Dan Olinger

On How to Think about Enemies, Part 2: Jonah, for the First Time

November 13, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We all think we know the story of Jonah and the whale.

Well, clearly, we don’t.

It wasn’t called a whale, but a “great fish.” Now, the word fish can refer to anything that looks like what we think of as a fish, so I suppose the creature could have been a whale. Back then, biological taxonomy wasn’t what it is today.

But the book of Jonah is not about the fish. It really isn’t even about Jonah; Jonah is the foil for God, who is the real protagonist.

In the first verse we learn that Jonah is a son of Amittai. That’s also noted in 2 Kings 14.25, where we also learn that he was from Gath Hepher, a village in Galilee, just 3 miles northeast of Nazareth. So he was from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Kings passage also places him in the reign of Jeroboam II. Scholars note that Assyria and its capital Nineveh were weak around that time, a fact that might explain the Ninevite king’s apparent humility and call for repentance.

Before we get to the theology, we ought to ask a basic question: Is the story true?

There are elements of the story that, though not technically miraculous, are remarkable evidences of providence—most especially the fish, of course, and the rapidly living and dying vine. Sceptics would reject anything smacking of the miraculous. But scholars have noted that this story doesn’t have the typical characteristics of allegory, or parable, or fable. There’s no known fictional form into which the story robustly fits.

If there is a God, and if he acts, then there is no reason to reject the story as fictional. And since the 2 Kings passage is historical narrative, not historical fiction, a reader would have to reject more than just the fish to call the whole account unhistorical.

Of course Jesus referred to Jonah (Mt 12.39-41). Now there is such a thing as literary allusion, and if I refer to Ebenezer Scrooge as a stingy old miser, that doesn’t mean I think he actually existed. But Jesus referred to Jonah as a prophet, not merely a fictional character, and he cited the conversion of Nineveh as an example for Israel—a fact that would make little sense if the Ninevites’ repentance never happened. Further, in the same discourse Jesus cited the Queen of Sheba (Mt 12.42), whom the Scripture presents as clearly a historical figure.

Jonah is a unique book among the prophets, in that it contains almost no prophecy. His entire prophetic message consists of a few words in Jonah 3.4; the rest is narrative. Further, most other prophets don’t engage in dialogue with God (Habakkuk being the most notable exception). And Jonah, of all the prophets, is simply a bad guy. He’s a bigot who refuses God’s command and complains when the prophecy is fulfilled.

Maybe there’s hope for some of the rest of us to be prophets.

I’m kidding, of course.

The book is structured* around two times that God called Jonah (Jon 1.2; 3.1-2). He disobeys the first call, but a group of pagans, the sailors, demonstrate more piety than he does. He obeys the second call, but only reluctantly, and again, a group of pagans—this time the Ninevites—demonstrate more piety than he does. In both halves of the book, Jonah ends up in a private conversation with the Almighty, and there we get to the meat of the book: who God is with respect to his enemies—and by implication, who we should be as well.

* I’m indebted to the Holman Concise Bible Commentary for this structural analysis.

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On How to Think about Enemies, Part 1: Introduction

November 10, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We all have enemies, of one sort or another. A lot of people, particularly Christians, are uncomfortable with that thought: love your neighbor, and love your enemies, and all that. But I’ll observe that the very fact that Jesus tells us to love our enemies assumes, or at least implies, that we have some. And even if you’re one of the few who regularly succeeds at loving your enemies and wishing harm to no one, those enemies are still out there. You may not even consider them enemies and hope and work for peace, but they still consider you an enemy, and that fact is going to affect your relationship.

People are enemies for lots of reasons. Throughout history countries and ethnicities have positioned themselves as enemies; as the old antiwar song goes, “the French hate the Germans; the Germans hate the Poles; Italians hate Yugoslavs; South Africans hate the Dutch; and I don’t like anybody very much.” These days we hear a lot about political enemies; candidates speak condemningly of their opponents, and the followers of each do the same. Sometimes family members become enemies, often after the death of a parent, when battles begin over what’s left behind. And of course there are religious enemies. Judaism and Christianity have often provoked animosity from nonbelievers, even without our considering the regrettable sinfulness of their adherents.

All of this, of course, is a consequence of sin, the fallenness of the present world. Of the innumerable attempts by well-meaning persons to bring peace to the world, or to set up a peaceful system within it, all have failed, whether with a bang or a whimper.

The Scripture speaks of a time of universal peace, and of a Prince of Peace, but he has yet to come. No one is beating his swords into plowshares, despite the statue in front of the United Nations building in New York.

So what do we do in the meantime? Do we just focus on our friends, and cut out “toxic people” from our daily interactions? Do we present them with indisputable proofs of how wrong they are, and just assume that if they reject our arguments they must be stupid—and thus hate them all the more?

Do we despair?

What do we do?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I think you can predict what I’m going to say next.

As the sufficient Word of God, the Scripture speaks to this question, as well as all the others.

There were times in its history when the nation of Israel, which has always been surrounded by enemies, was in particular peril. Two enemies were particularly strong and thus particularly dangerous. The earlier one was Assyria, which in the 700s BC was the Big Kid on the block. After it, in the 500s, came Babylon, which defeated Assyria and assumed its dominance in the world of its day. As we might expect, both of them were bullies—as countries with strong militaries are often inclined to be.

During those times Israel had many prophets, sent by God both to warn and to encourage his people. Some of them had their prophecies collected into books of the Bible that bear their names. And three of those speak particularly to Israel, and to us, about how we should think about our enemies. Those three, in chronological order, are Jonah and Nahum, who wrote about Assyria, and Habakkuk, who wrote about Babylon (or as he called it, “Chaldea”).

Because they were speaking for God and by his Spirit, and because God has preserved their words for us today, we can be confident that what they said can be instructive for us as we face our enemies, large and small, intimidating and not.

I’d like to spend a few—oh, quite a few—posts meditating on what they said about the subject.

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On the Believer’s Dual Citizenship, Part 4: Longing for the Eternal City 2 

November 6, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Living for the Eternal King | Part 3: Longing for the Eternal City 1

At this point in Hebrews 11 the author pauses to summarize and, perhaps, to clarify what he has said so far. These 5 people—Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah—have been chosen for the “Hall of Faith” for a single reason: they trusted God.

They demonstrated that trust, that faith, by believing that what God had promised he would do, and by embracing those promises (He 11.13). What did that look like? In Abel’s case, it meant simply offering a sacrifice to God from what God had given him, with an attitude that pleased him. The specifics of his attitude aren’t described, but it’s easy to imagine that it involved gratitude and willingness rather than stinginess. In the case of Enoch, the comment that he “walked with God” seems to indicate fellowship between friends. Noah and Abraham evidenced their trust in God by obeying a significantly difficult command. And Sarah perhaps appears here just because of the attitude of her heart as she anticipated a labor and delivery in old age.

In these different ways, these examples demonstrated that they looked forward to something beyond this life: that after they died, they would have a life that was worth sacrificing for here (He 11.14-16).

More examples follow: Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac (He 11.17-19); Isaac’s instruction of his sons (He 11.20); Jacob’s anticipating of the covenant blessings on his grandsons as well as his sons (He 11.21); Joseph’s expectation of the Exodus (He 11.22); Moses’ obedience to God in leading it (He 11.23-29); Joshua’s obedience at Jericho (He 11.30); and Rahab’s faith in the one true God (He 11.31).

And then comes a simple list of names, with no descriptions (He 11.32), and of others unnamed (He 11.33-38), all who valued the life to come more than this one, because they trusted God to keep his promises.

We’ve noted that the author of Hebrews clearly expects us to follow their example.

What would that look like in these “modern” days?

It would look like valuing the eternal over the things you can’t take with you. And that would mean that our values and aspirations would be pretty much the exact opposite of the prevailing values and aspirations of our culture. Wealth? Political power? Fame? Are you kidding me?

That completely changes how significantly this or that election, or this or that scandal, or this or that government policy, affects us.

It changes how much we value and therefore cling to our earthly possessions. Giving to those in need brings us much less hesitation. Augustine’s earthly city starts to seem relatively trivial.

It gives us a confident faith in the Great Certainties:

The greater value of the heavenly kingdom

God’s certain deliverance of us to that kingdom

The goodness of God’s plan for us here

Note that valuing eternity more than the temporal does not mean that we despise the temporal; God gives us good things, and it is appropriate to receive them with gratitude. I like my riding mower. I note that Abraham did indeed prefer Canaan to Ur, even though it wasn’t the heavenly city.

