After she commented on how handsome he was, Josh asked his mom, “May I go outside to play?”
The missionary asked him, “Where are you going?”
Our little angel smiled up at her and said, “None of your d**n business.”
Our chins hit the floor. We had never heard him say that word before (or since). The completely shocked look on all our faces told a five-year-old that this was unacceptable. His mom sputtered, “Josh!” Before we could say another word, he started crying and ran from the room. We communicated effectively this word was not appropriate. When he left, we were in an awkward spot with a missionary leader we had just met. We didn’t even have the luxury of shaking our heads and saying, “The things they learn from their friends!” All of his friends spoke Manadonese. I’m sure the missionary was convinced that the Richards household used spicy language at home.
We spent weeks wondering how our son could have learned a word he didn’t hear us use. Later we were rewatching a movie— there was no English television but we did have videos—and we heard the line, “Where are you going?” to which the hero replied with the now infamous line. Our son had used it exactly like he heard it. Our son had picked up a turn of phrase by watching a movie, which is one way culture is transmitted. My wife and I had passed along a cultural value by our response that such language is inappropriate, which is another way culture is transmitted.
The definition of mores also notes that they embody “the fundamental moral views of a group.” Observing these conventions is considered essential to the ongoing well-being of the community. Break them and chaos could reign. As a result, these values are guarded as if the very fabric of society depends on it. Sometimes it does. We would argue that “protecting the weak and innocent,” an American more (at least in principle), is essential to preserving American culture. More often, though, mores are less permanent, changing from place to place and, within the same culture, over time.
Within the U.S., for example, certain Christian values shift according to geography. In the South a generation ago, many folks considered playing cards to be of the devil. As you moved north, playing cards became more and more acceptable. When you reached Minnesota, you might find bridge tournaments in church.[1] On the East Coast (where tobacco is grown), smoking was okay as long as you didn’t smoke in the pulpit (this is only a slight exaggeration). As you moved west, it was less and less acceptable. When you reached California, smoking was of the devil. (We once heard a West Coast pastor joke that his church condemned adultery because it had been known to lead to smoking.) A family friend from Arkansas sent a Christmas card this year that was a collage of photos, four of which showed the husband or a child kneeling next to a dead animal they had shot. While I’m sure that it seemed very Christmasy to them, folks from other parts of the country might view this as an outrage.
Mores also change over time, causing what is commonly called the “generation gap.” Among conservative Christians in the United States today, we are seeing a shifting more. The consumption of alcohol in moderation, such as a glass of wine with dinner or a pint of beer with your buddies, was anathema for many conservative Christians a generation ago, especially in the South where we were raised. Today growing numbers of young conservatives are challenging this assumption. Now many conservative denominations are generationally split on the issue, with younger people imbibing and older people abstaining.[2]
As the examples above suggest, mores dictate everything from what qualifies as inappropriate language to what one eats and wears and even to whom one should marry and more. For example, the phrase “that was a good dog” spoken by an American suburbanite can mean “one that doesn’t chew my shoes”; by an Australian rancher, “one that herds sheep”; and by a Minahasan, “one that tastes delicious.” Our perspective depends upon what our social mores dictate is the appropriate use—and misuse—of language, the human body or our canine friends.
Serving Two Masters?
Christians face the unique challenge of being squeezed between conflicting mores. On one hand, Christians often adhere to a certain code of conduct without question and regard certain behaviors as essential to the well-being of both the Christian community and the world at large. On the other hand, majority Western culture has its own values that likewise go without being said and which are considered essential to human liberty and satisfaction. Thus, the church and the world often hold contradictory mores. Our options, then, are either to stubbornly resist the infiltration of a cultural more we consider antithetical to a Christian one or to compromise. History is full of examples. In eighteenth-century England and America, to take just one example, the theater was a popular source of entertainment and education for cultured members of society. Good Christians, however, wouldn’t be caught dead in a theater. Religious folk considered theater, with its vivid depiction of human depravity, to be morally corrosive. It excited the passions and threatened the social order. So Christian mores of the time said that theater was off limits for the faithful. For a while. Over time, however, churches began to adapt to theater culture. The dynamic English evangelist George Whitefield preached in a nearly unprecedented theatrical style during the Great Awakening, which led thousands to experience new birth in Christ.[3] Consequently, other preachers, who traditionally read their sermons from manuscripts, adopted more energetic and extemporaneous styles of communication in the entertaining vein of a theater actor. The old meetinghouse seating arrangement gradually gave way to theater seating, with a stage front and center and stadium-style seats facing forward. In this way, Christians were able to capitalize on the appeal of the theater without engaging in the aspects of it they considered questionable. In short, they compromised.[4]
Another reason Westerners are tempted to compromise is because we tend to view the world dualistically. Things are true or false, right or wrong, good or bad. We have little patience for ambiguity or for the unsettling reality that values change over time. We want to know: Is it okay to drink alcohol—yes or no? What about sex—good or bad? Tensions like these are so common in our culture that Hollywood has invented an image for it. When someone faces a dilemma, up pops an angelic image of himself or herself on one shoulder and a devilish one on the other. The symbolism is clear: our choice is always between saintly or sinful, holy or unholy. It is difficult to live in this tension. So we feel happiest when we can satisfy two conflicting mores with some sort of compromise, as our Christian fathers did with theater. This applies, of course, to other mores, including the three we will discuss below: sex, food and money.
