Sunday, August 03, 2008
Culture or sin covered over?
If you do any 'inter-cultural' training, one thing you will get drilled into your head over and over and over again is that 'its not wrong, its just different'. And I agree, in many cases this is true. Though it was pointed out to me that this can only go so far. We have to be careful of accepting some things that the people see as their culture, though according to Biblical teaching are really quite wrong. We cannot put foreign cultures up on any lofty perch and assume that they are perfect and worth emulating - no matter how old or 'interesting' they are. Just because it is 'cultural' does not mean that it is good. Now we do have to be careful not to condemn some practices because they do not agree with our own western thinking - we have to make sure it is Biblical contradiction not western interpretation of Biblical teaching. A hard process but an enlightening one because then we can really get to the heart and truth of our faith.
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Matt, that's something my puzzler's been puzzling about too, especially since I took my ethics course. The bible is our standard to see what is right or wrong. Yet the bible was written within specific cultural circumstances too; in fact, different parts of the bible were written in different cultural circumstances even. So I wonder how we can decide with any degree of certainty whether something in scripture is culture-specific or an ethical norm all cultures should follow. An example that comes to mind is when Paul talks about head coverings for women in 1 Cor 11. How do we know if that is supposed to apply to us or not? Maybe i just didn't pay enough attention in hermeneutics class.
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