Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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Baccalaureate, Part 2

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Part 1 

Another, very different perspective: 

John Gillespie McGee Jr., a British pilot in WW1, captured this concept more lyrically in his poem High Flight: 

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth 
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; 
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth 
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things 
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung 
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, 
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung 
My eager craft through footless halls of air …. 

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue 
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace 
Where never lark, or even eagle flew— 
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod 
The high untrespassed sanctity of space, 
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. 

A century ago another poet, an American college English teacher named Odell Shepard, in one stanza of a poem he called “Whence Cometh My Help,” wrote of the mountains this way: 

All the wisdom, all the beauty I have lived for unaware 
Came upon me by the rote of highland rills; 
I have seen God walking there 
In the solemn soundless air 
When the morning wakened wonder in the hills. 

The greatness of God is vividly apparent all around us, even to those who deny he exists. 

God is indeed great. Insuperably great. Unimaginably great. 

Years ago there was a commercial for Sherwin Williams paint. The opening shot was of the space shuttle on the launch pad, with a voiceover counting down: “3 … 2 … 1 … ignition!” And those two solid-rocket boosters kick in, and the screen fills with flame and then white smoke, until all you can see is white. And then, the white subtly changes. A door opens away from you, and you’re looking at a typical American bathroom. The voice says, “We developed the paint for the space shuttle. [Door opens.] Chances are, we can handle your bathroom.” 

I say this reverently: Chances are the God who “made the stars also” can handle the challenges of your life. 

God Is Good 

To his protégé Timothy Paul calls God 

the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy (1Ti 6.17b). 

Years ago it occurred to me that everything we really need—literally everything—is free. That’s the way God has arranged the universe. 

Don’t believe me? Hear me out. 

What do you need more than anything else in the world? If you lack it for 30 seconds, it will be literally all you think about until you get some. 

Yep, air. Or more specifically, oxygen. 

Free. 

We’re sitting at the bottom of an ocean of it—an ocean that God has kindly diluted with nitrogen so you won’t burst into flame at the slightest spark. God’s even given you a scoop on the front of your head so you’ll get your share of the stuff. Some of you he gave a larger scoop to, and you have the gall to be upset with him about that. Shame on you. 

What’s the second most necessary thing? Water. They say you can last 3 days without it—some maybe as much as 8 to 10 days under certain conditions. But not long. 

Most of the globe is covered with it. And that water mass feeds a delivery system that brings it right to your feet, purified, for free. (Unless you live in the Atacama Desert, which hardly anybody does.) And again, many of us complain when it rains. Especially at the beach. 

Granted, I pay a water bill, but I’m not really paying for the water; I’m paying for someone to clean it up and bring it to my house. But the water—it’s free. 

What’s next? Food. Grows right out of the ground, from plants that are already there. Free. Again, I pay for my food, but only because I don’t feel like growing it myself. So I pay somebody else to grow and harvest and deliver it; and sometimes I go out to a restaurant and pay somebody else to cook it and bring it to my table. But the food? The food’s free. 

And then there’s light, and heat, and all the other physical necessities. All free. 

God has been remarkably good to us. 

We’ll finish this thought—and the rest of the sermon—in the next post. 

Baccalaureate, Part 1

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The evening before I retired, I was privileged to be asked to deliver BJU’s Baccalaureate Sermon. I’ll publish the text here, in several parts.

__________

Theological students like to debate the complexities of theology: election and human will; theories and extent of the atonement; Trinity issues; the hypostatic union; the problem of evil.

These are consequential matters, and they should be debated. Such discussions and explorations are an important part of preparing the Christian student for whatever his divine calling may be.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found my appreciation increasing for the simple things, the basic things—the central things.

And it has occurred to me that these central things are perhaps best summed up in the simple child’s prayer:

God is great;
God is good;
Let us thank him.

The Apostle Paul began his magisterial epistle to the Romans by observing,

The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse (Ro 1.20).

As you graduating students learned in your Bible Doctrines class, this concept is what theologians call “general revelation.” It’s most famously expressed in the opening to Psalm 19:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament sheweth his handywork.
2 Day unto day uttereth speech,
And night unto night sheweth knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language,
Where their voice is not heard.
4 Their line is gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
5 Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
6 His going forth is from the end of the heaven,
And his circuit unto the ends of it:
And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

This is the concept that Paul used on Mars Hill, in presenting to the Athenians the basic things—the central things.

I’d like to attempt that here this evening.

God Is Great

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, [that] the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? [there is] no searching of his understanding (Isaiah 40:28).

Evidences of God’s limitless greatness lie all around us in His creation.

The fastest any human has ever traveled is 25,000 mph (Apollo 10’s return from the moon, being accelerated by the earth’s gravity). Now suppose we start at the surface of the sun—some of you are thinking, we shouldn’t do that; it’s way too hot. Well, I’ve solved that problem; we’ll go at night :-)—and we head out toward the planets at that fastest-ever speed. How long will our journey take us?

  • Mercury: 60 days
  • Venus: 56 (more) days
  • Earth: 39 days
  • Mars: 78 days
  • Jupiter (assuming we safely navigate the asteroid belt): 567 days
  • Saturn: 700 days
  • Uranus: 1500 days
  • Neptune: 1650 days

We’ve been traveling for a total of 12 years and 9 months, and we’ve just reached the edge of the solar system.

Now, to Boomers like me, we don’t believe that, because we still think Pluto is the outermost planet, because our first-grade teacher, Mrs. Devlin, wouldn’t have lied to us about that.

But at any rate, we find that now we’re headed toward the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, just to the left of the Southern Cross. That’ll take us 155,333 years.

Once we get there, we find that we’re on one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, pretty far out toward the edge. So we head for the nearest edge of the galaxy.

670 million years.

And we find that there are other galaxies. The closest, Andromeda, will take us 53 billion more years.

I hope you brought a book to read.

The astronomers tell us that there are clusters of galaxies out there. I have no idea how they know that, but we’ll take them at their word. Let’s head for the nearest edge of our galaxy cluster.

2.67 trillion years.

How about the edge of the observed universe?

131 trillion years.

After a while these numbers just become meaningless, don’t they? Fee, fi, fo-fillion, trillion.

And it’s not over; I suspect that when we reach the “edge” of the observed universe, we’ll just see more universe. How much farther? No one knows.

Now, these numbers are actually unrealistically low, for a couple of reasons:

  • They assume that the planets are all lined up perfectly on one side of the sun, which has never happened and is never likely to happen.
  • They also ignore a basic tactic of interplanetary travel, which involves the physics of sling-shotting the spacecraft around the heavenly bodies so you don’t have to keep the rocket engines firing constantly. In our example, you couldn’t possibly carry enough fuel to make the journey even to the nearest planet.

But the numbers speak for themselves.

God is great.

Now, I’ve said all that to say this.

Do you know how the Bible recounts God’s creation of what we’ve just described?

Genesis 1.16—“He made the stars also.” Five English words; two in Hebrew.

That’s just a side remark, almost a throwaway line: “Oh, yeah, he did that too.”

God is indeed great.

To be continued.

On Retiring, Part 2: How 

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Part 1: Why 

Several weeks ago, when my decision to retire was made official, I posted my reasons for making that decision. Welp, now it’s happened. As of 5 pm last Friday, I am retired and no longer an appointed member of the Bible faculty at BJU. 

My colleague in a neighboring office, who teaches Biblical Counseling, had asked a few days earlier how I was doing as The Event approached. I told him that I wasn’t sad or nervous; the word I gave him was “contemplative.” It’s natural to think back over the career—I was a full-time employee for 44 years, and a teaching GA for 5 years before that—and just reminisce a little. It’s good to look back. I’ve found that the contemplation leads to thankfulness, and that the thankfulness leads to peace. 

It’s all good. 

Even in these first few days I’ve noticed some other changes in my thinking. I thought I’d share how the days have gone and thereby note those changes. 

This will be the only issue of my Retirement Journal: take comfort in that. :-) 

On Friday Commencement ended a bit before 4pm, about an hour before my official retirement. I walked around the campus for a bit, greeting my former students and their parents, and rejoicing with them over their academic success. Then I turned in my regalia before 5. (As is customary, I kept the tassel—black for PhD—figuring it would make a better ornament than fuzzy dice). Dropped by a reception for the graduating online students. The Official Retirement at 5 happened while I was there, so I didn’t even notice it. 

Walked home (I hadn’t driven onto campus, since I knew there wouldn’t be any place to park), greeted my wife, and announced that I was going to change into my “retirement outfit.” Jeans and long-sleeved black tee. In the process I decided to take my watch off; why would I need a watch? There are clocks around the house and in the cars, and there’s always my phone for backup. I used to make fun of my students for not wearing watches—I could twist my left forearm and look at my watch in one-fifth the time it took for them to pull out their phones and look at them—but now, it seems, I’ve adopted their inefficient ways. 

I’d been avoiding dairy all week so I wouldn’t be clearing my throat when reading student names during the Commencement ceremony, but now all that was over, so I did the logical thing: I made myself a big ol’ decaf latte with an impressive layer of crema. Very refreshing. 

Now what? Let’s do the daily crossword puzzle, plus the one I didn’t have time to get to yesterday. 

I’m surprised at how quickly my thinking changed from time management mode—makin’ a list, checkin’ it 9 or 10 times, getting’ it done, all day every day—to a sense of utter flexibility. Still have things to do, and I intend to add things along the way (see Part 1), but now I have pretty much unlimited flexibility as to when I do them. That’s a major mental reset. 

Men’s prayer breakfast at church 7.30 Saturday morning. Went, of course, but hung around for further fellowship afterwards, because I had no commitments until after 2pm, so no sense of needing to Finish This Conversation and Get on to the Next Thing. Ask questions, and listen for as long as my brother wants to talk. Drive home, letting people cut in front of me, and obeying the speed limit, and stopping for yellow lights. 

This is really, really weird. 

I like it. 

Sit down with the to-do list and pick 3 priorities for the coming week: 

  • Get the Medicare / Medigap process started. (We have some time on that.) 
  • Condense and pack up the office. 
  • Order a laptop to replace the one I’ll be turning in at the end of the summer; I’ll need some time to set it up, install software that won’t be provided by the university anymore, and transfer stuff over. I intend to keep pretty much all my academic records in electronic form in case issues come up down the road that I need verification for. 

“Up down.” That’s funny. 

As well as a few end-of-year academic things: 

  • Upload the commentary that my students wrote in Romans class, so they can add it to their portfolios if they want to; 
  • End-of-year program assessments and division report; 
  • Polished versions of a couple of division processes for the Next Guy. Maybe this week, maybe later. 

And yeah, faculty are being paid this week after Commencement. 

So a plan is in place, and we’ll adjust as needed. 

This is fun. 

Photo by Stefan Steinbauer on Unsplash

On Silence During Chaos, Part 5: Peace 2

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Part 1: Personal | Part 2: Political | Part 3: Panic | Part 4: Peace 1 

My first biblical theological reason for general reticence about political fights, as I noted in the previous post, is my conviction that God is in charge, and that his good will is being done, despite the pervasive presence of bad actors on the field of battle. That is a powerful incentive to overall peace, to “freak out thou not.” Spending your time in a constant state of rage, frustration, or fear is bad for your mental health and bad for your physical health as well. 

My second reason of this sort is a matter of prioritization. God has given us believers a primary mission during our brief time on this earth: the so-called Great Commission, to take the good news about salvation by grace through faith in Christ to the ends of the earth (Mt 28.19-20). That’s more important than everything else. 

Now, of course he has given us other commands as well, including stewardship of the earth and its resources and systems, and political stewardship is an important part of that. In God’s providence, in this age we have democratic tools available that those in ancient empires could never have imagined, and we should use those tools as best we can. 

I’ve given reasons earlier in this series why I don’t think ranting in social media posts is an effective use of those tools. Here I’d like to add a couple of theologically based insights. 

First, I’d like to extend my earlier thought about panic. When I was boy, both my parents were employed at the home office of what was probably the most well-known right-wing political activist organization of that time. I often heard staff there speak derisively of those who said that we should “just preach the gospel”; they would respond, “Well, if the Communists take over, you won’t be allowed to preach the gospel, and what will you do then?! We need to take care of the Commies first!” 

I note two things: 

  • It’s God, not this or that activist organization, who raises up earthly powers and sets them down again. The USSR folded in its time through a series of events that no human agent manipulated into happening, or could have. 
  • And when, after Nixon, China finally became more open to Western “outsiders” visiting, early evangelists in those days were astounded to find, against all their expectations, that there were more Christians in China than in the USA. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese grandmothers kept the gospel story alive despite everything Mao could do to prevent that. To put it bluntly, “the Commies” literally didn’t know who they were dealing with. And in a more contemporary context, neither do the MAGA hyperfans or their most “woke” opponents. 

My second insight is that prioritizing panicked political warfare over the Great Commission doesn’t just ignore this divine command, but it actually impedes it. 

Why do I say that? Again two observations: 

  • What does the non-believer think when he sees those who profess to follow an omniscient, omnipotent God freak out over this or that political appointee? How pitifully weak and inattentive must their “God” be? They resemble more the prophets of Baal, whose god Elijah says must be distracted, off going to the bathroom instead of hearing their prayers (1K 18.27), than they resemble the first generation of apostles, who told the Powers That Be in their day, “We’ll focus on preaching Jesus no matter what you do to us” (Ac 4.18-20). God’s people should act as though they trust him. 
  • What does the non-believer think when professing Christians set themselves up as the political enemies of the very people that God has commanded them to reach with the gospel? Today there’s a multitude that no man can number of self-proclaimed believers who have burned every bridge available to them to be heard by any unbeliever. They have sacrificed the permanent on the altar of the immediate. Who knows how many “political opponents” they have stiffened in their unbelief? 

So. For a good number of reasons, I’m disciplining my mouth, in utter contradiction to my natural tendencies, and deciding not to pour gasoline on the flames of current political controversy. You may agree or not, of course. 

But one day, we all—every one of us—will give account to the judge of all the earth. And, as I understand the Scripture, we all will be manifest—transparent—before him (2Co 5.10). 

Every idle word (Mt 12.36). 

Photo by Jonathan Harrison on Unsplash

On Silence During Chaos, Part 4: Peace 1

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Part 1: Personal | Part 2: Political | Part 3: Panic 

I can’t discuss any life application—indeed, any topic at all—without basing my thinking on Scripture. I’ve studied the Scripture professionally all my adult life, and I am more convinced than ever that that was a good choice, informed even in my many ignorant times by the kind providence of God. I’ve written about my reasons for seeing the Scripture as more than an ancient book written by well-meaning but primitive people that has received outsized attention throughout cultural history, so I won’t repeat them here; but they inform all my thinking. 

I have a couple of bases in biblical theology for the reticence I’ve been advocating. Maybe two posts can cover them. 

The first theological basis is far broader than just politics or social upheaval; it covers literally everything in this world, and everywhere else, throughout all time and forever. 

God is in charge. 

I have social media connections, whom I care for, who disagree profoundly with that statement. But I’ve never seen them refute it. 

Oh, they’ll complain about it—“If there’s a God, why did he …”—but logically that’s not a refutation; it’s just an assertion that they disagree with him. 

I’m a lot older than most of them are, and with time I’ve come to recognize the foolish arrogance of a “lifted from the no of all nothing, human merely being” thinking that his disagreement with the Creator of heaven and earth, the covenant-keeping God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, “Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth, who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Ex 34.6-7)—whew—is in some way the basis for argument, application, or wisdom in life. 

God is in charge. 

Applying that principle to the current topic is fairly straightforward. 

First, history makes sense; it’s not a random sequence of events, but the outworking of a plan that leads to a sensible, rational conclusion—and that plan is from the mind of a great and good God. 

Now, that fact raises all kinds of questions. Why does God include in his plan things that make people miserable, that harm them in significant ways? I don’t know the answer to that, and neither does anybody else. But I do know God, and I have decades of experience, in both the lab and the field, that he is in fact great and good. And I expect that a great God, who is by definition infinite, will occasionally (!) go beyond the horizon of my understanding. When he does that, I trust him. 

I’ve never been disappointed. 

It should be said, of course, that we should do what we can to ease suffering. We ought to feed the hungry; we ought to clothe the needy; we ought to shelter the homeless. There are many ways to do that, including any number of organizations that have been doing those things long enough to have some expertise in the field, and whom we ought to support. 

(I’ll note as an aside that human nature these days is to assume that the government should be that default organization—and it’s precisely that kind of thinking that has gotten us into the unsustainable economic crisis we’re in now. The current administration claims to have cut $150 billion in spending—whether they actually have or not, I don’t know—but the naked truth is that the spending cuts are going to have to be an order of magnitude larger than that if the nation is going to be on a sustainable footing.) 

So. There is a God in heaven, who raises up kings and sets them down again, and who is so much greater than evil that he uses the greatest evil in all the world to accomplish his good plans (see “Crucifixion”). He knows infinitely better than I do, and I trust him. 

There’s a second theological basis for my reticence. More on that next time. 

Part 5: Peace 2

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On Silence During Chaos, Part 3: Panic

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Part 1: Personal | Part 2: Political 

You didn’t really think we were going to get through the sociopolitical situation in one post, did you? 

At the end of the previous post, I noted the almost constant pressure to see the current sociopolitical situation as apocalyptic: if we don’t do something now, everything will be ruined! 

A few thoughts about that. 

First, one of the basic rules of detecting and preventing fraud is to resist salespeople who are pressuring you to Act Now!, to get this special deal that won’t be available later. This technique happens in sales flyers for grocery stores; it happens at Wal-Mart; it happens at car lots; it happens when people are trying to lure you into a timeshare, or an investment in gold, or some hot stock, or some dark horse at the track. 

And it’s bogus. People who listen to those salespeople are going to lose their money, or at least they’re going to get less than they paid for. Fear makes for lousy decisions. 

Now, politicians and pundits are salespeople too. And they know, from long experience, that pressure tactics work. As one former advisor to President Obama famously said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” (That was Rahm Emanuel, in 2008.) Sometimes it’s a war; sometimes it’s an economic issue such as inflation or recession. Sometimes it’s an environmental catastrophe, or even just an apparent one, that serves as an opportunity to goose the level of governmental control. But it’s always something. 

So Trump is “a danger to democracy.” Biden’s immigration policy—or lack of one—will eventuate in “the last election of our lifetime.” Gotta do something. And the something you gotta do is vote for our guy, or support our policy. 

And thus has it ever been. Goldwater was going to bring nuclear death to that little girl picking daisies. Johnson was a warmonger, and Humphrey would bring us back to peace. Then Nixon was the warmonger, and McGovern would bring peace. Then Carter was going to destroy the economy. Then Reagan—oh, boy, did they unload on Reagan. “We begin bombing in five minutes!” Clinton. Bush 43 and the “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. Obamacare. Trump the First. Biden and the immigration invasion. And now Trump the Second. 

One of the benefits of living for a while is that you realize that the news never changes. 

And in a day when everybody has a publishing platform, the simplest thing for individual citizens to do is to cooperate by spreading the story or the meme that confirms your bias, that makes the side you want to be on look right and righteous and rigorous. 

And here’s the thing. Most of the people who are doing this have no idea what they’re talking about. They think they’re fighting the good fight, but they can’t possibly be sure, at least not in an informed way. And some of them even post—after having done their “research,” which consists of reading an outlet that they have chosen to trust specifically because it tells them what they have already decided to believe—that their friends should “educate themselves.” 

So given the likelihood that any given political crisis is being overhyped—perhaps by both sides—I would conclude that waiting for a bit and seeing how things go is the better part of wisdom. Most of the predicted catastrophes never happen. 

I have an acquaintance, a Facebook friend, who’s professionally in a position to interact with influential people, including some people whose names you would likely recognize if you follow the news. He’s no fan of Trump. And the other day he posted that the likelihood is that things are going to turn out all right. 

But what if it’s a real crisis? What if we really do need to act immediately? In the previous post I noted the importance of being informed, and cool-headed, in a crisis. That means that even if the current situation is in fact a crisis, and not just a manufactured one, those who are acting out of fear or ignorance—that’s most of them—are unlikely to be of any real help, and in fact are likely to do harm. 

I don’t want to be one of those people. 

If I’m not an expert on tariffs or immigration or law enforcement or military readiness—as, apparently, everyone else on Facebook is—then I’m going to get out of the way and let the people who know what they’re doing take care of the situation. I’m not going to add to the chaos on-scene by shouting uninformed opinions at the people who are actually trying to accomplish something. 

Now, if they need help with Koine Greek, or biblical exegesis, or Christian theology, or online teaching, or experiential learning, or poaching an egg, or roasting a Thanksgiving turkey, I’ll be glad to help. But in the meantime I’ll stay in my corner. 

Next time: about that Christian theology … 

Part 4: Peace 1 | Part 5: Peace 2

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On Silence During Chaos, Part 2: Political 

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Part 1: Personal 

Another factor in my political reticence is the current sociopolitical situation. 

I’ll start with the fact that we have the biggest and most powerful government in the history of the world. That’s a lot of power. And when there’s that much power, a lot of people are going to want a piece of that action. And typically, those people are not potential statesmen; they’re in it for themselves, and they’ll do whatever is necessary to get it. 

Some of them go the route of political office. They run for something achievable—say, city council—and they manage their image carefully, working up through the ranks until they get the Big Prize: US Senate. (I’d suggest that that’s usually more desirable than the Presidency, because it’s more likely to be achievable, and because it has lower visibility; once you’re the President, everybody’s after your job—even the people who say they’re on your side. The Senate consists of 100 people who think they ought to be President instead of the current guy.) 