Christians are tempted to believe that our mores originate from the Bible. We believe it is inappropriate or appropriate to drink alcohol, for example, “because the Bible says so.” The trouble is, what is “proper” by our standards—even by our Christian standards—is as often projected onto the Bible as it is determined by it. This is because our cultural mores can lead us to emphasize certain passages of Scripture and ignore others.
When I (Brandon) was growing up, pastors in our Christian tradition preached often on the evils of alcohol. We were frequently reminded—from Scripture—that “wine is a mocker and beer a brawler” (Prov 20:1). Thus, we learn, “Do not gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly! In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper” (Prov 23:31-32). It seemed clear enough to me.
So when I visited the house of a friend, a Christian of a different denomination who had recently moved to town from another state, I was shocked to discover that his parents had a wine chiller engraved with a different Bible reference: “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake” (1 Tim 5:23 kjv)! I began to suspect that my tradition’s view of alcohol consumption was at least as cultural as it was biblical when I spent a semester in Edinburgh, Scotland, where I attended a church of my own denomination. My first week in town, I was invited to a deacon’s house for dinner. He offered me a drink when I arrived.
“What do you have?” I asked.
/>
“Anything you want,” he answered. “We have lagers, ales, stouts, pilsners, sherry, whisky, port . . .”
Our hierarchy of what behaviors are better or worse than others is passed down to us culturally and unconsciously. We might assume that our mores are universal and that Christians everywhere have always felt the way we feel about things. But they aren’t, and they haven’t, as the illustration above suggests. In Indonesia, billiards is considered a grievous sin for Christians. When I (Randy) heard this, I reacted, “That’s silly. We had a pool table in my house when I was growing up.” My Indonesian friends said nothing. Years later, I found out that they commonly thanked God that he had delivered me from my terrible past. In their mind, I had grown up in a virtual brothel.
What can be more dangerous is that our mores are a lens through which we view and interpret the world. Because mores are not universal, we may not be aware that these different gut-level reactions to certain behaviors can affect the way we read the Bible. Indeed, if they are not made explicit, our cultural mores can lead us to misread the Bible. In the story about Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:1-9), it seems very clear to us what the sin of the Sodomites was: sodomy. (We even named a sin after them!) To Indonesian Christians, the sin of the Sodomites is equally clear: inhospitality. They appeal to this verse for support: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy” (Ezek 16:49). Both groups agree that the folks of Sodom were sinful. But of which sin were they guilty? In the pages that follow, we consider three issues—sex, food and money—which are surrounded by cultural mores that can influence how we read Scripture.
Sex
Tradition has it that a few years after Jesus’ ascension, the apostles gathered in Jerusalem to make plans for the first international missions movement. Motivated by the Lord’s commandment to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19), the apostles determined that they should make a concerted effort to spread the gospel beyond the empire and to the “four” ends of the earth.[5] They cast lots to decide who should go where. The lot for India fell to Thomas (the one Westerners often call “the doubter”).[6]
Record of Thomas’s ministry in India has been preserved in oral tradition and in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas.[7] That document testifies that Thomas traveled around northern India in good apostolic fashion, preaching a message of self-control and restraint: “abstain from fornication and covetousness and the service of the belly: for under these three heads all iniquity cometh about.” It’s good advice. If not in biblical language, the commandment to avoid sexual immorality, envy and gluttony coincides more or less with biblical teaching.
But context is everything.
The first time Thomas preaches his message of abstinence, he does so at a wedding. His chosen audience is the bride and groom. He is so persuasive that he convinces the young soon-to-be-newlyweds to call off the wedding and live chastely and single. By avoiding marriage, the couple will also avoid the “cares of life or of children” and enjoy a union of greater spiritual value: with God. This spiritual marriage will have eternal value, whereas their physical marriage would have resulted in a “foul intercourse.” According to the Acts of Thomas, Thomas’s message found an eager audience in India. But Thomas’s success ultimately led to his death. One of his final converts was the wife of King Misdaeus. When the queen became a Christian, she adopted the chaste lifestyle Thomas taught and stopped having sex with her husband, the king. This did not go over well with the king. King Misdaeus ultimately ordered that Thomas be put to death—and with him, the king hoped, Thomas’s insistence on celibacy.
