Honoring the Shamed

Welcome! Today we continue our series on Honor and Shame. Last week’s message was entitled Shaming the Honored, and we looked at, among other things, the honor-shame cultural practice, especially common in the Middle East, of challenge and riposte, in which people of relatively similar honor status challenge one another in a game of words and rhetoric to jockey for “position” and status. Honor was often seen as a limited quantity, so that increasing one’s personal honor was seen to necessitate the reducing publicly the honor status of a rival. The Pharisees, scribes, and teachers of the law repeatedly entered this “honor shame game” with Jesus, seeking to discredit Him, but invariably He would emerge from the confrontations as even wiser, more good, and more honorable in the eyes of the crowds that watched. This of course meant that the honor status of the leaders continually became lower and lower. Because the “game” could only be played among those of similar honor status, eventually the leaders sought to kill Jesus, because He was beginning to threaten their very way of life, and they knew they could not beat Him any other way.

Shaming the Honored

Welcome! Today is our fifth of seven messages on shame and honor, both as they exist in many cultures around the world and in the cultures of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. The previous messages in this series have discussed such topics as the concept of face, community, family and kinship, and patronage.

Before we really get into today’s topic, I want to address a question I frequently see when others talk about the shame-honor perspective of the Bible. The question is, “Who is right – the innocence-guilt people or the shame-honor people?” The answer is that both are in the Bible, so both are right. I would argue, however, that the shame-honor perspective is much more prevalent in the Bible than the innocence-guilt perspective. For example, let’s take the Book of Romans – after all, if any book is going to go solidly innocence-guilt it is this one, right? Well, let’s look at Romans 1:23, 2:23, and 3:23, along with surrounding verses.

Patronage, Gifts, and Grace

Welcome! Today as we continue our series on Shame and Honor, we are going to explore the concept of patronage and look at how Christ is the ultimate example of a good patron in all of history. We will then honor Him as our patron through remembering Him through the bread and the cup. My hope is that this somewhat different view of the role of Christ will make for a memorable and meaningful time of communion. Because we will also have a sharing time, our time is short, so I will forgo any kind of review except to remind you that past messages from this series can be found on our website.

Community and Kinship

Welcome! Today we continue our series on Shame and Honor, a series in which we hopefully are becoming better acquainted with honor-shame cultures and use this understanding to better grasp the heart of God towards people. A secondary goal is to become better able to relate to people in honor-shame cultures and present the gospel to them in a way that resonates with them. I encourage you, if you have missed either or both previous messages in the series, to look them up at our website.

Heart and Face

Welcome! Last week we began our new series on Shame and Honor. We discussed the idea that one can characterize cultures by the degree to which they exhibit guilt-innocence characteristics, fear-power characteristics, and shame-honor characteristics. We learned that our culture leans strongly towards guilt and innocence, whereas many cultures around the world, especially in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, lean towards shame and honor. We learned that the cultures in which the Bible was written, both in Old Testament and in New Testament times, were themselves primarily shame-honor cultures, and thus it is of value for us to better understand this kind of culture so that we better understand not only the Bible, but the very heart of God. I also explained that becoming better acquainted with this kind of culture can equip us to be better able to share the good news of the gospel with people who live in this culture – including many people here in America. Last week we also developed the ideas of shame and honor as two ends of a spectrum; to be high in honor is to be low in shame, and vice versa. We talked about the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis as the beginning of our story of shame; when we disobey God, we bring shame to ourselves, but not only to ourselves, but also to God who made us.

Clash of Cultures

Welcome! Today I am excited to begin a new series devoted to the far-reaching topics of shame and honor. Today’s message, “Clash of Cultures,” is an introduction, meant to begin to get us into a shame-honor type of thinking.

Mourning and then...

2 Samuel 1:16-2:4

For David had said to him, "Your blood be on your own head. Your own mouth testified against you when you said, ‘I killed the Lord’s anointed."—2 Samuel 1:16

David was talking with an Amalekite who claimed he had killed Saul.  Apparently, the Amalekite knew that Saul was God’s anointed leader.  Instead of David celebrating the death of Saul, he had the Amalekite killed.  Then David mourned:

Reaping What One Has Sown

I Samuel 31:1 - II Samuel 1:15

We return in our story from David to Saul.  Today we will read the final chapter in Saul’s reign.  In preparing, I came across a couple of graphs which explain the arc of Saul’s life.  Let’s look at them in turn.

Leading Wisely

I Samuel 30

Welcome! Today we continue our account of the story of David’s progression from shepherd to king. In this series we have seen that David has had both fine moments and not-so-wonderful moments. Certainly his faith in God demonstrated in his confrontation with Goliath was a high point. Although he has had other good days, days when he seeks God first and lives according to His precepts, over the past few weeks we have seen David seemingly forget about His need for God and instead operate by His own principles. By and large, this hasn’t gone so well.

Making Friends of Enemies

I Samuel 29:1-11 

Good morning!  We’re coming to the end of our series about David.  Including today, there are four more messages to go.  Where are we now and where will we be going today?

Two weeks ago, we studied through I Samuel 27.  That chapter opened with this unfortunate analysis …

But David thought to himself, “One of these days I will be destroyed by the hand of Saul. The best thing I can do is to escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will give up searching for me anywhere in Israel, and I will slip out of his hand.” –I Samuel 27:1