Phillip Jenkins’ book The New Faces of Christianity recounts an exchange between a Western church leader and his African counterpart. The two were talking about the Bible. The African, in frustration, finally says to the Westerner, “If you do not believe the Bible, then why did you bring it to us?”
I read that just before sitting down with a couple of chapters in Numbers. Here Moses is ordering the victorious Israelite armies to slaughter all the boys and non-virginal women from among the defeated peoples.
Walter Brueggemann describes the Old Testament in one place as the repository of the long, fierce voice of Moses. Fierce, indeed.
How do we hear it? Or as Jesus says, “Let those who have ears, hear.” How do we answer the question of our African brothers and sisters?
These are the same questions we have wrestled with since the first days of the faith. They may never go away.
Reading the Bible with other people, though, is an instant cure for anyone who wants to cage it with their own readings and interpretations. It simply will not be read in only one way and will not speak with only one voice. It will continue to create ripples and upset our apple carts. The Word is like a mischevious child that way. You can hear that faint giggling sound coming from your Bible every time our readings of it lead us into confusion.
Indeed, while the Bible speaks of the value of unity, it seems pretty clear that it is does not intend to be read in a unified way. I wonder if the very arguments the Bible causes are meant to get us wrangling with each other. The Bible wants to draw us out of hermetical little worlds and into each other’s. It may lead to shouting and frustration, but when we are raising our voices about the Bible we are – at least – in the presence of our brother or sister. The children of God are in one room – even if it is a rowdy room – like a birthday party when all the distant relations show up and bedlam and bad manners erupt.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
I like this thought. It allows us to be comfortable with different perspectives rather than frustrated or anxious.
Reading the Bible with other people, though, is an instant cure for anyone who wants to cage it with their own readings and interpretations.
I think this is right. I won’t claim to be an expert on the subject of ‘African cultures’ (and there are hundreds, if not thousands), but having spent about a year in an African church in London I suspect that your average Brit doesn’t mean the same thing by ‘I believe the bible’ that your average African does. And no, I don’t think the African understanding is ‘less sophisticated’. I think that most Africans probably actually understand the language and paradigms in which the bible was written a heck of a lot better than most Westerners do.
That is certainly one of Jenkins’ points. He writes that the social and economic conditions and the cultural issues in much (not all of course) of Africa are very similar to those in the Bible.