Our first instinct may be to dismiss Thomas’s teaching altogether. The Acts of Thomas is apocryphal and thus, we might say, of little value. A more constructive response, however, would be to recognize in the account an opportunity to identify the cultural mores that affect the way we understand this apocryphal book and, more importantly, the Bible.
What went without being said for Thomas, and for many of his Indian listeners who were very likely influenced by Hindu asceticism, was that celibacy was necessary for spiritual growth. Celibacy was preferable to marriage, for total commitment to Christ demanded avoiding the “foul intercourse” of marriage. On the face of it, it appears that Thomas’s message echoes New Testament teachings on sex and marriage. The apostle Paul wrote, “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman” (1 Cor 7:1). Unfortunately, there was sexual immorality in the Corinthian church. So Paul conceded that marriage is necessary if it helps keep immorality in check. Sure, he suggested, marriage is better than promiscuity, but celibacy is still better than both. Paul’s advice to marry was “a concession, not . . . a command” (1 Cor 7:6). Like Thomas, Paul wished “that all of you were as I am”—single (1 Cor 7:7). He likely had several reasons for this, but at least one was consistent with those Thomas offered.[8] Paul wanted his Corinthian readers to be “free from [the] concern” that necessarily comes with marriage (1 Cor 7:32).
An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord. (1 Cor 7:32-35)
This line of thought may make you uncomfortable. For many of us who grew up in evangelical churches, sex in marriage was the great carrot our youth pastors held out to keep us abstinent in high school.[9] That’s because what goes without being said among Western Christians, especially in America, is that celibacy has no inherent spiritual value. The idea of a pastor like Thomas—or Paul for that matter—talking a young Christian couple out of marriage on their wedding day strikes us as a misapplication of the gospel, because it violates a cultural more that goes without being said. For Western Christians today, marriage (and sex within marriage) is preferable to singleness (and celibacy). So we gravitate to other places in Scripture that speak more positively about marriage. We appeal to Genesis 2:24 (“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh”) or Ephesians 5:31, in which Paul compares marriage to the mystery of the relationship between Christ and his church. We agree, quite naturally, with one notable American theologian who has argued, “From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible assumes that marriage is normative for human beings. The responsibilities, duties, and joys of marriage are presented as matters of spiritual significance.”[10] In the process, we ignore Paul’s preference for singleness—probably by concluding that it was some sort of Corinthian issue and not relevant to us—and we use a “Well, the Bible as a whole says”–type of argument.
But are we positive that we prioritize marriage over singleness because of the Bible? Christians are not universally convinced.[11] On the issue of sex, for example, many Christians have the idea that sex is categorically bad. There’s a strong heritage of asceticism in Christianity that has viewed sex as something of a necessary evil—necessary for procreation, evil as it excites the baser desires. This way of thinking persists in some Christian communities.[12] And it has suffused much of conservative Christianity in the United States.
On the other hand, at least since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, majority Western culture insists that sex is always good. Christians naturally desire to resolve the tension. Marriage gives us a way to do that. We can affirm that sex is bad—in the wrong context. We can affirm, too, that God wants us to have a gratifying sex life, albeit in the right context: marriage. In this way we are able to affirm both statements. It could be that American Christians privilege marriage over singleness and celibacy because it eases the tension that exists between tradit
ional Christian and secular views of human sexuality.
With this in mind, we should take another look at 1 Corinthians 7. Upon further inspection, it appears that the Acts of Thomas overstates Paul’s argument in the direction of celibacy. Paul does say explicitly regarding “the unmarried and the widows,” “It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do” (1 Cor 7:8). But he does not imply that marriage will hinder spiritual formation. In clear contradiction to the Acts of Thomas, Paul does not advocate for celibacy within marriage. “The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband” (1 Cor 7:3) and “Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer” (1 Cor 7:5). Thus the celibate lifestyle Queen Misdaeus adopted upon her conversion was unbiblical. It is very likely that the ancient Indian preference for celibacy in the religious life caused Thomas and his listeners to misread the Bible by emphasizing biblical teaching like Paul’s in 1 Corinthians over other biblical teaching on marriage and singleness. If Thomas (and much of early Christian tradition) overemphasized the significance of celibacy, it should likewise be clear from this passage that it is possible to overemphasize the priority of marriage. In this passage, at least, singleness emerges as the preferable lifestyle for the Christian. This must be balanced in light of other Scripture, of course, including statements Paul himself makes elsewhere. But it is possible to err in either direction. The biblical witness appears to land somewhere in the middle. As English pastor and theologian John Stott explains:
Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes Page 3
