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

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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On Certsitude, Part 2: “Well, Actually, You Are Both Right. Kinda.”

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Part 1: “You’re Both Right!”

I’m meditating on the fact that I repeatedly see discussions on social media where my friends are taking directly opposing positions, yet I find that they’re both making legitimate points, ones worth considering. In a sense, they’re both right, even though their positions logically can’t both be true.

The Bible gives us reason not to be surprised by this.

According to the Scripture, humans are complicated; specifically, they’re characterized by a nature that’s in tension with itself.

  • On the one hand, we’re created in the image of God (Gn 1.26-27). There’s considerable discussion about what that means precisely, but most would agree that it includes the abilities to think, feel, and decide, as well as an innate sense of right and wrong, and the ability to rule, to take dominion over the created world in various ways. We have the ability to seek truth and to discover it.
  • On the other hand, we’ve been damaged by our sin, damaged in every corner of our being (Ro 3.23). Our thinker is busted and can’t be trusted; our feelings may misguide us; our decisions are not always based in truth.

We’ve all experienced this bifurcation; we want to do one thing—say, be kind to our extremely irritating neighbor—and we disappoint ourselves by snapping back at an unusually irritating remark from him. Even the Apostle Paul described this ongoing struggle in his own life (Ro 7.7ff): he wants to do one thing, but he does the other in spite of his good intentions.

Even more simply, we should expect that all of us are going to be right about some things and wrong about others. Nobody’s right all the time, and nobody’s wrong all the time, either.

But in public discussions we act as though that simple principle isn’t true. The other party’s guy is unremittingly and irredeemably evil, and I won’t give him an ounce of credit or an inch of slack. My party’s guy is unremittingly good, and everything he does can be justified. But this approach, based in utter falsehood, cannot bring good results.

I remember when this point was first driven home forcefully to me.

In 1983 Congress passed a federal statute making Martin Luther King’s birthday a federal holiday. Forty years later we don’t typically see that as controversial, but in those days the debate was heated. Opponents of the bill argued that King was characterized by low moral character; supporters argued that his accomplishments outweighed any imperfections. (I’m simplifying here.)

During the Senate debate, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), an opponent of the bill, argued against the position of Sen Ted Kennedy (D-MA) by saying, “Senator Kennedy’s argument is not with the Senator from North Carolina. His argument is with his dead brother who was President and his dead brother who was Attorney General.”

Yikes.

I’m politically conservative; I believe in limited government and personal responsibility and a bunch of other ideas espoused by Russell Kirk and Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek and, yes, Jesse Helms.

But that outburst is just inexcusable.

And I’m not going to be forced, because someone agrees with me on philosophical ideas that I hold dear and deeply, to justify things he does that are just plain wrong.

Coming back to the present. The fact that Rush Limbaugh held some views that I also hold doesn’t mean that he’s exempt from the biblical command to “be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you” (Ep 4.32) or to “let your speech be always with grace” (Co 4.6). On the other hand, the fact that he intentionally made people angry doesn’t mean that a person can’t appreciate the contribution he made to popularizing conservative philosophies like limited government or personal responsibility.

The fact that Ravi Zacharias was a moral monster does not mean that his apologetic arguments were invalid. But the fact that his arguments are helpful doesn’t mean that we minimize the horror of the damage he has done to women who didn’t encourage his reprobate behavior—or that people in position to know should have let him get away with that nonsense in the first place.

In short, we need to listen to one another rather than simply arguing. We need to recognize when people we disagree with are right, and we need to learn from them, even if we’ll never arrive at all their conclusions.

That’s sensible. It’s normal. It’s healthy.

It’s the only way we can have a society worth living in.

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

On Certsitude, Part 1: “You’re Both Right!”

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Yeah, I meant to spell it that way, even though Mr. Gates puts a squiggly red line under it.

Almost 60 years ago now, Certs produced a TV commercial featuring identical twin sisters arguing over whether Certs was “a candy mint” or “a breath mint,” only to be interrupted by the omniscient announcer inserting, “Stop! You’re both right!” and then pontificating that Certs is “two, two, two mints in one!”

