Archives for August 2024

On Widows in the Church

August 29, 2024 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

In the Bible James notes that taking care of widows and orphans is at the very heart of true religion (Jam 1.27). Later Paul, in a letter to his protégé Timothy, gives details on how the church should see to that duty (1Ti 5.3-16). His words are perhaps unexpectedly lengthy and detailed; he wants this done right.

Widows with family, he says, should be cared for by their family (1Ti 5.4, 16). That’s sensible. Further, the widow needs to be at least 60 (1Ti 5.9)—presumably because a younger woman would have a reasonable chance of getting married again (1Ti 5.11)—and have lived in a way that demonstrates the genuineness of her faith (1Ti 5.9-10), something that would obligate the church to see to her care.

How does this work in our culture? I’d like to share a story from my experience.

In a church where I was on the elder board, one of the elders got a burden for the widows, something he just couldn’t get out of his mind. We put him in charge of putting something together that would bring some discipline to our approach, particularly so that no one would fall through the cracks of our care.

Soon we had a list of all the widows in the church. There were 35. I was surprised at how many there were. Then an elder and a deacon interviewed each one: how are you doing? What do you need? How can we help?

We were all surprised at what we learned.

We expected to find financial need; that was certainly a primary concern in Paul’s day. There may have been a concern or two in our congregation, but for the most part that was not a problem. They told us that their husbands had had life insurance, and they had enough to live on. Some, in fact, were in better shape financially than they had been when their husbands were alive.

But that is not to say there were no needs. You know what they told us?

“We need purpose. We need to be needed. We need something to do, a reason to get up in the morning. We need to belong.”

Wow.

Two thoughts struck me immediately.

First, we were completely uninformed, misinformed, on the situation in our own church. It was nothing like we thought.

And second, how could we have missed such a serious need?

We took immediate action. We asked the widows to come up with ideas on how they could organize and serve. That would address both the need to belong and the need to be needed.

And their first idea surprised us. They suggested that they clean the houses of new mothers.

I’ll confess that I wasn’t too keen on that idea. Widows are often, um, older than the population median, and were they up to it? Physical labor?

Well, it turns out that living that long helps give a person good sense, and they were wise enough not to take on tasks that would be too much for them. And their time with the new moms gave them opportunity to share mothering wisdom with the first-timers, and they delighted in the chance to hold the newborns and marvel over their little fingers and toes.

It was a win all around. Listening to people, and trusting their good sense and creativity, is a good thing.

I suspect that widows’ ministry will look a little different in every church, but we can be sure that we will give account to whether we have attended to that need.

Do you know what happened next?

That elder? The one with the burden? He died, and his wife became a widow. And she stepped right into a ministry that was ready to help her with grief support, and a need to be needed. Eventually she became the de facto leader of that widows’ ministry, until she remarried some years later.

Isn’t providence good?

Photo by Free Walking Tour Salzburg on Unsplash

More Thoughts on AI

August 26, 2024 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

No, not some guy named Alan; that’s a capital i, not a lowercase L.

A while back I wrote a couple of posts about experimenting with ChatGPT to see whether I had a reasonable shot at spotting student work that was using the tool.

With school starting up this week, I’ve been thinking about what sort of policy to have about student use of AI. My university gives us teachers a lot of freedom as to our course policies; the official institution-wide policy is that student use of AI for assignments is prohibited “without the express permission of the professor”—which means we can give permission for anything we think is appropriate and academically justifiable.

So I did some more playing around with ChatGPT, and also with Claude.ai.

I began with ChatGPT, specifying, “Write a 700-word essay in the style of www.danolinger.com on the topic of sanctification.” I wanted to see whether it could write a blog post that sounded like me. (I know what you’re thinking; hold off on any judgment for a bit.) What it wrote—immediately—was pretty good. Although the title didn’t reflect my style here on the blog—you may have noticed that I like titles that start with “On”—it was generally pretty good as to content and basic style. I did notice differences in mechanics; it spelled out the names of the biblical books and used colons rather than periods to separate chapter numbers from verse numbers in references. But it did use the Oxford comma, though it used more commas than I would have in other constructions.

Sidebar: do you know why I use periods instead of colons in Bible references? Because a colon requires the Shift key, and the period doesn’t. Efficiency.

