When we address our culture, we have the benefit of lifelong immersion in it. But alas, that blessing is also a curse, for like fish in water, we cannot see the medium in which we swim. It is hardest to see what is always before our eyes, hardest to remark on values everyone accepts. We are imbedded in a web of assumptions and experiences and inherit biases and blind spots from them. Most Americans assume that freedom is essential to happiness, that innovation is good, that contact with other cultures is beneficial, that water is abundant. Yet such assertions would seem patently false in many cultures.
Dan Doriani, Putting the Truth to Work: The Theory and Practice of Biblical Application (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2001), 35.