We deceive ourselves when we think sin is individual and independent of a community’s honor. Our individualism feeds the false sense that sin is merely an inner wrong—the private business between me and God, to be worked out on judgment day. Paul thought otherwise. He considered sin yeast that influenced the whole batch of dough (1 Cor 5:6). The church in Corinth was having problems with the fellowship meal and the Lord’s Supper. Slaves got off work at 5 p.m. Some of the wealthy, it appears, were arriving early and eating choice meats and drinking strong wine before the poorer members arrived. This division of haves and have-nots struck against the very heart of Christian fellowship. Paul exclaims,
In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing? (1 Cor 11:18-22)
As far as Paul is concerned, the Corinthians were eating the meal of Christ in an unworthy manner, which brings judgment. He adds, “That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 11:30). When we find what appear to be jumps in the logic, usually something went without being said. We misread when we fill that gap with something that goes without being said in our own culture. In this case, what went without being said in Paul’s day was that communities were “permeable.”[20] What we mean is that bad things could soak into people (and groups). Ancients didn’t understand the world like we do, but they were good observers. When one person in a group caught a cold, often others in the group got sick. When one person in a group began bad habits or behaviors, often others in the group did as well. We might say that one scenario follows biology (viruses) and the other sociology (one bad apple spoils the whole bunch). Nonetheless, contamination happens.
Paul warned the church about the same thing. If you allow this “infection” in the Christian fellowship, it will spread. We often misread this passage. We fill in a value from our own culture: that is, “everyone pays for their own sin.” Thus we assume the ones who are getting sick or dying are the ones who were eating unworthily. Paul never says that. Life seldom works that way. The actions of some have dishonored the entire community. Paul argues, “Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing?” (1 Cor 11:22). Their actions were shaming the church of God and therefore God was defending his honor (Mal 1:6-7)! God was smiting the church for not defending her purity (Mal 2:2). He was not meting out early individual punishment for a few. Sin is corporate; it permeates the whole body. We don’t like to think that way, but it’s true. It leavens the whole lump and the honor of us all is at stake.
Conclusion
Let’s return to the betrayed wife who had no place to put her face. We are all confident the husband sinned—we get that from the Ten Commandments. Why it was sin depends upon the culture. (Actually, it is sin because God said so, but our culture then explains to us “why” God didn’t like it.) The greater challenge is then how we become ministers in this place of sin. Honor/shame isn’t just an academic issue, a peculiarity of ancient worldview. While I (Randy) was developing ministerial training in Indonesia, the issue of counseling came up. It seemed like a no-brainer, but the matter unraveled quickly over issues I had never considered. First, as we have noted, there is no privacy in Indonesia. Everyone knows everybody’s business. When couples are disagreeing with each other, there are usually other folks in the house. Also, the neighbor’s house is only a couple of feet away. Unless they are whispering in the bedroom, others will hear. In villages the walls of houses are made of split bamboo, and you can even hear whispering. There are just no private issues. Second, a couple cannot go to see the pastor without everyone knowing a visit occurred. Third, a couple is very unlikely to go to see the pastor until the entire village knows. More significantly, they are unlikely to think they have a problem until someone else tells them. When neighbors tell the couple, “You two are arguing and need help,” then they become aware of relationship problems. It is the village’s problem. The couple will live there in the future, whether or not they are together, so it affects village life. This cheating husband’s sin had an impact on the entire community. So in what way was “private counseling” appropriate for that couple?
The further we move down the iceberg of culture, the more difficult it becomes to prescribe practices for uncovering our presuppositions. This may be the most challenging chapter yet. We recommend you see the Resources for Further Exploration for suggested readings on this topic. You’ll begin to see honor/shame language in the Bible when you are more familiar with the concept. In the meantime, pay attention to where stories take place in Scripture. If an event or conversation is taking place publicly, there’s a good chance that honor/shame is at stake, such as in the story of Ruth and Boaz. As we mentioned above, the key difference between the questions Nicodemus and Jesus’ disciples asked and those asked by Jerusalem’s Jewish leaders was context: Nicodemus and the disciples questioned Jesus privately (see, for example, Jn 3:2 and Mt 17:19). The Jewish leaders questioned him publicly. You might object that the primary difference was motive: Nicodemus and the disciples were asking sincere questions, while the religious leaders were trying to trap Jesus. That’s true. But context indicates motive. Private questions were not honor challenges. Public questions were.
Questions to Ponder
The media frequently report a politician’s misbehavior. Often someone will respond, “What he does privately is his business. Public life and private life are separate matters.” Yet the Bible views life holistically. A lack of integrity in any part of a ship’s hull is still a risk of breach; it doesn’t matter if it is the port or the starboard side. Sin is never really private. Is a divorce really just the private business of two people? What about the children? What about the grandparents? Are coworkers and friends really immune? How have you seen “private” sin have corporate consequences?
