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 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

On New Year’s Day

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Certain topics typically come up at this time of year. Most common, I suppose, is that of resolutions. People post their resolutions, usually for a couple of reasons: either to hold themselves accountable or to suggest behaviors that their friends might consider.

Sometimes people show their character inclinations by letting the topic devolve into controversy: why my resolution is better than yours, or why the whole idea of resolutions is defective, for this reason or that.

I suppose the most mentioned defect is that so many people resolve to get in better physical shape, and they show up at the gym, crowding out the regulars and often entertaining them by demonstrating that they have no idea how to use the equipment. The regulars, in response, try to calm themselves by remembering that these folks will be here for just a few days before they go back to their couch-potato ways. Happens every year, and we just have to deal with it.

A topic I’ve seen more often this year is a denigration of the whole idea of calendar: why should the year start on January 1? Most of our measuring units for time (years, months, days) are based on cosmic cycles—the week being the notable exception.

[ Sidebar: That’s odd. I wonder why every culture has a 7-day week, when there’s no cosmic cycle to motivate it? That uniformity is … puzzling. ;-) ]

In the case of the year, there’s nothing evidently special about the earth’s orbital position on January 1; why start the year there? Other cultures start the year at other times. The Chinese New Year is on February 10 this year; as I understand it, it’s an anticipation of spring, the resurgence of life.

Hebrew culture has 2 New Year’s Days (well, actually, 4, but the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament, mentions just 2). The civil New Year, Rosh Hashanah (literally “head of the year”), comes in the autumn, on Tishri 1, which this year will begin on October 2 at sunset. This is associated with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when in ancient Israel the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies to sprinkle atoning blood on the Mercy Seat, the lid of the Ark of the Covenant. It is the holiest day of the year.

The religious New Year begins in the spring, at Passover, on Nisan 1, which this year will begin at sunset on April 22. When Israel left captivity in Egypt, God judged the Egyptians by the death of their firstborn, but “passed over” those who in faith had marked their door frames with the blood of a sacrificial lamb. At that time God said that this would be “the beginning of months to you” (Ex 12.2). Christians will note that Jesus was crucified on Passover.

I would think that would get confusing, having 2 New Years, but the ancient Hebrews, and the modern Jews, seem to handle it just fine.

The arguments will go on. Why should our culture consider one day more of a “New Year’s Day” than any other? Why have one at all?

Both secular and Christian thinkers applaud thoughtful living. Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and Paul admonishes his Ephesian readers to “walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise” (Ep 5.15). We ought to examine our values, our priorities, and our consequent words and actions every day; many Christians choose to spend time in the Scriptures and in prayer daily, and many of those choose the morning, to give the day a thoughtful, evaluative start. I’ve found that to be greatly helpful, as have others.

But similarly, it makes sense to recognize the cycles of our life with times of introspection. That’s something that seems fitting to lots of people. There’s certainly no harm in stopping to think once in a while, despite the ridicule of pedantic cynics over calendrical minutiae.

So feel free to go with January 1, or some other date, chosen randomly or otherwise, and pause for evaluation, contemplation, reprioritization.

Do well, and do good.

Happy New Year.

Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

On Christmas

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This Christmas season I’ve been meditating on the Virgin Birth of Christ.

We all know the story. Mary gives birth to a baby boy without the participation of a human father. Some anti-trinitarians charge that this is unseemly—that God the Father, or God the Holy Spirit, had sex with a Jewish teenaged girl. This is of course ridiculous and blasphemous. If Mary had had sex with God, then she wouldn’t be a virgin, would she?

The whole point of the story is that this is a birth unlike any other. God, the Creator, caused an embryo to form in Mary’s womb, and she gestated and bore the baby in the normal way.

I suppose that means that Jesus shared Mary’s DNA—that just as the human authors participated with the divine Spirit in the work of inspiration, so Mary participated in the origin and development of the human Jesus; whom the Bible repeatedly identifies as a “son of David.” But we are not informed of the details.

Why did this happen? Why was Jesus not born, in God’s providence, in the ordinary way?

The Bible doesn’t tell us.

Bishop Ussher, the same man who calculated the Creation to have occurred in 4004 BC, postulated that the Virgin Birth kept the defilement of Adam’s sin from passing to Mary’s baby:

“For sin having by that one man entered into the world, every father becometh an Adam unto his child, and conveyeth the corruption of his nature unto all that he doth beget. Therefore our Savior assuming the substance of our nature, but not by the ordinary way of natural generation, is thereby freed from all the touch and taint of the corruption of our flesh; which by that means only is propagated from the first man unto his posterity. Whereupon he being man of man but not by man, and so becoming the immediate fruit of the womb and not of the loins, must of necessity be acknowledged to be that HOLY THING” (James Ussher, The Incarnation of the Son of God, 12).

Paul Enns, author of The Moody Handbook of Theology, agrees:

“The virgin birth was the means whereby the incarnation took place and guaranteed the sinlessness of the Son of God.”

Charles Ryrie takes exception:

“The Virgin Birth … need not be the necessary means of preserving the sinlessness of Christ, since God could have overshadowed two parents so as to protect the baby’s sinlessness had he so desired” (Basic Theology).

Ryrie goes on to say,

“It served as a sign of the uniqueness of the person who was born.”

Since we get our fallen natures from our mothers as well as our fathers—women are sinners too—Ussher’s thesis seems flawed, and Ryrie appears to be right.

I recently read Mitch Chase’s article “Six Reasons for the Virgin Birth,” which seems to me to handle this particular question well:

”There seems to be a connection between the virginal conception of Jesus and the sinlessness of Jesus. Exactly how that connection exists is debated. … The language of Luke 1:35 doesn’t mean that sin is only biologically transmitted through a human father. Mary was a sinner with a sinful nature. However, the work of the Holy Spirit ensured that the human nature of Jesus in the womb of Mary was holy and without corruption.”

Chase goes on to list other reasons for the Virgin Birth; I commend the entire article for your consideration.

Jesus is the only case of God becoming man. We have trouble understanding unique things, and this is no exception. There is much mystery here. The early church spent 400 years wrestling with the question and never did explain it.

But God has become man, and perfect man at that, and will remain one of us for all time and beyond.

We have much to celebrate and meditate on in these days.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

On Protest, Part 5: The Long View

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Part 1: Initial Thoughts | Part 2: Biblical Principles | Part 3: What Now? | Part 4: Tactics

To wrap up this brief series, I’d like to call on a personal experience to highlight the most important point, the Big Idea.

Some years ago my Dad chose to become a tax protestor. I’ve written about that in an earlier post; I’ll give you a minute to go read it before I apply it to this issue.

…

No, seriously, you need to go read the story, or you won’t understand the point here.

…

OK. Now let’s talk about how my Dad’s experience applies here.

Really, now, why did Dad quit filing his taxes?

Because he didn’t want to pay them. He claimed, based on a book he’d read, that being forced to file a return is a violation of the Fifth Amendment, which says you can’t be forced to testify against yourself. He said, “If the government can show me how much I owe them, I’ll be glad to pay it. But I’m under no obligation to give them that information.” He claimed he was standing up for the Constitution, which is the real government.

Now, the book he’d read said very directly that you must continue to file; you just enter “5th Amdmt” in every blank where you would ordinarily write a number. I’ve never asked a lawyer about that approach, mostly because I’m pretty sure what the lawyer would say. But in any case, Dad didn’t follow the book’s advice; he just quit filing.

And the IRS let it slide. I’m sure they knew where he was, even though he’d recently moved across the country, from Boston to New Mexico. They knew because he was on Social Security, and they were mailing him a check—which he was cashing—every couple of weeks.

But they knew he was old, and retired, and had no savings to speak of, so they figured he wasn’t worth their time.

But as typically happens with believers, God’s Spirit doesn’t let things slide. Dad was in a church that preached the Word, and eventually he got under conviction, and he decided to make it right.

And when he did, it actually turned out better for him than if he’d just kept his mouth shut.

Now, I don’t think we can extrapolate from that to say that confessing your sin always increases your income. But when we get crossways with authorities, governmental or otherwise, God is doing things; he’s at work. And a significant part of that work is conforming us to the image of his Son.

Now, he might have things turn out well physically or relationally, to teach us that we were boneheaded to resist the authorities he has placed over us.

But he might not, either.

Either way, we’re going to be better for having done the right thing. My Dad isn’t here on earth anymore, but if he were, he’d tell you that the cleansing of his conscience and the faith he learned to exercise were worth far more than the piddling “refund” check he got from the IRS.

If you’ll trust in God’s providential working, you’ll never regret it.

That’s the Big Idea.

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

On Protest, Part 4: Tactics

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Part 1: Initial Thoughts | Part 2: Biblical Principles | Part 3: What Now?

