Lesson 5: Cultural Baggage, Does that verse still apply? and super controversial Texts
We all want the Bible to be practical. When we open the Scriptures, our natural instinct is to immediately ask, “What does this mean for me today?”
When we skip Interpretation and jump straight to application, we get into massive theological trouble. Instead of letting the Bible speak for itself, we end up projecting our own cultural and personal baggage right onto the pages of Scripture.
Now, as we conclude this series, we have to tackle two of the most common ways Christians accidentally distort the Bible today. The first error is turning the Bible's "Pictures" into a "Command." The second is using "Historical Context" as a magic eraser to delete verses we find uncomfortable.
Part 1: The Picture vs. The Command (Descriptive vs. Prescriptive)
One of the most vital rules of Bible study, emphasized heavily by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart in How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, is understanding the difference between a Descriptive passage and a Prescriptive passage.
Descriptive (The Picture): These passages simply describe what happened. They are historical narratives. They tell us what the characters did, but they do not necessarily tell us what we should do. As Fee and Stuart note, biblical narratives record what happened—they do not always explicitly state whether what happened was good or bad.
Prescriptive (The Command): These passages explicitly prescribe how we should live. They are the commands, laws, and moral imperatives (e.g., "Love your neighbor," "Flee from sexual immorality," "Do not steal").
The Danger: We distort the Bible when we take a descriptive narrative and treat it as a prescriptive command. Just because a story is in the Bible does not mean God is celebrating it or endorsing it as a model for your life!
Example 1: Gideon's Fleece (Judges 6)
Many Christians have used the story of Gideon to figure out God's will. Gideon was unsure if God would save Israel, so he put a piece of fleece on the ground and said, "God, if you are really going to save Israel, make the fleece wet and the ground dry." God graciously did it. Because of this, modern Christians often "put out a fleece" to make decisions.
I remember doing this as a new Christian, literally shooting insane trick shots in my driveway and asking God to tell me if so and so would be my wife if I could make it or not. I kid you not!
But Judges 6 is descriptive, not prescriptive. The narrator is not celebrating Gideon's bold faith; the narrator is exposing Gideon's paralyzing doubt! While God graciously accommodated Gideon's weak faith in that moment.
This brings us to a foundational rule of hermeneutics: Clear, prescriptive passages clarify unclear, descriptive passages. If a historical narrative is confusing or obscure, we interpret it through the lens of clear commands found elsewhere in Scripture. Because Deuteronomy 6:16 explicitly commands, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test," we know Gideon's fleece is a story of God's patience with a doubting man, not a prescribed formula for Christian decision-making.
Example 2: Selling Everything (Acts 2)
In Acts 2:44-45, we read that the early church "had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all." Some groups have read this and taught that to be a "faithful" Christian, you must sell your house, give up private property, and live in a commune. But the Bible (prescriptive) never command all Christians to sell everything they own. In fact, just a few chapters later in the story of Ananias and Sapphira, the Apostle Peter explicitly affirms private property rights, telling Ananias, "While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?" (Acts 5:4). Acts 2 is simply describing the radical, localized generosity of the early church. It is a beautiful description of the results of the gospel transforming a community, not a universal law regarding private property.
So, we must be careful not to turn descriptive historical stories into universal commands. But what do we do when we encounter actual, prescriptive commands in the New Testament letters that feel totally foreign to our modern lives? This brings us to the second major challenge.
Part 2: Playing the "Historical Context Card"
Many of the letters in the New Testament were written in response to something specific. Today, when modern readers encounter a command they don't like or that clashes with modern sensibilities, it is very popular to play the "Historical Context Card." We will say, "Oh, Paul was just speaking to a specific cultural issue in Corinth, so that verse doesn't apply to us anymore."
Before we make that claim (And sometimes we can after we do our careful work), we must exercise intense humility about our own baggage—both cultural and personal. In Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, the authors warn that we all wear cultural blinders. Because we breathe the air of the 21st-century West, we naturally assume our modern values—like extreme individualism and consumerism—are the "correct" and "enlightened" baseline for reality.
For a sobering historical example of how powerful this is, consider how for centuries, many Christians who knew their Bibles intimately did not question the institution of slavery. It was simply the cultural air everyone breathed, and their cultural blinders prevented them from seeing how evil and abusive the institution was.
But our baggage isn't just cultural; it is deeply personal. We read Scripture through the lens of our immediate family culture, our relational history, and even our personal trauma. For example, if you grew up with a harsh, authoritarian earthly father, reading about the "wrath of God" or a command to "submit" might instantly trigger a trauma response, causing you to instinctively reject or reinterpret those passages. If you grew up in a highly political town, you may not be able to see any of the blind spots of your political tribe.
Because of this, it is vitally important to grow in our own self-understanding. We have to examine the influences lurking underneath the waters of our hearts: our controlling idols, our fears, and our cultural values. Nobody comes to the text with a blank slate; we are all the product of our times and a complex web of personal factors.
This dynamic is actually one of the primary reasons there are so many different Christian denominations. It explains how multiple godly people who truly love Jesus can look at the exact same Bible text and come to vastly different conclusions. It is incredibly difficult to discern the invisible forces beneath the waters that are subtly shaping how we process anything.
It is understandable why we do this, and God is deeply compassionate toward our wounds and our blind spots. However, if we don't humbly acknowledge that we have baggage and lenses, we will fall into the lie that our reading of Scripture is the only pure one. We then unknowingly make our own cultural and personal baggage the ultimate authority over the Bible, rather than letting the Bible heal us and be the authority over us. We fall into the trap of eisegesis, reading meaning into the text, treating the Bible like a mirror to ourselves rather than drawing the meaning of the Text and letting it change us.
So, how do we actually know if a command is a localized cultural custom or a universal timeless principle?
Step 1: The Principlizing Bridge
In Grasping God’s Word, J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays introduce the concept of the "Principlizing Bridge." When we encounter a strange cultural command, we cannot just drag it directly into the 21st century, nor can we throw it away. We have to extract the timeless theological principle behind it.
Example A: The Holy Kiss
Take Romans 16:16: "Greet one another with a holy kiss." Are you living in sin if you shake hands at church instead of kissing everyone on the lips? No.
Their Town: In the 1st-century Middle East, a kiss on the cheek was the standard cultural form of greeting family.
The Principlizing Bridge: What is the timeless theological principle? The church is a family, and our gatherings should be marked by warm, genuine, family-like affection.
Our Town: We obey the timeless principle today using a different cultural form that communicates we have family-like affection.
Example B: Foot Washing
Let's look at a command from Jesus Himself. In John 13:14, after washing the disciples' feet, Jesus says: "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." This is a direct command. So why don't we mandate foot-washing basins in the church entrance every Sunday?
Because we cross the bridge. In the 1st Century, people walked dirt roads in sandals. Washing feet was the lowest, dirtiest job of a household servant. The cultural form was washing dirt off feet. The timeless principle is that Christians must gladly perform the lowest, most humbling acts of service for one another. You will likely not be in a situation to directly obey this passage unless you are Chuck Smith. In the 60’s, the Spirit birthed a revival among hippies, and Pastor Chuck had dirty-foot hippies filling his pews who were hungry for Jesus. Chuck started to wash their feet before they entered the church! This timeless principle can still have immediate applications today.
Step 2: Looking for "Universal" Context Clues
The "holy kiss" and "foot washing" are easy to navigate. But what happens when the cultural stakes are much higher? How do we know if an author is just addressing a local cultural issue, or if he intends the command to be universal for all time?
The Rule: We have to examine how the author grounds his argument within the text itself.
Why is this rule so important? Because historical and cultural contexts reconstructed by modern scholars can disagree with each other and change often, we often end up just picking the scholar who agrees with the conclusion we most want. For example, for years, Egalitarian scholars taught that the Artemis cult in Ephesus was centered around a fertility goddess, which supposedly created a local culture of female supremacy. They used this historical “fact” to argue that Paul was only restricting Ephesian women from domineering over men. However, in 2023, respected scholar Dr. Sandra Glahn published groundbreaking research demonstrating that the Ephesians actually viewed Artemis as a virgin goddess of midwifery, not a mother of fertility. Overnight, the historical foundation that supported decades of interpretation completely shifted! If we base our theology primarily on reconstructed history, our biblical convictions will constantly change with the latest academic discovery. As Dr. Tom Schreiner points out, a common hermeneutical problem is "We can appeal to matters not stated or found in a text to overturn what a text actually says." But do you know what doesn’t change? The Text! So to avoid this, we must lean into the contextual clues right there in the passage.
Furthermore, we need to rigorously double-check our interpretations, especially if a trending interpretation perfectly fits whatever the worldly culture currently finds palatable. It is certainly possible that the world, through God’s common grace, is seeing something that we are not. But more likely than not, throughout history, it is the church that is tempted to re-interpret clear texts to make them more acceptable in the public square.
Let's look at a highly contentious text, 1 Timothy 2:11-14.
"Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor."
Whoah, Paul!? Sexist much!?
In the context, he’s likely talking about preaching God’s Word while the church is gathered. Are you saying women can’t be pastors and preach?
I grew up in a church with women pastors who preached regularly, and they taught this passage was just a cultural context thing. For years, I accepted this explanation without another thought because the conclusion fit my church culture as well as the world’s culture. I mean, I am not going to be one of THOSE Christians. It wasn't until I started reading through the Bible multiple times on my own that I began to question that explanation. When you actually look closely at the text, the "cultural" argument falls apart.
Some scholars like Craig Keener or Cynthia Long Westfall argue: "Ephesus had a massive cult dedicated to the goddess Artemis. The women there were uneducated and teaching local heresies. Paul was only using Eve as an analogy to tell the Ephesian women to step down temporarily until they were properly educated." But if we use the hermeneutical tools we have learned in this course, I doubt those conclusions for at least four reasons:
1. Paul's Stated Ground (The Textual Clue)
If Paul wanted to ground his command in local Ephesian culture, he could have easily said, "For the women in Ephesus are currently uneducated and being deceived by Artemis." But he doesn't do that. To justify his command, Paul bypasses the Ephesian culture entirely. He reaches all the way back across history to the Garden of Eden, grounding his instruction in the Order of Creation and the Fall of Humanity saying, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” Creation and the Fall are not localized cultural events; they are universal human history.
2. The Consistency of Paul's Theology
If 1 Timothy 2 was just a localized "band-aid" for Ephesus, we wouldn't see it anywhere else. But Paul uses this exact same theological anchor (the Creation order of Genesis 2) in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 to establish gender distinctives when the church is gathered in a completely different church with completely different cultural problems. Furthermore, Paul explicitly grounds these instructions universally, stating in 1 Corinthians 11:16 and 14:33 that this is the standard practice "in all the churches of the saints."
3. The Context of the Deception
While it is true that some women in Ephesus were being led astray by false teachers—Paul even notes later in 2 Timothy 3:6 that these false teachers were creeping into households and capturing "weak women" who were being led astray—likely the chief architects of the heresy were men! In 1 Timothy 1:20, Paul explicitly names the two ringleaders: Hymenaeus and Alexander. If Paul’s goal was simply to stop a localized heresy created by men, giving a universal restriction on women teaching makes zero logical sense. Instead, he addresses the specific heresy elsewhere, but bases this specific office restriction on gender and roots it in Genesis.
4. Interpretive Weight: Which text wins?
Many thoughtful, faithful scholars (such as Preston Sprinkle in his recent book From Genesis to Junia) come to different conclusions by pointing to historical, descriptive narratives of women in ministry (like Junia or Phoebe). I believe Preston is doing his absolute best to be faithful to the text. He is a former professor of mine, his girls were flower girls in my wedding, and I esteem him greatly. I even had a chance to be an early reader of his latest book. I pushed back hard on some of his argumentation, and he gratefully received it. However, I disagree with his conclusions and was unable to convince him. I believe he makes the hermeneutical mistake of allowing suggestive historical examples to override clearer directive commands that are grounded in realities not bound by time.
Ultimately, this dispute boils down to a question of interpretive weight. Think back to the Picture versus the Command. When reading the New Testament, you have to make a choice:
Do we let the Commands (direct rules about church leadership) explain the Pictures (historical stories of people doing ministry)? Or do we let the pictures overwrite the commands?
If an apostolic command is explicitly anchored to the Garden of Eden, what kind of cultural excuse could possibly be strong enough to shrink it down to a temporary, local custom?
If we are going to handle the Bible faithfully, the Commands must always govern how we read the Pictures, not the other way around.
If we are going to handle the Bible faithfully, the clear, prescriptive texts about church office must govern how we read the descriptive narratives, not the other way around. If not, we then Open ourselves to over-read into narratives and historical contexts in such a way that we end up explaining away the command. This passage is loaded with controversy. Please don't think that I gave the final word in these few paragraphs, but I wanted to highlight some important points that I think are essential to understanding this passage as well as many other passages.
Conclusion: Going Wherever the Text Goes
Bible study requires immense humility. We all have baggage that we need to be aware of and navigate. And yet, we do not have the authority to dismiss a clear, universally grounded biblical command just because it clashes with modern, Western ideals. Conversely, we do not have the authority to turn a descriptive, historical narrative into a binding law that God never actually commanded.
As your elders, our commitment is simple but weighty: we are striving to go wherever the text goes, whether that direction is celebrated by our culture or demonized by it. We trust that God is infinitely wiser than we are, and that His ways are perfect, even when we can't fully see it from our limited, modern vantage point.
One day, when the perfect comes and we see Him face to face, the fog will clear. Not only will we see things more clearly, but we will likely realize how wrong we were about so many things! Yet, in the meantime, we still need to do our absolute best to be faithful. We will realize just how good, beautiful, and wise His ways truly are. On that day, we will know without a shadow of a doubt that it was the right call to trust Him and follow His words to the best of our ability, regardless of the cultural cost.
Our job today is to read carefully, study the context, look for the timeless principles, and humbly submit to the text and be willing to change our minds if it's clear that’s not what God was actually saying. Remember, we are doing this because we love God, and when you love someone, you take every word they say seriously, and you never want to misrepresent their heart or words. God help us do this holy and weighty work!