If it’s more important that a commercial be memorable than artful, this was one of the great ones, because the other day it sprang fully formed from the murky mists of my memory.

I’ve commented before on one of the pre-eminent features of our culture, The Outrage of the Day—something that calls to mind Orwell’s “two-minute hate.” Over the past few weeks, we’ve witnessed a mob invasion of the US Capitol, a disputed certification of votes, and an inauguration; an explosion of sewage from the life of Ravi Zacharias; a significant weather event across the nation, but especially noticeable in Texas, from which one of its senators escaped briefly to sunny Cancun; the death of the World’s Most Controversial Celebrity; and a bunch of highly controversial executive orders, which, despite the ease with which an incoming president can spay and neuter the previous set, seem to be the most popular way of governing in a democratic republic with a largely incompetent, ineffective, and self-absorbed legislature.

There—did I leave anything out?

There’s a lot we could say about the social commentary on all this—

  • The psychological phenomenon of confirmation bias, in which we believe what we want to and explain away or ignore what we don’t;
  • The long-lost art/science of evaluating the credibility and reliability of sources;
  • The weird way everybody suddenly becomes an expert on whatever topic is currently under discussion;
  • The compulsive need to comment publicly on matters we had no interest in yesterday.

Feel free to add to the list.

I’d like to give some attention here to something I noticed just the other day, on a couple of unrelated issues:

Even my commenting friends who are asserting diametrically opposed positions have something true and useful to say.

It’s counterintuitive. They’re saying opposite things, and yet they’re both right, in at least some sense.

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I’ve ruled out a couple of facile explanatory possibilities:

  • I’m intellectually infantile, and easily convinced by flagrant rhetorical fallacies, consequently agreeing with whoever was the last person to opine. I got good grades in school—punctuated by the occasional down-spike typically as the result of character failure rather than lack of ability—but there were always kids in my classes who were smarter than I was—I wasn’t the valedictorian in my small high-school class of 27. And these days I regularly have students who are demonstrably smarter than I am, though I try not to tell them that. :-) And in any case, I’ve learned over the years that academic smarts are not the most important indicator of success in life, and in fact are sometimes inversely proportional to that success. At any rate, I used to teach rhetorical fallacies to college freshmen, and I draw on that teaching all the time. Since I often recognize rhetorical fallacies in the social commentary today, I’m not inclined to think I’m falling for them in the case at hand.
  • I’m reading arguments from my friends, and I like my friends, and I’m subconsciously trying to justify friends who disagree with one another; I’m a peacemaker. Well, I don’t buy that either, since I haven’t noticed a strong tendency to be a peacemaker in days past. :-) I’ve noticed when other friends are wrong, so I’m inclined to think that I’d notice in this case as well.
  • I’m getting soft on moral absolutes, turning into a mealy-mouthed relativist. I don’t think so; feel free to ask my friends if I show any tendency in that direction.

So I’ve been meditating on this for a few days. Next time I’ll lay out a biblical and theological basis for the phenomenon I’ve described, and I’ll draw some conclusions and make an application or two.

Part 2

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

On Cultural Understanding, Part 1: The World

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I’d like to recall and expand on something I posted on Facebook on 9/4/16.

I’ve been privileged over the years to do a fair amount of international travel. I’ve taught in India, China, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, Mexico, and in 3 of the 4 major regions of Africa (East, West, and Southern). One of the keys to effective teaching anywhere on the planet is to understand something about the culture of your students; it affects how they think and thus how they learn.

Teaching in China was particularly educational for me. Because the Chinese language (I’m thinking specifically of Mandarin, in which I’ve had most of my experience) has to be memorized—you can’t know how to pronounce or define a character just by looking at it—much of Chinese education is based on memorization as well. The teacher lectures, the students take copious notes and memorize them, and nobody asks any questions. (I’m stereotyping just a bit.) Teachers are highly respected, and they must not be challenged. If a teacher asks a student a question, the assumption is that he thinks the student is not paying attention and wants to shame him.

You can imagine how a highly interactive, collaborative, “discovery” learning experience would be perceived in that culture.

In Africa, the British educational tradition, in which I’ve worked almost exclusively there, has a similar approach—stand and recite.

Now, it’s really important for the teacher to be aware of and accommodate those features if he’s going to keep the door of communication open with his students.

Which brings us to the main obstacle I experienced—being an American.

Americans are separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans. That means they don’t get overseas much.

Yes, it’s a lot easier these days than it used to be, but it’s still pretty expensive, and we don’t pop over to France as easily as Germans can and do. (My trips were paid for primarily by donations.) A great many Americans have never been outside their own country. (Some Americans have never been outside Brooklyn. :-) )

That fact has consequences. Most Americans have direct acquaintance with only American cultural standards and are fluent only in English. And that has led many Americans into a sort of cultural arrogance born, ironically, of ignorance. They just don’t know that in China, you’d better not eat everything on your plate, and that in Muslim-influenced countries, you’d better not give or receive anything with your left hand. It’s common overseas for Americans to be stereotyped as loud, obnoxious, inconsiderate, impatient, and arrogant—and the stereotypes are based in actual examples and experiences. The phrase “the ugly American” didn’t arise out of nowhere.

“You don’t speak English?! What are you, stupid?! Can you get me somebody who can actually help me?!”—to which the most logical response, I suppose, should be, “You don’t speak the local language? What are you, stupid?”

Unlike Americans, isolated between their oceanic buffers, most of the rest of the world lives close to, and even in the midst of, multiple diverse cultures with which they routinely interact and in which they routinely operate. Speaking multiple languages fluently is the rule rather than the exception; many of my African friends speak 4 to 8 languages and think that’s nothing unusual. Many of my American friends would be astonished at how much cultural diversity there is across the African continent (don’t even get me started on “the African jungle”)—or even within the one small country of Ghana, which has well over 50 tribal languages and whose Muslim Upper West Region is far more distinct from the largely “Christian” Greater Accra District in the South than the American South is from the West Coast or New England.

When you operate in a culturally diverse area, you accrue a lot of advantages—

  • Multilingualism
  • Greater cultural understanding
  • Greater ability to read the people you interact with
  • Openness to better ways of doing things
  • Humility—sometimes :-)

I may sound as though I’m being pretty hard on Americans. That’s not how I think at all. First, I am an American, and I love my mother country, flaws and all. Second, I recognize that my country’s geographical isolation is a function of topography, which itself is a result of divine providence, for which I have a profound respect and admiration. Providence has been kind to the US in inestimable ways.

And third, I think America has more cultural diversity than we often realize, from which we all benefit.

More on that next time.

Part 2: The United States

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

On Living by the Loopholes

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One of the most famous stories in the Bible didn’t actually happen—it’s a parable—but like all of Jesus’ teaching, it shows remarkable insight into the way people think. And it reminds us that not much about us has changed since he walked the earth. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

I’m speaking of the parable of the Good Samaritan. We all know the story.

There’s a man walking from Jerusalem to Jericho. That’s about 14 miles as the crow flies (and pedestrians don’t), down a steep and winding road through rugged, rocky, outcropped desert—what American Westerners would call Badlands. In the other direction, of course, it’s steeply uphill, a feature that in those days encouraged brigands. You hide behind a rock, and you wait for a lone (foolish) exhausted traveler to struggle pantingly by, and you make short work of him.

And so, where the robber meets the road, someone does that to this guy, leaving him shekel-less and beaten by the side of the road. A profitable day’s work.

And along comes a priest, somebody who really ought to care—but he doesn’t. He leaves the man helpless and dying in mid-desert under a hot sun. In essence, he kills him in his heart by leaving him to what can only be death.

Along comes a Levite, another full-time Jewish worker, another one who Ought to Care. And he doesn’t either.

Then comes the Samaritan.

This story doesn’t hit us the way it would have hit Jesus’ hearers, because we don’t revulse at the word. Maybe we should reset the story in our own culture.

Along comes a radicalized Muslim. A communist-sympathizing BLM agitator. An Antifa rioter.

Nancy Pelosi. Kamala Harris. AOC.

A Democrat.

You know, somebody like that.

And he defies all expectations. He is moved by what he sees, and he acts to help the man, providing first aid, taking him to medical care, paying his costs because he’s a robbery victim and has no means—and then he just leaves, not seeking anything in return.

He’s a friend—from the victim’s perspective, an invisible, anonymous stranger, but a friend.

You may be surprised to learn that my main point today isn’t this convicting story—though there’s plenty here for all of us to be convicted about.

My point, as reflected in the title above, is what happens before Jesus tells the story.

A lawyer—that is, a specialist in the Torah, the Law of Moses—asks Jesus what he needs to do to gain eternal life (Lk 10.25). Jesus says essentially, “What do you think?” The questioner dips into his area of expertise and delivers a perfect summary of the Mosaic Law—in fact, the same summary that Jesus Himself delivers elsewhere: love God, and love your neighbor (Mt 22.34-40). Jesus says, “You’re right; do that.”

And then the man, the lawyer, looks for a loophole: “Um, just how, exactly, would you define the word neighbor?” It depends, you see, on what the meaning of the word is is.

And now Jesus tells the story.

And he chooses as the protagonist precisely the person that every one of his hearers would have said is most certainly not his neighbor.

What’s the point?

Who is my neighbor?

It’s anyone who needs my help.

Anyone.

Most especially the surprising ones. The Others. The enemies.

In 2004 Vermont Governor Howard Dean was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. At a campaign event a voter chided Dean for speaking so harshly about his neighbor, President Bush. Dean replied, “George Bush is not my neighbor,” thereby nicely illustrating the very human tendency Jesus was combating with the parable.

We’re all for ethics, all for kindness, all for grace, when we’re the potential victim. But when grace is called for from us, we want to live by the loopholes. In this instance, you see, it’s different.

No. It’s not.

How different would our world be today, do you suppose, if Christ’s ambassadors represented him with the kind of grace that surprises and shocks precisely those who hate them? What if the behavior of Christians was actually … surprising? What if it didn’t look precisely like the behavior of everyone else on the battlefield?

What if?

Photo credit: The Good Samaritan, by Jacob Jordaens, c. 1616 – si.wsj.net, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19655930

On Sloth

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Since my previous post was on doing less and thereby getting enough sleep, I suppose I should balance it to keep folks out of the ditch on the other side of the road.

Life is about stewardship. We’re given abilities and responsibilities by the Lord’s providence, and he holds us accountable for how diligently we carry out those tasks. My assumption in the previous post was that we do better when we have enough sleep; I’ve learned that from long experience, and so, I suspect, have you. Sleeping, then, is a stewardship responsibility, and we should adjust our commitments to allow for enough of it.

But rest and recuperation are not laziness, and the same principle of stewardship is no call for us to lie around doing as little as possible; it calls for us to use our waking hours, which are limited, to the best and most efficient purpose. When we wake up, we should get going—since we’ve gotten enough sleep—and use the day wisely. Maybe that means taking care of other people—little ones, perhaps, or disabled ones—or producing things—shoes or artwork or widgets. Maybe it’s playing a part in a process, through meetings or paperwork or organization. Your mind’s well rested, and you jump in and give it all you’ve got.

Part of stewardship, I suppose, is doing your best to devote yourself to tasks that you’re good at. Some people absolutely thrive on an assembly line; others would go insane working any kind of a regular schedule. Different folks, different strokes. God made us all different, and we really should celebrate all kinds of diversity. (And no, that phrase is not redundant.)

