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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New Leaves

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New Year’s Eve. Last day of the old year; looking forward to the new.

There is something in us that makes us reflective at this season. We think through the past year and often make resolutions for the new.

This year, things will be better. Life will be better. We will be better.

Humans being complicated, this general optimism—or at least desire for improvement—is countered by cynics (they would call themselves realists) who confidently predict that it won’t last. Some of them seem irritated that anybody’s even trying. The most obvious example of that, I suppose, is at the gym, where the regulars are frustrated that for the first week or two of every January they can’t get to their usual machines because of the crowds—and their irritation is increased by the fact that the interlopers don’t even know how to use said machines.

I feel their pain—though I’ll admit that I haven’t done much at the gym this last semester, mostly due to schedule constraints of my first-semester teaching schedule. If I were going to start an exercise program, I think I’d start in December—or any time other than January. But as it happens, my gym is closed for 2 weeks precisely at the end of December, so that’s out.

Anyway, while recognizing the inconvenience that the optimists are to the cynics, at least at the gym, I’d like to suggest that they lighten up a little. If history is any guide, a lot of people will set out on a course of self-improvement this week, and the great majority of them will apostatize before the month is out. But does that mean that they shouldn’t even try? Or that they shouldn’t at least aspire?

Isn’t aspiration, the desire to get better, the desire to succeed, an essential part of being a healthy human? Isn’t it part of the image of God in us?

And if it is, shouldn’t we start down that path, and encourage others to do the same? Is that hopelessly naïve, or is it just healthy?

God certainly knew that we would fail when he created us, and he went ahead and did it anyway. He knew that Abraham’s descendants would be unfaithful lovers in the extreme, but he chose and blessed them anyway. He knew that Moses would strike the rock in rage, and that the same Israel who stood at Mt. Sinai and cried—with one voice—“All that the Lord has spoken, we will do!” (Ex 19.8), would refuse to take the land when God gave it to them. He knew that David would sin with Bathsheba. Jesus knew that Peter would deny him—and that Judas would betray him. And God chose them all anyway.

The Judas story is particularly intriguing. The Scripture doesn’t tell us Judas’s motive for the betrayal—though earlier it describes his motive at Bethany as greed (Jn 12.6). Some have speculated that like some of the other Jews, he wanted Jesus to overthrow the Romans and establish a political Messiahship. Maybe he did. If so, Jesus’ treatment of him is interesting.

It appears that Jesus set up a “buddy system” among the Twelve; we know that he sent them out in pairs on at least one preaching tour (Mk 6.7), and the accompanying list of the apostles appears to list them in pairs—Peter and Andrew, James and John, and so forth (Mt 10.2). If this is a “buddy list” of long-term “roommate” relationships, with whom does Jesus pair Judas?

Simon the Zealot (Mt 10.4).

And what’s the significance of that?

The designation Zealot is a reference to an activist group of the day who opposed the hated Roman occupiers with what we would call today “asymmetrical warfare.”

Simon was a guerrilla fighter. He was a terrorist.

But a changed one. He followed Jesus, and unlike Judas, he stayed true to that commitment to the very death.

So maybe—maybe—Jesus paired Judas the malcontent with Simon the (converted!) Zealot to let him see up close what a redeemed terrorist and Roman-hater looked like.

Maybe he was giving Judas a chance.

In any case, the God who knows all doesn’t go all cynical on us just because he knows we’ll stumble or even fail spectacularly.

We shouldn’t think like that either.

So make your plans, and your resolutions, for the new year. Set off down that path, with determination.

And if you proceed unevenly—you will, you know—get up and keep going.

For what it’s worth, I’m rooting for you.

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash

On Peace

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Been thinking a lot about peace lately.

I suppose you can guess why.

In the runup to tomorrow’s midterm elections—the most important election of our lifetime!—there’s not much evidence of peace. Both sides are scared of the consequences of losing the election, and they want you to be scared too—provided, of course, you’ll vote for their side. When all your friends have an interest in making you afraid, peace can be a little hard to come by.