As bearers of the name of Christ, our conduct is not our own private business. It is the business of Christ’s church together. This is clear when Paul discusses the immoral man in Corinth (1 Cor 5:1-8). Paul brings full weight to the matter by indicating it was a community problem. How does this chapter’s discussion on honor and shame inform 1 Corinthians 5:1-8?
In Galatians 2, Paul accuses Peter of hypocrisy because he ate with Gentiles until “certain men came from James” (Gal 2:12). Note the context in which Paul rebukes Peter. Paul makes it clear he opposed Peter “to his face” (2:11) “in front of them all” (2:14). He didn’t pull Peter aside privately to reason with him. Paul’s goal was to shame Peter into appropriate behavior. That was his culture; this is ours. So what should we do when a church leader isn’t acting appropriately?
We often imagine that after Peter denied Christ three times, his guilty conscience led him to repent. The crowing rooster seems almost a plot device. Yet the text suggests it was the crowing rooster that shamed Peter into repentance. How does—or should—shame and shaming play a role in the lives of Western Christians? Can God convict us of sin through shame as well as through our conscience?
As we noted above, God is also concerned about honor and shame. The writer of Hebrews tells us that because of the faithfulness of the patriarchs, “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God” (Heb 11:16). Have you ever wondered if God would be honored or ashamed to be known as our God? How do our actions as Christians bring God honor or shame?
-6-
Sand Through the Hourglass
Time
You might think that the one thing every culture could agree on is time. Are there not twenty-four hours in a day and sixty se
conds in a minute whether you live in Chicago or Singapore? Time doesn’t seem culturally determined. It’s based on the sun, for goodness’ sake!
Yet most people who have lived abroad will tell you that time is one of the ways cultures are most different. In the West, time is a hot commodity. Most of us consider it a limited resource. Sure, there are twenty-four hours in a day; but there are only twenty-four hours in a day. We struggle to fit all of our responsibilities—work, family, hobbies, leisure—into our busy schedules. We prove that other people are truly important to us when we “find time” or, better yet, “make time” for them. Because time is both limited and important, we talk about it as if it were a commodity that can be saved, traded or spent like money. Indeed, we are convinced that “time is money.” We are sensitive to the fact that other people value their time, so we try not to “monopolize” their time or, perhaps worse, waste our own. We even develop strategies for “time management,” which help us get maximum productivity out of this most limited of resources. (Some of you may be skimming right now in order to do just that.)
The importance of time in Western culture is further illustrated by the time-related virtues we celebrate and the vices we bemoan. Efficiency—the ability to do the most work in the least time—is an important Western virtue. So are punctuality, planning and predictability. These have their corresponding vices. Inefficiency, tardiness, nearsightedness and undependability are among the deadly sins (at least of business) in America.
While we fret and wring our hands about the demise of time, many non-Westerners don’t. My (Randy’s) Indonesian fishermen friends seem to have all the time in the world. I have deadlines. The end of the month is looming. I’m running out of time. I can hear my fishermen friends laughing. How can you “run out of” time? In their world, “there is always tomorrow until one day there’s not [i.e., you die], and then it won’t matter.” For them, procrastination is a virtue. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow? When tomorrow comes, you might find you didn’t need to do it at all. This gives many Westerners hives, because the sand is running out of the hourglass! The clock is ticking!
But our non-Western friends may be on to something. During the Y2K panic, I kept thinking of my Indonesian fishermen friends. Every morning they get in their outrigger canoes and paddle out to sea. I’m not certain they know what year it is. If the Y2K bug had shut down all computers worldwide, the next morning my friends would have paddled out to sea to fish, never the wiser. If energy grids go down, famine breaks out and Western civilization collapses, my fishermen friends will paddle out to fish. After a few years, they might wonder why I haven’t visited.
Talking About and Measuring Time
In the earlier chapter on language, we noted that what a culture values is often evidenced by specialized vocabulary in the language that makes it easier to describe and discuss it. It should come as no surprise, then, that Western and non-Western cultures have very different ways of talking about time. Many Western languages, including English, can describe the time of an event quite precisely. We can easily denote whether something happened in the past (“I ran”), is happening in the present (“I am running”) or has yet to happen (“I will run”). We can be even more precise. English can easily indicate if something happens regularly (“I run”) or if something used to happen but doesn’t anymore (“I have run”). It is even possible to describe the timing of one activity in relation to another, both of which may happen in the future (“I will have run”). We certainly love to talk about when something happened.
Many other languages do not make these distinctions. Indonesian, for example, has no verb tense. Most Americans can’t imagine such a thing: “How does anyone even communicate if you can’t indicate past, present and future?” Indonesians do it pretty well. When it matters—such as “Pick me up at the airport today” versus “Pick me up at the airport tomorrow”—they use the words today and tomorrow. This flexibility in language makes Westerners nervous. Verb tense (time) is so crucial, in fact, to modern English that we read that emphasis into other languages. When my (Randy’s) old Greek professor taught us verb tenses, we learned an aorist is a past tense verb. This was confusing when we later learned there are present aorists and future aorists. For Greeks, the past tense of the aorist is a lot broader than what we think. Today we teach our students that Greek tenses emphasize aspect more than time. We mean that the Greeks were more interested in whether or not the action of the verb was durative (ongoing, repetitive or persistent).
Time, though, is more slippery than merely past and present. In many Indonesian villages, church starts “midday.” When I (Randy) was invited to speak at a church, I initially asked what time church started. The term they used for midday was siang. Being a conscientious American, I tried to correspond siang with a time on my wristwatch. Language tutors were well accustomed to working with Westerners. I was taught siang means 10:30 a.m., and it ends with sore at 2:30 p.m. Indonesians are very friendly, so they greet each other by saying, “Good morning,” or “Good midday.” But they don’t play by the rules! I would say, “Good morning,” and they would reply, “No, it’s already midday.” But, blast it, I would look at my watch and it wasn’t even 10 a.m. It took me years to realize that siang was connected to the temperature, not the clock. Once the morning had turned hot, it was siang. When it cooled down in the afternoon, it was sore. That’s complicated enough; but remember, siang was the starting time for the church service. How do you start church at “hot”? That would make it difficult for everyone to show up at the same time. It sure does. Folks wander in over the course of an hour or so. But church never starts late.
The punctual reader is about to have a panic attack. Isn’t it rude to show up whenever you like? That’s not how non-Westerners think of the issue. Most cultures start and end events at the “correct” time. In the West, the correct time is usually connected to a clock. Westerners today view time as discrete (meaning separate units) and thus quantifiable. Over time, as we become busier, the correct time to start events is becoming more specific. In the 1970s, church started at 10:00 or 11:00 or noon. In the 1990s, church could start at 10:30 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. I (Randy) attend a church that begins at 11:15 a.m. In the non-Western world, by contrast, the correct time is often connected to a condition or situation. Some call this an “event” orientation, in which, as Duane Elmer writes, “Each event is as long or as short as it needs to be. One cannot determine the required time in advance. Time is elastic, dictated only by the natural unfolding of the event. The quality of the event is the primary issue, not the quantity of minutes or hours.”[1] Relationships trump schedules, so things begin when everyone who needs to be there has arrived.
So while in the United States church begins at 11:15 a.m., whether or not people are in the building, in Indonesia church begins when people get there. I always thought, Wow, some people get here early and some late. They didn’t think that way. Arriving just took time.
Time and the Bible
At first blush, it may appear that the Bible supports our Western view of time as linear and discrete. Surely the Western view of time as linear is due in part to the arrangement of our Scriptures. The biblical canon as we have it today starts with a clear beginning—creation—and stops with a clear end—the eschaton, or “end of all things,” as described in Revelation. Although the Bible also talks about time in cyclical terms—Ecclesiastes famously teaches, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” (Eccles 3:1)—the order in which our biblical books appear presents time as flowing toward an end. There are cycles in life and history, but history is not an endless cycle—and one is confident that the river of time will get where it’s going.
The earliest Christian creeds affirm this view of time and history. The Apostles’ Creed begins with a word about creation (“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth”) and ends with the promise of redemption (“the resurrection of the dead and the
life everlasting. Amen”). The way the books of the Bible are arranged in their current canonical order helps explain why the Christian view of time has always included a definitive beginning and end. The first story in Scripture is creation; the final story is about God’s redemption of creation. Everything in the middle works its way from point a to point b (not necessarily sequentially, as we’ll see below).[2]
We can also trace our sense of the limited nature of time back to the Bible. The Psalms consistently remind us that we humans “are like a breath; [our] days are like a fleeting shadow” (Ps 144:4). In light of the brevity of our lives, we are encouraged to ask God to “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps 90:12). Paul reminds us to make “the most of your time, because the days are evil,” a command earlier generations of Christians have taken very seriously (Eph 5:16 nasb). In other words, Scripture alerts us to be mindful of the time, aware that it will one day come to an end. But one senses no haste in the text.[3] You get the sense that even though time is not a limitless resource, there is plenty of it.
The New Testament writers used two Greek terms—chronos and kairos—that we typically translate with the same English word: “time.” Greeks commonly used chronos to describe the more quantitative aspects of time, such as chronology or sequence. Chronos time is what we might call clock or calendar time: discrete units of time that need to be measured (relatively) precisely. In the account of Jesus’ birth in Matthew, for example, we’re told Herod “called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time [chronos] the star had appeared” (Mt 2:7, emphasis added). Likewise, in his first epistle, Peter writes that his audience has “spent enough time [chronos] in the past doing what pagans choose to do” (1 Pet 4:3). Biblical language of things happening at “the ninth hour” or “early in the morning” were designations of chronos time, even if these chronos designations were less precise than we like (Mk 15:1, 33).
Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes Page 14