Not everybody can get a job that’s a good match for his skills. Sometimes you just have to take the job you can get. How do you steward that? By diligence, of course—being on time, doing what you’re told, working hard (and if you do those three things, you’re ahead of 90% of the workforce, it seems). By learning all you can about your responsibilities, to make up for lack of natural ability. By finding your joy in God’s empowerment to do well the things that don’t come naturally to you.

Over the years I’ve worked a lot of different jobs—custodial, food service, retail, security, facilities management, writing, publishing (with some marketing and sales along the way), and now teaching. I feel most qualified for what I’m doing now—for which I’m grateful—but I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed all the jobs I’ve had, and I’ve benefited from all of them beyond just the paycheck.

Our culture has come to view work as something you do to pay for the stuff you really want to do—whether it’s partying on the weekends, or summer vacations, or retirement. That’s a shame. We’re much healthier psychologically when we’re given to a mission, especially one that’s bigger than we are. We’re designed to spend our time making a difference, in ways great and small.

An even worse trend in our culture is to come home from work, fall onto the couch, and watch entertainment for the rest of the night. We’ve conditioned ourselves to sit passively for hours on end, even to the point where we’ll give up sleep for it. How profoundly unhealthy, both physically and spiritually.

When she was in early elementary school, one of my daughters observed that if she watched TV for a long time, she felt sad—she was happier when she was up and about and accomplishing things (though I don’t think she knew the word accomplishing at the time).

She was right; I’m glad she learned that lesson so young.

We’re made to accomplish things—different things, in different ways, certainly, but accomplishments all.

If you haven’t though about that lately, why not sit yourself down and spend a little time thinking about what you’re good at (it’s probably the same as what you love) and how you can invest in that activity for the good of others?

Photo by Stephen Tafra on Unsplash

On Sleep

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Some years ago I decided to adopt a lifestyle that prioritized getting enough sleep. Decades later, I’m more confident every day that it was the right choice.

When you’re a kid, staying up late is an adventure, a chance to live as the grown-ups do. Most parents have entertained themselves by occasionally telling a child that tonight he can stay up as late as he wants, and then watching him drop off to sleep on the couch not long after his regular bedtime.

Eventually, we get old enough to succeed at staying up late. Most high-schoolers will attend a school-sponsored event that lasts all night, perhaps a lock-in with basketball in the school gym and lots of those snacks that will kill you when you’re older. I can clearly recall coming home from one of those around 6 or 7 am and walking wordlessly past my waiting Mom and straight to bed.

In college, and especially grad school, all-nighters are a standard tactic. I took one course in seminary that required a long, detailed expository sermon outline every Friday, and many students had a regular ritual where they’d each check out the maximum allowed number of books from the library and gather in someone’s apartment to pool their resources and clatter away at their typewriters all night long. Sometimes the all-nighters were a consequence of poor time management during the day, but not always. I’ve had students, both undergrad and graduate, who were married, with kids, working full-time jobs and carrying a full academic load, and I don’t know how they did it.

Once we enter into our post-school life, the old habits die hard. Those of us with 8-to-5 jobs still feel like staying up until midnight just because that’s what we do. When children come along, there’s the sleep deprivation that comes from overnight feeding and miscellaneous wakefulness. When that phase of life is over, we stay up to stream TV or movies or lounge through social media.

And we’re tired. We need an alarm clock—maybe several alarm clocks—to get up, and then coffee, and during the workday more coffee, and dozing through those after-lunch meetings.

I decided that that life wasn’t for me.

These days I’m usually in bed by 10 and up by 6, which gives me time in the morning for devotions and ablutions and some time in the office to sort out priorities for the day ahead. That gives me 8 hours a night, and after doing that for a while I find I don’t need an alarm clock, and the fact that I can’t use caffeine doesn’t interfere with my ability to meet my responsibilities. I wake up awake.

I referred to this approach as a “lifestyle.” By that I mean that it involves more than just going to bed earlier. If you want to go to bed earlier, there are some other things that have to happen.

Most obviously, I’ve found that I need to get less busy. And that means taking on fewer responsibilities.

Now, some responsibilities are mandated.

