mistaking cultural conditioning for biblical teaching

I read somewhere recently that Americans frequently mistake cultural conditioning for Biblical teaching.

That is true. Of course, it is hard to imagine cultures other than your own and you live in yours. You not only live in it, you are immersed in it. You think it is normal to do what you do.

For instance, we eat three meals a day in America. That is not the case in a lot of countries. Nor is it the case in much of history. It is only relatively recently that people did that.

However, if we do not get our “three hots and a cot” we get all worried. Things are out of whack and it bothers us.

The same with how we view things.

Alcohol was not viewed as a sin until in the latter part of the 19th century with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Prohibition came out of that and a lot of “biblical teaching” that many times was not true.

In Jesus’ day, alcohol consumption was common. The water was bad and the only way to drink it was to cut it with wine so that the alcohol killed the bacteria. Jesus himself was called a wine-bibber and the apostles were accused of being drunk. Neither denied the consumption of wine, just the charge of excess.

Much of our whole way of looking at things is based on our culture. And there is nothing wrong with that.

After all,  this is where we live.

On the other hand, other cultures are not perfect either. Public nudity is common in Europe, but that doesn’t make public nudity right. Many Muslim cultures feel honor killings – the killing of a girl because she will not obey her parents or her husband – is fine, but that is a reprehensible custom. Some of the Indian cultures in North America viewed hospitality as the lending of one’s wife to a visitor for the night. Obviously I would not care for that, in addition to the fact that adultery is always wrong.

The same with a lot of other cultures.

The thing is, because a culture has a certain custom does not make the custom right or wrong. And you cannot preach that custom, no matter how good it may be, as Christian. Biblical teaching is based on the Bible, not on what we want.

That is a mistake that many missionaries have made in the past: trying to get the “natives” to become more American in their viewpoint instead of biblical.

The word of God is a flexible, one size fits all document made to fit any culture, no matter who diverse from any other it may be. There are immutable rights and wrongs, but there is also a lot of gray area.

The Lord is God and his word is great. Remember that when you try to make others fit your idea of God.

More later.