Archives for February 2021

On Certsitude, Part 2: “Well, Actually, You Are Both Right. Kinda.”

February 25, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

I’m meditating on the fact that I repeatedly see discussions on social media where my friends are taking directly opposing positions, yet I find that they’re both making legitimate points, ones worth considering. In a sense, they’re both right, even though their positions logically can’t both be true.

The Bible gives us reason not to be surprised by this.

According to the Scripture, humans are complicated; specifically, they’re characterized by a nature that’s in tension with itself.

On the one hand, we’re created in the image of God (Gn 1.26-27). There’s considerable discussion about what that means precisely, but most would agree that it includes the abilities to think, feel, and decide, as well as an innate sense of right and wrong, and the ability to rule, to take dominion over the created world in various ways. We have the ability to seek truth and to discover it.

On the other hand, we’ve been damaged by our sin, damaged in every corner of our being (Ro 3.23). Our thinker is busted and can’t be trusted; our feelings may misguide us; our decisions are not always based in truth.

We’ve all experienced this bifurcation; we want to do one thing—say, be kind to our extremely irritating neighbor—and we disappoint ourselves by snapping back at an unusually irritating remark from him. Even the Apostle Paul described this ongoing struggle in his own life (Ro 7.7ff): he wants to do one thing, but he does the other in spite of his good intentions.

Even more simply, we should expect that all of us are going to be right about some things and wrong about others. Nobody’s right all the time, and nobody’s wrong all the time, either.

But in public discussions we act as though that simple principle isn’t true. The other party’s guy is unremittingly and irredeemably evil, and I won’t give him an ounce of credit or an inch of slack. My party’s guy is unremittingly good, and everything he does can be justified. But this approach, based in utter falsehood, cannot bring good results.

I remember when this point was first driven home forcefully to me.

In 1983 Congress passed a federal statute making Martin Luther King’s birthday a federal holiday. Forty years later we don’t typically see that as controversial, but in those days the debate was heated. Opponents of the bill argued that King was characterized by low moral character; supporters argued that his accomplishments outweighed any imperfections. (I’m simplifying here.)

During the Senate debate, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), an opponent of the bill, argued against the position of Sen Ted Kennedy (D-MA) by saying, “Senator Kennedy’s argument is not with the Senator from North Carolina. His argument is with his dead brother who was President and his dead brother who was Attorney General.”

Yikes.

I’m politically conservative; I believe in limited government and personal responsibility and a bunch of other ideas espoused by Russell Kirk and Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek and, yes, Jesse Helms.

But that outburst is just inexcusable.

And I’m not going to be forced, because someone agrees with me on philosophical ideas that I hold dear and deeply, to justify things he does that are just plain wrong.

Coming back to the present. The fact that Rush Limbaugh held some views that I also hold doesn’t mean that he’s exempt from the biblical command to “be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you” (Ep 4.32) or to “let your speech be always with grace” (Co 4.6). On the other hand, the fact that he intentionally made people angry doesn’t mean that a person can’t appreciate the contribution he made to popularizing conservative philosophies like limited government or personal responsibility.

The fact that Ravi Zacharias was a moral monster does not mean that his apologetic arguments were invalid. But the fact that his arguments are helpful doesn’t mean that we minimize the horror of the damage he has done to women who didn’t encourage his reprobate behavior—or that people in position to know should have let him get away with that nonsense in the first place.

In short, we need to listen to one another rather than simply arguing. We need to recognize when people we disagree with are right, and we need to learn from them, even if we’ll never arrive at all their conclusions.

That’s sensible. It’s normal. It’s healthy.

It’s the only way we can have a society worth living in.

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

On Certsitude, Part 1: “You’re Both Right!”

February 22, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Yeah, I meant to spell it that way, even though Mr. Gates puts a squiggly red line under it.

Almost 60 years ago now, Certs produced a TV commercial featuring identical twin sisters arguing over whether Certs was “a candy mint” or “a breath mint,” only to be interrupted by the omniscient announcer inserting, “Stop! You’re both right!” and then pontificating that Certs is “two, two, two mints in one!”

If it’s more important that a commercial be memorable than artful, this was one of the great ones, because the other day it sprang fully formed from the murky mists of my memory.

I’ve commented before on one of the pre-eminent features of our culture, The Outrage of the Day—something that calls to mind Orwell’s “two-minute hate.” Over the past few weeks, we’ve witnessed a mob invasion of the US Capitol, a disputed certification of votes, and an inauguration; an explosion of sewage from the life of Ravi Zacharias; a significant weather event across the nation, but especially noticeable in Texas, from which one of its senators escaped briefly to sunny Cancun; the death of the World’s Most Controversial Celebrity; and a bunch of highly controversial executive orders, which, despite the ease with which an incoming president can spay and neuter the previous set, seem to be the most popular way of governing in a democratic republic with a largely incompetent, ineffective, and self-absorbed legislature.

There—did I leave anything out?

There’s a lot we could say about the social commentary on all this—

The psychological phenomenon of confirmation bias, in which we believe what we want to and explain away or ignore what we don’t;
The long-lost art/science of evaluating the credibility and reliability of sources;
The weird way everybody suddenly becomes an expert on whatever topic is currently under discussion;
The compulsive need to comment publicly on matters we had no interest in yesterday.

Feel free to add to the list.

I’d like to give some attention here to something I noticed just the other day, on a couple of unrelated issues:

Even my commenting friends who are asserting diametrically opposed positions have something true and useful to say.

It’s counterintuitive. They’re saying opposite things, and yet they’re both right, in at least some sense.

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I’ve ruled out a couple of facile explanatory possibilities:

I’m intellectually infantile, and easily convinced by flagrant rhetorical fallacies, consequently agreeing with whoever was the last person to opine. I got good grades in school—punctuated by the occasional down-spike typically as the result of character failure rather than lack of ability—but there were always kids in my classes who were smarter than I was—I wasn’t the valedictorian in my small high-school class of 27. And these days I regularly have students who are demonstrably smarter than I am, though I try not to tell them that. :-) And in any case, I’ve learned over the years that academic smarts are not the most important indicator of success in life, and in fact are sometimes inversely proportional to that success. At any rate, I used to teach rhetorical fallacies to college freshmen, and I draw on that teaching all the time. Since I often recognize rhetorical fallacies in the social commentary today, I’m not inclined to think I’m falling for them in the case at hand.
I’m reading arguments from my friends, and I like my friends, and I’m subconsciously trying to justify friends who disagree with one another; I’m a peacemaker. Well, I don’t buy that either, since I haven’t noticed a strong tendency to be a peacemaker in days past. :-) I’ve noticed when other friends are wrong, so I’m inclined to think that I’d notice in this case as well.
I’m getting soft on moral absolutes, turning into a mealy-mouthed relativist. I don’t think so; feel free to ask my friends if I show any tendency in that direction.

So I’ve been meditating on this for a few days. Next time I’ll lay out a biblical and theological basis for the phenomenon I’ve described, and I’ll draw some conclusions and make an application or two.

Part 2

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

On Cultural Understanding, Part 2: The United States

February 18, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The World

For all of America’s geographical isolation and reputation for cultural closed-mindedness, I’d suggest that the US has much more cultural diversity than many people realize—diversity from which we all can gain the same benefits enjoyed by multicultural societies in the rest of the world.

I spent the first half my youth in the Pacific Northwest, and the second half in greater Boston. (And when I say “half,” I’m being precise; we headed east 3 days after my 10th birthday.)

At that tender age I was given the pronounced privilege of glimpsing a sample of the cultural diversity of my own country.

The American West is still driven by its frontier past, which includes ranching (“cowboy,” if you will) culture: you herd animals, not people. You don’t tell people what to do; you show them a more efficient way—by example—and you leave them to make the free individual choice to adopt it. Discovery learning at its best.

My Dad, born on the frontier in 1918, always groused at the stanchions and cords set up to direct large crowds through long lines. “Sheep,” he would mutter.

Westerners are more likely to stop and help somebody who’s stranded on the highway. It’s big country out here, and we look out for one another. In many ways this thinking is similar to the hospitality culture of the Ancient (and modern) Near East.

Moving to Boston was an experience. New England is older than the PNW—Washington had been a state for only 80 years when I lived there—and considerably more set in its ways. (The phrase “Boston Brahmin” means something.) People are more taciturn, less likely to run on about their opinions or to listen to yours. My public schools in Newton were considerably more liberal politically than those in the hard-scrabble desert farmland of Eastern Washington. I had a lot to learn.

(An aside—of course we’re in danger of stereotyping here. But there are real and significant distinctions between these cultures, observed and catalogued by serious sociologists.)

I left Boston for college in the South when I was 17 and moved there permanently, as it turned out, at age 27 after my graduate work. Now, in my sixties, I’ve spent nearly 3/4 of my life in the American South. This is a region that, frankly, is held in low esteem by much of the rest of the country, often the target of stereotypes and ridicule, as well as a certain level of distrust that is historically well-founded.

But there are lots of things I like about the region:

Barbecue. And to my friends in California, bless your hearts, you’re not “barbecuing”; you’re grilling. It ain’t barbecue unless you’re usin’ wood and takin’ more than 8 hours.
The way Southerners soften their insults with “bless your heart.”
Biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast.
Calling other adults “Sir” and “Ma’am,” even when they’re younger than you.
Dinner on the grounds. And persimmon pudding. Preferably simultaneously.
The good people in mill towns like Poe and Zoar and Lockhart. (RIP, Eunice Loudermilk.)
Country roads slicing through the kudzu.
The way everything’s sweeter here–cornbread and potato salad and iced tea.
Tommy’s Country Ham House, which is closing due to Tommy’s imminent retirement, an announcement that has us all reeling.

I am blessed for having lived in multiple regions. It’s helped me realize that despite our differences, we are all more alike than we think–that there really is more that unites us than that divides us. That reaching across regional boundaries and disbelieving stereotypes is good for the soul. And for the country. And that as polarized as we are in this country, “e pluribus unum” really is possible. But it starts with us, one at a time.

Our leaders, and our journalists, and social media are united in their efforts to keep us ginned up, angry and hostile toward the “other side.” Don’t buy it. You’re in the image of God; you’re not a sheep. Think for yourself. And reach across the unbreachable boundary.

You won’t be sorry.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

On Cultural Understanding, Part 1: The World

February 15, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

I’d like to recall and expand on something I posted on Facebook on 9/4/16.

I’ve been privileged over the years to do a fair amount of international travel. I’ve taught in India, China, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, Mexico, and in 3 of the 4 major regions of Africa (East, West, and Southern). One of the keys to effective teaching anywhere on the planet is to understand something about the culture of your students; it affects how they think and thus how they learn.

Teaching in China was particularly educational for me. Because the Chinese language (I’m thinking specifically of Mandarin, in which I’ve had most of my experience) has to be memorized—you can’t know how to pronounce or define a character just by looking at it—much of Chinese education is based on memorization as well. The teacher lectures, the students take copious notes and memorize them, and nobody asks any questions. (I’m stereotyping just a bit.) Teachers are highly respected, and they must not be challenged. If a teacher asks a student a question, the assumption is that he thinks the student is not paying attention and wants to shame him.

You can imagine how a highly interactive, collaborative, “discovery” learning experience would be perceived in that culture.

In Africa, the British educational tradition, in which I’ve worked almost exclusively there, has a similar approach—stand and recite.

Now, it’s really important for the teacher to be aware of and accommodate those features if he’s going to keep the door of communication open with his students.

Which brings us to the main obstacle I experienced—being an American.

Americans are separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans. That means they don’t get overseas much.