In the previous post I said that if we must disobey a constituted authority, we should do so humbly and accept the penalty.

As a general principle, I think that’s right.

The most famous biblical example of civil disobedience, I suppose, is in Acts 4, when Peter and John tell the Jewish Sanhedrin that they will not obey their order to refrain from preaching about Christ. In that case, their disobedience is public (Ac 4.19-20), and they do accept the civil penalty—which in this case was delayed (Ac 5.17-18) and overridden by an angelic deliverance (Ac 5.19-20). The disciples continued their disobedience (Ac 5.21) and accepted further arrest peacefully (Ac 5.26); they stated their intention to disobey during a second hearing (Ac 5.27-29) and were providentially delivered from execution (Ac 5.33-39)—though they accepted a beating (Ac 5.40). And they continued to disobey (Ac 5.42).

But I do find that the biblical data appear to be broader than that. I find, for example, that Paul responds to unbiblical authorities in several different ways:

  • In Damascus, shortly after his conversion, “the Jews took counsel to kill him” (Ac 9.23-24). These “Jews” are not identified as governmental authorities, but since this very Saul had come to Damascus to carry out the high priest’s authorization to arrest Christians and return them (Ac 9.1-2), presumably for imprisonment (Ac 8.1, 3) and eventual execution, involvement of the Jewish civil leadership is at least strongly implied. Further, Paul later writes that the Roman ethnarch was seeking to arrest him at the time (2Co 11.32). In this case, Paul goes “underground,” sneaking away in the dark of night (Ac 9.25; 2Co 11.33), to live to fight another day. Neither Paul nor the disciples who cooperated in his escape ever show any regret for their decision. So apparently, sometimes you can run and hide.
  • On his first missionary journey, at Lystra, Paul accepts a stoning, which was typically intended to be capital punishment (Ac 14.19). (Of course, we doubt that he had any choice is this case.) Many interpreters believe that Paul actually died and was resurrected—and some suppose that his description of visiting “the third heaven” (2Co 12.2) occurred at this time.
  • On his second missionary journey, at Philippi, we find Paul using his natural-born Roman citizenship slyly; he knows his rights, and he works the system, so to speak. When he heals a demon-possessed girl, the local business interests bring him before the local authorities, who beat them and throw them into prison overnight (Ac 16.22-24). Now, it’s illegal to beat a Roman citizen without trial, and Paul could have stopped this procedure by simply stating his citizenship—as we will see him do later. But here he withholds that information and takes the beating. Then the next day he reveals his citizenship—placing the local leaders under the death penalty if he reports them to Rome (Ac 16.35-37). He demands a public escort out of town (Ac 16.37b)—and on the way, he takes them by Lydia’s house, where the church meets. I can’t avoid thinking that he does that intentionally: “I’d like you to meet my friends. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to my friends, now, wouldn’t it?”
  • After his third missionary journey, back in Jerusalem, the roman chiliarch sentences him to a beating for causing a public disturbance (Ac 22.24). But here, Paul plays his citizen card; he turns to the centurion and says, “Say, isn’t it illegal to beat a Roman citizen without a trial?” (Ac 22.25). And everything screeches to a halt (Ac 22.29).

So what do we make of this?

Paul sneaks out of Damascus to avoid an unjust death. In multiple later cases he uses his legal rights to accomplish his desired ends—once by claiming them up front, and once by claiming them later to force the local authorities to act justly. In every case, he is facing the threat because of his obedience to his heavenly commission.

I think we can all take Paul’s example by acting prudently, wisely, creatively, and in obedience to God’s Word.

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

Part 5: The Long View

On Protest, Part 3: What Now?

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Part 1: Initial Thoughts | Part 2: Biblical Principles

What do you do when you disagree with an authority?

Providence

Begin by recognizing that God is on his throne and that he has providentially brought you to this place for His purposes. His will is being done. Of course, that doesn’t mean that everything that happens is good; he brings things into your life, and mine, that he wants us to change. He does not call us to be passive. But when hard times come, even including the sinful acts of ourselves and others, he is using those things to make us more like Christ.

That may include changing our thinking, helping us see things from a different perspective, broadening our understanding of what is good and what is evil. It may include bringing to our attention calling he has for us, work that we need to do in order to bring change into his world. It may include simply teaching us patience, or strengthening us against temptation and sin.

But whatever it is, he has his purposes. If changing us, growing us, is his primary purpose for bringing this hardship upon us, it would be a shame for us to miss it, to waste the opportunity to learn and grow.

We need to trust him.

Submission

Our first job, then, is to try, as best we can, to discover that wise and good purpose and pursue it—to subordinate our thinking to his, to act on what we understand his will to be for our own growth. Wise believers have often said that the first question we should ask in hard situations is not “Why is this happening to me?!”—as though life should always be sunshine and roses—but rather “What is God doing to make me more like His Son?”

This calls for honest introspection and careful evaluation. It calls for us to determine for ourselves that God’s will for us is the wisest and best thing, and that we will pursue it no matter the cost. We need to start with the imperfections and failures in ourselves before we set out to change the world into something more comfortable.

Biblical Criteria

After we have begun to clean up our own house, then it’s time to bring careful consideration of biblical teaching regarding the matter we’re upset about. Is the authority with which we disagree actually acting in violation of biblical truth?

This will require objectivity, which of course is difficult when we’re upset or when our own interests are involved. Is a policy unjust? discriminatory? dangerous, or otherwise evidencing poor stewardship? immoral?

There are lots of biblical principles. The key here is to state clearly the principle(s) involved and to demonstrate objectively how the principle(s) are being violated by the policy.

It’s worth noting that our authorities are under authority as well. Employers need to obey national, state, and local laws, even if there’s no biblical principle being violated (other than the requirement to obey “kings and all that are in authority” [1Ti 2.2]). Bring all the legitimately applicable principles to bear on the specific situation.

Humility

We need to recognize our own limitations.

You and I cannot reliably discern motives, nor can we know all the considerations in any decision by an authority. Once again, that authority is in place by divine providence, and I would suggest giving them the benefit of the doubt when we know that there are things we don’t know.

Throwing the Switch

If you are convinced that the authority is acting unbiblically, begin by submitting to the authority’s procedure(s) for challenging the decision. Most employers, for example, have such procedures in place as a matter of policy. If the disagreement is with a governmental body, there are avenues for redress in the courts. We should exhaust the legal options before resorting to illegal activity.

If your conscience forbids you to submit to that authority’s procedures for redress, then disobey humbly and graciously, and submit to the penalty. If you do follow the procedures, and the authority overrules your plea, then you need to make the same decision: must you disobey in order to protect your conscience? If so, then do so, and accept whatever penalty the authority determines. In every action, you must guard your personal integrity and resist the constant temptation to act out of frustration and anger.

I’d like to take one more post to modify slightly what I’ve said here about submitting to the penalty. I think the biblical example is a little more complex than that.

But Thanksgiving is this week, so we’ll talk about being thankful next time, and finish this series next week.

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

Part 4: Tactics | Part 5: The Long View

On Protest, Part 2: Biblical Principles

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Part 1: Initial Thoughts

So we begin with the Scripture’s overarching principle for our existence: it’s doxological; we live for the glory of God (1Co 10.31).

What else applies to questions of protest?

Brokenness

Key to our decision making is worldview: what is the story we find ourselves in the middle of? And from the Scripture we learn that the world is broken. That’s no surprise to us, of course; we can see that by just taking a casual look around. But the Bible places that brokenness in context, giving us a foundation from which to deal wisely and effectively with it.

Sin has damaged God’s creation (Ge 3.1-19; Ro 8.22-23). It has rendered us broken as people (Ro 3.9-19), and it has broken our environment and our circumstances. What we see in the chaos around us, then, makes sense; it is what we should expect.

The world is broken because we broke it—and we are thus broken too. The problem is inherent to us, deep within our spiritual DNA. How likely is it that the solution to this brokenness will come from those who caused the problem in the first place?

But then again, shouldn’t we try? Does the Scripture encourage us to be passive about evil and wait for God to fix it supernaturally, or does it urge us to take action? I think that question answers itself.

Order

It turns out that the lunatics are not in fact running the asylum. There is a God in heaven, whose will is done (Da 2.28, 37, 44). He is taking the chaos that we created and ordering it to achieve his purposes—sensible purposes, good purposes (Ps 37.23). Events are not random, and causes and purposes are not entirely visible and obvious.

A significant part of that purpose and plan is that God is using hardship to strengthen and develop his people, the way a coach pushes his athletes to develop championship caliber in them (2Co 3.18; 4.16-18). God is greater than evil and injustice. He directs us and sustains through those things purposefully, in order to accomplish His goal in us.

Authority

God has established spheres of authority for us. These include the home (Gen 2.22-25), the state (Gen 9.6), and the church (Acts 2.41-47). These authorities, like us, are also broken; parents, political leaders, and pastors are all sinners and prone to grievous error. But they are authorities nonetheless, because God has ordained them for us. It is no accident that we have the parents, state, and church that we do.

These authority structures have spheres, where God has given them authority to operate. As just one example, Jesus was asked if the Jews ought to pay taxes to Caesar (Mt 22.17). We all know that he asked to see a coin, and he pointed out that Caesar’s image was on it—therefore it must belong to Caesar (Mt 22.18-21). What he didn’t say, but clearly implied, was that what had the image of God on it belonged to God; the citizen, as one bearing the image of God (Ge 1.26-27), does not belong to the state, but to God. The state’s authority is limited.

And most especially, all these institutions are under God’s authority, for it is from him that they have any authority in the first place. If a human authority—family, state, or church—asks me to do something that violates God’s will as revealed in the Scripture, then I must disobey (Ac 5.27-29).

This means, of course, that we are all responsible to educate our minds and our consciences from the Scripture so that we can choose biblically in those moments of apparent conflict.

These biblical principles, I think, give us a solid basis for a philosophy of protest and guide us to a proper course of conduct in choosing when and how to obey, to protest, and, if necessary, to disobey.

We’ll get more specific in the next post.

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

Part 3: What Now? | Part 4: Tactics | Part 5: The Long View

On Protest, Part 1: Initial Thoughts

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I’ve lived all my life in an environment of protest. I came of age in the 60s, so it started early. Activist writers in those days noted that public protest is a way to get on the political agenda; it’s a way to overcome government inertia and stimulate otherwise uninterested authorities to pay attention. Just as Jesus described a presumably fictional unjust judge (Lk 18.1-8)—I guess governmental inertia was a thing in his day too—politicians will often be unmoved by citizens’ problems unless the citizens find a way to make inertia inconvenient in the lives of the leadership.

So people protest. This is de rigeur in democratic societies, of course, where officials face the prospect of being voted out of office, and where the protesters find it reasonably safe to raise their voices. But it happens in totalitarian societies as well, where the risk is considerably higher. The Soviet Union saw public protests in Czechoslovakia in 1968—that didn’t turn out well for the protesters—and in East Berlin in 1989. (That turned out better.) The Chinese Communists saw a confrontation in Tiananmen Square that same year. The people of Iran rose up against the mullahs just last year. And there are many, many more examples.

Over the course of my life I’ve seen many causes promoted by protest: civil rights (both racial and women’s rights), war and peace, economic policy, criminal justice, right to life (as considered in both abortion and capital punishment), terrorism, tax policy, environment, and others. Most recently there have been protests worldwide against Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s response in Gaza. Many have expressed the opinion that this one seems bigger, more volatile than what has typically preceded; some are talking seriously about the end of the world.

Well, I don’t know when the end of the world is coming, and neither does anybody else. I think it would be unwise to try to predict it even if Jesus hadn’t told us not to. (If he didn’t know the date when he was walking amongst us, how likely are we to get it right?)

But the protests are ubiquitous, and they’re intense. People are expected to take a side.

Sometimes—often—taking a side is precisely the right thing to do. As an acquaintance of mine commented decades ago, the middle of the road is where the yellow stripe is.

I don’t think the protests are going to get quieter, or the issues simpler, as time rolls on. It’s our duty, I’d suggest, to think through a philosophy of protest, something that can guide us through emotional, murky, and rapidly moving times. As a Christian, I need to base my philosophy of protest, like anything else, on the Scripture. I’d like to take a few posts to offer some suggestions and to invite feedback.

I’ll begin with the overarching biblical principle: we live for the glory of God (1Co 10.31). We pattern our thinking after his, as expressed in his Word; we decide our actions, from choosing a vocation to deciding whether to speed up or stop for that deeply pink traffic light, on the same basis. And we establish our priorities, including the decision to join a particular protest movement, based on his. Only he is worth all our love, all our loyalty, and all our devotion. God is the only person we can follow blindly—and He doesn’t ask us to (Is 1.18).

Next time, we’ll tease out other biblical principles that we need to consider in developing our philosophy of protest.

Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash

Part 2: Biblical Principles | Part 3: What Now? | Part 4: Tactics | Part 5: The Long View