I have been reading a fascinating book entitled: “Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes” by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien.
For today’s blog post, I wanted to share an excerpt from the Introduction of this book, which I thought you might find interesting as well:
“Christians always and everywhere have believed that the Bible is the Word of God. To open the Word of God is to step into a world where things are very unlike our own. 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 have many 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.
“There is no way around the fact that our cultural and historical contexts supply us with the mindsets [aka: biases] which lead us to read the Bible differently than Christians in other cultural and historical contexts.
“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.
“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.”
Here is a fascinating example of reading the Bible through different cultural lenses:
“Mark Allan Powell had 12 students in a seminary class read carefully the story of the prodigal son, from Luke’s Gospel, then retell the story as faithfully as possible to a partner. None of the 12 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 100 people read the story and retell it, as accurately as possible, to a partner. Only 6 of the 100 participants mentioned the famine. The group was ethnically, racially, socioeconomically, and religiously diverse. The “famine-forgetters” 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 50 participants to read and retell the prodigal son story. This time an overwhelming 42 of the 50 participants mentioned the famine.
“Why? Just 70 years before, 670,000 people had died of starvation after a Nazi German siege of the capital city began a 3-year famine. Famine was very much a part of the history of the Russian participants.
“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 detail. The son in the story 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. We apply the story, then, as a lesson about willful rebellion and repentance.
“Christians in other parts of the world understand the story differently. In cultures more familiar with famine, the application of the story has less to do with willful rebellion and more to do with God’s faithfulness to deliver lost people from hopeless situations.”
I wrote in yesterday’s blog post about biases.
I stated in yesterday’s post that we each have subconscious biases which have slowly formed (over time) in our minds, without us really knowing it. These subconscious biases form based upon what is “normal” for us. We don’t really know anything different. That’s just the way it is. So we assume that that’s the way it is everywhere!
Our biases are powerful! Our biases define who we are.
We all come to the Bible with our own biases [aka: our own cultural backgrounds and presuppositions] which we then “read” into the text.
* The thing is, the Holy Spirit helps us understand and learn the lessons God has for us in His Word regardless of our cultural lens we bring to the text!
Wow … this is mind-blowing to me!
What an amazing work the Holy Spirit does!
Across all cultures, across all cultural differences & presuppositions, the Holy Spirit makes the message clear … so that all people, from all cultural backgrounds can love and faithfully serve & follow Jesus Christ.
This is amazing to me! Absolutely mind-blowing!
Thank you God for giving us the Holy Spirit to help us as we read the Bible!
Thank you Holy Spirit for making clear to us what we read in the Bible, so that we can learn what God wants us to learn … so that we can grow in righteousness and holiness.
