#workingforthespirit

[jefflauis]

Old Readings, Fresh Eyes

"For a North-American Christian, it can be a surprising and humbling experience to read parts of the Bible and to try to understand how they might be read in communities elsewhere in the world...

...Read Ruth, for instance, and imagine what it has to say in a hungry society threatened by war and social disruption...

...Read Psalm 23 as a political tract, a rejection of unjust secular authority.

Imagine a society terrorized by a dictatorial regime dedicated to suppressing the church, and read Revelation: understand the core message that whatever evils the world may produce, God will triumph...

 ...Apply the Bible's many passages about the suffering of children to the real-world horrors facing the youth of the Congo, Uganda, Brazil, or other countries that before too long will be among the world's largest Christian countries...

...understand the references to widows not as the ancient history of social welfare systems but as radical responses to present-day problems affecting millions of women worldwide....

...appreciate the promise of liberation and loosing presented in Jesus' inaugural sermon in the Nazareth synagogue. Understand the appeal of this message in a society in which  'the frustration of being alive...is excruciating.'..."

- Philip Jenkins The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (With formatting)

Since taking Science and Christianity, I've found I actually do have time to read scripture and spiritually edifying books. Imagine that.