Have You No Shame (2)

The vocabulary for honor and shame is difficult for Westerners to keep straight, not least because though we still use the terms honor and shame, we use them differently.
 
First, shame is not negative in honor/shame cultures; shaming is. Technically, in these cultures, shame is a good thing: it indicates that you and your community know the proper way to behave. You have a sense of shame; if you didn’t, you would have no shame. You would be shameless. This is different from being shamed. When an older American asks, “Have you no shame?” they mean, “Don’t you know the proper thing to do?” When one is censured for not having a sense of shame, for being shameless, then one is shamed.
 
We know that all this can be confusing. But remember that languages tend not to have words for ideas that are not considered important. Since honor/shame isn’t important in English, we are lacking in the words we need. Make no mistake, though: shame is important. It was why the Jewish officials killed Jesus. They didn’t kill him for going around preaching “love one another” or for healing the sick or for performing miracles. They killed him because he had taken their honor—a limited resource.
 
Actually, the Spirit uses both inner conviction (a sense of guilt) and external conviction (a sense of shame). While the ancient world and most of the non-Western world contain honor/shame cultures and the West is made up of innocence/guilt cultures, God can work effectively in both.

- E. Richards & Brandon J O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: 

Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible, 2012.

Have You No Shame (1)

In an innocence/guilt culture (which includes most Western societies), the laws of society, the rules of the church, local mores and the code of the home are all internalized in the person. The goal is that when a person breaks one of these, her or his conscience will be pricked. In fact, it is hoped that the conscience will discourage the person from breaking the rule in the first place. The battle is fought on the inside.
 
In an honor/shame society, such as that of the Bible and much of the non-Western world today, the driving force is to not bring shame upon yourself, your family, your church, your village, your tribe or even your faith. The determining force is the expectations of your significant others (primarily your family). Their expectations don’t override morals or right/wrong; they actually are the ethical standards. In these cultures, you are shamed when you disappoint those whose expectations matter. “You did wrong”—not by breaking a law and having inner guilt but by failing to meet the expectations of your community. For our discussion here, the point to notice is that the verdict comes not from the inner conscience of the perpetrator but from the external response of his or her group. One’s actions are good or bad depending upon how the community interprets them.
 
As is clear from all this, non-Western and Western cultures have a difficult time understanding each other. Western readers of this book likely think the non-Western view of honor is strange and convoluted. Our non-Western friends find us equally confusing. Westerners like to think of ourselves as holding to the moral high ground that is found within ourselves; non-Westerners often view us as insensitive.

- E. Richards & Brandon J O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: 

Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible, 2012.

  

The Corresponding Word for Makarios (2)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (niv). The niv represents the traditional translation of this beatitude. “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs” (nlt). The goal of the New Living Translation is to render the original languages in good, contemporary English. The translators appear to recognize that English readers want a clear subject and a verb in the active voice, so they supply a subject (God) and make the passive Greek verb active.
 
“The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs” (Holman Christian Standard Bible). In contrast to the nlt, this translation preserves the passive voice of the original Greek. This is a less satisfying English sentence but more faithful to the original Greek.
 
“Blessed (happy, to be envied, and spiritually prosperous—with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions) are the poor in spirit (the humble, who rate themselves insignificant), for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!” (Amplified Bible). It would probably be difficult to read long passages from the Amplified Bible. But the value of this translation is that it demonstrates how it sometimes takes many words in one language to approximate or capture the essence of a single word in another language.
“Happy are people who are hopeless, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs” (ceb). The Common English Bible abandons the traditional verb blessed altogether. This gives the verse a different feel.
 
When you read a passage in different translations, take a few moments to consider the implications of the different renderings. Does the meaning or application of the verse change depending on the translation? Sometimes. This exercise can help you become sensitive to what goes without being said behind the words we use.
 

- E. Richards & Brandon J O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: 

Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible, 2012.

 

The Corresponding Word for Makarios (1)

Sociologists suggest that people have a difficult time describing or even identifying something that they don’t have the vocabulary for. Some even suggest that one can have a hard time experiencing something for which one has no corresponding word.
 
The Greeks had a word for the feeling one has when one is happy: makarios. It is a feeling of contentment, when one knows one’s place in the world and is satisfied with that place. If your life has been fortunate, you should feel makarios. We use idioms in English to try to approximate this experience. We’ll say, “My life has really come together,” or “I’m in a happy place,” or “Life has been good to me.” We are not really discussing the details of our life; we are trying to describe a feeling we have. Happy sounds trite, so we avoid it. Actually, we are makarios.
 
In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that if you are a peacemaker, then you are makarios. Since English doesn’t have a word for this feeling, translators have struggled to find one. What do you call it when you feel happy, content, balanced, harmonious and fortunate? Well, translators have concluded, you are blessed. Thus our English translations say, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt 5:9). Unfortunately, this introduces another problem. The English language prefers clear subjects for its verbs. So the missing puzzle piece in the Beatitudes is, How is one blessed? What goes without saying in our culture is that God blesses people. Consequently, we often interpret this verse to mean, “If you are a peacemaker, then God will bless you.” But this isn’t what Jesus meant. Jesus meant, “If you are a peacemaker, then you are in your happy place.” It just doesn’t work well in English. Alas, here is the bigger problem: maybe the reason we North Americans struggle to find makarios in our personal lives is because we don’t have a word in our native language to denote it.
 
But English cries out for a subject. Because English “needs” a subject, we tend to provide one. This is why, as we pointed out above, “Blessed are the peacemakers” turns in our minds to “God blesses the peacemakers.” We don’t make this adjustment on purpose. But it goes to show how thoroughly our English language (even grammar, which we might not be able to explain) affects the way we think.
 

- E. Richards & Brandon J O'Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: 

Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible, 2012.