Context & Culture

CONTEXT & CULTURE

// Prophetic Dream Interpretation Breakdown Basics //

THE TWO C’S

In this chapter I want to break down how our perspective and life experiences can influence dreams and your interpretation of them. To do this I want to talk about how context and culture can affect the interpretive process. My terms are made up but if you want to find a more in depth understanding of this topic then please check out Grasping God’s Word, A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible. The author, J. Scott Duvall, does an amazing job explaining and breaking down the interpretive journey you need to learn for understanding God’s Word. These concepts are actually the same principles you will need to understand to get a firm grasp of your dream life and discerning God’s voice.

// Context //

… the people of Israel have done nothing but arouse my anger with what their hands have made,

declares the Lord. From the day it was built until now, this city has so aroused my anger

and wrath that I must remove it from my sight.

Jeremiah 32:30 & 31

If you were to read this text alone or have someone quote it to you, you could easily develop a pretty narrow view of God and Israel. These two verses would establish a doctrine solely founded in the anger of the Lord. However, as we know, this is just a couple verses from a larger chapter and one chapter from a larger book. Even still, Jeremiah, is just one of 66 books of the Bible. Then you compound that with Jeremiah being alive during the time of Daniel and Ezekiel (who both wrote books in the Bible). Lastly, this still doesn’t take into account our own bias brought into the equation and the fact that this passage was delivered during the old covenant, not through the filter of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary.

To make this a bit more personal. Everyone on the planet can relate to being misunderstood. It is easy to get wrapped up in one phrase that was spoken rather than trying to focus on the heart behind the one phrase, especially in a disagreement where emotions are involved. Or, have you ever walked into the middle of someones conversation only to form a wild opinion about what was just discussed, but to find out that you didn’t have all the facts. I know I’ve been guilty of that. Yet, this is what we do with God when reading His Word or when hearing His voice in dreams. We take one line of a greater message and create a complete doctrine or view of life off that one encounter or passage.

This even happens to me in my thought life. One bad thought can ruin my whole day but if I were to submit my thoughts to Christ, my ultimate context, it would be impossible for it to affect me. But, can I really do that if getting caught in poor context or without having a proper understanding of His heart? Let’s re-look at a passage I discussed in my book, Revive the Night, Chapter 13, Discerning The Voice of the Lord.

Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood,

you have no life in yourselves. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise

him up on the last day. “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. “He who eats My flesh and drinks

My blood abides in Me, and I in him. “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who

eats Me, he also will live because of Me.

John 6:52-57

Over 5,000 people became disillusioned with Jesus and stopped following Him after they heard the message listed above. Even His own disciples had a hard time with it. With the cannibalistic take on this passage aside, what He said was radical to their culture and Old Testament view of God. However, most contemporary Christians can we easily navigate this passage because we know the greater context and we know Jesus’ heart was not to create cannibals. Yet, I would say we make this mistake often in our relationships with each other and God. Our emotions, shame and fear cause us to get offended with what a pastor or individual says, inadvertently blinding us from the true intent and heartbeat behind their words. In layman terms this is known as bias. Anytime our biases filter what we read and hear you should only expect to get a narrow, distorted, piece of truth and reality.

I dragged this illustration out a bit long but I wanted to demonstrate how extremely important it is to fully grasp the context and the heartbeat of that context. There are so many caveats and idiosyncrasies that can affect your interpretation of a conversation or Biblical passage, making it easy to get tripped up on just one mere word or passage. In the same respect, we need to take similar care and delicacy when interpreting your own or another person’s dreams.

Dreams can be extremely wild with an endless amount of details, so it’s easy to get wrapped up in the drama or minuet details of a dream, thereby losing site of the greater picture. Or, as with the first illustration, if I were to have the core belief that God is an angry god or, as in the second example, take my own bias into the interpretive process, those beliefs would dramatically filter and change the way I would interpret a dream. Being able to quickly remove our own biases to understand the heart and context will launch you into the next level of your gifting.

When I interpret dreams the first thing I attempt to do is to discover the overall theme before even attempting to dive into all the details of it. Theme helps me place the dream in its’ proper context. Then, if interpreting someone else’s dream, I ask the individual questions about some of the symbols and themes in their dream to see how they relate to them to build a larger web of understanding before diving in to interpreting. In the blogs, Dream Types and Asking the Right Questions I discuss some of the attributing factors and questions to process when processing a dream.

// Culture //

For the purpose of this book I will define culture as the behaviors, language, and beliefs of a particular social, ethnic, age group, or individual.

In the Middle East and some parts of West Africa and South America if I give someone a thumbs up it will be viewed as an extremely offensive gesture. Or, in some parts of China chewing loudly is a sign of enjoying your food, while here in American it would be viewed as improper table etiquette. Even within the English language there is an endless amount of slang that might even change depending on what region or state you are from. Imagine if English is not your first language but you hear someone saying how sick or bad something is. Due to not fully understanding our culture and language, they would think to themselves, “how can a scene from a movie or an inanimate object be bad or sick?” As in these example, if you don’t fully understand someones culture there is a high chance of offending a lot of people or, at the least, misunderstanding them.

To read the Bible properly you have to understand culture and context. For instance, the word Apostle means little to us in our contemporary western society but to the Romans it had massive cultural meaning. With our limited understanding of that term we probably give it little attention when we see Paul use it. Yet, I would argue that the word in itself is a large part of the point he is trying to make in some passages.

“In the name of,” is another term you see in the Bible which was borrowed from Roman and Greek cultures. To them it was a legal term. If I came in the name of Caesar, that means I came in his authority and it’s as if he is there in person. Saying no to the delegate of Caesar would be like saying no to Caesar himself; consequently meaning I would then have to deal with him and the entire Roman empire. With that new knowledge meditate on when Jesus says, “I will do whatever you ask in My name;” it begins to take on a much greater implication. Or just do one Bible study with a Messianic Jewish scholar and you will quickly begin to see how many symbols, festivals, and words mean so little to our culture and yet so much to theirs.

Now it happened at the end of two full years that Pharaoh had a dream, and behold, he was standing by the Nile.

And lo, from the Nile there came up seven cows, sleek and fat; and they grazed in the marsh grass. Then behold,

seven other cows came up after them from the Nile, ugly and gaunt, and they stood by the other cows on

the bank of the Nile. The ugly and gaunt cows ate up the seven sleek and fat cows. Then Pharaoh awoke.

Genesis 41:1-32

To us, we might think, how did Joseph know that there would be famine in the entire land just based off the Nile river bringing forth seven fat cows and then seven ugly, gaunt ones? To us the Nile means little but to the Egyptians it was everything. The entire nation and surrounding nations built there livelihood off the seasons of the Nile. Watering crops and livestock, trade, commerce, and travel were all affected by the Nile. To Joseph it wasn’t much of a stretch to say the Nile would easily affect the entire region.

Can you see how cultural implications can affect interpreting dreams? With that in mind, what should you do if you are interpreting a dream for a friend and there is a major symbol or theme in their dream? Well, for one, you shouldn’t interpret that symbol or theme based on what it means to you. If the church is symbolized in my dream it would most likely be a good symbol, but if the individual you are talking with has been hurt by the church, symbolically it would have a completely different connotation. Furthermore, if someone grew up in a different church denomination or country than you it would drastically effect the meaning as well.

Understanding culture and context is very similar to the process I teach in Revive the Night, Chapter 4, Discerning His Voice. You can say the same words but mean something completely different depending on the tone and heart behind them. In the same respect, as we just learned, a word in a dream to one person might mean something completely different to you. Take the time to fully dive into the heart and life of the individual and you’ll find your interpretive journey with dreams will be much less tumultuous.

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