Ron’s Reviews > Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible > Status Update

Chapter 9 focuses on the American assumption that I individually am important in God's plan. American self-interest has certainly led to many innovations and opportunities, but it also leads to a reading of the Bible where the reader is the center of the universe. God's plan revolves around me, I will be among the 144,000 chosen at the end, and it will happen in my lifetime because I'm just that important.

Chapter 8 talks about the cultural values that we often superimpose on the Bible. For example, in America its considered a virtue to save enough money to retire comfortably. However, the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21) seems to directly contradict this. Such a man is seen as sinful because he'd rather provide for his future self than for his neighbors who are hungry now.

Chapter 7 gets into the Biblical idea of relationships. We westerners like to think of behavior as right or wrong. We want to be able to pick lines out that clearly say, "Eat this, not that." But back then it wasn't that simple. Relationships also came into play, and often what was done or advised in the Good Book was specific to the context of that relationship.

Chapter 6 was pretty short, but it's subject is potentially quite big: different cultures talk about time differently. In many non-Western cultures, it's quite common to tell a story in a chronologically roundabout way because that creates a better buildup and payoff. This is likely why time skips around so much in the Bible and why multiple stories about the same event (e.g., the Gospels) don't always line up.

Chapter 4 discusses individual vs. collective societies, then Chapter 5 shows how those cultures interpret positive and negative behavior, namely through justice and guilt systems in the West and hinor/shame systems elsewhere.

From chapter 2: One of the authors, both of whom are white, adopted a black child from a local agency, and he got a crash course in the subconscious racial assumptions we all make. He soon had to field many well-intentioned but ignorant comments from his good Christian brethren, including one who asked, "Is she one of those crack babies?"

Part 1 of 3 focused on how our interpretation is shaped by social mores, views of race and ethnicity, and differences in language. Tl;dr - it's easy to assume that they valued what we value and spoke as we spoke, but that's not always the case.