Archives for February 2022

On What You Put into Your Head, Part 1: Strategic Exposure

February 28, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

I get a sense that our culture doesn’t think much about what it consumes mentally. We scroll through social media posts, slowing down for something that suits our fancy. We scroll through the menus of streaming services, looking for something to watch: something we like, something that looks interesting, something with a cool thumbnail graphic.

Whatever.

But we all know better.

We’ve all had the experience of seeing or hearing something that we wish we could forget; the woods is full of people who desperately want to get old pornographic images out of their minds and just can’t. For all the talk about being unable to remember things, we find that our brains often remember things far better than we’d like. If we had any sense, we’d be a lot more careful about what we put in there.

We’d be purposeful, strategic about it.

Let me share some thoughts about that, something I shared in chapel at Bob Jones University way back on November 6, 2006.

Since what we put into our heads is going to be there forever, and potentially available for recall, we ought to direct our thinking, and even our entertainment, to things that are going to help us become what we want to become and accomplish what we want to accomplish.

I decided a long time ago that the wisest goal for my life was to heed the biblical admonition to “do all to the glory of God” (1Co 10.31). I had discovered that I didn’t have enough mass to be the center of the universe, and what I had experienced of God led me to believe that he would make a wiser investment of my life than anyone or anything else.

And what things would most effectively glorify him?

Knowing him: “This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).
Being like him: “We all … are changed into the same image [of the glory of the Lord]” (2 Cor. 3:18); “whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Ro 8.29).
Serving him: “That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2Ti 3:17).

So what things can we devote our thinking to that will further these goals?

The Scripture answers this question, as it does many others, with both freedom and caution. On the one hand, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Ps 24.1). God pointed Adam and Eve to a garden full of all different kinds of trees and encouraged them to eat all different kinds of fruit.

Freedom!

But on the other hand, the world is broken and dangerous. There was one tree in the garden that was forbidden to them, and when they violated that prohibition, the whole garden became off limits. There are many things in the world today that we restrict our children from, and if we have any sense, there are things that we restrict ourselves from as well.

Caution.

In the next post I plan to share some observations about thinking with freedom, romping in broad fields of mental wildflowers; in the third post, I’ll have some thoughts about how and when to be cautious.

Part 2: All the Trees of the Garden | Part 3: Toto, We’re Not in Eden Anymore

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Dealing with Doubt, Part 3: Trusting Your Friends

February 24, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Joy of Doubting | Part 2: The Limits of Logic

So far in this series we’ve noted that doubt is a normal part of maturing and that while we should use logic as a useful tool for the discovery of truth about things we doubt, it cannot function as an absolute authority. This time I’d like to suggest an approach to dealing with those situations where logic runs out of gas. This principled approach is an important enough concept that I’m including it here as a conclusion to this series even though I’ve alluded to it before.

Let me expand on an illustration from Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology.

Suppose I come home from work early one day. I pull into the driveway, and there’s a car there that I don’t recognize. I get out of my car and, when I close the door, a man I don’t recognize emerges from the front door and onto the porch. He’s tall, good-looking, and of course has a full head of thick, glorious hair.

When he sees me, he looks horrified. He runs to his car, fires it up, and squeals the tires as he speeds away.

Now.

What am I going to think?

Actually, it depends.

On what?

It depends on how my wife and I are getting along these days.

If our relationship is healthy, we’re talking, solving problems together, sharing goals—in other words, there are no suppressed pathologies in the relationship—then I’m going to assume that there’s a reasonable explanation for what just happened, that there’s simply something I don’t know that would make it all make sense.

If it happens in early September, I might think, “Hey, my birthday is coming up. I bet she’s planning a surprise party, and he’s the party planner. I’ll have to be sure to act surprised when it happens, so I don’t disappoint her after all that work—because I want her to enjoy the party just as much as I do.”

But if our marriage is in trouble, my thoughts are going to go in a considerably darker direction.

When someone in a relationship with us does something inexplicable, then what we think about that action depends pretty much entirely on how healthy the relationship is. If we trust him, we assume there’s a good explanation. If we don’t, we don’t.

How would you like to be in a marriage where—let’s look at it from the wife’s perspective—your husband comes home and checks the odometer in your car to see whether you’re putting more miles on it than you can account for? Where he grills you about where you’ve been? Every day?

I’d suggest that that’s not a marriage. It’s stalking.

No one wants to live like that.

A husband ought to trust his wife, because he knows her, and because their relationship is in good shape. That’s not being naïve or credulous; it’s being emotionally and socially healthy.

If your immediate thought when God puzzles you is that he doesn’t care about you, or that he’s evil, or that he doesn’t even exist, then it’s time to invest some time and energy in the relationship. Before you make any life-changing decisions—before you deconstruct—you need to give the relationship a chance. That’s how healthy relationships work.

In the case of your relationship with God, that means giving attention to the means of grace, going to the spiritual gym and working out. It means getting into the Word, seeking answers that apply right now to this question that’s troubling you. It means meditating on passages that delineate God’s character and thus present a logical—yes, logical—response to the thing he’s done that puzzles you.

I’ve found that the most impactful way to meditate on the Scripture is to memorize it. But everybody’s different; you may find that other kinds of interaction with the Scripture and prayer and fellowship are more effective for you. That’s great. Go for it.

But give the relationship a chance. Make sure it’s healthy.

You’d do the same for your friends. How much more should you exercise care for your relationship with your Creator, the Lover of your soul?

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On Bible Conference

February 21, 2022 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

This post will be of more interest to people associated with Bob Jones University than to others.

Last week was the annual Bible Conference at Bob Jones University. It occurred to me that it was my 50^th Bible Conference, and that milestone led to some reminiscing.

There are cherished memories that I will never experience again—

Standing under the low sidewalk cover in front of Rodeheaver Auditorium for an hour before each service—that was the only way to get a seat—and singing hymns and gospel songs with no leader, just ad hoc. Those were some of the most genuinely spiritual times I’ve had with other believers.
After the Amphitorium was constructed, Dr. Gustafson leading a packed house of 7,000 voices in singing “Master, the Tempest Is Raging” and “Wonderful Grace of Jesus.” The spirit was palpable.
Ian Paisley. He was unlike me in almost every way; he was an Ulsterman, a Presbyterian, and big, and he had a love for finding chiasms in biblical lists where I just didn’t see them. His sermons were long, mostly because his massive voice moved so slowly. But boy, could he move his hearers. He would open the invitation, and people would flow down the aisles with no hectoring or manipulation. I suspect that his standard pre-sermon prayer for the power of the Spirit had a lot to do with that.
Dr. Bob Jr. talking about the toothpaste tube before the offering.
Specific sermons that I remember decades later. J. B. Williams. Charles Smith. And more.
All that time for socializing. Students called it “drop/add week” because of all the relationships that began—or ended—because of the extra time spent together. Some realized (fortunately!) that they just weren’t that compatible.

As years go by, things change. That’s a universal principle. But another principle is Providence, by which God’s hand continues to direct in our affairs, for our good and his glory.

Old preachers die, and new ones come along. This year’s slate of preachers, both in-house and invited, was outstanding. Mike Redick’s closing sermon (starts at 44:10), energized by the Spirit, brought students down the aisles as certainly as any of Paisley’s.
Old songs welcome newer ones, and the repertoire is expanded and enriched. Dan Forrest’s setting of “Amazing Love,” sung by the school’s combined choirs in the final service, I found particularly edifying.
There are fewer services per day now; 50 years ago there were 6 per day, and now it’s down to 3—which allows time for meditation, lingering over meals, fellowship, and rest. I think this is better stewardship.
There are 3 days now instead of 5. I miss the full week, but there were good reasons for making the change. (See under “Providence” above.)

As I reflected on the Conference, it struck me that this one was more refreshing—yeah, that’s the word—than any other I remember. Drinking from a firehose is profitable and invigorating, but no one would describe it as “refreshing.” This one left me spiritually stronger, more joyous, more at peace, than before it started. It heightened my appreciation of God’s grace and my sense of his presence—an answer to a specific prayer from a week ago.

May God give us more such times until He comes.

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Dealing with Doubt, Part 2: The Limits of Logic

February 16, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: The Joy of Doubting

One of the main reasons that Christians wrestle with doubts these days is that they bump into something that doesn’t seem to make sense.

Jesus is a human teacher, but he’s also God? How does that work? How can he not know something (Mk 13.32) if he’s omniscient? How do you not know something you know?
Why did God have to kill his Son, when his Son didn’t even do anything wrong? Why couldn’t God just forgive us—the way he’s told us to forgive others?
If God is great and good, why is there suffering? Isn’t he able to stop the suffering? Doesn’t he want to?

We’re struggling with a simple problem here—none of us is as smart as we think we are.

Come on; you know that’s true. Even if you don’t admit it for yourself, you see it easily in everyone around you. What’s the likelihood that you’re the only exception? :-)

Our minds are wonderful things, wonderful gifts from God that enable us to discover truth. But they are not ultimate authorities—in fact, they couldn’t possibly be, given that no two human minds come to all the same conclusions. That may be more obvious in the current polarized culture than ever before. Everybody’s wrong about something; and if there were one exception to that rule, we would have no reliable way to determine who it was.

Rationalism, then, is self-defeating.

Reason, like all of God’s other gracious gifts, is great, but it makes a lousy god.

Paul tells us that “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1Co 1.25). In other words, on his worst day, God is better than the best of us on our best day in both wisdom and strength.

And God doesn’t have any bad days.

This simple fact yields at least three consequences. I’ll note the first two in this post.

First, arguments raised against God are predominantly weak.

I’ve commented before on the weakness of most charges of contradiction in the Scripture. I’ll confess that I find it difficult not to shake my head when I hear yet another young scholar repeat as breaking news the old allegation that the Bible is “filled with contradictions.” Those who can supply an example or two when asked—and that’s a minority—typically raise objections that are just laughable, such as the biblical comments that God is both a God of peace and a God of war (that’s a round character, and the same young scholars love them when they show up in popular movies), or that Leviticus calls bats birds (it doesn’t).

I’m not saying that there aren’t tough questions; there certainly are, and I’ll get to them in a moment. But it’s remarkable to me how many bright people who view logic as the greatest authority don’t see the logical problems in their own charges against the Scripture.

Second, because our minds aren’t good at understanding infinity, which is an essential attribute of God, we’re often going to run into things that puzzle us—things that we’re not mentally equipped to comprehend.

Let me note something simple about this phenomenon.

It’s exactly what we should expect if there’s really an infinite God.

A common critical view is that religion is something that evolving humans developed in an attempt to make sense of the world, and probably to give themselves power over rival tribes. The Bible, like all other holy books, is just folk tales, interesting in the study of the history of religions but not true, and most certainly not authoritative.

But that doesn’t square with the data.

If we had made this god up, would we have included things that we can’t figure out? things that would encourage rationalists to reject such a god altogether? On the other hand, if such a God really exists, wouldn’t we expect that he would regularly step beyond the horizon of our understanding and leave us shaking our heads in puzzlement?

I would submit that the existence of these perplexities is a feature, not a bug. This is a reassuring thing, not something that should lead to apostasy.

There’s more to be said. Next time.

Part 3: Trusting Your Friends

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

On Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

This a time for romance. For love. For commitment. For loyalty.

Interestingly, God describes his relationship with his people in those terms.

We know that “God is love” (1Jn 4.8, 16)—that he has always been in relationship among the persons of the Godhead; he has never been alone. Love is natural for him; it’s part of who he is.

We know that “we love him because he first loved us” (1Jn 4.19)—that he initiated the relationship with us, even though we had wronged him (Ro 3.23). In fact, he lovingly anticipated that relationship before we even existed—before the earth itself existed (Ep 1.4).

