I was watching the league on Friday night, the Storm/Raiders, and after the game Cameron Smith was chaired off by team mates at Suncorp Stadium. All the commentators said that it was obviously a confirmation of his retirement. Cut to fifteen minutes later and the post-match press conference and he tells everyone the coach did it just in case it was his last game there, but he still wasn’t sure yet and it wasn’t a confirmation of his retirement, just a nice gesture by the coach!

Got me thinking…context is everything.

What do I mean by that?

How we see things, how we understand or interpret them is totally based on the context. The context always influences how we see things.

The Oxford defines context as:

The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood.

Oxford Dictionary

Who I am, where I live, my upbringing, current life situation, what I am currently going through, all influence how I see and understand things.

The thing with context is that all of the above things can taint how I see things, understand them, react to them and shapes the opinions or ideas I form around certain things.

I was really confronted by that this week.

Pull Your Head In!

As a minster of religion I get to speak often. I have always been conscious that I don’t interpret the Bible from my twenty first mindset and understanding. The Bible was written two thousand years ago for a first century culture and understanding, so I need to be careful in not projecting or seeing it from my twenty first culture and understanding.

In among all that I have always found the writer of much of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, to a bit arrogant. Bit full of himself. Many of the things he writes about himself; his ‘humble brags’ that go on in 2 Cor 11, Eph 3 and other places, often make him seem quite proud and in my opinion, maybe a bit full of himself!

In my recent study I have come to have more of an understanding and I have realised how my context totally shapes how I see the Apostle Paul.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie

Being an Australian, we are very self-depreciating as a culture and are often quick to cut down the tall poppy. You don’t brag about stuff without a mate or two putting you back in your place.  Now it is mostly done with humour and jest, but the idea behind it is that we don’t make ourselves out to be better than our mates!

My Australianness means I read Paul in that way. I find myself wanting to tell him to “pull his head in!” Again my context, my culture, my upbringing, it totally affects how I see Paul. Whereas our guest lecturer this week, an American, didn’t even see this or think like that about Paul. His culture, which is all about having a go; self-promotion; be all you can be; so they love that attitude of Paul about himself.

What About Me?

So anyway back to me, how does context affect me in other ways and areas?

Emily has been hassling me for weeks to promote what Kerrilee and myself are doing with our vlogs, videos, and blogging, among our friends and on all our media platforms, but that very idea of putting myself out there, seeming to be bragging, or self-promoting stops me.

My culture, my context, causes me to hang back and not promote because I don’t want to be the tall poppy and to be ‘humble bragging’, so I say it will sort itself out, people will find it, don’t worry about it, don’t be that guy who is spruking himself all over the place.

The problem is then how do people find out; how do people hear?

Here is some irony, Paul summed it up quite well:

No one can hear a message unless someone speaks it, even if they write it down, they need to tell people how to find it! Maybe I need to speak up a bit more! Just a thought!

Self Aware

Anyway back to context, understanding my context, who I am, where I live, what I know, what I am going through, all help me to know why something affects me in a certain way – why I react how I do to situations, words, people.

Knowing that can hopefully help me to be more self-aware of how I see and interpret life.

It brings me full circle to my opening line: Context is everything.

Cheers