Archives for January 2021

On Healthy Minds in Troubled Times, Part 3: Selflessness

January 28, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: This Has Happened Before | Part 2: Confidence

In troubled times, “looking out for Number One” is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Just as a threefold cord is not easily broken, so we as believers benefit by facing the certain troubles as a unified body, looking out for and supporting one another. Troubled times are the worst times to be fragmented or to go it alone.

Paul pleads with the Philippian believers to be

of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others (Php 2.2-4 NASB).

This verb “to be of [a] mind” occurs 10 times in this brief letter (Php 1.7; 2.2 [2x], 5; 3.15 [2x], 19; 4.2, 10 [2x]); it’s a major theme. How we think, how we set our attitude, has everything to do with how we fare in this world.

The kind of mind Paul describes here goes against our instincts. When we have problems, we’re inclined to give attention to them, not to the needs of others. But that’s illogical, even if natural. If we concentrate on our own problems, there’s just one person trying to take care of them—and that one person is limited in his creativity and strength. But if he takes that limited strength and creativity and applies it to the problems of others—many others—they will all benefit. And as they reciprocate and turn their attention to helping him with his troubles, he gets the input of exponentially more creativity and strength than he could ever have applied to his concerns by himself.

Paul spends the rest of this chapter giving examples—and he begins with the greatest of all. Christ himself provides the supreme example of selflessness by not clinging to his divine privileges, but adding to his person a genuinely human nature, living among us, and even dying in our place—and dying the most cruel and ignominious death ever conceived.

Because I’ve written elsewhere on this passage, I won’t develop it at length here. But Christ is certainly the ultimate example of selfless service in troubled times. And as we are “in him” (Php 3.9), we are certain to be empowered by him to live as he did (Php 2.13).

There are three more examples that fill out the chapter.

Paul encourages the Philippians to imitate him (Php 2.17-18). This is not an apostle holding himself up as some great one—that would make nonsense of the entire chapter—but a man who has learned to serve, and who counts all his earlier achievements, which are considerable (Php 3.4-6), as rubbish, in order to win Christ and be found in him (Php 3.7-8), inviting his friends to join him in this delightful and joyous exercise. “Come on in!” he shouts, “The water’s fine!”

Another example is Timothy. Amidst a school of fish “looking out for Number One” (Php 2.21), Timothy swims upstream; he “will genuinely be concerned with your welfare” (Php 2.20). When Timothy arrives, the church will do well to follow his example.

But in the meantime, Paul is sending Epaphroditus (Php 2.25). Everything we know about this man is in this verse and one more later in the epistle (Php 4.18). It’s intriguing that he’s named for the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite; his name literally means “On Aphrodite,” a term that gamblers would use as a wish for luck. From that pagan background he came to Christ and is probably a leader in the church at Philippi, who has come to Rome to serve Paul for an extended time and is now returning, carrying this letter.

Selfless service. Rapt attention to what others need, at the expense of your own assets.

This is how you deal with troubled times.

Part 4: Perspective | Part 5: Focus

Photo by André Ventura on Unsplash

On Healthy Minds in Troubled Times, Part 2: Confidence

January 25, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: This Has Happened Before

As we noted in the previous post, Paul writes his letter to the Philippian church from house arrest in Rome, probably toward the end of the two years he was confined there. And that two-year period follows another two-year stint in confinement in Caesarea, all on the same false charge.

Four years. Four years of sitting and waiting for justice—punctuated by a shipwreck in the middle.

How’s your day going?

We would expect Paul to do some complaining in this letter—life’s not fair; what’s going to happen to me now; nobody loves me; so this is the thanks I get. “Scary!”

Nope.

Right out of the gate Paul exudes confidence.

He offers “grace” (the Greek greeting) and “peace” (the Jewish greeting) to this little church, followed immediately by a word of thanksgiving (Php 1.2-3).
He tells them he prays for them with “joy” (Php 1.4) because they are sharing in his experiences—as will become clear later, with financial as well as other support (Php 4.18). Turns out it’s simply not true that “nobody loves me.”
He’s confident that God will finish the work he has started (Php 1.6).

Ah. There, my friend, is the basis of his confidence in troubled and trying times.

There is a God in heaven, and he is sovereignly and certainly working his plan.

Paul’s “trouble with the law” has advanced his calling, the spread of the gospel (Php 1.12). You see, he hasn’t just been sitting around for four years wishing he could be on the road founding churches. At least for the two years of Roman house arrest, he’s been tended by Roman guards, probably in 6-hour shifts, perhaps even chained to them. Four soldiers a day, a captive audience. Chained or not, they can’t leave; Paul is their military post. And apparently, some of them have listened to what their prisoner said; the “whole imperial guard” (Php 1.13) knows that he’s a prisoner for the cause of Christ. And they’re not just gossiping about the interesting prisoner; later in the same letter Paul sends greetings from “saints … of Caesar’s household” (Php 4.22). Caesar’s staff, his guard, maybe even his family include believers. It’s not likely Paul could have accomplished that by traipsing around the empire planting churches.
Fellow believers, Paul says, are emboldened by his example and are speaking the word without fear (Php 1.14). Scores, perhaps hundreds, of believers are more than making up for the loss of Paul’s public voice. Where there was one voice, there is now a throng. The word goes forth with more volume, more power, than it had while Paul was free.
Some people are even spreading the word in an attempt to supplant the now absent authority of the apostle (Php 1.15-17). Paul, not jealous for his personal position, simply rejoices that the word is going forth (Php 1.18).
Paul thinks it’s likely that he’s going to win his appeal and gain release to preach again (Php 1.19). (I’m pretty sure he’s right—there’s good indication in the Pastoral Epistles that Paul engaged in travels not recorded in Acts, and there’s a very strong early-church tradition that he went to Spain.)
But whether he wins or loses his case, Christ is exalted, and that’s been the real goal all along (Php 1.20).

Since God’s plan will be accomplished, and since the “worst” that can happen—death—is actually victory, what’s the reason for things to be “Scary!”?

But things look so … dark. We might face opposition, or deprivation, or suffering, or persecution.

Indeed. On the day Christ commissioned Saul as apostle to the Gentiles, he told him he would suffer. He told Ananias, the believer who healed Saul of his heaven-sent blindness,

“Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Ac 9.15-16).

And Saul, now Paul the apostle, tells the believers in the little church at Philippi that this is the common fate—no, the “privilege”—of all believers (Php 1.29). Persecution means you’re confronting successfully the lostness of the world and contrasting it with the grace and hope that is in Christ. It means you’re doing it right.

Confidence. Not fear.

Go, in this thy might.

Part 3: Selflessness | Part 4: Perspective | Part 5: Focus

Photo by André Ventura on Unsplash

On Healthy Minds in Troubled Times, Part 1: This Has Happened Before

January 21, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

One common human characteristic is to think that whatever you’re facing is new. One benefit of being an old codger like me is that 66 years is long enough to realize that that just ain’t so. Even within a single lifetime, history tends to run in cycles—I’ve written about that before—and Solomon has famously told us that there’s nothing new under the sun (Ec 1.9).

What the church is facing these days is not new or even unusual; in fact, it’s pretty tame by historical standards. The American church in particular has had an extraordinary run of good times, of perhaps unprecedented opportunity to “lead a quiet and peaceable life” (1Ti 2.2) for literally centuries. While anything could happen, even the most pessimistic and nightmarish predictions that I hear from the prophets of doom don’t come close to what the church experienced in its first two centuries, or during the Inquisition, or even under Communist rule in the last century.

In the first century, even before Emperor Nero went cuckoo for cocoa puffs and blamed the fire in Rome on the Christians, there was violent opposition to the practitioners of The Way. Preaching the resurrection of Messiah—or anything else about him—was ruled illegal within a few days of its occurrence (Ac 4.18). Within a year or so the first preacher was violently killed by a mob (Ac 7.54-60), with the approval of the local government (Ac 8.1; 26.10). A decade later the first apostle was executed by Judea’s puppet “king,” Herod Agrippa I (Ac 12.1-2). And a little more than a decade after that, Paul returns to Jerusalem only to be attacked by a mob—in the very Temple precincts!—under the demonstrably false charge that he had brought a Gentile into the Court of the Women (Ac 21.27ff). He is jailed for more than two years, even though the Roman arresting officer believes him innocent (Ac 23.29), just on the off chance that the governor can squeeze a bribe out of him (Ac 24.26). To thwart an assassination conspiracy, Paul appeals to Caesar, gaining safe passage to Rome, where he waits under house arrest for another two years (Ac 28.30).

Keep in mind that Paul has been commissioned by the risen and ascended Christ himself as the apostle (“sent one”) to the Gentiles, a task that requires a lot of traveling around and talking to people, as Acts 13-21 make abundantly clear. Spending four years in jail for something you didn’t do—indeed, for a charge that every official along the way has pronounced unfounded (e.g. Ac 25.13-20)—puts a pretty significant crimp in your life’s calling.

Toward the end of those two years renting a house in Rome, waiting for his appeal to be heard, Paul writes a letter to the first church he founded in Europe, the one at Philippi, over in Macedonia (northern Greece). He wants to thank them for a generous gift they’d sent him (Php 4.15ff) and explain what’s been happening with one of their members, Epaphroditus, who’s been with him in Rome for some time (Php 2.25).

In the letter he takes the opportunity to catch them up on events in Rome, and to encourage them to stay faithful to Christ even though times are tough.

As I’ve been studying this epistle lately, it has occurred to me that its major points form a pretty good list of how we should react to troubled times—how we should think, how we should respond, how we should proceed.

It’s also occurred to me that hardly any Christians I know—at least, the ones I know who are making the most noise—are putting the list to work. Maybe it would do us all good to run the list through our heads and do a little introspection and self-evaluation.

Can’t hurt, right?

We’ll get started in the next post.

Part 2: Confidence | Part 3: Selflessness | Part 4: Perspective | Part 5: Focus

Photo by André Ventura on Unsplash

On Living by the Loopholes

January 18, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

One of the most famous stories in the Bible didn’t actually happen—it’s a parable—but like all of Jesus’ teaching, it shows remarkable insight into the way people think. And it reminds us that not much about us has changed since he walked the earth. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

I’m speaking of the parable of the Good Samaritan. We all know the story.

There’s a man walking from Jerusalem to Jericho. That’s about 14 miles as the crow flies (and pedestrians don’t), down a steep and winding road through rugged, rocky, outcropped desert—what American Westerners would call Badlands. In the other direction, of course, it’s steeply uphill, a feature that in those days encouraged brigands. You hide behind a rock, and you wait for a lone (foolish) exhausted traveler to struggle pantingly by, and you make short work of him.

And so, where the robber meets the road, someone does that to this guy, leaving him shekel-less and beaten by the side of the road. A profitable day’s work.

And along comes a priest, somebody who really ought to care—but he doesn’t. He leaves the man helpless and dying in mid-desert under a hot sun. In essence, he kills him in his heart by leaving him to what can only be death.

Along comes a Levite, another full-time Jewish worker, another one who Ought to Care. And he doesn’t either.

Then comes the Samaritan.

This story doesn’t hit us the way it would have hit Jesus’ hearers, because we don’t revulse at the word. Maybe we should reset the story in our own culture.

Along comes a radicalized Muslim. A communist-sympathizing BLM agitator. An Antifa rioter.

Nancy Pelosi. Kamala Harris. AOC.

A Democrat.

You know, somebody like that.

And he defies all expectations. He is moved by what he sees, and he acts to help the man, providing first aid, taking him to medical care, paying his costs because he’s a robbery victim and has no means—and then he just leaves, not seeking anything in return.

He’s a friend—from the victim’s perspective, an invisible, anonymous stranger, but a friend.

You may be surprised to learn that my main point today isn’t this convicting story—though there’s plenty here for all of us to be convicted about.

My point, as reflected in the title above, is what happens before Jesus tells the story.

A lawyer—that is, a specialist in the Torah, the Law of Moses—asks Jesus what he needs to do to gain eternal life (Lk 10.25). Jesus says essentially, “What do you think?” The questioner dips into his area of expertise and delivers a perfect summary of the Mosaic Law—in fact, the same summary that Jesus Himself delivers elsewhere: love God, and love your neighbor (Mt 22.34-40). Jesus says, “You’re right; do that.”

And then the man, the lawyer, looks for a loophole: “Um, just how, exactly, would you define the word neighbor?” It depends, you see, on what the meaning of the word is is.

And now Jesus tells the story.

And he chooses as the protagonist precisely the person that every one of his hearers would have said is most certainly not his neighbor.

What’s the point?

Who is my neighbor?

It’s anyone who needs my help.

Anyone.

Most especially the surprising ones. The Others. The enemies.

In 2004 Vermont Governor Howard Dean was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. At a campaign event a voter chided Dean for speaking so harshly about his neighbor, President Bush. Dean replied, “George Bush is not my neighbor,” thereby nicely illustrating the very human tendency Jesus was combating with the parable.

We’re all for ethics, all for kindness, all for grace, when we’re the potential victim. But when grace is called for from us, we want to live by the loopholes. In this instance, you see, it’s different.

No. It’s not.

How different would our world be today, do you suppose, if Christ’s ambassadors represented him with the kind of grace that surprises and shocks precisely those who hate them? What if the behavior of Christians was actually … surprising? What if it didn’t look precisely like the behavior of everyone else on the battlefield?

What if?

Photo credit: The Good Samaritan, by Jacob Jordaens, c. 1616 – si.wsj.net, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19655930

On Sloth

January 14, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Since my previous post was on doing less and thereby getting enough sleep, I suppose I should balance it to keep folks out of the ditch on the other side of the road.

Life is about stewardship. We’re given abilities and responsibilities by the Lord’s providence, and he holds us accountable for how diligently we carry out those tasks. My assumption in the previous post was that we do better when we have enough sleep; I’ve learned that from long experience, and so, I suspect, have you. Sleeping, then, is a stewardship responsibility, and we should adjust our commitments to allow for enough of it.

But rest and recuperation are not laziness, and the same principle of stewardship is no call for us to lie around doing as little as possible; it calls for us to use our waking hours, which are limited, to the best and most efficient purpose. When we wake up, we should get going—since we’ve gotten enough sleep—and use the day wisely. Maybe that means taking care of other people—little ones, perhaps, or disabled ones—or producing things—shoes or artwork or widgets. Maybe it’s playing a part in a process, through meetings or paperwork or organization. Your mind’s well rested, and you jump in and give it all you’ve got.

Part of stewardship, I suppose, is doing your best to devote yourself to tasks that you’re good at. Some people absolutely thrive on an assembly line; others would go insane working any kind of a regular schedule. Different folks, different strokes. God made us all different, and we really should celebrate all kinds of diversity. (And no, that phrase is not redundant.)

Not everybody can get a job that’s a good match for his skills. Sometimes you just have to take the job you can get. How do you steward that? By diligence, of course—being on time, doing what you’re told, working hard (and if you do those three things, you’re ahead of 90% of the workforce, it seems). By learning all you can about your responsibilities, to make up for lack of natural ability. By finding your joy in God’s empowerment to do well the things that don’t come naturally to you.

Over the years I’ve worked a lot of different jobs—custodial, food service, retail, security, facilities management, writing, publishing (with some marketing and sales along the way), and now teaching. I feel most qualified for what I’m doing now—for which I’m grateful—but I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed all the jobs I’ve had, and I’ve benefited from all of them beyond just the paycheck.

Our culture has come to view work as something you do to pay for the stuff you really want to do—whether it’s partying on the weekends, or summer vacations, or retirement. That’s a shame. We’re much healthier psychologically when we’re given to a mission, especially one that’s bigger than we are. We’re designed to spend our time making a difference, in ways great and small.

An even worse trend in our culture is to come home from work, fall onto the couch, and watch entertainment for the rest of the night. We’ve conditioned ourselves to sit passively for hours on end, even to the point where we’ll give up sleep for it. How profoundly unhealthy, both physically and spiritually.

When she was in early elementary school, one of my daughters observed that if she watched TV for a long time, she felt sad—she was happier when she was up and about and accomplishing things (though I don’t think she knew the word accomplishing at the time).

She was right; I’m glad she learned that lesson so young.

We’re made to accomplish things—different things, in different ways, certainly, but accomplishments all.

If you haven’t though about that lately, why not sit yourself down and spend a little time thinking about what you’re good at (it’s probably the same as what you love) and how you can invest in that activity for the good of others?

Photo by Stephen Tafra on Unsplash

On Sleep

January 11, 2021 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Some years ago I decided to adopt a lifestyle that prioritized getting enough sleep. Decades later, I’m more confident every day that it was the right choice.

When you’re a kid, staying up late is an adventure, a chance to live as the grown-ups do. Most parents have entertained themselves by occasionally telling a child that tonight he can stay up as late as he wants, and then watching him drop off to sleep on the couch not long after his regular bedtime.

Eventually, we get old enough to succeed at staying up late. Most high-schoolers will attend a school-sponsored event that lasts all night, perhaps a lock-in with basketball in the school gym and lots of those snacks that will kill you when you’re older. I can clearly recall coming home from one of those around 6 or 7 am and walking wordlessly past my waiting Mom and straight to bed.

In college, and especially grad school, all-nighters are a standard tactic. I took one course in seminary that required a long, detailed expository sermon outline every Friday, and many students had a regular ritual where they’d each check out the maximum allowed number of books from the library and gather in someone’s apartment to pool their resources and clatter away at their typewriters all night long. Sometimes the all-nighters were a consequence of poor time management during the day, but not always. I’ve had students, both undergrad and graduate, who were married, with kids, working full-time jobs and carrying a full academic load, and I don’t know how they did it.

