Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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Servant Songs, Part 1: Introduction

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For several weeks now I’ve been working on memorizing Isaiah’s “Servant Songs.” I’ve found them difficult to memorize, for a couple of reasons. First, I’m aging, and everything is getting more difficult to memorize. I’ve heard that the brain is more like a muscle than a bucket, and that the more you use it, the stronger it gets. I hope that’s true; if it is, then the difficulty I’m having would be even worse if I weren’t actively exercising my memory muscles.

The second reason this has been difficult is specific to the passages. They’re a set of four, by the same author, in the same prophetic book, and there’s a lot of parallel phrasing in there. (Compare, for example, Isaiah 42.6 and 49.8, and 42.7 and 49.9.) It’s taken some time to get the passages into my head so that my brain knows which specific phrasing goes with which context.

But there are benefits to all that recitation and repetition.

First, as with any memorization, you notice details you didn’t notice before—where the “wills” are as opposed to where the “shalls” are, for example, but often more significant things* such as parallel phrasings that give insight into the structure of the text and thus the mind of the author at the moment he was writing.

Further, the repetition gives you time to “think on these things.” The text makes a greater impression on your mind, and the process forces you to think more deeply about what the author is saying. You notice connections between verses (take a look, for example, at Isaiah 53, which is a chain of thoughts, one link connected to the next phrasally; I first noticed this phenomenon when I was memorizing Psalm 27). My ADHD mind is not good at meditating on things abstractly, but the process of memorization overcomes that disability quite nicely, since I have to think about the thoughts and their connections over a period of time.

A particular benefit of memorizing the Servant Songs is that, in a very real sense, they’re not written to me; they’re written to the Servant of Yahweh, God the Son, the Messiah. As a result, they give us insight into the mind of Christ that we don’t get anywhere else.

In Biblical Studies there’s a concept called “the messianic consciousness”: the idea that the man Jesus didn’t fully understand his divine identity from infancy, but that it developed in his mind as he matured. The Bible does teach that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2.52). Exactly what that looked like is of course a mystery to us—how can the omniscient God increase in wisdom? how can God the Son increase in favor with God? But it says he did. And we presume that he didn’t speak fluent Hebrew when he was a week old or dissertate on the hypostatic union when he was three—though he did astonish the rabbis when he was twelve, and at that age he clearly knew that God was his Father in a way that Joseph wasn’t (Lk 2.46-49).

This concept has raised in my mind visual images of the boy Jesus listening to the Scripture in the synagogue. (His family almost certainly did not have Tanakh scrolls that he could read at home.) At some point along the way, when he heard the Servant Songs read, he realized, “That’s me! That’s talking about me!” Did this realization hit him suddenly, like the proverbial Mack truck, or did the light of understanding rise slowly in his mind, like dawn on the eastern horizon?

I don’t know. But at some point these songs became his. Did he memorize them? Did he pray them to his Father over those long nights alone on a hillside? Did he contemplate them during walks near Nazareth, among lilies and sparrows and brilliantly ornamented wildflowers? Did he come to find meaning in the idea that “this is my Father’s world” that goes well beyond anything that we can say of ourselves?

I’d like to take a few posts, maybe more than usual, to meditate on these songs as a vehicle to seeing Christ the Servant in a richer and rounder light.

* My apologies to our British cousins, who think the difference between “will” and “shall” is meaningful, and who make a practice of using the two words correctly. I can never remember the difference.

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Song 1, Part 1 | Song 1, Part 2 | Song 2, Part 1 | Song 2, Part 2 | Song 2, Part 3 | Song 3 | Song 4, Part 1 | Song 4, Part 2 | Song 4, Part 3 | Song 4, Part 4 | Song 4, Part 5

On Valentine’s Day

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Since Valentine’s Day is this week, I’d like to think a little bit about love.

Love is fascinating—all the popular songs are about it.

But it’s a mystery.

For some time there’s been circulating on the internet a series of comments on love by children. I haven’t been able to find its source—everybody quotes it, but as far as I can tell, nobody credits it. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • “No one is sure why it happens, but I heard it has something to do with how you smell; that’s why perfume and deodorant is so popular.” Mae, age 9
  • ”I think you’re supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn’t supposed to be painful.” Manuel, age 8
  • “It isn’t always just how you look. Look at me, I’m handsome as anything and I haven’t got anybody to marry me yet.” Brian, age 7
  • “Don’t do things like have smelly, green sneakers. You might get attention, but attention ain’t the same thing as love.” Alonzo, age 9
  • “Be a good kisser. It might make your wife forget that you never take out the trash.” Dave, age 8
  • “Don’t forget your wife’s name. That will mess up the love.” Erin, age 8
  • “Love will find you. Even if you hide from it. I have been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me.” Dave, age 8

And it’s important.

It’s fundamental to our very nature; we’re made in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27), who, though one in essence, is—and thus has always been—in three persons, in perfect relationship.

And when one of those persons became man, he issued an insider’s commentary on God’s law: it’s all about loving God and loving your neighbor (Mk 12.30-31).

So life is as simple as that:

  • Love God: put Him first
  • Love others: put them first

It’s as simple as closing the door quietly and leaving the hall light out if someone is asleep. As simple as stopping to help someone who’s in difficulty. As simple as thinking about what you can do.

Years ago I was in the Las Vegas airport headed home, and a woman came up to me and asked me, in broken English, if I had a quarter for the pay phone. She was unexpectedly stranded and needed to call a family member. I fished a quarter out of my pocket and gave it to her and walked on toward my gate, feeling satisfied with having helped somebody out.

Then I thought, You could have done better. You could have let her use your phone, so she could make additional calls if she needed to. You could have asked if she was hungry, and bought her a meal if she needed one. You could have asked her where she was from and recommended a church in her town. You could have …

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Didn’t.

If I love my neighbor, I want to do him, or her, some eternal good.

Of course, Valentine’s Day is especially focused on local love, on committed love, love more deep and abiding than general love of neighbor. Our culture is filled with stereotypes about that.

Candy. Flowers. Jewelry. A candlelight dinner.

But as long-term couples know, lasting love is as much, if not more, about smaller, less affected things.

Putting your dirty clothes in the hamper. Putting the toilet seat down. Cleaning up after yourself. Keeping your promises.

Listening.

And it’s all based in God’s love for us: we love Him, because He first loved us (1Jn 4.19). If you’re going to love as you should, you need God’s example and His power. You find that, and develop it, in the means of grace: the Word, prayer, and fellowship.

As you walk with God, you’ll know, experience, and live out love.

First things first.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

On Sources for the Bible, Part 2: Specifics

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Part 1: Summary

In the previous post I observed that the biblical writers often used other works as they composed their writings—and that they didn’t confine themselves to other biblical works.

Here are the specifics.

I like to organize these references into 2 categories:

  • Consultation, by which I mean that the author says, “This is also recorded in such-and-such a document.”
  • Allusion or quotation, where the author quotes, loosely or directly, from another source, whether he specifies it or not.

First the consultations.

Jewish Sources

  • Book of Genealogies (Gen 5.1)
  • Book of Jasher (Josh 10.13; 2Sam 1.18)
  • Book of Nathan the Prophet (1Ch 29.29; 2Ch 9.29)
  • Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite (2Ch 9.29)
  • Visions of Iddo the Seer (2Ch 9.29; 12.15; 13.22)
  • Book of Shemaiah the Prophet (2Ch 12.15)
  • Book of the Acts of Solomon (1K 11.41)
  • Book of Gad the Seer (1Ch 29.29)
  • Sayings of the Seers (2Ch 33.19)

Note that two passages, 1Ch 29.29 and 2Ch 9.29, are particularly rich in these consultations.

I also note that these sources cannot be divinely inspired, since they have not been preserved, as God promised that his Word would be.

A Persian Source

  • The author of Esther (perhaps Mordecai?) consulted “The book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia” (Es 10.2)—perhaps in the same warehouse where the unnamed servant grabbed a clay tablet at random to read to Xerxes so he could sleep (Es 6.1).

And now the allusions and quotations. Where possible I’ve included links to the sources on the internet so you can check ‘em for yourself.

Jewish Sources

Pagan Sources

  • Aeschylus, Agamemnon l. 1915 / 1624 (Acts 9.5)
    • This is included in Jesus’ words to Paul from heaven. Jesus’ sentence is clearly the same as the line from “Agamemnon,” but we can’t be certain that Jesus is quoting that poem. It’s possible that Aeschylus’s line became common in the ancient culture—similar to, say, “Early to bed and early to rise”—and Jesus is simply referring to the popular expression.
  • Epimenides, Cretica (Acts 17.28a; Titus 1.12-13)
  • Aratus, Phaenomena l. 5 (Acts 17.28b)
  • Menander, Thais 218 (1Cor 15.33)

So What?

What does all this mean?

  • The Spirit-driven biblical writers used sources, including pagan sources, with no apparent discomfort.
  • They did so using the standard practices of their day; for example, Paul uses a couple of lines about Zeus and applies them to the Lord. The hearers would be expected to understand what he was doing, and there was no intent to deceive.

Here’s what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that the source is inspired. We do not “live, and move, and have our being” in Zeus.

One closing note.

Jude cites 1 Enoch in his epistle. Now, we know that the biblical Enoch is not the author of everything in 1 Enoch—but there’s no reason that the traditions on which 1 Enoch is based couldn’t have included some authentic statements of the ancient saint. If Jude had simply cited 1 Enoch without any comment, it wouldn’t matter whether or not what he quoted was actually spoken by Enoch. But he puts it this way:

And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying … (Jude 14).

In my opinion, Jude is stating that the historical Enoch, seven generations from Adam (and long before “1 Enoch” was written), said these words. And since Jude is inspired, I believe that the verse he quotes from 1 Enoch is in fact an authentic saying of the ancient prophet.

Have fun with all this.

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On Sources for the Bible, Part 1: Summary

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Where did the Bible come from?

The answer to that question depends on what you mean.

Most simply, and most importantly, the Bible comes from God. Paul tells Timothy that the words of the Scripture (and in this context, he pretty clearly means the Hebrew Scripture, or what we Christians call the Old Testament) were breathed out by God (2Ti 3.16), and Peter says that the human authors were “moved” by the Holy Spirit (2P 1.21). That word “moved” is used in Acts of the storm (Ac 27.15, 17) that nearly blew Paul’s ship all the way to Africa (Ac 27.17). Since the Greek word for “wind” is the same as the word for “spirit,” it’s pretty clear that Peter is engaged in wordplay.

But the Bible also came from human authors, people like us. The fact that they were blown along by the Holy Wind doesn’t mean that they had no control over what they were writing. When the prophet Jeremiah accuses the Lord of deceiving him (Je 20.7), he’s clearly expressing his own opinion, not God’s. And when Paul writes that he baptized only two people in Corinth (1Co 1.14), you can see his thought process as he corrects himself in the succeeding verses: “Oh, yeah, I baptized that one family—and, uh, I don’t remember whether I baptized anybody else” (1Co 1.16). (That’s clearly my informal paraphrase.) Paul’s words clearly indicate that he isn’t just quoting the Holy Spirit, who most certainly does remember whether Paul baptized anybody else.

In the famous “needle’s eye” passage, Matthew (Mt 19.24) and Mark (Mk 10.25) use the common Greek word for “needle,” the kind of needle any first-century Jew could find in his house. But many manuscripts have Luke (Lk 18.25) using a different word for “needle,” a technical term for a surgical needle. Luke, the doctor, uses the first Greek word that comes to mind for “needle”; he speaks from his own experience.*

So the authors, though completely under the direction of the Spirit, played a role in the composition of the biblical text.

Let’s take this a step further. The authors themselves used other sources as they composed their works. I’m not speaking here of the common critical assumption that the Genesis creation story came from the Enuma Elish, or that the flood story came from the Epic of Gilgamesh. I think it’s much more likely that those pagan myths came from the cultural memory of an actual ancient creation and an actual ancient global flood, the one Moses describes in Genesis.

Rather, I’m saying that the authors borrowed freely from other ancient works, often saying so at the time—in effect, inserting a footnote.

Now, we all know that the New Testament often quotes from the Old. The simplest way to see this clearly and quickly is to flip through the Christian Standard Version (available online for free at biblegateway.com). The editors of that version have opted to set all NT quotations of the OT in bold-faced type, making them visually jump right off the page. And if you start in Matthew, who quotes the OT frequently, you’ll see a lot of bold-faced type.

But the biblical writers don’t limit themselves to quoting just other writers of Scripture. They quote from all over the place—including Persian historical archives and classical Greek poets waxing eloquent about Zeus. It’s possible, though not certain, that Jesus himself, resurrected, glorified, and at the right hand of the Father, quotes a classical Greek poet.

And these writers do so without seeming to sense any need to explain themselves or to offer some sort of disclaimer.

Next time we’ll look at what’s there in the biblical text.

* A note for those of you thinking as you read: which Greek word did Jesus actually use? And which Gospel author reported that word inaccurately? Freak out thou not, my friend; Jesus almost certainly was speaking Aramaic, and he used the common word for “needle” in that language. Matthew, Mark, and Luke were translating Jesus’ words into Greek as they wrote, and so each writer would choose the first Greek word for “needle” that popped into his head, based on his experience.

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Part 2: Specifics

On Being an Ambassador, Part 4: Seeing the Long View

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Part 1: Cultural Diversity | Part 2: Walking the Tightrope | Part 3: Drawing the Line

We are ambassadors for a reason. God is working through history toward a goal that is worth all the difficult choices and cultural confrontations. We do well to remind ourselves of it.

In the beginning, God created us in his image and gave us dominion over a created world that was “very good” (Gen 1.31). Soon that creation was marred, however, distorted by our sin. And immediately God set out to restore what we had broken, to reunite what was estranged (Ge 3.15).

He prepares an earthly line that will eventuate in a man who is God himself. The story takes a while to tell; there is Seth, then Noah, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; David, and Solomon, and then a builder in Nazareth named Joseph. He adopts his fiancee’s baby, thereby entitling the child to the throne of his father David. This child, in his short life, will demonstrate himself to be prophet, priest, and king, and will offer the perfect sacrifice—himself—to atone for the sins of all who would believe in him. And with that faith comes the transfer of his righteousness, his legal and moral perfection, to the believer.

And then reunification with the long-estranged God.

And God’s vision continues. It’s not enough that three Jewish men—Jesus’ “best friends”—believe, or that the Twelve or the crowds do. The vision is much bigger than that. God is gathering to himself a people, innumerable and global, to praise his name. The message of this gathering will go to the Jew first, but God’s Spirit will create a new institution, the church, to unite all who will come, to erase national and ethnic boundaries, to manifest the glory of disparate people fellowshipping face to face, worshiping together in the same room, rooms large and small all around the globe.

And those little gatherings are a foretaste of a much larger gathering, myriads of myriads, people from every kingdom, tribe, tongue, and nation, united in their praise, with one voice, to the one who loved them and who bought them with his very blood.

I once attended a worship service in Arad, Israel, one of the oldest cities in the world. In a house on a hill gathered believers from all around the world. The sermon was in Hebrew, but with the aid of live translators and headsets, we heard in our mother tongues—I in English, others in French, Spanish, Arabic, Swahili. A foretaste.

It was always clear in the Hebrew Scripture that the plan was not limited to the Jews. God told Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Ge 12.3). Amos preached that Edom and “all the heathen … are called by [God’s] name” (Am 9.11-12). Isaiah foresaw all the nations coming to worship in Jerusalem (Is 2.1-4; 27.12-13). Jesus said,

Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven (Mt 8.11).

But that all these peoples would be united in one body, on equal footing, not because they had become Jews, but because they believed in the God of all the earth—that was new revelation, given through Paul (Ep 3.6).

This plan could only result in infinite glory being given to the Planner, whose wisdom and power and grace astonishes even the angels in heaven (Ep 3.10), when they see people who should be mortal enemies united in praise to the One who has brought them together, not just with one another, but with him.

Cultural boundaries, indeed.

This is the God, and the plan, that we represent. What a trust we have been given; God has entrusted his reputation and plan to servants that he knows are unfaithful and imperfect. But he will empower us, enliven us, direct us, and the plan will be accomplished.

To represent such a God is an inestimable privilege.

May he give us wisdom and strength to represent him well.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

On Being an Ambassador, Part 3: Drawing the Line

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Part 1: Cultural Diversity | Part 2: Walking the Tightrope

I think it’s worth looking more closely at where we draw the line between what cultural practices we accept and what we reject—in short, where we draw the line.

What makes a given culture’s norms and practices unacceptable? In a well-known passage, the Apostle John writes,

15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (1J 2.15-17).

We are not to love “the world” or “the things that are in the world.” Now, we know that’s not an absolute statement; we’re told to love our neighbors, as well as our wives and children, and the last time I checked, they all resided on Planet Earth. John gives us some insight into what he means in the next sentence; he lists three things that characterize the world’s thinking and values, things that are at odds with the way God looks at things (what we often call a “biblical worldview”):

  • The lust of the flesh
  • The lust of the eyes
  • The pride of life

As we think about these three things, we realize that they indeed characterize the thinking of the world we live in and in which we are ambassadors for Christ:

  • Our culture is devoted to satisfying our physical desires. Because our culture is deeply pornogrified, we tend to think of “the lust of the flesh” as sexual lust, and it does include that, but it’s not limited to that. We want food; we want sleep; we want freedom from pain. And if you’ll think about it, you’ll realize that all these physical desires come from God; Adam and Eve ate fruit—and enjoyed it, and were given free rein to eat from all the trees but one—before they fell into sin. I would suggest that “the lust of the flesh” is the desire to use God’s gifts in ways that he has not intended—and thus to worship the gift rather than the giver. A healthy appetite becomes gluttony; a need for rest becomes laziness; a desire for freedom from pain, which is a God-given sign that we’re using our bodies in destructive ways, leads to drug addiction, which is simply our continuing to abuse the body further.
  • Our culture wants what it sees—material possessions of all kinds, from houses to vehicles to baubles to toys, both men’s and boys’. Gotta have it. I’ll be happy with just one more thing. And as we all know, the stuff eventually loses its shine and we’re driven to move on. Once again, in most of these cases the thing itself can well be a gift from a good and generous God, until we move our affections from God to the stuff.
  • There’s discussion about what “the pride of life” is. Some think it’s the desire for admiration or popularity; others think it’s the desire for experiences, such as exotic travel or extreme sports. Again, the issue is whether we live for the experience, which is temporal, or for the Creator, who is eternal.

As we represent Christ in our culture or in a foreign one, we must live in a way that declares our priorities clearly. When the culture advocates lust of the flesh, we can’t trim our message to appease the libertines. When the culture lives on greed, we can’t cater to it with some sort of Christianized prosperity theology. When the culture worships political power, we can’t simply champion the candidate most likely to give us a piece of that action, even if he’s a narcissist.

We are representing someone else. That’s a higher mission.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

Part 4: Seeing the Long View

On Being an Ambassador, Part 2: Walking the Tightrope

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Part 1: Cultural Diversity

As Christians, we get our instruction from the Scripture. We find there early examples of how Christians crossed cultural boundaries in taking the gospel to ends of their world. One instructive example is the preaching of the Apostle Paul. Since God called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles, we should expect that he would deal with widely diverse cultures—and he does.

On his first journey he travels to central Turkey, beginning at Antioch in the region of Pisidia. He begins by connecting with the people with whom he’s most familiar: on the Sabbath, he goes to the Jewish synagogue (Ac 13.14). Since he’s a rabbi, and even trained at the feet of the highly respected Rabban Gamaliel, the local Jewish community initially welcomes him and gives him a platform to speak. He addresses them at some length (Ac 13.16-41), repeatedly referencing the Jewish Scriptures and demonstrating that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah. This message would be of considerable interest to his Jewish audience and would stimulate interest in further discussion (Ac 13.42).

A few years later he arrives in Athens. Paul visits the synagogue there (Ac 17.17) but does not confine his outreach to that. He wanders the streets of the city and sees a statue “to the unknown God” (Ac 17.23). He immediately recognizes a point of cultural contact: Paul’s God can be known, because he has revealed himself in Creation as well as in the Hebrew Scriptures. In his discussions with the Gentile Athenians, several hearers seek to learn more, so they take him to a part of the city where people can deliver public speeches to passersby (Ac 17.19-21), and he offers to introduce the hearers to this “unknown God” (Ac 17.22-31).

This speech is very different from the one in the synagogue. He doesn’t cite the Hebrew Scriptures even once, presumably because this audience wouldn’t have the foggiest notion what he’s talking about. He doesn’t claim that Jesus is the Messiah, because, again, that is a meaningless term to the Athenians.

Instead he quotes their poets—Epimenides of Crete (“in him we live and move and have our being,” Ac 17.28a) and Aratus (“we are his offspring,” Ac 17.28b). (Apparently, Paul has read these poets enough to be able to cite them extemporaneously.) I find it interesting that both of these poets are describing Zeus—but Paul deftly redirects to the one true God.

So far these approaches are entirely different. But at the end Paul preaches essentially the same message: the resurrected Christ and the need for repentance (Ac 17.30-31). And in both environments he faces both scoffers and those who want to hear more.

Paul’s example leads us to believe that cultural adaptation is appropriate; ambassadors should be effective at communicating to a culture unlike their own. Yet the ambassador must not misrepresent his king; he must deliver the message that the king wants delivered, without distortion.

I’ve written an earlier series on the fact that some doctrines are more important than others; there are certain specified “fundamentals of the faith” on which we must not yield and for which we must do battle if they are under attack. An ambassador is not going to water down these essential doctrines or try to present them disarmingly.

But there are also many teachings, some of which we hold strongly and dearly, on which we must allow one another freedom, and over which we must not fight. I would suggest, for example, that while I’ll die on the hill of the deity of Christ and salvation by grace through faith, I must not fight with brothers who disagree with me on mode of baptism, or church government, or eschatological system.

A wise ambassador is going to pick his battles. He’s going to seek to bridge the cultural gaps as winsomely and effectively as possible while still delivering the king’s message accurately.

There are things about the gospel that are offensive to every culture, and we cannot and should not seek to avoid or disarm those offenses.

But we don’t always need to sacrifice our effectiveness in order to tell the truth. Christ’s great commission can indeed be obeyed and accomplished.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

Part 3: Drawing the Line | Part 4: Seeing the Long View

On Being an Ambassador, Part 1: Cultural Diversity

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This week my pastor pointed us to 2 Corinthians 5, where Paul tells Christians that we are appointed as “ambassadors for Christ” (2Co 5.20) tasked with the responsibility to represent the King (Ps 2.6-9) by taking the gospel to the ends of the earth—as he commanded us just before he returned to his Father (Mt 28.19-20).

Most of us realize that we aren’t doing a very good job of that; we’re reticent to share the gospel, most often because of cultural pressure, and when we do, we often end up arguing rather than graciously and lovingly persuading. Sure, Jesus overturned tables in the Temple, but he didn’t treat everybody, or even most people, that way.

So representing the King is going to involve stewardship, careful thought about how we go about taking the good news to the whole planet. There’s been a lot written about evangelism, missiology, acculturation, and the other issues involved in a global outreach, and there have been plenty of examples, positive and negative, of attempts to carry it out.

I’d like to share a few thoughts on a biblical basis for proceeding, and point out a few questions that we all ought to consider as we do so.

To begin with, the globe displays a lot of cultural differences. Many Americans, isolated as we are by oceans on both sides, haven’t traveled at all internationally, and many more have cross-cultural experiences that are fairly limited—a quick foray from San Diego into Tijuana, perhaps, or from Detroit over the river into Windsor, or maybe even a cruise to the Bahamas. I realized years ago that one of the best ways to combat your cultural misconceptions is to travel—and when you do, ask questions, listen to the answers, and resist jumping to conclusions.

People are different, and thus cultures are as well.

Why?

Because we’re created by God, who is, well, creative. We see diversity and contrast all throughout Creation, from trees to birds to butterflies to rocks to weather patterns. And people. God doesn’t want us all to be alike.

And so we do things differently. I’ve noted before that in some cultures people are unapologetically late to church, because they stopped to talk to someone they passed along the road, and it’s just not polite to dismiss others with a wave of the hand and a verbal “Gotta get to church”—although that’s fine here in the good old US of A. And how in China, you can’t eat everything on your plate, because that makes the host think he didn’t give you enough.

And in many, maybe most, cases, these differences have no moral weight; they’re simply different ways of doing things.

But we also know that Creation is fallen, and humanity is broken, and we often choose to conduct ourselves badly. Sometimes entire cultures call good evil and evil good. The early Christians famously refused to participate in the civil religion by calling Caesar “Lord”; and they denounced the common practice of exposing unwanted babies and allowing them to die. In fact, they rescued these babies and raised them as Christians, thereby turning an evil practice into a source of both civil and religious good.

As ambassadors, then, we need to navigate the realities of cultural difference, speaking and living in a way that communicates clearly, winsomely, and effectively to people who are different from us, while being wise enough to reject cultural practices that are broken and thus evil.

That’s a tricky business; there are lots of things to consider, and the decisions aren’t always clear-cut.

I intend to take several posts to lay a foundation for making such decisions and to think through some of the issues involved.

See you next time.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

Part 2: Walking the Tightrope | Part 3: Drawing the Line | Part 4: Seeing the Long View

Continuous Improvement, Part 2: Inch by Inch

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Part 1: No Fear

Deming’s fourteen principles included a second one that has greatly influenced my thinking: being satisfied with slow, iterative change, so long as it is constant because it is built into the system. That, too, reflects something in God’s relationship with us.

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, he has three years to save the world. We would certainly feel a lot of pressure in that situation. And that pressure would be compounded if we had to set up a system that would perpetuate itself for thousands of years—particularly if we found that our disciples unanimously and continuously Just Didn’t Get It.

A remarkable thing about Jesus’ ministry is that he never seems to be in a hurry. As he’s traveling through Galilee, he sees a funeral and stops to raise the lone widow’s only son back to life again (Lk 7.11-17). As he’s walking to a village to heal Jairus’s daughter (Lk 8.41-42), he pauses and asks, “Who touched me?” (Lk 8.45). And he takes time to talk to the woman, to comfort and encourage her. Though he sometimes expresses frustration over the thickheadedness of his disciples, he doesn’t fire them and look for someone else. At the end of his earthly ministry, though they are still essentially numbskulls, he instructs them patiently and at length about what’s coming next and what their responsibilities will be.

A little improvement here, a little improvement there. That’s good. We’re moving in the right direction.

It should be no surprise, then, that he works with us in the same way. At our conversion, a lot happens from the divine side, but we’re still just babies, dependent on constant care, feeding on milk and not solid food (He 5.12; 1P 2.2). Yet God has committed himself to us for the long term, uniting our efforts with his in the lifelong process called sanctification (Php 2.12-13). With our active participation, he begins to conform us to the character of his Son, a process that will take our entire lifetimes, even with the Spirit’s empowerment. And even at the end, we still won’t be there, and God will have to take us the rest of the way to perfect Christ-likeness—and he certainly will (1J 3.2).

He knows, of course, that all along that lifelong pathway we’ll stumble, sometimes from weakness, sometimes from inattention, sometimes from sheer bone-headedness. Even Paul didn’t do any better than that (Ro 7.14-25).

But our Father is utterly committed to our long-term reclamation, and he is in this with us for the long haul. He knows our dusty frame (Ps 103.14), and he knows that we’re going to progress in tiny steps, and that sometimes we’ll take steps backward. Though we are frustrated by the fickleness of our love for God and by the consequent inconsistency of our spiritual growth, he is not.

Why not?

Because God’s plans are never frustrated.

And because he loves us.

We’re going to get there, by God’s grace and with his empowerment. You can take that to the bank.

So, every day, we seek continuous improvement. As my pastor said recently, we just take the next step. What that next step is, is different for each of us, but by God’s grace we can see that far, and we can take the step in confidence that he will empower it.

I hope you don’t take this brief series to imply that God is following Deming’s fourteen principles; God is what he is timelessly, and Deming, through common grace, is following God’s principles rather than vice versa.

It shouldn’t surprise us that God is the perfect Father, the perfect Master, the perfect Director and Accomplisher of his good and eternal plans—that he has delivered us from all fear and empowered us to become like Christ, no matter how long it takes or how slow and inconsistent the process.

Take the next step, with confidence.

Photo by carlos aranda on Unsplash

Continuous Improvement, Part 1: No Fear

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Thirty years or so ago, when I was working for BJU Press, my boss assigned me the task of researching what was then commonly called “Japanese-style management,” to see whether we could apply some of its principles to our production processes. For several years the Japanese car companies had been cleaning the clocks of the American manufacturers, and companies of all kinds were beginning to take notice.

So I did some research. Interestingly, the Japanese companies were following the advice of an American statistician named W. Edwards Deming, who argued that companies, particularly in manufacturing, should evaluate their processes statistically and make changes to their processes that were called for by the hard numbers, rather than just acting on hunches. Deming composed a list of fourteen principles to guide company management in this process of continuous improvement.

I was particularly influenced by two of these principles. The first was the absolute necessity of removing fear from the workplace. Every employee must consider himself an equal member of the team, whose input is valued. (In many cases, the line worker’s input is more valuable than the boss’s, because he’s closer to the details of the process and more likely to see where the problems lie.)

The second was the idea of continuous improvement. A company often tries to roll out a new process or organization or morale campaign, with lots of horn-blowing and pom-pom shaking and fancy new slogans, but nothing about the process and the team dynamics really changes; it’s all just pomp and circumstance. Work harder! Try more! Rah rah rah!

Deming says you can’t become a perfect organization just like that. There’s no program or reorganization that is the magic solution to your problems. Instead, you must empower everybody in the organization to notice imperfections and to speak up about them. In the case of the Japanese automakers, they empowered every worker on the assembly line to pull the chain and stop the line if he saw a problem. Yes, it costs money to stop the line; but if you see a problem, stop the line.

Because management has removed fear from the workplace (see previous principle), the employee knows he won’t get cut off at the knees when he notices and immediately reports a problem.

And quality goes up, just a little bit.

And day after day, it goes up just a little bit more.

These days that approach to management is called continuous improvement, or total quality management.

And it works.

It’s interesting to me that God’s treatment of his people reflects both of these principles.

First, God removes fear from the relationship. He does this in a couple of ways. First, he begins the relationship by assuring the believer that although he was angry at his sin before salvation, that is no longer true. He is propitiated: the enmity has been removed, and he will never be angry at the believer again.

A friend of mine, a pastor, heard me say that in class once and challenged me on that. Isn’t God angry at us when we sin? Doesn’t he chastise his people (He 12.5-9)? Yes, he chastises us, but as a perfect father, out of restorative and corrective love, not out of anger. Christ’s sacrifice propitiated the Father, and he is no longer angry. For him to become angry at us, I would suggest, would devalue the sacrifice of his Son. Was Christ’s work effective, or not? Has he propitiated the Father, or not? I said to my friend, there are Christological implications in seeing the Father as ever angry at his children.

A lot of Christians continue to live under the fear of their Father. They know that their sin continues, despite all their efforts to eradicate it. Paul admits this of himself (Ro 7.14-24). But Paul ends that confession with a shout of triumph:

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. … There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Ro 7.25a, 8.1).

And he has already said, “We have peace with God” (Ro 5.1).

The second way he has removed fear is by assuring us of a good, and eternal, outcome. We will persevere (Jn 10.27-29); God’s enemies will be defeated (Re 20.10); and we will have abundant life eternally (Re 21.1-7), as well as in the present (Jn 10.10). Confidence, like love, casts out fear.

We’ll address the second principle next time.

Photo by carlos aranda on Unsplash

Part 2: Inch by Inch