Yes, it’s a lot easier these days than it used to be, but it’s still pretty expensive, and we don’t pop over to France as easily as Germans can and do. (My trips were paid for primarily by donations.) A great many Americans have never been outside their own country. (Some Americans have never been outside Brooklyn. :-) )

That fact has consequences. Most Americans have direct acquaintance with only American cultural standards and are fluent only in English. And that has led many Americans into a sort of cultural arrogance born, ironically, of ignorance. They just don’t know that in China, you’d better not eat everything on your plate, and that in Muslim-influenced countries, you’d better not give or receive anything with your left hand. It’s common overseas for Americans to be stereotyped as loud, obnoxious, inconsiderate, impatient, and arrogant—and the stereotypes are based in actual examples and experiences. The phrase “the ugly American” didn’t arise out of nowhere.

“You don’t speak English?! What are you, stupid?! Can you get me somebody who can actually help me?!”—to which the most logical response, I suppose, should be, “You don’t speak the local language? What are you, stupid?”

Unlike Americans, isolated between their oceanic buffers, most of the rest of the world lives close to, and even in the midst of, multiple diverse cultures with which they routinely interact and in which they routinely operate. Speaking multiple languages fluently is the rule rather than the exception; many of my African friends speak 4 to 8 languages and think that’s nothing unusual. Many of my American friends would be astonished at how much cultural diversity there is across the African continent (don’t even get me started on “the African jungle”)—or even within the one small country of Ghana, which has well over 50 tribal languages and whose Muslim Upper West Region is far more distinct from the largely “Christian” Greater Accra District in the South than the American South is from the West Coast or New England.

When you operate in a culturally diverse area, you accrue a lot of advantages—

Multilingualism
Greater cultural understanding
Greater ability to read the people you interact with
Openness to better ways of doing things
Humility—sometimes :-)

I may sound as though I’m being pretty hard on Americans. That’s not how I think at all. First, I am an American, and I love my mother country, flaws and all. Second, I recognize that my country’s geographical isolation is a function of topography, which itself is a result of divine providence, for which I have a profound respect and admiration. Providence has been kind to the US in inestimable ways.

And third, I think America has more cultural diversity than we often realize, from which we all benefit.

On Personal Diversity

February 11, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

This probably isn’t about what you think.

I’m not talking about quotas, or intersectionality, or affirmative action.

I’m not talking about labels and classes of people.

I’m talking about individuals.

I’ve been thinking lately about how diverse human beings are. We teachers have to take some of these differences into account when we teach. Students have different academic levels, of course. They have different backgrounds that can significantly affect their readiness for the material and their ability to process it. Teachers famously think about learning modalities; I’m inclined to think that the traditional list of “visual, auditory, and kinesthetic” is far from exhaustive. I remember how revelatory it was for me when I realized that I just don’t process things auditorily, that I have to see things to remember them.

The school where I teach has a fairly large department devoted to helping students succeed by finding their strengths and making reasonable accommodations for their weaknesses. I’ve grown to appreciate the fact that as a teacher I’m responsible to make these accommodations so that each of my students—all of them created in the image of God himself—can be the best he or she can be.

Our diversity extends far beyond our academic pursuits. People have different personalities—what in theology we call “natures.” Some people, like me, like to be on stage and presenting things we believe strongly. Others literally fear public speaking worse than death. Some people are introverted; some are extroverted. (And most, I suspect, are a complicated mixture of the two.)

Our families make us different. Our cultures make us different. Our place in time makes us different. And on and on it goes.

The Bible makes all this diversity unsurprising—first, because we’re created by a God who demonstrates the richness and complexity of his creative inclinations at every hand, and second, because a major emphasis of the New Testament is the diversity of believers in the church, both because of the breadth of God’s plan for his people—they will be from every kingdom, tribe, tongue, and nation (Re 7.9)—and because of the work of the Spirit in gifting his people for a wide range of ministry. On more than one occasion (Ro 12.4-8; 1Co 12.4-31; Ep 4.11-16) Paul compares the church to a body with one essential purpose but a wide variety of parts, each of them excellent at something, able to do things for the body that other parts cannot.

And that means that while there will be similarities in how we live out the Christian life—we will reverence God, and trust and obey him, and experience the Spirit’s conviction when we sin, and respond to that conviction with repentance—there will also be significant dissimilarities.

We’ll have differing salvation experiences. Some of us will experience great emotion, and others not so much. This is not an indication of the genuineness of our experience; it is simply a manifestation of our way of responding to even the most significant of life experiences.
We’ll have differing experiences of the means of grace.
- We’ll apprehend Scripture differently, depending on our learning modalities and a thousand other differences. Sure, we should embrace a careful and defensible hermeneutic, and not engage in exegetical fallacies; but the experience of reading, absorbing, and implementing is not going to be the same for everyone. We’re going to see things differently, and we should share those insights to add to the richness of the biblical tradition.
- We’ll pray, and experience prayer, differently. Some will be more conversational; others will work a list, and some lists will be more complicated than others—pray for these people on Monday, these on Tuesday. Some will pray with deep emotion; others will matter-of-factly present their requests to God and with relative ease will trust him to do the best thing. The Scripture doesn’t bind us as to prayer technique, and we should be free to express ourselves to our heavenly Father in ways—loving, reverential ways—that are most effective and genuine for us.
- We’ll worship differently. Some will be inclined toward more formal, even liturgical services, while others will flourish in the environment of the old-time camp meetin’. More power to all of you.

Recognizing the creative complexity of our God, and of his image in us, liberates us to be genuine—within the bounds of morality, of course—and to make our unique contribution to the larger body.

It’s good for us. All.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

On Magic—and Why It’s No Way to Live, Now or Forever

February 8, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

In the Bible, there’s a lot of the supernatural. There’s an infinite, eternal God, who invisibly directs in the affairs of people and nations, and who occasionally breaks out in something miraculous. There are—or were—prophets, who speak the very words of God. There are invisible forces with visible results. Christians, including me, believe this as a matter of course.

But this same biblical God is directly opposed to magic. He doesn’t propose that there are fairies at the bottom of the well, and he even forbids the kinds of activities that have been associated with magic. Israel’s prophet speaks scornfully of “wizards that peep and mutter” (Is 8.19). When Israel’s King Saul consults a medium and—to the apparent surprise of the medium herself—converses with the departed spirit of the prophet Samuel (1S 28.12), the Bible presents that event, the night before Saul’s death, as the final low point of a life of thoroughly unmet potential. When Israel marches the Ark of the Covenant into battle “for luck,” God allows it to be taken by the victorious enemy (1S 4.1-11). When a later and more deeply apostate Israel brags that Jerusalem will never fall because the Temple of God is there (Je 7.4), God brings in the hated Babylonians (Hab 1.6-11) to demonstrate the emptiness of their confident boast. And 600 years later, in a new Temple, God’s Son rejects the idea that those who pray “will be heard for their much speaking” (Mt 6.7).

Why is that? Why does God reject magic?

It’s pretty obvious when you think about it.

What is magic? (I’m talking about real supernatural activity, not the legerdemain of modern entertainers or shysters.)

At its heart, magic is the attempt to get the supernatural powers to do something. It’s about making them serve your desires, instead of serving theirs. It’s about trying make yourself God’s boss.

And that’s not going to happen, because it’s just impossible; it turns the universe completely upside down.

And furthermore, the people who want to do that are precisely the people who should most certainly not be in charge.

And yet we find ourselves tempted to live out our Christianity—our “faith”—that way.

It’s easy for us to see and reject the magical in the aberrant and extravagant behaviors of certain extreme subgroups of Pentecostal or Charismatic Christianity, where if you’ll send in a prayer cloth or apply a vial of completely ordinary oil received in the mail from some huckster, or “if you have enough faith,” God will certainly heal you—and when he doesn’t, well then, whose fault is that?

But what of us?

If you have your devotions, God will give you a better day—by your standards—right?
If you’re busy at church, your kids will turn out just as you want—right?
If you give enough, or pray enough, or go to the right school, or vote for the right “Christian” candidate, you’ll get what you want, right?

And in the end, we’re all little wannabe gods, trying to influence the Big Guy to do what we want him to.

What blasphemy.

God is not your genie, released from the bottle only when you rub it, destined to be your slave forever.

He is Father, Son, Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, creator and sustainer of heaven and earth, Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.

He’s not magic.

We serve him; he most certainly does not serve us.

He does love us, however, and as the omnipotent and omniscient God, he will do for us precisely what is best—in his own time, and in his own way, and by his own will.

And that is all the more reason to trust his will and judgment, and to keep our own executive ideas to ourselves.

We trust, we serve, and yes, we ask, as he encourages us to do.

But we do not manipulate.

He’s better than that.

Photo by Cesira Alvarado on Unsplash

On Healthy Minds in Troubled Times, Part 5: Focus

February 4, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: This Has Happened Before | Part 2: Confidence | Part 3: Selflessness | Part 4: Perspective

As Paul nears the end of his epistle to the Philippian church, what we might call a meditation on the habits of a healthy mind in troubled times, he turns from character qualities to the content of thought. We might say that he pivots from how to think to what to think.

He starts by telling a couple of church members to stop quarreling (Php 4.2). That sounds fairly mundane, but I think it’s something of a key to the rest of the chapter. These are people who have served God in the past, and apparently together. Now they have a disagreement about something. He tells them to cut it out.

And that means that they don’t have to be fighting; they are not driven to their stances by circumstances. They can decide what to think, and they can decide to get along.

You see, we’re not obligated to think about, let alone agree with, any old thought that pops into our heads. We can direct our minds. We can take charge of our thoughts.

These days we’ve had several decades of passivity, watching a screen and letting our minds be pulled here and there as the content creator wished. (Marshall McLuhan warned us about that way back in 1964—when this now-old guy was much too young to understand what he was talking about.) Mental passivity is an unbiblical way of living; as viceregents and stewards of this planet, we ought to be directing our thoughts, choosing how we think, not just reacting—usually merely emotionally—to our circumstances.

Paul spends the rest of the epistle specifying what we should be thinking about.

We ought to rejoice (Php 4.4)

That means that we ought to be focusing, in the midst of troubled times, on what is worth rejoicing over. We ought to be prioritizing our circumstances so that those that bring joy—legitimately—are valued more than those that frustrate us, cause us fear, or drive us to despair.

I have a lot to be thankful for. So do you. Dwell on those things, and revel in the joy they bring.

We ought to be at peace (Php 4.6-7)

… rather than full of anxiety, that is, about the challenges that face us. Why? Because there is a God in heaven, who hears our prayers and is moved to respond to them in ways that are unfailingly for our long-term benefit. Commit the darkness around you to your powerful and loving heavenly Father, and walk confidently through the darkness with your hand in his.

I’ll confess to being more than a little perplexed—and irritated, frankly—at the number of my spiritual brethren whose public words predominantly communicate fear and frustration and rage against the machine. Is there no God in heaven? Does he not skillfully and certainly direct in the affairs of people and nations? Are we not his people? Why, then, the rage? Why the frustration? Why the fear?

We ought to be mentally focused (Php 4.8)

… on the good, the true, the edifying. That means not filling our heads with the words of angry people, people who are constantly muckraking, spouting theories with no basis in fact, grasping daily for ratings, another listener or another click. We can and should direct our thoughts elsewhere.

We ought to be satisfied (Php 4.10ff)

… with what God has given us—our possessions, our relationships, our station in life, our circumstances. Satisfied knowing that whether we live in relative poverty or relative wealth, our Father supplies all our needs, wisely, benevolently, lovingly, perfectly. Children of the heavenly Father, after all, do indeed safely in his bosom gather.

Mine are days here as a stranger,
Pilgrim on a narrow way;
One with Christ I will encounter
Harm and hatred for His name.
But mine is armour for this battle
Strong enough to last the war;
And He has said He will deliver
Safely to the golden shore.

