The hidden difficulty of truly understanding another person's culture
In short: Moving to a new country is often described as a series of hurdles—learning the bus routes, the currency, and the grammar. But for theologian Gene Green, the real challenge was the 'invisible' culture: the humor, the historical allusions, and the subtle social reactions that remain opaque even after fluency.
Gene Green, a Professor of New Testament Emeritus at Wheaton College, spent thirteen years living in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. He describes his journey as a progression through distinct 'valleys' of adaptation. The first was the material culture—navigating basic survival skills like paying bills and avoiding parasites. The second was the linguistic hurdle, which required ten months of intensive daily training just to reach a basic level of comprehension.
However, Green notes that reaching linguistic proficiency only opened a 'whole new world of confusion.' Even when he could understand newspapers and broadcasts, he struggled with the nuances of humor and historical allusions. He compares this sensation to a recurring Dylan lyric about mysterious occurrences, noting that cultural nuances only emerge via extended residency and the assistance of local guides.
This personal history informs his academic work on biblical interpretation. Green argues that understanding any communication—especially ancient scripture—requires navigating massive temporal, geographic, and cultural gulfs. He emphasizes that interpretation is not a Western monopoly; it is a global, 'self-theologizing' process. By listening to African, Asian, and Latin interpreters, he acknowledges how one's own social location influences their perspective, making the work of understanding others a humbling and laborious task.
His career reflects this commitment to contextual understanding, ranging from his research on Macedonian Christianity to his work on 'Majority World Theology.' Whether analyzing the Greco-Roman backgrounds of the New Testament or the sociology of early Christianity, Green's methodology is rooted in the belief that true understanding requires crawling into the intricacies of a culture rather than simply observing it from the outside.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Gene Green
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