Some go the route of journalism. They go to journalism school (which, by the way, no longer teaches accuracy in reporting; it teaches advocacy, taking a side and “reporting” in such a way that you influence the public to your position—which is a virtue, because of course you’re right), then work their way up from the local newspaper (if it even exists anymore) or TV newsroom to one in a larger city and then, if possible, to the network. Again, you’re not likely to get the anchor chair—though a home-town girl from Wade Hampton High in Greenville did a few years ago—but you can be the White House correspondent, or national security correspondent, or some other reporter who’s likely to make the national newscast multiple times per week. 

Some go the route of influencers—maybe because they’re rich (we’ve seen a lot of that lately) or because they have expertise in foreign affairs or monetary policy or political campaigns, and they can thereby get the President’s ear. 

The situation is complicated by the fact that in a complex political or policy environment, truth is damaged not only by what the outlet says; it’s damaged too, sometimes even more, by what it doesn’t say. If a network refuses to carry a story because they think it would help the “other side,” they’re leaving the public with a skewed view of reality. I’ve seen the New York Times do that, and I’ve seen Fox News do it; and for those for whom Fox News is too far left, I’ve seen the fervently pro-MAGA outlets do it as well. 

But all of this is about the power. Big government attracts the power-hungry. Those who have the power will do anything to keep it, and those who don’t will do anything to get it. 

In that environment, what will the news, and the news releases, be like? They’ll be telling one side of every story, the side most likely to get the government office, or the corporation, or the journalist, more power. And even those who speak most ostentatiously about putting out “no spin” are spinning. That’s a power grab too. 

Now. In that environment, what’s a consumer to do? 

Well, the standard advice is to hear both sides. But if both sides are skewing, who’s to say that Side 1 + Side 2 = The Truth? I’m reminded of the engineer who, upon hearing a friend say that she used a cheap tire pressure gauge but took the average of three readings, said, “Why do you think the average of three unreliable readings will be more reliable?” 

In practice, then, our short-term sense of the situation is simply not going to be reliable; it’s going to take some time for the truth to come out. 

To use a current example, President Trump says he’s going to use tariffs to negotiate deals with other countries, likely eventuating in what is effectively free trade. His opponents say it won’t work, and that in any case he’s inflating the number of countries who want to negotiate. Now, the only way to know who’s right is to wait and see whether his claim is verified. 

But that raises another problem. 

There’s no time for that! 

This will be the end of the world! 

We need to act now! 

We’ll talk about that next time. 

Part 3: Panic | Part 4: Peace 1 | Part 5: Peace 2

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On Silence During Chaos, Part 1: Personal

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We live in a noisy time. The combination of national polarization, political controversy, and social media—the fact that literally everyone has a public platform now—encourages everyone to have a stake, an opinion, and to express it vociferously, even apocalyptically. 

I don’t say much about politics, at least not publicly. I’ve been asked, by people on both sides of the proverbial aisle, why I don’t say more—why I don’t “take a stand” for MAGA, or against it, or on some other hot-button issue. 

What am I afraid of? Rejection? Losing my job? (That’s funny, since I’m retiring in 2 weeks. But just for the record, I’ve never been afraid of losing my job. I have confronted people up the chain of command—all the way to the top—when I thought that was called for, and I still have my job. :-) ) 

So why don’t I speak up more? That’s a good question, and the answer is multi-faceted, touching on personal history, political philosophy, and theology. I think it would be worthwhile, as an exercise in integrating these and other disciplines, to work through an answer. 

That means that I’m going to be talking about myself for a few posts. I don’t normally do that, either; I’d much rather lay the Word out there and trust the Holy Spirit’s work in believers, and unbelievers, to make it profitable, even in ways I’m not necessarily intending. 

But for better or worse, here goes. 

First, personal history. 

  1. All my life I’ve had a problem with my mouth. My late parents and my older sisters could bear abundant testimony to that, as could any number of teachers, fellow students, former students, and colleagues. I haven’t typically been driven by malice; usually it’s just an attempt to be funny. But I have had enough of shooting off my mouth and then seeing the hurt on the face of someone I cared about. And I see my friends, on the left and on the right, posting hurtful things, often with actual malice aforethought, and I just don’t want any part of it. 

Grace. Mercy. Peace. That’s what I’d like my words to sow. 