  • I’m a husband, and I need to spend time with my wife.
  • I’m a father, and even though my children are now grown and out of the house, I need to interact with them.
  • I have a job, and the responsibilities there are significant. My classes meet at a certain time, on certain days, and I have to be there, and I have to have something prepared. I’ve seen to it that my job responsibilities can be completed in the normal 40-hour work week, and beyond that I turn down extra responsibilities if I can. I rarely if ever take work home.
  • Church is not optional. I’m faithful there, and I do more than just attend, but I don’t offer to help with everything. I try to do one thing well, rather than a little bit of everything.

I know that for some people this studied approach to life is simply not possible. Financial or medical or family responsibilities take all the time you have. I experienced that when I was my father’s caregiver for the last 5+ years of his life. I can tell you that those exhausting seasons are temporary.

But for those of you streaming entire seasons of zombies at night and then living as zombies through the day, there’s a better set of priorities.

Photo by Cris Saur on Unsplash

“What Do You want from Me, God?” Part 4: A Humble Walk

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Justice | Part 3: Mercy

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Mic 6.8)

Walk humbly.

Unlike the previous two, this one has two parts: there’s humility, and there’s walking with God.

First, the humility.

Frankly, God shouldn’t have to say this.

Have you ever interacted personally with somebody famous? For most of us, buzzing in the back of our head the whole time is the realization that we shouldn’t even be there, talking with this famous person. He’s famous, and rich, and powerful, and here he is talking to little old us. Plus, he’s famous.

We can hardly believe it’s happening.

Even being in the presence of certain people humbles us.

How much more—how much more—should we be humbled to walk with our heavenly Father?

And in that state, how can we possibly be arrogant or unfeeling toward our fellow believers—or toward an unbeliever, in whose shoes we so recently and unhappily walked, only to be rescued by this Father through no merit of our own?

Humbly is the way we should walk.

And that is the second part—walking with our God.

It’s often been observed that salvation—conversion—is not a fire escape; it’s just the beginning of a lifetime of growing in Christ and an eternity of walking with God. That’s the structural theme of Ephesians, and Colossians, and Galatians, and Romans, and Hebrews, all of which move from a doctrinal section, filled with indicative verbs, to an application section, filled with imperatives.

And so we are designed to spend our earthly lives walking with an invisible God.

There are two kinds of walking, of going on a journey.

The first kind is typified by an elevator ride.

You get on, and if there’s another person there, you both become completely enraptured by the little row of numbered lights above the door.

1 … 2 … 3 …

You stare at them like you’ve never seen anything so interesting.

4 … 5 … oh, look! There’s a 6!

How can we explain this odd behavior?

You don’t talk to people on elevators. It’s just not done.

Because the experience is all about getting where you’re going. It’s not about the journey.

But there’s another kind of journey. It’s best typified by lovers going for a walk.

Man: Do you want to go for a walk?
Woman: Why? Where are we going?

That’s not how the conversation goes. “Going for a walk” isn’t about the destination; it’s about the fellowship along the way. Nobody cares where we’re going; we’re just going for a walk.

We just want to be together.

“Walk humbly with thy God.”

Isn’t it remarkable that the God of the universe, the One who is perfectly satisfied in himself, to whom we cannot possibly be intellectually stimulating, comes to us every morning and asks,

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

And isn’t it even more remarkable how often we respond with

“I don’t know. Where are we going? Is this going to hurt?”

“Is this going to hurt?” indeed. How much do you suppose our response hurts the God who comes to us just seeking to spend some time together, to fellowship, to relish the relationship?

How much?

We are an infinitely privileged people, we people of the living God. The Creator of heaven and earth, the King of kings and Lord of lords, seeks to spend time with us, to walk together by appointment. This is for our benefit, not his. We are the privileged ones.

This is what the Lord seeks from us.

To walk humbly with our God.

Let’s not treat it like an elevator ride.

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

“What Do You want from Me, God?” Part 3: Mercy

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Justice

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Mic 6.8)

Love mercy.

This is a big word.

