Misreading Scripture

The following example essay on “Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien” is an analysis of a literary work. The essay explores how our worldview – our way of seeing the world – significantly controls what we understand when we read the Bible.

It is very important to deal with this human reality of being “encultured”. Each human being has a set of ideas, perspectives and attitudes that influence their decisions and opinions. These ideas are related to the environment in which the individual lives.

For example, we might ask why it is that opinions and ideas always seem to be linked to cultures and geographical locations.

Thats the main reason why “Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes” by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien is a captivating perused. Understanding sacred writing is exceptionally testing particularly when the way of life of the content is new to the new peruses and new devotee. To reach a legitimate determination one must comprehend the content, and the data that the first essayist was stating to the first peruses.

The procedure that is incorporated with the comprehension of sacred text is to know the culture and customs of the creators, returning so as to comprehend the circumstance and conditions of that timespan. When interpreting the Bible today we should push pass our very own preferences, and expel self from the condition by going into the past with the best understanding through however much research as could reasonably be expected to comprehend the contrast between the past and the present and how the past can be connected to help the individuals who are listening how sacred writing can be connected to their immediate circumstance.

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The goal of the writers is to help a cutting-edge western sacred scriptures reader to perceive their own social misinterpretations and predispositions so as to look past those impediments and all the more completely handle the proposed significance of the first writer. The book is loaded up with both scriptural models and individual declaration from the writers that guides the peruses in understanding the focuses being made.

The book is separated into three segments. The main segment of the book titled “Above the Surface” presses into the issues of mores, race and ethnicity, and language. The second area of the book titled “Just below the Surface”, considers issues that are subtler and hence progressively risky, explicitly, independence and community, respect/disgrace and right/wrong, and time. The third area of the book titled, “Deep below the Surface”, looks to expose issues that are least evident in this manner generally hazardous. Each segment identifies with a sort of misconception with each segment referencing a logically increasingly troublesome territory for the peruser to perceive.

The controlling representation is that of a massive iceberg. Bits of the icy mass are unmistakably over the water, different parts our hidden by the rushes of the sea and still different parts are far beneath the surface. Each part is dynamically progressively hazardous to passing boats who chance crossing paths with the ice. The creators cunningly bunch classes of confusion into comparative classifications.

Analysis

In the start of the book Richards and O’Brien approach the peruser from a tribute see. The writer’s point is to enable the their perusers to relate to the human part of the essayist. The central matter of the book is to recognize the social hindrances that people have. Individuals from everywhere throughout the world think about sacred writing, and the manner in which they decipher it relies upon their very own way of life. This has turned into an issue in the content Richards and O’Brien state from their own experience and the battle they experienced while in another nation.

The writers likewise include some experiences from their own lives. They talk about conviction, and the manner in which it applies to an individual or a network of devotees. Those presentation tells and brings forth the objective of the book. “One of our goals in this book is to remind (or convince!) you of the cross-cultural nature of biblical interpretation.” . Paul is an incredible precedent that is being utilized because of the reality he worked with various individuals from different cultures, convictions, dialects and backgrounds. It is expressed plainly in sacred texts. For example Acts 17:23 he had the capacity to take what they accepted and use it to clarify in wording they comprehended to convey them to reality of the Gospel. Another example There is an interpretation of the commandment to love our neighbor in which it is stated that, as he says that we must love our neighbor as ourselves, one must learn to love oneself before loving one’s neighbor. To me this seems more like a rationalization than an interpretation. That we must learn to love ourselves is an idea completely alien to the biblical text, a product of modern psychology, which is introduced in the passage to domesticate it. The idea that we must learn to love ourselves is based on a cultural notion of love. Self-love is the cultivation of a type of internal emotional well-being that has more in common with the cultural definition of love than with the biblical idea of love. The biblical definition of love cannot be applied to self-love, because the biblical definition is related to others.

Like Paul and Christ Richards and O’Brien are teachers and this would imply that they both encountered the social obstructions that Westerners don’t consider. They express that Westerners consider themselves to be people (individualistic), whereas in different societies they recognize themselves as a network ( community). The writers can convey these contrary energies and relate them to sacred writing by helping the peruser comprehend that God is about network and community. At the point when Jesus conveyed the seventy he sent them out two by two. It is expounded on in sacred writing how two are superior to one. The writers make a solid direct association toward this theme and how Westerners are out of social limits with regards to their translation of sacred text, and what the first author was really saying to the first receivers of the sacred text. Talking about ethics and ethnicity they share how prejudice is a key factor in sacred writing similarly for what it’s worth on society today, they call attention to the manner in which an individual talk, dresses, eats, and instructive foundation can isolate them from specific gatherings of individuals. The model they use is that of Ruth, and how God utilized her in the progression lineage of a King. They help the peruser get that in spite of the fact that it is predominant in the Bible, they need the perusers to comprehend that they don’t embrace partialities and to recognize, “Roman world was filled with racism.”

From my point of view, the quality of the book would be that it shows the elitism in western society and sadly the advancement of self. A legitimate moment is plastered by the words of Richards and O’Brien when they wrote “This cultural assumption about the supremacy of me is the one to which we Westerners are perhaps blindest. We rightly search for the center of God’s will with the unspoken assumption that once we find it, the seat will have my individual name on it.” When in really God’s will is about God, and his kingdom work in Christ. “. “God is restoring all of creation not just one individual.” A shortcoming would be there isn’t any make reference to of an association with God on an individual dimension to know him and to enable him to do what he has guaranteed all humanity who are made in his picture that he will keep on working everything together for the great commission, and will total it until the day of Jesus Christ. Have we ever stopped to consider that if it were not for the Bible, we could never have had a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ? Think about it. If it were not for the written revelation that God gives man himself, we would not know enough to become a Christian. To the extent that He reveals Himself through the Bible (and that you understand that revelation), you can have an intimate relationship with Him. This is true not only in your personal relationship with God, but also with the people. Good scriptures interpretation involves personal and community relation with God.

Conclusion

This might be the most down to earth book that I have ever perused concerning scriptural understanding. I have just started to apply some of what I have realized. This Sunday I will bring to class up the theme of Cross and crucifixion. The cross dominates the horizon of Latin American cities, whether in the marginal neighborhoods of Lima, in the outstretched arms of the redeeming Christ of Sao Paulo or in the Cristo de la Concordia in Cochabamba, Bolivia o La Cruz del Vigia here in Ponce, Puerto Rico. In our environment everyone knows what a cross is, or at least they have a specific association with it as a Christian religious symbol. The cross is a cultural symbol. Although the cross may mean different things to different people (symbol of forgiveness, ambiguous religious relic, object of art), one thing is certain: the cross today does not have the meaning it had in the different cultures that lived under the government of Rome. I trust this content will be a significant apparatus for a considerable length of time to come in my work as an interpreter of the sacred scriptures to others.