Striking the cultural nerve!

“The challenge is to critique our culture with the Bible and not vice versa.”
Duvall and Hays _Grasping God’s Word.

        Today I have read about context, particularly about the context and baggage that we bring to things. Like how we often want to bring America to the Bible and not Bible to America. What I read today was a great expounding of thoughts I was already formulating but had no clue as to how to put it to words. They talked about stories like Jonah and the whale, and how we often think Jonah is inside some big belly cave. This is totally false though, well I believe it is though. I imagine the belly of a whale, to be mushy and abrasive and pretty confining and constricting. The authors of this book thinks the idea of Jonah in a big belly of a whale stems possibly from childhood memories of seeing Pinocchio sitting inside a whale.

        So I have been sorting through many ideals, and cultural norms of american life through my brain for the past couple of years. I have begun to critique a lot of our american standard thoughts and traditions and sifted them through a filter of the Bible. I feel like Irresistible Revolution has also played a role in this thought process, as Shane Claiborne challenged many many aspects of life in which we as americans feel content with. Many Christians are starting to question justification of war. If we are against abortion, can we be pro war in which many suffer and die.

Another is Romans 13. If we are to submit to our authorities, why are we so reluctant to pay, taxes, rent, bills, and or respect to those that we owe it.

        Duvall and Hays bring up the notion that people get pretty steamed up about challenges to their train of thought. In particular, they questioned whether the American Revolution is justified biblically because it was a blatant disrespect to authority. They hoped that there would be some inner emotional reaction within reading of a normal biblical text. They suggest that we should ask ourself “ Why did I react so strongly?”

        Duvall and Hays weren’t even trying to really challenge the thoughts of the American Revolution, but to help us be awakened to the many ideas that we accept as standard, in which they may not be biblically just. The response to being challenged over our traditional ideas is often to become defensive and get riled up instead of introspectively looking at Why something stirs us so deep, and questioning if our thought is biblically sound.

Our culture should never dictate the Word of God,

“We often become closed-minded to any understanding of the Bible that conflicts with the status quo of our culture.”

I often feel like a prick to always bring about hard questions, and judgments to the status quo of culture, but I feel it is a necessary trait that we need to start picking up. Many always talk about us buying into the lies of the world, however there are very few that try to figure out what lies they believe.