I thought I’d see how it handled a secular topic, so I asked, “Make the topic the migration of the monarch butterfly.” I’m no expert on the seasonal peregrinations of lepidoptera, particularly danaus plexippus, but what it churned out seemed very good to me.

Now, I had asked it to use the style of my blog’s website, where there are, as of this writing, 691 posts, and the speed with which it had responded to both of these prompts made me wonder whether it had even glanced casually in the direction of the blog. So my next prompt was “Delineate the parallels in style between your essay and those on danolinger.com.”

I was astounded by its reply—seven nicely formatted points identifying seven elements of my blog’s style, ranging from “conversational tone” to “use of relatable examples” to “integration of wonder and mystery.”

Yikes. ChatGPT is the most attentive reader I’ve got.

One more test—one that I think might cause it to stumble. “Add biblical references to the essay.”

Now this is an essay about a non-religious, and more specifically, extrabiblical topic, and I’m asking this non-brain to make biblical applications about something it doesn’t even mention. So what does it do?

It brings in Psalm 19.1, a key passage for the doctrine of natural revelation. Then it parallels God’s guidance of the monarch with his guidance of his people, citing Proverbs 3.5-6, and then the idea of finishing the race, from Hebrews 12.1-2. And it finishes with Ecclesiastes 3.11 and Psalm 104.24.

Bravo, ChatGPT, bravo. I’m impressed.

Later, at the recommendation of a friend, I popped over to Claude.ai and asked for the same thing, for the topic of the early date of the Exodus. Excellent essay.

Then “Write a 500-word short story set during the Exodus.”

Pretty good one. The kid’s even named Levi.

“Write a haiku about it.”

Waves part, path revealed
Israelites follow God’s call
Freedom’s light shines forth

“Write a sonnet about it.”

“Write a poem about it in Greek.”

It even included the line “Οἱ δὲ ἐν φόβῳ ἔφευγον πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν Ἐρυθράν.” Pronominal use of the article. Nice touch.

Then I asked for a poem in Akkadian.

And it did it.

Transliterated—not in cuneiform—but recognizably Akkadian. (I’m not qualified to evaluate the literary quality or the accuracy of said poem.)

Yikes.

These tools are getting better all the time.

But no, I’ll never use them to write a blog entry.

So what’s my AI student policy?

For Greek and for Bible Doctrines, prohibited. I want the students to do the thinking—all of it.

For my Gospel of John class, I’ve decided to try an experiment.

“Any use of AI must be specifically credited with quotation marks and a footnote. AI output should not predominate in what you turn in.”

I have no idea whether or not this is a good idea. We’ll see how it goes, and I’ll ask the students for feedback at the end of the semester.

No chatbots were harmed in the creation of this blog post.

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

On Biblical Mandates and Cultural Expectations, Part 3

August 22, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 | Part 2

Once we’ve invested the time and effort it takes to be informed about what the Scripture says, and what the law requires, and what the culture expects, we need to get down to the business of making decisions about how we respond to specific demands from those authorities.

We tend not to do well when we make snap decisions. Many decisions about these matters—especially the most important or significant ones—are complex and require us to think through extended arguments pro or con. That takes time, effort, and discipline.

Add to that the fact that social media is formulated in such a way that it discourages us from complex thought (I’ve written on that here), and we’re temperamentally and intellectually disinclined to spend that time and expend that effort. We have to fight against our own inclinations and those of our peers.

By the way, this ability to think through complex problems to a proper application is called “wisdom” in the Bible, and it’s highly commended and recommended there. Start with Proverbs.

So. What process do we follow to arrive at a wise decision when authorities appear to be in conflict? Let me suggest one that works for me.

First, gather the data. Make sure you know what you’re talking about.

What does the Scripture actually require?

What does the law actually require?

What does the culture actually expect? And how broadly pervasive is that expectation?

Often I find that at this point there’s no actual conflict; I can figure out a way, sometimes requiring a little creativity, to satisfy all the authorities. I find that Christians are often too quick to pull the trigger on civil disobedience or offensiveness to the culture—or disobedience to the Scripture in order not to be offensive to the culture.

Next, determine the importance. Do you actually have to make a choice? Proverbs—that book of wisdom—says, “He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, Is like one that taketh a dog by the ears” (Pr 26.17). Not every controversy is one you need to take sides in; and that’s especially true in a culture where various media outlets raise their ratings, and consequently their ad revenue, by serving up The Outrage of the Day, every day, and sometimes more frequently than that.

