Please note that due to the software used, not everything in this transcript will be accurate.

African Jesus

Elizabeth Mburu:
 Can I say, do I have time to tell you a story? 

John Dickson:
Yeah, of course you do. We like stories.

Elizabeth Mburu:
I love, I love telling this stories. It’s the story of, of the tortoise and the hair. I was going to tell you, you know, the poem of, you know, the Blind Men, but I thought maybe the tortoise and the hair is a little bit better. And so Aesop’s Fables has, uh, a version of this story. And this is a story that is common in Africa as well as in many other contexts. And so Tortoise challenges Hare to a race.

Studio – John Dickson:

That’s Elizabeth Mburu, a world-renowned theologian and associate professor of New Testament and Greek at Africa International University in Nairobi, Kenya. She was the first woman to earn a PhD from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary – so she’s a genuine trailblazer. Elizabeth is one of the leading voices advocating for the benefits of approaching the Bible from an African perspective. Biblical understanding, she says, doesn’t have to be through a western lens. In fact, coming at the text from multiple angles gives us a fuller, richer appreciation of things. She’s one of the editors of a new book from Zondervan Academic called Prophet, Priest, and King: Christology in Global Perspective and that book aims to highlight the different voices from the global church (not just from Africa, but from across the Majority World) who can help us understand the Jesus in a fuller way. What she’s talking about here is the famous parable of the Tortoise and the Hare. In the Western telling of the story, the Tortoise wins because, when the Hare realises how far he is ahead, he lies down for a nap before reaching the finish line. The takeaway is that slow and steady wins the race, and hubris can be your downfall. But in Elizabeth’s telling of the story, Tortoise wins in a different way. 

Elizabeth Mburu:
And, um, of course we know that, uh, Tortoise can’t win. We know that’s a fact. So what Tortoise does is he recruits his relatives, you know, same size, same color, puts them along the path of the race, and then as, as, as Hare comes along the path of the race, each, you know, Tortoise is jumps out and runs on ahead, and the one behind hides. And so at the end of the race, Tortoise is the undisputed winner. So let me ask you a question. What is this story about? Is it about deception? Is that what it’s teaching us, or would you say?

Studio – John Dickson:

Is it cleverness? It is cheating? Tortoise has found a way to engineer a favourable outcome, even when the odds are stacked against him. Perhaps the takeaway is: work smarter, not harder. Not quite… 

Elizabeth Mburu:
It is actually about community and it’s also about the honor, honor, shame culture where, you know, you don’t allow anyone in your, in your family to suffer shame because individual shame is public shame. Right. It’s communal shame. Mm-hmm. But when I’ve told this story to many other Western audiences, except you. They’ve, they’ve always said it’s teaching us about, you know, deception. 

Studio – John Dickson:

This is confronting. The different versions of the Tortoise and the Hare show us how cultures come at a similar tale from different perspectives. The Western story emphasises the perils of pride and the benefit of consistency. The African story puts a spotlight on the power of community/teamwork and the honour/shame dynamics that play a huge role in many cultures. Our culture shapes how we perceive the story. Our culture shapes how we perceive the world. Now, I’ll be honest. I don’t like the African moral of the tale. I actually think it prizes a communitarian attitude that is, in fact, wrong – protecting the honour of a community, regardless of cheating and cover-up, has been one of the great evils of the past – including in the Church. But here’s the thing. I am quick to see this fault. Am I as quick to see the faults in my own life and culture? No way. For me, the lesson of the African version and Hare and Tortoise story isn’t the moral it teaches. It’s the way it holds a mirror up to me. How quick I am to say “That’s not right!” about someone else! How slow I am to say the same about myself and my people. It all raises the possibility that I – as a white, wealthy, westerner – have ways of hearing stories, and reading texts (like the Bible), that are completely shaped by culture, and so leave me clueless about what’s really there. And what it means for me. In 2019, the Society of Biblical Literature, the largest body of biblical scholars in the world, found that 86 per cent of members who were college or university faculty were of European or Caucasian descent. That means that the teaching voices of Christianity are overwhelmingly culturally shaped. Maybe the critics are right: Christianity is just a white-man’s religion. Its biblical scholars mostly are. And yet African Christianity is almost as old as Christianity itself. Alexandria in Egypt was one of the major epicentres of early Christianity. Important early Christian theologians like Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine were from Africa. And Ethiopian Christianity dates back as early as the 4th century and maybe before that (there’s a whole episode to be done on that fascinating history). Biblical scholar Esau McCaulley — my colleague at Wheaton … who is not white – wrote recently that we need to see the Bible through the eyes of others, because “no one part of the body has the right to speak for the whole. We need each other”. So today, perhaps only as a thought experiment (but probably also for much more!) we’re going to look at Jesus through African eyes. I’m already looking at Jesus through western eyes – I can’t help that – so why not give the African lens a go and see … what I see!! I’m John Dickson, and this is Undeceptions.