  1. Shortly after our two daughters were born, I decided to get certified as an EMT, so I’d know what to do in an emergency. A key part of that training was the importance of surveying the scene: you don’t just rush into a situation (hurry! lives are at stake!!!!) without taking some time to see whether there’s ongoing danger, and if so, where it is. If you don’t do that, you’ll likely become just another person who needs medical attention, another person some other responder is going to have to expend the effort to rescue. Just jumping into an emergency situation isn’t helping anybody. 
  1. A few years later I got certified as a security guard by the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) so that I would be more reliable as a concealed carrier of a firearm. With that certification I was then approved to carry on school and church property. (South Carolina doesn’t allow carrying there without board approval.) Again, a key part of that training is the importance of staying calm in a chaotic situation; if there’s a shooter in a church sanctuary, and everybody’s running in all directions, and there’s loud noise and the smell of gunpowder in the air, you don’t want to be firing wildly in random directions; you want to observe, determine the threat, determine whether you’re in a position to neutralize the threat (from your angle, is there an innocent person in the line of fire? even beyond the target?), and only then take action. You’re responsible for the final location of every bullet that leaves your weapon, and everything it touches along the way.

We’re responsible, too, for every word we speak. Words can do great damage, often even greater damage than bullets can. We will give account to the one who knows all things (Mt 12.36): Jesus himself said that. 

In the current culture, everyone’s encouraged to shoot his mouth off in public forums. Here’s the outrage of the day; what side do you have to be on, based on your vote in the last election? Well, then, assume that position; shoot first, ask questions later. Could the situation be more complicated than it appears at first glance? Who cares? Fire away! 

I see that kind of behavior every day—and yes, on both sides.* 

I’m not gonna have it. 

Next time, we’ll begin looking at the socio-political environment. 

* And no, I’m not engaging in “both-sidesism.” That’s saying, “The other side does this bad thing, so my side can do it too.” That’s not what I’m saying; I’m rejecting them both and refusing to do the bad thing. 

Part 2: Political | Part 3: Panic | Part 4: Peace 1 | Part 5: Peace 2

Photo by Jonathan Harrison on Unsplash

2 Peter, Part 8: Finishing Well 

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 

Since the Day of the Lord is coming, how should we, God’s people, then live? 

One natural inclination would be to take fleshly joy in our deliverance: well, I’m OK, so why should I care? 

The Christian life is not like that. We don’t live for ourselves, and most certainly not for the lusts of the flesh, one of which is comfort and ease. Our perspective, our sense of responsibility, is outward: Jesus said we love God, and we love others. 

How do we manifest those two loves (which, of course, are in perfect harmony) with the certainty of coming judgment and an end to the cosmos as we know it? 

Peter begins with a summary: “holy conversation [lifestyle] and godliness” (2P 3.11). That, of course, is always called for, in any era or circumstance. 

What does that look like in the Last Days, with cosmic judgment possible at any time? 

Well, anticipation, even eagerness, makes sense (2P 3.12). 

Why? 

Because the destruction of the current world—broken by sin, and groaning for deliverance (Ro 8.21-22)—prepares the way for a new cosmos, unbroken, perfectly fruitful, and ready to serve as a home for glorified servants of a great and good God (2P 3.13). 

Peter does not emphasize this point here, but of course he has in mind our need to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. He received that Commission directly from the mouth of the Lord himself (Mt 28.16-20), and he has now devoted his life to carrying out that Commission faithfully, even knowing that at the end he would be bound and carried where he does not want to go (Jn 21.18). Our faithfulness in telling this story is of course part of what Peter urges us toward. 

But he devotes his words here to a slightly different track. 

Live right, he says. Live so as to finish “in peace, without spot, and blameless” (2P 3.14). Don’t get sloppy or inattentive just because the judgment hasn’t happened yet; use the time to advance, to grow, to mature in your salvation, specifically your sanctification (2P 3.15). 

Here Peter calls on the agreement of another apostle, Paul, with these urgings. As we’ve noted, Peter is familiar with Paul’s writings—Paul may already have been martyred by this time—and perhaps collections of his epistles may already be showing up in the churches. They have their dense parts—and as I’ve noted in the series on 1 Peter, so do Peter’s—but they are well worth the effort necessary in reading, understanding, and applying them. 

And so Peter closes with the two principles most heavily emphasized by both himself and Paul: 

  • Pay attention (2P 3.17). Don’t be deceived by false teachers (cf. Co 2). Compare their teachings with the truth (again, both the words of the apostles [cf. 2Th 2.15; 3.4] and the Scripture itself) and cling to the truth. 
  • Pursue sanctification: “grow in grace” (2P 3.18). Live a life of constant growth, empowered by the means of grace and aiming for the character of Jesus Christ (1J 3.2), insofar as is possible for someone who is only human and not also God. 