Eternal values, exercised wisely as we inhabit a temporal kingdom. Stewarding present responsibilities and opportunities even as we await eternal life in a very different place.

Grace, mercy, and peace.

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On the Believer’s Dual Citizenship, Part 3: Longing for the Eternal City 1

November 3, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Living for the Eternal King

As citizens of both an earthly nation and a heavenly home, believers think and live in ways that are markedly different from those with only an earthly citizenship. In the previous post we started that contrast by recalling our heavenly King’s Prime Directive, the “Great Commission” (Mt 28.19-20). Our life focus, our overriding mission, is to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. It’s been my pleasure to do that on several continents, but it’s worth noting that Jesus’ command was to start where we live (Ac 1.8).

As we do that, other distinctives reveal themselves. There are many examples in Scripture, in both Testaments, of people who carried God’s Word to their families and neighbors. The classic summary of these efforts appears in Hebrews 11, the so-called “Hall of Faith.” Here we meet several believers from the Old Testament—some of whom we’re surprised to find here—with a description of their attitudes. It’s worth looking through those descriptions for attitudes that we should adopt these centuries later.

The writer begins by talking about faith, the characteristic he’s going to choose as key for his list. In the larger context of Hebrews, he’s writing to what we might call New Testament Jewish believers, urging them not to return to Judaism. So it’s pretty clear that he intends this list of Old Testament examples to be examples for us, living as Christians in the New Testament economy. The writer confirms that in verse 4, when he says, “he being dead yet speaketh.” These long-dead saints are speaking to us.

What are they saying?

The first example is Abel, who “offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain” (He 11.4). We’re not told why it was more excellent; I was taught as a youngster that Abel offered the blood sacrifice that God required. But there’s no indication in the Genesis account that God had given any instruction about blood sacrifice; some note that God made Adam and Eve “coats of skins” after their sin, and it’s reasonable to conclude that the animals who donated those skins died, but their death is not called a sacrifice, and in any case, God offered it rather than commanding Adam and Eve to offer it. We certainly can’t hold Abel—or Cain—to the Abrahamic or Mosaic requirements centuries before they were given. All we know is that Abel’s sacrificed pleased God, while Cain’s didn’t. Cain’s response—murderous rage and then arguing with God (Ge 4.5-15)—indicates that the difference between the two men was in their attitude toward God. Our Hebrews passage will develop more details about that.

The second example is Enoch, who is said simply to have “pleased God” (He 11.5); the OT account says that he “walked with God” (Ge 5.22).

What do Abel and Enoch have in common? Their focus was on what God wanted, not merely their own earthly concerns. They wanted to please God.

And our author next tells us that there’s only one way to please God, and that’s to trust him. In the original languages, “trust” and “faith” are the same word, both as nouns and as verbs. “To have faith” simply means to trust.

We find this principle repeated in the next examples. Noah trusted God that rain was coming, even though it had never rained before, and he proved his trust by spending a century building a really big boat. Abraham trusted God’s call and proved it by uprooting his sizable business and moving to a place he’d never been. Sarah had some doubts about the pregnancy, of course—she was 90 years old, and the whole concept made her laugh (Ge 18.10-12)—but once she was pregnant, she believed that God would give her strength to deliver, and Abraham named her son Isaac—“laughter”—in a delightful double entendre, a nod to Sarah’s faithlessness and God’s faithfulness.

There’s much more to consider in this passage. Next time.

Photo by Global Residence Index on Unsplash

On the Believer’s Dual Citizenship, Part 2: Living for the Eternal King

October 30, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction

What is the believer’s mindset as one holding dual citizenship? Can he be a loyal citizen of his earthly national homeland even as he acknowledges the superior authority of his heavenly king?

Earthly Authority Matters

I think he can, for the simple reason that providence exists. God directs the affairs of people and nations—both national affairs and the details of each individual to whom he has given life. Most of my readers were born into citizenship in the USA. Others are loyal to one of a number of homelands in six of the seven continents in the world. (If you’re in Antarctica, please speak up. McMurdo Station, anyone? Anyone?)

Now, we’re not where we are by accident. God put us here. And just to make his intention absolutely clear, he has instructed us in the Scripture, as noted in the previous post, to “be subject unto the higher powers”—by which he means, as the context indicates, political powers (Ro 13.1). He even extends that clarification further when Peter writes to churches in Asia Minor (Turkey) that are suffering persecution from the Roman emperor and subordinate provincial officials:

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; ¹⁴Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well (1P 2.13-14).

So at the outset, we dual citizens are reminded that we’re not playing games here, playing one citizenship against another to our greatest advantage. Given the context of persecution, it’s pretty clear that our personal advantage isn’t a significant consideration in a godly decision.

But Eternity Matters More

Given the brokenness of the world and everyone in it, we should expect that earthly authorities will issue directives that are not in line with God’s will. In fact, the Scripture gives examples of that in both Testaments. Pharaoh ordered the execution of male Israelite babies; Herod ordered the execution of any baby who might turn out to be “King of the Jews”; the Sanhedrin ordered the Apostles not to proclaim Jesus as Messiah.

The responses of God’s people varied. Sometimes God just stepped in and stopped the evil attempt: God warned Joseph in a dream to get out of Bethlehem and migrate to Egypt for a while. In two other cases a key person on scene lied: that would be the Egyptian midwives and Rahab. There’s disagreement about whether these people did the right thing; that’s too long a discussion for this blog post, but for now we can just say that God delivered his people from the evil ruler. (He is sovereign over sinners as well as saints, after all.)

In the case of the Sanhedrin, the situation is clear. Jesus, in his last command to his disciples, had ordered them,

All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. ¹⁹Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: ²⁰Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world (Mt 28.18-20).

The Sanhedrin had ordered them to disobey that command.

What part of “all authority” is hard to understand?

Peter’s reply captured the situation perfectly:

Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. ²⁰For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard (Ac 4.19-20).

So our heavenly king does indeed take precedence over our earthly king. We obey him regardless of contradicting earthly directives.

There’s a reason for that: eternal directives are more important than temporal ones, because eternal consequences are more significant than earthly ones.

In our patriotic duties, then, we make our decisions on the basis of the eternal outcomes. In such matters, obedient believers may disagree; one believer may choose to bake a cake for a gay wedding, and another may refuse. But if they’re obedient, their decision is based on the eternal.

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On the Believer’s Dual Citizenship, Part 1: Introduction

October 27, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Christians have always disagreed over their responsibilities to earthly governments. Jesus, of course, declared to Pilate that his kingdom “is not of this world” (Jn 18.36), leading some since to deny, or at least resist, all earthly kingdoms. Most Christians, though, have tried to follow Paul’s mandate that we should respect “the powers that be” (Ro 13.1), but they have disagreed significantly over what exactly that should look like.

Augustine laid the foundation for “two kingdoms” thinking in his classic work The City of God, in which he asserted that all humans are citizens of either the city of God, loving God, or the city of man (Babylon), loving self. In his view, Christians are also citizens of earthly kingdoms, though only temporarily, and should be good citizens, seeking to improve society while realizing that complete success is impossible.

The medieval Roman Catholic Church gave lip service to this idea—Augustine is, after all, one of the great Fathers of the Church—but various popes sought to exert authority over kings to an extent that rendered the latter essentially powerless. The most well-known example of this is when Pope Gregory VII refused to answer the door at the Canossa Castle in northern Italy, leaving Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV standing barefoot outside in the snow for three days (1077).

The Reformers, who for obvious reasons were not inclined to follow slavishly the Roman Catholic example, mostly returned to something close to Augustine‘s position. Calvin taught that Christians should respect and obey the government—not surprising, since for a time in Geneva he essentially was the government, even ordering capital punishment for heretics as he deemed it appropriate.

These days most evangelical Christians make much of the Romans 13 passage, reserving civil disobedience to matters where they view the government as impinging on matters of biblical command and thus personal conscience. They will disagree with one another on precisely when civil disobedience is necessary*, but they will generally agree on the abstract principle.

In some non-Christian minds this “dual citizenship” seems inappropriate. On November 10, 2004, speaking at the University of Chicago the day after that year’s presidential election, humorist Garrison Keillor said, “I’m trying to organize support for a constitutional amendment to deny voting rights to born-again Christians. I feel if your citizenship is in Heaven—like a born again Christian’s is—you should give up your [US] citizenship. Sorry, but this is my new cause. If born again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?”

