Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible

by E. Randolph Richards

My religious leaders generally interpreted the words hot, cold and lukewarm as designations of spiritual commitment.

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.

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.

It was a less notable city than Laodicea, but it had one thing Laodicea didn’t: a cold, freshwater spring.

it was water—or the lack thereof—that set Laodicea apart.

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 Laodiceans were left with all the lukewarm water they could drink. Surely they wished their water was one ...

their discipleship was unremarkable.

where we stand influences how we read—and ultimately apply—the Bible.

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.

By the Holy Spirit, God continues to speak to his people through the Scriptures.

We can easily forget that Scripture is a foreign land and that reading the Bible is a crosscultural experience.

we tend to read Scripture in our own when and where, in a way that makes sense on our terms.

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 i...

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 Christian...

crosscultural nature of biblical interpretation.

the most powerful cultural values are those that go without being said.

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 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).

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

Christians in other parts of the world understand the story differently.

In cultures more familiar with famine, like Russia, readers consider the boy’s spending less important than the famine.

The boy’s problem is not that he is wasteful but that he is lost.

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?

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.

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 part one,

In part two,

in part three,

while this is a book about biblical interpretation, our primary goal is to help us learn to read ourselves.

Before we can be confident we are reading the Bible accurately, we need to understand what assumptions and values we project onto the Bible:

In terms of sheer numbers, then, non-Western interpretations of Scripture will soon be “typical” and “average.”

“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.”

If our cultural blind spots keep us from reading the Bible correctly, then they can also keep us from applying the Bible correctly.

They reminded me that Paul told believers to obey their parents (Eph 6:1).

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.

all questions of interpretation are, in the end, questions about application,

Culture changes according to place, to be sure. But culture also changes across time.

earlier Christians’ interpretations are invaluable

for helping us identify what goes without being said for us.