Reading Genesis as a Means of Defining Core Values
in the Modern World
Daniel Reifman
One of the hallmarks of modernity is the gradual breakdown of the social structures which circumscribe the range of choices available to the individuals within them. The processes of urbanization, migration, and mass communication serve to compress a wider and wider range of experiences into the spatial and temporal limits of the modern consciousness, and open modern man to the notion that he has a choice in how to live his life: where to live, how to earn, what to wear, whom to marry. Beyond these concrete decisions, however, the structures that dominated pre-modern society also provided a set of values which defined the individual's sense of self. Hence the fact that the modern individual has far greater choice to determine the course of his life also means that he must take a much more active role in articulating his set of core values. This is an arduous task, and we are only beginning to comprehend the consequences when it is not done well.
The sociologist Peter Berger[1] cites religion as a prime example of the way that modern society both affords us more freedom but also demands of us more active involvement in constructing our sense of self. It is self-evident that modern society is characterized by secularization, which Berger defines as “the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.” Yet as Berger notes, this does not mean that religion is no longer a dominant feature of contemporary society. Rather, modern man's view of religion differs from that of his forbears in that he views religious belief and affiliation as a matter of each individual's choice. Furthermore, religion is usually only one aspect of his identity, and must be integrated with the other, non-religious aspects of whom society expects him to be (citizen, worker, etc…). Hence modern life demands that the religious individual craft a personal concept of religion that can be integrated with the other aspects of who she is. Conversely, modern life also enables the non-religious individual to incorporate certain aspects of religious traditions into her sense of self without necessarily feeling conflicted.
Our proposal is that the process of constructing a set of life values can be facilitated by the act of engaging with text, and that the book of Genesis is especially well suited to serve this function. Traditionally, Bible study has focused on understanding the internal aspects of the text itself: the rules of its grammar, the development of its characters and storylines, the unity of its structure. But Paul Ricoeur[1] posits that this is only one aspect of the reading process: "…the text is not closed in on itself but open out onto something else. By any supposition reading is a linking together of a new discourse to the discourse of the text." That discourse may be history, psychology, ethics, etc… but Ricoeur insists that regardless of the specific discourse that we conjoin to the text, ultimately the process of interpretation leads back to the reader himself "who henceforth understands himself better… Hermeneutics and reflective philosophy are here correlative and reciprocal… [T]he understanding of a text is not an end in itself and for itself; it mediates the relation to himself of a subject who, in the short circuit of immediate reflection, would not find the meaning of his own life”.
The book of Genesis is particularly well suited to this task, since it directly addresses a host of issues that are central to human existence and society. It is certainly about man's relationship with God, and thus is most readily appreciated by a religious audience. But the theological aspects of the text are interwoven with many other themes: the problem of evil, the often strained dynamics of the family, the desire for a purpose in life that is not satisfied only by a relationship with God. Given the complexity of religious identity in the modern world, it is simply not correct to assume that the religiously unaffiliated, or even atheists, have nothing to gain from a focused study of Genesis, or that its message for the religiously affiliated will be straightforward and unproblematic. The process of reading is inseparable from the process of understanding who we are and who we want to be, and the wisdom of Genesis is relevant today no less than it has been for millennia.
[1] The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967).
[2] “What is a Text? Explanation and Understanding,” in Paul Ricoeur: Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