Now, if you’ve decided that you need to act on the issue, it’s time to give thought to the way you act. Harsh confrontation, complete with your shaking your fist in someone’s face, need not be your first choice—and frankly, I’m not sure it’s ever a proper choice, especially given Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek (Mt 5.39) and Paul’s words in his letter to the Colossian church:

Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man (Co 4.6).

And a few further considerations:

What is the Authority Priority? I’d say we obey the Scripture first, then the law, then the cultural expectation.

What response best reflects Jesus’ thinking and behavior? Yes, that can be difficult to determine: he overturned tables in the Temple, and later he stood silent before his accusers and took their beatings. And there’s theology to consider behind both of those responses.

How will your response affect others, both regenerate and unregenerate? Paul talks directly about the importance of protecting the conscience and edification of a fellow believer (1Co 8.4-13; 10.23-31), and Peter speaks of the importance of avoiding unnecessary offense in the communication of the gospel, “with meekness and fear” (1P 3.15).

A sobering consideration is this: though you will never have to answer to God for your sins—Jesus’ cross work has taken care of that—you will one day give an account to him for your stewardship, your use of the time and characteristics he has given you. He can’t be fooled, and he’s not likely to be happy with casual or slipshod decision-making on matters of obedience.

So. Navigate the tensions between authorities carefully, thoughtfully, with grace toward all, with joy for Christ’s companionship, and with the confidence that comes from knowing who wins in the end.

Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash

On Biblical Mandates and Cultural Expectations, Part 2 

August 19, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

We have, then, three distinct authorities:

The Scripture, which is absolute;

The laws of our land, which the Scripture has obligated us to obey, unless they compel us to disobey God; and

Cultural expectations, because Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor and to live out his grace, mercy, and peace as ambassadors—again, short of disobeying the Scripture. We don’t pick our nose in public.

How do we rightly maximize obedience to all three?

We all know this isn’t easy.

One thing we do know is that some random blogger can’t make these decisions for us; the answers will come from our mind and conscience as informed by our personal interaction with the Scripture and with the Spirit—who, we should remember, never leads contrary to the Scripture, which he himself inspired. This means that we, as individuals, need to be serious about our study of the Word, hiding it in our hearts, and thinking regularly about how, specifically, it regulates our decision making. Your pastor, though his ministry of the Word can be part of your information collection, can’t give you a personal understanding of the Word; you have to do that for yourself.

Similarly, we need to develop our own determination that we are going to heed the Scripture regardless of the personal consequences. We can’t go through the hard decisions of life on someone else’s commitment to Christ; we have to be serious about our commitment to him personally.

Third, we need to know what we’re talking about. For example, on making a decision about a legal requirement, we face a problem: legal issues are often political issues, and politics is by nature filled with highly inaccurate information. Both sides in a political controversy want to maximize their following, and in most cases they’re perfectly willing to lie to do it. So they exaggerate the threat and sometimes they just make stuff up. Further, these days most journalists are advocates, not reporters, and they omit facts that don’t fit their goals and distort facts that do. That means that we need to go to original sources—yeah, we need to read the actual law to find out what it requires.

This principle of being accurately informed extends over into the cultural issues as well. We tend to overestimate the breadth of cultural expectations, to assume too quickly that “everybody’s doing it.” As just one example, evangelicalism in the US has moved from a general opposition to the use of beverage alcohol during Prohibition to more openness since. That move was expedited by increased ease of travel and consequent increased exposure to cultures where practicing Christians had not been influenced by the American Prohibition movement and had a long history of disciplined use of alcohol. So “everybody’s doing it.”

In my experience, though, that’s simply not true. Though I grew up in a culture where alcohol was common (my extended family was more the beer-drinking type than wine connoisseurs), I decided not to drink for a few reasons:

I had a family history of alcoholism;

My parents decided to quit drinking when they came to Christ in their 40s; and

During a brief period of rebellion during my gap year after high school I found that I didn’t handle it well.

As an employee of my university, I’ve signed a statement that I won’t drink, but I wouldn’t drink even if I didn’t work there.

All this to make this point: over the years I’ve often been invited to share a drink, and I’ve always said, “No, thanks, I don’t drink.” And never—not once—has anyone given me any grief about that or taken any offense. In my experience, there is no real social expectation regarding alcohol. The culture does not in fact require that of its good citizens, and everybody’s most certainly not doing it.

So it helps us to be informed about what’s actually going on with the legal requirements and the cultural expectations. And of course, what the Scripture actually says.

Next time, some suggestions about how we make those decisions now that we have the facts at hand.

Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash

On Biblical Mandates and Cultural Expectations, Part 1

August 15, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We Christians find ourselves in an odd situation.

To paraphrase Jesus, we are in the world, but not of the world (Jn 17.15-16). He has sent us into the world (Jn 17.18) to be his ambassadors (2Co 5.20)—that is, to represent him well by living out his grace, mercy, and peace, and by spreading the message of the gospel to the ends of the earth (Mt 28.18-20).

Now, that means that we are to be different from the world and to make that difference plain—as Israel did under the Mosaic Covenant by intentionally not behaving like the cultures around them. They didn’t round the corners of their temples (Le 19.27), or wear linen mixed with wool (Le 19.19), or plow with an ox and an ass together (Dt 22.10). But at the same time we are to be “in” the world, representing God’s love, grace, mercy, and peace as well as his holiness, purity, and justice.

And God further emphasizes the idea of being “in” the world by saying that he has placed the earthly authorities in their positions and that we are to obey them, seeing them as agents of God himself (Ro 13.1-7).

So we serve God, obeying his commandments, and we obey earthly authorities, and we represent a good and kind God in the culture where he has sovereignly placed us.

We might expect, then, that occasionally these authorities will bump into one another. There are biblical mandates, and we must obey them. There also legal and cultural mandates and expectations, and we should do our best to accommodate them, to the extent that they don’t bring us into conflict with what God wants of us.

I’ve written before, and at more length, on Paul’s passages on this subject: 1 Corinthians 8-10 and Romans 14. But here I’d like to comment a little further on making decisions, sometimes hard ones, on practical matters.

There are clear biblical commandments. The big two, according to Jesus, are to love God and love your neighbor (Mt 22.37-39). We always ought to obey those.

But we know that there are some biblical commandments that we must not obey. The entire Mosaic ceremonial code—priesthood and sacrifices—has been fulfilled in and by Christ, who offered one sacrifice forever (He 10.12), and we would be wrong to follow the Levitical sacrificial code. In this case, as time has passed, the biblical expectation has been completely reversed.

Further, we know that some of the Bible’s commandments were culturally based. As just one example, Paul commands that we greet one another with a holy kiss (Ro 16.16), and I’m not seeing a whole lot of that among the brethren, at least in the US. We understand that we ought to greet one another affectionately and sincerely, and here in the US that usually involves a handshake or a hug, not a kiss. Cultural adaptation.

Some interpreters bring this principle into passages in a more controversial way. Paul’s proscription of women speaking in the assembly (1Co 14.34), for example, they suggest was unique to the Corinthian situation; the women there were causing a problem by their speaking in the church, so Paul told them to give it a rest; but he did not intend this to be a prohibition for all his churches, let alone for churches today.

Now, I’m open to that possibility in the abstract, but proper hermeneutics calls for careful consideration of the context. And I note that

Paul does not hint at any geographical limitation in the passage, nor does he describe any kind of misbehavior that elicited the prohibition;
Paul makes similar prohibitions in letters to other churches, such as the one in Ephesus (1Ti 2.12), which is on a completely different continent from Corinth;
And the reason he gives for the latter prohibition is not the behavior of the women in the Ephesian church, but the behavior of just one, and at the very beginning of time—the mother of us all (1Ti 2.13-14).

So I’d call that a legitimate principle—culture can indeed affect the application of a passage—but not textually indicated in this case.

We’ll continue this next time.

Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash

A Theology of a Morning Walk, Part 2: The Theology

August 12, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Walk

The previous post described a walk on the beach.

What was I thinking about during that time?

Let me tell you.

God’s Power and Faithfulness

The first thing you notice while walking on the beach is of course the ocean. It’s active, with the waves crashing a (reasonably) steady drumbeat on the sand. And it extends over the horizon, all the way to someplace far away. As I noted, this thing goes all the way to Perth. It’s unimaginably immense.