But we all want it—or say we do.

The Jews greet each other with the simple word peace—“shalom.” So do the Arabic-speaking peoples—“salaam alaikum.” And the latter greeting makes explicit what is only implicit in the Hebrew custom—why they say the word at all.

It’s a wish. The greeter is saying he wants you to be at peace, and that his intentions toward you are peaceful: “peace to you.” And if you are familiar with the culture, you respond reflexively: “wa alaikum salaam” (“and to you, peace”). I hear that greeting, and offer it, frequently in both West and East Africa, where there’s considerable Muslim and thus Arabic influence.

Peace. We all want it.

During times of war, our desires are pretty simple and straightforward—we just want the fighting and killing to stop. We want to go home. We want to be with our families. We want to not be afraid all the time. We want a peace treaty. The Old Testament often uses the word shalom this way.

But once the fighting has stopped, we find that that’s not all we wanted. We want peace at home, too. We want the neighborhood to be safe. We want our kids to be able to play outside until the street lights come on. We want to have block parties. We want to jog along the streets and wave at our neighbors. We want the mailman not to get bitten by the neighbor’s junkyard dog.

And the circle of concern gets narrower. We want peace inside the house as well as out in the neighborhood. We want to love and enjoy the company of our spouse. We want our children to love and respect us, and love to be at home with us, and make us proud. We want quiet nights by the fireplace with hot chocolate and popcorn. We want to sing silly songs in the car on the way to Wally World. We want family.

And most of all, we want peace inside ourselves. We want to be free from worry, and hate, and fear. We want to feel like a walk in the woods, a campfire, and a night in the forest all the time.

We want peace.

The direction of our travel here has been from the outside in. We achieve peace in wartime, then in the neighborhood, then at home, and finally within ourselves.

Many of us think that’s how peace comes to us.

But it doesn’t.

It travels from the inside out.

It has to start with peace in your soul, in your spirit.

Why?

Because if your heart isn’t fundamentally at peace, you’ll bring strife and discord to your home. And your home will bring strife to your neighbors. And a country at war with itself will destabilize its national neighbors—and in this global neighborhood, all the rest of the world as well.

What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not that your passions are at war within you? (James 4.1).

The biblical word shalom speaks of a lot of kinds of peace—of absence of war (1K 4.25) or, less formally, of strife (Gen 26.29); of healthy, happy, harmonious relationships; of prosperity; of completeness or fullness; of fulfillment.

Of being in the place you were meant to be, one that matches you perfectly.

How does that happen?

In the Bible, it comes from being righteous (when you behave yourself and live in a way society views as orderly, your life tends to be a lot less complicated, doesn’t it? [Isa 32.17]); it comes from being in God’s presence and especially from being in a relationship with him (Gen 15.15; Ps 85.8; Isa 54.10). In short, it comes from God:

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

And, importantly, shalom doesn’t come from our circumstances; it’s independent of them (Isa 54.10). It’s not going to come from winning the election—I suspect that no matter who wins, the rage is only going to deepen. But when the world is shaking—whether the whole world, or just your world—the peace is still there, because God is still there.

Do you have peace?

If you’re a believer, you should. And in a day when the world is teetering, that’s what you should be communicating to those who have no peace.

You’ll stick out like a sore thumb.

A really good and attractive sore thumb.

Salaam alaikum, my friend.

Photo by Sunyu on Unsplash

Responding to Persecution, Part 2

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Part 1

In my previous post I introduced the subject of persecution and how the early church responded to it. As explained there, I’d like to take this post to summarize and extend an excellent discussion of Paul’s teaching on the subject in 1 Thessalonians by Michael Martin in the New American Commentary volume on Thessalonians.

In general, Paul is not playing games with his flock. He “did not attempt to diminish the severity of the Thessalonians’ persecution. Rather, he sought to broaden their vision” (Martin). Rather than fixating on themselves, and how hard and unfair their lives were, Paul called their attention to the Big Picture—to the far greater realities that were at work. These are not platitudes; they’re facts, and they place God’s people in a position to survive, to endure, even to thrive in the most unjust and painful situations.

