The Bible as Culture
Our Riddle
Throughout history the riddle of the human condition has been thoroughly examined by thinkers from a wide range of disciplines, yet humanity is no closer to solving its riddle than it has ever been.
The irony is that we have always had access to a detailed description of human nature as well as a diagnosis of what the human ailments are but this knowledge has largely been rejected out of hand. The knowledge I am speaking of is the truth contained in the Bible. Many who are struggling to discover practical answers to life’s most pressing questions tend to not seriously consider the idea that the Bible can provide relevant help in our most urgent circumstances.
Christian Witness
To be fair some of this biblical indifference is a symptom of the Bible being neglected by many of us who are recognized as Christians. For too many of us a real study, or even contextual reading, of scripture is not a priority. Many of us misunderstand, underrepresent or ignore completely the role of scripture in our day to day circumstance.
When scripture becomes theoretical and impractical in this way it functions in our lives at best as inconsistent philosophy and at worst as a mere personal superstition. Living a Christian life that is not totally reliant on a growing understanding of scripture leads to irreconcilable contradictions and inconsistencies of belief. The biblical witness of such a life can reinforce the idea that the Bible is not credible as a practical guide for living.
The pervasive influence of this type of Christian witness has led to the devaluing of scriptural content in society. This content has supplied the foundational truths for many of the intellectual pillars in western culture. For instance, our ideas of charity, the inalienable rights of every individual and universal justice expressed as law, have come to us from biblical principles. These biblical principals transformed the western world by displacing the pagan ideas that proceeded them.
Biblical Influence
For this reason, the Bible is not just a book for religious practice in the West. Biblical principles are what Western Civilization has aspired to expresses as culture into the world. When the West has grown dark in its interactions and influence it has been because it failed to express as culture an accurate interpretation of scripture.
The recognition of this larger value of biblical truth beyond religious practice is being lost and this loss is contributing to the overall dimming of culture. The death of civility, the erosion of ideas supporting political, social and economic institutions and the loss of the concept of objective moral truth are just a few symptoms of our loss of light.
The way we chose our leaders, our relationships with authority and how we all relate to the vulnerable and disenfranchised in society, are just a few examples of how this loss of light affects are daily lives.
It can be argued that a democratic, and even capitalistic, society cannot be maintained without these underlying concepts of light. Democracies created without the underlying assumptions connected to the recognition of each individual’s objective value as creations of God can lack the moral framework to protect the individual. And capitalist economies without this moral governor protecting the individual against the various forms of exploitation become dangerous.
We have plenty of examples for these types of failures in the history of western civilization. It is true that throughout history the influence of Christian principles has suffered from misinterpretation and manipulation which has resulted in a darkened cultural expression. However, the complete absence of these principles would make it impossible to maintain even a dimmed version of a civil democratic society, or a moral capitalistic economy.
The bad news is that we growing darker every day.
Biblical Inoculation
Scripture once enjoyed the lofty position of assumed truth in the west but today has been degraded to the position of enshrined platitude. We contribute to this degradation of scripture when we quote it out of its original context without an understanding of its original meaning. This degradation effects our foundational beliefs about what society should be, as well as the biblical truths that lead to salvation.
For instance John 3:16 is ubiquitous in its enshrinement in the popular culture to the point that you would be hard pressed to find even an atheist who could not quote it. However, all of the underlying and supportive body of biblical knowledge is absent from this recognition and renders this biblical truth empty of much of its original influence. Even the most important truths of the Christian faith when stripped of their underlying and supporting scriptures are robbed of their original context and become all but inaccessible to society.
The world has been inoculated against the Christian faith. Just as a physician injects a patient with a small amount of a dead virus to build up in that patient resistance to the living virus the world has been continuously exposed to small portions of dead Christian platitudes striped from their original scriptural context and cultural relevance. This inoculated resistance to Christian truth is what is fueling the popular cultures callow form of Christianity as well as its misinformed atheistic tendencies.
Because of all of this resistant secularization of the culture we have fallen into the mistaken idea that there is a Christian culture separate from a secular culture. In the West there is only a culture framed by biblical truth and that culture is becoming more secularized every day.
Western society has largely concluded that the scientific study of the material world is all that is needed to shape culture. We are forgetting our own nature and have begun the unconditional surrendering of ourselves to a completely contrary notion of what it means to live a human life.
The Way Forward
The Bible’s basic assumptions about what a human being is can inform everything a society believes about itself. When the Bible is neglected our collective culture, as well as our individual lives, begin to descend toward our lower selves.
The only way to begin to reverse this trend is for individuals to reintroduce themselves to scripture. We cannot do this through reading books about the bible or collections of scriptures separate from their original context. The only way to grow in our understanding of the Bible is to actually read a clear and respected translation. We can get a deeper understanding of scripture through the help of study aids but nothing can replace a contextual reading of the Bible.
The only way to maintain a democratic society, blunt the harshness of a capitalistic economy or add eternal meaning to an individual life, is the infusion of an accurate understanding of scripture.
This must be our challenge and our mission.
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