We know that his most oft-repeated description of himself includes “lovingkindness” (Heb hesed), a far-reaching word not captured by any single English word, but including loving loyalty to a covenant relationship. It’s the attribute that keeps 60-year marriages together in spite of everything.

That’s the kind of relationship God wants with us.

We can imagine, then, how our sin must grieve his heart. In fact, he describes the sin of his people as adultery, violation of the marriage relationship.

I’ve been a believer for more than 60 years. Every day of those 60 years, I have fallen short of the glory of God. I’ve been unfaithful to the relationship.

That’s over 22,000 days of adultery.

How many would it take for you to give up on your spouse?

Yet God continues to welcome us back, to forgive our unfaithfulness, to restore the relationship.

Hesed.

God illustrates his love for us in a couple of stories he tells his people. One is in the book of Hosea, where he tells the prophet to marry a woman who will be unfaithful to him—as Israel has been unfaithful to their God.

It’s heartbreaking.

There’s another story, a less-well-known one, in Ezekiel 16.

Ezekiel is writing long after Hosea—so long, in fact, that Judah has now gone into captivity in Babylon, and Ezekiel is prophesying to them in the Jewish community there. He speaks God’s words to the community—

One day God found an abandoned baby by the side of the road, newborn, unwashed, unwanted. He took her home and cleaned her up, and then he began to provide for her needs: food, clothing, shelter. For years he raised her—lavishly—as his own daughter.
When she became an adult, a beautiful woman, his love for her led him to take her as his wife.
But she was unfaithful. She went after other lovers, not merely being seduced by them but seducing them, and aggressively. She pressured them; she even paid them. She made Sodom seem mild by comparison. She broke his heart.

What a horrifying account.

But it doesn’t end in divorce, or retaliation, or expulsion, or murder, or any of the things we would expect from a human relationship of this sort.

It ends in restoration, reunification, love.

And not because the unfaithful wife pleads for forgiveness.

Because the maltreated Husband remembers and is faithful to the marriage covenant, to the permanence of the relationship:

⁶⁰Nevertheless, I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. ⁶¹… . ⁶²Thus I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord (Ezk 16.60, 62).

O wondrous love that will not let me go,
I cling to You with all my strength and soul;
Yet if my hold should ever fail
This wondrous love will never let me go!
(Steve and Vikki Cook)

Happy Valentine’s Day.

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Dealing with Doubt, Part 1: The Joy of Doubting

February 10, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Do you ever doubt your beliefs?

The fact is that we all do. We doubt the little things, and sometimes we doubt the big things. The really, really big things.

I’ve written before about an experience I had while in seminary, when I doubted the Biggest Thing Ever—whether there’s a God, and whether any of this is true.

Doubt is an important part of growing up. There comes a time in our maturation when we have to move beyond “that’s what I’ve always been taught” to “this is what I believe, for myself, with conviction; here I stand; I can do no other.” If you never do this, you essentially remain a child, at the mercy of those who want you to remain a child even though you’re an adult. And that, my friend, is profoundly unhealthy. Such a relationship is inevitably going to become abusive.

I deal with college students all day long. College age—whether you go to college or not—is the time when we transition into adulthood, when we ask hard questions about what we’ve always been taught and come to personal convictions about what we believe and how we will live. It’s the right time to work through those issues. Adulthood awaits.

But asking those questions can be scary. Where will I come out? Is there light at the end of the tunnel? For some people, the tunnel is darker than for others, and it can generate a fair amount of fear. When I was doubting—when I didn’t know how it would all turn out—I was deeply unsettled.

But I can say most assuredly that I am better for having doubted, for having gone through the unsettling experience. One reason is that beliefs that are never tested are never proved. Another reason is that working out your convictions makes them, and you, stronger. Yet another reason is that I have stories to encourage younger brothers and sisters who are now in that growth process. I’m profoundly grateful that I have had, and progressed through, that period of doubt.

Something I learned from the experience is that in thinking through what we’ve been taught, we’re often biased toward rejecting it, for several reasons.

Familiarity breeds contempt, even when the contempt is undeserved. Add to that the fact that you know where the bodies are buried in the landscape of your life: you’ve seen sin and failure and hypocrisy in people who participated in your upbringing—parents, siblings, teachers, pastors. That’s the inevitable result of living in a broken world, but it nonetheless inclines you to reject where you came from. The problem is that there may well be a baby in that bathwater.
The grass seems greener on the other side of the fence. There’s as much imperfection over there as you experienced in your upbringing—it’s a broken world, remember—but you haven’t experienced that, and everything looks fresh and new and exciting over there.
I’ve used trite maxims in the previous two points, so I’ll avoid that on this one. We live in an increasingly unstable culture. The pace of cultural philosophy, like the news cycle, is accelerating, and there’s considerable social pressure to throw out the old and embrace the new. If you toss it all, you’ll get instant affirmation and support from many quarters.

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t throw out some of the things we were taught. In fact, by saying that we live in a broken world, I’ve implied just the opposite. I was taught things that I haven’t retained as an adult, and undoubtedly we all should have a similar experience. But I am saying that as you make those decisions, good and necessary decisions, you’ll be inclined to throw out things that you shouldn’t. You need to proceed carefully, thoughtfully, intentionally, rather than just chucking everything.

As I walked that path, I learned some principles that I found helpful in evaluating what to keep and what to toss. I’d like to take a few posts to share them with you.

Part 2: The Limits of Logic | Part 3: Trusting Your Friends

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A Small Thought on What We Pray For

February 7, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

As I noted last time, I’ve been studying the book of Ruth lately. With the help of commentator Dan Block, I’ve been confronted with something in the book that I found striking.

Most commentators note that the book is mostly dialogue; about 52% of the Hebrew words there are spoken by various characters in the story. A recurring theme in these speeches is prayer for blessing:

“Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, ‘May the Lord be with you.’ And they said to him, ‘May the Lord bless you’ ” (Ru 2.4).
“Her mother-in-law then said to her, ‘Where did you glean today and where did you work? May he who took notice of you be blessed’ “ (Ru 2.19).
“Then he said, ‘May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich’ ” (Ru 3.10).
“Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel’ “ (Ru 4.14).

There are other prayers that call for blessing without using the word:

“And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. ⁹May the Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband.’ Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept” (Ru 1.8-9).
“[Boaz said to Ruth,] ‘May the Lord reward your work, and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge’ ” (Ru 2.12).
“All the people who were in the court, and the elders, said, ‘We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel; and may you achieve wealth in Ephrathah and become famous in Bethlehem. ¹²Moreover, may your house be like the house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah, through the offspring which the Lord will give you by this young woman’ “ (Ru 4.11-12).
“[The women of Bethlehem said to Naomi,] ‘May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him’ “ (Ru 4.15).

That’s seven prayers (the last bullet point in each set being from the same prayer) in just four relatively short chapters.

Boaz blesses his field workers (and they him) and Ruth (twice).
Naomi blesses her daughters-in-law and Boaz.
The people of Bethlehem bless Ruth and Naomi.

Do you notice anything?

Nobody prays for his own needs. Not Boaz, the (likely) old bachelor, who, as it turns out, could really benefit from a wife, both as a companion and as the provider of a family line. Not Naomi, the childless widow who is in imminent danger of starvation. Not the people of Bethlehem, who have just emerged from a famine. And not Ruth, who has left all she knows to live in a foreign and hostile culture.

Nobody. As Block notes in the New American Commentary, “It is striking that no one in the book prays for a resolution of his own crisis. In each case a person prays that Yahweh would bless someone else. This is a mark of ḥesed” (pp 612-13).

Hesed is the Hebrew word translated “kindly” or “kindness” in Ruth 1.8, 2.20, and 3.10. It’s the “mercy” in the oft-used biblical statement that “[God’s] mercy endureth forever.” It speaks of fierce loyalty to a relationship that’s based on love.

Now, other biblical passages make it clear that praying for your own needs is not only tolerated but encouraged and even welcomed. Both Paul and Peter tell us to cast our care on God, making our requests known (Php 4.6; 1P 5.7). But against the dark background of the Judges, when “every man did what was right in his own eyes,” it’s remarkable to see a community where the first concern is for others.

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

Incomprehensible Faith

February 3, 2022 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

In my Bible study plan I’m always doing a deep dive on a section of Scripture. For the first three months of this year, I’m studying Ruth. I return to the book every day, studying it from multiple perspectives and reading. A lot.

A few days ago I thought of something that I’d never noticed before, after all these years of hearing and reading the story dozens of times. It’s something about the first major incident in the book.

We all know the story. Naomi and her husband move from Bethlehem—the house of bread—to Moab because of a famine. Their two sons marry Moabite women, and then all three men die. In the culture of that day, a childless widow is in very serious danger of starving to death. Naomi hears that the famine is over back in Bethlehem and decides to return—likely because she has family there who will be legally obligated to help her.

So far the story is pretty simple. But it’s complicated by the fact that one of her Moabite daughters-in-law, Ruth, wants to return with her.

Naomi argues against it, citing the obvious practical fact that Ruth is more likely to find a second husband in her own land. Naomi doesn’t mention the fact that the Moabites and the Israelites are enemies; the king of Moab had hired the prophet Balaam to curse Israel (Nu 22.4-5), and God had consequently cursed the king and his people (Nu 24.17). Surely Ruth’s marital prospects would be better in Moab.

But Ruth insists. She will go with Naomi; she will live with Naomi; she will adopt her people and culture; and she will worship her God (Ru 1.16)—for the rest of her life (Ru 1.17).

Why?

Look at this from Ruth’s perspective. The conventional wisdom in her day is that every ethnic group has its own god. Chemosh is the god of the Moabites—and their harvests are so plentiful that Yahweh’s people are coming over there to get a piece of the action. In all of Ruth’s experience to this point, she has seen nothing that would convince her that Yahweh cares for his people, or even that he is good. His people are starving, so Chemosh feeds them. Her father-in-law dies in Moab, as do his two sons, including Ruth’s husband, and all of them allegedly under the care of this tribal god Yahweh—who, to make matters worse, has placed her and her people under a specific curse.

Why seek shelter under the wings of such a god? What has he ever done for his own people, let alone an enemy?

Was it Naomi’s love for and trust in her own god? Well, she believes that her god, Yahweh, has taken someone who was full and has left her empty. A few days from now she will tell her own people no longer to call her by her name, Naomi, which means “pleasant.” Instead, she will say, call me Mara—“bitter.” My god has not been good to me.

So why does Ruth go with Naomi? And especially, why does she seek to worship Naomi’s god?

Well, for all her imperfections, Naomi does recognize that God is in charge. (And here I begin to capitalize the word again.) It is he who has brought food back to Bethlehem (Ru 1.6). It is he, not Chemosh, who she confidently believes will prosper the lives of her daughters-in-law (Ru 1.8-9). Even though his hand has gone out against her (Ru 1.13), she still believes that he is strong enough to bless, and she prays that he will. You don’t pray to someone you don’t believe in.

Apparently, Ruth sees in Naomi’s imperfect faith something greater than what she sees in the worshippers of her tribal god. For all of the trouble, for all of the pain, this is a God worth following—even at the cost of leaving home, family, culture, and language to go to a land where you’re under a curse, where you will likely face deep, overt, and lifelong discrimination.

So she goes.

And she finds that her faith is richly rewarded. This Yahweh, she finds, does indeed direct circumstances, even down to the portion of the community field where she happens to go looking for loose grain lying on the ground or standing beyond the reaches of the reapers’ sickles around the edges.

This is a God worth trusting. Worth following.

No matter what.

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