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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On Faith and Culture, Part 5: Choosing Wisely 

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Flexible Evangelism | Part 3: Drawing the Line 1 | Part 4: Drawing the Line 2  

When we’re considering how to adapt to a different culture in our gospel outreach, it’s helpful to consider how the early church approached the same question. In an earlier post we noted that the church did indeed wrestle with cultural differences, but for many of those conflicts we don’t have much information about how they resolved them. 

An exception is the question of meat offered to idols, discussed in 1Corinthians 8-10 particularly, and perhaps, to a lesser extent, in Romans 14. When asked the simple question, “Is it permitted to eat such meat?” (1Co 8.1), Paul gives a fairly complex answer—and in the process he reminds us of the basis on which we make these decisions. I‘ve written on this passage elsewhere, but it’s worth summarizing some of the salient points here. 

First, Paul begins by answering a question that they didn’t ask. He says that the goal is not knowledge, but love (1Co 8.1-2). I don’t think I’m reading too much into his observation when I say that in our approach to different cultures, we should not assume that we have all the answers; rather, we should act in the best interests of those we’re approaching. 

Then Paul turns to how to apply that general principle to this specific question. Even if your view is demonstrably correct (1Co 8.4-6), the best interests of the other person are served when you consider his cultural background and adapt to it (1Co 8.7). 

Now, I hasten to add that this adaptation cannot violate the principles of truth and of loyalty to God and his Word. If the matter does not violate such things, then the believer is free to adapt, even to give up his own rights—or culturally based sensibilities—for the sake of the other’s eventual spiritual well-being (1Co 9). But he may not adapt to the new culture in ways that constitute false worship (1Co 10.1-22). And, perhaps surprisingly, he ought to prefer acting rudely in a given cultural situation than undercutting the spiritual health of fellow believers (1Co 10.23-30). 

The overarching principle, he says, is the glory of God (1Co 10.31). 

Now for some application of these principles. Suppose you’re working in a culture with a dominant religious tradition that is false. You may not know whether a given cultural element—say, a common funeral tradition or holiday custom—is meaningfully tied to that false religion. You’re going to have to ask for wisdom from believers in that culture and to respect their judgment; you’re going to have to place more value on their opinions than on your own. 

Some years ago, while I was teaching in Mexico, my host took me to lunch at a fancier-than-usual taco restaurant. As we entered, the greeter asked if we would like to sit in the mariachi section or non-mariachi. My host, an American, immediately said, “Non-mariachi, please.” As we sat down, I said, “I’d have preferred to sit in the mariachi section.” He replied, “For the believers here, mariachi has cultural connotations that are unhealthy, and they won’t associate with it.” 

I picked up a little wisdom that day. Respect the opinions of those who know about the culture; tourists are notoriously unwise in their interactions, because they’re simply ignorant, even when well-meaning. 

In general, it’s unwise to embrace all of a culture’s elements without doing some research. I would agree, as would pretty much everybody else, that Hudson Taylor was justified in wearing Chinese clothing and growing his hair into the queue typical of the culture. But that decision was considered and informed by his understanding of the culture. Praying to one’s ancestors, however, is quite another matter.  

After Taylor, Gladys Aylward argued that the cultural practice of foot binding had to stop. And with influence from her and other Christian missionaries, the practice came to an end. As far as I’m aware, the practice did not involve devotion to some false religion, but it certainly violated the Christian principle of loving one’s neighbor. 

Sometimes you embrace the culture. But you do not endorse its every practice; the gospel is not enhanced by mere grooviness. And the distinction must be based on careful thought and objective truth. 

Next time: The Big Idea. 

Photo by Joseph Grazone on Unsplash

On Faith and Culture, Part 4: Drawing the Line 2 

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Flexible Evangelism | Part 3: Drawing the Line 1 

To continue our survey of biblical limits on cultural adaptation— 

The Lust of the Eyes

This is wanting what you see. We might call it materialism, in the sense of acquisitiveness: the belief that “if I can only have that, I’ll be satisfied.” 

Much of Christendom has been overrun by Prosperity Theology, the idea that God wants you to be rich. In the old days it was Kathryn Kuhlman and Oral Roberts; these days it’s Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, and a raft of others. The movement has spread like wildfire through Africa, and I wonder why, after all this time, it hasn’t occurred to the attendees at these massive rallies that they’re not getting any richer. 

