Dan Olinger

On Memorizing Scripture

February 5, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

This past Saturday evening I had the pleasure of seeing my friend and colleague Dr. Lonnie Polson actively recite—expound—the Gospel of Mark. I’d seen him do an excerpted version of it several years ago at my church. I’ve enjoyed seeing similar recitations; one of the pastors at my church, Abe Stratton, gave us the book of Romans some time back, and years ago I saw a professional presentation of the Gospel of John at BJU; unfortunately, I’ve forgotten the artist’s name. (Was it the Brad Sherrill production?)

There’s great benefit to reading, or hearing, large chunks of Scripture at a single sitting. For years now I’ve been requiring students in my Epistles classes to read any epistle at a single sitting; you notice things, particularly large-scale structural things and repetitive patterns and themes, when you read the whole thing that you don’t notice when you read it a chapter at a time.

This is not to say that micro-reading is a bad thing; it provides opportunity to notice details (all of which are important in a verbally inspired document) and particularly to spend time in meditation, which reinforces the impact of the concepts on your mind and eventually on your instincts and the resultant actions.

But we ought to eat large meals of Scripture as well. Big, fat feasts.

For similar reasons, we ought to memorize large passages of Scripture. There’s benefit to memorizing key verses, whether “fighter verses” or key doctrinal passages; BJU has students in its undergraduate systematic theology course memorize the key doctrinal proof texts for all 10 standard theological topics, so they’ll have them at hand when they need them.

But the Scripture wasn’t given to us in little pieces of unconnected thoughts. (OK, Proverbs is the exception that proves the rule.) It was given to us in great sweeping arcs, storylines and extended logical arguments (most obviously Romans) that support the even greater storyline that all the Scripture together forms. There’s integrity and wisdom in memorizing it that way.

The summer after my freshman year in college I started out on that road by memorizing the book of James, 1 verse per day. The experience was life-changing, and James has been my friend ever since; I have regular conversations with him in my mind, which I couldn’t do without having expended that effort all those years ago.

How did I do it? Well, I was living in a western suburb of Boston that summer, and working in a CVS downtown. I commuted on my bicycle. (For folks who know Boston, when I tell you that I rode in and out on the infamous Route 9, you’ll consider it a miracle that I lived to tell the story.) I had about 45 minutes each way, 90 minutes per day to just go over James’s words in my mind. That was more than enough time to review once what I had memorized of the book up to that day, and even to go over it several times. And the stress of doing all that in killer traffic, I suppose, increased my long-term retention.

As I’ve noted before, memorizing doesn’t have to require a lot of time; what it requires is day-to-day discipline. We memorize, or move material from short-term memory to long-term memory, by a simple process of regular, spaced repetition. In other words, you need lots of brief sessions rather than a few long ones. You say today’s verse until you can say it without error (the number of repetitions is different for different people—God made us all different—but you’ll find that for pretty much everyone, the required number drops as you get more experience), and then you review what you’ve memorized on the previous days. That doesn’t need to take long; you can say the entire book of James out loud in just 15 minutes. Then you put the whole thing out of your mind and do other things. Most people will need to do that again later in the day; when I’m starting out on a dramatic role, I’ll review lines 3 times a day, for just 5 or 10 minutes. Each session goes a little faster, because you’ll retain more of what you did in the earlier sessions.

As little as 15 to 20 minutes a day. Just 5 minutes while you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, while you’re waiting for the microwave to heat up your meal at lunch, and while you’re waiting to fall asleep at night.

What can you accomplish with that?

In 3 months you’ll memorize Colossians, the greatest treatise on the headship of Christ ever written. In a month and a half, 2 Thessalonians, and in 3 more months, 1 Thessalonians, both on how to live while waiting for Christ’s return. In 3 more months, 1 Peter, on how to endure triumphantly while suffering. A new Psalm every week or two.

How much is that knowledge worth? How much difference would it make for you to have that kind of information stored in your head, part of how you think and who you are?

Maybe you’d be more consistent. Maybe you’d be more successful. Maybe you’d be happier.

I dunno. Worth a try.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Overcoming Cultural Distance

February 1, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

The USA is sure a dysfunctional family, isn’t it? We share common experience, and a reasonably common culture, though of course we have a rich collection of subcultures, from the Italian Catholic feast days of Boston’s North End, to the summer dog days of the Carolina Low Country, to the rugged manliness of that isolated Texas prairie out west of Van Horn, to the streetwise playgrounds of Roxbury and Harlem and Avalon Park. The experiences of growing up in these places are significantly different, and those experiences shape our perspectives as well as our personalities.

But we’re family nevertheless. I began to come to that realization by growing up in a variety of places, from the Pacific Northwest to suburban Boston, before settling into a stereotypical “sleepy Southern town” with a decaying Main Street that blossomed over a few decades into a thriving city center after one of the most studied transformations in the country. (Thanks, Knox.) For several years I had immediate family members in all 4 corners of the Lower 48—almost as though we were all trying to get as far away from one another as we possibly could. Living in different subcultures—farm, suburb, town, western, northeastern, southern—helped me learn early on that we’re really different but all fundamentally the same.

That feeling has grown stronger in more recent years, with the opportunity to travel internationally more than the average American. I know the feeling of recognizing another American in an otherworldly place. Of being embarrassed by the horrified look on the Buddhist monk’s face when the gum-chewing girls in halter tops and short shorts are snapping photographs and talking exponentially more loudly than anyone around them, completely oblivious to the way they’re treating his sacred space. Or by the well-fed, camera-laden tourist in the sidewalk café berating the waitress for being obviously too stupid to speak English. Or, on a lighter note, enjoying a cultural moment with (The) Ohio State University students at the bungee jump bridge just downstream from Victoria Falls, Zambia. Or being moved by the student on one of my Africa teams, patiently interacting with an autistic child, perhaps the first person ever to interact with him in a way that understood and addressed his special needs.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re my people.

We’re family.

But boy, are we dysfunctional.

Polarized. Hateful. Viewing one another through deeply distorted telephoto lenses, because we can’t abide getting close enough to talk face to face.

Pride is in our national DNA. It’s human nature to care for ourselves, to respect ourselves, infinitely more than others. To compare ourselves to others in a way that makes us the standard and others the defects. Everyone who drives slower than I do is an idiot; everyone who drives faster is a maniac. Me? I’m an excellent driver.

My congressman is awesome, but the people who elected all the other ones are idiots, and we ought to throw all the (other) bums out.

This pride isn’t unique to Americans; it’s in the human DNA too. The first evil creature rebelled out of pride, and the first human ones did too; they decided they knew better than their Creator on the question of produce.

So we despise each other; we talk but don’t listen, and the loudest, rudest, sharpest, cruelest remark wins.

That was good one!

What’s sad is knowing that if these same people were in a broken-down Jeep in the middle of the African grasslands, listening at night to the unfamiliar, terrifying sounds of the surrounding wildlife, they’d be working together. They’d be figuring out who was good at what, and they’d be dividing up tasks among the team members and figuring out a way to get the Jeep fixed or send a radio signal or use a mirror in the morning to flash sunlight at an airplane, or something to get out of there.

American ingenuity, you know.

And when they got out, they’d all go someplace and eat and drink together, and laugh, and tell stories, and joke about their individual idiosyncrasies, and be friends for the rest of their lives.

How do I know that?

Ask any combat veteran.

Maybe what we need is working on solving life-threatening problems, together.

Sure beats hate.

Photo by Corentin Marzin on Unsplash

Three Days with Hilaire: On Caring to Make a Difference

January 29, 2018 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

When I was a boy, my Dad worked for a politically conservative speaker’s bureau. As a result, I got to meet a lot of interesting people when they came to town to give a speech. There was Gen. Robert Scott, WW2 fighter pilot and author of the book God Is My Co-Pilot, who sat at our dinner table and told wonderful story after wonderful story. There was Maj. Pedro Diaz Lanz, compatriot of Fidel Castro and chief of the Cuban Air Force, who defected and told horrific stories of repression in Cuba. There was Slobodan Draskovich, who hijacked a commercial flight to get out of Communist Yugoslavia, and who thought the wire leading to the electric blanket in our guest bedroom was evidence that someone was trying to kill him.

But my favorite was Hilaire du Berrier, a farm boy from North Dakota who was expelled by Pillsbury Military Academy (later the campus of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College) a month before graduation and eventually ran off to be a soldier of fortune. He fought against the Fascists in Ethiopia and spied against the Communists in the Spanish Civil War, then spied against the Japanese in Shanghai during their occupation of China. (As part of his cover he rented a room to a woman who later became one of Mao’s wives and was eventually disgraced as leader of the Gang of Four.) Eventually captured by the Japanese, he bore the scars of torture during their interrogation.

In short, he had a lot of stories to tell.

In town for a speaking engagement, he stayed at our house for 3 days in the spring of ’63.

I was a hyperactive kid, a complete pain in the neck.

He took an interest in me.

He showed me how to make a different kind of paper airplane. He told me stories about his idol, Napoleon. (Hilaire’s real name was Harold; he changed it to Hilaire in honor of one of Napoleon’s generals.) He took me to an office-supply store and showed me where they sold liquid rubber, the kind you use to make tear-off pads of paper. It was pink and had a distinctly pungent smell. He showed me that you could take a 3-dimensional object—he had a metal eagle that he’d gotten off a Napoleonic dispatch case, and why he had it with him on that trip, I’ll never know—and cover it with several layers of liquid rubber to make a mold. Then he showed me how to mix plaster of paris (is that French?), pour it into the mold, insert a wire in the back, and make an exact copy of the object, paint it (with gold paint!), and yield a pretty cool wall plaque. He took a little plaque I already had, with the Cub Scout oath on it, and we made a copy of that too.

I was a lot older when I realized that he had been teaching me spycraft.

He had a lady friend in our town—she was the host of the local Romper Room show—and incited me to come along on a dinner date to act as escort for her daughter. He instructed and rehearsed me to present my “date”—I was 8—with one of our cool gold-painted plaster eagles and induct her into the Society of Napoleon. We had a fabulous time at a fancy restaurant in Spokane. (In those days, there weren’t a lot of those.)

Hilaire was an artist as well; he’d done commercial art in Chicago before running off to chase adventure. He told me I should write a book; he laid out a characterization for me, presenting each of my family members as an interesting animal: Mel Mouse, Pauline Pony, Betty Jeanne Jackrabbit (though he misspelled her name), Kathy Cat, and, of course, Danny Dog. I should write The Story of Danny Dog and His Friends, he told me, and he said he would wait expectantly for me to send him a copy when it was published.

A few days later, having returned from the speaking tour to his apartment in New York, he wrote me a letter to let me know he was still thinking about me, and to encourage me to get to work on The Book.

He lived another 40 years, writing an international intelligence subscription letter called HduB Reports, eventually dying in his 90s, a tax exile in Monaco.

I’ve never forgotten the time he took during those 3 days to reach out to a painfully energetic boy, giving his attention to a kid who needed direction, planting ideas in me that I have gone back to as an adult and that I remember well now more than 50 years later.

Thank you, Hilaire. I’m grateful.

On Threats from a Hostile Culture

January 25, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Last week Carl Trueman published a thoughtful piece on the future of Christian colleges. His premise is that they’re threatened, existentially threatened, by the hostile secular culture, particularly as it is expressed by the US government, and particularly in the matter of sexual discrimination, and particularly on the question of transgenderism. If Christian colleges stick to their beliefs, they will run afoul of anti-discrimination laws, thereby losing their accreditation and possibly—probably—even their tax exemption. An existential threat.

I don’t find anything he said directly wrong, but I’d like to balance his thoughts just a little bit.

First, a key piece of his argument is the Bob Jones Supreme Court case, in which my college lost its tax exemption because it violated “public policy” by prohibiting interracial marriage among its students. Something he doesn’t seem to consider, though, is that public-policy decisions arise more out of politics than out of law. It was easy for most Americans to agree with the court’s decision in the Bob Jones case because BJU was, well, wrong. It seems to me that if the government were to seriously consider denying tax exemption to all Christian schools that do not accommodate the policy du jour on transgenderism, the breadth of public outcry, and the consequent threat of political backlash, would render such an incursion politically impossible. There are a lot of people in this country who don’t see current transgender policy as in the same category as the civil rights movement.

There’s a reason that Social Security is the third rail of politics, even though the math underlying it is confessedly bogus. Politics works that way.

But times change, and majority public opinion changes with it. Suppose that, over time, clear biblical teaching on sexual morality is seen by most Americans as the enemy of the people? What then?

Well, several observations.

First, colleges can survive without tax exemption. Bob Jones did (and yes, it got the exemption back after several decades). It’s difficult, and with the passage of time a college will need to change significantly in the way it does things and perhaps even in its basic structure, methods, and size. But people are in the image of God, and that fact makes them creative, among other things. Just as businesses adjust to changes in tax law and all sorts of other elements in their legal environment—and do that every year, routinely—so people who want to run an educational institution can come up with ways to make it work. (And toward the end of his piece, Trueman essentially says that.)

But suppose the environment gets so oppressive that the college model can’t work at all? Well, for most of human existence—and this is true for young-earth creationists as well as old-earth creationists—people have been educating their offspring and preparing them for useful lives without any colleges whatsoever. You think businessmen are creative? Just watch parents trying to ensure their children’s success. There are no limits.

And it’s not just about the motivation and determined action of the parents.

For decades the People’s Republic of China was one of the most oppressive societies on the planet. It was completely cut off from the West; everybody had to dress just like Chairman Mao, and they had to quote his Little Red Book; and Mao had unfettered power to annihilate the scourge of Christianity from his land.

Several years ago I was teaching Christian theology. After class one of the students, who had grown up in China, said to me, “You are telling the [Bible] stories.” “Yes,” I replied. “I know the stories,” she said. “How do you know?” “My grandmother taught me.”

Mao had all the power imaginable, and he used all of it. Millions of his own people died under his orders just because they were Christians. But today Mao is dead—I’ve seen his corpse—and his great effort was foiled by a bunch of wizened 4’10” Chinese grandmothers, who told their grandchildren the stories. And today, by most estimates, there are more Christians in China than there are in the US.

Christian parents of whatever nation, however hostile, will tell those same stories, and Christian sons and daughters will go out as ambassadors for Christ, to spread the Good News, to die if necessary, but they will go out, and they will be faithful.

Christ, whose power well exceeds that of Mao and of any future American autocrat, will build his church, and the very gates of hell will have nothing at hand to stop it.

Fear not.

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

The Great Illusion

January 22, 2018 by Dan Olinger 5 Comments

This time of year, it’s not unusual for the death rate to rise. And this time around, a lot of people I know have graduated from this life to the next. It started with a former student and advisee of mine, a recent graduate of BJU, a valued team member of an evangelist, another former student, in a car accident. His sudden departure was a shock to all who knew him, and a sobering reminder that we have only a brief time to know and serve God here.

Then came a wave of older friends, showing the wear of their years of faithful service, moving on at a more “normal” age. Dr. Stewart Custer, the teacher I had for more classes than any other, the gentle intellect whose clear faith and love for his God was impossible for any who knew him not to notice. Then Geneva Anderson, a stubbornly godly woman who battled cancer, it seemed, forever, and who in the end did not succumb so much as overcome. “The Lord be praised!” And then Bud Rimel, who taught my EMT certification class and with whom I had the joy of playing criminal during security training simulations. If it weren’t for Bud I never would have had the opportunity to “steal” that police car. (Wish I’d known how to turn off the light bar at the time.) And then Kay Washer, veteran missionary in Africa, whose example is being followed by her own descendants as well as many others.`

Then Don Horton, the California boy who spent his entire ministry life pastoring just one church in Statesville, North Carolina, who 43 years ago spent a year directing my undergraduate ministry internship, from whom I learned lessons that I have never forgotten. Then Gertrude Chennault, unassuming relative of the great Gen. Claire Chennault, whose life as an administrative assistant at BJU facilitated the accomplishment of great things but kept her out of the spotlight, which was just exactly where she wanted to be.

And Saturday I attended the funeral of Dolores Wood, wife of Bill for 72 years, a war bride, a member of the Greatest Generation, but much more importantly, a woman who met Christ at the age of 36 and spent the next 55 years serving him with the kind of love and joy you come across only once in an age. She loved her husband, and her family, and nearly everyone else; everyone who met her came away thinking she was Mom. For years of Wednesday night prayer meetings I heard her share prayer requests for people she was concerned about and ministering to.

And here’s the thing. Every one of these people—every one of them—has died, but only sort of. Death, for them, is just an illusion. For them, it is not death to die.

Every one of them is a child of God by faith, a fellow-heir with Jesus Christ, a sinner forgiven by grace through faith. And that means that every one of them is separated, but only temporarily, from the physical body but alive and well in the presence of Christ, safe and rested and painless and at peace, exponentially better off than they were even on their best days here, let alone during those last painful days or moments. But at the same time, they’re looking forward with eager anticipation to better days to come (2Cor 5.1-9).

What could be better than being instantaneously free of pain and sorrow and in the presence of a loving God? Well, there’s more coming for them. The day will come when their discarded bodies will be raised, reconstituted and flawless, impervious to pain, sickness, and death, and reunited with their waiting consciousnesses (1Th 4.16; 1Co 15.20-23, 42-43, 51-55). They’ll be complete again, embodied as they were designed to be, and prepared to serve their God flawlessly, expertly, and eternally.

What a day that will be.

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

The Judgment Believers Face

January 18, 2018 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

The Bible talks a lot about judgment. Jesus anticipates the day when he will sit as judge over the nations (Mat 25.31-46). And readers of the Bible are all struck by the bleakness of John’s description of the Great White Throne judgment in Revelation (Rev 20.11-15). These are harsh and terrifying scenes.

I can remember wondering as a boy if I would come before Christ, confident that I was saved, and learn to my shock that I was mistaken: “Depart from me; I never knew you” (Mat 7.21-23). It’s a frightful thought.

Paul tells us that all believers will stand before Christ for judgment, and that this judgment will be on the basis of our works (2Cor 5.10). And he intensifies the picture with his main verb; the English says, “We must all appear,” but the Greek verb does not mean simply “we must all make an appearance”; it means, “we must all be made transparent.” There will be no hiding, no excuses, no covering up hidden secrets. Everything will be out there.

Is this our lot? Are we going to stand before Christ and face his disappointment with us—even his wrath, the “wrath of the Lamb,” because of our sin? And will all our sin be paraded before everyone, shouted from the housetops, with nothing held back? How can we live in “grace, mercy, and peace” in the face of that prospect?

It’s true that we’ll be made transparent before the judgment seat of Christ. But the description I’ve given is nothing close to accurate. Here’s why.

First, you and I will never have to face the wrath of God for our sin. We deserve to, and we would have no argument had God chosen to do that. But he has not chosen to do that; he has chosen instead to pour out his infinite wrath on his Son, who has equally chosen to receive it. Not only is the wrath of the Lamb not directed at his people, but the love of the Lamb is the very reason that he chose to intercede for us against the Father’s wrath. God’s wrath was poured out on him (Mat 27.45-54), and his wrath has been propitiated (1Jn 4.10); there is no more left for us.

You will never face God for your sins. The mighty Lamb, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, has done that in your place. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5.1).

So what’s the judgment seat of Christ about? The passage tells us: “that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2Co 5.10). We’re giving account, not of our sins, but of our service—whether what we’ve done for Christ has been valuable (“good,” Gk. agathos) or worthless (“bad,” Gk. phaulos). We’re giving account of our stewardship.

Christ often spoke of this in his parables. The master returns from a long journey and sees what his servants have done with the resources he left with them (Mat 25.14-30; Lk 19.11-27); the king calls his servants to evaluate the quality of their service (Mat 18.23); even the crooked servant is commended for his diligence (Lk 16.1-13). Paul describes our works being tested by fire, so that the worthless and insubstantial (“wood, hay, stubble”) will be burned up and the valuable (“gold, silver, precious stones”) will be left for display (1Co 3.10-17).

Paul writes of the judgment seat of Christ in a context of warning—as does Jesus in telling his parables. This is serious business; you don’t want to disappoint the master or position yourself as an incompetent servant. He calls for diligence.

But the judgment seat doesn’t have to be a disappointment. Won’t it be great, if you’re a diligent servant, to present your service to him when he comes? Isn’t it great when a little child joyously and confidently greets her father at the door with “Daddy! Come see what I made for you!” Won’t that be something?!

Our father’s out of town on a trip (metaphorically speaking). He’s left us lots of really important things to do, but things that he’s equipped us for, things we can do well, things that bring great enjoyment. So we devote ourselves to those blessed tasks, and we anticipate his return, when we’ll be able to show him what we’ve done: “See what I made for you!”

There’s nothing to fear here. There’s no need for doubt, or apprehension, or a nagging dread in the pit of your stomach.

Serve with joy, and prepare for the reunion with delight.

Photo credit: Arek Socha

On Leaders, Flaws, and Achieving Some Sort of Rational Consistency

January 15, 2018 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Or, as the government officially calls it, the “Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.” On this day the nation officially focuses on a lesson learned from its past; as the current president put it, to “encourage all Americans to observe this day with acts of civic work and community service in honor of Dr. King’s extraordinary life — and it was extraordinary indeed — and his great legacy.”

We all know that this day, and its good intentions, arose out of controversy—first, the very painful controversy surrounding the Civil Rights movement, and then more controversy regarding the personal character of Dr. King himself.

Political conservatives, in my opinion, pretty badly missed the boat in dismissing the Civil Rights movement as simply “communist agitation,” first, because it sprang from a serious social problem in our culture and was not simply a minor issue stirred up by enemies of the nation to foment instability. Of course the extreme left sought to use the movement for its own very different ends, but that minor fact hardly renders racial segregation and discrimination minor problems. Both political and religious conservatism are founded solidly on the principle of divine creation of all humans and the rights and respect that come with that status. Conservatism speaks often of equal justice under law. We conservatives missed the boat—badly—on this one. We took the wrong side.

And then there’s the second controversy. When Congress discussed making Dr. King’s birthday a federal holiday, there was considerable opposition. Some of it, doubtless, came from those who just don’t like black people. Further opposition came from those on the political right who didn’t like anybody aligned with the political left. But some opposed the holiday on the ground that Dr. King was a flawed character, one whose birthday we shouldn’t honor with a federal holiday.

Charges were leveled against his memory. The most significant was that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Some charged, based on his acceptance of support from left-wing organizations, that he was a communist. Others noted that while he preached non-violence, violent protests seemed to follow him wherever he went. The character argument received new life several years after President Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, when Dr. King was found to have plagiarized his doctoral dissertation in systematic theology at Boston University in 1955.

Can we celebrate a holiday as an impetus to social good, based on the noble sentiments expressed in the “I Have a Dream” speech, when the man who gave it was imperfect? Well, obviously we can; that’s what we’re doing. More precisely, then, can we do so in a way that’s morally and intellectually consistent?

I think we can. Here’s why.

First, everyone is flawed. That doesn’t mean that everyone’s birthday should be a national holiday, but it does mean that all of our heroes—all of them—have feet of clay. Washington, Lincoln, the Pilgrims, our veterans, even St. Valentine!—these are people who sinned and who disappointed themselves and others along the way. But they did not surrender to their sinful natures; they rose, as image-bearers of God, to stand for ideas that were bigger than themselves, ideas that are worth celebrating and promoting.

The real question, then, is whether Dr. King did the same, in spite of his status, alongside all of us, as a sinner.

That’s a question we have to wrestle with in each of our proposed heroes. In the case of Dr. King, I don’t know whether he was unfaithful to his wife; I don’t know whether he secretly sought to promote violence even as he urged the opposite; I don’t know whether he was an ideological communist—though I’m pretty sure, based on statements and his actions, that he wasn’t. I’m not going to believe those things about him without better evidence than I have, and I’m especially not going to believe those accusations when they come only from his avowed enemies.

Now, the plagiarism matter was adjudicated by a panel at his alma mater, and they ruled that he was guilty. In my line of work, that’s a career ender, but there are all kinds of mitigating considerations along the way—intent and extent being the most significant—and I’m not in a position to know the details of those matters either.

So what do we have? We have an imperfect man who embraced and promoted high ideals—necessary and good ideals—at significant personal risk, who inspired a great many people to pursue those ideals themselves, whose legacy is directly associated with those ideals, and whose memory is sacred to a lot of people, all of whom are in the image of God, and many of whom are my dear friends and colleagues, of whose character I have no doubt.

Can I celebrate this day and the ideals with which it is associated?

You bet I can.

Photo Credit: Yoichi R. Okamoto

Grace

January 11, 2018 by Dan Olinger 5 Comments

I’ve been thinking recently, as I often do, about the many ways God has been kind to me. His greatest kindness, of course, has been in drawing me to himself. It’s a story worth telling.

Early on, my parents were not religious people, at least not so’s you’d notice. Dad was a Westerner, orphaned at 13 and shepherded through his teen years relatively haphazardly by his older siblings. Mom’s family was devoutly Universalist—my uncle, Carleton Fisher, was the last president of the Universalist Church and thus one of the founders of the UU’s, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, back around 1960. As we kids were showing up, the family bounced around southeastern Washington State, living in towns with names like College Place and Colfax and Diamond and Elberton and Trentwood and Greenacres, as Dad followed work available in his two professions, the railroad and printing.

As the kids got a little older, my parents thought it wise for us to go to some kind of church, so we attended a church in Opportunity, of which I have dim memories, but we did not hear the gospel there.

They became interested in politics—like most Westerners of that day, the conservative kind—and there they met a few people who spoke, oddly, of something called being born again, and they began to realize that not all churches were like that. I remember playing on the kitchen floor as they were sitting at the table discussing whether their minister knew about this “saved” thing.

They found a church that was what we today would call evangelical, and one Sunday we all showed up. Fourth Memorial Church in Spokane was officially Presbyterian, but they had just voted to leave their denomination over liberalism, so they were ecclesiastically independent—and I was much older before I realized that an independent Presbyterian church is an oxymoron.

I was 6 and was shuffled off to the age-appropriate Sunday school class.

And none of the other kids showed up that day.

The teacher—I remember her as an impossibly old lady, maybe as old as 60!—set aside her planned lesson and joined me at the table in one of those little kiddie chairs. We just sat and talked. As the conversation progressed, she realized that I knew nothing of the gospel, and so, simply and kindly, she told me The Good News.

I didn’t know much of anything; I knew nothing about the Bible or theology or supralapsarianism.

But I believed. I believed simply and awkwardly, but I believed in the same God as Peter and Paul, the covenant-keeping God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And so, due to the mission focus and caring shepherding of a little “old” lady, I became a child of God, with spiritual life.

I don’t even know her name. I look forward to thanking her in person one day.

There was a lot of growing ahead. I faced a long period of behavioral problems—I suppose I was ADHD, although they weren’t diagnosing it in those days. Shortly later, in the same church, I was removed from another Sunday school class because the teacher couldn’t control me—I like to say that I was the only person I’ve ever heard of who was expelled from Sunday school—and in first grade, at that! I drove my older sisters to tears and frustration with my pestering ways. And once, at 16, I walked away from the faith for a year—or tried to, anyway.

But through those years, a long line of faithful servants of God poured grace and truth into my life, in a series of churches, large and small, on both coasts, and in a Christian school in New England. They endured my shenanigans—I wasn’t malicious, just, well, exuberant—and patiently discipled me, tiny step by tiny step along a rocky path, made so by my own selfishness and general lack of self-control.

That time I walked away from the faith? It was just after graduating from the Christian high school, just after receiving all that care from all those selfless people. Sheeeeeeesh.

I can never repay them. Nor can I ever repay the God who gave them life before he gave it to me, who arranged for them to be alongside my life’s road, and who used them as instruments of his grace.

Who is worthy of such things? How can it be anything but grace?

I am grateful. And content. And satisfied.

The world is broken, and all its people are broken, but God, God, is infinitely good.

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

Freak Out Thou Not. This Means You.

January 8, 2018 by Dan Olinger 10 Comments

What to do?! What to do?!

Everything’s just awful! Worse than ever before!

If you’re conservative, then the Deep State is trying to overthrow a duly elected president, and the country’s going broke, and sexual mores are all being redefined, and what has happened to our country?!

And if you’re liberal, well, do we even need to say? We have an idiot in the White House, who watches TV all day, and he’s going to start a nuclear war, and even his entire staff thinks he’s unfit for office. Roll out the 25^th and stop this madman.

It’s awful. Just awful.

I’m not suggesting that the world’s problems aren’t serious, or that evil people aren’t up to something. But I’d like to suggest that we don’t have to panic—in fact, that as a moral matter we ought not to panic.

A few observations.

One of the benefits of being an old codger is that, if your long-term memory is still working, you have some history by which to evaluate the present. I can testify that this kind of apocalyptic talk has been going on for as long as I’ve been alive—and longer than that (because I was actually taught history in school, back in the day).

When I was born, VP Richard Nixon was going to jail everybody who disagreed with him, because of that awful Senator McCarthy and the military-industrial complex, or something. Then JFK was going to start a nuclear war with the USSR over a few pictures from an inconsequential island. Then the Commies were going to destroy our society with forced integration, and with that take over the whole bloomin’ country by 1973. Then LBJ was going to kill all our boys in Vietnam—he was so unpopular with his own party that he couldn’t run for reelection in 1968. Then MLK and RFK were gunned down right before our eyes. Then Nixon—well, Nixon—do we even have to talk about him? End-of-the-world stuff. Then Carter couldn’t get our hostages out of Iran, and then Reagan was going to start World War III (“we begin bombing in five minutes!”), and then Clinton was, well, inattentive to his presidential duties because of, um, distractions, and there was that whole impeachment thing, which was just about sex, and who cares about that? and then Bush stole the whole country from Gore and blew up the Middle East by lying about WMDs, and then Obama wasn’t even born here, and was just an undercover Muslim (did you know his real name is Soetero?!), and threw the whole country away, and now Trump’s gonna destroy everything for sure.

I mean it when I say that I’m not mocking past fears or trivializing serious issues in the US and the world. But I can’t help noticing that none of the fears were realized. None of them. Sure, there are problems today, many of which have their roots in those earlier times. But we’re still here, and the great majority of us live better than millionaires did a hundred years ago (sometime study the history of sewage systems), and the fears were all overblown. All of them.

Political opponents have always exaggerated the fears. The current election has always been the Most Important One Ever, and the opponent has always been the Worst Person in the World. Now even the weather is worse than ever; every storm is the Storm of the Century, or the Snowpocalypse, or the Polar Vortex, or the Bomb Cyclone.

We need to get over our addiction to adrenaline. We need to see things as they really are, and then we need to just calm down.

This is particularly true of Christians. There is a God in heaven, who raises up kings—all of them—and in his good time sets them down again (Dan 2.21). Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton are no longer any threat.

Further, they were never any threat to the plan of God, even when they were in office. They were, in fact, part of his plan. As is Donald Trump, love him or hate him, and Barack Obama before him. Our times are in the hands of a God who is both great and good, and whose intentions for his people are good to the infinite extreme.

What are seekers to think when God’s people act as though none of that is true? When they express dismay, or rage, or outright panic in their public proclamations or in private? When they evidence that for them, love of God has not cast out fear? When we show no evidence of grace, mercy, and peace?

Sure, the world’s a difficult and dangerous place. And when we see problems, they should get our attention, and we should act to solve them. We should fight injustice. We should demand truth and righteousness from our elected leaders. But we cannot act strategically, wisely, when we’re in panic mode. We need to be calm, rational, deliberate, trusting in the providential care of Almighty God, as we seek to bring light and hope to a badly broken world.

#freakoutthounot

Christmas

December 18, 2017 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Every Christmas there’s a rash of articles about Christmas myths: Jesus wasn’t born in winter; there weren’t 3 wise men, and they didn’t show up at the stable; the angels didn’t sing.

It’s proper to insist on the accurate retelling of the biblical story, and it’s really important not to say God said things when he didn’t (Rev 22.18), but sometimes I get the idea that the Christmas Mythbusters are just getting their jollies from popping the children’s balloons at the party.

Pedants.

For starters, there may have been 3 wise men; we don’t know how many there were. And Jesus may have been born at any time of year, even in December; we just can’t think of a reason shepherds would have been watching their flocks by night other than lambing season in the spring. And sure, the text says that the angels “said,” but are you really going to insist that angels don’t sing because of that? “Glory to God in the highest” as monotone? Seriously?

Get the biblical story right; but get it right for good reasons.

May I offer a counterexample?

Back to those wise men. They came from the East, according to the oft-mocked song, “bearing gifts … following yonder star … westward leading, still proceeding.”

I beg to differ, and for what I hope is a good reason, an edifying one.

Whatever their names were, they came “from the East” (Mat 2.1), which we take to be Mesopotamia, and thus perhaps were Parthians. They “saw his star when it rose” (Mat 2.2) and consequently traveled to Jerusalem. There is no evidence that they “follow[ed] yonder star” to Jerusalem; in fact, it seems most certain they did not—

If you’re following a star, why stop to ask directions (Mat 2.1-2)? (Especially since men never … oh, never mind.)
If the star led you to Herod’s palace, why get all excited that it’s still there when you return outside (Mat 2.10)?

So back home in the East they saw some sort of celestial phenomenon, and they went to Jerusalem to see the newly born king.

Why get so excited about another prince being born? Princes were born all over the region all the time. They didn’t make pilgrimages for every prince, did they? And an expedition to Jerusalem was a difficult, time-intensive, and expensive proposition. What made this one worth it? What made this prince special?
And how did they know to go to Jerusalem, if the star wasn’t leading them?

We’re going to have to speculate a little bit. But there are reasonable speculations, based on evidence. Crime-scene investigators do that sort of thing all the time. Let’s try to do one of those.

These men were court astrologers from Mesopotamia. They would have been knowledgeable regarding the history of their region, and especially of the history of their craft of predicting the future. They would have known about their prophetic ancestors. And they had a couple of ancestors whose prophecies would likely have informed them when they saw the star.

The first was Balaam. He was from “Pethor” (Num 22.5), which is commonly believed to be Pitru, near Carchemish in northern Mesopotamia. He was a well-known prophet; records of his extrabiblical prophecies have been discovered at Deir Alla, a town in modern Jordan. The wise men could well have been familiar with his work.

And his work includes the following statement: “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth” (Num 24.17). He finishes this prophecy with these words: “Alas, who shall live when God does this? But ships shall come from Kittim and shall afflict Asshur and Eber; and he too shall come to utter destruction” (Num 24.23-24).

Hmmm. A star. Out of Jacob. Who will destroy kingdoms, perhaps including “Asshur.” I think the Mesopotamian astrologers might have been interested in that.

The other prophet is Daniel. He would certainly have been well known, as a high government official in Babylon who was so effective that Babylon’s Persian conquerors kept him on in their government too. He prophesied of an “anointed one” who would be “cut off” (Dan 9.26) along about, oh, 30 years from now, in the wise men’s day. They’d be interested in that too.

They see the celestial phenomenon. It disappears. They remember the star prophecy of the king from Jacob. They check the timing of Daniel’s prediction. Yep. They saddle up and head for Jerusalem, report to the palace, and ask where the prince is.

The king’s reaction puzzles them. He doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The prince is apparently not his son. Bethlehem, he tells them. Go there, and find the child.

How are they going to do that? Of course there will be children there; but which one is the Anointed? How will they know?

Shaking their heads, they head for the caravan outside in the courtyard. As they exit the building, a strange but familiar light envelops them. They jump for joy.

God’s Word is reliable.

And he clarifies it for those who want to know.

Photo by Inbal Malca on Unsplash

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I’m taking a break from blogging for the holidays. See you after the New Year.