And God says to it, “Thus far you shall come, but no farther; and here shall your proud waves stop” (Job 38.11).

I see the moon, thousands of miles away, shining with the albedo of the reflected sun, even farther away, and Jupiter, farther yet, also reflecting the sun’s light, and a host of stars, exponentially farther. In a dark sky, a few of those “stars” would actually be galaxies, comprising millions of stars themselves.

In the understatement of all time, Moses writes, “He made the stars also” (Ge 1.16).

And this massive system runs like a clock. Or rather, our clocks attempt to run like it. We mark our years, and months, and days because God has created a system that is faithful, down to the second. So I knew before I started out that high tide was at 8:55 and sunrise at 6:38. Sure enough.

God’s faithfulness is also evident in his provision for his creatures: air, and water, and food, and warmth. Life is everywhere, from the microscopic on up, and it thrives because God is faithful.

Beauty

The wisest man who ever lived said that God “has made everything beautiful in his time” (Ec 3.11). You see that beauty everywhere—in the sunrise, in the cloud formations, in the iridescence of the seashells, in the astonishing variety of size and color in just the scallop shells, in the sea oats holding the dunes together, in the people walking and running and cycling. And that beauty resonates with us humans, because we are made in God’s image; I’m not the only one out at the jetty to watch the sunrise.

Human Stewardship

God has given us the responsibility—and the privilege—to take the raw elements of creation and develop them effectively and wisely. I see that everywhere on my walk, from the ships on the horizon to the waterfront houses to the rock jetty—it’s not a natural formation—to the little signs asking passersby to please be careful of the turtle nests, and to the dog owners who have trained their best-friend canines not to go potty on the beach. I see it in the parking lot in all those cars that have come all those miles with gas-powered explosions in their engines and not breaking down while it all happens. I see it in the websites I consulted about the tides and the sunrise and the weather. (And thanks to those meteorologists, I knew to get off the island 4 days before Hurricane Debby showed up and flooded the place.)

Brokenness

Speaking of young Debby, my walk reminded me that my pleasant and enjoyable experience wasn’t actually in the world that the powerful and faithful God had created—or rather, that this world, which he did indeed create, is not the same as it was when he rested on the seventh day. It’s broken.

I see evidences of natural death all around me: those horseshoe crab carapaces, and the little tiny holes in pretty much every bivalve shell, where a predator has overcome the poor creature’s defense system and made a meal of him. I’m not a fan of Jack London or of Darwin, but when the former describes nature—what the latter suggested operates for “the survival of the fittest”—as “red in tooth and claw,” he’s right.

And those Marine recruits over on Parris Island are engaging in wise preparation because humans are broken, and they do bad things, sometimes on a global scale.

But outshining all the evil is the greatness and goodness of God.

That was a great walk.

Photo by Hari Perisetla on Unsplash

A Theology of a Morning Walk, Part 1: The Walk

August 8, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

While vacationing on Hilton Head Island recently, I got up early one morning to do one of my favorite things. Up at 5, I headed out to the beach to walk a couple of miles to a favorite location for watching the sunrise.

Leaving my beach shoes at the end of the boardwalk, I turn left to head northeast along the beach. On my right, still invisible in the early morning darkness, lies the Atlantic Ocean, but I can hear it “flushing and flushing,” as one child once said. Out on the horizon I can see the lights of 5 different ships, and to my left, a few lights in resort hotels and multimillion-dollar houses fronting the ocean. (I wonder what they pay for flood insurance?)

Most people standing on a beach in the eastern US assume that straight in front of them is Europe, or maybe North Africa. Actually, from here it’s the eastern tip of Brazil, and the next landfall, believe it or not, is in Western Australia.

I know the tide is still coming in—high tide is 5:55 am—so I keep to my left to give the water room to crawl up the beach, but down the beach enough to have packed sand, which I find easier to walk on.

Above and slightly ahead of me, just on my right, I can see the moon, in waning crescent phase, with Capella at its ten o’clock and Jupiter at its two. There’s a long ridge of clouds to the northeast, at first reaching high enough to blur the moon, but within a few minutes the height of the ridge begins to recede.

In those dark hours you’re typically alone on the beach, and the waves provide the only sound. But when I’m a mile or so down the beach, there’s a slight lightening of the sky in the southeast, and I begin to hear the calls of the sea birds, up and looking for breakfast. They soar, seemingly effortlessly, occasionally rising a few feet and then turning to dive straight down into the chop, aiming for a fish. Sometimes they get it; sometimes they don’t.

