Culture – Page 16

Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 5

March 29, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

We’ve found 3 places in the OT where the word firstborn clearly does not mean “the first one to be born.” So what does it mean in those cases? Let’s work on one of those occurrences and see what we can learn.

Psalm 89.27 reads, “And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” Before we can determine what this means, we need to know who it’s talking about. And that means identifying those pronouns—or rather, the antecedents of those pronouns. Who is “I”? And who is “him”? (And yes, that’s grammatically correct, even though it sounds awful.)

Let’s start with the “I.” Who is speaking in the passage? Well, the previous verse says, “He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’ ” OK, the speaker is God; the Psalmist, Ethan the Ezrahite, is quoting God at some length beginning in verse 19.

And who is God going to make his firstborn? We see the answer toward the beginning of the quotation, in verse 20. He’s talking about David.

So. God will make David his firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

Now, we know that firstborn here can’t mean “the first one to be born,” for two simple reasons:

David wasn’t the firstborn. In fact, he was the youngest of eight brothers (1Sam 16.10).
The verb’s all wrong. You can’t “make” someone the first one born, after he’s born. Either he’s already the first one born, or he’s not.

Well, then, what does the word mean? The last part of the verse tells us: “the highest of the kings of the earth.”

Not “the oldest,” mind you, but “the highest.” Here God is using the word firstborn to refer to someone who is over others—who is more important than those around him, who is pre-eminent.

And come to think of it, we know of situations like that in the Bible. Jacob buys the birthright from his (slightly) older brother, Esau (Gen 25.29-34); decades later the same Jacob intentionally gives his grandson Ephraim the blessing of the firstborn over his older brother Manasseh (Gen 48.13-19), to the displeasure of their father, Joseph. The younger became more important than the older.

So how did a mathematical, biological word like firstborn come to have this very non-literal nuance?

The answer is obvious. The firstborn son in a family in the ancient world had certain rights and responsibilities. In the Mosaic Law, the firstborn son received a double portion of the inheritance—so if there were 3 sons, the oldest got 2/4, and each of the other two got 1/4 (Dt 21.15-17). The firstborn would rule the family in the father’s absence; he would be “lord” over his brothers (Gen 27.29).

Since the most important characteristic of the firstborn was his pre-eminence, it was natural to make the word mean that. So the word firstborn came to mean “the pre-eminent one,” “the boss,” “the highest one.”

And that seems to be what the word means in those other two occurrences we found at the end of the previous post.

When God tells Pharaoh that Israel is his firstborn son (Ex 4.22), he is saying that he prefers Israel above all others—including Egypt—and that ol’ Pharaoh had better keep his bloomin’ hands to himself—and Pharaoh learns that lesson in spades through the plagues (Ex 7.14ff) and the massacre at the Red Sea (Ex 14.26-29).
Similarly, when Jeremiah quotes God as saying that Ephraim is his firstborn (Jer 31.9), he means that he prefers Israel (implied as included in the one tribe Ephraim) over their Babylonian captors, and he will certainly restore them to their land after the captivity.

So the word firstborn in Colossians 1.15 could have at least two possible meanings.

It could be used literally: Jesus came into existence by God’s creative act before anything else was created. This is the Jehovah’s Witness position, and it seems heavily favored by the word’s usage statistics.
Or it could be used metaphorically, as it is only rarely elsewhere: Jesus is pre-eminent over all (merely) created things.

Now right here is where most Christians make their big mistake. We’ll talk about that next time.

Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 4

March 26, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

You and two hypothetical Jehovah’s Witnesses are having a discussion, and they’ve pointed you to Colossians 1.15, where Christ is said to be the “firstborn of all creation.” We’ve noted that the operative word here is the term firstborn, and we’ve set out to discover what it means.

Defining the key terms

Since words have multiple meanings, we need to gather a list of what this key term could possibly mean. We’ve noted that according to its etymology, it simply means that the person is the first one to be born, or to come into existence. That means that our Jehovah’s Witness friends are winning.

But we’ve also noted that etymology is notoriously unreliable as an indicator of meaning. We need to look further.

Step 3: Possible meanings–context

The best indicator of a word’s meaning is how it’s actually used. If Michael Jackson used the word bad to mean “good,” then we need to know that when one of his fans uses the word bad.

Similarly, we need to survey how the word firstborn is used. The most reliable indicator is typically how it’s used in “near context”—the same chapter, the same epistle, the same author. The word does appear just a few verses below this occurrence, in verse 18; we’ll come back to that later. For now, we notice that it appears 3 times in Paul, twice in Hebrews, and twice in the Gospels. If you’re being extra diligent and using Strong’s numbers to check the underlying Greek word, you find 2 more uses, translated “first begotten” in the KJV, both in Hebrews.

So 9 uses in the New Testament. That’s a problem in that 9 uses are nowhere enough to constitute a meaningful dataset; statisticians will tell you that you need 50 whatevers before you can start drawing statistical conclusions. Furthermore, the problem gets worse; of these 9 occurrences, 8 of them are simply calling Jesus the firstborn, which is the very thing we’re trying to figure out. We need verses that use the term to refer to other things, so we can see what the term actually means. Our one instance in the NT, Hebrews 11.28, is a reference to Passover, when the death angel destroyed the firstborn of Egypt, and that’s talking about people and animals that were literally the first ones to come into existence.

Too little evidence, and what little we have says that the Jehovah’s Witness is still winning.

Drat. Again.

But we do have another resource. The Old Testament, the Scripture of the same cultural group, was translated into Greek about 200 years before Christ, which is close enough in time to be useful as evidence. We can take a look at that Greek OT, the Septuagint, to see how much it uses the term.

Firstborn occurs in the KJV OT 110 times. Now there’s a dataset. (If you get more technical and count the number of times the Greek word prototokos occurs in the Septuagint, you’ll get 124. That number’s different for several reasons, which won’t make any significant difference in our work here.)

Of those 110 occurrences, about 97% are literal—that is, we’re talking about a human or animal that is literally the first one born. So 97% of the time, this word speaks of coming into existence.

Who’s winning? The Jehovah’s Witness. Still. And by a mile.

But 97% is not 100%. There are a few instances where the word is used of someone or something that is not the first one born:

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son (Ex 4.22).
And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth (Ps 89.27).
With weeping they shall come, and with pleas for mercy I will lead them back, I will make them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble, for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn (Jer 31.9).

Next time we’ll take a closer look at one of those passages, and we’ll learn of a second possible meaning for our word.

And, more importantly, we’ll also learn how not to completely abuse the Scripture in the process.

Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 3

March 22, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2

Defining the key terms

So you’re deep in conversation with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and you’re discussing the deity of Christ, and the spokesman clobbers you with Colossians 1.15: Christ is “the firstborn of all creation.” He’s the first created being.

Now what?

Well, you treat this passage like any other. You follow the exegetical process to determine what it means. Since this is a short passage and a simple statement, the process will be a little simpler than if you’re working in, say, Ezekiel 40-48, so this shouldn’t take long.

Step 1: Identifying the key words

You begin by looking at the words. (Were you expecting something more, well, profound?) What are the key words in the passage? You’re going to start with the subject and the main verb, then other nouns and verbs, then adjectives and adverbs. If you were dealing with a longer passage, you’d look closely at conjunctions as well, to see how the statements fit together.

The main verb of the verse is simply a form of “to be,” which in this case is fairly simple. There are nouns—image, God, creature—which here have fairly plain meaning (image excepted, perhaps) and in any case are not the focus of the theological disagreement. Both you and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to agree that the key word, the central character in the disagreement, is the adjective firstborn. What does it mean that Jesus is “firstborn”? Everything hangs on the answer to that question.

Step 2: Possible meanings–etymology

Now that you’ve identified the key word(s), you need to find out what they mean. This process will involve multiple steps.

You begin with a critical observation: words mean more than one thing. If you look up any word (in any language, come to think of it) in the dictionary, it’s pretty much always going to have more than one definition. There are exceptions, mostly very technical terms—deoxyribonucleic, for example—but every biblical word I’ve ever studied has multiple definitions (or, as the scholars like to say, “nuances”).

It might seem like the logical place to start is with the question, “Well, where did the word come from?” Or, to put it more technically, what is the word’s etymology? The word firstborn looks pretty obvious, and it is: it comes from two words meaning, um, “first” and “born.” So, the first one to be born, or to come into being. Jesus is the first one to come into being.

Who’s winning so far? The Jehovah’s Witness.

You can double-check in a formal source, like the Oxford English Dictionary (at the library), or Merriam Webster’s, or even dictionary.com. They’ll all say the same thing. First. Born.

Hmm. Well, how about the Greek? I don’t recommend that people who don’t know Greek set out to “check the Greek,” for reasons both practical and professional, but I’ll save you the trouble. The Greek word is prototokos. Proto, “first.” Tokos, “born.”

Drat.

He’s still winning.

I’ll tell you a little secret, though.

Etymology is a lousy way to find out what a word means. There’s even an exegetical error called the “etymological fallacy.” The reason for that is really simple: we’re in the image of God, and God’s creative, and consequently so are we. One of the ways we show that is by coming up with creative uses for our existing words. One reason you can’t understand half the things your teenagers say is that they’re using existing words with meanings that only they and their friends know. Back in the 80s Michael Jackson decided that the word bad actually meant “good,” and we’ve been messed up ever since.

If I were to say, “When the sun set, I polished my chess set while my wife set her hair,” you wouldn’t have any problem understanding the sentence, although it would seem like an odd juxtaposition of observations. The word set occurs in that sentence with 3 completely different and unrelated meanings (to go down; a collection of objects; and to harden in place), but if you’re a native speaker of English, it didn’t even slow you down. How did you sort out the meanings?

Context. The accompanying words sun, chess, and hair told you which meaning, or nuance, I intended in each instance.

So to find out what our word firstborn means, we’re going to have to do some work with context.

Next time.

Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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Firstborn!: You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 2

March 19, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1

The battleground

So you’re standing on the porch, or maybe sitting in your living room, and the conversation begins. You have a couple of choices. You can just let them talk, and ask clarifying questions along the way, or you can drive the conversation yourself. Either way, eventually you’re going to get to the most serious difference between JW theology and biblical Christianity: the deity of Christ.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, as modern ideological descendants of Arius and his followers, believe that Jesus is a created being, the first of God’s creatures, and then the creator of everything else. They happily show you where your Bible teaches that:

Who [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Col 1.15).

The designated spokesman of the pair will show you the passage in your Bible and then say, trying not to sound triumphal, “You see, this verse clearly says that Jesus was the first created being.”

What are you going to say to that? Many Christians find the statement a little troubling and seek to counter it with a bunch of other verses that, they say, teach the deity of Christ. You know, verses like John 1.1 (boy, is there going to be an argument about that one; few things are more comically futile than two people who don’t know Greek arguing about what the Greek says), and John 8.58, and Titus 2.13, and Isaiah 9.6, and …

But there’s a problem or three with that approach. First, you’re trying to win an argument by having the more verses. And in doing that you’re implying that the Bible teaches both sides, and the side with the more verses wins. And that’s an implicit denial of the unity and inerrancy of Scripture. Second, you’ve failed to respond meaningfully to his argument, thereby giving him a solidly planted tent peg that he doesn’t deserve. And most important, you haven’t gained from the Word what this verse actually teaches. If all the Scripture is profitable (2Ti 3.16), then you ought to mine the gold from this passage.

So what do you say about this passage? Here you have a wonderful opportunity to teach beyond the argument. You have a chance to teach these folks some exegesis, through which, if they heed it, they’ll be finding problems with their own theology all by themselves for the rest of their time as Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But it’s going to take some time. So, I suppose, those of you who are sitting on comfortable couches and drinking iced tea will have a bit of an advantage.

Exegesis is simply the process of getting the author’s intended meaning from a piece of writing. You do exegesis all the time, even if you’ve never heard the word before. In fact, you’re doing it right now—you’re reading my words and getting the meaning from them.

Most of our daily exegesis is pretty simple: Stop. Authorized personnel only. Exit left. Wait here to be seated. Waffles $8.95. Electronics Department. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But lots of writing requires more care in understanding correctly. Good poetry, for example, typically requires some scratching of the head, stroking of the beard, and furrowing of the brow. Narrative is much easier. In biblical studies, epistolary literature, of which Colossians is one example, requires considerable thought, especially when it’s developing an argument over multiple paragraphs and even chapters.

That means there’s a process for exegeting challenging writing. This process has multiple steps, each of which you need to do in its order and with careful thought. This passage is a great opportunity to learn the process, because it’s brief, but it also requires all the steps of the process if you’re going to understand what it’s saying. Further—and this is really cool—if you follow the process carefully, the meaning is absolutely clear, and it’s absolutely impossible for the passage to say what the Jehovah’s Witness claims it says. But all along the way, until the very end, your JW friend is going to think that he’s headed for a win; he’s going to be the proverbial hare to your tortoise.

All of that makes the exercise deeply enjoyable.

So next time, we’ll head jauntily off toward Understanding.

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

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Firstborn! You and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part 1

March 15, 2018 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

To engage or not to engage

It’s not a question of “if.”

It’s only a question of “when.”

You’re going to open your front door, and two Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to be standing there. And they’re going to want to talk.

There was a time in this country when door-to-door salesmen were common and generally welcome, as another supply vector—for Fuller brushes or Hoover vacuum cleaners or Schwan’s ice cream. But those days are gone; today Americans are unanimously thinking How can I get this bozo off my porch and get on with my life? That’s not true in many other countries, but it’s true here.

So I know what you’re going to be thinking about those JWs.

Great. Just great. This is not a good time. Come to think of it, it’ll never be a good time. I have better things to do.

But. Do you? Really? Unless you’ve just called 911, and somebody’s exsanguinating on your kitchen floor, I’m not so sure you really do have better things to do.

There is a heaven, and there is a hell. And everyone’s going one place or the other. And here are two people, in the image of God, who have gone to the trouble of coming right to your door, and who want to talk about Jesus.

Now, exactly what better things do you have to do?

First question: do you invite them in? or do you talk on the porch?

Most Christians know about 2 John 7-11—I suspect mostly because it’s a great way to get yourself out of talking to them and back to those “better” things you have to do:

⁷For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. ⁸Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. ⁹Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. ¹⁰If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, ¹¹for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

So someone who “does not abide in the teaching of Christ,” who, as in this case, denies the deity of Christ, is a false teacher, and we’re not supposed to let him into the house.

Several years ago, I was helping a pastor friend plant a church in a Boston suburb. One afternoon we were planning the next Sunday’s service when the doorbell rang, and there were two JWs. My pastor’s words to them were curt:

“I know who you are; you’re Jehovah’s Witness; you’re heretics, Arians, and your heresy was condemned by the church in the fourth century. The Bible says I can’t invite you into my house, so I have nothing to say to you. If Dan wants to talk to you out here on the porch, he’s welcome to do so, but as far as I’m concerned, this conversation is over.”

And he closed the door in their faces. (I was young and a seminary student and spoilin’ for a fight, so I engaged them for quite a bit there on the porch—but that’s a story for another time.)

My pastor friend interpreted the 2 John passage very literally—on the porch, OK, but not in the house.

Other students of the Bible have read the passage differently. They suggest that in the first century, to “receive [someone] into your house” meant to give him a place to stay, and that meant that you were effectively endorsing him in your community. They note that when Jason, a man from Thessalonica, offered Paul and his team a place to stay, the locals took that as support and endorsement and even threatened Jason with civil forfeiture (Acts 17.1-9). Long before that, Lot took strangers (actually angels) into his house and felt obligated to protect them from the townsmen to the point that he offered the mob his own daughters for sexual assault (Gen 19.1-11). Hospitality in the ancient Near East was a very serious business indeed.

So, these interpreters suggest, the issue isn’t whether the conversation takes place inside or outside the house; the issue is whether you act toward them in a way that implies endorsement or recognition as anything other than false teachers. So, they would say, invite them in; show them to a seat; offer them some (sweetened!) ice tea. And then have a gracious but frank conversation with them about the error of their ways.

Whichever interpretation you take, I think you ought to have the conversation. The image of God is very serious business as well.

Next time: then what?

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

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Cry, the Beloved Country

March 8, 2018 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

I visited South Africa for the first time in the year 2000. I tell my friends, and my students, that you cannot visit Africa without leaving a piece of your heart there. I love many countries and people in Africa, but South Africa is as close to my heart as any. It has a stark beauty in its land, in its people, in its many languages, even in its accents.

My favorite place in the world, oddly enough, is not in my homeland; it is in South Africa—Dias Beach, at the Cape of Good Hope. It’s like no other beach—or place—in the world.

And so it’s hard to put into words how deeply my heart was broken by the news that the South African Parliament, which meets in Cape Town, has voted to expropriate farms owned by whites without any payment, to establish justice for apartheid.

It’s not certain yet; the proposed constitutional amendment needs to be approved by the Constitutional Review Committee, which will render a decision by August, and then be approved by 2/3 of Parliament. I’m not well enough informed on South African politics to guess on the odds of that happening. But I do enough theology to comment on the underlying causes.

For decades the South African government viewed black Africans as inferior and instituted a system of segregation and discrimination against blacks that it called apartheid, Afrikaans for “apartness.” It was similar in many ways to conditions in the Jim Crow South, though there were some differences in the particulars.

One law was that blacks were not allowed to own land. The predictable result was that virtually all private land was owned by whites. Under increasing world pressure, the white government abolished apartheid in the early 1990s, and former prisoner Nelson Mandela rode a wave of popular support to the presidency in 1994.

It was a precarious time. There were cries for retribution in the name of justice, and whites, whether landowners or not, were afraid. To pretty much everyone’s relief, Mandela rose to the occasion, declaring that there would be justice for all, but not revenge. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to hear testimonies of injustice and abuse under apartheid. The truth was both told and heard, and the explosive situation was handled deftly. Every white South African I’ve spoken to in the years since has told me that Mandela was a good man. They mourned his death alongside his black countrymen, who called him by the tribal honorific “Madiba.”

Mandela was a flawed man, like any other. He did foolish and sinful things in his younger days. But I have respected his conscious decision to rise above revenge to act for the good of his country. We all could benefit from more such men.

So South Africa prospered, unlike its near neighbor Zimbabwe, which raced headlong into revenge mode. Under the dictator Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe confiscated white-owned farms in the name of retribution and justice. The country swiftly descended into economic chaos, and societal chaos quickly followed. When I visited Zimbabwe in 2010 you could buy a 1 billion dollar note as a souvenir for a couple of US dollars; the Zimbabwean retailers wouldn’t even take Zimbabwean money, but our US dollars were welcome.

I don’t know what will happen in South Africa. The new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, claims the confiscations will be done in a way not to cause economic harm. I don’t see any way he can keep that promise. I’m afraid that South Africa is about to learn that killing the goose doesn’t yield any more golden eggs. And a great country will face a long period of economic and social hardship.

This is what sin does.

God created men and women—all of them—in his image. World history is an unbroken story of peoples in power abusing those out of power, denying their imageship. And that sin, like all sin, has consequences, and long-lasting ones at that—consequences that outlast generations. Apartheid set the stage for suspicion, hatred, revenge; and this generation and future generations will reap a bitter harvest.

My prayer is for grace, mercy, and peace for all the dear people of South Africa. May the gracious hearts of my many South African friends—black, white, and coloured, in places like Guguletu, Kuilsrivier, and Beverly Park—prevail to bring peace and mutual respect to their beautiful land.

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On National Conversations

February 19, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Another school shooting. Another subsequent sequence, one that, horrifically, we’ve gotten used to. Shock. Grief. Exposes of the shooter. Identification of causes, conveniently aligned with our political positions. Charges that the other side—and only the other side—is “politicizing” a tragedy. Snarky posts. Angry comment threads. And calls for a “national conversation”—in this case, on guns.

Back in 2009, when the national focus was on police shooting of unarmed black civilians, Attorney General Eric Holder was widely mocked by the political opposition for calling for a “national conversation” on race. Some conservatives charged that when liberals call for a “national conversation,” what they mean is “Shut up and do what I say.”

Of course that’s not fair. People are all different, even those in the same group; it’s conservatives who resist “class-conscious” thinking as Marxist. You and I can’t really say—accurately—that “all liberals” or “all conservatives” mean this thing when they say that thing.

But I’d like to try to go beyond the political posturing and the mud-slinging and the parading of moral superiority of “my side”—and I do have a side, which I’ll not state, for reasons that I hope will soon become clear—to encouraging us to think more deeply about our assumptions on all of this.

I’ve noted before that political victory is fleeting and that a great many things are more important because they last forever. That fact should certainly drive any “conversation.”

But I wonder if we might probe a little deeper. What’s the point of a conversation? To win the argument and rest in our smug confidence? To gain political ground and the consequent political power, so we can make everyone else—especially those morons who disagree with us—do what we want? Or to solve the problem?

What kind of conversation will lead to a solution?

Here’s where I get controversial.

A conversation that leads to a solution will not involve everyone, because not everyone has something of substance to contribute.

We all know what it’s like when everyone talks at once. And even when people take turns, we all know from experience that not everybody has something useful to say. (I know you’ve been in a meeting like that, as I have. Far too many times.)

A conversation that leads to a solution will involve people who (1) know what they’re talking about and (2) are interested more in arriving at a solution than in winning the argument.

Jim Geraghty recently expressed frustration with people who advocate for gun control but in the process demonstrate that they have no basic knowledge of how guns work. They’re ready to pontificate for everybody, but they think automatic weapons are legal—or that an automatic weapon was used in this shooting or that one (chances are, it wasn’t). They call a magazine a “clip.” They use the term “assault rifle” as if it actually means something.

Now, I grant that knowing the difference between a clip and a magazine, or a round and a bullet, is probably not going to affect any policy outcome. And I also grant that liberals aren’t the only ones who demonstrate on occasion that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

But what about the principle? Won’t we be more effective with national policy if we convene people with expertise and experience, get them away from the noise, and then listen to what they say? If we base our positions on hard data rather than political expediency?

How effective are various kinds of gun laws?
What are the primary avenues of illegal gun traffic?
What psychological conditions are most likely to result in violence?
- Is shooting violence different in causation from other violence?
- How can those psychological conditions most effectively be identified?
- Is there a statistically significant correspondence between the use of antidepressants and violence? Is there a control group available for comparison?
Why do so many shootings happen in schools? Are there data on that, or is everybody just assuming his thesis?
What are the best practices in building security?

Come on; the military has been doing building security for centuries; the knowledge is out there. Why not use it?

I see the danger in what I’m saying. Elitism. Trust the smart people—you know, the ones from the Ivy League. The smartest ones in the room.

That’s a danger, all right, for many reasons, most obviously that the elites haven’t done all that great a job of running the country since, oh, 1800 or so. (Happy 286^th birthday, Mr. President!)

But I’m not talking about the Ivy League. I’m talking about people with demonstrated expertise and success in the field in question. In this particular issue, many of those people may never even have gone to college. Let them talk. And listen to them.

I have a friend, whom I like very much, who has one really irritating characteristic. When we’re sitting together in an audience, he’ll keep whispering comments in my ear when I’m trying to listen to the speaker. And I have to choose between being polite to my friend or getting the information I’m there to get.

So. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, keep your opinions to yourself, so we can hear the people we came to hear.

Assuming, that is, that you want to solve the problem.

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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

On Threats from a Hostile Culture

January 25, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Last week Carl Trueman published a thoughtful piece, entitled “Preparing for Winter,” 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

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