Crossing post/modernism

We are used to people writing for us. Newspapers and popular magazines pitch at an eighth grade reading level, easy for all of us. Textbooks are generally written not only by knowledgeable people, but by skilled educators who pay attention to our learning styes, attention spans, and format prefrerences. Popular novels (the ones most of us read, if we read them at all) are written to be popular, and that means easy for us, accesible to us. We assume, if the Bible is in any way inspired, that the Holy Spirit would be so kind and considerate as to similarily gear it exclusively to us. Reasonable enough… at first glance. But think again. If the Bible were written for twenty-first century readers, how would it have come across to its original hearers in the sixth century BC or eight century AD?… And assuming the world is still spinning, how would a style and form targeted on a twenty-first centruy demographic cohort feel for advanced readers in the twenty-ninth century?

It is hard for us, spoiled as we are by being marketing targest, but the Bible askes us to rise above our narrow parochial tastes. It asks us to learn, to understand, to imaginatively enter an alien geography… alien cultures… and social structures. It asks us to stop absolutizing our perspective and, instead, to see our modern or postmodern view points simply as views from a point – limited, contingent, changing, not privileged. In so doing, the very form of the Bible begins teaching us something about humility and perspective.