It's all about ME

What if you knew that your actions affected an entire community, and everyone in that community would suffer the consequences of your choices?

I’m reading a new book, and it’s truly eye-opening. It discusses the disconnect between western and eastern cultures, and how those differences can create misinterpretations in scripture when they’re viewed through the western lens.

It’s my July Book of the Month, and is linked on the homepage. I highly recommend anyone truly studying scripture read it at some point…and I won’t use this post to reiterate all of the brilliant things they say in the book – but I do want to discuss one particular aspect that changes the way you consider biblical stories, and in some cases, completely changes the “point” of the story.

In western culture, we grow up with a very individualistic view of ourselves. Choosing Christ is a personal decision.  Our sin is our sin, the consequences are our own. It’s not the same in eastern culture; the collective – families, villages, even ancestors – are the priority. The community is involved in – well, everything – including the consequences of your decisions. When we read the Bible, we have to remember that the biblical culture is eastern, not western. I’m learning the implications of that one, simple fact on scripture.

In western culture, personal guilt is the motivator for good behavior. In eastern culture, there is no such thing as guilt – if the community condones your actions, there is no guilt involved; if they disagree with your actions, the motivator is shame.

What would our lives be like if we focused first on how our behavior affected the community? Let’s define community…for believers, it’s the church. Corporate church. Meaning your issues with sin affect the entire corporate church – not just your personal life.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. – 1 Corinthians 12:12

Does that scripture ring any different now? With Christ, believers are one body.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. – 1 Corinthians 12:14-15,18-19

If you hurt your foot, your whole body is affected, even though the injury is contained to the foot. You can’t walk right, so pain develops in your hips; your alternate leg works harder to compensate; maybe your spine gets out of alignment, which works its way up to your neck and headaches ensue…the singular injury to your foot eventually spreads affecting various parts of your body.

In the same way, your sin permeates the entire body of Christ. Perhaps that is why we’re commanded to “confess your sins to one another, so that you may be healed.” Perhaps “you” is not a personal term, it’s a plural term representing the entire body.

I’m in no way an expert on these things (I’m barely scratching the surface of beginner), but I do know that I have stopped to consider the fact that the commands in the Bible do not see me as an individual – they see me as a part of the collective church. And I’m truly pondering the idea that my actions, my sins, my decisions may have significant impact to the entire corporate church.

So I’ll ask you again - what if you knew that your actions affected an entire community, and everyone in that community would suffer the consequences of your choices? Would anything change?

BOOK: Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing the Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible – E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien