in the mission statement and want to be a part of the action.
Scripture is clear that when we become Christians, we become—permanently and spiritually—a part of the church. We become part of the family of God, with all the responsibilities and expectations that word connotes in the non-Western world. We don’t choose who else is a Christian with us. But we are committed to them, bound to them by the Spirit. And we are not free to dissociate our identities from them—mainly because once we are all in Christ, our own individual identities are no longer of primary importance.
Paul asked the Corinthians: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own” (1 Cor 6:19). We typically understand the singulars and plurals in this verse backwards. In the original Greek, the you is plural and temple is singular. Paul is saying, “All of you together are a singular temple for the Holy Spirit.” God doesn’t have millions of little temples scattered around. Together we make the dwelling for the Spirit.
“Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”[15]
Anne Rice
in recent years for believers to call themselves Christ-followers instead of Christians. Like Rice, they don’t want to be associated with the negative, nominal and cultural connotations of the word Christian.
In the West, it may help if the church started thinking more in terms of we than me.
Paul considered himself “faultless” even though he was persecuting Christians (Phil 3:6). It was only when he was confronted by another that he realized his sin (Acts 9:1-5);
But Jesus told him "it is hard for thee to kick against the goads". Wouldn't that suggest that he felt some measure of guilt?
Make no mistake, though: shame is important. It was why the Jewish officials killed Jesus. They didn’t kill him for going around preaching “love one another” or for healing the sick or for performing miracles. They killed him because he had taken their honor—a limited resource (more on that below).
In a landmark essay, theologian Krister Stendahl demonstrated that the introspective conscience of Westerners is alien to the biblical authors.[13] Beginning with Augustine, Christians understood Paul’s conversion as a troubled conscience weighed down by the guilt of sin but transformed by the soothing message of Christ’s forgiveness. Paul “saw the light,” not so much literally as internally. Luther encouraged Western Christians to come to Christ via our own consciences properly convicted from our reading of God’s law. Today, we often skip over Paul’s statement that his life was blameless
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Women (then or now) don’t bathe in places where they could be seen publicly. We might assume Bathsheba had been engaged in a ritual Jewish bath, but the text never says, or even suggests, that she was Jewish (her husband was a Hittite).[15] Furthermore, we are unaware of ritual purifications done at night. Since it is evening (remember, David had been in bed), it is likely it was dark and therefore Bathsheba had provided sufficient lighting—sufficient for bathing and sufficient for being seen while bathing. We may assume Bathsheba was aware that her rooftop was visible from the palace, notably
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At every step, he did what was typical for a Mediterranean king at the time in a situation like this. And according to the honor/shame system of David’s day, the matter was resolved. It is likely that David never gave it another thought. He was not likely tortured by a guilty conscience. There was no further recourse. All parties were satisfied or silenced.
But what about God's Law? He would have known he broke it.
We Westerners might assume that God’s Spirit would eventually convict David’s inner heart, like Poe’s tell-tale heart. That’s because Westerners are introspective.
Or maybe this is because they didn't have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and their consciences were seared by sin.
The thought that should guide our conduct is that we are representatives of both Christ and the community that bears his name. As such, we must be careful to live in such a way that brings honor, and not shame, on Christ’s name and his family.
Have you ever wondered if God would be honored or ashamed to be known as our God? How do our actions as Christians bring God honor or shame?
In the non-Western world, by contrast, the correct time is often connected to a condition or situation. Some call this an “event” orientation, in which, as Duane Elmer writes, “Each event is as long or as short as it needs to be. One cannot determine the required time in advance. Time is elastic, dictated only by the natural unfolding of the event. The quality of the event is the primary issue, not the quantity of minutes or hours.”[1] Relationships trump schedules, so things begin when everyone who needs to be there has arrived.
You get the sense that even though time is not a limitless resource, there is plenty of it.
Do we though?
The New Testament writers used two Greek terms—chronos and kairos—that we typically translate with the same English word: “time.” Greeks commonly used chronos to describe the more quantitative aspects of time, such as chronology or sequence. Chronos time is what we might call clock or calendar time: discrete units of time that need to be measured (relatively) precisely.