Undeceptions theme plays

Studio – John Dickson: 

There’s a problem with this episode. It could easily be tied to the ‘culture wars’ that are everywhere in the West, especially in my new home of the US. I am not endorsing the view of some that white readings of texts are ‘oppressor readings’ and that black readings of texts are the more noble ‘oppressed readings’. To be clear, I reject that paradigm. BUT … different cultures do see different things in texts. And some of those things may be closer to, or further from, the intended meaning of the texts. The best approach is to listen to multiple readings in a mode of humility. It may just be that I discover something true and good that my cultural lenses obscured. I’ve found this to be true just in my small cultural shift moving to America three years ago. For the first year, Buff, Josie, and I constantly found ourselves saying, “How weird is that …!” It might be the way the supermarkets are designed … or it could be the American flags on people’s homes … how confident American college students are … and so on. But two years in, and now three years in, we’ve grown to love these things (even the supermarkets) and it’s made us think twice about Australian modes of living, some of which we prefer … some of which we do not!! I’ve learnt in a small way how much my cultural environment affects how I perceive and evaluate things. And it makes me think that there is every chance I am seeing things in the Bible that aren’t really there – just because my culture and tradition has conditioned me to see them everywhere. And I’m probably NOT seeing things in the Bible that really are there — because my cultural lenses have pushed them out of focus. 

Elizabeth Mburu:
So you sitting in, in Australia, right? Um, I,

John Dickson:
I happen to be in the US right now.

Elizabeth Mburu:
Oh, you are in the US Okay. You sitting in the US and me sitting here in Nairobi, uh, I would look at a text and I’ll probably have different issues. Um, when, when we read, particularly as Africans, the text is very functional. I’m looking to the text to address my realities, and so I have questions to ask. I might have different questions than you do. We might have the same kinds of questions. Who wrote this? Why did he write this? You know, and so on and so forth. But then there are other questions. That I would ask that you wouldn’t ask. And so your contextual okayness is, is, is so important, uh, when we come to reading the text, because when we put those two together, then we have what I would call, I wanna say a fuller reading, but you know, like a more balanced reading, uh, understanding what the author intended to communicate in a more, uh, it’s like a puzzle. We are filling in the pieces of the puzzle together.

Studio – John Dickson:

The origin of the term “Africa” is contested. There are pop theories you’ll sometimes hear – like it comes from the Latin apricus (“sunny”). But the OED suggests it’s little more than a Roman reference to a mysterious ‘Afri’ people. Africa is just the ‘place of the Afri’. Wherever the name originated, the Romans were talking about “Africa” by the second century BC. It’s a place with a rich, ancient history – and it appears in the Bible a lot. Egypt in particular is referenced hundreds of times across the Old and New Testaments. Abraham goes to Egypt, Moses escapes from Egypt in the Exodus, Joseph (and his coat of many colours) rose to prominence in Egypt. Jesus lived in Egypt for a time as a child, we’re told in the Gospel of Matthew. Other significant bible stories play out in the region of Cush – which probably lay to the south of Ancient Egypt, and these days would lie partly in Egypt and partly in Sudan. Ethiopia is referenced several times, as is the region of Put, which would probably be modern-day Libya. We can often get the sense that Christianity arrived in Africa with colonialism. And there’s certainly an episode to be done about colonialism – the good and the bad. But actually, the ancient Church chronicler Eusebius tells us the gospel writer known as Mark went to Egypt in the first century:

Reading

And so greatly did the splendor of piety illumine the minds of Peter’s hearers that they were not satisfied with hearing once only, and were not content with the unwritten teaching of the divine preaching, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, a follower of Peter, and the one whose Gospel is extant, that he would leave them a written monument of the doctrine which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease until they had prevailed with the man, and had thus become the occasion of the written Gospel which bears the name of Mark. 16.1 And they say that this Mark was the first that was sent to Egypt, and that he proclaimed the Gospel which he had written, and first established churches in Alexandria. 

Ecclesiastical History, Book 2

Studio – John Dickson:

Far from being a colonial power, Christianity first went to Africa as a tiny and persecuted minority. We, in fact, know the names of at least 30 Christians in Africa who were executed for their faith. 

John Dickson:
Christianity from the beginning was really diverse. Uh, it reached into different cultures, you know, within the first 10 years it was, um, making inroads. But does this make Christianity messy intellectually and emotionally?

Elizabeth Mburu:
I think it does because the way we practice Christianity now, um, tends to be almost monocultural in the sense that we stick to our own kind. And so we have a lot of unity amongst like-minded believers. Then we think that, um, anyone who has a different perspective, uh, is a little bit, you know, off. And so we, they’re not in the, in-group. They’re, you know, they’re outsiders. So, so I do think, that, that it must have made things quite challenging, uh, particularly in the beginning when Jews, uh, probably thought this is, this is ours. And then, uh, people come along like Paul and say, no, uh, the Gentiles are part of this too. And then they have to figure out how do we relate to people, you know, with whom we, we are so different culturally, religiously, uh, in terms of background? And I think it took a lot, it took a lot to begin to try and come as one. That unity in diversity, I think was, yeah, probably messy, problematic, but worth it. Right. 

