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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Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 4: On Solutions

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Wouldn’t it be great if we could solve this problem? Wouldn’t it be great if our culture treated women with respect, seeing them as more than just objects? If we saw everyone’s full potential as a unique creation in the image of God? Wouldn’t that be great?

We may be seeing a cultural sea change. We can never be sure of that in the middle of the moment; the defining points of history become clear only on later reflection. But many have suggested that the era of the casting couch in Hollywood is over.

We’ll see.

But there are some things that we can know, even as things are developing rapidly around us.

All of us, even those among us who don’t want to admit or accept it, know that civil behavior begins with fear—specifically, fear of punishment. That’s where we start with our children; that’s why state troopers drive around on the interstate, just being seen; that’s why people who aren’t powerful behave themselves in public. We don’t want to face the consequences of acting on our impulses.

Right now we’re in the fear stage. There are lots of brutish actors and athletes and news reporters and politicians who haven’t been outed yet, but they know they could be; and they’re keeping their heads down. Maybe some of them are even keeping their noses clean for the moment.

Fear works.

But nobody wants that kind of a culture for the long term. Parents don’t want their children to be afraid of them all the time; no husband and wife want to spend a lifetime in fear of one another. No respectful relationship can be based on fear alone.

The Bible says that “perfect love casts out fear” (1John 4.18). As a healthy relationship matures, we move from being fearful to being just nervous, then to being comfortable, then to being attracted, and finally to love—to being so fiercely devoted to the benefit of the other person that we’ll make any sacrifice for it.

That’s the way a marriage ought to be. That’s the way a society ought to be.

Perhaps raw fear will keep the predator numbers down, but it won’t bring us a healthy culture. We need love to do that. And that means learning one another, experiencing one another, as much as possible. It means interacting with our neighbors beyond the greeting from driveway to driveway. It means spending time with people who are not like us, the kind of time that allows us to learn why they think as they think and why they do as they do.

It means hard work.

Will our culture do that? Will we? Only time will tell.

But there’s more.

We can improve our society by these sorts of actions—social contracts, shared experiences, shared efforts. It’s been done before, though usually not without some motivating external influence, and usually a negative one, such as a war or a famine or a plague (remember 9/11?). But it can be done; it does happen.

But this kind of development doesn’t really solve the problem. It usually lowers the problem’s incidence and weakens its effect on the larger society—temporarily—but the problem is still there. There’s still rape, and theft, and murder. And beyond that, there’s still lust, and greed, and hatred.

These tendencies go deep; they’re part of who we are. And we can’t eradicate them by trying hard, or by singing Kum-Ba-Ya, or by buying the world a Coke, or by thinking globally and acting locally, or by visualizing world peace. You don’t get rid of a deeply embedded infection by taking something for the headache; you have to hit it hard and deep with really strong stuff.

So how do you heal a culture?

You heal it by healing its people, one at a time. And you do that by going after the infection, hard and deep.

That infection is called sin, and our culture not only doesn’t have anything with which to heal it—we don’t even believe that it exists. And until we do, there’s no road to a solution.

But there is a solution, and it has worked reliably, one person at a time, for thousands of years. It’s called repentance—turning from your sin—and faith—turning toward its Victor, the Christ. The solution to sin is found in the One who has already defeated it decisively, through a consistently victorious life, a powerfully overwhelming death, and an explosive resurrection.

With turning—conversion—come the mercy and forgiveness that heal our relationship with our Creator—which was our real problem all along—and then the grace and the guidance to change from the inside out, to change our thinking so that our behavior will naturally follow.

And that is the only solution.

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 3: On Causes and Effects

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A lot of people have expressed shock and surprise over the revelations of brutish behavior by so many men they had previously admired. How could these men have done such things? And further, how could so many of them have done such things? What have we come to? What is wrong with us?

What I find shocking and surprising is the shock and surprise.

