Cultural Bias
April 21, 2006I came across the following post (only partially quoted here) a few months ago.
For some reason, Proverbs 31 has been on my mind a lot this January. I think it’s a really important passage for women to study, and I know a lot f women probably feel that it’s overquoted, but I think it’s definitely overquoted for a reason.
These are just a few of my notes on the verses.“The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life. She looks for wool and flax and works with her hands in delight.” -Proverbs 31:11-13
I love this part of the chapter, because I want to be a trustworthy wife. I want my husband to have faith in me, to know that he can trust me to take care of the finances, a family business, or whatever he normally takes care of.
“She is like merchant ships; she brings her food from afar. She rises also while it is still night and gives food to her household and portions to her maidens. She considers a field and buys it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard.” -Proverbs 31:14-16
I love these verses because it is proof that a woman can work and still be a biblical wife. While the woman in these verses may not have a specific job outside the home, it is clear that she is involved in lots of work that is not “housework.” I love this: “She considers a field and buys it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard.” The verse doesn’t say that she asked her husband, and he bought the field for her. The verse says that she looked at a field, bought it herself, and then wisely used the earnings from it to plant a vineyard! What a wise woman! I think this goes back to earlier in the chapter, when it talks about a husband’s heart trusting in his wife. It is clear that this woman’s husband trusts her completely, even with his finances! She makes financial decisions for the family and the house, all to the benefit of her husband and home. What a wonderful woman! What a wonderful wife!
Now, I don’t mean to be picking on the author. She made some really good observations, as well, and what I am about to point out here is just a good example of something I’ve seen many others do, as well. But they are great examples of this, and it needs to be pointed out.
So what exactly is it that needs to be pointed out? The author of this post fell into the trap of interpreting the Bible in light of her own cultural bias. One of the first rules of proper exegesis (that is, correct Bible interpretation) is that the text cannot mean what it never meant. In other words, although we may find new applications of the same principles, the basic meaning of the text does not change with time or culture. What it meant when it was written is what it means now.
Another example is the pastor that we heard preaching about the church with “multiple pastoral staff” (as in, senior pastor, youth pastor, pastor of evangelism, etc.) at Antioch. His Scriptural “support” for this? Acts 13:1: “Now in the church at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabus, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.” Any real effort to understand this passage reveals that not only is this pastor’s interpretation bogus, the passage demonstrates a church culture that is radically different from our current church culture. Rather than remaking the Bible in the image of our culture, we should be remaking our culture in the image the Bible presents.
Going back to our original example, how did our well-meaning young lady interpret Proverbs 31 in light of her cultural bias? There are two key ways.
The first is in her response to the beginning of the passage: “I want my husband to … know that he can trust me to take care of … whatever he normally takes care of.” Already, I fear that our young lady has missed the entire point of the passage. 
A wife’s responsibility is not to take care of the things her husband normally takes care of, but to take care of the things which are hers to take care of. In our modern society, we expect women to be clones of men. We think we haven’t “proven ourselves” enough unless we are handling the provision-related aspects of the home, but this is a lie of the devil. The Bible tells us that we are to take care of the nurture-related aspects of the home. A family does not need two providers; it does not need two men. A family needs a man and a woman – a provider and a nurturer. A husband whose wife is busy trying to fill his shoes will be lacking in all of the things she was designed to do.
The second thing our young lady has done is to project our modern society onto the Proverbs 31 woman’s work. It is true that the Proverbs 31 woman was industrious, and even that she made some extra money for the home. It drives me crazy, however, to hear people use her as justification for women’s abandoning our God-given role for the workplace. Any familiarity with the traditional role of women easily puts these comments in their proper context. Remember the prairie women (which I’m sure you’ve seen in the movies) with their egg money? That’s the idea here. From the very beginning, godly women have been bringing in a little extra money from largely home-based pursuits – usually pursuits based in homemaking skills. These home-based entrepreneurial ventures are a far cry from holding an outside job, under the authority of another man (or woman). What did the Proverbs 31 woman do? She sewed. She apparently didn’t even carry her wares to market, as the verses tells us that she sold them to the merchants. She also bought a field. Perhaps this was real estate (which, again, would not have required her to be away from home regularly), or perhaps she simply bought it to plant her garden (vineyard) to supplement the food she was purchasing. Any way around it, these verses, read in the appropriate cultural context, do not provide support for the currently typical outside-the-home job.
Let us be careful to hear what the Bible says, and not just what we want it to say.
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