Peter closes with a benediction. We should not read this, or any benediction, as a mindless formula, like the “Sincerely,” at the end of our letters. (Does anybody write letters anymore?) 

This is a statement of the reason for which we live, for which we were designed to live. Our lives, and indeed all the universe, exist for the explicit purpose of bringing “to him … glory both now and for ever” (2P 3.18). 

There’s no greater joy than finding your designed purpose and fulfilling it. And in the light of coming judgment and new creation, there’s nothing that makes more sense. 

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash

2 Peter, Part 7: The Certainty of the Day of the Lord

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 

As Peter has been discussing God’s judgment of false teachers, he naturally turns to the greatest judgment of all, God’s coming with a final judgment over all the earth. He eventually calls it “the Day of the Lord” (2P 3.10). This term is used 25 times in the prophets, Acts, and the epistles, usually in a sense of coming judgment. In the prophets it may refer to a coming local judgment—say, the Assyrian or Babylonian invasion—but most often it’s speaking of God’s great intervention at the end of days. By the time Peter is writing this epistle, Paul has already discussed it (1Th 5.2ff), and Peter is certainly familiar with that passage (2P 3.15-16). Here it’s a natural follow-on to what he has just said about the false teachers. 

He begins the chapter by warning his readers against following the path of the false teachers; remember, he says, what the prophets (in the Scripture) and the apostles (today) have warned you about (2P 3.2). Here, of course, he’s repeating the two authoritative sources he’s already identified in 2 Peter 1.16-21. 

Here Peter calls the opponents “scoffers” (2P 3.3), calling to mind the OT references to “the ungodly” (Ps 1.4-6) and the frequent references in Proverbs to the “fool.” These are people with hard hearts, who are predisposed to reject God’s word in any form and to call into question anything he says. Here they scoff at any warning of coming judgment, motivated by “their own lusts,” as Peter has already noted in chapter 2. 

Their foolish confidence in mocking the predictions is based on the fact that time has passed since they were given (2P 3.4); of course the prophets and the OT patriarchs are long dead, and though only a minority of NT scholars believe that Peter is here speaking of “the fathers” from the Christian era, many of them have died by the time Peter is writing in the mid to late 60s AD. Stephen has died (Ac 7.59-60); the Apostle James has died (Ac 12.2); “James the Just,” the half-brother of Jesus, and author of the Epistle of James, has likely been thrown from the pinnacle of the Temple by this time as well. 

Mocking God’s warnings on the basis of the passage of time is a really dumb idea. As Peter notes, the record shows that God does keep his promises. Noah’s flood is testimony to that (2P 3.5-6). 

Some years ago I had the opportunity to travel through the Grand Canyon on a six-day rafting trip. As the days passed we were deeper and deeper into the layers of rock, standing as mute—but visible—testimony to God’s judgment, until we reached the Great Unconformity, the abrupt layer of pre-Flood rock. The layers above, which evolutionary geologists say were laid down over millions of years, show folds that must have occurred while those multiple layers were soft. And some of those layers extend from the American Southwest all the way to the British Isles. 

Global flood. God does keep his promises, whether of judgment or anything else. And so another promised judgment, this one by fire, is certain to come (2P 3.7). And the passage of time since that promise means nothing; God is not time-bound as we are, and he has literally all the time in the world (2P 3.8). 

So why does he delay? Well, technically, he’s not delaying; he’s waiting for the pre-determined time. But in the meantime, he is giving those of his people who are not yet his people time to come to him (2P 3.9). The “delay” is evidence of his patience, of his grace. 

But when it comes—when it comes—there will be no doubt what is happening. When no one expects it—like a thief in the night—everything that we know will be destroyed by fire (2P 3.10). The sky, the earth, everything humans have built on it, even the very chemical elements themselves—all of it will be destroyed. 

Promises made, promises kept. 

Those false teachers, with those rock-hard hearts, and all their victims, whom they are using just for their own selfish gratification? Yes, they’d better listen, because judgment is certainly coming, in a time of God’s own choosing. They should not interpret the delay as softness or indecision. 

Now, God’s people are safe from this judgment; we need not fear. But there are still ramifications of its certain coming; there are ways we ought to direct our thinking and behavior in the meantime. We’ll get to those in the next post. 

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash