How to counter the cultural-copout accusation on verses
Posted: Fri May 13, 2016 8:46 am
Steve,
How do we know if we are WRONGLY dismissing/redefining parts of the bible we don't like by relegating a passage to that of a specific culture, and therefore not applicable today?
For example, the passage on headcovers or longhair. When Christian men have long hair, or women opt not to cover their heads, and the reason given is this was only applicable to an ancient culture - there will be those who will take exception to that, and accuse us of cherry picking and tossing out the parts we don't like.
That's certainly NOT what I would want to do. So how do we avoid this?
As for long hair: What could Paul have possibly meant by it being a "shame" for men to have "long" hair? No where does it say HOW it is shameful, nor does it anywhere specify the LENGTH or even style of hair (e.g. pig tails, braided would seem to cross the line... maybe even a "man bun" ).
I believe your take on these sorts of passages is these are only mentioned ONCE in the bible, and are not as clear to everyone as say drunkenness and adultery passages are (which in contrast have MANY similar or illustrative examples to clarify). So these are open to interpretation and cannot be violated so easily. These might even be just cultural for another time and place, and at best have a parallel application today to something more clear like MEN who say, dress or act like women. There's no question from other parts of scripture that God would not support that.
So how can we best understand "shame" and "long"?
My take on it is for a man to be effeminate is shameful for him as a man, and being mistaken as such would do that. But if the guy acts like a man, and has some facial hear, and looks manly enough regardless of the length of his hair (e.g. rugged) - I don't see how this would apply even to people in an ancient culture as such. Certainly not today.
Any how, I believe we already touched on some of this before. My main question is more for you to define some guidelines to avoid accidental dismissing a passage, reasoning how times have changed, etc.
How do we know if we are WRONGLY dismissing/redefining parts of the bible we don't like by relegating a passage to that of a specific culture, and therefore not applicable today?
For example, the passage on headcovers or longhair. When Christian men have long hair, or women opt not to cover their heads, and the reason given is this was only applicable to an ancient culture - there will be those who will take exception to that, and accuse us of cherry picking and tossing out the parts we don't like.
That's certainly NOT what I would want to do. So how do we avoid this?
As for long hair: What could Paul have possibly meant by it being a "shame" for men to have "long" hair? No where does it say HOW it is shameful, nor does it anywhere specify the LENGTH or even style of hair (e.g. pig tails, braided would seem to cross the line... maybe even a "man bun" ).
I believe your take on these sorts of passages is these are only mentioned ONCE in the bible, and are not as clear to everyone as say drunkenness and adultery passages are (which in contrast have MANY similar or illustrative examples to clarify). So these are open to interpretation and cannot be violated so easily. These might even be just cultural for another time and place, and at best have a parallel application today to something more clear like MEN who say, dress or act like women. There's no question from other parts of scripture that God would not support that.
So how can we best understand "shame" and "long"?
My take on it is for a man to be effeminate is shameful for him as a man, and being mistaken as such would do that. But if the guy acts like a man, and has some facial hear, and looks manly enough regardless of the length of his hair (e.g. rugged) - I don't see how this would apply even to people in an ancient culture as such. Certainly not today.
Any how, I believe we already touched on some of this before. My main question is more for you to define some guidelines to avoid accidental dismissing a passage, reasoning how times have changed, etc.