Please be so kind as to laugh

A Texas multimillionaire had been invited to speak to a group of Tokyo businessmen. Wanting to lighten things up, he began with this joke:

“A rancher wanted to count his cattle so he hired a helicopter to take him above the enormous herd.

After just a few minutes of looking at the herd which stretched for miles toward the horizon, the rancher said, “Yep, 128,607.”

The amazed pilot said, “How did you do that so fast?”

“Easy,” the rancher drawled, “I just counted their horns and divided by two.”

The Japanese interpreter paused for a moment and then spoke to the businessmen, “Our honored guest has just told a joke that is untranslatable. Please be so kind as to laugh.”

I’ve been thinking about God’s Word and humor. And God’s Word and dancing. And just plain thinking about God’s Word. There are so many Scriptures that puzzle me. 1 Corinthians 11 is high up on the list. It’s in the Bible. It tells women to cover their heads. But most people who believe in following the Bible don’t believe that women should cover their heads in church. I certainly don’t. I don’t even think it’s a disgrace for a woman to cut her hair (v. 7). So I’m at odds with St. Paul. Yikes!

Funny thing is I am completely incapable of praying with a hat on. Or allowing my sons to wear hats in church or at the table or while praying. If someone starts praying I always take off my hat. But my wife never covers her head. The hat thing for me is a big deal but the scarf (or doily or prayer shawl) is not.

What makes one a big thing and the other not? Why is it easy for me to interpret one behavior as biblical and the other as cultural? Today I asked an older colleague how she interpreted 1 Corinthians 11. Her reply was, “I don’t understand it so I just try to avoid it.” A fellow Bible translator at the same gathering said, “I’m just going to translate that and let the pastors interpret it however they want to.”

There’s a problem with that strategy. Translation without interpretation leaves the reader guessing at how the passage is supposed to be understood. When that happens, interpretation will be shaped by the reader’s culture rather than God’s Word. And that’s not funny. Because culture unless it has been redeemed by the gospel is corrupt.

Or maybe it’s not that bad. The gospel is pretty flexible. In my limited experience, God’s Word has seemed to adapt to the culture just as much as the culture adapts to it. So “church” is different depending on whether you are in the U.S. or Mexico or Portugal or Mozambique or South Africa or Malawi. In some churches the women cover their heads. In others, men sit on one side of the aisle and women sit on the other. Mostly men preach in Mozambique, but also women. There are a lot of lady preachers in Mexico but very few in the U.S.

Something recognizably “gospel” is at the heart of all these churches in different countries and then it gets dressed up in the cultural artifacts of the place. Even within a country there are wide differences. The Makhuwas of Mozambique are much more colorful dressers than the Nyungwes. If a lady dressed like that and went to church in the U.S. she would look like a pirate at a costume party. But here the women are very pretty with bright scarves on their heads and rings in their noses and ears. I need to ask a Makhuwa how they interpret 1 Corinthians 11. Since all the ladies wear headscarves anyhow it’s probably not a very controversial passage.

Having said all that, I’d still be interested to know what the Corinthian women looked like. Were they coloring their hair? Getting a perm? Something about their hair was bothering Paul so much so that he was even concerned about them offending the angels (v.10). Or tempting them? Or maybe we’re supposed to see a logical connection between woman created for man and angels created for God.

It seems safer to interpret the commands of the epistles as only having literal application for the particular congregation that was being addressed. For the rest of us, I don’t think we can justify making a direct application of the command unless we are able to show that the situation in our congregation is identical. Even then, our culture will never be the same so it is left for us to decide what would be a culturally equivalent application.

Trouble is, I’m always suspicious when a preacher tells me that the Bible says one thing but I’m supposed to interpret it as meaning something else. It’s like that Japanese interpreter. You can tell me to laugh but I’d still like to know why it’s funny.