I begin to see the rock jetty, dimly at first, but as I get closer, and the light increases, it comes plainly into view. And out come the other beach walkers, some for the exercise, others combing for seashells, yet others riding bicycles with fat, relatively low-pressure tires to maneuver well on the sand.

When I arrive at the jetty, the cloud ridge is still obscuring the horizon, so I won’t be able to see the sun break the horizon and then rise to full glory. But I know exactly when it happens—6:38 am—because observers of the sky tell us these things.

Sometimes I see Christians reading their Bibles out on the jetty, and others—perhaps New Agers, perhaps not—facing the rising sun with various poses, welcoming the new day. There’s none of that this morning; just walkers—some with coffee cup in hand—and bicyclists.

I move beyond the jetty, following the shoreline to the left as it begins to turn the north end of the island. There are often horseshoe crabs here, and while I don’t see any live ones, I do come across four carapaces, one of them disarticulated. I also come across a good-sized sand crab, also disarticulated; I assume he made a tasty meal for some predator.

Then further around the north end, to where I can see the low-lying Parris Island, where I assume the latest class of Marine recruits is having a far more strenuous morning than I am. I appreciate their willingness to do hard things for honorable purposes. And I find that I feel no irony in being thankful that their rigors are not those of this old, growingly creaky guy. God bless them.

With that, it’s time to turn around. I like to time the turning point at sunrise, so I’m not squinting into the sun on the way back.

After 7 am, the beach is getting busy. I see the beach patrol cart moving along the high beach as the staff check on the turtle nests; at one point they stop and deliver an impromptu teaching session to interested passersby. Several folks are fishing—I watch one young man pull in a 9-inch something-or-other as I’m walking by—and others are setting up tents and coolers and wagons full of folding chairs and beach toys in preparation for a full day on the beach, as the lifeguards are setting up chairs and umbrellas for the paying guests. Others are bringing their canine friends out for an early morning run, some tossing balls into the water for them to fetch. Dogs and beaches have a special relationship.

Back at the boardwalk at 8; time to rinse off the sand and walk across the parking lot to the condo, passing cars from pretty much every state in the Southeast, as well as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Texas, Kansas, and even Montana. And Ontario.

Now, what about the theology?

Next time.

Photo by Hari Perisetla on Unsplash

On Discipline, Part 5: Mentors 

August 5, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Perspective | Part 2: Action | Part 3: Dependence | Part 4: Thought

One more item in Paul’s list of areas we should give attention to and discipline:

Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you (Php 4.9).

He encourages the believers in Philippi—a church that he planted—to imitate his example, to follow his practices. These days we call such a person a mentor, and those who imitate him proteges.

Some people might find this surprising. Isn’t this arrogant of Paul—especially since Christ is the only perfect example?

Good point. And as it happens, Paul says that himself elsewhere:

Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ (1Co 11.1).

He’s clearly not placing his value as an example above that of Christ.

I’ll note that Paul’s exhortation here indicates that he has been careful to set the kind of example that the Philippians should follow. He’s been helped in that, certainly by the fact that he’s an apostle, guided by the Spirit into all truth (Jn 16.13).

Slight sidetrack: Many interpreters would apply Jn 16.13 to all believers. I don’t, because I know that I’m not guided into all truth, and as I tell my students, I have written documentation in a file cabinet in my office that they are not guided into all truth either. I think this is a promise to the apostles that they would be inerrant in their reporting of Jesus’ life and teachings—their proclamation of the gospel. This of course would come to us through the New Testament. But since only three men in the room in John 16 wrote any New Testament, I’m also inclined to believe that the rest of the apostles, though not sinless (Ga 2.11), were inerrant in their preaching—which makes Luke’s description of the Bereans all the more remarkable (Ac 17.11; but cf 1Th 2.13).

But to return.

Paul here encourages the Philippians to imitate his example.

Might this exhortation have broader significance? Should we, two millennia after Paul’s death, imitate him too? It occurs to me that we’ll have a harder time doing so, since we can’t see Paul’s example in his day-to-day life, as the Philippians did. But there are certainly a good many things we can know about him, and those things we can imitate.

