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Ramble: Cultural Polarization

We're back! After illnesses, a very busy April, and a long semester of school the blog is back. Thank you to everyone for being so understanding about it. We should be back to normal now posting every Wednesday with our continued overview of the Bible. In a couple of weeks Historical Fridays will start up again too.

This week we will be discussing something a little different than normal before we get back into over viewing the Bible. This is an observation about the culture we live in and how it might affect the way in which we read Scripture.

We live in a culture of extremes. Everything is highly polarized. There is no middle ground, no room for compromise. It's Marvel comics versus DC comics, Star Wars versus Star Trek, Cubs versus Cardinals, liberals versus the conservatives, the Republicans versus the Democrats, the rich versus the poor, white people versus black people, the north versus the south, the USA versus the world. Everything in our culture nowadays is us versus them in some form or fashion. Everyone is either on our side or on the enemy's side.

This is something most of you have probably noticed, and both sides of every argument is guilty of this. There is a very natural tendency to associate with people who share similar values and ideals. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem arises when we consider everyone who is not us an enemy, whoever "us" is.

This is the narrative of our culture, and you know what? Secretly I think we love it.

Sure we might claim how much we wish people on both sides of the aisle would cooperate, but how many of us actually take that first step of listening to the other side? How many of us claim to be open to cooperation, but only friend people on Facebook we agree with? Or listen to the news that fits our bias? The truth is most of us do.

We love the polarization because its easy. An "us vs them" framework is easy to live within. It justifies our tendency to stay within our comfort zones, because the "them" is inherently bad and therefore not safe to be around. We reinforce our own opinions, whether they be right or wrong, and then can't even comprehend how the "them" can possibly think differently, so they must be stupid.

Now this isn't quite what I'd call an encouraging topic, but it matters for more than just our politics or media consumption. This idea of polarized extremes makes its way into our reading of Scripture.

Think about it.

We look in the Bible constantly for the "them." We are eager to point out the sins of others, but fail to realize that we are all sinners. We study the parts of the Bible we like and ignore the parts that challenge our opinions. We eagerly seek the Scriptures to see who should be in positions of authority and who should be submissive, but we miss that Jesus alone has all authority and that we are all called to submission.

I could go on, but I think the point is clear. We must be aware of the cultural mindset we live in. It affects the way we look at the Bible, and not just the things we look for but also our theology. There are plenty of things in Scripture that we tend to separate and pit against each other that the Bible doesn't do, or at least doesn't separate nearly as severely (Old and New Testaments for instance).

This is just something I've noticed in the culture, our churches, and in myself. I'm not innocent of this. I hope you have enjoyed this Ramble. These will pop out every now and again. Next week we will continue our journey through the Bible with 1 Corinthians!

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