Once we enter into our post-school life, the old habits die hard. Those of us with 8-to-5 jobs still feel like staying up until midnight just because that’s what we do. When children come along, there’s the sleep deprivation that comes from overnight feeding and miscellaneous wakefulness. When that phase of life is over, we stay up to stream TV or movies or lounge through social media.

And we’re tired. We need an alarm clock—maybe several alarm clocks—to get up, and then coffee, and during the workday more coffee, and dozing through those after-lunch meetings.

I decided that that life wasn’t for me.

These days I’m usually in bed by 10 and up by 6, which gives me time in the morning for devotions and ablutions and some time in the office to sort out priorities for the day ahead. That gives me 8 hours a night, and after doing that for a while I find I don’t need an alarm clock, and the fact that I can’t use caffeine doesn’t interfere with my ability to meet my responsibilities. I wake up awake.

I referred to this approach as a “lifestyle.” By that I mean that it involves more than just going to bed earlier. If you want to go to bed earlier, there are some other things that have to happen.

Most obviously, I’ve found that I need to get less busy. And that means taking on fewer responsibilities.

Now, some responsibilities are mandated.

I’m a husband, and I need to spend time with my wife.
I’m a father, and even though my children are now grown and out of the house, I need to interact with them.
I have a job, and the responsibilities there are significant. My classes meet at a certain time, on certain days, and I have to be there, and I have to have something prepared. I’ve seen to it that my job responsibilities can be completed in the normal 40-hour work week, and beyond that I turn down extra responsibilities if I can. I rarely if ever take work home.
Church is not optional. I’m faithful there, and I do more than just attend, but I don’t offer to help with everything. I try to do one thing well, rather than a little bit of everything.

I know that for some people this studied approach to life is simply not possible. Financial or medical or family responsibilities take all the time you have. I experienced that when I was my father’s caregiver for the last 5+ years of his life. I can tell you that those exhausting seasons are temporary.

But for those of you streaming entire seasons of zombies at night and then living as zombies through the day, there’s a better set of priorities.

Photo by Cris Saur on Unsplash

On Aspirations in the New Year

January 7, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In my previous post I noted the importance of paying attention to the little opportunities for compromise that our culture routinely sets before us. As Solomon noted, even the little foxes can plunder the vines (SS 2.15).

I’d like to extend that thought to the positive side.

With the New Year, most of us—for completely illogical reasons, since calendrically speaking there’s nothing particularly historically significant about the annual day we call “January 1”—give some thought to turning over a page of self-improvement, sometimes including resolutions for change in the new year.

We ought to do that continuously, but whatever. :-)

I recently came across an essay by the old Keswick pastor and devotional writer F. B. Meyer (incidentally, the man who introduced D. L. Moody to Great Britain), called “The Common Task,” that we might consider as we seek self-improvement.

Meyer notes that lots of people are convinced—and some of them rightly—that their station in life is beneath their abilities—as he put it, that one’s “life afford[s] no outlet for the adequate exercise of his powers.” He offers some mollifying and sharpening thoughts to those in that situation.

I should note that Meyer is clearly not suggesting apathy or lack of aspiration; his biography demonstrates the kind of productivity that evidences devotion, effort, and energy. By all means, take a survey of your gifts and abilities, and seek ways to steward them for the greatest good in the world.

Be all that you can be.

But most of us know that we can aspire to things that we will never reach. Only 45 people in history have ever been POTUS; millions of others haven’t, but not for lack of thinking about it. You’re probably not going to be a star athlete, and I’m most certainly never going to be a fighter pilot, thanks to a bum ear—and the grace of God.

What do you do with the Now, even as you aspire to the Then?

Meyer offers several observations, from which I’ve selected and reworded for the current century.

God has a plan for you, and it will happen. God is attentive to your situation, committed to your fulfillment, and able to bring it to pass. You are where and what you are by his benevolent plan, which includes an eternal future.
No matter what your circumstances are right now, you can fulfill your most important goal—Christlikeness—in the midst of them. In Meyer’s words, “We ought … to be very careful how we fulfill the common tasks of daily life. We are making the character in which we have to spend eternity.”
Doing anything well—even trivial things—makes a difference.
- The excellence you develop prepares you for doing greater things later. “You cannot be brave in a crisis if you are habitually a coward. You cannot be generous with a fortune if you are a miser with a limited income.”
- The way you handle small responsibilities is evidence of who you truly are. And God notices.

“There are great tasks to be fulfilled in eternity: angels to be judged; cities to be ruled; perhaps worlds to be evangelized. For these, suitable agents will be required: those who can rule, because they have served; those who can command, because they have obeyed; those who can save others, because they never saved themselves. Perhaps even now, our Heavenly Father is engaged in seeking those among us who can fill these posts. And he is seeking them, not amongst such as are filling high positions in the eyes of men, but in the ranks of such as are treading the trivial round and fulfilling the common task.”

In this New Year,

aspire;
plan;
steward your abilities;
and serve, with diligence and energy, wherever the Master places you.

Happy new year.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

On Persecution, Revised

January 4, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Just over two years ago I wrote a couple of posts on the persecution of Christians. I said then, and I’ve thought for a long time, that for American Christians to speak of being “persecuted” was unbecoming. Americans haven’t suffered anything close to what saints in history have—read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs sometime—and there are plenty of Christians on the planet today who are suffering things that Americans can’t even imagine. Numerous times I’ve said something to the effect that “If you want to talk about suffering, I can take you places and show you suffering. You are not suffering. Stop whining; it’s a flesh wound.” Sticks and stones, and all that.

Yeah, I’ve got that whole bedside manner thing down just fine. Mr. Sympathy.

My thinking on this issue is changing.

First, because lack of sympathy is just wrong, because it’s not Christlike. There’s certainly a place for encouraging fellow believers to get back into the fight (Ep 6.10-18; 2Ti 2.3-4), but words—my words—should be filled with grace. Regardless of the issue being addressed, slapping people around is just uncalled for.

Well, maybe not completely regardless. TV “evangelist” shysters and child sexual abusers deserve whatever they get.

But that’s off the point here. :-)

Sympathy. Words of grace. Needed.

There’s a second, issue-related reason my thinking is changing. One of the books I’ve read over this longest-ever Christmas break is Paul Grimmond’s Suffering Well, from Matthias Media, an Australian publisher perhaps best known for its “Two Ways to Live” tract.

Grimmond has given me a lot to think about. He’s done the hard work of gathering and thinking carefully about pretty much all the biblical data on suffering. He’s not the first to have done that, but he has pointed out something that I’ve never noticed before.

On the question of persecution, which is just one type of suffering, Grimmond notes (in his Chapter 6) that the biblical passages on persecution focus more on verbal and attitudinal than physical assault—the very kinds of things that my thinking had been discounting.

Jesus emphasizes verbal abuse in the Beatitudes (Mt 5.11-12) and in his later teaching (Mt 10.24-25; Mk 8.34-38). Grimmond notes, “Jesus knew from the beginning that his followers would struggle as much with what we might now call mental and emotional abuse as they would with physical abuse.”
Paul does the same in Php 1.27-30; 1Th 1.4-7; 2Co 4.16-18.
As does Peter, in 1P 4.12-14.

Grimmond continues, “The great danger for Christians living in the West is not physical death at the hands of persecutors, but the slow, spiritual death of a thousand tiny compromises crouched at our door, waiting to devour our hearts. … At the moment we need it most, we have let go of a robust theology of belonging to Christ and suffering for him. … As a result, we fail to teach each other to live without shame in the face of the more subtle pressures in our culture.”

I’d recommend that you buy the book and read it thoughtfully.

What does the biblical emphasis mean to us in these days?

Persecution comes with the territory. It’s an unavoidable consequence of following Christ publicly. Don’t be surprised, and don’t assume that God’s not watching.
Lots of persecution comes in subtle forms, what Grimmond calls “a thousand tiny compromises.” We need to pay attention and live thoughtfully—or as Paul puts it, “walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise” (Ep 5.15).
Verbal abuse and exclusion offer opportunities to represent Christ well by displaying calmness under pressure and grace toward the adversaries, who genuinely think that they’re doing the right thing (Jn 16.2). When the whole world is reactionary, easily offended, and chaotic, grace stands out like a meteor trail in the night.
Every opportunity for compromise gives us a chance to exercise our spiritual muscles and thereby get stronger. It’s a joy to run up the stairs two at a time after years of getting winded at every exertion.

May I encourage you—graciously and sympathetically—to welcome these little oppositions without seeking them, and to use them calmly and graciously as opportunities to be more like your Master?

Happy new year.

Photo by James on Unsplash