Personal Saviour or Tribal decision?

In the 'west' and particularly in the USA among all churchmanships there seems to be a common language talking about Jesus as our 'personal Saviour'. Friends from Europe in Africa were talking to someone from a tribe that knew nothing of Jesus. He went away talked with his family and tribe and the whole tribe came back and said 'We've decided to follow Jesus'. 'Wait a minute… it doesn't work like that… you need to individually follow Jesus.'

Personal Saviour and Lord Jesus? Unbiblical?

One of the authors on the Patheos website argues that the concept of a personal Saviour and Lord is unbiblical.

Personal Jesus. Is he? Is Jesus your personal savior and Lord? Do you think that the Bible teaches we should think of Jesus in that way, and proclaim him to be that over our lives? Such is the claim belonging to an overwhelming majority of American Christian Bible readers professing to understand what the authors of Scripture wrote and meant to convey. But what if I told you that such a claim is ridiculous because 21st century U.S. Bible readers are culturally alien to the early followers of Jesus and their audiences?

The author is not from a fundamentalist Evangelical background…but does vociferously attack what many might perceive as such:

And what happens whenever we Americans open up our Bibles or hear the Liturgy of the Word?—I’m looking at you, fellow U.S. Catholics! Just as with our Netflix and Disney+ viewing, so too do we bring to these readings all our cultural expectations. Whether it be Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Paul, or Mary Magdalene, it’s just as with Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and Daenerys Targaryen—these figures must always be understood individualistically and psychologically. Outlandish? Yes. Common? Just as much. Disrespectful? Definitely!

The author argues two things: Firstly that the very personal Saviour attitude is at variance with the cultural context, both then and now of what he calls Mediterranean collectivist culture. Secondly, he argues from the Scriptures that this is what the Bible teaches.

Mediterranean Culture

I have lived for the last 23 years on a Mediterranean island and have travelled and worked extensively in the Middle East and North Africa. I was born in western Europe, in the UK, and have also lived in the USA. I stand in the gap between all these cultures. And I must admit, to a large extent, what he says resonates with my experience and with my reading of Scripture.

But at the same time the article made me uncomfortable. In part this was because the article seemed to be confrontational in its style, but also due to something that he missed about the Mediterranean culture, that most things are not black or white, but shades of grey. It is not either personal or collectivist but both personal and collectivist.

Bible readers today should recognize that ancient Mediterranean believers had zero comprehension of individualism. Therefore, neither Jesus nor any character or author of Scripture should ever be imagined as individualistic or personal the ways we are. 

No ancient disciple or Christian would understand Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. Neither first century nor fourth century Mediterraneans would see that because they simply could not do so. While typically Americans do experience a personal, individualistiic, self-concerned focus in human life, first century Mediterraneans were unaware of anything like that. Moreover, if anyone behaved like Americans do in the villages Jesus preached and healed in, they would be labeled extreme social deviants and dangerous. Such dysfunctional people would be an existential threat to group survival.

It is most certainly true that ancient and modern Mediterranean people see the community as central, and in the case of Cyprus the Greek Orthodox Church as central, within the context of family and extended family. This is similarly true within Islam in the Middle East and North Africa: Islam emphasises community and indeed the worship is extremely collectivist, with everyone doing the same and saying the same at the same time. Mediterraneans and Middle Easterners do indeed emphasis the community over the individual.

But that doesn't mean we have zero comprehension of individualism, more that it is balanced within the context of community.

The Parable of the Wedding Banquet

One parable that always confused me growing up was the parable of the Wedding Banquet. It is found in two places in Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14 and Luke 14:15-24. Almost inevitably people in western Europe and the USA speak from the Luke version of the story not the Matthew one or stop at verse 10 in the Matthew version.

The story is of a king throwing a wedding banquet for his son. When it was the time for the banquet, and remember this was before individual watches or clocks, the king sent his servants out to tell the guests the time was right and they should come. But they didn't. So the king said that since the feast was ready and those invited declined to come so his servants should go out into the streets and find people… good and bad it didn't matter… and bring them into the feast.

And that's where people stop. We the good and bad who are not part of the 'chosen people' are invited, individually and personally to the feast which is heaven.

But the story doesn't stop there. The king comes down to greet his guests and finds one of the guests not wearing wedding clothes. The king is annoyed, to put it mildly, and to tie him up and throw him outside into the darkness! And it ends on another phrase people use 'for many are invited but few are chosen' suggesting that this is again about individualism.

Well… I was sitting in a café on the bank of the river Nile in Egypt and mentioned this to a friend of mine from Egypt. He explained that what we didn't know as westerners was that at that time it was customary for wedding guests to be provided with wedding clothes as a gift by the person throwing the feast. So the person not in wedding clothes was not being unfairly put upon, as I had thought, since he'd been grabbed off the street, but had decided to reject the free gift of the king!

This story exactly demonstrates the mix of community and individualism understood in the Mediterranean and Middle East. From the community the VIPs are invited as individuals. They reject it so the wider community is invited as a community, not individuals, but within that context everyone is expected to accept the free gift as part of that community. If, as an individual, they reject it then they too are rejected as an individual.

Abnormality?

The author of the article suggests something different:

Let’s contrast how differently Americans and ancient Mediterraneans explain some adult whom they judge as being abnormal. Immediately the U.S. person uses psychology—we explore his or her childhood experiences to link these to the kind of personality he or she exhibits. We scour the personal past of the abnormal person, looking for some watershed event that psychologically shaped the adult we study… 

And how does this compare to ordinary Mediterranean persons, whether past or present? These people, in contrast, are not at all psychologically minded and, indeed, are anti-introspective! Ancient Mediterranean elites believed that a human being’s basic personality derived mostly from ethnic characteristics taken from the native air, water, and soil of the ethnic group’s home land…

For that to be true in this story told by Jesus, as a Mediterranean Middle Easterner, then something about the person thrown out should demonstrate he or she was not a native of that region. But specifically Jesus does not either point to something psychological or to something foreign but just lets it stand as someone from the community not accepting the gift the rest of the community had accepted. When something is offered to the community it is expected that the community, or family, as a whole accept or reject that offer.

The author confirms his belief that it is geographic rather than psychological with a reference to the book of Titus:

Note how the inspired author of Titus writes—“Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12). There is nothing psychological there! 

So whereas U.S. biographies are descriptions of psychological development, ancient Mediterranean biographies describe someone who fulfilled stereotypical roles. 

This would, however, seem at variance to Jesus telling the story of the Samaritan man who didn't fulfil the stereotypical role when caring for the person attacked by robbers on the road. (Luke 10:25-37)

Our Relationships

Although the author points to some things I disagree with his interpretation of, there are some which I think he hits right on the nail from my experience. 

(St) Paul considers abnormality not a problem within a person but rather something amiss outside a person. In other words, the ancient abnormal person is deemed abnormal because the web of relations into which he is embedded is abnormal!

The web of relations within the Mediterranean and Middle East is critical. I remember another occasion sitting with a friend in Cairo at 3AM and something came up that only his brother would know the answer to. It was quite normal to phone his brother at that time in the morning when he was in bed and wake him up to ask him that question. Try doing that in the west and it's a quick way to lose friends! (Or even lose a relationship with a brother!)

Function has taken over from relationships in the west.

Scripture - reading and understanding

One of the key issues is our reading and understanding of Scripture. Years ago I was giving the talk in a service on Bible Sunday. One of the key points I was trying to communicate is that we need to get to know the author and the subject of the books more than just the text of the books. The example I gave was if someone wrote a biography about my wife, the type of character painted by the author of the book would be affected by the author. Because I know my wife the book could tell as much about the author as it did about my wife! So it is with the Bible. With a relationship to God we do learn a lot through the Bible but we also learn about the authors' relationships with God through the Bible.

Now here's the point… in a modernist world we like to do all sorts of analysis on the text. Yes, that's helpful but there are two more poignant questions: What was the thought the author was trying to communicate? What was the thought God was trying to communicate through the author? In other words we need to think thought for thought as much as word for word.

Does that mean the words are irrelevant? Not at all! Words help us understand the thoughts of the author, though sometimes they obfuscate too. Understanding etymology, context and culture are frequently more useful than a dictionary.

Added to which, and this is where I disagree with the original author, simple answers to complex issues are usually the wrong ones. So when he says

Bible readers today should recognize that ancient Mediterranean believers had zero comprehension of individualism.

Complex not simple

He has simplified a complex issue and in the process creates an equally inaccurate answer. Having lived in the UK, USA and Cyprus the cultures are radically different, but when asked to quantify what those differences are it is difficult to do so. It is absolutely true that we have a greater emphasis on community and the web of relationships we have, but does that mean we don't experience any individualism? Not at all. It is indeed complex and not simple.

There are boundaries to the individualism and boundaries to collectivism within the Mediterranean communities as there are too in the Anglo and northern European world.

When I was thinking about this I was thinking about the rise of populism within different cultures. In some ways populism is the ultimate collectivist expression. Except it is not. It can be, but recent populist movements are expressions of manipulation of people longing for a collectivist culture but without the true community to experience it. True collectivist cultures are open and welcoming, as can be experienced by the immense emphasis on hospitality among them. Populism breeds pseudo collectivist cultures which are the inverse of that; putting up boundaries and excluding rather than inviting.

'Undifferentiated Ethnic Ego Mass'

The author asserts that:

Mediterraneans like the anonymous Psalmist define themselves exclusively in terms of their ingroups (i.e. those groups, in which they are embedded). Because of this, it is group embeddedness on which their total self-awareness depends. Thus Biblical people like the Psalmist (and Jesus and Paul!) are so immersed in their ingroups that they share an “undifferentiated ethnic ego mass.” 

Hmmm… yes… sort of… I would prefer he had said:

Mediterraneans like the anonymous Psalmist define themselves primarily in terms of their ingroups (i.e. those groups, in which they are embedded). Because of this, it is group embeddedness on which their dominant self-awareness depends. Thus Biblical people like the Psalmist (and Jesus and Paul!) are so immersed in their ingroups that they share an “undifferentiated ethnic ego mass.”

It's not exclusive but is dominant, so he is primarily correct but not completely. As I say, it's complex, not simple!

One of the things that he totally misses is that both in ancient times and today there is a huge amount of movement of people around the Mediterranean region. I live in Larnaca and I have friends living here in Larnaca from Cyprus, Greece, Armenia, Germany, France, UK, USA, Estonia, Syria and yesterday I met a Latvian. Yes, there are closed Cypriot family communities that I am not part of, but the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culture is very welcoming and so long as you wish to fit in with the collectivist community embracing too.

Just read the Acts of the Apostles chapter 2 and you see that in the ancient world it was much the same!

'how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.'

Collectivism and Communism

Now I can almost feel steam coming out of the ears of some of my American and northern European friends with the use of the word collectivist, which they hear as close to communist, which is considered anti-Christian by them since culturally they have embraced capitalism.

I'm going to say it again… it's complex, not simple!

When we read in chapter 4 of the Acts of the Apostles:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. 

That sounds an awful like theoretical communism! When I say theoretical communism that is to separate it from the Marxism/Leninism today labeled as communism.

People write off the Amish as an out of date fringe group in their expression of collectivism. But I have Mennonite friends in downtown Chicago who practice exactly what we read about in Acts chapter 4.

Almost nowhere in the Mediterranean and Middle East will one find a truly collectivist community. But at the same time it's frequently a lot more fluid with people helping people and not allowing the abject poverty one can see in some American cities. Though sadly that is changing.

In summary…

So in summary, it is true that not only were the early believers and today's Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures very different to northern European and North American culture, but to see this a binary is to miss the reality of it. That we, as followers of the Messiah, should embrace a more Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culture, wherever we live, is certainly something I believe God is calling us to. And that closed culture populism is the antitheses of this.