So what are the big ideas?

  • If you’re a believer, you’re not suffering because people hate you. You’re suffering because they hate your Lord, the one they crucified, and because they hate his plan for his creation. “They suffered for the kingdom of God, not needlessly” (Martin; cf. 2Th 1.5). There is no greater cause, and there is no greater payoff. Jesus told of a man who found a pearl of great price and sold all he had to buy it (Mt 13.45-46). Seriously, now—what greater cause is there? Consider what sacrifices people will make for other, far lesser causes; is the path that God has asked you to walk really all that extraordinary?
  • Jesus is not asking you to walk a path any more difficult than the one he has already walked for you (1Th 1.6-7). This is a point Peter also makes when he remarks that “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps” (1P 2.21). When we follow him, “despising the shame” (Heb 12.2), we demonstrate that our faith in him is genuine—that there’s substance to it. And that in turn gives us further motivation and strength to continue to endure.
  • Like any difficulty, persecution is temporary. At some point—sooner than you can believe while it’s happening—it will be over. And then you have two things to look forward to—
    • Like the athlete suffering through 3-a-day workouts, you can anticipate the strength benefit you will derive from the exertion. “No pain, no gain” may be trite, but it’s wisdom culled from the experience of millions. As the fire refines gold, so suffering refines and improves and strengthens God’s people (1P 1.6-7). Embrace it.
    • God’s plan is to present you perfect at Christ’s coming (1Th 1.10; 3.13). You will not only be stronger in this life, but you will be ultimately sanctified, glorified, when the final reckoning comes.
  • When we look around in our persecution, we see brothers and sisters suffering alongside us. We are not alone. In the case of the Thessalonians, they knew of Paul’s persecution in both Philippi and Thessalonica (1Th 2.2), and they knew of the suffering of the first Christians in Jerusalem, persecution in which Paul himself had long before played a role (1Th 2.14). This isn’t “misery loves company”; it’s support from teammates united in back-breaking effort.
  • We have infinite resources freely available to us in the struggle. We are indwelt, empowered, and gifted by the Holy Spirit (1Th 1.6); God himself gives us the power to “increase and abound” (1Th 3.12) and will “sanctify [us] wholly” (1Th 5.23)—yes, he surely “will do it” (1Th 5.24). This is not a battle God will lose, and if we are in him, we will not lose either.
  • Justice will come. Evil will be judged; the first will be last (1Th 2.16). It’s just the 3rd inning; it’s too soon to take the score seriously. Things are not what they seem.

Martin concludes his summary with these remarkable words:

Knowledge of such truths does not make suffering disappear, nor does it mean that suffering is good or should be sought. But suffering is tolerable when it has purpose, when something of value is gained by it, and when those who inflict it do not do so with impunity. A sufferer gains comfort in the comradeship of shared suffering and can give thanks in all circumstances given the knowledge that the suffering will eventually give way to victory and reward. Peace is the result, an enduring and genuine sense of well-being even in the midst of distress.

May God give us grace to represent him well when suffering comes.

And may we not be whiners in the meantime.

Responding to Persecution, Part 1

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about persecution of Christians in America. I suppose it’s true that there’s more than there used to be—there’s been some name-calling and a lawsuit about wedding cakes, though the defendant won that one.

It’s worth noting that this sort of thing is relatively mild compared to what’s going on around the world and what has gone on throughout church history. Just a couple of weeks ago was the anniversary of the death of two famous British martyrs, and there have been thousands of others.

So for Americans, things could be a lot worse than they are now. And there’s no guarantee that they won’t be.

What then?

How should we respond?

As always, we ought to take our cue from the Scripture.

When the first persecution of Christians occurred, shortly after Pentecost, the church responded immediately—with prayer. And what did they pray for? That God would smite their persecutors? That he would send fire from heaven to turn the wicked into a smoking crater and thereby justify and endorse his people? Or that he would lighten their load, lessen their pain?