Come rejoice now, O my soul,
For His love is my reward—
Fear is gone and hope is sure;
Christ is mine forevermore!

Jonny Robinson and Rich Thompson

Photo by André Ventura on Unsplash

On Healthy Minds in Troubled Times, Part 4: Perspective

February 1, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: This Has Happened Before | Part 2: Confidence | Part 3: Selflessness

As Paul navigated the troubled times in which God called him to minister, he paused in Philippians 3 to reflect on where he was aiming—and to contrast that with the direction his life had been aimed before. He marveled at the way God had changed his perspective.

The NRSV suggests two sections to this chapter: “Breaking with the Past” (Php 3.1-11) and “Pressing toward the Goal” (Php 3.12-4.1). Paul begins by looking back at what he valued Before Christ—complete devotion to the Law, climbing the ranks of those who held themselves up as examples of committed and devout followers of Moses:

He was circumcised 8 days after birth, as the Law required—in other words, he was born into Judaism, not a later convert. He had devoted his entire life to keeping the Law.
He’s of the stock of Israel—both his parents are Jewish.
He’s of the tribe of Benjamin—one of only two tribes descended from Israel’s favorite wife, the tribe of Israel’s first king (for whom Paul is named), the tribe where the capital and Temple were, the only tribe that remained with Judah during the rebellion of the northern tribes under Jeroboam, the tribe of whom Moses said in his final blessing, “May the beloved of the Lord dwell in security by him, who shields him all the day, and he dwells between his shoulders” (Dt 33.12).
He’s a “Hebrew”—he speaks the mother tongue as his heart language.
He’s a Pharisee, the sect devoted to the strictest obedience to the Law, tithing even his herbs and spices (Mt 23.23). Josephus, a Jewish contemporary of Paul, described the Pharisees as men “who valued themselves highly upon the exact skill they had in the law of their fathers, and made men believe they were highly favored by God” (Antiquities 17.2.4) and “who are esteemed most skillful in the exact explication of their laws” (War 2.8.14), and he notes that “the cities gave great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their discourses also” (Antiquities 18.1.3).
He persecuted the Christian “heretics” with incomparable zeal.
He stood “blameless” before the Law—an impressive claim, considering the breadth of the Law’s demands.

But now, having met the very Jesus whom he was persecuting, he views all of that former obsession, all of that former glory, as just trash (Php 3.8); the word can refer to garbage or even to excrement, as the KJV renders it. What he had held so close he now finds not merely worthless, but repugnant, malodorous, reprehensible.

Get it out of here; it’s stinking up the place.

Talk about a change of perspective.

So what does he value now? Where is his focus? To what goal are his energy and effort directed?

Christ.

Knowing him (Php 3.8).
Being united with him (Php 3.9).
Replacing his own righteousness with Christ’s (Php 3.9).
Suffering with him (Php 3.10).
Dying with him (Php 3.10).
Rising with him (Php 3.11).
Winning with him (Php 3.14).

Paul closes the chapter by contrasting this new perspective with that of the world.

They prioritize their appetites (Php 3.19).
They “set their minds on earthly things” (Php 3.19).

Paul, in stark contrast, understands that his “citizenship is in heaven” (Php 3.20).

His Philippian readers knew precisely what he was talking about. Nearly a century before, in 31 BC, Octavian had defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. He had rewarded his soldiers by giving them land near Rome. He then rewarded the owners of that land, who were now displaced, by moving them to Philippi and designating that city a Roman “colony” (Ac 16.12) with extensive privileges, including exemption from some taxation and the full benefits of Roman law as if they were still in Italy.

The Philippians knew what a privilege citizenship was. And they knew what it was to be a citizen of a faraway place that was truly home.

And so are we.

We are God’s servants here, stewards of what he has entrusted us with, but this world is not our home, and our eyes are elsewhere. Anything we can achieve here is essentially worthless unless it affects what is waiting us at home.

And anything that draws our hearts away from home, or interferes with our commission to take others home with us, has to go.

We don’t live for Philippi, even though we live there for now.

Part 5: Focus

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