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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Crushed.

August 31, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We all love the underdog. We cheer for David against Goliath. We love it when the cocky athletic novice gets a whoopin’ from the aging veteran of the sport.

But we don’t like it when the roles are reversed, when we’re the one who’s humiliated.

The Bible gives examples of people getting humiliated. We can learn from them.

Pharaoh

We all know the story of Moses before Pharaoh. Moses appears in his court and delivers the message from God: “Let my people go” (Ex 5.1). Pharaoh’s reply is terse and pointed:

“Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go.”

We’ve always known how the story turns out—Pharaoh is The Bad Guy. But just as a thought experiment, put yourself in Pharaoh’s sandals. You’re the most powerful man in the world. If you say someone dies, he dies. You tell neighboring kings you want their treasures, and they give them to you. Maybe you know that this Moses was raised in the court 40 years ago; maybe you don’t. But even if you do, you know he’s been keeping sheep in the desert ever since. He’s a has-been, a one-hit wonder who’s now eking out a living playing at county fairs and trying to relive the old glory. And his god? Why should you be impressed with him? What has he done?

But as I say, we all know how the story turns out.

God takes on the gods of Egypt, one by one—starting with the Nile—and in 9 plagues demonstrates that he is greater than them all. And then he turns toward Pharaoh himself and kills his firstborn, the heir, at midnight. And the families of the kingdom are too busy mourning their own loss to mourn his.

He lets God’s people go.

Nebuchadnezzar

There’s another example.

Eventually, as they all do, Pharaoh and his kingdom wane, and another kingdom rises. Babylon defeats Egypt at Carchemish, and Nebuchadnezzar becomes the most powerful man in the world. He builds a capital city on the Euphrates, including an artificial mountain—reportedly for his wife, who missed the mountains of her homeland—with water pumped to the top to supply a waterfall. He stands on the 300-foot-tall wall of the city (that’s what Herodotus says, anyway) highly impressed with himself:

“Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan 4.30).

Again, put yourself in his shoes. He’s telling the truth; no one can dispute it.

But God faces no one mightier than himself. “While the word was in the king’s mouth” (Dan 4.31) Nebuchadnezzar lost his mind, spending the next seven years as the crazy guy down the street, sleeping in the woods and eating grass off the lawn of the county courthouse.

It’s a tribute to Nebuchadnezzar’s personal power that seven years later, when he walked into the palace and said, “I’m back,” everybody apparently agreed. This only increases the contrast between Nebuchadnezzar’s power and that of God, who brought him down in an instant.

Uzziah

One more example, perhaps less well known.

Judah’s king Azariah, or Uzziah, is one of the most successful. He becomes king at 16 and reigns for 52 years (2Ch 26.3)—a veritable Queen Elizabeth (either one). He’s successful in war, and in economy, and in foreign affairs. He’s good at what he does.

One day he decides that if he’s the king, he can be a priest as well.

Now, in God’s design, only two people could be both priest and king. The first was Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most High God (Ge 14.18); the second is the One for whom Melchizedek’s order was created, the Son of God, king of kings, Jesus Christ (Ps 110.4).

Uzziah’s very badly out of line.

As he had done with Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar before him, God reaches out and takes Uzziah down. Leprosy breaks out on his forehead—where everyone can see it—and Uzziah lives as an isolate and outcaste for the rest of his life (2Ch 26.19-21).

Would you like to get crushed? There’s a way to do that.

Promote yourself. Rejoice in yourself. Live for yourself.

And God will bring you down.

Pride goes before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before stumbling
(Pr 16.18).

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you at the proper time,
casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you
(1P 5.6-7).

Photo by mwangi gatheca on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Ethics Tagged With: humiliation, pride

On Well-Intentioned Viral Campaigns

August 17, 2020 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Last week I posted a question on Facebook:

“How does the viral posting of a photo of a white boy murdered by a black man contribute anything constructive to the conversation?”

I was not trolling, as one commenter suggested; I was actually looking for answers. So I waited, not interacting at all with the responses, just letting them accumulate and interact with one another. By posting time for this blog entry, there were 68 comments, which statisticians tell us is more than enough for useful analysis.

One of my friends—and by that I mean not just a Facebook friend, but an actual friend, whom I know, like, respect, and pray for—posted a characteristically thoughtful response, including these words:

“I feel like a fool and a horrible person if I draw attention to what happened to George Floyd (which I did) and I refuse to highlight this horrible situation with this innocent five-year-old.”

Most of the others who responded to the question—as opposed to those who just cheered from the sidelines, for one side or the other—cited media bias as their motivator: they wanted to highlight a crime that the media were ignoring, in stark contrast to the perceived media over-reporting of the Floyd episode.

As more than one commenter noted, however, there has indeed been national news coverage of both stories, despite the frequent allegation that “the media are just ignoring [the latter story].” By the time I posted my question, CNN, Newsweek, and People Magazine, as well as wire services from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox / Cox, and even the Independent in the UK had run stories on it. It’s obvious that the Floyd story got exponentially more coverage, but the statement that the story is being “ignored” is just not true.

One commenter acknowledged that there had been national media coverage of both events, but that the latter one was not reported with any reference to race, while the racist motives of the police involved with Floyd were assumed from the outset. Significantly, the family of the boy has specifically requested that the case not be characterized as about race.

And thus arises the issue that motivated my question in the first place.

In 2018, which is apparently the last year for which reliable data are available, 255 children aged 1 to 4 were murdered. Of those, 129 were white, and 113 were black. As far as I know, there’s no simple way to determine the race of the offender in each of those cases, but we do know that of all the murders of whites, of any age, in that year (3,315), 81% (2677) were committed by other whites, and 16% (514) were committed by blacks. If we extend that ratio to the murders of children, then in that year about 25 white children aged 1 to 4 were murdered by blacks. (Feel free to check my math.)

Now, we can all agree that that number is too high.

But can you find a way to understand, when you share that story for the stated purpose of calling attention to an injustice, why many of the people you’re trying to convince might suspect that there’s a racial motive involved? Look at that horrible black man.

Why did you pick one of the 25? Why not pick one of the other 230?

In a culture where the atmosphere is already toxic, where we’re predisposed to distrust one another, we have to think carefully about the perceived motivations and implications of our actions, even when our intentions are completely above board. Audience analysis. Strategy.

We’re not going to convince anybody—change anybody’s mind—if we don’t think about these things.

And that’s what we want, right? To change minds?

One of the commenters suggested that all this is just venting—that it’s not really about conversation or discussion or making progress toward a solution. (Everything after the dash is my words, not his.) If he’s right, then we’re all in deep trouble—first, with God, because venting is just giving in to the flesh, one of the great enemies of our soul, and second, as a society, because venting is not the path to a solution and a consequent livable society, but a death spiral into chaos, to which we will all have contributed and for which we will all be guilty.

We’re going to come to a solution, if we ever do, one person at a time, by holding ourselves accountable, speaking in wisdom, and committing to be part of the solution rather than merely ratcheting up the rage.

Filed Under: Culture, Ethics

On How You’re Remembered (Strategery)

August 6, 2020 by Dan Olinger 7 Comments

A few days ago I posted something on Facebook that caused some controversy. It was a reflection on an issue that’s extremely controversial—how we discuss our varying responses to the current pandemic. The whole world is worked up about this pandemic, because it’s global, and significant, and consequential.

As often happens, the comments turned back to arguing about the issue rather than about how we discuss the issue, which was my original point—and the hostility of the discussion pretty well made my point, which was that some things are more important than other very important things—that some things are infinitely important.

Years ago I had an experience that significantly changed my thinking about this principle. My father got involved in a tax-protest movement and stopped filing his taxes. I got to thinking about doing the same thing.

I was young—just out of college and into grad school—and at that moment I did one of the very few wise things I did in those days.

I went to see Dr. Panosian.

He was the chairman of the History Department at BJU at the time, and one of the school’s most well-respected professors. I thought his advice would be wise.

So I sat in his office and explained what the movement was all about and asked him what he thought.

He leaned back in his chair, looked off into the distance for a few seconds, and in that remarkably deep and sonorous voice, he spoke words that changed my life.

“Dan,” he said, “someday you’re going to die.”

And I wondered, what does that have to do with tax protest?

“And when you die,” he continued, “you’re going to be remembered for something. You need to decide whether this is what you want to be remembered for.”

And with those three brief sentences, uttered in less than 30 seconds, he expressed such concise and clear wisdom that I was ashamed that I had needed his help in the first place. I should have been able to figure that out myself. What a stupid question I had asked.

When my death notice comes out, do I want people to say, “Oh, yeah, Dan. He was that tax protestor, wasn’t he?”

Not in a million years.

I want them to say, “Oh, yeah, Dan. He believed Jesus. He studied his Word and taught it to others. I’m happier and closer to Jesus because of something he said once. I’m glad our paths crossed.”

Since then, I’ve been a lot less inclined to get all fired up about less important stuff. I get involved in righteous causes, of course; but I can’t find myself getting all riled up about the Outrage of the Day. I have overriding responsibilities, and confidence in the good plan of the One who gave them to me.

That brings grace. Mercy. Peace.

It brings joy. Confident expectation (“hope,” in the biblical sense).

And focus. Focus on the long view, the eternal issues, the most important goal. Strategery.

So.

You might be wondering what happened to my Dad.

Eventually he got under conviction for breaking the law and turned himself in.

The IRS said, “Don’t leave town; we’ll look into your case and get back to you.”

A few weeks later they called him in.

They said, “Mr. Olinger, your case is very interesting. You worked a union job at the Boston paper before you retired, didn’t you?” Yep. Linotype operator at the Herald American. Closed shop.

“And you held your union seniority after you retired.” Yep. A little union trick. You don’t quit your job; you put on a “permanent sub.”

“And then Rupert Murdock came in and bought the paper—and with it he bought out all the union contracts with a cash payment.” Yep.

“Your buyout check was handled through the union office in Boston, where they withheld taxes on the settlement based on your union income level, before they sent it on to you.” Yep.

“Well, Mr. Olinger, we’ve determined that since you’re retired now and not making as much as you were in the union job, you were over-withheld on that buyout check. Here’s what we owe you. Have a nice day.”

Now, I know what was going on there. Dad had no assets for them to recover, and they knew it. So they showed mercy and grace, figuring that he’d tell his tax protester friends and that some bigger fish would be enticed by his story to turn themselves in. The IRS was thinking strategically, far beyond the current case.

The children of this world are often wiser than the children of light.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Filed Under: Ethics, Personal

On Being Like Jesus, Part 8: Closing Thoughts

July 16, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time | Part 3: Aligning Your Values | Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself

You’re not going to be called on, like Christ, to die for the sins of the world. But wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, God has called you to be like Christ, to represent him well (2Co 5.20) by serving others rather than being fixated on yourself. 

How can you live that out in your ordinary life?

  • You can notice when someone around you could use a hand. Hold a door; pick up what someone’s dropped; tell a friend there’s ink on his face. 
  • You can decide to spend less time thinking about your own happiness, or success, or popularity, or grooviness,* and think instead about how you can help other people get those things. Pass the ball. Redirect the spotlight. Make somebody else look good. 
  • You can think about the effect of your actions on people you don’t see right now. Clean up after yourself; pick up trash off the sidewalk. Don’t say every clever thing that pops into your head. Leave a loose end on the roll of toilet paper. 
  • You can choose to obey regulations and laws you think—or know—you don’t need, because that helps everybody, in more ways than you can imagine. 
  • You can take responsibility for your own actions instead of blaming your misfortunes on someone else. You got the grade you got because you didn’t study, not because the test was stupid. You got a speeding ticket because you violated a policy that you already knew about, not because the cop hates you. 
  • You can think about the things you’re good at—everyone’s good at something—and figure out who you know that could use your help with that. Did you do well in school? How about tutoring someone who’s struggling? Are you tall? How about getting stuff off the high shelves for the rest of us? 
  • You can walk circumspectly—looking around—watching for situations that could use your help, and do what you can, even if it’s not something you’re particularly good at. You can go out of your way, inconvenience yourself, be late to something, miss a bus, because somebody just needed a little help.
  • You can look for ways to be kind to someone you don’t like. He’s voting for that other guy. He advocates positions that are stupid. He’s a jerk. He’s nasty to you. Rather than unfriending him :-), how about watching his posts to see if there’s something he needs or wants that you can provide? How about encouraging him privately when he’s angry or afraid or sad? How about praying for him—grace, mercy, peace?
  • You can notice when other people are kind to you, or help you, or do things that benefit you, and you can thank them for it, specifically. 

You may never be at the homecoming dance at Richmond High. You may never need to be a hero. But you can live every day in a way that benefits the people around you. 

By God’s grace and with His help, you can be like Christ. 

* I use a word that’s hopelessly outdated to make a point. Whatever the term for “popular” or “admired” is in the current culture, it will be outdated in a few years—so outdated that people will laugh when you use it, taking it as an indication that you are hopelessly behind the times and thus the very opposite of what the word used to mean. Public admiration is a transient and ethereal thing. We seek it as if it were a thing of value, and it isn’t.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Ethics, Theology Tagged With: New Testament, Philippians, sanctification

On Being Like Jesus, Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself

July 13, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time | Part 3: Aligning Your Values | Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low

Let’s start with a quick review.

Being Christlike begins by changing the way you think—specifically, what you value (Php 2.3) and where you focus (Php 2.4). That change in outlook will then issue in changing the way you act—divesting yourself (Php 2.6), humbling yourself (Php 2.7), and now—and finally—sacrificing yourself (Php 2.8).

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Christ, who is equal with the Father, as we’ve learned earlier (Php 2.6), submitted himself to the Father in obedience.

That is a mark of remarkable humility—and confidence, as we’ve discussed earlier. He obeyed someone who was not his superior.

We’re not like that. We don’t like to obey anybody, ever. As 4-year-olds, we thought we were smarter than our parents, and as 14-year-olds, we thought we were smarter than our teachers. (Actually, I recall acting that way openly in class when I was just 11. I was a precocious little snot, I was.) Today I have all kinds of friends who think they’re smarter than the government.

OK, maybe that was a flawed example. :-)

But the point stands. We don’t want to obey anybody, even—and most especially—those whom God himself has placed in authority over us.

Romans 13? Well, that says the government is a terror to evil and a praise to those who do good, and my government isn’t like that, so I don’t have to obey them.

By that standard, no one has ever had to obey any government that has ever existed, and God wrote Romans 13 as a gigantic joke.

That’s not a conclusion I can come to.

Obey the government? Well, in the US the government is the Constitution, and our elected officials don’t follow it, so I don’t have to obey them and their stupid laws.

There’s a fancy term for that governmental philosophy; it’s called anarchy, when every man does what’s right in his own eyes. And it doesn’t turn out well.

Jesus obeyed. He is God, and he obeyed.

That’s remarkable.

The passage goes further.

Not only did he obey, but he obeyed at infinite cost—to death, and even the death of the cross.

Crucifixion was designed specifically to be the slowest, most painful death possible. The Father’s will was not to send Jesus to die during the French Revolution, when the guillotine was the execution device of choice.

Drop, lop, plop. Done.

He didn’t send him to die in Hiroshima in August of 1945, when his life would have ended in a brilliant flash of light and instant vaporization.

He sent him to the Roman Empire in the first century.

There has never been a worse time to die.

Obedience really cost him something. And this something went far beyond the merely physical pain.

Obedient unto death—even the death of the cross.

I’ve heard a lot of talk from Christians recently about persecution.

For the most part, I find it embarrassing.

What persecution? Against this background—the death of the cross—what persecution?

What have I sacrificed?

I’ll tell you about the worse I’ve ever suffered for Jesus.

In college, I was standing on a sidewalk in St. Matthews, SC, next to a friend who was preaching across the street from a bar during the Purple Martin Day Festival, the town’s annual street party. Some men came out of the bar to see what was going on. One of them had a large paper cup of beer, and he threw it at my friend. Missed him and hit me. Beer all over me.

That’s the worst I’ve ever suffered.

And to tell the truth, it was a hot night, and the cold beer actually fell pretty refreshing running down my front.

Serving Jesus has cost me nothing of any consequence.

I know that not everyone can say that. I have friends who have lost much to follow Christ, and I have friends of friends who have died violently specifically because they were Christian.

They would say that it has all been worth it.

Next time, we’ll share some closing thoughts.

Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Ethics, Theology Tagged With: New Testament, Philippians, sanctification

On Being Like Jesus, Part 6: Getting Low

July 9, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time | Part 3: Aligning Your Values | Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go

If the first exemplary action Christ took was to divest himself of something valuable (more on that in a moment), the second action was to humble himself (Php 2.7); as the NASB puts it, he “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.”

As I noted last time, the theology gets a little complicated here. Paul says that Christ “emptied himself.” Emptied himself of what? What did he throw overboard on the way from heaven to earth?

Did he give up his equality with God—his deity?

Well, we know that can’t be right, for several reasons. As a visible, corporeal human being, he said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8.58). He perfectly revealed the Father (Jn 14.9; Col 1.15; Heb 1.3). The fullness of the Godhead was in him bodily (Col 2.9). He was God with us (Mt 1.23). One of his disciples called him God, and he didn’t correct him (Jn 20.28). He forgave sins (Mk 2.7). He offered an infinite sacrifice, sufficient for all the sins of all the humans who have ever lived.

Only God could do those things.

So how did he empty himself? What did he throw overboard?

Our passage doesn’t actually say that he threw anything overboard; it says that “he emptied himself” by “taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men” (Php. 2.7). He didn’t lose anything he had; he added something burdensome.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of running a three-legged race. (I’ll bet it was at a church picnic, wasn’t it?).

How was your time in the 40 in that race? Better or worse than usual?

Worse?! How could that be? You had an extra leg, didn’t you?

In this case, having an extra leg doesn’t make you faster. It’s an added burden.

I said last time that no metaphors about God work perfectly, and the three-legged race is deficient as well—Jesus’ act of bearing both human and divine natures simultaneously was (and is) not clumsy or comical—but it serves well enough for our purpose. He took on a human nature, and that weighed him down in some sense. As Darrell Bock has observed, the incarnation “was subtraction by humble addition”; and as we learned in elementary school, subtraction is simply the addition of a negative number.

So Christ, valuing our need more than himself, refused to view his equality with God as something he had to hold and protect, but took the drastic step of becoming a man, becoming in form like a slave. That step had eternal ramifications for him as well as us. He is still a man, with a body, apparently forever bearing the scars (Jn 20.27) of his corporeal humiliation. That move did not cost him his equality with God, but it did cost him a lifetime of humiliation, disgust, and pain.

If you’re a believer, sacrificing yourself for others is not going to cost you anything eternal; you’ll still be God’s child, and you’ll still be secure in his love. But it will cost you other things, including your own will and your own way. It’ll probably cost you some respect, and it may even cost you some money. For some, it has even cost them their life. But if you take Jesus’ view, you won’t value those things, certainly not more than following his example.

Get low. Humble yourself. Set aside things you care too much about. Rest in the confidence of God’s plan and care for you, and take some risks.

Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Ethics, Theology Tagged With: New Testament, Philippians, sanctification

On Being Like Jesus, Part 5: Letting Go

July 6, 2020 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time | Part 3: Aligning Your Values | Part 4: Aligning Your Focus

The first two steps in becoming more like Christ, as Paul lays them out in Philippians 2.3ff, involve changing the way you think; you align your values with Christ’s, and then you focus on what he focused on.

Jesus himself teaches us that actions result from thoughts; “out of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mt 12.34). Our next step is going to involve changing our actions, but we’re not going to be able to do that unless we take those first two steps first, changing the way we think. History is filled with failures on that score.

Beginning with Philippians 2.5, Paul turns to Christ as an example of the ideas he’s laid out in verses 3-4; Christ’s actions, which we can see, are examples of the kind of thinking he’s asking us to pursue. I’d like to suggest that there are three steps—action steps—that Christ took in the behavior Paul describes here.

To begin with, Jesus divested himself—he let go of what he had.

Now, we’re getting into some complex and incomprehensible theological concepts here, so we want to be careful how we describe what Jesus did. Though we are in God’s image, God is fundamentally unlike us, and unlike anyone or anything else—that’s essentially what we mean when we say that God is “holy”—and consequently we can’t describe him accurately with a metaphor, which is one of the primary ways we come to understand things. So we’re working at a significant disadvantage here. Let’s proceed cautiously.

The text says that Jesus was “in the form of God” (Php 2.6). In English that sounds like he looked like God, but he actually wasn’t. And that’s a badly mistaken reading of what Paul is saying here. Jesus is the same shape as God; he’s like God in every respect. He is distinct from the Father but equal to him.

Now, Paul says, in that situation, Jesus didn’t regard his equality with God—which he did indeed have—as something that he needed to hold onto for dear life, the way a drowning man holds desperately to his rescuer. Why? Because equality with God is inherently his. He doesn’t have to fight for it or to fight off challenges to it. He’s confident; he’s in his natural state. This is just the way he is.

In the next verse this situation is going to get pretty sticky—but that’s for the next post. The key point here is that Jesus didn’t feel as though he had to hang on to what he had.

We’re not like that. We want what we have, and we hold these things insecurely, and we’re terrified of losing them. As I write this, we’re still in the midst of this pandemic business, and some of my friends are trying desperately to hang on to their health, while others are trying desperately to hang on to their rights, and come, um, high water and even worse stuff, nobody’s going to let go; this is a tug of war to the death. Don’t give an inch. If we lose what we have, we’ll never get it back.

That’s a sign of weakness.

It’s like the teacher who really won’t smile before Thanksgiving, because he’s afraid that he’ll lose control of the class. He’s incompetent, or he fears that he is, and his militancy is a cover for his insecurity.

Jesus isn’t like that. He doesn’t hang on to anything for fear of losing it. He’s willing to divest himself of whatever he has, for the benefit of those whose well-being he values. (Did he “divest himself” of his equality with God? Be patient; that’s for next time.)

Whatever you have—time, money, energy, whatever—you hold loosely, ready to drop it in an instant if by doing so you can serve others.

How do we act that out in a day of Covid?

I’m not your governor, and I’m not going to tell you what to do specifically.

Be like Jesus.

Here’s what he didn’t do. He didn’t say, “I’ll be glad to help you out, as long as it doesn’t, like, cost me anything.”

Someday the crisis of the day will be a distant memory, but the people you serve will still be conscious, in this life or the next, and they’ll still be valuable. Invest what you have, by God’s grace, in them, not in yourself.

Imagine if Jesus hadn’t done that for you.

Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Ethics, Theology Tagged With: New Testament, Philippians, sanctification

On Being Like Jesus, Part 4: Aligning Your Focus

July 2, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time | Part 3: Aligning Your Values

Paul’s first principle in his description of being like Jesus (Php 2.3-8) is to change your values—specifically, to regard others as more important than yourself (Php 2.3). In this post we turn to the second, complementary principle—we need to change what we focus on:

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others (Php 2.4).

As I’ve noted, this is complementary; it builds on the first principle. We begin by valuing others more than ourselves, and that change in valuation prompts us to “look out for” the interests of those we value.

I suppose the best illustration of this is parents with their children. In most cases this radical shift in focus happens naturally; it’s the rare exception when a mother feels no natural instinct to care for her infant, and indeed to put the infant’s well-being ahead of her own. Parents routinely sacrifice sleep for their newborn, and often they take on extra work to provide for the child’s needs, and further to provide things that may not be needs but that they consider important to the child’s success.

I well remember my last year in public school. I was in 7th grade, in a junior high (that’s what we called them in those days) in a Boston suburb where the leadership was trying all the latest fads in educational theory. There were no grades; there was no discipline; and I was headed for trouble in several obvious ways. My parents decided that my Mom would go to work—she had excellent secretarial skills—and in doing that they were able to pay for tuition in a Christian school several towns over. For the next 4 years I rode to work with my parents, caught a city bus to the next town, walked half a mile down a hill to the private school bus stop, and rode to school on Mr. Dutton’s bus. Reversed the process in the afternoon, studied at Mom’s office till 5, and then drove home with my parents.

Mom didn’t have to do that. I could have kept on going to school for free, catching a bus right down at the corner nearest my house.

But like pretty much all parents, my parents were willing to upend their lives to my advantage, because, at root, they valued me above themselves.

That’s natural, or so it seems. We value our children, and so we focus on their success.

Now, here’s the thing.

We need to do that with everybody.

Everybody.

The ones we don’t naturally feel any special attachment to.

The ones who don’t seem to be as valuable as we are.

And to our minds, that’s pretty much everybody outside our friends and family—and maybe some people within our friends and family as well.

You know who I’m talking about. :-)

The emphasis in our current verse (Php 2.4) is on focus, on looking around, on paying attention. It’s on noticing need and then acting on it.

You can’t notice if you’re not paying attention—indeed, if you haven’t developed the habit of paying attention.

You can’t notice if your nose is buried in your phone as you’re walking down the sidewalk.

You won’t notice if, like me, you’re such a list-obsessed person that all you normally think about is the thing you’re working on right now, and the next thing, and the next.

Stop. Look around. Pay attention. Notice.

Sure, fellow list-makers, make your list; see to your responsibilities; make each day count; be strategic.

But as you’re doing that, value those around you, and watch them, looking for their needs, ready to be interrupted, and planning how you can help meet them.

When Jesus started his earthly ministry, he had three years to save the world. That’s a pretty big to-do list.

How would you have started?

He started by going over to Bashan and getting baptized. Then he went to a wedding, and when they ran out of wine, he provided some more.

And after 3 years of seeing and acting on other people’s needs, he saved the world.

Follow him.

Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Ethics, Theology Tagged With: New Testament, Philippians, sanctification

On Being Like Jesus, Part 3: Aligning Your Values

June 29, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important | Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time

In beginning this series I said that we should pattern ourselves after Christ, because it is into his image that the Father is transforming us during the lifelong process of sanctification (2Co 3.18). Of many biblical passages in which we can find information about Christ’s character and attributes, I’ve chosen to look at just one, the well-known, lyrical description in Philippians 2:

3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Before this passage gets to a description of Christ’s thinking and consequent actions, it begins with a couple of direct imperatives for Paul’s readers. Verse 3 addresses the mindset that should underlie our decisions, while verse 4 speaks of where our thinking should be focused. I’d like to take a post to deal with each of these imperatives. I’d suggest that verses 5 to 8, the description of Christ’s thinking and action, serve simply as an example of these two imperatives in practice—and so the imperatives are the underlying principles that more or less define Christ-likeness.

The first underlying principle—the first characteristic of Christ’s thinking and decision-making—is to “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.”

The principle is straightforward and uncomplicated: we’re to consider others as more important than ourselves.

Are they? Actually, the passage doesn’t say that. The Scripture is clear that we’re all—equally—in the image of God (Gen 1.26-27). the Creator has made each of us to be remarkable examples of living design, and we all have a place in his plan. You really are special—that statement isn’t just pandering psychobabble—and you know what? I’m just as special as you are.

But no human being has enough mass to be the center of the universe. God is the Center, and we as his creatures are designed to fulfill his purposes for this life and the life to come. Life goes badly when we consider ourselves the center of it. We are designed—and, here, instructed—to consider others as more valuable than ourselves.

In fact, Paul goes so far as to say that self-centeredness—the Greek word rendered “conceit” here means “glory”—is “empty”; there’s just nothing to it, like a cheese curl, or a soap bubble floating in a light summer breeze. All of our effort to bring glory to ourselves will simply come to nothing; in fact, it will likely encourage people to admire us less rather than more.

So instead of puffing ourselves up, ordering our affairs around our own advantage and interests, what does Paul call us to do?

Choose humility.

We’re funny about this; we admire humility in everyone except ourselves. We genuinely admire people who are genuinely humble, but we seem to think that those we admire will admire us more if we call attention to ourselves, grab the spotlight, make a big impression.

Nope.

I’ve taken several teams of students to Africa, involving all different kinds of kids. I’ve found things to admire about all of them.

But you know who made the biggest impression on me?

It was the one on the trip to Tanzania where we were out of running water for 5 weeks, and we had to cart 5-gallon buckets of water to two different houses for cooking and bathing. And whenever there was a moment, I’d see Jack (not his real name), without being told, carting 2 5-gallon buckets at a time over to the girls’ house to refill their water supply. Jack was a lot bigger and younger and stronger than I was, and he was using his gift to make a difference.

Be like Jack.

 Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Ethics, Theology Tagged With: New Testament, Philippians, sanctification

On Being Like Jesus, Part 2: Why It’s OK to Moralize, This Time

June 25, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Why It’s Important

Like many of my colleagues and fellow travelers, I’m leery of moralizing on deep theological passages. Gideon’s story is not about being watchful when you drink from a river, and the death of Goliath is not about “only a boy named David” and those “five little stones he took.”

Those passages are about the might of Israel’s God, and his faithful, loving covenant loyalty (hesed). In the main, the Scripture is about God, not us, and we do a disservice to its Author when we turn it into a self-help book.

I had an experience years ago that drove this idea home to me.

One Christmas my family was visiting my sisters in New England. Not far from one sister’s house was a colonial-era church, which is well known for its architecture. Built in 1719, it has the box pews and the pulpit sounding board that were common design features in those days. As it happens, a painting of the building was included in one of the BJU Press textbooks back in my days with the Press, and when I left the Press to join the BJU faculty, my boss, who knew how much I loved that illustration, gave me the original artwork (by John Roberts—no, not the Chief Justice), and it hangs in our dining room today.

I really wanted to visit that church.

We showed up for the Sunday morning service just before Christmas. The minister presented a homily on Mary’s Magnificat (Lk 1.39-56).

Now, I knew this church was theologically liberal, and I later learned that it had embraced liberal theology not long after it was founded; it was liberal before liberal was cool. But even knowing that, I was floored by the homily.

As students of the Scripture know, the Magnificat presents some really remarkable features—

  • To begin with, it exhibits extensive parallels with Hannah’s prayer of thanks after the birth of Samuel (1Sam 2.1ff), and it is delivered extemporaneously—which indicates that Mary was thoroughly familiar with Hannah’s song, having probably studied and memorized and meditated over it, in a day when most girls were never taught to read. As a literary work alone, it’s worthy of extensive study.
  • Further, it develops significant theological themes involving multiple divine attributes and works, demonstrating both his greatness and his goodness. Again, this is surprising in an age when women were generally not educated or included in theological discussions—all the more so if, as we suspect, Mary was a teenager at the time.

If it’s Christmas-time, and you’re preaching on the Magnificat, there’s no lack of substantive material to present. The hard part is deciding what to include in just one sermon.

So what was the homily about on this Christmas Sunday morning?

Mary said these things after her cousin Elisabeth had greeted her with uplifting words (Lk 1.42-45). So we should say uplifting words to one another, thereby encouraging one another to produce wonderful creative things.*

My friends, I’m all for encouraging people—even poets!—but that is not what the Magnificat is about. When we deal with biblical theology, we need to make it about what it’s about, not our own good feelings about ourselves.

So here in Philippians 2 we have a significant Christological passage, the classic biblical passage on Christ’s humiliation and exaltation. The deity and humanity of Christ are in here, and the divine plan involving the cross, and eventual obeisance of all life—human, both regenerate and unregenerate, and nonhuman as well—and the absolute and eternal lordship of Jesus Christ.

It’s not about us.

But—it is about us. The very reason Paul has (apparently) pulled this ancient hymn into this particular epistle to a particular church in Macedonia is that he wants to moralize on the theology it contains. He wants us to do what Jesus did—to humble ourselves, to serve others. He wants us to break the passage down and live it out—not just by worshiping the Great Lord Jesus, but by imitating him. We are to “let this mind be in [us]” (Php 2.5).

We’ll take a few posts to explore what that means.

* For some reason, I can remember the liberal sermons I’ve heard better than the conservative ones. I guess the horror makes the experience more memorable over the long term.

 Part 3: Aligning Your Values | Part 4: Aligning Your Focus | Part 5: Letting Go | Part 6: Getting Low | Part 7: Sacrificing Yourself | Part 8: Closing Thoughts

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Ethics, Theology Tagged With: New Testament, Philippians, sanctification

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