Culture shock in the Bible

When I hear in a sermon, “Here’s what I think was going through the mind of x when they wrote this” or “I want you to put yourself in this scene–can you see y” almost immediately I think we are on very shaky ground.

The Bible does not tell us what was going through the mind of its writers, and it’s often wrong to make an argument from that silence.

When we do such things, what we are tempted to do is project our thoughts, perceptions and understandings back into the mind of the person in that situation. But that’s a sure recipe for cross-cultural misunderstanding.

One classic example is the whole situation with Lot, his daughters, and the angels in the square in Sodom. There is very little more horrifying to me than Lot offering his daughters to the men in the square. I cannot understand why he would do such a thing – and in my humanness, I don’t know why God thought he was worth saving if he would. I have tried many times to imagine thought process, what cultural viewpoint, what honor/shame background might do this, and I just can’t.

This is why I prefer the Discovery Bible Study approach, which simply asks:

(1) what is God doing in this story (what does this tell us about the character of God) (2) what is man doing in this story (what does this tell us about the character of man) (3) is there anything in this story that we ought to obey, today?

When you get into what you don’t know, you start guessing – and that leads us into divisive debates rather than obedience.