For decades, our culture has engaged in the very kinds of thought and behavior that virtually assure that we would end up right where we are. For starters, we have used one of God’s delightful gifts—our creative energies—to trivialize another of his delightful gifts—sexuality—by reducing it to mere biological function. We have created, and rabidly consumed, entertainment that makes women mere collections of body parts to be ogled (we call that PG) and fondled (we call that R). For the most part, the women in our movies, our television shows, our game shows, our sports broadcasts, and even our news programs (!) are no more than eye candy, there for the shot that deftly catches the angles most likely to focus the viewer’s mind on the external and provoke a merely physical response. One news analysis show sports a “leg chair” featuring a clear shot of a female pundit—always a female—in a short skirt—always short. This is about news analysis, and the woman is a lawyer, for crying out loud; what’s the real objective here? Oh, and this is the politically “conservative” channel.

Yikes.

If we take in a steady diet of material that sees women as meat, we’re going to think of them as meat, and we’re going to toss them around like so many beef carcasses.

We’ve reaped what we’ve sowed.

A second practice is our elevation of creatures to the status of creators. We’ve made gods of mere men.

We all want heroes, and genuine heroism should be thanked and celebrated. The generation of young men who took on two world powers at the same time, on opposite sides of the world, and by dint of grit and guts and discipline and determination ground them into powder—the Greatest Generation—are rightfully heroes. But I’ve noticed that those men, real heroes all, didn’t really ask for anything special. They didn’t want to talk about their exploits except to deflect praise to others, especially those who died by their sides. They wanted simple, ordinary pleasures—a wife, a child or two, a house, a back yard, maybe a picket fence. Peace.

And they cared for their people, because they had fought for them.

But opportunities for real heroism on that scale don’t come along very often, and in those in-between times, we want heroes. So we make them up. We celebrate actors, and athletes, and musicians, not simply respecting their legitimate accomplishments or their disciplined devotion to their craft—which are worthy of respect—but pouring adulation and worship on them, making them idols, American or otherwise. And then we adulate those in power in those industries or in politics. And eventually we even make gods out of people who just read the news.

Humans aren’t designed to be gods; they’re designed to be worshipers. When we make them gods, they respond poorly, like anyone else who’s in a position for which he is completely unqualified. They are corrupted by the power, they feel undeservedly invulnerable, and away we go.

There’s irony here.

We pride ourselves on our modernity. We’ve outgrown our ancient superstitious ways. We’re scientific. Yeah, that’s it.

How scientific is it to compile terabytes of data on physical and psychological human sexual response—something we’ve put an inordinate amount of time and resources into studying—then do all of the things that incite the raw hormonal reaction, and then act surprised when the chemical reaction occurs? How scientific is that?

“Officer, I just poured gasoline all over the building and then lit a match; I had no intention of burning the place down.”

And to increase our guilt, we’ve criticized those who said, “Um, you keep that up, you’re gonna burn the place down,” as joyless prudes.

That’s not gonna stand up in court.

Part 4

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 2: On Celebrating Sin

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Part 1

One interesting feature of the recent scandals is their breadth. The current wave began with revelations about the office atmosphere at a conservative Republican—leaning (!) media outlet, Fox News, with the most visible examples being founder Roger Ailes and star talent Bill O’Reilly. Then there was a bit of a pause until revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was not, um, conservative or Republican. And then the dam broke—media personalities at the left-wing Vox and at NBC, powerful Hollywood icons, a fashion designer, and the usual string of libidinous politicians, both red and blue.

This breadth has given us an opportunity to watch partisanship in action. When a politically conservative abuser is uncovered, the left calls for his head; when a leftist is uncovered, the right does the same. But when the perv is “our guy,” each side rushes to the ramparts and defends The Cause against Scurrilous and Unfounded Charges by Evil or Manipulated Women Out to Make a Fast Buck or Just Get Attention.

Yikes.

We call that hypocrisy. And nobody likes it—when it’s practiced by the Other Side.

There’s a reason why we don’t like it, at least in other people. Because we’re created in the image of God, there’s something deep inside us, even as broken and sinful people, that wants to be like him—that resonates with his qualities, even if we have difficulty putting them into practice.

And this particular quality is truthfulness. God is true and faithful and trustworthy. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for that quality, ‘emunah, is the source of our English word amen (“May it be so!”). We celebrate his truthfulness, and we seek it in others. Every government makes it a crime, or at least a misdemeanor, to break your word, to fail to keep a contract, to slander or libel someone. We expect truthfulness.

And that’s why we jeer at the opposition for their hypocrisy, even as we excuse it in ourselves. That’s different, you see; ours is a completely different situation. Apples and oranges.

Nonsense.

When we engage in such sophistry, defending vice against virtue when it suits our cheap temporal goals, we have descended to the level of the perverts themselves. We despise them for being one thing on TV, or on the Senate floor, and being something very different after they’ve pressed the button under their desk to lock their office door. They’re hypocrites.

Just like us.

Others have noted that sinfulness is not necessarily hypocrisy; a legislator can vote for a law against fornication while being a fornicator who is trying desperately to stop. The hypocrite is one who does not see his sin as sin—who continues it while demanding that others stop. And neither side in this controversy shows any interest in stopping the partisan hypocrisy.

As evil as all this is, I think there’s another element to it that’s even worse, especially when practiced by believers.

In his classic passage on love, Paul lists a number of admirable characteristics of genuine love. Among those is the remarkable statement that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1Co 13.6). And love, you’ll recall, is both the first and second great commandment, according to Jesus (Mt 22.37-40).

I think we’ve all had this experience. There’s a new allegation; a new perp is uncovered. And he’s on the Other Side.

There a place deep inside us that feels really, really good about it. Oh, yeah, the other guys have another sleazeball.

And we rejoice.

Oh, we tell ourselves, as we shake our heads, it’s just a shame. Those poor victims—how they must be hurting. How sad that it took so long for their abusers to be unmasked. Such injustice. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Let’s see that justice is done, for the good of all, and for truth, justice, and the American way.

But we still rejoice.

We’re glad it happened. This’ll look really bad on the Other Side’s resume. How many House seats will this give us in the next election? How many more Supreme Court justices will this give us? How many decades of Our Side winning?

Yaaaaaay!

When we think that way, we’re not thinking like God. We’ve taken sides against him.

Time for us to change too.

Part 3 Part 4

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Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 1: On Abuse of Power

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Who is it today?

Who’s been outed as a sexual harasser?

The parade goes on, day after day; another famous person, it turns out, has been creepy all along. And the “outing” is happening because suddenly, people are starting to speak up.

Good for them.

Everyone I know hopes that the parade of perp walks continues until justice has been done for everyone. And maybe, just maybe (hope against hope!), this is the beginning of a sea change in our culture, one that changes fundamentally the way we address our sexuality. (More on that later.)

As I’ve watched all this unfold over the past few weeks, I’ve had a few thoughts that I’d like to share in the next few posts.

First, as I suppose everyone knows, most of these cases have been about a fundamental imbalance of power. Someone in power—perhaps a boss, or someone else in a position to affect the victim’s career significantly, seeks sexual favors from the victim, with the explicit or implicit promise of good career prospects if the victim consents or the threat of bad ones if she (usually she) refuses. Many of the victims said that they gave in because of this pressure. I’ve found it interesting to note that in this latest wave, some Democrats have finally spoken out against Bill Clinton’s misbehavior, more than two decades after the fact; is it just a coincidence that with Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential election, the Clintons are now not in any position to retaliate? Is the two decades of silence simply part of the same power imbalance?

This is a serious problem, first because it involves the deepest urges of every human, and second because it crosses cultural and chronological barriers: it’s been going on for a long time, and wherever human beings interact.

We would expect, then, that the Bible would have something to say about it. And it does.

We could start with Jesus’ teaching, specifically with the fact that he elevated love of others to the second great commandment, below only our relationship with God himself. If you love someone else, then you sacrifice your own well-being for hers; using others, whether against their will or not, to satisfy your own needs is precisely the opposite of how Jesus lived his life and how he expects us to live ours—indeed, how he demands that we live ours, with open threat of future judgment.

But the Bible speaks even more directly to what we’re seeing play out on our newsfeeds day after day. The Old Testament prophets raged against those in power who used that power to abuse others. Amos condemned leaders in Israel “who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted” (Amos 2.7), who “turn aside the needy in the gate” (Amos 5.12)—that is, who withhold justice from those appealing to the court system. Amos’s contemporary Isaiah joins the chorus, calling Israel to “seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isa 1.17). And more than a century later, Jeremiah turns his fire on neighboring Judah:

Execute justice in the morning [i.e., immediately], and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed, lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of your evil deeds (Jer 21.12).

Judah, as we all know, ignored the warning and spent 70 years in captivity in Babylon. After they returned, God sent more prophets to warn them against returning to their old ways. One of them, Zechariah, said,

Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart (Zech 7.9-10).

Is this all only for Israel? Did God judge other nations for allowing the weak to be persecuted by the powerful? You can find the answer to that question by reading the book of Obadiah. It’ll take you less than 2 minutes.

Micah lyrically sums up what God expects of those in power: Do justice; love kindness; walk humbly with your God (Micah 6.8).

Perhaps the clearest example of this kind of abuse comes from a surprising figure, King David himself, the sweet singer of Israel, the man after God’s own heart. In a moment of lust, he takes to himself another man’s wife. (Of course she assents; what choice does she have?) God sends the prophet Nathan (2Sam 12.1) to tell the satisfied king a story about a rich man who takes his poor neighbor’s one little beloved lamb to feed to a guest. The outraged David orders the rich man’s immediate execution. Nathan violently jerks the potentate’s chain with the simple words, “You are the man!” (2Sam 12.7).

Speaking truth to power. It’s a thing.

And governments should have protections in place to prevent the powerful from using their power to abuse the powerless.

That’s what God says.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

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Unbroken by a Broken World

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It was a mildly chilly winter day in South Africa, and the BJU Africa team and I were returning from a sight-seeing trip to the Cape of Good Hope—my favorite place in the world. Some of our team members had been surprised by a rogue wave at Dias Beach, and since we were planning to eat dinner at Mariner’s Wharf restaurant in Hout Bay on the way home, they wanted to try to find some (cheap) dry clothes to buy and wear for the rest of the day. So we stopped in Simon’s Town, a beautiful little harbor village on the Cape, where there are plenty of shops.

While they were shopping, I thought I’d use the opportunity to replenish my supply of cash, so I hit a bank machine with my TD Bank debit card to access the team’s account. A quick couple thousand rands, and the transaction’s done. It’s all good.

As I’m leaving the machine, a local man stops me with a kind warning: I haven’t logged out of the ATM, and someone else could come along and access my account.

No, I say, I have my card. I’m logged out.

No, he says, they’ve changed the software; you need to actually log out of the machine, or your account is still open. A random passerby confirms his words. You need to put the card back in and execute a formal logout to protect your data.

I think you can see where this is going.

By the time we’re done, the two guys—they’re working together—have my debit card and the PIN, and they’ve disappeared into the crowd. Three-tenths of a second later, I can see exactly what they’ve done, but it’s too late to catch them.

I’ve been scammed.

Well, this is gonna be a problem. They have access to the team’s bank account.

I make a quick call back to the States to the father of one of the team members, who just happens to be a bank president. He calls TD Bank with my account number, and the account is locked, but not before the scammers have gotten some of our money.

Years later, I can say that it all came out fine. We had plenty of money to pay our expenses, and while I couldn’t access it without the debit card, I did have a credit card that got us through the rest of the trip and home, where we could use the funds still in the account to pay the credit-card bill. No problem.

I’ve learned some things from that valuable experience. (In fact, learning things is what makes the experience valuable.)

Most obviously, things are not always what they seem. We need to pay attention to details; in thinking back over the experience, I realized there were several things that I should have noticed that would have foiled the creeps.

But a greater lesson for me has been the danger of over-reacting—in fear, or in bitterness, or, most dangerously, in cynicism. Not everyone’s a scammer, and while I can engage in practices that lower my vulnerability, I shouldn’t distrust everybody. I should accept legitimate kindness from strangers, and I should offer help to strangers without fearing that they’ll think I’m a bad guy.

There’s always been sin—well, always in practical terms, anyway. The world’s always been a broken place populated with broken people, and nasty stuff happens. But God has called us to shine as lights in that very same world, and the opportunity to shine is only increased by the darkness.

Rather than becoming cynical and distrusting everybody, or becoming fearful and spending our lives in a virtual fetal position, God’s people should march out confidently, ambassadors of the heavenly king, to represent him freely and accurately by taking his love to those who need it most.

Even the creeps.

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Have You Thought about It?

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We live in a world of snap judgments. We read a tweet (now up to 280 characters!), or a Facebook post (better not have to scroll!), or we see clickbait (you won’t believe what happened next!), and we go for it, or we don’t. We hear a sad story (Cyntoia Brown!), or a rage-inducing one (Al Franken!), or a fear-inducing one (Net Neutrality!), or a partisan one (Trump! Clinton!) and we react, research be, um, condemned into everlasting redemption.

This didn’t happen overnight.

Some time back I read a fascinating book by Nicholas Carr called The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. He argues—and, I think, demonstrates—that web surfing has changed the way we think, and not for the better. We’re making decisions, sometimes consequential ones, faster and faster, on the basis of less and less actual information or resulting thought. Research indicates that when we do that as a regular practice, our brains rewire themselves to accommodate that kind of thinking—what you might call “fast-twitch” thinking—eventually to the point where we can’t follow a thought for long at all anymore.

Carr notes that after years of using the web, he’s less patient with long-form articles; he wants to get the quick point and move on.

Have you noticed that happening to your brain? I have. And spending a solid hour scrolling through a Facebook newsfeed every day is just going to make the problem worse.

Why do I say “worse”? What’s wrong with thinking faster? Isn’t that a good thing?

No, and here’s why.

When we routinely think with our gut, reacting instantaneously, we’re not really thinking at all. We’re not researching to get as many facts as we can; we’re not thinking through the consequences of our decision as a matter of cause and effect; we’re not weighing alternatives; we’re not hearing both sides.

We’re not thinking.

And thinking is really important. It helps us make decisions with better outcomes. In short, it makes us wise.

Are the problems our society needs to solve getting simpler or more complicated? How likely is it that we’ll be able to solve them effectively with just our gut?

So what do we do? A few suggestions—

  • Do long-form reading, regularly. Keep your brain’s “slow-twitch muscles” strong. Wrestle with complicated questions—net neutrality would be a good one to start with—and read deeply about them on both—or all—sides.
  • Limit your “fast-twitch” reading to a few minutes every so often. Don’t make it regular, and for sure don’t make it all the reading you do.
  • Don’t “Like” something the first time you see it. How can you possibly know enough about that particular thing to offer an informed opinion?
    • OK, I’ll give you a pass on videos of people falling down. Or babies. Or cats. Or especially puppies.
  • If you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t comment.
  • If you’re not sure whether you know what you’re talking about, you don’t.
  • Start by thinking about my suggestions carefully and critically. Are they any good? Or are they just sound and fury, signifying nothing? And for Pete’s sake, don’t “Like” this post; you just saw it, for crying out loud.
  • If you’re interested in thinking more about this phenomenon, read Carr’s book, and then read a bunch of the negative reviews, and then talk to informed people about it, and then take some time coming to a decision.

And now, a word to those who are upset about the Cyntoia Brown reference—if you’ve read this far.

It’s a sad story, and some celebrities are promoting it. But it’s also an adjudicated case, and the law is complicated. (I’m not saying that’s a good thing.) I found myself forming an opinion about what I read, as you did too. But I don’t know anything about the case—I haven’t read any of the trial transcripts, or the judges’ opinions, or even any long-form articles about the case. My uninformed opinion—I do have one, and you’d probably like it—is worth precisely nothing. If there’s injustice there, then let those who have the best and most complete information weigh in on it. Better yet, become one of those people yourself, and then make all the noise you want. Justice is worth the fight.

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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.

_______________

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).

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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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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