As I start reading the introduction to The Postmodern Bible, I’m reminded of David Foster Wallace’s This is Water.

It starts off with

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

To apply it to Biblical studies, water is the cultural context we are surrounded by when we read the bible, a context we are probably not even aware of. As we read the scriptures, we turn around the creation story and recreate God in our image, because that is the image we know and understand. Megyn Kelly recreates Jesus as a white conservative and James Hal Cone speaks of God in terms of black power.

As I think back of my journey to understand Christianity, as well as to understand cultural constructs like whiteness and blackness, maleness and femaleness, straightness and gayness, transness and cisness, I shudder at the presumptions I made about how to love my neighbor.

These days, these ideas are reflected in phrases like “Your privilege is showing” or “check your privilege”. Perhaps that is a good Lenten discipline, checking one’s privilege. Perhaps as we sit and read the Bible, we need to think about how much our interpretation and understanding of the verses comes from our own privileges.

Back to David Foster Wallace’s This is Water; towards the end of his commencement speech, he pulls it all together with

If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Checking one’s privilege, pay attention, looking for other options, perhaps this needs to be part of Biblical Studies and Lenten discipline.