I read a book this winter that’s really clarifying a lot of heartache I’ve experienced as a Christian in America at this time in history. I want to share a book review, wrapped in a blanket of experiences.

I came to this book so hungry to learn the things that are in it. For years I have heard myself saying things like, “Have you noticed how often God addresses his people as a people, not as individuals? I feel like there’s got to be something to this culturally that we just don’t get here.” I have always been interested in other cultures, and admittedly somewhat discontent within my own. 

Last fall my good friend emailed me a photo of the cover of this book from Uganda, where she had discovered it on her hosts’ bookshelf.  I pursued it through an interlibrary loan, and several weeks later it came from some seminary library. The circuitous way that I came across it makes me smile. It’s not a best seller, but it’s a treasure that I am so thankful has found me.

 

The book is written by two American men. This collaboration may be an application of what they have learned, because they shared that Paul often wrote with others in a collaborative effort characteristic of his culture. One author draws many of his experiences from years spent teaching the Bible in an Indonesian fishing village, where it is clear he learned as much as he taught. The other is a younger Bible teacher who has learned about culture from real world experiences, such as adopting an African American child as a white couple in the South. Their goal is clearly not to assert themselves as experts, but to start a limitless discussion out of love for the family of God. I am going to try to summarize their thoughts first before sharing my own, but there’s still some interpretation.

 

Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes is organized around the image of an iceberg. The first section discusses a few of the obvious cultural differences that affect our reading of Scripture: cultural mores, ethnicity, and language differences are visible above the surface. 

Mores are the folkways that embody our morals, without question. The authors gave some examples of how the church has compromised with the mores of our culture. For instance, money is seen as an unlimited resource in western cultures where Biblically it is limited, meaning one person growing wealthy causes others to be poor. We read our own mores into the text, assuming that any mention of modesty would be of a sexual nature, when actually economic modesty was the issue being addressed in the early church.

Ethnic descrimination is everywhere in the Bible, but much of it will be lost on us until we come to terms with our own assumptions, which we are often unaware of. The authors pointed out that our claims to be “colorblind” limit our ability to understand what was really going on or being said in Scripture.

Language is an obvious barrier in understanding Scripture, but there’s more to language than words. There are values and assumptions behind the words. For instance, the fact that we esteem concrete, propositional language over ambiguous, metaphorical language makes it harder for us to understand the Scriptures where the assumption is flipped. The values behind our language are not the same as those of the Bible. When we translate we might add subjects or actions that weren’t intended because our language centers around them. Also, there are words and ideas with no equivalent translation. Each language has a more specialized language to describe what it values. In the Bible there are four words for love, where we have only one.

 

The second part of the book dives below the surface to look at more complicated cultural differences. These are ideas that we may be able to spot, once we’re aware of them, but much harder for us to understand.

Individualism is a defining characteristic of Western cultures, in contrast to the collectivism of non-Western cultures. In individualist cultures the rights and sovereignty of the individual are valued above those of the group. In collectivist cultures the community is the most important entity, not the individual. Our assumptions here greatly affect our reading of Scripture, and consequently the way church has evolved in our culture. Biblically the church is a family, with implications and obligations that our culture has no grid for because of our individualism. The Great Awakening purported that it was the voluntary nature of churches that legitimized them. Consequently, many westerners who claim to be Christians today do not want to be associated with the church, but Jesus would have no grid for our individualistic way of thinking. 

Secondly the authors contrasted the honor/shame culture of the Bible and the right/wrong or innocence/guilt culture of the western world. This is a hard difference to contrast because they do not equate. Wrong is not the same as shameful. Westerners have a habit of dichotomizing, or seeing something as either/or. In Eastern thought they strive for harmony not distinction, so most things are viewed as both/and. In our western world individuals mature by learning and internalizing the difference between right and wrong. In non-western cultures one’s actions are judged by the community, which holds the moral standards externally. 

The idea of an internal conscience began with Plato, but the ideas would not have reached Palestine by the time of the New Testament. So, while we have a hard time imagining a life devoid of inner guilt, the authors of the Bible would not understand our introspective conscience. Our right/wrong perspective makes it very easy for us to misread sins that are not implied, and completely mis sins that were obvious to those writing the Scriptures. For instance, the religious leaders of Jesus’ time killed him because he took their honor by winning every public contest they entered with him verbally. Killing him as a criminal was how they recovered their honor in the community.