But to go a step further. Can we take Paul’s words as a general endorsement of the concept of mentorship? There are a good many Christian books on discipleship that do just that, and I don’t see a reason to disagree with them. Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts seems to imply strongly that all believers should sit under gifted teachers and should live exemplary lives before their church assemblies.

So, I would suggest, we can all benefit from following the examples of exemplary believers. (The apparent redundancy there is intentional and is not actually redundant.) And Paul’s words here in verse 9 indicate that we should be careful whom we choose.

I suppose it could go without saying that we should choose as models those who follow Christ well, consistently, carefully, graciously. We should choose them not because they’re popular, or good-looking, or socially adept. We should recognize something of the character of Christ in them and then seek to integrate that character trait into our own thinking and lifestyle. We should ask them questions, and we should listen to the answers.

I suppose it’s worthwhile to insert a caution here.

You and I are not called to be anybody else. God has made us all different, and he has gifted us to serve in ways that are the sum of our DNA, our upbringing, our experiences, our sanctification, and yes, our gifting. I’ve known Christians who want desperately to be just like somebody they admire, and those efforts always end in disappointment. We’re called to be ourselves, remade in the image of Christ.

But we ought to follow examples, carefully chosen, in our lifelong journey to be like Christ.

Photo by Dave Lowe on Unsplash

On Discipline, Part 4: Thought

August 1, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Perspective | Part 2: Action | Part 3: Dependence

The next area of discipline in Paul’s list is likely the toughest one for many people.

 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things (Php 4.8).

Here Paul calls for mental discipline: controlling what you think about.

This is tough.

We’re not used to that in our culture, and in recent years it’s only getting more difficult. We naturally tend to think about whatever pops into our head. Most often those things pop in from our daily circumstances—conversations, assigned tasks, and so on. Many of those things we don’t control; they just show up, and we think about them.

But with the rise of social media, we’re being conditioned against mental discipline. Social media posts scroll by, and we think about them for 5 or 10 seconds, and we move on. We’re passive consumers of mental stimulation; it’s all up to the algorithms, and our thoughtful choices have nothing to do with what’s being poured into our brain bucket. There’s no discipline or self-control whatsoever; it’s just random dopamine hits.

Yikes.

But it gets worse. Neurological research indicates that the more we engage in this kind of media surfing, the less thinking we’re able to do; our brain rewires itself for “fast-twitch” thinking rather than long-form consideration of more complex ideas. If a paragraph consists of more than 9 or 10 lines, we’re not going to consume it thoughtfully; eventually we’ll just skip it altogether. (How many of the issues that we deal with in modern society can we think through in 5 or 10 seconds? We’re being conditioned against wisdom.)

For more information on this concept, I highly recommend Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. He brings serious research to the question.

In this pervasively “fast-twitch” environment, we’re going to find it harder than ever to follow Paul’s admonition. In a culture where many people have no mental discipline, directing your thought anywhere in particular, let alone to specific areas, is going to seem strange and foreign.

I’d suggest some practical things:

Read, regularly and repeatedly. Of course, believers should read their Bibles as their primary source of spiritual nutrition. But any long-form reading will strengthen your mental discipline. (And no, the closed captions on movies are not long-form reading.)

Memorize Scripture. Memorization requires repeated review (I have a system, and I hope you do too), which will enable you to bring to mind biblical content whenever you have some mental free time—while driving, walking, standing in line, and so on.

Approach casual conversations thoughtfully. Sure, small talk has its place; but if your conversations at church are all about football or politics, they could use some discipline. Direct conversations to substantial things. “How can I pray for you?” is one way to start.

Use “down time” thoughtfully. While you’re waiting to fall asleep at night, direct your thoughts.

Paul includes here a list of things to think about. I’m not sure detailed word studies on each term are what he’s after; the list could be more of a random collection of examples than a to-do list. I doubt that once you’ve thought about his list of 8 things, he’d say you’re done. Think about anything excellent; think about anything praiseworthy. Think on purpose.

Again, this is hard. We like to let our thoughts go wherever they take us. But they do take us places, and while “the power of positive thinking” isn’t a magical formula for personal success—“if you can believe it, you can achieve it!”—the way we think does make a difference in the progress and outcome of our living. It certainly makes a difference in our spiritual success, our sanctification.

Think on these things.

Photo by Dave Lowe on Unsplash