John Dickson:
Do you think there was, um, there’s something inherent in Christianity that, that is aiming for diversity or, or was it accidental?

Elizabeth Mburu:
I think it’s inherent in it because, um, uh, even when you look at the gospels, they say, you know, Jesus came to the Jews first. Implying that after that first there is another group that the gospel is intended to reach. Of course, we see that, you know, with, with Peter in Acts 10, with Cornelius.

Reading

The following day, Peter arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. But Peter made him get up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself. While talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?” Cornelius answered: “Three days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me and said, ‘Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor. Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner, who lives by the sea.’ So I sent for you immediately, and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.” Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.
Acts Chapter 10

Elizabeth Mburu:
I think that the, the history of salvation, the way God works throughout history, always intended to incorporate all peoples right, right from Abraham. Uh, when, when he gave, you know, that promise to Abraham and when we think about the fact that Abraham is, is not just the father of the Jews, but as you come to Galatians, the father of all who believe in Jesus Christ. So that was inbuilt in the gospel. Even if you look at Genesis chapter three, that definitely shows you that seminal gospel shows you Christianity was meant to be, uh, wider than just the Jews. Uh, no matter what they might have thought, yes.

 John Dickson:
So if we turn to the Bible and how to interpret that amidst this diversity, uh, I  guess one question is, um, is there such a thing as a neutral way to read the Bible? 

Elizabeth Mburu:
Oh, that’s a myth of the enlightenment. I would say there’s no such thing as a neutral reading of the text. In fact, we have many discussions with my friends, uh, from North America, from, you know, from the uk. Um, and I’m always telling them, you know, we have to write books that say African Hermeneutics or Asian hermeneutics. And then we look at the textbooks that come to us  from the, the US or the uk, and they’re just Hermeneutics. And I say, no, no, no, it’s not just hermeneutics. That’s got your assumptions, your cultural biases loaded into it as well. And so there is no such thing, uh, as a neutral hermeneutic. Uh, we all interpret through a contextual lens whether we know it or not. 

Studio – John Dickson:

Hermeneutics is one of those weird words you only hear in Theology and English Lit departments. Here’s Kevin Vanhoozer talking about hermeneutics  back in Undeceptions episode 137 ‘Bible Unlocked’.

Keven Vanhoozer:
It comes from the name of a Greek God Hermes, the messenger God, and there’s a verb in Greek hermeneuion, which means to interpret. So really it’s the study of how we interpret messages. It’s come to be associated with interpreting texts in particular, but really it’s like philology. Anybody who loves words or discourse should love hermeneutics because life is about interpretation. We have to interpret everything from baby’s cries to James Joyce’s Ulysses. And so hermeneutics is a discipline that is focused on the principles for right understanding of texts. If you’re going to study the humanities at some point you’re going to interpret what humans have said or done.

John Dickson:
Because it’s one of those things where it’s mostly intuitive, isn’t it? I mean, people are doing hermeneutics, whether they’ve even heard the word or not. We’ve all got a way of interpreting!

Keven VanHoozer:
Hermeneutics is intuitive. It steps back and says, what did we just do? What did we just do in interpreting this? And how do we make sure we’re doing it right?

Studio – John Dickson:

Thanks Kevin. Back to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Mburu:
Uh, we are doing it all the time. Uh, it’s just that we, we, we who received the gospel through the missionaries and then naturally received the books that came from the west. We just assumed, oh, this is the hermeneutic. However, more recently, we are beginning to acknowledge that, as we examine the methods and their underlying assumptions, we are starting to realise that this is … it is, um, loaded with some contextual aspects to it. Uh, and we need, we need to uncover that and we need to acknowledge it. It’s not bad. I think it’s a good thing, uh, that we don’t read neutrally, but it has to be balanced, uh, not unrestricted or contextual reading that just lets the text say what you want it to say.

John Dickson:
Yeah but you wouldn’t dismiss, would you, uh, the sort of starting point that in order to read, say the letters of Paul, you’ve got to have the Greek language. I mean, that’s what it was written in. Uh, you’ve got to know something of the Greek and Roman world and the context to which he’s speaking … so you’re still anchoring it in its historical environment yes? Or, you know, are you bypassing that when we speak of this sort of more diverse hermeneutic?

Elizabeth Mburu:
Well, I’m not, you know, some do, uh, some completely disregard what I would call the world behind the text, uh, which is the historical, social, political context and just read through their own lens, uh, through the world in which we call the world in front of the text. But I particularly like to think that we have to have that balance. The world behind the text is important. The world of the text, which is what you are talking about, the Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic knowledge of that knowledge of grammar, knowledge, of syntax, how communication works within a particular, um, social cultural context because language is of course, you know, socially conditioned, so how, how they spoke at the time, that’s important. But I think what’s happened from generally, from a Western perspective, uh, the world in front of the text is not generally, considered except in some approaches, right? And so I think it’s good to balance the three of them, uh, to recognize, as we said, we who are in front of the text, uh, come with our assumptions. We come with our biases to the text, and then the text is there in front of us. The authors wrote something. They intended us to understand what they wrote, and then there’s the world behind the text, which is a historical world, which allows us to understand why they wrote what they wrote. So those three things must always be working together, that that would be my particular perspective.

Studio – John Dickson:

 We’ll be right back. 

BREAK 1

Media – ‘Correct the Map’

Studio – John Dickson:

That’s a clip from an interview on Channel Africa just a few months ago, with an advocate from the ‘Correct The Map Campaign’ arguing for the adoption of a new world map that more accurately reflects the true size of Africa. The general point is: Africa is BIG. Much bigger than many of us fathom. You could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico, and much of Europe into Africa! There’s a great West Wing episode when CJ meets a group of cartographers who are advocating for a new world map that’s actually really similar to the one we’re talking about here. Researcher Al thinks we have too many West Wing references, so he argued against playing that little bit. I’d love to hear from you, dear listeners, all the reasons he’s wrong. Anyway … it’s not just land mass that makes the African continent big. These days, approximately 1.5 billion people live there, making it the second most populous continent behind Asia. Since the turn of the millennium, Africa has also experienced rapid financial growth, with half of last year’s list of fastest-growing world economies being African. As we’ve documented before on Undeceptions (in episode 75, ‘Global Christianity’ with Gina Zurlo), the African church is also booming. According to a Statista report in 2020, 60 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa now calls itself Christian – an unbelievable shift from 2000, when that number was around 25 per cent. In fact, in that episode, Gina said that “the typical Christian today globally is a poor, young, uneducated woman in Sub-Saharan Africa”. A Pew Research Centre report notes how Africa is defying global religious trends.

It reads:

“Much of Christianity’s future growth is likely to be in the global South, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa – the only region where natural increases in the Christian population are expected to grow even larger in the coming decades.” 

The centre of gravity for the church today is in Africa. But what makes African Christianity different? And is it even right to speak of “African” Christianity, when it’s such a big place?

John Dickson:
So let’s talk about the African, uh, continent. Um, uh, we, we need to speak about Africas, don’t we? We can’t really speak about Yes, yes. The African perspective, but no. I mean, are there some aspects of, let’s, let’s just start with Kenya. Uh, are there distinctives of the Kenyan way of looking at life, uh, that, that make it different? When an African or a Kenyan comes and reads the Bible.

Elizabeth Mburu:
 I try to think. Um. About a Kenyan reading the Bible and for instance, a Nigerian reading the Bible. Um. Um, the differences there might be, uh, while we would both approach it with a, a very holistic worldview, um, recognizing that the spiritual dimension is just as real as the physical dimension. That’s a major part of, of, of the worldview of many Africans. Um, although I would have to say that with the millennials and the Gen Zs, I need to do a more research on that. But with the older generation would say that, but perhaps if I read it, I may not. Um, bring out too many elements of, you know, witchcraft or, um, uh, being cursed. Although it is there, uh, they would probably be deeper in another African setting. Uh, I think that’s a tough one for me to answer. I’m not, I, I, I don’t, I reading as a Kenyan.

Studio – John Dickson:

Kenya, where Elizabeth is from, has a huge Christian population – about 85 per cent out of a total of 55 million people. Catholics first arrived in the region in the 1400s, when the Portuguese, under the leadership of explorerexporerr Vasco Da Gama, docked in what is now Mombasa in 1498. The Protestant team arrived in the late 1800s, when the interior of Africa became accessible by rail and missionaries arrived. 

Elizabeth Mburu:
I, I recently did a chapter in a book, uh, that was looking at the, the global view, global readings, uh, of the New Testament. And I was re-reading Galatians, so I would say as a Kenyan rereading Galatians, uh, I would reread it through the lens of identity. I. Uh, not so much legalism, uh, but, but through the lens of I have a fragmented identity as a Kenyan. Not just because after colonialism we were never really able to get back to who we were in the past, but also because now there’s a certain, uh, desire by many people to get back to tradition, which is not really the tradition that we had. So there’s, Kenyans are confused, I would say, about who they are. The social media doesn’t make it any easier. Uh, so many voices telling us who we ought to be or who we are. And so when I reread Galatians through the lens of identity,  I, I would come to the conclusion that just as, uh, Paul was telling his, his readers that their identity markers should not be defined by circumcision or the law, you know, things to do with the mosaic law, I, I come back to myself and I say, my identity markers should not be defined by my African traditional religious past. Because that’s a big problem where, uh, the traditional past comes in and really messes up what, you know, Christianity ought to look like. So that might be an example that I could give. 

Studio – John Dickson:

The fusion of traditional African religion with Christianity is sometimes called “syncretism”. African cultures, generally speaking, have much greater day-to-day interaction with the spiritual realm. A good example of this is found in South Africa, where traditional healers, known as Sangomas, often use rituals to try to cure ailments. The Bible is clear: partaking in these kinds of rituals isn’t cool. But, as a recent Christianity Today report noted:

“Online sagomas draw in a mass audience of millennial Christians—a generation eager to ‘decolonise’ their lives and reconnect to indigenous African roots.”

This combination of indigenous ritual and Christian faith is an ongoing challenge for African church leaders. Here’s Elizabeth, elaborating further on this in her book African Hermeneutics:

Reading

Syncretism occurs when religious and cultural forms are combined with the biblical message without any regard for whether they align with biblical truth. The rapid growth of African Initiated Churches also reflects attempts to join African Traditional Religions with the teachings of the Bible. While African religious and traditional beliefs can and should be used in some measure to formulate an understanding of the Bible from an African context, they must not be allowed to displace biblical revelation.

Studio – John Dickson:

I wanted to raise an obvious question with Elizabeth. 

John Dickson:
How would you sense respond to someone? How would you respond to someone who’s listening to our conversation and thinks, mm-hmm. Um, oh, this is just trendy advocacy hermeneutics. It’s, you know, just, just elevating minorities. I’m sick of that left wing, progressive stuff.

Elizabeth Mburu:
Well, I have been called a heretic for promoting this kind of hermeneutics. So, um, what would I say to them? I would say to them, go back and read your Bible. Uh, this is how Jesus interpreted the Old Testament. It’s how Paul interpreted the Old Testament. If you look at Acts 17, uh, there is a way in which he allows his culture, in Athens at the time, uh, in Acts 17, the Areopagus speech, there’s a way in which he allows his culture to influence how he, he engages with those two sets of philosophers, the Epicureans and the Stoics. He uses their cultural resources in order to be able to build a bridge to communicate with them. And so I would say building bridges. Jesus did that. Paul did that. I would say it’s biblical. It’s not left wing or radical, it’s just reading it. Through my lens and allowing my lens to be read by the scripture. But that’s very important. I didn’t say that before. I cannot allow my, my lens to determine what the text says. I have to allow the text also to confront me, uh, and to correct and to reframe and to expand, um, my worldview, um, my ideology, you know, whatever it is that I’m bringing to the text. Yeah I don’t know if that could convince

John Dickson: Yeah. It, it may or may not, but I mean some, yeah, you know, some of a more conservative bent, I mean, I, I guess, I mean, politically conservative would think that our conversation is really just an example of anti-Western rhetoric, anti missionary rhetoric.

Elizabeth Mburu:
Oh, I get you. Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah. No,

John Dickson:
And, and they’ll feel offended, uh, by that.

Elizabeth Mburu:
Oh no. I think that, um. Anyone who would think that would maybe have not fully understood what we are trying to do. But let me put a caveat. There are some methodologies that come out from different contexts in the global South – Asia, Latin America, Africa – uh, that would have that anti-colonial, anti-white Christianity is a white man’s religion. You know, that’s a, the rhetoric out there. But I, I would say that the way I look at scripture is, is balanced, uh, because I don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I accept that I come from a historical tradition. I accept that there are ways in which the Bible has been read in the past that are useful, but I also accept that those ways were framed in a context with the assumptions of that context and that I can bring my own, um, particular way of reading that pays attention to my context and hold the two together in tension. So I would say a reading such as the one I would do would be complimentary, not anti, uh, but we do have to accept as, as much good as the missionaries did they also did a lot of damage. And I think that, that, that should be acknowledged because it’s a fact, it’s a reality. So I would hope that, um, a, a reading that comes from a context would be seen as reflecting the diversity of voices in the global church. Uh, rather than, than, than a challenge or something that should just be dismissed or discarded. I think it, it should be embraced. I think it’s a, it’s a wonderful thing when you hear somebody from India or from Brazil, from Ethiopia looking at the text and seeing all these different aspects of the text, and then we bring them all together. The text is much richer for the diversity that we bring.

John Dickson:
It’s as if you’re saying, um, look, Westerners are already reading the Bible with, with their western 21st century lenses on that they’re just there. Yes. So why don’t we, uh, just see what it feels like to put on African lenses and, and see if there are other things that we see with those lenses on.

Elizabeth Mburu:
Perfect. I couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s exactly it. Yes.

Studio – John Dickson:

In their book Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes, authors Brandon O’Brien and E. Randolph Richards use the parable of the lost son – also traditionally known as the prodigal son – as an example of how different “reading cultures” take different things from the same passage. That parable tells the story of a son who, after squandering his inheritance in a far away land, returns to his father, begging for forgiveness. The father runs to meet him, and a celebration breaks out. It’s a beautiful story, often used to point to God’s eagerness to forgive his people – but it’s also sometimes used as a warning against wastefulness (“prodigal” means “wasteful”). But O’Brien and Richards note that when New Testament scholar Mark Allen Powell had twelve seminary students read the passage, none of them picked up on a crucial aspect of the story: the famine that drove the son home in the first place. Later on, Powell had the opportunity to gather fifty students together in St Petersburg, Russia, and he asked them to share what stood out to them about the parable. Forty-two of the fifty students mentioned the famine. Seventy years before, St Petersburg had experienced severe famine under siege by German forces in the Second World War. O’Brien and Richards write:

“In cultures more familiar with famine, readers consider the boys’ spending less important than the famine. The application of the story has less to do with wilful rebellion and more to do with God’s faithfulness to deliver his people from hopeless situations.” 

Of course, this isn’t an African example – but it is an example of how a Western reader might miss something in a text that really is there. So what might an African reader find in the Bible that a Western reader might miss? 

John Dickson:
Okay. So with the African lenses on, um, let me ask you to be honest about Western Christianity. What are some aspects of Western Christianity that are cultural blind spots

Elizabeth Mburu:
I did live in the US for about 10 years, so I can only say, you know, what I observed. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, some of the things that I would have observed would’ve been, um. In Africa, we have, uh, a philosophy called Ubuntu, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. I am Because you are and because you are I am.  I exist because you exist … existence in relationship, and so we, we definitely have, uh, closer relational ties, uh, on the continent of Africa. What, what I found from, I’m speaking from my experience now, I’m not speaking about anything that’s in any textbook, is that, that, uh, communal identity didn’t seem to permeate the churches. There’s a lot of individualism, a lot of reading the Bible and saying, ‘Okay, this is for me as an individual’, as opposed to perhaps an African reading, uh, that would ask first, ‘What does this say to us as a community of faith? How are we responsible for each other within the community of faith? How are we accountable to each other? Within the community of faith’. So our, our African worldview of Ubuntu is kind of expanded and reframed in, in, in, in this now church, in this church context. Of course. I’m not saying that we are perfect. The philosophy of Ubuntu is, is eroding, um, you know, individualism, globalization, all these things have, have come in and people seem to be standing a little bit apart, but that communal identity is still there. Maybe another that I, I found a bit, uh, strange is, um, most Africans have this worldview of wholism. You know, I’ve mentioned it before. The spiritual and the physical dimensions are very real. And so if you come to an African church and somebody says, ‘Oh, last Sunday there was an exorcism in church’ we don’t like what? No. It’s, it’s a part of it, you know, that the, the, the move and the activity of the Holy Spirit is so real, um, in, in our churches. And I found maybe Western Church is a little dry, a little intellectual, you know, uh, too, um rationalistic, I would say, I guess it’s, it’s a product of the enlightenment, and so I’d say that again, uh, ends up, you know, like a, a church that’s limping on three legs because the spiritual dimension of life is in, is in the Bible. It’s biblical, it’s not for primitive people who don’t know science and so should toss that, you know, we should toss that aside. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with that worldview.

John Dickson:
Can I flip my question around though, and ask you what aspects of African, uh, life are critiqued by the Bible?

Elizabeth Mburu:
Oh, yeah. Whew. Uh, where do I start? There’s, there’s just, I mean, like every other culture and every other society, of course, we see that the Bible critiques many things. Let me go back to that example I started with, of the worldview of holism, um, of the, the, the spiritual dimension being very real. I think that the Bible can critique that because sometimes we tend to go overboard. And so, we have this, this, this thing called the worldview of power, of dynamism and, uh, within an African worldview, um, what an African would do is try to gain more power from the spiritual realm to overcome their negative circumstances. Okay, I’m getting, I’m getting there. I can see, you know, this might be a bit strange, but that was the word view. So what happens in the church? The Holy Spirit is there. So what we do with the Holy Spirit, we try to access the Holy Spirit, who is a channel of power to overcome our negative circumstances, the Holy Spirit becomes like a puppet. You know, that that is used mm-hmm. Against, you know, against whoever is coming against you, whoever has curse you, for instance, if you know, if that’s what you think. And so sometimes we tend to take the spiritual too far. Uh, we, we, we don’t, we don’t bring it back into alignment, uh, with the Bible. And even going back to that other example of, of the communal, which is so good. Then again, we ask ourselves, what about personal responsibility? Because you have a personal relationship with Christ, therefore you have personal accountability for the things you do. So sometimes that personal accountability, uh, may not be there. Uh, we may repent as a community if something happens in the community. We may come to God as a community, but sometimes I wonder, do the individual members of that community recognize that? The Bible calls, uh, the, the Bible has both an individualistic and a communal worldview, and so we need to hold, you know, both of them intention and know, uh, which, which, you know, which, which is working, when and where. Those are just like, uh, maybe a couple of things. 

FIVE-MINUTE JESUS

Let’s press pause. I’ve got a 5 min Jesus for you. One of the peculiarities of Christianity, from the beginning, was its relative lack of specific cultural badges people had to wear in order to be Christian. Christianity had its theological and moral convictions, of course, as well as its set text, the Bible. But it did not have a sacred language that adherents were encouraged to learn. It had no dietary laws or dress code. It was not wedded to particular times and places—pilgrimage to sacred sites had little significance in Christianity compared to other traditions. There were no particular careers Christians should avoid, apart from immoral ones. Nor were there categories of people—racial, credal, or even moral—with whom believers were not to associate or share a meal. This goes back to Christ himself, who had been known as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:33–34). This speaks of Jesus’ interest in getting alongside others – in a scandalously flexible way – in order to help them, communicate to them – in this case, to save sinners. The church after Jesus had no distinctive ethnic profile, either. One of the most remarkable statements in world history was from Paul in Galatians 3:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Christianity started amongst Semitic peoples (Galilean and Judean Jews), but within 20 years it was embraced by Indo-Europeans in Asia Minor, Greeks, and Italians. Within 200 years it had spread amongst Arabs, North Africans, Gauls (the French), the Spanish, and the Celts of Britain. One of my favourite historians is Robert Wilken. In his marvellous book The First Thousand Years (a set text for my Master’s students) he writes: 

Christianity brought into being a new kind of community, defined not by nation or people or language, but by its worship of the one God as known through Jesus Christ. Though it had similarities with Judaism, Christianity had no ties to a people or a land. By severing the bonds that fastened religion to people and place—a characteristic feature of religion in the ancient world—Christianity created a community whose practices, beliefs, and self-understanding set it apart. 

All of this is a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, it has made Christianity an easily transportable faith. It is just as much at home in Africa or China as it is in France or the US. This is no doubt partly why it became history’s first—and now largest—“world religion.” On the other hand, the relative lack of fixed social patterns in Christianity, combined with its missionary zeal, is one of its vulnerabilities. Christians are prone to adopting local norms and accommodating themselves to the local context – African or Western. The capacity and desire to fit in to a host culture makes them susceptible to the temptation to sacrifice some of their own ideals in an effort to win friends and influence people, as it were. The New Testament itself simultaneously celebrates Christianity’s social flexibility and warns Christians against the temptation to be shaped by local society. On the one hand, following the pattern of Jesus, Paul wrote:

“To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.” (1 Cor 9:20–22). 

But the mention of remaining “under Christ’s law”—a reference to Christ’s teaching—is the part of this equation that Christians sometimes overlook. Christianity’s cultural flexibility can, as I say, leave it vulnerable to modification. In seeking to accommodate itself to a local setting, it can compromise its own moral logic. But it doesn’t have to do that. I may have quoted this before on the show, but for me one of the most compelling texts in all of ancient Christianity comes from the middle of the second century – the 100s AD – it’s an anonymous defence of Christianity titled the Epistle to Diognetus. It captures perfectly the ideal of a Christianity that can simultaneously flex and fit in with any culture it finds itself in … AND remains true to its own core convictions without compromise. Let me read it from section 5:

For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom … They live in their own countries, but only as nonresidents; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign. They marry like everyone else, and have children, but they do not expose their offspring. They share their food but not their wives. They are in the flesh, but they do not live according to the flesh. They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws; indeed in their private lives they transcend the laws. They love everyone, and by everyone they are persecuted. They are unknown, yet they are condemned; they are put to death, yet they are brought to life. They are poor, yet they make many rich … In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; likewise Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. 

Well, that’s the ideal.

You can press play now.

Reading

Then Hannah prayed and said:
“My heart rejoices in the Lord;
    in the Lord my horn is lifted high.
My mouth boasts over my enemies,
    for I delight in your deliverance.
“There is no one holy like the Lord;
    there is no one besides you;
    there is no Rock like our God.
“Do not keep talking so proudly
    or let your mouth speak such arrogance,
for the Lord is a God who knows,
    and by him deeds are weighed.
“The bows of the warriors are broken,
    but those who stumbled are armed with strength.
Those who were full hire themselves out for food,
    but those who were hungry are hungry no more.
She who was barren has borne seven children,
    but she who has had many sons pines away.
“The Lord brings death and makes alive;
    he brings down to the grave and raises up.
The Lord sends poverty and wealth;
    he humbles and he exalts.
He raises the poor from the dust
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes
  and has them inherit a throne of honor.
“For the foundations of the earth are the Lord’s;
    on them he has set the world.
He will guard the feet of his faithful servants,
    but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness.
“It is not by strength that one prevails;
those who oppose the Lord will be broken.
The Most High will thunder from heaven;
    the Lord will judge the ends of the earth.
“He will give strength to his king
    and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

1 Samuel: Chapter 2 

Studio – John Dickson:

That moving piece of scripture comes after Hannah, a woman living in Ancient Israel, finds out she is pregnant after years of being unable to conceive. She gives birth to a son, Samuel, who goes on to play a key role in the unification of Israel under King David. To Western readers, Hannah’s prayer is a textbook example of giving thanks to God for His blessing. But this passage takes on a whole new dimension for women in cultures, including many African ones, where infertility can have serious social consequences. It’s a perfect example of scripture resonating differently when read through African eyes.

John Dickson:
Can I ask you a specific, uh, biblical question and you speak to it from an African, um, perspective. So, Hannah, the, the figure of Hannah in one Samuel. How, how does, how does she, you know, I guess speak to you as an African woman, or, or how do you think an African woman might read that text and, and feel a resonance with it?

Elizabeth Mburu:
Oh, I love that text. You know, I love Hannah’s song. It’s beautiful poetry. Um, that, that song resonates with a lot of African women, uh, who are barren. Um, number one, because of the honor, shame culture, uh, that’s, uh, represented in the story of Hannah in the biblical context in which that that story occurred. And also in the African context, we still have the honor, honor, shame, uh, dynamic, uh, coming in. And so when I think about Hannah’s song and an African woman, uh, an African woman who is barren. Uh, is often it’s, she’s often seen very negatively. It’s not usually, oh, she has a medical condition and so she’s unable to have children and, oh, poor her. But no. Who has cursed her? Uh, why is she barren? Uh, why is she, uh, bringing shame on her husband? And on his family and her family by being unable to bear children. Actually, I don’t know if you know this, but, um, sometimes barren women in the Kenyan context, uh, get divorced, uh, because they, they’re ashamed to the husband and they need to be gotten rid of. So that honor can be restored by the husband marrying somebody who will bear him children. So we, we, we, we definitely see that resonance with Hannah because we understand her pain. We know she, she probably felt socially ostracized as an African woman would, as a barren African woman would, uh, and, and, and we knew her pain. And we know her pain because obviously, um, dealing with the idea of barrenness, not just as an individual, but recognizing that it impacts the entire community is a heavy thing to carry. And so I would say that that, that for me would be that point of resonance. The way we understand barrenness in an honor – shame culture is virtually identical to what was happening in Hannah’s context,

John Dickson:
And then how does the story sort of speak encouragement or joy to that context?

Elizabeth Mburu:
Oh, it speaks encouragement and joy because we, we recognize God who is supreme, uh, can reverse circum circumstances if he so chooses to do so. Um, obviously there, there’s sometimes the notion that He must reverse the circumstances. So there needs to be that balance. If God chooses to reverse the circumstances, he will. If he doesn’t, it’s for a reason. He allows suffering for a purpose, uh, which is something that we are not yet, we haven’t yet come to terms with, you know, that whole world view of suffering. But Hannah’s song would be an encouragement, uh, to women in her situation that they do not need to think of themselves as someone who ought to be ostracized in the society. Uh, that song Okay, empowers them, gives them agency, I would say, because they would, they recognize that, of course, in Christ, because Hannah’s song points forward to Christ, that in Christ, um, he’s the one who redeems. He’s the one who delivers. And so it, it’s definitely an encouraging song. I don’t think that I’ve ever actually heard it preached, uh, in my own context, but I think it would preach very well if, if that were to be the case.

Studio – John Dickson:

If we can see Jesus through a specific lens, does that mean we can see Him in whatever way suits us? 

John Dickson:
I’ve got a final question for you, Elizabeth. Um, we, we have a lot of, um, people who listen to this show who aren’t sure if they believe in Christianity. They might be a little bit skeptical or they’re just investigating it. And I guess my question to you is, on their behalf, um, a skeptic might say all there is. In reading the Bible is culturally conditioned readings. There’s no real hard truth. You, you, you, you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. Um, that might be their response to our conversation. And I guess I want to give you the last word. Uh, for the, for the skeptical person.

Elizabeth Mburu:
I would, well, my goodness. I would say in some senses, in some ways they may be right because there are some people who just do contextual readings. But I would say that the Bible is more than that. It’s, it’s not just a literary document, it’s also a spiritual document, uh, which conveys theological truth. And as an African, I see it as a functional document, a, a document that has the power to inform my life, uh, and my belief system. And so I would say. Let’s do the homework. Let’s, let’s look at the text. Let’s put it in its historical cultural context. Uh, let’s weigh the evidence, um, particularly the stories of Jesus. Let’s, let’s weigh the evidence, uh, and see what they ha Jesus has to say about himself and what. You know, the gospel writers had to say about him and let’s, let’s go back and read it, uh, as a book. That’s not a history book, that’s not a science book. Uh, but it’s, it’s a book about, um, the son of God, particularly when you come into the New Testament. Um, I think that a reading that is faithful to the way language works, uh, would, and then that, that, that shows how. Those words on the page are backed up, uh, by evidence from the historical context. I think that that is a good starting point, [00:31:00] uh, to begin to, to weigh and see is this true or are they just stories that I can just interpret in the way that I want to interpret them. I think that with hermeneutics there are rules, uh, rules in which we interpret that can bring us to an accurate understanding of what the biblical writers wanted to convey.

Undeceptions theme plays

CREDITS

Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dickson, produced by Kaley Payne and directed by Mark Hadley. 

Alasdair Belling is a writer-researcher.

Siobhan McGuiness is our online librarian. 

Lyndie Leviston remains my wonderful assistant. 

 Santino Dimarco is Chief Finance and Operations Consultant. 

Editing by Richard Hamwi.

Our voice actors today were Yannick Lawry and Suzanne Ellis.

Special thanks to our series sponsor Zondervan for making this Undeception possible. 

Undeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com – letting the truth out.