"Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes" is an excellent "heads up" for everyone who reads the Bible. As the authors say in the introduction: "We want to unsettle you just enough that you remember biblical interpretation is a crosscultural experience and to help you be more aware of what you take for granted when you read."

Some main points:
- Where we stand culturally (our geography, time, political environment, etc.), influences both how we read and how we apply the Bible - and much of what influences us is assumed/instinctive.
- Reading the Bible is a cross-cultural experience for everyone of us, no matter where or when we live - yet we seldom take notice
- All of us NEED to take notice
- We need to do our best to understand "what the passage meant to the original hearers," before we ask "how that applies to us." Interpretation comes first, then application. "What it meant to original hearers" comes before "What it means to me."

The book is structured on the metaphor that our particular culture is like an iceberg, with 3 categories: Issues Above the Surface, Issues Just Below the Surface, and Issues Deep Below the Surface. It works well.

A typical book on biblical interpretation deals with culture, and the need for interpretation before application, but this book gets much more specific with particular cultural matters, which is one of its greatest strengths - they don't leave it with stated principles, but give many concrete examples. Richards' experience as a missionary in Indonesia is used with great effect for many of these. And both authors' roots being in the U.S. south provide many other good examples.

As they say in the introduction: "our primary goal is to help us learn to read ourselves." That is, to become aware of our cultural filters as we read the Bible.

Why bother with this subject - on which a great deal has been written? My first thought is because "not many Christians - pastors, or everyday people - in America seem to be getting it!" So much of American Christianity is not biblical Christianity but "Americanity" - sort of an "American Dream" merged with Eisenhower's post-WW2 America. Other cultures have their own problematic cultural influences - I have found Korean Christianity to be "Confucianity" - because Korean culture has been so strongly influenced by Confucianism. This is, in fact, one of the authors' reasons: "If our cultural blind spots keep us from reading the Bible correctly, then they can also keep us from applying the Bible correctly....All questions of interpretation are, in the end, questions about application."

But the authors have another excellent reason, which has to do with the (diminishing) persuasive influence of Americanity in the changing world: "we can no longer pretend that a Western interpretation of the Bible is normative for all Christians everywhere....We need to be aware of the way our cultural assumptions affect how we read the Bible so we are prepared to hear what our non-Western brothers and sister have to teach us about Christian faith and practice."

As someone who has personally experienced "foreign Christianity" it is at first starling - and threatening - and then humbling and finally horizon-expanding - to deal directly with interpretations and applications that are very different from what we do in America without even thinking (because it "goes without being said," to use the phrase often used by the authors.

"We speak as white, Western males....There's really nothing we can do about that except be aware of and honest about it." ("This is the group that has dominated the conversation about theology and biblical interpretation for the last few centuries.")... That said, we write as white, Western males who have been chastened to read the Bible through the eyes of our non-Western sisters and brothers in the Lord.... The challenges of reading with others' eyes should not deter us. We can learn so much from each other."

The book has good, extensive footnoting - with lots of good information. Unfortunately, eReading is not well suited to looking up footnotes and back-referencing what you've read earlier, so if you're one who does that, you'll be better served by a hardcopy version.

An excellent book for anyone of any culture!

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Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible