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 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. 

Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash

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. 

Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash

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

On April Fools’ Day

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My practice is to post here on Mondays and Thursdays. As it happens, April Fools’ Day is on a Monday this year, and I thought it might be interesting to share some thoughts on the subject.

Prankstering is a thing. Certain kinds of people really enjoy playing tricks on people, and certain others—fewer, I suspect, than the number of pranksters—genuinely enjoy having tricks played on them.

Grace and peace to them all, and may they have a delightful time on this day.

In my younger years I engaged in some of that myself. I remember attending a wedding with my mother as a college student, and some attenders wanted to do some stuff to the getaway car, so I popped the lock and let them in. I still remember the look of surprise and concern on my mom’s face at the ease with which I got access to the locked car.

In the next few years I found that my excitement and joy at playing tricks on people was diminishing, and today I can say that I haven’t done any of that for a long time.

There are lots of wedding pranks. You get access to the honeymoon suite and put the groom’s underwear in the freezer. You shave his chest. You soap the car windows, paint signs on the rear window, put a noisemaker in the exhaust pipe, tie cans to the rear bumper, fill the inside with balloons. And so grooms make a practice of hiding the car.

I recall when a friend of mine—a buddy from BJU’s judo demonstration team—got married, and the rest of us on the team decided we were going to find his car, get into it, and do nothing but tape a hundred-dollar bill to the steering wheel with a note wishing the two of them a happy honeymoon. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the car, and he never got the hundred bucks.

Another time a former roommate called me at my GA apartment on a Friday night and asked if he could spend the night there. He was getting married the next day, and he didn’t trust what his groomsmen might do to him that night. He knew he could trust me. That opportunity, and that trust, I took as a privilege, and since then I’ve made it my desire to be the guy people could trust in similar situations.

For a few years I’d post this every April 1: “Yes, I know what day it is. No, I’m not going to lie to my friends.”

It occurs to me that that sounds pretty judgmental.

I don’t think it’s a lie to play a prank on a friend—if you know he’ll enjoy it, if it won’t be an unpleasant experience for him. Nothing wrong with good clean fun.

But not everybody finds that kind of thing, or specific instances of that kind of thing, fun. People trying to have a baby don’t find the topic humorous. Oh, you’re not really pregnant? Ha, ha, ha.

A tech newsletter I subscribe to came out this past weekend with a bunch of ideas for pranking your friends using computers. You can switch the keyboard assignments, so whenever they type an “e” it sends an “I” to their screen / file.

Ha, ha, ha.

What if your friend needs to send an important email at that moment? What if he’s got to get some work done on a tight deadline? How long will it take him to figure this thing out and fix it?

How would you feel in that situation?

Ha, ha, ha? I don’t think so.

And the larger principle of the boy who cried wolf comes to mind. I don’t want to be the kind of person that others will be inclined to distrust, because I’ve fooled them one time too many.

So I don’t do the April Fools’ thing. It’s a personal choice, a preference.

But I also don’t sit in judgment on people who get their jollies that way.

As long as we love God and love our neighbors, always seeking their good, even if at our own expense, we’ll be just fine.

Enjoy the day.

Photo by Waldemar on Unsplash

On Valentine’s Day

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Since Valentine’s Day is this week, I’d like to think a little bit about love.

Love is fascinating—all the popular songs are about it.

But it’s a mystery.

For some time there’s been circulating on the internet a series of comments on love by children. I haven’t been able to find its source—everybody quotes it, but as far as I can tell, nobody credits it. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • “No one is sure why it happens, but I heard it has something to do with how you smell; that’s why perfume and deodorant is so popular.” Mae, age 9
  • ”I think you’re supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn’t supposed to be painful.” Manuel, age 8
  • “It isn’t always just how you look. Look at me, I’m handsome as anything and I haven’t got anybody to marry me yet.” Brian, age 7
  • “Don’t do things like have smelly, green sneakers. You might get attention, but attention ain’t the same thing as love.” Alonzo, age 9
  • “Be a good kisser. It might make your wife forget that you never take out the trash.” Dave, age 8
  • “Don’t forget your wife’s name. That will mess up the love.” Erin, age 8
  • “Love will find you. Even if you hide from it. I have been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me.” Dave, age 8

And it’s important.

It’s fundamental to our very nature; we’re made in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27), who, though one in essence, is—and thus has always been—in three persons, in perfect relationship.

And when one of those persons became man, he issued an insider’s commentary on God’s law: it’s all about loving God and loving your neighbor (Mk 12.30-31).

So life is as simple as that:

  • Love God: put Him first
  • Love others: put them first

It’s as simple as closing the door quietly and leaving the hall light out if someone is asleep. As simple as stopping to help someone who’s in difficulty. As simple as thinking about what you can do.

Years ago I was in the Las Vegas airport headed home, and a woman came up to me and asked me, in broken English, if I had a quarter for the pay phone. She was unexpectedly stranded and needed to call a family member. I fished a quarter out of my pocket and gave it to her and walked on toward my gate, feeling satisfied with having helped somebody out.

Then I thought, You could have done better. You could have let her use your phone, so she could make additional calls if she needed to. You could have asked if she was hungry, and bought her a meal if she needed one. You could have asked her where she was from and recommended a church in her town. You could have …

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Didn’t.

If I love my neighbor, I want to do him, or her, some eternal good.

Of course, Valentine’s Day is especially focused on local love, on committed love, love more deep and abiding than general love of neighbor. Our culture is filled with stereotypes about that.

Candy. Flowers. Jewelry. A candlelight dinner.

But as long-term couples know, lasting love is as much, if not more, about smaller, less affected things.

Putting your dirty clothes in the hamper. Putting the toilet seat down. Cleaning up after yourself. Keeping your promises.

Listening.

And it’s all based in God’s love for us: we love Him, because He first loved us (1Jn 4.19). If you’re going to love as you should, you need God’s example and His power. You find that, and develop it, in the means of grace: the Word, prayer, and fellowship.

As you walk with God, you’ll know, experience, and live out love.

First things first.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

On Being an Ambassador, Part 4: Seeing the Long View

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Part 1: Cultural Diversity | Part 2: Walking the Tightrope | Part 3: Drawing the Line

We are ambassadors for a reason. God is working through history toward a goal that is worth all the difficult choices and cultural confrontations. We do well to remind ourselves of it.

In the beginning, God created us in his image and gave us dominion over a created world that was “very good” (Gen 1.31). Soon that creation was marred, however, distorted by our sin. And immediately God set out to restore what we had broken, to reunite what was estranged (Ge 3.15).

He prepares an earthly line that will eventuate in a man who is God himself. The story takes a while to tell; there is Seth, then Noah, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; David, and Solomon, and then a builder in Nazareth named Joseph. He adopts his fiancee’s baby, thereby entitling the child to the throne of his father David. This child, in his short life, will demonstrate himself to be prophet, priest, and king, and will offer the perfect sacrifice—himself—to atone for the sins of all who would believe in him. And with that faith comes the transfer of his righteousness, his legal and moral perfection, to the believer.

And then reunification with the long-estranged God.

And God’s vision continues. It’s not enough that three Jewish men—Jesus’ “best friends”—believe, or that the Twelve or the crowds do. The vision is much bigger than that. God is gathering to himself a people, innumerable and global, to praise his name. The message of this gathering will go to the Jew first, but God’s Spirit will create a new institution, the church, to unite all who will come, to erase national and ethnic boundaries, to manifest the glory of disparate people fellowshipping face to face, worshiping together in the same room, rooms large and small all around the globe.

And those little gatherings are a foretaste of a much larger gathering, myriads of myriads, people from every kingdom, tribe, tongue, and nation, united in their praise, with one voice, to the one who loved them and who bought them with his very blood.

I once attended a worship service in Arad, Israel, one of the oldest cities in the world. In a house on a hill gathered believers from all around the world. The sermon was in Hebrew, but with the aid of live translators and headsets, we heard in our mother tongues—I in English, others in French, Spanish, Arabic, Swahili. A foretaste.

It was always clear in the Hebrew Scripture that the plan was not limited to the Jews. God told Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Ge 12.3). Amos preached that Edom and “all the heathen … are called by [God’s] name” (Am 9.11-12). Isaiah foresaw all the nations coming to worship in Jerusalem (Is 2.1-4; 27.12-13). Jesus said,

Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven (Mt 8.11).

But that all these peoples would be united in one body, on equal footing, not because they had become Jews, but because they believed in the God of all the earth—that was new revelation, given through Paul (Ep 3.6).

This plan could only result in infinite glory being given to the Planner, whose wisdom and power and grace astonishes even the angels in heaven (Ep 3.10), when they see people who should be mortal enemies united in praise to the One who has brought them together, not just with one another, but with him.

Cultural boundaries, indeed.

This is the God, and the plan, that we represent. What a trust we have been given; God has entrusted his reputation and plan to servants that he knows are unfaithful and imperfect. But he will empower us, enliven us, direct us, and the plan will be accomplished.

To represent such a God is an inestimable privilege.

May he give us wisdom and strength to represent him well.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

On Being an Ambassador, Part 3: Drawing the Line

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Part 1: Cultural Diversity | Part 2: Walking the Tightrope

I think it’s worth looking more closely at where we draw the line between what cultural practices we accept and what we reject—in short, where we draw the line.

What makes a given culture’s norms and practices unacceptable? In a well-known passage, the Apostle John writes,

15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (1J 2.15-17).

We are not to love “the world” or “the things that are in the world.” Now, we know that’s not an absolute statement; we’re told to love our neighbors, as well as our wives and children, and the last time I checked, they all resided on Planet Earth. John gives us some insight into what he means in the next sentence; he lists three things that characterize the world’s thinking and values, things that are at odds with the way God looks at things (what we often call a “biblical worldview”):

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

As we think about these three things, we realize that they indeed characterize the thinking of the world we live in and in which we are ambassadors for Christ:

  • Our culture is devoted to satisfying our physical desires. Because our culture is deeply pornogrified, we tend to think of “the lust of the flesh” as sexual lust, and it does include that, but it’s not limited to that. We want food; we want sleep; we want freedom from pain. And if you’ll think about it, you’ll realize that all these physical desires come from God; Adam and Eve ate fruit—and enjoyed it, and were given free rein to eat from all the trees but one—before they fell into sin. I would suggest that “the lust of the flesh” is the desire to use God’s gifts in ways that he has not intended—and thus to worship the gift rather than the giver. A healthy appetite becomes gluttony; a need for rest becomes laziness; a desire for freedom from pain, which is a God-given sign that we’re using our bodies in destructive ways, leads to drug addiction, which is simply our continuing to abuse the body further.
  • Our culture wants what it sees—material possessions of all kinds, from houses to vehicles to baubles to toys, both men’s and boys’. Gotta have it. I’ll be happy with just one more thing. And as we all know, the stuff eventually loses its shine and we’re driven to move on. Once again, in most of these cases the thing itself can well be a gift from a good and generous God, until we move our affections from God to the stuff.
  • There’s discussion about what “the pride of life” is. Some think it’s the desire for admiration or popularity; others think it’s the desire for experiences, such as exotic travel or extreme sports. Again, the issue is whether we live for the experience, which is temporal, or for the Creator, who is eternal.

As we represent Christ in our culture or in a foreign one, we must live in a way that declares our priorities clearly. When the culture advocates lust of the flesh, we can’t trim our message to appease the libertines. When the culture lives on greed, we can’t cater to it with some sort of Christianized prosperity theology. When the culture worships political power, we can’t simply champion the candidate most likely to give us a piece of that action, even if he’s a narcissist.

We are representing someone else. That’s a higher mission.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

Part 4: Seeing the Long View

On Being an Ambassador, Part 2: Walking the Tightrope

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Part 1: Cultural Diversity

As Christians, we get our instruction from the Scripture. We find there early examples of how Christians crossed cultural boundaries in taking the gospel to ends of their world. One instructive example is the preaching of the Apostle Paul. Since God called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles, we should expect that he would deal with widely diverse cultures—and he does.

On his first journey he travels to central Turkey, beginning at Antioch in the region of Pisidia. He begins by connecting with the people with whom he’s most familiar: on the Sabbath, he goes to the Jewish synagogue (Ac 13.14). Since he’s a rabbi, and even trained at the feet of the highly respected Rabban Gamaliel, the local Jewish community initially welcomes him and gives him a platform to speak. He addresses them at some length (Ac 13.16-41), repeatedly referencing the Jewish Scriptures and demonstrating that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah. This message would be of considerable interest to his Jewish audience and would stimulate interest in further discussion (Ac 13.42).

A few years later he arrives in Athens. Paul visits the synagogue there (Ac 17.17) but does not confine his outreach to that. He wanders the streets of the city and sees a statue “to the unknown God” (Ac 17.23). He immediately recognizes a point of cultural contact: Paul’s God can be known, because he has revealed himself in Creation as well as in the Hebrew Scriptures. In his discussions with the Gentile Athenians, several hearers seek to learn more, so they take him to a part of the city where people can deliver public speeches to passersby (Ac 17.19-21), and he offers to introduce the hearers to this “unknown God” (Ac 17.22-31).

This speech is very different from the one in the synagogue. He doesn’t cite the Hebrew Scriptures even once, presumably because this audience wouldn’t have the foggiest notion what he’s talking about. He doesn’t claim that Jesus is the Messiah, because, again, that is a meaningless term to the Athenians.

Instead he quotes their poets—Epimenides of Crete (“in him we live and move and have our being,” Ac 17.28a) and Aratus (“we are his offspring,” Ac 17.28b). (Apparently, Paul has read these poets enough to be able to cite them extemporaneously.) I find it interesting that both of these poets are describing Zeus—but Paul deftly redirects to the one true God.

So far these approaches are entirely different. But at the end Paul preaches essentially the same message: the resurrected Christ and the need for repentance (Ac 17.30-31). And in both environments he faces both scoffers and those who want to hear more.

Paul’s example leads us to believe that cultural adaptation is appropriate; ambassadors should be effective at communicating to a culture unlike their own. Yet the ambassador must not misrepresent his king; he must deliver the message that the king wants delivered, without distortion.

I’ve written an earlier series on the fact that some doctrines are more important than others; there are certain specified “fundamentals of the faith” on which we must not yield and for which we must do battle if they are under attack. An ambassador is not going to water down these essential doctrines or try to present them disarmingly.

But there are also many teachings, some of which we hold strongly and dearly, on which we must allow one another freedom, and over which we must not fight. I would suggest, for example, that while I’ll die on the hill of the deity of Christ and salvation by grace through faith, I must not fight with brothers who disagree with me on mode of baptism, or church government, or eschatological system.

A wise ambassador is going to pick his battles. He’s going to seek to bridge the cultural gaps as winsomely and effectively as possible while still delivering the king’s message accurately.

There are things about the gospel that are offensive to every culture, and we cannot and should not seek to avoid or disarm those offenses.

But we don’t always need to sacrifice our effectiveness in order to tell the truth. Christ’s great commission can indeed be obeyed and accomplished.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

Part 3: Drawing the Line | Part 4: Seeing the Long View

On Being an Ambassador, Part 1: Cultural Diversity

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This week my pastor pointed us to 2 Corinthians 5, where Paul tells Christians that we are appointed as “ambassadors for Christ” (2Co 5.20) tasked with the responsibility to represent the King (Ps 2.6-9) by taking the gospel to the ends of the earth—as he commanded us just before he returned to his Father (Mt 28.19-20).

Most of us realize that we aren’t doing a very good job of that; we’re reticent to share the gospel, most often because of cultural pressure, and when we do, we often end up arguing rather than graciously and lovingly persuading. Sure, Jesus overturned tables in the Temple, but he didn’t treat everybody, or even most people, that way.

So representing the King is going to involve stewardship, careful thought about how we go about taking the good news to the whole planet. There’s been a lot written about evangelism, missiology, acculturation, and the other issues involved in a global outreach, and there have been plenty of examples, positive and negative, of attempts to carry it out.

I’d like to share a few thoughts on a biblical basis for proceeding, and point out a few questions that we all ought to consider as we do so.

To begin with, the globe displays a lot of cultural differences. Many Americans, isolated as we are by oceans on both sides, haven’t traveled at all internationally, and many more have cross-cultural experiences that are fairly limited—a quick foray from San Diego into Tijuana, perhaps, or from Detroit over the river into Windsor, or maybe even a cruise to the Bahamas. I realized years ago that one of the best ways to combat your cultural misconceptions is to travel—and when you do, ask questions, listen to the answers, and resist jumping to conclusions.

People are different, and thus cultures are as well.

Why?

Because we’re created by God, who is, well, creative. We see diversity and contrast all throughout Creation, from trees to birds to butterflies to rocks to weather patterns. And people. God doesn’t want us all to be alike.

And so we do things differently. I’ve noted before that in some cultures people are unapologetically late to church, because they stopped to talk to someone they passed along the road, and it’s just not polite to dismiss others with a wave of the hand and a verbal “Gotta get to church”—although that’s fine here in the good old US of A. And how in China, you can’t eat everything on your plate, because that makes the host think he didn’t give you enough.

And in many, maybe most, cases, these differences have no moral weight; they’re simply different ways of doing things.

But we also know that Creation is fallen, and humanity is broken, and we often choose to conduct ourselves badly. Sometimes entire cultures call good evil and evil good. The early Christians famously refused to participate in the civil religion by calling Caesar “Lord”; and they denounced the common practice of exposing unwanted babies and allowing them to die. In fact, they rescued these babies and raised them as Christians, thereby turning an evil practice into a source of both civil and religious good.

As ambassadors, then, we need to navigate the realities of cultural difference, speaking and living in a way that communicates clearly, winsomely, and effectively to people who are different from us, while being wise enough to reject cultural practices that are broken and thus evil.

That’s a tricky business; there are lots of things to consider, and the decisions aren’t always clear-cut.

I intend to take several posts to lay a foundation for making such decisions and to think through some of the issues involved.

See you next time.

Photo by Carlos Magno on Unsplash

Part 2: Walking the Tightrope | Part 3: Drawing the Line | Part 4: Seeing the Long View