You can tell that because the English versions translate it with different English words:

  • Mercy (KJV, NKJV, GW, NLT)
  • Kindness (ASV, NASB95, ESV, NIV, LEB, RSV)
  • Compassion (AMP)
  • Faithfulness (CSB, NET)
  • Love (GNT)
  • “Be compassionate and loyal in your love” (MSG)

In the OT, it’s a significant character trait of God, which the KJV translates multiple ways in its 231 occurrences:

  • Favor
  • Goodliness
  • Goodness
  • Kindness
  • Lovingkindness
  • Marvellous
  • Mercy
  • Pity

In fact, it’s the most common biblical statement about God: “His mercy endures forever.” 

One scholar defined the Hebrew word this way:

“A beneficent action performed, in the context of a deep and enduring commitment between two persons or parties, by one who is able to render assistance to the needy party who in the circumstances is unable to help him—or herself.”

One of my theology professors put it more concisely:

“Steadfast, loving loyalty.”

Several concepts going on here:

  • There’s a relationship between the two parties.
  • This relationship is grounded in love.
  • The person showing “mercy” is fiercely devoted to being loyal to the relationship, no matter what.
  • This loyalty issues in action that benefits the person in need.

Looks like the way The Message renders it, as noted above, is the best of the bunch: “Be compassionate and loyal in your love.”

I suppose that you could say, then, that “mercy” is the opposite of apathy.

  • It’s the opposite of saying, “Sorry, but I have other things to do right now.”
  • It’s the opposite of saying, “It’s your own fault.”
  • It’s the opposite of saying, “I told you so.”

It’s living out James 2:15-17—

15  If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? 17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

We’re to love mercy.

We’re to look for problems that others are facing, and to commit ourselves to helping them solve those problems, no matter how much time and energy and money it takes, because we love them.

I’m not naturally like that, and I suspect you aren’t either.

I find it helpful to meditate on the ways God has shown this kind of loving commitment to me.

Someone has said that the fact that God has forgiven us obligates us to forgive others—for how could anyone have sinned against us more grievously than we have sinned against God?

Indeed.

How could we possibly show “mercy” to someone else more purely and deeply and intensely and completely than God has shown mercy to us?

May we all pay attention—on the prowl, searching, seeking for people who need help—and render help in ways that are sacrificial and truly effective.

And may we love it.

Part 4: A Humble Walk

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

“What Do You want from Me, God?” Part 2: Justice

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Part 1: Introduction

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Mic 6.8)

Do justice.

Justice is one of those things that’s hard to define. I suspect that’s because there are lots of situations where we have trouble coming up with the right response, but we know instinctively when the right thing hasn’t been done.

  • Can we right the deep wrong of the American practice of slavery by doing something today? Well-intentioned people will argue all day about how to do that.
  • But the family that poured their life savings and sweat equity into a small business only to have it burned to the ground by rioters? That’s just not right.

The core of our problem in defining justice is that we are broken people living in a broken world. Human culture is indeed systemically defective, and our evaluations of the resulting problems, as well as our proposed solutions, are broken as well because our moral compasses don’t point north, and our logical processes can’t be trusted as authoritative.

How then are we to do justice?

In the mists of the past some old saint once observed that “what God orders, he pays for.” The words aren’t directly biblical, but the thought surely is. In the broadest sense, an omnipotent God will certainly accomplish all his holy will, or his Son wouldn’t have instructed us to pray, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6.10; Lk 11.2). As to the specific issue of justice, Peter assures us that God’s “divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness” (2P 1.3)—an astonishing truth indeed. On the individual level, certainly, the believer can expect that God will enlighten and enable him to do whatever God has commanded. Including Justice.

But how?

Peter’s sentence continues: “through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”

The better we know God, the more clearly we’ll understand justice, and the more accurately we’ll be able to apply it.

How do we get to know God?

Through his Word.

