Great title, I know.
Barring the discovery of some ancient
advanced civilization, today in 2013 we most certainly enjoy the status
of being the most technologically advanced generation the Earth has
known. That certainly must be a fact. Now, a Revolution-style
catastrophe could occur, stifling electricity and throwing us backwards a
couple of hundred years. Or, the global nuclear wars feared in the
1960's could still happen and destroy our technological achievements,
again throwing us back several hundred years. However, that hasn't
happened and is fairly unlikely to occur. So, we should feel pretty
confident that our future generations will still be in the vanguard of
human achievement.
It's pretty reasonable then to assume that our generation has something that is slightly better
than previous generations. There has to be some truth to that. If I
contracted strep throat, I'm going to choose a 2013 doctor over a Middle
Ages barber-surgeon. If I needed to send a message to a relative in
Africa, I'm going to send an immediate email rather than arrange a
1900's steamboat and an ensuing safari team to have someone reach them.
If I have some current need for toothpaste, milk, and a new knife, I
can go to Target today, rather than an apothecary, a farm, and a
blacksmith in Ancient Rome. A strange list, I know.
You can't deny how the modern era has made us a more efficient, healthy, and safe people. But does the benefit of being born into this particular era enable us to assume we're also intellectually superior to previous generations?
In school we do get the opportunity to learn the fruits of years' worth of work left behind to us by the likes of Einstein, Curie, Pasteur, etc.; we can sit in science class and memorize (and immediately forget) these scientist's formulas in just a handful of classes. Although we get to use their lifelong scientific conclusions for our immediate benefit, the average student isn't automatically considered a genius just because they got a 92 on a physics test.
I think it's even more so in the fields of philosophy, and more importantly, theology. Granted I am probably guilty of this myself at some point, but how can anyone today begin to assume that just because we are living in this modern age, that we can summarily dismiss the past as obsolete and worthless?
Here's what I'm getting at - a common objection to Christianity and the Bible is simply, it's old. Antiquated, and uninformed. It's a product of an age where it did apply but "we've moved on." Surely we do not need to accept the attitudes expressed in this book because it was written thousands of years ago by ignorant and unenlightened brains.
Ah, I'm glad you said that.
Such is the opinion of the "Chronocentric." I was surprised but someone wrote a wikipedia article about it as well which is accurate enough for me. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronocentrism
Chronocentrism is just as much a mistake as ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism, if you can recall again from school days, is an unmerited belief that your culture is superior to others. For a quick and crude example, "Americans are better than any other nation. Our lives are just better." Ethnocentrism and racism can also be closely related. And they are both inherently and absolutely wrong. So is Chronocentrism - assuming that ourselves in our current time are more enlightened and smarter than previous generations. This is simply not true.
Think about the classic writers of the Enlightenment, the Declaration of Independence and early democratic ideals, philosophic works over the ages (Plato, Socrates, Kierkegaard, etc), novels, plays, music, ancient evocative poetry like the Odyssey? (This list is embarrassingly brief, but you get the point.)
If you were to be transported to a room with one of these people and magically spoke the same language, what would you even talk about besides the weather? A status update you made yesterday? How stupid traffic is in Atlanta?
The writers of the Bible are no less significant than their secular historical counterparts listed above. The mystical and mysterious nature of the poetry of Genesis is straightforward enough to serve as a history for an ethnic group (and everyone), but on the other hand is so full of enigma and questions that we'll never understand the answers in this life. Proverbs contains timeless, though ancient wisdom. John is a gospel, but reads more like a captivating novel. And Paul in Romans and his other letters uses intricate and emotional language to dramatically and desperately convey his urgent message. And it was all written hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The argument that the Bible was written so long ago by ancients does not diminish or alter their message. We must treat them as peers and their writings as legitimate, because humans are equals, despite race, culture, and even time.
Caveat 1 - Obviously there were schools of thought that were antiquated (I'm thinking scientific ones mostly) like the sun rotating around the earth, the heavens are in the clouds, etc. Also, things like human sacrifice in order for a good harvest, etc. Obviously, people in the past are like us; they were misguided and made mistakes. For the purposes of this post, I'm primarily referring to intangible truths gleaned from the Bible, i.e. the theology behind it.
Some parts of the bible are time-bound and culturally specific and should be interpreted as such.
Caveat 2 - Just because you respect the literature as being legitimate doesn't mean you have to agree with it. Obviously I've written under my conviction the Bible is truth, but in reading this you may not have that conviction, which for the purposes of this article is not required. The purpose is just to make sure we are aware and not thinking "chronocentrically," intentionally or not. On the flipside, I need to respect the Quran or Bhagavad Gita as written by capable authors, though I don't agree with those particular movements.
Note - I was listening to a song on the radio the other day, I think it was some kind of marriage equality song which one of the verses mentioned that the opponents of the marriage equality were using the Bible as their basis, and it was "written three thousand years ago" or something to that effect. Thus the inspiration for this post.