No, none of these things. They prayed, first, of their confidence in God (Ac 4.24) and of their certainty that such persecution was no surprise to him (Ac 4.25-28). And then, remarkably, they prayed for two things: for boldness to continue to obey in the face of the persecution (Ac 4.29), and for power to carry out their commission (Ac 4.30).

And this was just the beginning.

Since there are lots of examples of persecution in the early church, the letters of the apostles have a lot to say about how God’s people should respond to persecution. Peter’s first epistle is built entirely around that theme, and Hebrews has something to say about it as well. Paul’s epistles, unsurprisingly, bring it up repeatedly.

I find the situation in Thessalonica particularly instructive. Paul arrives in this Macedonian seaside city of hot springs on his second missionary journey, not long after receiving the vision of the man from Macedonia calling, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” (Ac 16.9). After a brief stay in Philippi, which included a beating and a night in jail (Ac 16.12-34), Paul’s entourage worked their way down the Egnatian Highway to the next major city, Thessalonica (today’s Thessaloniki). There they were welcomed into the home of a man named Jason and began preaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath days, as was their practice (Ac 17.2-3). Before long Paul’s theological opponents stirred up a mob who came looking for trouble (Ac 17.5). Unable to find Paul, they seized Jason, his host, and dragged him—literally—into court (Ac 17.6).

Jason was able to get out on bond (Ac 17.9), but with his bond in jeopardy should more trouble ensue, and unable to prevent such trouble, since they hadn’t started it, the believers decided it the better part of valor to get Paul out of town (Ac 17.10).

So he had to leave. Gettin’ the trash out of NYC, and all.

This stuff isn’t new, folks.

Shortly later, Paul, now down in Achaia, the southern part of Greece, writes this little group of beleaguered believers a couple of letters, reviewing their relationship and situation, and instructing and encouraging them for what lies ahead. In 1 Thessalonians in particular he talks to them about persecution and how to deal with it.

If it would work for them, with all they were facing, it will certainly work for us.

Recently I came across a really helpful summary of Paul’s teaching on this point, written by Michael Martin, author of the volume on the Thessalonian epistles in the really excellent New American Commentary series, who at the time of writing was a professor of New Testament at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in San Francisco. (He’s now their academic VP, and the seminary is now called Gateway Seminary.)

I’d like to summarize and extend his remarks in the next post. What are the big ideas we take into battle as we face persecution?

Part 2

On Listening to the Designer

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When my wife and I were shopping for our first house, the inspector pointed out a tree on the property. “The branches are rubbing against the roof,” he said, “and that’ll shorten the life of your shingles. Further, the roots will eventually undermine your foundation. If you buy the house, you should cut it down.”

Well, we bought the house, and shortly later I bought me a chainsaw. A very manly one.

It came with a fairly hefty manual, which, you’ll be surprised to know, I read.

Lots of things to remember with a chainsaw. For starters, it has a two-stroke engine, so you have to mix oil with the gas, at a very specific ratio (32:1, to be precise). Second, there’s a compartment there where you need to put a different oil, with low viscosity, for the bar and chain sprocket, to keep things moving along.

And then there’s a section in the manual about kickback. Apparently there are ways you can manipulate the chainsaw that will increase the likelihood that it will come back at you, and you’ll be essentially kissing the business end of the thing, which I’m told can lead to negative patient outcomes.

So I read all that.

Now here’s the thing.

I’m an American. I have my rights. One of the most precious is the right to property, which some political philosophers (Locke, no?) tell us underlies all the other rights. When I plunked my money down on that orange counter, that chainsaw became mine, and I have a right to do whatever I want to with it.

If I don’t want to put oil in the gas, I don’t have to. If I don’t want to use special oil in that other compartment, I don’t have to. And if I want to manipulate that growling beast in ways the manual discourages, I can do that.

It’s my chainsaw. I have my rights.

But I think you’d agree that I’d be an idiot to exercise those rights. I’ll shorten the life of the tool and consequently end up spending more money than I need to, to keep myself in chainsaws. And even more significantly, I could shorten the life of the operator—and even mar this strikingly handsome face.

That would be a loss for everybody.

When the engineer tells you how he designed the machine, you’d better listen to him. Only a fool cares more about his rights.

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

When the designer of your mind and body tells you what the specs are, you’re nuts to cast off those constraints.

As just one example, our culture has set out to redefine sex and sexuality, as to its purposes, its significance, its definition, its safe and appropriate uses.

You can do that if you want to. Really, you can.

  • You can deny its interpersonal significance and make it a lonely, solo experience.
  • You can deny its safety limits and embrace random and exhausting and faceless promiscuity.
  • You can deny its marital limits and take your partner(s) places they’d rather not go, but won’t necessarily deny you.
  • You can create children with no means or plan to give them a meaningful life.

Yes, you can.

And when you’ve done that, you’ll have what we have in our culture—

  • The poverty of single-parent homes
  • Life-changing—and sometimes life-taking—diseases
  • An increasing sense of frustration, unfulfillment, and discontent
  • Fundamental distrust between men and women, each viewing the other as the exploiter, and everyone confused and worried about what’s OK and what isn’t, all the rules unspoken, and every encounter presaging danger of future betrayal
  • And sex without joy.

You know, the designer made it fun on purpose.

He gave it to us as a splendid and magnificent gift.

But we’re using it in ways that not only minimize its effectiveness and usefulness, and deprive us of much of its joy, but may well end up killing us before it’s all over.

I can hear my skeptical friends now—“You know, you’re assuming there’s a designer.”

Without going into all the reasons I think that’s a well-based assumption, let me just observe that our culture is assuming there isn’t a designer.

How’s that workin’ out?

Read the manual. Respect the design specs. Use it well.

Don’t be an idiot.

Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash

On Sexual Assault, Due Process, and Supreme Court Confirmations

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There’s no sense in my jumping into the Kavanaugh battle with a personal opinion; there are bazillions of those already, and I have no experience that gives me any special insight into legal issues.

But I do find something waaay back in the writings of Moses that may give us a little something to think about.

The legal difficulty of sexual assault is that it typically doesn’t happen in the city square, with lots of witnesses. The nature of sex as a private function means that abuses of the sexual function, like its legitimate uses, tend to happen in private. And in private, there are just two witnesses. If the sex is abusive, then the two witnesses are the perpetrator and the victim.

He said, she said.

That’s how it almost always is.

In biblical times it was the same way, of course. I note that in those days, unlike today, rape was a capital offense. I’ve heard it argued that today it shouldn’t get the death penalty because if the rapist knows that, he’ll just go ahead and kill the victim, since that would eliminate a witness without increasing his penalty. I recognize the logic, but I still would prefer to see the death penalty for rape, particularly in a day when DNA testing can make the identity of the perpetrator absolutely certain.

But back to my point. In biblical times, rape got the death penalty. But here’s the thing: elsewhere the biblical law restricted the death penalty to cases where you had at least two or three witnesses (Num 35.30; Dt 17.6).

Contradiction, no? Rape gets the death penalty, but there are never enough witnesses to actually get it carried out. The woman loses, every time.

Patriarchy.

Ah, not so fast.

There’s a special provision for allegations of sexual assault. In the midst of some broad-ranging regulations in Deuteronomy 22 (help an animal stuck in a ditch [4]; don’t kill a bird sitting on a clutch of eggs [6]; build your house so that visitors are safe [8]), there’s a point about sexual assault.

23 “If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, 24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

 25 “But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, 27 because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.

Interesting.

If the attack happens near other possible witnesses, then we assume that in a nonconsensual encounter the woman would protest in ways that those nearby would hear. If she says later that it was rape, then she is judged to be lying since she didn’t scream during the assault.

Women lie sometimes too. Even about things as serious as rape. We have to take that into account.

But if the event occurs away from possible witnesses, the woman gets the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she did call for help, and there was nobody to hear her.

Now, a woman having a consensual sexual encounter in the woods might lie too. She could decide later that it was a mistake, and she could decide to get the poor guy in beaucoup trouble. That could happen.

But here, she gets the benefit of the doubt. As the only witness. In a charge that bears the death penalty.

It’s not a perfect world. God knows that. And he indicates that he expects us to do the best we can in these difficult decisions. We need to remember that women lie just as certainly as men do, for all kinds of reasons. And we also need to remember that sometimes we need to give a woman in a difficult spot the benefit of the doubt.

When do we do which? That’s a really tough call; as someone who served on a jury for a case of child sexual assault, I know exactly how difficult it is.

But if you support Kavanaugh simply because you’re a Republican, or you oppose him simply because you’re a Democrat, then you’re in no position to be heard in such a critical decision.

Which, I guess, disqualifies pretty much everybody this time around.

Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

On Weather and Fables

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As I post this, Hurricane Florence is bearing down on the Carolinas, predicted to make landfall today and to reach here in the SC Upstate over the weekend. For days we’ve been hearing about how bad this storm is, with dire warnings to run for your life if you’re on the coast—and this one, they say, will have surprisingly destructive force far inland, even here above the fall line.

I believe them. But a lot of people don’t. They’re staying put. And the local first responders are collecting the names of their next of kin so they can notify them after the fools are dead.

Why don’t people listen to such grave warnings?

Well, some people are just foolish. That’s part of human nature. But I think these days there’s more involved.

In recent years journalism has become almost entirely ratings driven. Every story has to be hyped. Local news desks give you a teaser at 8 pm so you’ll tune in at 11—and when you do, the story turns out to be not as big a deal as the teaser implied. In fact, the teaser is more like a National Enquirer headline than actual journalism. And the national desks do it as well. For some time now, Fox News’s Bret Baier has been introducing his evening broadcast—“Special Report”—with an “ALERT” logo—to imply that there’s breaking news, when usually there isn’t.

Everything’s a Big Deal. Go for the adrenaline. Capture the eyeballs. Every day.

And the weather folks are doing it too. Local and national weatherpeople, even the agencies that feed them information—the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center, and so on. Every storm is the Storm of the Century, or the Snowpocalypse, or some other frightening neologism.

And they start saying these things 5 or 6 days out, before they can have any sort of reading of the storm with any scientific basis. At that point they can’t predict the path—but it MIGHT hit a population center!—or the intensity or the size of the storm. But they can get several days of good ratings by fearmongering.

Why do they do this? I’m sure they would say that they’re doing a public service by giving the population plenty of time to prepare for any eventuality. And they do, and for that I’m grateful.

But I think it’s demonstrable that there are other reasons as well. For the news outlets, they want the ratings, the eyeballs, because that drives the ad fees, and that means money in their pockets. For the agencies, they want the exposure, because that usually turns into stable future funding. There’s a strong element of self-interest in this.

Which is fine—capitalism and all that—except that there’s a downside.

As Aesop noted all those centuries ago, when the boy cries “Wolf!” repeatedly, eventually people stop believing him—even when he’s telling the truth.

Now, lots of people in Charleston remember Hugo, and lots of people in New Orleans remember Camille and Katrina, and they’re wise enough to get ready and get out. We’ve seen the interstates looking like parking lots the last couple of days, and I had a visitor in my class this morning who’s been evacuated from his school down on the coast.

But other people in hurricane-prone areas have heard repeated frenetic warnings about literally every storm with a snowball’s chance of reaching any point of the North American coastline. And in many cases those storms were described superlatively—this is a rare and even unique threat. And in most of those cases, the warnings haven’t panned out—usually because the hype started before there was any scientific basis for it.

When you’ve seen that happen a few times, you’re tempted to start downplaying the warnings. Significant numbers of people who live on the coast, and who can remember the last 20 years, are going to board up their windows, buy some batteries and bottled water, and settle in to watch the storm through their beach-facing picture windows.

And eventually, some of them are going to die—probably in great quantities, during the same genuinely powerful storm.

And whose fault is that? Might there be blame for more people than just the ones who died?

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

On Asking about Ethnicity

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In his column at National Review last week, Jim Geraghty thought out loud about a New York Times book review of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Lies that Bind. (Did you follow all that?) Appiah raises concerns about the way introductions work. Pretty much everybody, on meeting somebody else, asks questions about him—where are you from? where do you work? Appiah suggests that this tendency to want to categorize people might often imply a sort of racism or at least stereotyping.

Geraghty thinks that identity politics might be contributing to that. Immigrants. Wall Streeters. NRA members. Police officers. We react instinctively to certain groups, positively or negatively, depending on where we are on the political or cultural spectrum. He observes that this kind of thinking contradicts the very idea of America as a place where anybody can become anything with enough hard work and perhaps a little luck (or providence). Upward mobility. No feudalism. All that.

I think Geraghty is right, and based on his description of Appiah’s book—which I haven’t read—I suspect that the latter is right on that point too. I’ve found myself making assumptions about someone I’m meeting, based on his occupation or his appearance or some other information he offers about himself. We shouldn’t do that. People are individuals, not merely members of a class.

My ethnicity is German—as is obvious from my last name. But I’d think anybody who gave me a Nazi salute was just plain weird. I was born in Washington State, but I’m not a liberal Democrat. (In fact the area of the state where I was born is rock-ribbed conservative Republican, largely for reasons of physical geography—which, while interesting, is completely off our topic.) I spent my teen years in Boston, but I don’t park my car in Harvard Yard, and frankly, I’m tired of hearing about it from people who think they’re being original and clever. I live in the South, but I’m not an advocate of the Lost Cause. I don’t like being stereotyped, and Jesus tells me that in that case I shouldn’t stereotype others.

But just a minute here. If we shouldn’t stereotype the person we’re meeting, then observers of the conversation shouldn’t stereotype the person asking the questions, either.

Sure, sometimes people ask those questions in order to put the stranger into a box—to stereotype him. But not everybody does.

On a good day, when I ask a person what he does, it’s not to prejudge him—it’s to find a point of contact, to further deepen the relationship—which so far is pretty shallow.

  • You’re a pilot? I love that! My Dad was a private pilot, and I got to do a lot of flying when I was a kid. There’s nothing like the top side of a cloud.
  • You’re a waiter in a restaurant? I did that for a year. Hardest work I ever did. Good for you. Are people tipping better these days than they used to?

And that goes for geography too.

  • You’re from Boston? What part? Ah, Revere. Love the North Shore. Ever get up to Gloucester and Rockport? Boy, I miss the fish!

Here’s the sad part. Because of a lot of past sins, Americans are really, really sensitive about race—or as I prefer to say, ethnicity. You can’t talk about it without feeling like you’re stepping on eggshells, and if you talk about it much, people tend to wonder what you’re up to.

But I find ethnicity just as interesting as occupation or birthplace. If I’m meeting a black person, and I detect what sounds like one of many African accents, I really, really want to ask where he’s from. And sometimes I do. If I were to meet Dr. Appiah—Geraghty mentioned that he’s Ghanaian—I’d be all over that.

  • Where in Ghana? Accra? I love that city! What do you think of Papaye Chicken in Osu? Do you ever get up north, to the rural areas? What about the Upper West? What wonderful people! The most patient man I ever met was a Ghanaian pastor in the Upper West. And that Volta Dam is a remarkable achievement, isn’t it?

Now, as it happens, Dr. Appiah is of Ghanaian descent, but he was born in London, so he might surprise me by saying, “I’ve never actually been to Ghana.” And that’s fine. We can talk about London instead.

Sure, the person is more than these things. But he is these things, and what else he is, is molded, or perhaps reflected, by these things and many others. What’s wrong with wanting to know him as well as you can?

Let’s take this a little further. I’m intrigued by all the variations in skin color that human genes can produce. I know someone whose mother is Puerto Rican and whose father is Italian. I know someone else whose mother is Spanish and whose father is British. And another whose mother is Mexican and whose father is a New Zealander.

All of this is really cool. Unusual mixtures of genes and cultures and accents and perspectives. I want to interrogate such people about all of that.