We dive into its deep waters, and we spend time there, soaking, swimming, observing, immersed in truth and seeking the pearls that are certainly there. Over time, we begin to think the way God teaches us to think, to love what he loves and to hate what he hates. We begin not only to see with clarity that a given situation “just isn’t right,” but to see how it can best be remedied in ways consistent with God’s.

The longer I live, the more I’m inclined to think that justice is not most effectively imposed from the top down, or the outside in. You can tell people that racial discrimination, for example, is wrong, and you can make laws against it, but people inclined to engage in racial discrimination will find ways to do it out of public view, ways that can’t be effectively prosecuted. And what do you call it when lots of people like that live together?

You call that systemic racism.

Laws can’t fix that. Of course societies should seek to make injustice difficult, and laws are a part of that. But they can’t fix the underlying problem.

This old guy has come to believe that justice—real, lasting justice—has to come from the inside out. It has to come from the heart, from individual people who are determined to want justice and to act within their sphere of influence to do justly and to encourage others to do the same.

In other words, to follow the biblical pattern: regenerated sinners, indwelt by the Spirit of God, illuminated to understand His Word, and imbued with that Word by long hours of study and meditation, begin to think about justice as God thinks, consequently seeing the wrong and seeing the path to making it right.

Doing justly, one person, one home, one block, one neighborhood at a time.

Until the day when “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Am 5.24).

Part 3: Mercy | Part 4: A Humble Walk

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

“What Do You Want from Me, God?” Part 1

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One of the most well-known passages in the Old Testament springs from an argument between God and his people. The prophet Micah writes to the people of Israel—there’s some in there for the Northern Kingdom, but primarily he focuses on Jerusalem—and brings a word of judgment: “the mountains will melt,” he says (Mic 1.4).

And why?

For rebellion—and specifically, for idolatry (Mic 1.5) and for abuse of fellow Israelites through fraud (Mic 2.1-2).

For three chapters the warning continues, alternating between a catalog of Israel’s sins and a catalog of the judgments that are coming.

Then, suddenly, the tone shifts. God’s looks beyond the judgment to the days that will follow. God will establish his kingdom in Jerusalem for a time of peace, prosperity, unity, and true worship (Mic 4.1-8). Even in the face of judgment, God’s people can look forward to his mercy (Mic 4.9-13). He will send a deliverer, born in Bethlehem (Mic 5.2), who “will arise and shepherd his flock” (Mic 5.4). The rest of chapter 5 eagerly anticipates the day of blessing.

But with chapter 6 the tone returns to the earlier chastisement. God has an indictment against Israel (Mic 6.2), and justice must be done.

You would think that God’s people would respond to all this with repentance, either out of fear or out of eagerness for the blessing. On the contrary, though, their response is shocking.*

What do you want from me?! Do you want all my animals, my entire flock, in sacrifice? Would that make you happy? How about if I slaughter my firstborn son for you? Will that be enough?!

What do you want, anyway?!

You can practically see the veins popping out on Israel’s neck.

If you and I were God, there would be a smoking crater where Israel was standing.

But we’re not God—and all the universe is infinitely better for that. God’s response to his insolent children is as shocking as their insolence. In calm, measured tones, he surprisingly de-escalates the confrontation with words of invitation and reconciliation.

You know what I want; I’ve told you before. I don’t want anything unreasonable or destructive or confiscatory.

I want you to do justice. I want you to love mercy. And I want you to walk humbly with me, your God.

In Jesus’ time, the rabbis argued about which of the 635 commandments in the Scripture was the greatest. One of the favorite candidates was this passage. (As we know, Jesus chose another, Deuteronomy 6.4.) It’s easy to understand why some of the rabbis argued for this one. It’s theologically, logically, and rhetorically deep, and brilliant, and pleasant to the soul.

I think it’s worth spending a little time on. I plan to spend the next 3 posts meditating on the 3 things that God kindly and patiently requested from his estranged people.

* Scholars disagree on the tone of Micah 6.6-7. I think the context justifies the tone I’ve ascribed to it here.

Part 2: Justice | Part 3: Mercy | Part 4: A Humble Walk

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash