In a recent article at his excellent blog on studying scripture, George Guthrie talks about how knowledge of cultural context can help us better understand the Bible. He writes:<\/p>\n
If I simply wear my \u201ccultural glasses,\u201d the way of looking at the world which has been crafted in my own cultural context, the teaching of Jesus can be skewed. I may not feel <\/em>disoriented, since I am comfortable in my culture, but I may have a skewed vision of what Jesus is saying, missing aspects of his powerful, culture-altering message. So how might learning more about the cultures of Jesus\u2019s day help us?<\/p>\n For instance, consider the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32. Remember that when the son came to his senses, starved and worn out with his wasteful life, he decided to go home. By stringent guidelines of the culture (think of the directions in Proverbs for dealing with a rebellious son!), the father had every right to turn the son away and treat him harshly.<\/p>\n Yet, when the son stepped over the horizon, moving from his life of rebellion to the home where he had been raised, the father saw him coming. He ran <\/em>to his son. Some scholars point out that an important, socially-respectable patriarch did not run in public<\/em>. He was dignified. <\/em>People ran to him, not the other way around. This part of the story would have shocked Jesus\u2019s audience. The father did the unthinkable <\/em>in terms of social norms\u2014because of a love-infused grace. Jesus is telling us: the Father\u2019s love is reckless <\/em>in the eyes of the world. Rather than stand-offish, God enthusiastically embraces those who repent and turn to him.<\/p>\n CLICK NUMBER 2 TO READ THE REST OF THE LIST<\/p>\n In a recent article at his excellent blog on studying scripture, George Guthrie talks about how knowledge of cultural context can help us better understand the Bible. He writes: If I simply wear my \u201ccultural glasses,\u201d the way of looking at the world which has been crafted in my own cultural context, the teaching of … Continue reading “Why Cultural Context Matters”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1.<\/strong> Understanding Jesus\u2019s cultural context helps me hear the intended impact of Jesus\u2019s teaching<\/em>. <\/em><\/h2>\n