Throughout Scripture sin is corporate, not private. Jesus understood sin as yeast that permeates the whole community. The honor of all, and of God who is head of the family, is at stake when we sin. This gives new meaning to a lot of the honor talk in the Bible.

The third discussion in this second section was around time. Unlike money, Westerners consider time a limited resource, a commodity to be saved or spent. Our language reveals our obsession with “when” something happens. We find meaning in sequence, which we prefer to be linear. But the Bible wasn’t written within our western understanding of time. The writers of the Bible used sequencing intentionally and creatively, but not with accurate chronological reporting. Their idea of telling a story was more like cooking than reporting. They were more concerned with the wisdom of timing than chronology. 

 

The third section dives even deeper below the surface into things that influence us below often our level of consciousness. 

Whether a culture is governed by rules or relationships can be very hard to decipher on the surface when every culture consists of a tangle of both. The authors unpacked ways we tend to understand relationships in terms of laws or rules. In contrast, rules in non-western worldviews only describe the visible outworking of an underlying relationship. It’s a difference in what’s below the surface, to use the iceberg illustration again.

During the Enlightenment western Christians translated our new knowledge of nature’s laws into the worldview that God created everything to operate under established rules. Naturalism assumes that the natural world and its laws can fully explain everything. But God is sovereign over his own rules and the Scriptures are full of examples where he bends them for the sake of relationships. Westerners struggle a lot with what we consider “inconsistencies” in Scripture mostly because of our cultural expectation that rules should apply 100% of the time, like gravity. But in the culture of the Bible the relationship dictates the rules, making it possible to live by the Spirit, not by the law. 

The second discussion in this section was around what we consider vice and virtue. The authors pointed out some Western virtues that are anti or non Biblical: self-sufficiency–when we are called to carry each other’s burden, fighting for freedom–when Jesus says to turn the other cheek, “might makes right,” or peace through military force–not the kind of peace Jesus came to give, leadership–when Jesus teaches us to follow and submit to God, and tolerance–when Jesus says the gate is narrow. A final big American virtue that Jesus calls a vice is saving money. God expects us to be faithful in the present, not store away our excess to protect against uncertainty.

The final discussion looked at how “self at the center” is pervasively central to American culture. Our country was founded by immigrants seeking self-improvement, and built on the backs of “free and independent” farmers. American Christians are quick to claim every promise or blessing as personal when God’s promises are to his people at large, but don’t necessarily include everyone. Our assumption that God’s promises are like the laws of nature, with no exceptions, and our infatuation with ourselves leads to plenty of disappointment.

 

In conclusion, the authors had some helpful suggestions for wading through these differences in our reading. They warned against our tendency to overcorrect in our either/or culture. For instance, just because we can’t insist that God’s promises always include everyone, especially me, sometimes they actually do. They also encouraged us to embrace complexity, instead of glossing over what we don’t like, like when the magi’s visit led to the death of many children in Bethlehem. In short, reading together across cultures and generations helps us uncover each other’s blind spots.

 

I find this book a very helpful tool in helping us recover what Jesus intended for his church. Sadly, many of those closest to me who sparked my interest in the Bible no longer trust it any more. They have plenty of good reasons not to trust those who have claimed authority over them, and throw the writers of the Bible into that camp. While I share a lot of their frustrations about authorities who have misused it, I believe the Scriptures are what I can trust to guide me. I still have lots of questions, but the more I read them the more I trust them. 

I believe there’s still much that we don’t understand about the Scriptures, and too much that we think we do understand. This has become a deep passion for me, trying to understand where the writers of Scripture may have been coming from. I love it that God used the labor of ordinary people who were living in historical people groups and cultures to give us his Word. I think that understanding them better can help us recover God’s vision for his people today.  

For years my frustrations with the church in America have been about cultural compromises that are not Biblical. I have had a sense that we’re misinterpreting, but didn’t really know how. Learning a little bit about the culture of the Bible has got me fired up to write more about real reformation for right now. Reformation is necessary to purify the church regularly. A few big events scattered throughout history have not kept us faithful to Jesus’ words.

So, I plan to write several more pieces looking at specific areas of reformation that will draw from and dive deeper into the ideas outlined here.