Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes: Honor, Part 1

We’re considering Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible, by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien — an excellent book.

The next chapter deals with honor cultures — which is, to me, perhaps the most revealing chapter in the book.

I’m going to introduce the subject from a different angle from the authors of the book — in hopes making a very foreign concept more familiar.

Honor

“Honor” is a concept that the West rarely speaks of. The military talks about honor quite a lot. Some schools have honor codes. Southerners used to speak of honor, I think, but it’s not a common word today — or even when I was little. Nowadays, it’s taken on a somewhat old, musty feel.

That’s because Western culture is a “guilt culture” rather than the East’s “honor culture.” To get a very rough sense of an honor culture, think of the Klingons in Star Trek (really) or the Japanese. The Japanese famously are horrified at the thought of “losing face.” It’s so important there that many have committed suicide rather than live a dishonored life. And to Americans, this is incomprehensible.

You see, in an honor culture, the important thing is how you’re perceived by others. Honor is everything. In a guilt culture, the important thing is who you are. That is, guilt is about your individual conscience; honor is about the group’s perception.

It’s therefore no surprise that individualistic cultures tend to also be guilt cultures and that collectivist cultures tend to be honor cultures.

Honor in the contemporary Middle East

In the Middle East, we see this playing out quite plainly in the Israel/Palestine confrontation. In a typical negotiation, the Western American president approaches the Palestinian leadership and offers his people money, factories, jobs, training, easy travel, and even a new democratic government, figuring that what they really and truly want is freedom and wealth. The Palestinians look at the president with scorn, because what they really want is their honor restored. And that requires all the trappings of sovereignty — a nation, a military, a seat at the U.N., and for some, vengeance.

Vengeance

You see, honor drives people to kill innocents by the thousands on the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna, where the Western armies turned the tide against Muslim forces bent on conquering Europe, eventually driving them almost entirely out of Eastern Europe — on September 11, 1683.

The West is so uninterested that the Wikipedia article on the battle doesn’t even mention the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers. The Middle Eastern attackers were trying to send a message — that the defeat of Islam on an earlier September 11 was about to be reversed — and yet the West was largely unaware of the significance of the date, even though, according to one author —

Educated, fundamentalist Muslims feel the sting of the defeat hundreds of years later. In their view, they are the recipients of Allah’s final revelation and it is humiliating to them that their “perfect” Islamic culture has declined relative to Western culture. They seek to reverse the trend and September 11 was carefully chosen to try and reverse the course of history and create a new September 11 that the Islamic world could celebrate.

You see, many honor cultures focus heavily on revenge as a means of gaining/retaining honor.

Vengeance in the Bible

We see ample evidence in the Bible that the biblical world was an honor culture with a heavy focus on vengeance. After all, how often do we read a command against taking vengeance?

Deu 32:35 Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.

Rom 12:17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

Heb 10:30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”

Pro 24:29 Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.”

Lev 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Pro 20:22 Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you.

Mat 5:39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

The Bible wouldn’t so often warn against taking vengeance if vengeance weren’t a serious problem. For example, think about the provisions in the Law of Moses dealing with the cities of refuge —

(Num 35:9-12 NET)  ⁹ Then the LORD spoke to Moses:  ¹⁰ “Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘When you cross over the Jordan River into the land of Canaan,  ¹¹ you must then designate some towns as towns of refuge for you, to which a person who has killed someone unintentionally may flee.  ¹² And they must stand as your towns of refuge from the avenger in order that the killer may not die until he has stood trial before the community.”

If a man accidentally killed another, he was required to flee to a “city of refuge” for protection against “the avenger,” and stand trial. Outside the city of refuge, the avenger could gain vengeance by taking the life of the accidental killer.

(Num 35:25-27 NET) ²⁵ The community must deliver the slayer out of the hand of the avenger of blood, and the community must restore him to the town of refuge to which he fled, and he must live there until the death of the high priest, who was anointed with the consecrated oil.  ²⁶ But if the slayer at any time goes outside the boundary of the town to which he had fled,  ²⁷ and the avenger of blood finds him outside the borders of the town of refuge, and the avenger of blood kills the slayer, he will not be guilty of blood …

The NET Bible translators explain the meaning of “avenger” —

The participle ‌גֹּאֵל‎‏‎ (go‘el) is the one who protects the family by seeking vengeance for a crime.

In other words, the Torah assumes that, even for an accidental killing, justice cannot be had except in certain cities specially designated as cities of refuge. Outside these towns, the law of vengeance prevails. The culture was so steeped in the need for vengeance that even God’s justice under the Torah could not reach into the more rural areas of Israelite society.

Honor and vengeance

It’s not that vengeance is foreign to the Western heart. It’s not. But we don’t have politicians running for office in order to avenge losses from 400 years in the past. In fact, we’d rather do business with, say, Viet Nam or Germany than seek vengeance. We’re much more about a nice house in a subdivision than keeping score on ancient wrongs. Those were other people with other problems. We feel little, if any, identity with the soldiers who fought in Vienna so very long ago.

But in a collectivist, honor culture, that wrong needs to be righted. Honor needs to be restored, and it will be restored, not through living better, but by military victory. And if outright victory can’t be had, a grand, romantic, suicidal gesture will have to do to show that the defeated remain willing to fight on for honor, regardless of the odds, proving that the West may have bigger guns, but they can’t take honor away from their enemies.

It’s the West that says, “Living well is the best vengeance” (George Herbert). The East often sees things very differently.

But this is not a blog about Middle Eastern politics. Rather, the point is that once we get a grasp of a culture that is radically foreign to us Westerners, we can better understand scriptures written from within an honor culture.