Richards And O Brien: Chapter Analysis

Richards and O’Brien open up with detailed information about their professions, studies and families. This allows the reader to get a better understanding of the authors, so that interpreting the authors’ points of view becomes either agreeable or disagreeable. Afterwards, the authors describe the general ideas that will be covered in the different sections of the book and how deep the misreading actually goes between the different sections. Finally, the authors explain the importance of why the reader needs to understand how western views are different from eastern views and how theses views affect ones interpretation of scripture.

Section one of the book starts off talking about mores or customs that differ from western and eastern cultures.

Topics include individualism and collectivism, honor/shame and right/wrong, and time. Beginning with individualism and collectivism, the authors share that before the modern area Christianity didn’t take root in Japan very well. Japan is a collectivized system and no person could make a decision on their own, but has to ask the rest of the family. Many eastern countries are collectivized and therefore everyone joins together on making decisions. The authors challenges the reader to understand that through the bible, there were many cases westerners read it as individualistic while actually collectivized. Next the authors talk about honor/shame and right/wrong, they also explain that this chapter was the most challenging to right because they themselves still lacked a good understanding of the difference. Here they connect back to the topic individualism and collectivism. Throughout this chapter they explain what scholar meant by honor and shame by comparing Western concepts of rights and wrongs. They follow with explaining how honor and shame worked through the bible. The authors then explain that because of the difficulty of understanding honor and shame, the best way to understand the bible more is to better understand the concepts of honor and shame. Finally, the authors close section two with the topic of time. Western culture is powered by time and therefore everything is on a schedule, whereas in

Rule and relationships is the opening chapter of section three and discusses the changes of Western culture relationships with God. For the longest people believed that God created everything and was still developing the world, but in the nineteenth century the relationship between God and Earth became distant. People believed God had set Earth in motion and was going to watch as it finished. In other words God had removed Himself from being involved with anything that occurs on Earth. This separation led to the formation of rules, which Westerns try to follow as to please God. These rules became deeply entrenched in our lives and led to misinterpreting rules in the bible. The authors challenge the reader to read the rules in scripture less scrutinizing. Next, virtue and vice, these have made following Christian ideas difficult because we are to share our wealth, but the little red hen story says that people are to work for their share. The authors explain that to understand virtues and vices is similar to understanding mores in section one. They challenge the reader to be sensitive to the writings of scripture and be sensitive tot the writings of other Christians different in culture or age. Finally the last chapter of the book deals with finding the center of God’s will. Every person tries to get the bible to relate to himself or herself that way it is