Cultural Blind Spots

Readings for today: Psalms 145-147, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16

Today’s New Testament reading is a weird one. Why in the world does the Apostle Paul care so much about hair style? Of all the issues he could have spent time on, why head coverings? Is that really the most pressing issue for the church at Corinth? Were the Christians there that caught up in how they looked? This is what makes Bible reading such a challenge. We can’t just read the words on the page and accept them at face value. We have to dive deeper to understand the cultural currents of the day and how these words fit if we want to understand. Furthermore, we have to acknowledge the cultural assumptions we ourselves bring to the text. We are not objective observers. We too have biases and perspectives that are shaped by current cultural movements like #MeToo, feminism, and, at a more fundamental level, the US Bill of Rights that will shape how we respond to the text. It’s hard to lay these things aside and hear what God is trying to say to His people.  

One of the foundational principles we must understand as we approach the Bible is that God never speaks to His people in a culture or a language they cannot understand. He meets them where they are. Consider Genesis 1 as an example. It is written to a people who held to an Ancient Near East cosmology. As such, they believed creation was less about how all the “stuff” of this world came into being and more about how they functioned. Creation was about bringing order to chaos rather than creating everything out of nothing. They would care less about how many actual 24 days God used to create and would have focused more on how God’s creation functioned for their benefit. Day One would be less about light and darkness and more about the creation of time. Day Two was less about the creation of heaven and more about the creation of weather systems. Day Three was less about the creation of earth and plants and vegetables and more about the creation of food. (For those interested in this topic, I would suggest reading John Walton’s excellent book titled, The Lost World of Genesis One.)

Fast forward a few thousand years. The Apostle Paul is speaking to a largely gentile audience in the Greco-Roman world about Christian worship. He speaks to them through the cultural norms of their day. It was a patriarchal society. Men most of the power. Women had some rights but only if they were freeborn Roman citizens. Culturally speaking, married women wore a veil over their heads as a sign of their virtue and honor. If a woman walked about unveiled, she was potentially signifying her availability. (This was not always the case. There is some evidence from ancient sources that married women did occasionally go out in public with their heads uncovered.) Furthermore, they only cut their hair during periods of mourning or if they dishonored their families. Men, on the other hand, rarely covered their heads. About the only time they did was when they entered a pagan temple to offer sacrifices. At such points, they would throw a bit of their toga over their heads to symbolize humility and submission. What’s the point? Well, entire theological systems have been built on passages like these despite the fact that they addressed to particular Christians in a particular culture at a particular time. Paul himself even prefaces his advice by saying, “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.” (1 Corinthians‬ ‭11:2‬) This is not a “Thus saith the Lord” situation but one in which Paul acknowledges he’s passing on a human tradition. Contrast his words with what comes later in verse 23 where he says, “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you…”‭ Obviously, Paul makes a distinction between when he’s speaking for Jesus and when he’s speaking for himself or his culture.

So what can we draw from this passage? After all, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the people of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy‬ ‭3:16-17‬) First and foremost, it’s important to note that both men and women were involved in leading public worship. They both are expected to pray and prophesy within the context of the gathered worshipping community. Second, both men and women were expected to exercise humility. They were not to draw attention to themselves by the way they dressed or the way they styled their hair or any other thing having to do with their appearance. Third, and perhaps most strikingly, men and women enjoy equal standing before the Lord. “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.” (1 Corinthians‬ ‭11:11-12‬) Men are not greater than women. Women are not greater than men. They both have an equal share in the Kingdom of God.

One of the most important questions we must ask as we read Scripture is not so much “what does this mean for me?” but “what did this mean to the people who first heard it?” What was the author’s original intent? Why did they address the issues they did? What was going on in the culture of the day? How did the people back then understand their world? If we fail to ask these questions, the Bible can often seem anachronistic and old-fashioned and irrelevant to the issues we face in our own day.

Readings for tomorrow: None