Now, I’m pretty sure Keillor was joking—first, because that’s what he was getting paid to do, and second, because as far as I know he never acted on those words. But it’s easy to see how this doctrine might give pause to a non-Christian or two.

Well. Given that conservative evangelicals seem to have a robust theology of earthly citizenship based on Romans 13 and are (mostly) in agreement as to its broad application, I think it’s worth giving some attention to our other citizenship—what Augustine called “the city of God.”

How do we live for the eternal king?

And how do we demonstrate longing for the eternal city?

Next time.

* In a contemporary example, the US Supreme Court is deciding this year a Christian therapist’s objection to Colorado’s restrictions on “conversion therapy” for homosexual and/or transgender youth. Practicing evangelical licensed therapists in the state disagree over whether their colleagues can abide by the existing state law in good conscience and in obedience to Scripture. Some think the plaintiff’s objection is unnecessary by biblical standards.

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On Revival

October 23, 2025 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

There’s a lot of talk about revival these days. National networks are noticing and reporting on a surge of interest in Christianity, particularly among young men on the political right. Many are attributing it to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, with perhaps a reaction against policies hostile to Christian thinking that are widely viewed as “nutty.” The most obvious of these, I suppose, would be the transgender movement, especially policies promoting the participation of biological males in women’s sports and the encouraging of puberty-blocker hormone treatments and surgeries in minors. Many pundits think that young males have just had it up to here with what they see as the fruits of secularism and are turning to Christianity.

Maybe they are. I certainly would like to see that happen. (I’d also like to see a similar surge in that thinking among young females, but it doesn’t appear to be happening.)

But I’ve noticed something about the current discussions of this phenomenon that gives me pause.

The evidences that I’ve seen cited for this revival are all external.

By that I mean things like attendance at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, and increased attendance at church, and Bible sales, and app downloads, and streaming of Christian music. News outlets and podcasters are chattering about these statistical shifts.

Now, these are all good things to one degree or another, but they’re not revival.

I suppose that in order to support that statement, I need to define my terms.

Historically, the term revival has been used of a renewal of dedication to God among Christians. It’s not technically a wave of conversions; that’s evangelism. For our purposes, though, I’m happy to just lump those two phenomena together as a broad move toward Christian thinking, regardless of the subject’s previous religious state.

The little itch that I need to scratch is the apparent confusion between a sociological phenomenon and a genuine experience of Christian conversion or renewal.

The Bible speaks of revival, or conversion, as a work of God’s Spirit in the individual heart. The Spirit convicts someone of his sin; he draws him to himself. As a result, the person repents of that sin and turns to Christ, seeking him and trusting him as the source of forgiveness and spiritual life. He becomes a servant of God, and his priorities are radically reordered.

Maybe that’s happening on a large scale today. I hope so. But the simple fact is that we can’t possibly know that yet. Jesus said that we know his followers by their fruits; and Paul names the fruit of the Spirit as a set of character traits: love, joy, peace, endurance, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control (Ga 5.22-23).

We see precious little of that these days, on the right or the left. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Now, I really don’t think I’m the curmudgeon here (shades of Andy Rooney), or the stereotypical fundamentalist (“no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental”). I think the body of this blog demonstrates that I’m fundamentally an optimist. But I know from experience that young people get swept up in various emotional causes. I note that a recent study suggests that the transgender movement among young people may be powered as much by peer pressure as genuine sexual dysmorphia.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the response to Charlie Kirk’s death were in any significant way another example of the same phenomenon?

So what do we do?

To start, we seek to understand accurately what’s happening. Becoming a Republican, or a fan of President Trump, or of Charlie Kirk, is not regeneration. Going to church is not conversion; in fact church is designed to be a gathering of people who are already believers, not a way to become one. Listening to Christian music, especially considering how broadly defined that genre is, may not be evidence of any particular mindset.

Let’s see what’s actually there, and not what we wish for.

And then, we steward the opportunity this social phenomenon represents. We interact with those who show up in our churches, showing them what the Scripture says about regeneration and the Spirit who gives that life, and showing them what the consequent life of sanctification looks like. We challenge the deviancies of professing Christians on both the right and the left. And we do these things in a way that reflects the fruit of the Spirit, bringing grace, mercy, and peace to those we serve.

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On Jaywalking

October 20, 2025 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Longer post than usual.

New experience last Friday. I got hit by a car while crossing the street.

I was jaywalking, which I now don’t recommend.

A teenager was turning left into the street I was crossing. She looked left: clear. She looked right: a car coming, but waaaaay down the street. Plenty of time to get into the traffic flow if she didn’t dally. Watching right, which was her only traffic, she gave it gas.

At that moment, I stepped into the lane she was turning into, having followed precisely the same mental process she had, verifying that it was safe to cross. I was looking right, away from her, to make sure the far lane was remaining clear.

The next few seconds were kinda confusing.

Why are my feet above my head? Why is my head on the ground? Why am I covered in [censored for the squeamish; if you’re not, and you want to see a really cool pic, click here]?

I was EMT-certified years ago, after our first daughter was born, and one of the things I have known since then is that scalp abrasions and lacerations bleed profusely for a few seconds and then settle right down. They look a LOT worse than they really are. So I wasn’t particularly concerned by the ruby cascade, but of course lots of people would be horrified.

Then began the screaming and crying.

Not me, you knucklehead. Her.

I’ve been driving for over 50 years, and I’ve been in multiple accidents, some of which I caused, but I’ve never hit a pedestrian. That must feel awful.

And she’s just a kid.

I feel terrible about that. And especially since she really didn’t do anything that a more experienced driver couldn’t have done.

I spent some time trying to calm her down—”I’m OK,” that sort of thing. But she was having a really bad experience.

I also feel terrible about the fact that it happened on an arterial to the BJU campus, at 7.50a, just when everybody’s showing up for the day. I started getting texts immediately. The whole institution apparently saw the newly retired Chair of the Division of Biblical Studies and Theology go, um, head over teakettle and bleed all over the street.

Oh, great.

A BJU staff member jumped out of his car to see if I was all right. Turns out he was my student 20 years ago. Thanks, Nick.

The highly conscientious and effective and thoughtful city of Greenville sent everybody they had, in literally seconds. Ambulance. Police. Fire truck, for crying out loud. Back all the traffic up, so everybody can get a really good, leisurely look.

Oh, great.

They did a really good job. I considered refusing treatment—I really felt fine—but the EMT voice in my head kept whispering “Subdural hematoma, you bonehead,” and I acquiesced.

Fun conversation with the EMTs in the ambulance. One of them was a sister-in-law of another former student. Fond memories, Drew. Fun conversation with the folks who greeted me in the ER. Fun conversation with the nurses who wired me up to the cardiogram and the sphygmomanometer and the little oximeter on my index finger.

Wait for the doctor.

Wait some more for the doctor.

Fun conversation with the policeman who cited me for jaywalking. Just for the record, given the layout of that street, I had a perfectly good reason to be jaywalking, and I’m pretty sure I can argue for it if I need to. But I probably won’t. Need to, that is. The traffic judges here have a pretty good reputation for being reasonable.

By the way, he didn’t cite the driver. I’m no expert on the law, but at this point I don’t have any reason to object. I wish her the best.

Wait for the doctor.

Initial consult. Doc says I’m in great shape for a guy my age, and that I’m “highest priority” for the CT scanner.

Wait for the scanner.

Fun conversation with the nurse, who asks if I need anything. I tell her I desperately need the C-collar to go away. She sympathizes, but there’s nothing she can do.

Wait some more for the scanner, for which I am, ahem, “highest priority.”

Several more conversations, over an unremittingly lengthening timespan, with the nurse, who is very attentive and eager, but she can’t remove the C-collar or bring me a decaf latte with half and half from the food court in the main lobby. I ask if I can just pop over there and get one. I think you can guess what her answer is.

Fun conversation with the transporter who shows up to take my gurney and me to the scanner.

Fun time in the scanner. It’s not as loud or scary or uncomfortable as I thought it would be.

Fun conversation with the (different) transport person who takes me back to my cozy little alcove in the ER. I feel like asking him to take me by the food court in the lobby, but I’ve resigned myself to what I know his answer will be.

Wait for the doctor.

Wait some more for the doctor.

Here he comes. It has now been, oh, about 5 hours.

He checks my neck. Says the scan showed nothing going on in my head.

No kidding!? I’ve known that for decades.

He and a medical student on rotation clean my head wound—that hurts, but within reason—and wash the blood out of my hair. I ask if he can add some body to my hair while he’s at it. The student laughs.

Students are like that.

The student tells me that one of her classmates in med school is a BJU grad. I don’t recognize his name, so I immediately feel sorry for him for going all the way through BJU, with all those excruciatingly difficult pre-med classes from Dr. Chetta, without taking a single class from me.

My wife shows up. The nurse says I’m all ready to go, with nothing to sign or nuttin’.

Limp to the exit. Hmm—starting to feel some pain in the hip. (I’m kinda surprised they don’t put me in a wheelchair; I’ve seen hospital staff insist on that when I’ve picked up other people to take them home. And I do have a yellow band on my wrist that says “Fall Risk.” I wonder if six months ago it would have said “Spring Risk.”)

My beloved brings the car around, having to maneuver through the tight space left by a meal delivery person who took up the whole bloomin’ two-lane drive-through. At the ER. Now *there’s* a knucklehead.

Home.

Alive. Well. Sore, sure, but did you notice the alive and well part?

Let’s end with some theology.

I can testify that God is good. But if I were seriously injured, or dead, he would still be good.

Amen.

Have a good day.

And be careful crossing the street.

Photo by Jonnica Hill on Unsplash

On the Big Story, Part 3: The Kingdom of God

October 16, 2025 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Israel and the Church 

How do Israel and the church fit together? And are there any other stages in the Big Story that God is telling?

What should we make of all this?

Oh, my friend, this is not dusty theology. This has everything to do with today’s news cycle, and more importantly how we live in and respond to it.

The New Testament speaks often of “the kingdom of God.” John the Baptist introduces the term (Mt 3.2), and Jesus presents himself as the fulfillment of John’s prophecy (Mt 4.17; 12.28; 16.28). It’s a major theme of Jesus’ teaching (e.g. Mt 13), and it shows up in the writings of Paul, Peter, John, and James.

So what is it? Well, a kingdom typically involves three elements:

A king, or ruler

A realm, or sphere of authority

A people, or subjects

The kingdom of God, then, might be defined this way:

God reigns in heaven and on earth, over a people he has created and called, for the praise of his glory (Ps 103.19).

That reign has manifested itself persistently through the history of the world and will continue forever:

The cosmos (Gen 1-11): God created it from nothing, and he sovereignly directs it. We literally set our watches by this cosmic direction.

Israel (Gen 12-Mal): This is the kingdom of God as manifested throughout the Old Testament. He originates it in Abram; he constitutes it at Sinai; he appoints its leadership, climaxing in David and Solomon; he sovereignly directs its location in Canaan, then Egypt, then Israel, and even Babylon and Persia.

The church (Acts-Jude): This is the kingdom of God throughout the New Testament and up through today, all the way to the return of Christ. God originates it at Pentecost through the work of his Spirit; he empowers its spread as evidenced in Acts; He sets forth its moral code in the Epistles.

The eschaton (Revelation): “Eschaton” is just a fancy term for the time after Jesus returns; it literally means “the last thing.” At that time God will invade the realm of earth and establish his kingdom (Rev 20). (Here I’m taking the position that the millennial kingdom is visible, earthly, and yet future. Many will disagree with me.) Then he will create a New Heaven and a New Earth (Rev 21-22).

So how does all this affect the way you and I live today and tomorrow?

To begin with, we recognize and take into account the fundamental, universal principle of all existence, which is that God is in charge.

A lot of people don’t like that principle, particularly in the West, where democracy is ingrained into us, and we talk a lot about our “rights.” But I’ll observe that according to the USA’s founding document, we are endowed with those inalienable rights by our Creator; even our democratic republican system begins by recognizing that God is in charge.

Now. How do we think and live under that dominating principle? How do we respond to the evidences of brokenness in our human social and political systems? We manifest God’s rule in multiple ways. Let me suggest just a few and leave you to see how far down that road your own thinking can take you:

We seek to know Him personally.

We obey His will as expressed in the Scripture.

We submit to earthly authorities* because they are under His dominion (Rom 13).

We live trustingly and confidently—optimistically—in a broken world, or at least we’re supposed to, because we know that the Sovereign is wise and good and will bring it all out in a good place.

We seek an eternal kingdom, thereby relatively devaluing the present world. That means we live in grace, peace, and confidence instead of fear, frustration, and anger.

As the people of God, we inhabit our phase of history, of God’s plan, with confidence in the one whom we know intimately, who has all power and exercises it wisely and beneficently. And I’ll observe that as God’s people, we can do the world a lot more good by living that way, in sharp contrast to the spirit of any age, than by acting as frustrated, angry, and afreid as everybody else.

Vive la difference.

* As I’ve noted before, there are exceptions to this rule at times when our authorities are not in fact respecting God’s dominion.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

On the Big Story, Part 2: Israel and the Church

October 13, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction

We all know that the Bible consists of two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Within those two divisions, we find that the people of God are organized differently. In the Old Testament, after the primeval period in Genesis 1-11, God begins to establish his people as a family—specifically the family of Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, whom he later names Israel. As the family grows, Jacob’s twelve sons become tribes constituting the people of Israel.

In Exodus, God turns this family, this people, into a nation, with defined leadership and explicit laws. And the rest of the Old Testament is the story of this nation—a turbulent story indeed.

These are the people of God.

How do you become part of the people of God? Usually, you’re born into it, but there are exceptions. When the Israelite slaves are delivered from Egypt, some Egyptians come with them; at Jericho, a Canaanite woman—a prostitute!—asks for asylum and is granted it. And the Mosaic Law provides for “strangers”—foreigners—who can be admitted to Israelite citizenship.

But for the most part, the people of God in this stage are genetically determined. And that leads to some, well, imperfections. Throughout Israel’s history, some percentage of Israelites do not believe in Israel’s God. At times, hardly anybody in Israel really belongs to God. The prophets paint a dark. stark picture. But for now, the people of God are defined in terms of ethnicity, of nationality, and, after the Conquest, of geography.

When we come to the New Testament, the whole picture changes. Now the people of God are defined by their belief in God. Ethnicity (Ga 3.28) and nationality (Ro 13) and geography (Mt 28.19-20) become irrelevant; the church begins in Jerusalem and expands throughout Judea, but soon it’s in Samaria, and then it explodes across the Mediterranean Basin. Within a generation or so it’s in India, and soon in China, and once the New World is discovered in the late 15^th century* it immediately takes hold there as well.

Now. How do these two manifestations of “the people of God” relate?

So far in church history there have been two basic answers to that question. There may be other theories in the future, but for now this is what we have.

One approach is that Israel has been replaced by the church. The promises that God made to Israel in that historical context have either been fulfilled already (e.g. the land promise [Gen 15.18] under Solomon) or are now given to the church. That means that modern Israel has no biblical or theological significance; it’s just another country, like Liechtenstein or Malawi. And that means that Christ’s kingdom is not an earthly, political kingdom; it’s either the influence of the church in the world (postmillennialism) or the reign of Christ in the hearts of his people today (amillennialism).

For most of church history, this approach, and specifically amillennialism, has been by far the majority view. Today it’s called “Covenant Theology” and is held by Presbyterians and a few other groups.

Another answer to the question is that Israel and the Church are distinct—perhaps eternally distinct—entities. God has not yet completely fulfilled his promises to Israel—most especially the Land Promise. That means that he will fulfill that promise at some future time, in a political kingdom here on earth. The Temple will be rebuilt; David’s greater son, Christ, will reign from Jerusalem, and that earthly reign will last for a thousand years.

Elements of this view were held in early apostolic times; many of the Apostolic Fathers, for example, held to a literal earthly reign of Christ. But fairly soon a literal reading of prophecy fell out of favor, and the idea of spiritualizing the kingdom became dominant. But in recent centuries—the 19^th and 20^th—this second view, called Dispensationalism, has become popular and even dominant in evangelical Christian culture.

I prefer one of these two views, but I don’t believe that this question should cause rancorous divisions in the body of Christ. I think it helps us to see that we all agree on The Big Story:

God is creating a people for his glory.

He began doing so with a physical illustration (Israel), including an ethnicity and a legal system.

That people demonstrated a need for something beyond the physical arrangement.

Having demonstrated his point, God graciously did what Israel could not.

Incarnate, he kept their Law in their place.

He offered himself as the perfect sacrifice for their sin.

He promised to return as king.

And then he extended this offer of grace to the entire world.

Next time we tie these two entities, and more, into the Really Big Picture.

* Sure, the Vikings. But they made no lasting settlement. And the Native Americans apparently had no history of contact with Christianity before they arrived in North America.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash