Greek Vs. Hebraic Mindsets

This past week's teaching was brought by Ashley Little, the older sister of one of my best friends, Chris Little. She started off this week speaking on how our mindset in the American church has been heavily influenced by the Greek philosophers of old.

The most prominent way this is evident is by looking at the way we think opposed to the way of Hebraic thinking (anything related to the culture and/or language of the Hebrews). The Greek thinking pattern is a linear one, A+B=C and so on, but if A+B doesn't =C then it can't equal D, E, etc. Most of the Christian church is in this pattern of thinking; for example, Romans 8 says that we have been predestined by God, but we are told to pray in other passages. All of the apostles and Jesus model prayer as a spiritual discipline and something that moves the heart of God, the Greek thinking looks at this and says that one is wrong because they contradict each other and proceeds to get rid of the one they think is wrong, because it doesn't line up with the linear thinking pattern. Now the Hebraic way of thinking is what is called 'box' thinking, each book of the Bible is divided up as a box and each of the boxes is the inspired word of God and since "it is impossible for God to lie" (Hebrews 6:18) then each of these boxes, no matter how much they contradict the other are 100% truth.

For most of us this is hard to grasp, because as Americans, whether in or out of the church, we have all been taught with a linear thinking pattern and “the teacher is always right”. This is something else that contradicts what was originally designed for the church. The way the Jews would teach in the temple is they would read scripture out loud and then everybody would discuss it, there wasn't one person who knew it all and would be the single person teaching. That design came from Constantine, when he started to Romanize Christianity. Constantine outlawed the Jewish style of teaching and made it like the Roman senate, where one person would get up and teach all of the lay people. This has continued on today and was not the original design for the body of Christ. Our best representation of church is the house church, lead out by a single person and the 'congregation' is open for discussion on the topic that is shared.

This week has been a very challenging week for me and it has tested my thinking on many levels than I had anticipated. I had no idea how much the Greek philosophers had influenced our church and the way we look at scripture these days. I would love to chat more about this if any of you are interested, please email me at Christerbergus@gmail.com. I will be posting another blog very soon including more principles Ashley taught.