A friend of mine asked me if I had ever read Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes (Removing cultural blinders to better understand the Bible). Not only had I not read it, I had never heard of it. But I was super intrigued by the title so I picked up the audio book and gave it a listen. It was fantastic and I am going to listen through it again for sure.
In this book, the authors lay out nine examples of ways that we may (and probably do) misread the Bible because of our western culture. I found the chapters on shame (internal vs external as a motivator), aloneness (is privacy really a good thing), and race (if you think Moses was looked down on because he married a black woman you might have it backward).
My favorite quote:
“In the west, church is considered a voluntary association…‘It’s all about you, Jesus.’” Who are we kidding? It’s all about Jesus as long as it’s in a service I like, in a building I like, with people I like, with music I like, for a length of time I like. At some point in this generation, ‘take up your cross and follow me’ changed into ‘come to Jesus and he’ll make your life better.’”