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

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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On Thanksgiving

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Since it’s Thanksgiving Day in the US, I thought I’d repeat a thankful post from this past July 27.

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Early in our marriage, when we were in the process of making friends with other young couples, my wife and I would occasionally notice that as we socialized in our home or in someone else’s, some people always seemed to be upset about something. They’d tell us the story of how they were wronged in some way, how some injustice was done. The next time we were together, they had their tails in a knot about something else. Always upset, always holding on to wrongs, real or imagined.

Once, we made the conscious decision to minimize our socializing with one such couple. These days the internet memes say, “You just don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.” And it’s true.

It puzzles me how some people can be so ungrateful. People don’t treat them right; they don’t get paid enough; their mother-in-law is a pain in the neck; their boss is an idiot. And on it goes.

A colleague of mine remarked to me several years ago, “You know, life’s going to happen, no matter what you do. Some of it will be unpleasant. You can be bitter about it, or you can be happy in spite of it. The choice is up to you. I decided,” she said, “to be happy.” And boy, was she.

As result of her example, I began to think about all the ways I’ve been blessed. And one day it occurred to me that everything I need—literally everything—is free. That’s the way God has arranged the universe.

Don’t believe me? Think about it.

What do you need more than anything else in the world? If you lack it for 30 seconds, it will be literally all you think about until you get some.

Yep, oxygen.

Free.

You’re swimming at the bottom of an ocean of it—an ocean that God has kindly diluted so you won’t burst into flame at the slightest spark. God’s even given you a scoop on the front of your head so you’ll get your share of the stuff. Some of you he gave a larger scoop to, and you have the gall to be upset with him about that. Shame on you.

What’s the second most necessary thing? Water. They say you can last 3 days without it—some maybe as much as 8 to 10 days under certain conditions. But not long.

Most of the globe is covered with it. And that water mass feeds a delivery system that brings it right to your feet, purified, for free. (Unless you live in the Atacama, which hardly anybody does.) And again, many of us complain when it rains. Especially at the beach.

Granted, I pay a water bill, but I’m not really paying for the water; I’m paying for someone to clean it up and bring it to my house. I choose to do that, but I have a big ol’ plastic barrel that I could use to get my water for free.

What’s next? Food. Grows right out of the ground, from plants that are already there. Free. Again, I pay for my food, but only because I don’t feel like growing my own. So I pay somebody else to grow and harvest and deliver it; and sometimes I go out to a restaurant and pay somebody else to cook it and bring it to my table. But the food? The food’s free.

And then there’s light, and heat, and all the other physical necessities. All free.

God has been remarkably good to us.

But you’re thinking (I hope), those aren’t our greatest needs. They’re just temporal. We have greater needs: forgiveness, relationship, grace, mercy, peace. Love.

What do you know? They’re all free, too.

Everything you need is free.

I don’t mean to minimize anyone’s suffering. The world is broken, and we and everyone we know here are broken as well, by sin. Suffering is real. Abuse is real. Pain is real. Death is real.

But we have much to be grateful for, and these jewels shine all the brighter against the black background of pain.

Today’s homework: read Psalm 145.

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously [freely!] give us all things?” (Rom 8.32).

Photo by Willem Karssenberg on Unsplash

Amateur Thoughts on a Theatrical Experience

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Last week I had the pleasure of performing in a minor role in BJU’s Classic Players production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. I’ve enjoyed being able to act in a few other productions as well for the past couple of decades. (My first real acting experience, beyond the occasional skit, was in my 40s, when a friend offered me the role of Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew. I knew nothing about acting, and he kindly and patiently directed me to the point where I wouldn’t make a complete fool of myself—and him. Thanks, Ron.) This one was directed by my long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Lonnie Polson (“Rehearsal is not where I tell you what to do; it’s where you show me what you have already done”).

I love everything about the experience. The rehearsal hours are long and sometimes tedious, but that’s the price of getting to the point where you don’t fear complete chaos on opening night. And in those rehearsals I get to watch real actors work, experimenting with different ways to say their lines and deciding what kinds of body language and business make the role genuine. Then there’s the work of the crew, including costumers who make an idea real and attentively see that the costume fits the actor in such a way that he can do what he needs to do on stage; makeup artists, who spend significant time creating art that’s going to last for just a couple of hours, but in the meantime transform actors into exactly the people they need to be; and wig & hair artists, who complete what the makeup artists have begun with what amounts to the cherry on top. And during performance, the crew is standing in the wings, ready to fix anything that goes wrong in their area of responsibility.

And we’re just getting started. There’s the audio crew, who see that we’re all fitted with working microphones, which the aforementioned wig folks hide in our hair relatively painlessly; and the lighting crew, who have labored for hours to design and implement scores of lighting cues, checking angles and colors and lumens so that the stage comes alive for each scene; and not least, the stage crew, who do the hardest physical work in a precisely choreographed dance while working diligently to be completely invisible.

I love all of them, and all of it. I love the smell of the stage (though not necessarily “the smell of the crowd”), the smoothness of the scene changes, the arc of the story, the magic of the make-believe world.

Story-telling—dramatic performance art—is a powerful thing. Ask Ezekiel.

It’s worth the effort.

And its benefits are far greater than just the entertainment value or the moral of the story.

A couple of examples.

First, there’s a character benefit to the cast. You can’t cram for a role; for a live show, the lines, and the business, and the blocking all have to be ingrained in your long-term memory, so that you can include in your attention the vagaries of live performance. In one of our performances, the Dogberry character, a professional-level actor, started his line “I give your worship leave to depart” as “I give your leaship ….” In a split second, he had to decide whether to restart the line, which the audience would obviously notice, or press on with an ad lib. And in that split second, he realized that the line would work perfectly if he continued, “word to depart.” So he did. And, in my opinion, he actually improved on Shakespeare’s original—if you know Dogberry.

Now, if the character is going to be that deeply a part of you, you have to discipline yourself to review your lines and visualize your role every day; that degree of memorization comes from regular, spaced repetition. It requires character and commitment. It’s always seemed odd to me that some stage actors, whose work requires that level of solid character, seem to have such undisciplined lives offstage.

Second, there’s a benefit to the entire cast and crew from working as a team. You can’t mount a production of any magnitude by yourself; even if you know everything about acting and electricity and carpentry and costume design and makeup and hair and music and lumens, you simply can’t do all that work yourself, because you’re not omnipresent, and the show lasts only so long. You need your fellow cast members, if there are any, to execute their lines and blocking; for a rapid costume change between scenes, you need costumers, perhaps several of them, to get you out of one and into another; if the wig adhesive lets go during a fight scene, you need the wigmaster in the wings to fix that right now; you need the phone to ring at precisely the right time; you need the set pieces to be at the right place for every scene, and sometimes you need them to move while you’re delivering a particular line; you need the choreographer not to run you into a statue—or the second row of seats.

Everybody needs to be focused on his responsibilities, and he needs to execute them correctly.

And you need to trust all of them with the kind of trust that comes from working hard together over time.

That’s a recipe for success in the real world just as certainly as in the magical one.

Photo by Peter Lewicki on Unsplash

On Calling God by His First Name

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God has a lot of names.

And they’re significant, for two reasons: first, because unlike us, God has chosen his names for himself; and second, because he has chosen to reveal his character and works through them.

And so he has a lot of names, because there’s a lot to know about him.

Some of his names are simple and straightforward. Elohim (in the Old Testament) and Theos (in the New Testament) simply mean “God.” Adonai (OT) and Kurios (NT) simply mean “Lord.”

Some of them are more complicated. Yahweh Tsebaoth (OT) means “Lord of Hosts” or “Commander of Armies”; the name speaks of his ability to back up his plans and commands with a powerful heavenly host of battle-hardened troops—even though he’s omnipotent and doesn’t really need the help.

And that brings us to the name Yahweh, or more correctly YHWH, which we typically translate as “LORD.”

And that’s a shame. Let me explain why.

First, a little background.

Unlike the other names of God, which are titles or descriptions, YHWH is God’s personal name; in Western culture we would say that it’s his “first name.” And remarkably, God reveals that name to his people and invites them to use it when referring to him.

Imagine that. God invites his people to call him by his first name.

But of course, God is God, the Creator of heaven and earth; we may do whatever he invites us to do, but we may not treat him as common. He is holy; we treat him not just with respect, but with a respect unlike any other. And so he tells his people, “You must not take my name in vain” (Ex 20.7); that is, you may call me by my first name, but only respectfully. This relationship is not trivial, and it is not a joke.

When the Hebrew OT was written, scribes did not include vowels; they wrote just the consonants, and part of being literate was knowing the text well enough to know what the unwritten vowel sounds were. (That’s why it was—and still is—such a big deal for a Jewish boy to read aloud from the Torah, in public, when he became a man at bar mitzvah.)

At the same time, the Jews were very careful to keep all the commandments, and even to put protections in place to prevent themselves from violating a command accidentally. God had said not to take his name in vain; eager to please, the Jews thought they would safeguard against taking the name in vain by never taking it at all.

And so, when the public reader of Scripture came to the name YHWH, he would not pronounce it; he would read Adonai (Lord) instead. Centuries later—long after Christ’s death, in fact—when Jewish scribes called Masoretes added vowels to the OT text, to every occurrence of YHWH they added the vowels for Adonai as a reminder to the reader to say the latter, not the former. (And thus, to this day, we’re not sure how to pronounce the name—the name by which he invited us to call him.)

And then the word looked like “Yehowah.” Centuries later, when biblical scholarship passed through Germany, those scholars wrote that pronunciation as “Jehovah,” and a new name was created. (Interestingly, the name that the “Jehovah’s Witnesses” approve for God is in fact the one name that we know for sure is not actually a name for God (!).)

A thought. Do you like to hear your name? Of course you do. Often, in an introduction, your name is the only one you hear. 🙂 What do you think God thought when his own people refused to speak his name? And all out of respect?

I wonder in what other ways we choose to show our respect for God in ways that hurt him.

In another development, a group of Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek a couple of centuries before Christ. In a far-reaching decision, they chose to translate the Hebrew YHWH with the Greek kurios, “Lord”—even though they were already using that Greek word to translate Adonai—I suppose because the public reader would read “Adonai” whenever he saw YHWH anyway.

So now, we’ve replaced God’s first name with a title.

What does that do?

It distances us from the person.

Some people call me “Dan”—some few even call me “Danny.” (They would be my older sisters, in whose minds I am still an obnoxious little boy.) Others call me “Dr. Olinger.”

Which ones do you think I’m closer to?

God has asked us, his people, his sons and daughters, to call him by his first name. And we call him “LORD” instead. We hold him at arm’s length when he seeks an embrace.

How do you think he feels about that?

I’m not suggesting that we burn all the Bibles that have “LORD” in all caps. But we should at least remember that God has called us to an intimate relationship with him; he has invited us to come boldly and joyfully into his presence, as the little children came to Jesus.

We should delight in that degree of loving, respectful intimacy as much as he does.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash.

Created. Now What? Part 9: Creature vs Creator, and the Surprise Ending

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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

In our study of what it means to have a Creator, we’ve noted a couple of significant consequences: the fact that we’re in the image of God, and the fact that we’re responsible to the one who created us. Last time I noted that the Bible seems to place our sexual behavior fairly high on the list of our responsibilities to God. Here, rather than itemizing further down the list, I’d like to make a larger point.

Since we have responsibilities, it’s possible to shirk them. We can fulfill our responsibilities poorly, or half-heartedly, or we can ignore them altogether. Most of us know how irritating that can be; we’ve had children who didn’t do what we asked, or we’ve been assigned group projects with people who just didn’t care, or we’ve had employees who acted as though we were paying them primarily as a philanthropic endeavor.

Boy. Some people.

Imagine, then, the heart of the Creator when we ignore or trivialize our responsibilities to him.

He has made us—we are in debt to him for every breath of fresh air, every floral scent, every brilliant sight, every soothing sound, every delicious taste of food or drink, every hug, every laugh, every moment of passion or delight. We exist, and we know every one of the joys that existence has brought, because of him.

Beyond that, he has made us in his image, far greater than any other creature, so that even mighty animals respond to us with respect. He has given us dominion over all we see, so that we can use it freely for our own survival and prosperity.

We owe him everything.

So how despicable is it when we despise his gifts and ignore the responsibilities he has given us? when we turn every one to his own way? when we treat him as absent, or even enemy, instead of loving Father?

There’s a word for that kind of attitude or behavior. We call it sin. It’s possible only because we are creatures: if we were random accidents, no other creature could claim that we owe him any duty; we would all be lords of our own flies and nothing more.

But we are not random accidents. There is such a thing as sin, and it’s very, very serious business. It’s far worse than anything any ungrateful child or apathetic fellow team member or entitled employee has ever done to us. It’s worse than inattention or even hostility; it’s a denial of our very selves and the One to whom our very selves are owed.

What should be a Creator’s response to such ingratitude and rebellion? After we have despised his many gifts, what more does he owe us? What should we now expect from him?

Well, the reasonable response would be for him to take our unappreciated toys away from us. Joy. Delight. Pleasure. Freedom. Rest. Peace.

And life itself.

But he doesn’t.

Oh, my friend, does he ever not.

In the midst of his anger, rightly earned, he gives more grace.

He determines to forgive—and to find a way to do so without violating his perfect justice.

He determines to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

Astoundingly, he steps into our world, lives in the dump we have made for ourselves, and does perfectly what we have done badly or not at all. He meets his own standard of perfect righteousness.

And then—what?!—he punishes himself for our graceless acts of rebellion. He pays the price himself, through death.

Even the death of the cross.

And because he will not tolerate defeat, or even apparent defeat, he uses that death to destroy the one who has the power of death, the one who led us willingly astray in the first place. Rather than counting us enemies, he soundly defeats our greatest enemy and so counts us his friends.

There are no words.

Now, after all that, what does it mean to live as a creature?

It means gratitude, devotion. It means steely determination to live for him, for the publishing of his fame to every corner of what he has created. It means loving our enemies with the same fervor with which he has loved his.

It means using every breath, every neural impulse, every calorie, every heartbeat to be his servant.

What difference does it make that we are created?

Every possible difference. Every one.

What patience would wait as we constantly roam?
What Father, so tender, is calling us home?
He welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor!
My sins, they are many; his mercy is more!
(Matt Papa)

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

Created. Now What? Part 8: On Hurting Yourself by Ignoring the Directions

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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

If we’re created, then we’re accountable to our Creator. That’s just simple logic.

We’re accountable in many ways, great and small. We have to do what he says.

Does the creation account emphasize any specific kinds of accountability? specific design specs? our essential identity and proper use?

Yes, it does.

From the very beginning, we’re told, when God created us in his image (Gen 1.26), he created us male and female (Gen 1.27). That’s the original design, an essential part of what it means to be human.

And the first recorded words God spoke to his creatures, this male and this female, were straightforward: “Be fruitful, and multiply” (Gen 1.28). That’s the first way that humans are to implement dominion; there have to be enough of them that they can get significant things done.

Now, there’s only one way to multiply, to be fruitful.

Yep. God has designed, and then ordered, our sexual nature and behaviors. And to encourage things along, we’re told at the end of the next chapter, he creates the first couple naked and unashamed (Gen 2.25). His intent couldn’t be more clear.

So here’s the principle: our sexuality is an important part of who we are; it’s part of the image of God in us. And he has commanded the sexual relationship and the consequent fruitfulness.

There are a lots of observations to make about that, which are significant for the current culture, but let me focus on just one for now.

Sexuality is designed to be monogamous.

Monogamy was the only option, obviously, when Adam and Eve were the only people on the planet. But although it’s strongly implied in the creation story, we need later revelation to be certain of God’s intent in the matter. Polygamy becomes routine fairly quickly (Gen 4.19), but what does God think about that? The first identified polygamist, Lamech, is not presented as an admirable character (Gen 4.23-24), but that doesn’t necessarily discredit the practice. Eventually, in the Mosaic Law, God forbids adultery (Ex 20.14), but the polygamy question gets a firm and clear answer only with Jesus’ comment that God’s design intent was monogamy (Mt 19.4-9), and Paul’s later restatement of the principle (1Cor 7.2). Jesus, of course, was there at the beginning; he was in fact the active agent in creation (Jn 1.3; Col 1.16; Heb 1.2), if you will, the Elohim of Genesis 1. He is in every position to know what the designer’s original intent was.

It’s interesting to me how our culture has twisted that sentiment, and the horrific price it has paid for ignoring the designer’s specs. As just one example, the sexual revolution of the mid-20th century urged promiscuity (“Love the one you’re with!”) as a means to heightened sexual pleasure—variety obviously being the spice of life, and all. But with promiscuity, and especially with the frequent accompanying intoxication and lack of reasoned action, came hygiene issues and the rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases. And in a few years along came an STD, HIV, with real teeth: it could kill you.

Well, then, we have to be more careful, don’t we? Not monogamous, of course—that’s obviously out of the question—but smarter in our rejection of norms. Turns out there’s effectively only one reasonably reliable preventative of HIV transmission: the condom. So the Surgeon General urges everyone to make it a practice.

And what do you suppose is the most immediate and obvious consequence of condom use? Reduced. Sexual. Pleasure.

Not only did the sexual revolution not deliver what it promised, it actually gave its fans the exact opposite.

How about that.

Doesn’t it make sense that the one who designed sex, who made it pleasurable in the first place, would want us to take pleasure in it? Wouldn’t the most potentially pleasurable practice of it, then, be in what the designer intended? And isn’t it a shame that by rejecting his design, his specifications, we damn ourselves to a lifetime of less than that? or much worse?

And we’ve noted just the biological side of things. We find that sexual activity is much more complex than the simple physical mechanics, much more of a whole-person experience—something that promiscuity directly undercuts by making the partners strangers.

This is just one example, the first one that comes to mind from the text. How much more joy do we miss, how much more pain do we feel, how much more substantial meaning do we replace with empty wind, all because we ignore the Designer’s specifications—because we act like a chimp with a chainsaw?

May I ask you a question?

Why not be smart about it?

Why not read the directions?

Part 9

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Created. Now What? Part 7: On Listening to the Designer

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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

In our consideration of the practical consequences of being created, we’ve identified the clearest consequence as our existence in the image of God, and we’ve noted the effects of that image in our dominion over the planet, our personal nature, and our social disposition. There’s a second major consequence, which is not stated directly as such in the creation account, but is assumed throughout Scripture, from the very beginning.

You see, if we have a Creator, then we are not self-existent, and we are not random, and we are not essentially independent.

If we have a Creator, we’re responsible to him. What he thinks matters, and his purpose in creating us is at the core of our responsibility.

In short, we have to do what he says.

This concept drives all of our lives, as a human race and as individuals. Whatever we think, however we feel, whatever we do, we need to derive from the Creator’s purpose for us. To do otherwise is inherently destructive.

When my wife and I bought our first house, the inspector recommended that I cut down a tree whose branches were rubbing slightly on the roof. He said the tree would shorten the life of our shingles, and eventually the root system might undermine the house’s foundation as well.

Yikes. Big stuff.

So I went to one of those big box home improvement stores—the orange one—and I bought me a chainsaw.

Every man needs a chainsaw.

And, to everyone’s surprise, I read the manual.

I learned a lot of things—how to tension the chain, where to put the sprocket oil, how much oil to mix in with the gasoline (2-stroke engine, you know), and where to put the gasoline mixture when I had the ratio right.

Most important, the manual had a section on a phenomenon called “kickback.”

Apparently you can handle a chainsaw in such a way that the Business End will proceed rapidly in the direction of your face, and I’m told that you really don’t want that to happen.

The manual explained what kinds of behaviors increase the likelihood of kickback. I read that section very carefully, because when your face is as attractive as mine is, you have an obligation to prevent anything untoward from happening to it. I have a duty to my public.

Now, I had bought and paid for that chainsaw. It’s mine, and I can do whatever I want with it. I can empty the sprocket lubricant reservoir. I can use straight gasoline, or even jet fuel, if I feel like it. I can juggle it while it’s running. I can use it to cut concrete.

I have my rights.

But if I do any of those things, I’m an idiot. I’ll shorten the life of the machine; I’ll waste money; and most important, I might do serious harm to myself and others. I wouldn’t be much of a husband or father if I did that to my family.

I have my rights, but I have responsibilities as well.

The engineers who designed that chainsaw know how it was designed to operate. They know its limits and its capabilities. I ought to listen to them.

And so it is with us. If we’re designed, the designer knows our specs. He knows how our equipment—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—should be used. He knows what will lead to a long, happy, and useful life, and he knows what will send us to the scrap heap. So we ought to do what he says.

But it goes deeper than that. The chainsaw designers have a lot of expertise to share with me and advice to give me, but they don’t own either me or the chainsaw. But it’s different with us. God’s not just a designer whose product or services we’ve hired; he owns us. He has a right to tell us what to do. And if we ignore him, there are more than just practical or financial consequences—there are moral and even eternal ones.

We could apply this principle endlessly; God has sovereign rights over every decision we make, from the smallest to the greatest. We’ve noted in an earlier post that our obligation extends to the care with which we exercise the dominion that is ours as part of the image of God. There’s a second specific application in the creation account, one that speaks powerfully to the world we find ourselves in today.

We’ll talk about that next time.

Part 8 Part 9

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Created. Now What? Part 6: Relationship

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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

We’re exploring what it means to be in the image of God. The context of Gen 1.26-27 makes it pretty clear that the image includes our dominion over the earth. And as we saw last time, we are persons, like God, and fundamentally different from the animals. But is there even more to it than that?

Well, thanks for asking.

I think there’s another way that we’re in God’s image, but it’s not something we can deduce from the Creation account, or even from our logical processes.

We’re going to need the New Testament for this one.

In Genesis 1, we notice that God’s name—Elohim—is plural, and we also notice that when he’s anticipating making man, he speaks to himself in the plural: “Let us make man” (Gen 1.26). That makes us go, “Hmm,” but it’s not enough evidence to develop a robust view of the Trinity. It’s the New Testament that provides that evidence.

I don’t intend to review all that evidence here—it’s available in lots of other places—but suffice it to say that with a completed Scripture we know that the one God exists in three distinct but not separated entities, or persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Since God is both eternal—he has always existed (Ps 90.2)—and immutable—he has never changed (Ps 102.26-27; Jas 1.17)—we know that God has always existed in these three persons.

God has always been in relationship. The relationship among these three persons is not exactly the same as our relationships with other humans—God is One, after all, and the Three are united far more perfectly and essentially than any two ordinary humans—but the fact remains that being relational is an essential, definitional part of who God is. He has never been alone.

A medieval church father, Richard of St. Victor—admittedly not one of the more well-known fathers—argued that if God is love, he has always been love; and if so, then he must always have had someone to love—for how can there be love if no other person exists? On this basis he argued that since only God is eternal, God must exist eternally in more than one person, and that thought in turn formed the basis of his argument for the deity of Christ—indeed for the Trinity itself.

He was right, of course.

So if God has always been in relationship, then it shouldn’t surprise us at all when he says, “It is not good that the man [in my image] should be alone” (Gen 2.18). As I’ve noted earlier in this series, God graciously allows Adam to realize his need for companionship before he gives it to him; and when he sees his match for the first time, he speaks (extemporaneously!) in poetry:

“This is bone of my bone
And flesh of my flesh!”

In other words, “This one is like me! This one is for me!”

We can imagine his joy at being, like his creator, in relationship.

Now, some caveats.

First, our Creator is creative, and he makes everyone different. While we all need social interaction, we don’t all need or approach it in the same way. Some of us thrive on social interaction; some of us are drained by it and need some alone time to recharge. The former we call extroverts; the latter we call introverts. We need to respect and appreciate one another’s differences in this regard; introverts are not “less” in the image of God than extroverts. There’s been a lot written on this; we would do well to learn about those differences so that we can be social responsibly.

Second, there are many kinds of social relationship. For most people, their primary relationship is with their spouse. But God has not ordained that life for everyone; many are called to be single. We should note that they are in the will of God, and the image of God, as well; no life lived in the will of God is a deficient one.

The social aspect of the image of God is a delightful gift. Of course not all relationships go well, and sometimes we’re tempted to just let go of all the drama and keep to ourselves. But we must not choose that as a lifestyle; we are here to image our Creator, and we need to represent him well.

To begin this series I noted that there are at least two ways that creation theology changes the way we think and live. The first is the image of God; in the next few posts we’ll consider the second.

Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

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Created. Now What? Part 5: Personhood

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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

We’re exploring what it means to be in the image of God. The context of Gen 1.26-27 makes it pretty clear that the image includes our dominion over the earth. But is there even more to it than that?

This is where we move from biblical theology to systematic theology: we use our minds to discover and consider ideas that the Bible might not say explicitly, but that are within biblical limits.

Being in the image of God means to resemble him. So let’s sit and think for a bit. In what ways do we resemble God, beyond the already stated resemblance of dominion?

The Bible makes it clear that God is not an influence, or a force, or all that is good in the world. He’s a person. (Well, three persons, actually, but that comes in the next post.) He thinks: he’s self-aware (Gen 15.7), and he knows all things (Isa 46.9-10), and he invites us to reason with him (Isa 1.18). Further, he chooses: he likes some things better than others (Dt 17.1), and he makes decisions to do this or that (Jn 1.13). And he feels: he has emotions, both “positive” (love [Jn 3.16], joy [Zeph 3.17]) and “negative” (anger [Rom 1.18], grief [Eph 4.30]).

God is personal. And so are we. We’re not infinite like him, of course; he’s omniscient, and we’re just sortaniscient, but we do have minds that think and reason, reflecting the way his mind works. (How do we know how his mind works? He tells us, both in the Scripture—we can analyze its logical forms—and in the created world, where we see design elements that reflect his thinking.)

We’re volitional like him as well: we too express preferences and make choices based on those preferences, and on the reasoning we’ve previously conducted. And, as you know, we’re emotional like him too. We have loves and hates, likes and dislikes; we laugh, we grieve, we respond in anger to things we find unacceptable. Like God, except imperfectly.

Perhaps like me you’ve wondered exactly how we’re different from the animals in this regard, animals not being in the image of God. In some animals at least, we think we see evidence of thinking. Our pet dogs, we are convinced, pick up on our thoughts and respond sensibly. A chimpanzee uses a straw to pull termites out of a hole so he can eat them. An orangutan solves a problem to gain access to food. A whale shark seeks a diver’s help in getting free from a net. Bees show their sisters where the pollen is.

And what about will?

Have you ever tried to give a cat a bath?

And emotions?

Dogs rejoice.

Cats hate.

It’s sometimes hard to tell whether these animal behaviors are what they seem, or whether we’re projecting onto them the thoughts and feelings we would have if we were in those situations. Maybe we’re not seeing what we imagine we see.

But it’s pretty hard to argue that there isn’t some kind of thought, or choice, or emotion going on in many of these scenarios. So are animals in the image of God too?

The Bible seems to rule that out. Of course it doesn’t say that animals bear the image, but I think this conclusion is more than just an argument from silence. The Creation account draws a sharp contrast between what has come before—the creation of the earth and of the creatures who populate its air, water, and land—and the creation of man “in our image.” These things are not the same. Whatever some animals do by way of thinking, or choosing, or feeling is qualitatively different from the faculties that God has placed in us. The orangutan may be “thinking” in some rudimentary way, but he is not thinking about the consequences of being created, or choosing to act more consistently with that status, or responding in joyous worship to his creator.

What it must have been like to be Adam or Eve, in God’s image as persons, but with unbroken minds, and wills, and emotions! with thoughts that are reliable, with wills that always choose wisely and well, and with emotions that are servants rather than masters!

Take heart. Our brokenness is not permanent. The day is coming when, by the grace of God, we shall again “be like him” (1Jn 3.2), perfected, glorified, consistent and righteous.

What a day that will be.

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Created. Now What? Part 4: Dominion

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If the first takeaway from creation theology is that we’re all, male and female, in the image of God, despite our sinfulness and our damaged state, then we ought to figure out what that means.

What is the image of God, anyway?

I think the first hint toward an answer is in the text itself. As God meditates on what he’s going to do (Gen 1.26), and as Moses then describes what God did (Gen 1.28), the text emphasizes a single point: Adam is to have dominion “over all the earth,” including “every living thing that moves on the earth.” He is to fill the earth with descendants of himself (Gen 1.28), and these humans are to “subdue” the earth in their dominion over it.

So what’s that mean?

Several things:

  • God has given us responsibility for the state of the earth. We’re going to be accountable for how we use it. It’s not our playground; it’s our responsibility. That means we need to use it wisely and, dare I say it, sustainably. We should use our non-renewable resources with a view toward how long they’ll last at the current rate of use. We should prefer renewable resources wherever possible—and we should carefully think through what “possible” means, in both practical and financial terms. We should develop smart ways to conserve and extend what’s on and in the earth. Avoidable extinctions shouldn’t happen on our watch. We’re not drunken sailors—or we shouldn’t be.
  • And with the responsibility to use the earth wisely is the clear right to use it. Its resources are for our use, within the bounds of stewardship. We can harness the power of its energy sources; we can use our intelligence to make plants more productive or more useful in other ways (natural isn’t necessarily a more moral descriptor); we can domesticate animals and use them for work or for food, even as we care for them and seek their prosperity (Prov 12.10). We can kill them, but we do so humanely and only as needed.

And that brings other issues to consider:

  • Are there limits to this dominion? Selective breeding? Hybridization? Genetic manipulation? Cloning? What about cloning humans? Does that cross a line? How do we define the line?
  • Does our dominion extend beyond the earth? Space travel? Mining asteroids? How do we decide?
  • Does our dominion extend to “redeeming culture” in the Kuyperian sense? Should we embrace all cultural forms as morally neutral and exploit them for the advancement of the kingdom? What constraints would a biblical view place on that kind of activity?

The longer God gives us to steward the planet, the more complicated the questions get. Turns out we need to steward the questions about stewarding, as well as all the other stuff. Being in the image of God is serious business, and it requires us to know more about him than what he has revealed in us; we need to master the revelation he gives in his Word if we’re going to steward our dominion over the earth in ways that consistently please him.

Responsibility is hard work.

Next time, we’ll ask whether there’s more to the image than just dominion.

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Created. Now What? Part 3: Recognizing the Image of God

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So the first major takeaway from creation theology is the fact that we’re special—specifically, that we’re in the image of God.

Before we get to what that means, I’d like to take a post to note whom it involves.

It involves every human—everyone who’s descended from Adam and Eve.

First, it includes sinful humans, and that’s all of us, of course. Every descendant of Adam and Eve is sinful, in at least three ways:

  • We’re guilty of Adam’s sin, because Adam was our representative in the Garden. Paul tells us that in Adam, “all sinned” (Rom 5.12)—not “all sin,” or “all will sin,” but “all sinned.” There are different theories as to how that works, but no orthodox theologian denies the fact that the guilt for Adam’s sin has been imputed to us.

What’s that you say? That’s not fair? Sure seems like it, doesn’t it? But let me encourage you to take a look at the whole picture. Adam’s guilt is imputed to you; that really hurts. But your sin is imputed to Christ (Is 53.4-6), and that’s not “fair” either. And the coup de grace is that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us (2Cor 5.21), so that God sees us through Christ-colored glasses.

That’s quite an arrangement.

You can whine about fairness if you want, but this is the best deal in the history of ever, and you’d be a fool not to take it.

  • As descendants of Adam, we’ve inherited his sinful nature, so that we’re inclined toward sin; we naturally lean in that direction (Rom 8.5-8; Eph 4.22). We like it.
  • And we sin. Even if Adam’s sin weren’t on our account, we have plenty of our own to answer for. We’re guilty (Rom 3.10-18), as guilty as sin. And if you don’t think so, consider how you’d feel if your thoughts were broadcast, 24/7, to everyone you know. I sure wouldn’t like it. I’m not the only one like that, am I?

But here’s remarkable thing. Even as sinners, we’re still in the image of God (Gen 9.6; Jam 3.9). God’s image in us is so powerful, so deeply embedded by his sculpting hand, that all the sin in the universe can’t blast it away. God is bigger than sin, and so is his image in us.

And one more thing. At the moment he placed that image in us, he said specifically that it involved both kinds of humans: male and female (Gen 1.27).

No, the woman wasn’t an afterthought. That’s ridiculous; God doesn’t have afterthoughts. She’s in the image of God too. I’d go so far as to suggest that neither sex completely reflects the image of God; the image is most clearly and completely displayed by the two together. Which means, I suppose, that the sexes image God most clearly when they’re friends, not enemies.

So why did God delay the creation of Eve? He didn’t say, but as a teacher, I have a suspicion.

He wanted Adam to realize his own incompleteness before he completed him with Eve. He wanted him to treasure what a remarkable and perfect gift she was. So he set him out to name all the animals (Gen 2.19), and here they came, two by two, each male with his perfect female complement. And Adam noticed the obvious: there’s no one like that for me (Gen 2.20). He recognized his need. (Discovery learning!) And when God met that need, perfectly (Gen 2.21-22), Adam burst into poetry (Gen 2.23).

Men have been writing poems to women ever since, with varying degrees of skill. And reception, alas.

Now, how do you treat the image of God?

Well, suppose I’m in London, and I see a bust of the Queen. And I spit on it.

I’m going to have to do a lot of explaining to a lot of Brits, some of them undoubtedly in an official capacity.

And what if I say, “I didn’t spit on the Queen; I spit on a chunk of marble”?

Nope. That excuse is not gonna fly. It’s a piece of marble that looks like the Queen, and that’s the whole point. My treatment of the image can reasonably be taken to reflect my attitude toward the original, the person depicted.

That’s why murder is wrong, you know. Not primarily because the human has a right to life (which he does), but because murder is an attack on, a defacing of, the image of God (Gen 9.6).

So how do you treat the image of God that you see every day? In the rich? The poor? The white? The black? The male? The female? The stronger than you? The disabled? The respectable? The death-row inmate? The countryman? The refugee?

Images of God. All of them. Better not spit on them, or you’re going to have to answer to the Original, and he’s not going to be happy about it.

You disrespect certain kinds of people? Then you need to ask yourself why you despise God so much. You need to repent, and you need to make restitution. You need to repair the damage you’ve done.

Creation theology means that there shouldn’t need to be #metoo hashtags. Or any other campaigns to end abuse, physical or verbal, or even simple disrespect. It’s all ungodly, and in that sense it’s also subhuman.

Get with the species.

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