Maybe someday we’ll be able to do that without people getting all nervous.

I really hope so.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

On Integrating to a New Culture

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On August 10, Martha Bishara was on a lot across the street from her house in Chatsworth, Georgia, collecting dandelions to make salad. She was carrying a knife to get the dandelions. The owner of the lot called the police.

When the police arrived, they ordered her to drop the knife. She didn’t, and started walking away. They ordered her to stop. She didn’t.

So they hit her with a Taser. Failure to respond to police commands, while openly carrying a weapon.

Seems simple enough.

But, as most of you know, it isn’t.

Mrs. Bishara is a (legal) immigrant from Syria, who speaks very little English and so did not understand the officer’s commands.

She’s 87 years old and 5 feet tall, and she has trouble walking.

And they Tased her.

The story has gotten a lot of circulation, generating pretty much universal condemnation. And FWIW, I’m repulsed by what happened as well.

But I think there is a teaching moment here.

I’m not interested in ascribing blame. That’s not my right or responsibility, and people far more qualified than I will address that. Not having been there, and not having police training, I’m ignorant of a lot of what’s necessary to deliver a binding judgment. I have friends who are police officers, including one who used to be a police chief in Georgia, and I have to reserve the possibility that something I don’t know could change my entire perspective on the situation.

Though that’s hard to imagine.

So, no final judgments.

And thus my thoughts turn to how something like this might have been prevented.

There are lots of possibilities. Better training? More, um, common sense? Something else?

One occurs to me.

I’m thinking out loud, in public, and that’s really dangerous. I know that what I’m about to say is going to be controversial, especially to those who are inclined to knee-jerk about The Cause of the Day. I would ask only that you hear me out and actually consider the logic of the idea I’m tentatively suggesting.

Mrs. Bishara has been in the States for more than 20 years. She speaks hardly any English.

Maybe there are good reasons for that. Maybe she has a learning disability. Maybe she’s tried repeatedly and just can’t do it. When she arrived here, she was older than I am now, and I can feel my brain cells dying by the day. I am recognizing my own ignorance by not saying that it’s her own fault.

But her case illustrates one danger of not learning the local language, which is just one part of cultural integration.

Cultural integration, what most people mistakenly call “assimilation,” has gotten a bad rap lately. It’s been equated with imperialism, with cultural elitism. And sometimes, certainly, those things have been involved.

But if you move to another country, it’s just plain good sense to make some adjustments—most critically, to learn the language as well as you can.

I take American students to Africa pretty much every year. Each year that we go to Tanzania, we spend 2 or 3 days teaching the newbs enough Swahili to be able to participate in the daily greetings—a very significant thing in Tanzanian culture—and to buy something in the market. (Starvation, and all that.) Without being able to do those things, they’re not going to be able to show respect to the nationals, to greet them in the ways that the nationals expect; and further, they’re vulnerable out in the city in ways they don’t need to be.

If they were going to stay for more than just 3 to 5 weeks, they would need to learn more.

This last trip, we were on our way to the airport when we were pulled over by a policeman for a random inspection. Our missionary host was driving; I was riding shotgun (without one, fortunately). The officer seemed quite agitated, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Afterwards my host informed me that I had been cited for not wearing a seat belt, and fined 35,000 shillings. (Freak out thou not; that’s about $15.) What if my host hadn’t been there? I could legally have driven myself to the airport; what if I had?

Better learn the language.

I’m not suggesting that one’s personal cultural identity should be sacrificed. I spent about a decade living in Boston, where the North End is famously Italian and the South End is Irish. Both cultures are working-class Catholic, but they have significant differences as well—differences that sometimes have ended in blows. These groups have retained strong ties to the Old World and to their cultural heritage.

Good for them.

But if a cop stops any of them on the street, they’ll know what he’s saying.

Not being able to do that can get you hurt. Or dead.

Respect the culture you’re entering enough to learn to function safely and effectively in it.

In this case, loving your neighbor ends up benefiting you. A lot.

Photo by Jeff Finley on Unsplash