Removing Cultural Blinders

In my beginning years as a layman apologist, this book was a good starting point for me. It had opened my eyes to the idea that the Bible was not necessarily written to me, but written for me. The Bible is written from the perspective of the original author, to its current audience. I can then extrapolate God's word from a prescriptive/descriptive manner. Once I understood the author's culture better, I became a better Bible student. ( )

Excellent book looking at how we often misread Scripture with our western eyes. Nine differences we should be aware of - some that are obvious and less likely to cause serious misunderstanding through to those that are not obvious at all and dangerous for interpretation ( )

Having trouble choosing what books to read for spiritual growth and development? Each month a member of our pastoral team will offer a book recommendation that has been meaningful to them in their spiritual journey. Here is Pastor Chris’s "Pastor's Pick" for March 2023.

“This has been a more recent read for me and I cannot recommend it enough. It is an eye opening look at how the modern western world (like every generation before us) has explicitly and implicitly remade Scripture in our own cultural image through cultural assumptions and “filling in the gaps” with our own western worldview. Because the text of Scripture is so easily accessible to us in a language we can read, we tend to forget that it was written to non-western people who lived thousands of years ago in a culture which was vastly different than our own. A quote from the text that I loved “We can easily forget that Scripture is a foreign land and that reading the Bible is a cross-cultural experience. To open the Word of God is to step into a strange world where things are very unlike our own.”
No matter how long you have been reading the Bible, this is an excellent read that may be quite eye-opening for you. I DEEPLY care about Scripture, and that demands not only that I read Scripture, but that I read it humbly, seeking to understand the message that God was speaking to the audience of the text, so that I determine the Truth claim being made and apply that to my own context.” – Pastor Chris Vasquez

4.5⭐️

This book is a good introduction to the idea that our cultural influences and modern paradigms can heavily shape the way we read and interpret scripture - an important thing of which to be aware if you want to really dive deeper into biblical study, interpretation, how interpretation influences what faith looks like in different circles around the world, and the relevant history. If you have not yet studied these topics much, it would be a good book with which to start. It's a book I would not hesitate to purchase for a friend interested in the topic. ( )