No, the lust of the eyes is not a legitimate vehicle for evangelism, if for no other reason that the “converts” aren’t there for the gospel at all. 

The Pride of Life 

There’s some discussion on what exactly this phenomenon is. Some interpreters focus on the word pride and assume that it has to do with personal recognition, popularity, or fame. Others focus on the word life and take it to refer to experiences or adrenaline rushes. They point to Satan’s third temptation of Jesus, to jump from the high point of the Temple, as an example. 

I’d suggest that in either case a core component is focusing on this life rather than the next—which is also the core component of the other two classes of sin. 

__________ 

In our own culture we see all three of these categories in evidence. As just one obvious example, the LGBTQIA+ movement is an extreme manifestation of lust of the flesh. (For what it’s worth, I expect the “L” and the “T” to part ways at some point, if the Lord tarries, but that won’t be a case of “the good guys” vs “the bad guys.”) 

Rampant consumerism, as illustrated by the three or four months of “Christmas shopping” and the expectation of same-day delivery of everything by exhaustive web retailers with massive warehouses scattered across the country would seem to indicate a certain presence of lust of the eyes. 

And the self-promotion typical in social media, with its obsession with likes and shares, certainly smacks of the pride of life. 

So back to our driving question: what kinds of cultural adaptation are appropriate for the evangelist, and what kinds are not? 

Well, audience adaptation of the sort that Paul demonstrated in his preaching is certainly appropriate, in the interest of making the gospel comprehensible by varying cultures. Similarly, engaging in work that demonstrates love for neighbor—such as mission hospitals, famine and other disaster relief, orphanages and schools, drilling wells—are effectively commanded by Jesus in Mark 12.31, and there’s nothing dishonest about doing those things in order to open the door for evangelism. 

But catering to lust—the uncontrolled or extreme desire for earthly things—or to self-obsession in order to present the gospel is a very different thing. We are called to enter a foreign culture, to live out grace, and mercy, and peace in ways that represent our King well, and make disciples of all nations. We must do that with honesty and integrity. 

Next time, I’d like to look at an example or two of cultural practices over which believers have had to make decisions—do I adopt the practice, or not? And why or why not? 

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On Faith and Culture, Part 3: Drawing the Line 1 

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Flexible Evangelism 

In what ways can we accommodate a culture in evangelistic efforts, and in what ways can we not? How do we know? Where do we draw the line? 

This is not just a matter of personal taste: “I don’t like that” or “That makes me uncomfortable” or “That offends me.” And it’s not just a matter of whether a cultural practice seems strange to us. It’s the very nature of cross-cultural work that practices will seem strange until you know why those practices exist—and perhaps after you know as well. 

As always, we Christians take our directions from the Scripture, because it is the Word of God, inerrant and authoritative. Does the Bible have anything to say about how we interact with our culture? 

You bet it does. While it begins with a clear affirmation that all humans are created in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27), it also affirms that all humans have sinned (Ro 3.23). As a result, when sinners form cultures, those cultures reflect the brokenness that sin invariably brings. 

Some cultures may seem more “broken” to us than others, but I suspect that much of that sense springs from our bias toward our own culture. Some cultures require very little clothing; some are in constant warfare with neighboring tribes; some are tyrannical and abusive. But our culture is broken too, given over to the pursuit of wealth and power, worshiping at the false altar of entertainment, and in constant warfare with neighboring political tribes. 

The Bible doesn’t use the word “culture” except in the more paraphrastic versions such as The Message and the Passion Translation. (The King James uses it in the Apocrypha, in 2 Esdras 8.6, but in a different sense.) But there is a word in the Bible that closely parallels the concept. The Bible speaks often of “the world,” and some of those uses mean something pretty close to “culture.” But the biblical sense is uniformly evil, whereas today “culture” includes many things that are not evil at all. But the Scripture does identify some things to avoid in “the world” (1J 2.15-17): 

  • The lust of the flesh 
  • The lust of the eyes 
  • The pride of life 

When a culture embodies or embraces these things, we evangelists cannot adopt them as a vehicle for spreading the gospel. 

The Lust of the Flesh 

When we hear this expression, we tend to think of sexual lust—probably because our own culture is pervasively pornographic. And yes, the incitation of sexual desire outside of marriage is evil, not something we can endorse or accommodate. 

But “the flesh” includes more than just sexual matters. “Lust of the flesh” includes anything that caters to sinful physical desires. 

  • Gluttony is such a lust—and I’ve been in other cultures where their single observation about us Americans is that we all eat too much. 
  • Laziness—the desire for an unjustified amount of rest—is also catering to an inappropriate physical desire. I suppose that would include not just lying in bed all day, but overdosing on entertainment or scrolling on social media for hours. 

A clue, I think, is that if you can’t stop it, then it’s out of control. 

Next time, we’ll finish the list and attempt to draw out some governing principles. 

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On Faith and Culture, Part 2: Flexible Evangelism 

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Part 1: Introduction 

I ended the previous post with the observation that the world and everything in it is broken by sin. Because of that brokenness, Jesus left his disciples a command to go into all the world and preach the gospel (Mt 28.19-20). Even in Paul’s day, and even with the relative cultural unity brought by the Greeks and then the Romans across the Mediterranean Basin, there were cultural issues to address: 

  • Just within Judaism there was division between those who spoke Hebrew/Aramaic and kept closely to Hebrew customs, and those (“Hellenists”) who admired the Greek culture and tried to adopt as much of it as they could (e.g. Ac 6.1). 
  • The division between Jews and “Gentile dogs” was as deep and wide as it could be (e.g. Ac 10.28; 11.2-3). 
  • As Paul traveled the Roman Empire, he faced occasions where he didn’t understand the local religious practices, or even the language (Ac 14.8-18). 
  • Even within the church there were disputes about whether one should keep kosher or celebrate the Mosaic feast days (Ro 14.2, 5), or whether one should eat meat that had been offered to an idol in a pagan ritual (1Co 8.4-13). 

These were real concerns, real disagreements, that caused real divisions. Answering these questions was hard. 

Throughout this process of early evangelism, the apostles made it clear that there were some things, both doctrinal and practical, on which Christians must agree. They evidenced this primarily in their sermons, all of which tended to focus on the same set of core doctrines, the hub around which the wheel of Christianity turned. (That link is important; take a minute to read the post, and ideally the whole series, since it’s foundational to the current discussion.) They began with the well-founded assumption that the Hebrew Scriptures—what Christians call the Old Testament—are God’s inspired Word and thus to be trusted—and obeyed—implicitly. 

But beyond that core, they demonstrated some flexibility on how they approached various groups. For example, Paul addressed a synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, with a discourse on how Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew Scripture, since these educated, observant Jews had a cultural context for that argument (Ac 13.15-41). But at the Areopagus in Athens, facing a pagan audience, Paul quoted none of the Hebrew Scriptures, focusing instead on the writings of various Greek poets and philosophers (Ac 17.18-31)—specifically, 

By the end of this sermon, however, Paul demonstrated the importance of the doctrinal core by emphasizing unapologetically the resurrection of Christ, an assertion that brought mocking from this culture (Ac 17.32). 

It’s interesting to compare the two sermons more closely: 

  • Opening Hook: national pride (Ac 13.17) vs. “unknown god” (Ac 17.22-23) 
  • Storyline: national covenant (Ac 13.18-22) vs. creation (Ac 17.24-29) 
  • Consequence: Messiah as fulfillment of promise (Ac 13.23-41) vs. certainty of coming judgment (Ac 17.30-31) 

These two commissions—to preach the undiluted and undistorted gospel, and to preach to every culture on the planet—give rise to disagreements. Believers are priests, illuminated by the Spirit, but they’re imperfect, and so they differ as to how to go about this central task. 

  • We are tasked with taking the gospel to every culture on the planet—cultures that exist because we are created in the image of God. 
  • Good stewards will represent Christ, in word and deed, in the most effective way to reach the culture. 
  • But the message must not be compromised by that accommodation to the culture. 
  • While contextualization means doing what’s necessary to make the gospel  understandable in the target culture, it is not a blank check to be as groovy as possible. 

This raises—it does not “beg,” but that’s for a different post—a question. Which ways of making the gospel message more easily accessible by a different culture are appropriate, and which are not? How do we tell the difference? Where do we draw the line? 

More on that next time. 

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On Faith and Culture, Part 1: Introduction

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Times change.

Living for a while will drill that idea into you.

The college students I teach, who have lived for only a generation, don’t have a clear sense of that. They don’t understand that our culture didn’t always include cell phones, or scanners at the airport, or the kind of deep polarization that characterizes culture and politics today.

I don’t blame them for that, because they haven’t lived long enough to see generational change.

I sprang to life as a baby boomer, in a culture full of postwar optimism and relative prosperity—though my family was cash-poor in those days. My peers and I lived with Cold War fears, including the Cuban Missile Crisis; then the assassination era (JFK, RFK, MLK) during the Civil Rights and Vietnam protest times; then the “general malaise” under Carter, before anyone associated him with Habitat for Humanity; the Reagan Era, including the end of the Cold War and the optimism that characterized the imaginings of a world without Communism; then 9/11 and the rise of radical Islamic terrorism. All of this is outside the scope of my students’ experience.

Since Y2K—oh, I didn’t mention that little cultural bleep, did I?—I’ve had the privilege of doing some international travel, in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and especially Africa—and I’ve gained a little more understanding of cultural differences as well.

Time and space. People are different, and times change.

Why is that?

I’d suggest that this diversity is a direct result of the fact that we humans have been created in the image of God. The first thing that the Scripture tells us about God is that he’s creative (Ge 1.1), and the first thing it tells us about us is that we are like him in significant respects (Ge 1.27). We should not be surprised, then, that humans, as a matter of course, come up with different ways of doing things. As they spread around the globe, and as they develop through time, they’re going to think, speak, and live in ways that differ from one another.

We see these differences in thousands of distinctions, big and small. When I was a kid, we learned our friends’ phone numbers, mostly because we dialed them so often. Today nobody knows anybody else’s number, because we never dial them at all, because they’re just stored in our phones—and why do we call punching buttons “dialing,” anyway?

That’s a change over time; how about a change across space? I’ve written before about my favorite example of cultural difference—how in China, you must never eat everything on your plate, and in the USA you must always eat everything on your plate. Why? Because in the US leaving something on your plate is taken to mean that you didn’t like it, while in China, it means that the host has been so generous that you simply can’t eat any more. Same action has different meanings in the two cultures, making one polite and the other impolite—and both views make perfectly good sense.

Often these differences divide us. The ever-present “generation gap” is an indication of cultural misunderstanding across time, and entire wars have been fought over cultural differences across space.

But the Bible indicates that such divisions are often unnecessary. God seems to want us to be different—to be an expression of our creativity, our different ways of thinking and doing. As just one illustration of that, the Spirit of God gifts his people in the church in different ways, by his own choice (1Co 12.4-11), rendering the body of Christ a diverse unity (1Co 12.12-27), so that it will thereby be more flexible in its abilities and more helpful from one member to another. Paul adds to that idea in his letter to the Romans by essentially demanding that we maintain unity despite our differences that might incline to drive us apart (Ro 14.1-9).

But there’s a wrinkle. The world is not as God made it; it’s broken by our sin, and that brokenness extends to our social and cultural practices, bringing them into conflict. That’s not surprising, given that fellowship—peace with one another—is an outcome of our individual peace with God (IJ 1.3).

I’d like to spend a few posts thinking about how those of us who follow Christ should navigate these cultural differences and the murkiness that our brokenness brings to our decision making.

Photo by Joseph Grazone on Unsplash

More Thoughts on AI 

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No, not some guy named Alan; that’s a capital i, not a lowercase L. 

A while back I wrote a couple of posts about experimenting with ChatGPT to see whether I had a reasonable shot at spotting student work that was using the tool. 

With school starting up this week, I’ve been thinking about what sort of policy to have about student use of AI. My university gives us teachers a lot of freedom as to our course policies; the official institution-wide policy is that student use of AI for assignments is prohibited “without the express permission of the professor”—which means we can give permission for anything we think is appropriate and academically justifiable. 

So I did some more playing around with ChatGPT, and also with Claude.ai. 

I began with ChatGPT, specifying, “Write a 700-word essay in the style of www.danolinger.com on the topic of sanctification.” I wanted to see whether it could write a blog post that sounded like me. (I know what you’re thinking; hold off on any judgment for a bit.) What it wrote—immediately—was pretty good. Although the title didn’t reflect my style here on the blog—you may have noticed that I like titles that start with “On”—it was generally pretty good as to content and basic style. I did notice differences in mechanics; it spelled out the names of the biblical books and used colons rather than periods to separate chapter numbers from verse numbers in references. But it did use the Oxford comma, though it used more commas than I would have in other constructions. 

Sidebar: do you know why I use periods instead of colons in Bible references? Because a colon requires the Shift key, and the period doesn’t. Efficiency. 

I thought I’d see how it handled a secular topic, so I asked, “Make the topic the migration of the monarch butterfly.” I’m no expert on the seasonal peregrinations of lepidoptera, particularly danaus plexippus, but what it churned out seemed very good to me. 

Now, I had asked it to use the style of my blog’s website, where there are, as of this writing, 691 posts, and the speed with which it had responded to both of these prompts made me wonder whether it had even glanced casually in the direction of the blog. So my next prompt was “Delineate the parallels in style between your essay and those on danolinger.com.” 

I was astounded by its reply—seven nicely formatted points identifying seven elements of my blog’s style, ranging from “conversational tone” to “use of relatable examples” to “integration of wonder and mystery.” 

Yikes. ChatGPT is the most attentive reader I’ve got. 

One more test—one that I think might cause it to stumble. “Add biblical references to the essay.” 

Now this is an essay about a non-religious, and more specifically, extrabiblical topic, and I’m asking this non-brain to make biblical applications about something it doesn’t even mention. So what does it do? 

It brings in Psalm 19.1, a key passage for the doctrine of natural revelation. Then it parallels God’s guidance of the monarch with his guidance of his people, citing Proverbs 3.5-6, and then the idea of finishing the race, from Hebrews 12.1-2. And it finishes with Ecclesiastes 3.11 and Psalm 104.24. 

Bravo, ChatGPT, bravo. I’m impressed. 

Later, at the recommendation of a friend, I popped over to Claude.ai and asked for the same thing, for the topic of the early date of the Exodus. Excellent essay. 

Then “Write a 500-word short story set during the Exodus.” 

Pretty good one. The kid’s even named Levi. 

“Write a haiku about it.” 

Waves part, path revealed  
Israelites follow God’s call  
Freedom’s light shines forth 

“Write a sonnet about it.” 

“Write a poem about it in Greek.” 

It even included the line “Οἱ δὲ ἐν φόβῳ ἔφευγον πρὸς τὴν θάλασσαν Ἐρυθράν.” Pronominal use of the article. Nice touch. 

Then I asked for a poem in Akkadian. 

And it did it. 

Transliterated—not in cuneiform—but recognizably Akkadian. (I’m not qualified to evaluate the literary quality or the accuracy of said poem.) 

Yikes. 

These tools are getting better all the time. 

But no, I’ll never use them to write a blog entry. 

So what’s my AI student policy? 

For Greek and for Bible Doctrines, prohibited. I want the students to do the thinking—all of it. 

For my Gospel of John class, I’ve decided to try an experiment. 

“Any use of AI must be specifically credited with quotation marks and a footnote. AI output should not predominate in what you turn in.” 

I have no idea whether or not this is a good idea. We’ll see how it goes, and I’ll ask the students for feedback at the end of the semester. 

No chatbots were harmed in the creation of this blog post. 

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On Biblical Mandates and Cultural Expectations, Part 3 

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Part 1 | Part 2 

Once we’ve invested the time and effort it takes to be informed about what the Scripture says, and what the law requires, and what the culture expects, we need to get down to the business of making decisions about how we respond to specific demands from those authorities. 

We tend not to do well when we make snap decisions. Many decisions about these matters—especially the most important or significant ones—are complex and require us to think through extended arguments pro or con. That takes time, effort, and discipline. 

Add to that the fact that social media is formulated in such a way that it discourages us from complex thought (I’ve written on that here), and we’re temperamentally and intellectually disinclined to spend that time and expend that effort. We have to fight against our own inclinations and those of our peers. 

By the way, this ability to think through complex problems to a proper application is called “wisdom” in the Bible, and it’s highly commended and recommended there. Start with Proverbs. 

So. What process do we follow to arrive at a wise decision when authorities appear to be in conflict? Let me suggest one that works for me. 

  • First, gather the data. Make sure you know what you’re talking about. 
  • What does the Scripture actually require? 
  • What does the law actually require? 
  • What does the culture actually expect? And how broadly pervasive is that expectation? 

Often I find that at this point there’s no actual conflict; I can figure out a way, sometimes requiring a little creativity, to satisfy all the authorities. I find that Christians are often too quick to pull the trigger on civil disobedience or offensiveness to the culture—or disobedience to the Scripture in order not to be offensive to the culture. 

  • Next, determine the importance. Do you actually have to make a choice? Proverbs—that book of wisdom—says, “He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, Is like one that taketh a dog by the ears” (Pr 26.17). Not every controversy is one you need to take sides in; and that’s especially true in a culture where various media outlets raise their ratings, and consequently their ad revenue, by serving up The Outrage of the Day, every day, and sometimes more frequently than that. 
  • Now, if you’ve decided that you need to act on the issue, it’s time to give thought to the way you act. Harsh confrontation, complete with your shaking your fist in someone’s face, need not be your first choice—and frankly, I’m not sure it’s ever a proper choice, especially given Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek (Mt 5.39) and Paul’s words in his letter to the Colossian church: 

Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man (Co 4.6). 

And a few further considerations: 

  • What is the Authority Priority? I’d say we obey the Scripture first, then the law, then the cultural expectation. 
  • What response best reflects Jesus’ thinking and behavior? Yes, that can be difficult to determine: he overturned tables in the Temple, and later he stood silent before his accusers and took their beatings. And there’s theology to consider behind both of those responses. 
  • How will your response affect others, both regenerate and unregenerate? Paul talks directly about the importance of protecting the conscience and edification of a fellow believer (1Co 8.4-13; 10.23-31), and Peter speaks of the importance of avoiding unnecessary offense in the communication of the gospel, “with meekness and fear” (1P 3.15). 
  • A sobering consideration is this: though you will never have to answer to God for your sins—Jesus’ cross work has taken care of that—you will one day give an account to him for your stewardship, your use of the time and characteristics he has given you. He can’t be fooled, and he’s not likely to be happy with casual or slipshod decision-making on matters of obedience. 

So. Navigate the tensions between authorities carefully, thoughtfully, with grace toward all, with joy for Christ’s companionship, and with the confidence that comes from knowing who wins in the end. 

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On Biblical Mandates and Cultural Expectations, Part 2  

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Part 1 

We have, then, three distinct authorities: 

  • The Scripture, which is absolute; 
  • The laws of our land, which the Scripture has obligated us to obey, unless they compel us to disobey God; and 
  • Cultural expectations, because Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor and to live out his grace, mercy, and peace as ambassadors—again, short of disobeying the Scripture. We don’t pick our nose in public. 

How do we rightly maximize obedience to all three? 

We all know this isn’t easy. 

One thing we do know is that some random blogger can’t make these decisions for us; the answers will come from our mind and conscience as informed by our personal interaction with the Scripture and with the Spirit—who, we should remember, never leads contrary to the Scripture, which he himself inspired. This means that we, as individuals, need to be serious about our study of the Word, hiding it in our hearts, and thinking regularly about how, specifically, it regulates our decision making. Your pastor, though his ministry of the Word can be part of your information collection, can’t give you a personal understanding of the Word; you have to do that for yourself. 

Similarly, we need to develop our own determination that we are going to heed the Scripture regardless of the personal consequences. We can’t go through the hard decisions of life on someone else’s commitment to Christ; we have to be serious about our commitment to him personally. 

Third, we need to know what we’re talking about. For example, on making a decision about a legal requirement, we face a problem: legal issues are often political issues, and politics is by nature filled with highly inaccurate information. Both sides in a political controversy want to maximize their following, and in most cases they’re perfectly willing to lie to do it. So they exaggerate the threat and sometimes they just make stuff up. Further, these days most journalists are advocates, not reporters, and they omit facts that don’t fit their goals and distort facts that do. That means that we need to go to original sources—yeah, we need to read the actual law to find out what it requires. 

This principle of being accurately informed extends over into the cultural issues as well. We tend to overestimate the breadth of cultural expectations, to assume too quickly that “everybody’s doing it.” As just one example, evangelicalism in the US has moved from a general opposition to the use of beverage alcohol during Prohibition to more openness since. That move was expedited by increased ease of travel and consequent increased exposure to cultures where practicing Christians had not been influenced by the American Prohibition movement and had a long history of disciplined use of alcohol. So “everybody’s doing it.” 

In my experience, though, that’s simply not true. Though I grew up in a culture where alcohol was common (my extended family was more the beer-drinking type than wine connoisseurs), I decided not to drink for a few reasons: 

  • I had a family history of alcoholism; 
  • My parents decided to quit drinking when they came to Christ in their 40s; and 
  • During a brief period of rebellion during my gap year after high school I found that I didn’t handle it well. 

As an employee of my university, I’ve signed a statement that I won’t drink, but I wouldn’t drink even if I didn’t work there. 

All this to make this point: over the years I’ve often been invited to share a drink, and I’ve always said, “No, thanks, I don’t drink.” And never—not once—has anyone given me any grief about that or taken any offense. In my experience, there is no real social expectation regarding alcohol. The culture does not in fact require that of its good citizens, and everybody’s most certainly not doing it. 

So it helps us to be informed about what’s actually going on with the legal requirements and the cultural expectations. And of course, what the Scripture actually says. 

Next time, some suggestions about how we make those decisions now that we have the facts at hand. 

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On Biblical Mandates and Cultural Expectations, Part 1

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We Christians find ourselves in an odd situation.

To paraphrase Jesus, we are in the world, but not of the world (Jn 17.15-16). He has sent us into the world (Jn 17.18) to be his ambassadors (2Co 5.20)—that is, to represent him well by living out his grace, mercy, and peace, and by spreading the message of the gospel to the ends of the earth (Mt 28.18-20).

Now, that means that we are to be different from the world and to make that difference plain—as Israel did under the Mosaic Covenant by intentionally not behaving like the cultures around them. They didn’t round the corners of their temples (Le 19.27), or wear linen mixed with wool (Le 19.19), or plow with an ox and an ass together (Dt 22.10). But at the same time we are to be “in” the world, representing God’s love, grace, mercy, and peace as well as his holiness, purity, and justice.

And God further emphasizes the idea of being “in” the world by saying that he has placed the earthly authorities in their positions and that we are to obey them, seeing them as agents of God himself (Ro 13.1-7).

So we serve God, obeying his commandments, and we obey earthly authorities, and we represent a good and kind God in the culture where he has sovereignly placed us.

We might expect, then, that occasionally these authorities will bump into one another. There are biblical mandates, and we must obey them. There also legal and cultural mandates and expectations, and we should do our best to accommodate them, to the extent that they don’t bring us into conflict with what God wants of us.

I’ve written before, and at more length, on Paul’s passages on this subject: 1 Corinthians 8-10 and Romans 14. But here I’d like to comment a little further on making decisions, sometimes hard ones, on practical matters.

There are clear biblical commandments. The big two, according to Jesus, are to love God and love your neighbor (Mt 22.37-39). We always ought to obey those.

But we know that there are some biblical commandments that we must not obey. The entire Mosaic ceremonial code—priesthood and sacrifices—has been fulfilled in and by Christ, who offered one sacrifice forever (He 10.12), and we would be wrong to follow the Levitical sacrificial code. In this case, as time has passed, the biblical expectation has been completely reversed.

Further, we know that some of the Bible’s commandments were culturally based. As just one example, Paul commands that we greet one another with a holy kiss (Ro 16.16), and I’m not seeing a whole lot of that among the brethren, at least in the US. We understand that we ought to greet one another affectionately and sincerely, and here in the US that usually involves a handshake or a hug, not a kiss. Cultural adaptation.

Some interpreters bring this principle into passages in a more controversial way. Paul’s proscription of women speaking in the assembly (1Co 14.34), for example, they suggest was unique to the Corinthian situation; the women there were causing a problem by their speaking in the church, so Paul told them to give it a rest; but he did not intend this to be a prohibition for all his churches, let alone for churches today.

Now, I’m open to that possibility in the abstract, but proper hermeneutics calls for careful consideration of the context. And I note that

  • Paul does not hint at any geographical limitation in the passage, nor does he describe any kind of misbehavior that elicited the prohibition;
  • Paul makes similar prohibitions in letters to other churches, such as the one in Ephesus (1Ti 2.12), which is on a completely different continent from Corinth;
  • And the reason he gives for the latter prohibition is not the behavior of the women in the Ephesian church, but the behavior of just one, and at the very beginning of time—the mother of us all (1Ti 2.13-14).

So I’d call that a legitimate principle—culture can indeed affect the application of a passage—but not textually indicated in this case.

We’ll continue this next time.

Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash

On Independence Day 

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Since the Fourth of July falls on a Thursday this year, and since I post on Thursdays. I’m going to interrupt the current series to say something about the holiday. 

I suppose I could say something about what it means to be an American, and about the sacrifices of the many who have bestowed this blessing on us. I could engage my inclination toward theology to discuss the concept of independence as the Bible presents it, or the significance of our national identity against the backdrop of divine providence. I could meditate on the importance of celebration, or the joys of tradition, or what happens when someone uses fireworks foolishly. Or even about why the Articles of Confederation didn’t work out so well. 

Maybe on a future Independence Day, one on a Monday or a Thursday, I’ll hit some of those ideas. But this time, I want to point out the day’s relationship to a very large theological theme. 

Political liberty is a divine gift. The American founders recognized that fact without apology, and various leaders along the path of its history have repeated the theme—leaders as theologically diverse as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. 

I’ve had the privilege of being in at least two other countries—one in Asia, one in Africa—as they were celebrating their independence days. I found it oddly satisfying to rejoice with them in their freedom, to feel something akin to patriotism toward a land that was not my own. (I suppose the fact that both countries were celebrating independence from Great Britain gave my Patriot heart a certain resonance with theirs.) I’d suggest that it’s perfectly normal for God’s people to celebrate his gifts to others (Ro 12.15). 

And speaking of gifts, the Bible spends quite a bit of time talking about a specific class of gifts that God gives to his people, which he calls charismata, “spiritual gifts.” He makes it very clear that God is lavish with these gifts, seeing to it that every individual believer has at least one, and distributing personally through his Holy Spirit (1Co 12.11-13). We are not to take credit for the abilities these gifts entail, for we did not earn them; God has given them freely. 

But on the other hand, he expects us to steward them, to use them wisely and effectively. He expects us to develop them, to make the best use of them that we can (2Ti 1.6). We will give account for that stewardship. 

In a similar way, even as we rejoice in the delights of the gift of freedom, we are not to be casual about them, for they are the gift of God. We hold a solemn responsibility to steward our freedom, to make the best use of it. I would suggest a few specific ways we can do that. 

  • By not abusing it. I am free to do all sorts of things, but that fact does not mean that I ought to do everything I am free to do. I am free to speak my mind to political adversaries, but I will give account for every idle word that I speak (Mt 12.36), particularly words that imply my adversaries are not, like me, created in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27) and of infinite value. I am free to spend my hard-earned money on myself, but I am not free to ignore the plight of those in need. 
  • By attempting to extend it to others. I have fellow citizens whose freedom, and other natural and constitutional rights, are being impinged; and of course citizens of multiple other countries are in a similar or worse condition. I can steward my freedom by using it to expand the freedom of others. 
  • By defending it. My country has not called on me for military service—I learned as a teen that the government was not particularly inclined to let someone with only one working ear fly its multi-billion-dollar fighters—but I can defend it in other ways. All that requires is being attentive and inclined to take a stand. 

Gratitude for God’s gifts, and stewardship of it. Most of theology is about giving balanced attention to both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. 

To my American friends, Happy Fourth. 

And to my other friends, I rejoice with you in God’s particular kindness to you. 

Or, as we say in my region of my country, to y’all. 

Photo by chris robert on Unsplash