Why Should God Care Less? part 3

This carries on from the post below:

... Now, how could I have missed this? Well, the problem was, I didn’t know how to read the book of Genesis. We’re going to spend a bit of time that morning to unpack some of that. And I think though certainly familiar, it’s been transforming. Now the problem with ancient documents is this: they’re written in another language. And you know people where you talk about Genesis 1 and you are really walking on thin ice. You can lose your eternal destiny according to some people if you misread Genesis 1, is that not true? There are all kinds of bun fights that go on about the meaning of this text. Well, it’s interesting though, that the people who have these arguments ... (uh, by the way, bun fight is an Australian term. It doesn’t mean what bun means here. Ok? [laughter] Just to kind of clarify that. And it’s in the singular. Not plural.) People read Genesis 1 off the page in English and they say, ‘well, that’s what it says.’ But of course it wasn’t written in English, it was written in Hebrew. And that’s significant. Why is that so important? Well, you probably know this, but it’s worthwhile to be reminded, that there’s no such thing as a generic word. Every word is culturally bound. They have to be. That’s the kind of world God made. God did not make some kind of Socratic world of forms and essences. He made particular trees, particular plants, particular people, particular languages .... We don’t have time to talk about that but western philosophy, for two thousand years, has been diametrically opposed to what God has actually created. And Heigl represents the pinnacle of this. He really can’t deal with the particular and Kierkegaard recognized that so that’s why on Kierkegaard’s tombstone he has written ‘That individual.’ It’s his last shot at Heigl. These world encompassing maps that explain everything. Kierkegaard recognized ultimately how, and maybe he wouldn’t have used this language, but I would, how demonic they can become. And you see it happening in church systems too. In the name of efficiency we turn people into generic persons. And then people feel de-humanized. God did not make a world like that. He made a particular world with particular people - that means particular cultures. And this culture is from a long time ago.
Now I’m an Australian. I’ve been here for 9 years. I still don’t understand Canadians. I’m working on it. I used to think that Canadians and Australians were pretty similar. In fact I think that we’re rather different in all kinds of ways. Actually sometimes it’s good. You’re polite. It’s great. But from an Australian’s point of view sometimes we think you’re dishonest. You’re being polite and we think: ‘You’re not really telling the truth, are you?’ And I’m not making a value judgement on that, it’s just what happens when two cultures meet one another. Well, if we have that kind of interaction and we live in the same time frame, imagine the problems we’re going to have understanding a culture that’s 3 thousand years distant from ours. Now, you’ve done some training on this, you understand these issues. It’s really important to take those very, very seriously indeed. Sometimes we only give them lip service. We need to take it more seriously than that. So, very different culture, long time ago, different language, how do we understand this? Well there are some clues. There are some tricks we can use and it’s to do with the question of genre, form and content and the first place to go when talking about Genesis 1 is ... The Simpsons. [Laughter] And you knew that, right. Uh, I once mentioned that in church and really got into trouble for talking about The Simpsons on Sunday morning. I was talking about the book of Daniel actually and mentioned The Simpsons in that context and it was very quiet in this very large Pentecostal church in Vancouver and, uh, I should have picked up the signals but then I’m Australian so I’m not very sensitive; I’m not polite. So I said ‘You don’t watch this show?’ [laughter] Well, the point that came after was ‘how in the world do you expect to share the gospel with people when you don’t understand their language?’ Got a bit of a blast about that. Well, this is not the right thing to do. But any case: The Simpsons. Now here’s the question: Is The Simpsons true?