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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The Judgment Believers Face

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The Bible talks a lot about judgment. Jesus anticipates the day when he will sit as judge over the nations (Mat 25.31-46). And readers of the Bible are all struck by the bleakness of John’s description of the Great White Throne judgment in Revelation (Rev 20.11-15). These are harsh and terrifying scenes.

I can remember wondering as a boy if I would come before Christ, confident that I was saved, and learn to my shock that I was mistaken: “Depart from me; I never knew you” (Mat 7.21-23). It’s a frightful thought.

Paul tells us that all believers will stand before Christ for judgment, and that this judgment will be on the basis of our works (2Cor 5.10). And he intensifies the picture with his main verb; the English says, “We must all appear,” but the Greek verb does not mean simply “we must all make an appearance”; it means, “we must all be made transparent.” There will be no hiding, no excuses, no covering up hidden secrets. Everything will be out there.

Is this our lot? Are we going to stand before Christ and face his disappointment with us—even his wrath, the “wrath of the Lamb,” because of our sin? And will all our sin be paraded before everyone, shouted from the housetops, with nothing held back? How can we live in “grace, mercy, and peace” in the face of that prospect?

It’s true that we’ll be made transparent before the judgment seat of Christ. But the description I’ve given is nothing close to accurate. Here’s why.

First, you and I will never have to face the wrath of God for our sin. We deserve to, and we would have no argument had God chosen to do that. But he has not chosen to do that; he has chosen instead to pour out his infinite wrath on his Son, who has equally chosen to receive it. Not only is the wrath of the Lamb not directed at his people, but the love of the Lamb is the very reason that he chose to intercede for us against the Father’s wrath. God’s wrath was poured out on him (Mat 27.45-54), and his wrath has been propitiated (1Jn 4.10); there is no more left for us.

You will never face God for your sins. The mighty Lamb, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, has done that in your place. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5.1).

So what’s the judgment seat of Christ about? The passage tells us: “that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2Co 5.10). We’re giving account, not of our sins, but of our service—whether what we’ve done for Christ has been valuable (“good,” Gk. agathos) or worthless (“bad,” Gk. phaulos). We’re giving account of our stewardship.

Christ often spoke of this in his parables. The master returns from a long journey and sees what his servants have done with the resources he left with them (Mat 25.14-30; Lk 19.11-27); the king calls his servants to evaluate the quality of their service (Mat 18.23); even the crooked servant is commended for his diligence (Lk 16.1-13). Paul describes our works being tested by fire, so that the worthless and insubstantial (“wood, hay, stubble”) will be burned up and the valuable (“gold, silver, precious stones”) will be left for display (1Co 3.10-17).

Paul writes of the judgment seat of Christ in a context of warning—as does Jesus in telling his parables. This is serious business; you don’t want to disappoint the master or position yourself as an incompetent servant. He calls for diligence.

But the judgment seat doesn’t have to be a disappointment. Won’t it be great, if you’re a diligent servant, to present your service to him when he comes? Isn’t it great when a little child joyously and confidently greets her father at the door with “Daddy! Come see what I made for you!” Won’t that be something?!

Our father’s out of town on a trip (metaphorically speaking). He’s left us lots of really important things to do, but things that he’s equipped us for, things we can do well, things that bring great enjoyment. So we devote ourselves to those blessed tasks, and we anticipate his return, when we’ll be able to show him what we’ve done: “See what I made for you!”

There’s nothing to fear here. There’s no need for doubt, or apprehension, or a nagging dread in the pit of your stomach.

Serve with joy, and prepare for the reunion with delight.

Photo credit: Arek Socha

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 4: On Solutions

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Part 1  Part 2  Part 3

Wouldn’t it be great if we could solve this problem? Wouldn’t it be great if our culture treated women with respect, seeing them as more than just objects? If we saw everyone’s full potential as a unique creation in the image of God? Wouldn’t that be great?

We may be seeing a cultural sea change. We can never be sure of that in the middle of the moment; the defining points of history become clear only on later reflection. But many have suggested that the era of the casting couch in Hollywood is over.

We’ll see.

But there are some things that we can know, even as things are developing rapidly around us.

All of us, even those among us who don’t want to admit or accept it, know that civil behavior begins with fear—specifically, fear of punishment. That’s where we start with our children; that’s why state troopers drive around on the interstate, just being seen; that’s why people who aren’t powerful behave themselves in public. We don’t want to face the consequences of acting on our impulses.

Right now we’re in the fear stage. There are lots of brutish actors and athletes and news reporters and politicians who haven’t been outed yet, but they know they could be; and they’re keeping their heads down. Maybe some of them are even keeping their noses clean for the moment.

Fear works.

But nobody wants that kind of a culture for the long term. Parents don’t want their children to be afraid of them all the time; no husband and wife want to spend a lifetime in fear of one another. No respectful relationship can be based on fear alone.

The Bible says that “perfect love casts out fear” (1John 4.18). As a healthy relationship matures, we move from being fearful to being just nervous, then to being comfortable, then to being attracted, and finally to love—to being so fiercely devoted to the benefit of the other person that we’ll make any sacrifice for it.

That’s the way a marriage ought to be. That’s the way a society ought to be.

Perhaps raw fear will keep the predator numbers down, but it won’t bring us a healthy culture. We need love to do that. And that means learning one another, experiencing one another, as much as possible. It means interacting with our neighbors beyond the greeting from driveway to driveway. It means spending time with people who are not like us, the kind of time that allows us to learn why they think as they think and why they do as they do.

It means hard work.

Will our culture do that? Will we? Only time will tell.

But there’s more.

We can improve our society by these sorts of actions—social contracts, shared experiences, shared efforts. It’s been done before, though usually not without some motivating external influence, and usually a negative one, such as a war or a famine or a plague (remember 9/11?). But it can be done; it does happen.

But this kind of development doesn’t really solve the problem. It usually lowers the problem’s incidence and weakens its effect on the larger society—temporarily—but the problem is still there. There’s still rape, and theft, and murder. And beyond that, there’s still lust, and greed, and hatred.

These tendencies go deep; they’re part of who we are. And we can’t eradicate them by trying hard, or by singing Kum-Ba-Ya, or by buying the world a Coke, or by thinking globally and acting locally, or by visualizing world peace. You don’t get rid of a deeply embedded infection by taking something for the headache; you have to hit it hard and deep with really strong stuff.

So how do you heal a culture?

You heal it by healing its people, one at a time. And you do that by going after the infection, hard and deep.

That infection is called sin, and our culture not only doesn’t have anything with which to heal it—we don’t even believe that it exists. And until we do, there’s no road to a solution.

But there is a solution, and it has worked reliably, one person at a time, for thousands of years. It’s called repentance—turning from your sin—and faith—turning toward its Victor, the Christ. The solution to sin is found in the One who has already defeated it decisively, through a consistently victorious life, a powerfully overwhelming death, and an explosive resurrection.

With turning—conversion—come the mercy and forgiveness that heal our relationship with our Creator—which was our real problem all along—and then the grace and the guidance to change from the inside out, to change our thinking so that our behavior will naturally follow.

And that is the only solution.

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 3: On Causes and Effects

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Part 1  Part 2

A lot of people have expressed shock and surprise over the revelations of brutish behavior by so many men they had previously admired. How could these men have done such things? And further, how could so many of them have done such things? What have we come to? What is wrong with us?

What I find shocking and surprising is the shock and surprise.

For decades, our culture has engaged in the very kinds of thought and behavior that virtually assure that we would end up right where we are. For starters, we have used one of God’s delightful gifts—our creative energies—to trivialize another of his delightful gifts—sexuality—by reducing it to mere biological function. We have created, and rabidly consumed, entertainment that makes women mere collections of body parts to be ogled (we call that PG) and fondled (we call that R). For the most part, the women in our movies, our television shows, our game shows, our sports broadcasts, and even our news programs (!) are no more than eye candy, there for the shot that deftly catches the angles most likely to focus the viewer’s mind on the external and provoke a merely physical response. One news analysis show sports a “leg chair” featuring a clear shot of a female pundit—always a female—in a short skirt—always short. This is about news analysis, and the woman is a lawyer, for crying out loud; what’s the real objective here? Oh, and this is the politically “conservative” channel.

Yikes.

If we take in a steady diet of material that sees women as meat, we’re going to think of them as meat, and we’re going to toss them around like so many beef carcasses.

We’ve reaped what we’ve sowed.

A second practice is our elevation of creatures to the status of creators. We’ve made gods of mere men.

We all want heroes, and genuine heroism should be thanked and celebrated. The generation of young men who took on two world powers at the same time, on opposite sides of the world, and by dint of grit and guts and discipline and determination ground them into powder—the Greatest Generation—are rightfully heroes. But I’ve noticed that those men, real heroes all, didn’t really ask for anything special. They didn’t want to talk about their exploits except to deflect praise to others, especially those who died by their sides. They wanted simple, ordinary pleasures—a wife, a child or two, a house, a back yard, maybe a picket fence. Peace.

And they cared for their people, because they had fought for them.

But opportunities for real heroism on that scale don’t come along very often, and in those in-between times, we want heroes. So we make them up. We celebrate actors, and athletes, and musicians, not simply respecting their legitimate accomplishments or their disciplined devotion to their craft—which are worthy of respect—but pouring adulation and worship on them, making them idols, American or otherwise. And then we adulate those in power in those industries or in politics. And eventually we even make gods out of people who just read the news.

Humans aren’t designed to be gods; they’re designed to be worshipers. When we make them gods, they respond poorly, like anyone else who’s in a position for which he is completely unqualified. They are corrupted by the power, they feel undeservedly invulnerable, and away we go.

There’s irony here.

We pride ourselves on our modernity. We’ve outgrown our ancient superstitious ways. We’re scientific. Yeah, that’s it.

How scientific is it to compile terabytes of data on physical and psychological human sexual response—something we’ve put an inordinate amount of time and resources into studying—then do all of the things that incite the raw hormonal reaction, and then act surprised when the chemical reaction occurs? How scientific is that?

“Officer, I just poured gasoline all over the building and then lit a match; I had no intention of burning the place down.”

And to increase our guilt, we’ve criticized those who said, “Um, you keep that up, you’re gonna burn the place down,” as joyless prudes.

That’s not gonna stand up in court.

Part 4

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 2: On Celebrating Sin

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Part 1

One interesting feature of the recent scandals is their breadth. The current wave began with revelations about the office atmosphere at a conservative Republican—leaning (!) media outlet, Fox News, with the most visible examples being founder Roger Ailes and star talent Bill O’Reilly. Then there was a bit of a pause until revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was not, um, conservative or Republican. And then the dam broke—media personalities at the left-wing Vox and at NBC, powerful Hollywood icons, a fashion designer, and the usual string of libidinous politicians, both red and blue.

This breadth has given us an opportunity to watch partisanship in action. When a politically conservative abuser is uncovered, the left calls for his head; when a leftist is uncovered, the right does the same. But when the perv is “our guy,” each side rushes to the ramparts and defends The Cause against Scurrilous and Unfounded Charges by Evil or Manipulated Women Out to Make a Fast Buck or Just Get Attention.

Yikes.

We call that hypocrisy. And nobody likes it—when it’s practiced by the Other Side.

There’s a reason why we don’t like it, at least in other people. Because we’re created in the image of God, there’s something deep inside us, even as broken and sinful people, that wants to be like him—that resonates with his qualities, even if we have difficulty putting them into practice.

And this particular quality is truthfulness. God is true and faithful and trustworthy. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for that quality, ‘emunah, is the source of our English word amen (“May it be so!”). We celebrate his truthfulness, and we seek it in others. Every government makes it a crime, or at least a misdemeanor, to break your word, to fail to keep a contract, to slander or libel someone. We expect truthfulness.

And that’s why we jeer at the opposition for their hypocrisy, even as we excuse it in ourselves. That’s different, you see; ours is a completely different situation. Apples and oranges.

Nonsense.

When we engage in such sophistry, defending vice against virtue when it suits our cheap temporal goals, we have descended to the level of the perverts themselves. We despise them for being one thing on TV, or on the Senate floor, and being something very different after they’ve pressed the button under their desk to lock their office door. They’re hypocrites.

Just like us.

Others have noted that sinfulness is not necessarily hypocrisy; a legislator can vote for a law against fornication while being a fornicator who is trying desperately to stop. The hypocrite is one who does not see his sin as sin—who continues it while demanding that others stop. And neither side in this controversy shows any interest in stopping the partisan hypocrisy.

As evil as all this is, I think there’s another element to it that’s even worse, especially when practiced by believers.

In his classic passage on love, Paul lists a number of admirable characteristics of genuine love. Among those is the remarkable statement that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1Co 13.6). And love, you’ll recall, is both the first and second great commandment, according to Jesus (Mt 22.37-40).

I think we’ve all had this experience. There’s a new allegation; a new perp is uncovered. And he’s on the Other Side.

There a place deep inside us that feels really, really good about it. Oh, yeah, the other guys have another sleazeball.

And we rejoice.

Oh, we tell ourselves, as we shake our heads, it’s just a shame. Those poor victims—how they must be hurting. How sad that it took so long for their abusers to be unmasked. Such injustice. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Let’s see that justice is done, for the good of all, and for truth, justice, and the American way.

But we still rejoice.

We’re glad it happened. This’ll look really bad on the Other Side’s resume. How many House seats will this give us in the next election? How many more Supreme Court justices will this give us? How many decades of Our Side winning?

Yaaaaaay!

When we think that way, we’re not thinking like God. We’ve taken sides against him.

Time for us to change too.

Part 3 Part 4

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 1: On Abuse of Power

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Who is it today?

Who’s been outed as a sexual harasser?

The parade goes on, day after day; another famous person, it turns out, has been creepy all along. And the “outing” is happening because suddenly, people are starting to speak up.

Good for them.

Everyone I know hopes that the parade of perp walks continues until justice has been done for everyone. And maybe, just maybe (hope against hope!), this is the beginning of a sea change in our culture, one that changes fundamentally the way we address our sexuality. (More on that later.)

As I’ve watched all this unfold over the past few weeks, I’ve had a few thoughts that I’d like to share in the next few posts.

First, as I suppose everyone knows, most of these cases have been about a fundamental imbalance of power. Someone in power—perhaps a boss, or someone else in a position to affect the victim’s career significantly, seeks sexual favors from the victim, with the explicit or implicit promise of good career prospects if the victim consents or the threat of bad ones if she (usually she) refuses. Many of the victims said that they gave in because of this pressure. I’ve found it interesting to note that in this latest wave, some Democrats have finally spoken out against Bill Clinton’s misbehavior, more than two decades after the fact; is it just a coincidence that with Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential election, the Clintons are now not in any position to retaliate? Is the two decades of silence simply part of the same power imbalance?

This is a serious problem, first because it involves the deepest urges of every human, and second because it crosses cultural and chronological barriers: it’s been going on for a long time, and wherever human beings interact.

We would expect, then, that the Bible would have something to say about it. And it does.

We could start with Jesus’ teaching, specifically with the fact that he elevated love of others to the second great commandment, below only our relationship with God himself. If you love someone else, then you sacrifice your own well-being for hers; using others, whether against their will or not, to satisfy your own needs is precisely the opposite of how Jesus lived his life and how he expects us to live ours—indeed, how he demands that we live ours, with open threat of future judgment.

But the Bible speaks even more directly to what we’re seeing play out on our newsfeeds day after day. The Old Testament prophets raged against those in power who used that power to abuse others. Amos condemned leaders in Israel “who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted” (Amos 2.7), who “turn aside the needy in the gate” (Amos 5.12)—that is, who withhold justice from those appealing to the court system. Amos’s contemporary Isaiah joins the chorus, calling Israel to “seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isa 1.17). And more than a century later, Jeremiah turns his fire on neighboring Judah:

Execute justice in the morning [i.e., immediately], and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed, lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of your evil deeds (Jer 21.12).

Judah, as we all know, ignored the warning and spent 70 years in captivity in Babylon. After they returned, God sent more prophets to warn them against returning to their old ways. One of them, Zechariah, said,

Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart (Zech 7.9-10).

Is this all only for Israel? Did God judge other nations for allowing the weak to be persecuted by the powerful? You can find the answer to that question by reading the book of Obadiah. It’ll take you less than 2 minutes.

Micah lyrically sums up what God expects of those in power: Do justice; love kindness; walk humbly with your God (Micah 6.8).

Perhaps the clearest example of this kind of abuse comes from a surprising figure, King David himself, the sweet singer of Israel, the man after God’s own heart. In a moment of lust, he takes to himself another man’s wife. (Of course she assents; what choice does she have?) God sends the prophet Nathan (2Sam 12.1) to tell the satisfied king a story about a rich man who takes his poor neighbor’s one little beloved lamb to feed to a guest. The outraged David orders the rich man’s immediate execution. Nathan violently jerks the potentate’s chain with the simple words, “You are the man!” (2Sam 12.7).

Speaking truth to power. It’s a thing.

And governments should have protections in place to prevent the powerful from using their power to abuse the powerless.

That’s what God says.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Unbroken by a Broken World

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It was a mildly chilly winter day in South Africa, and the BJU Africa team and I were returning from a sight-seeing trip to the Cape of Good Hope—my favorite place in the world. Some of our team members had been surprised by a rogue wave at Dias Beach, and since we were planning to eat dinner at Mariner’s Wharf restaurant in Hout Bay on the way home, they wanted to try to find some (cheap) dry clothes to buy and wear for the rest of the day. So we stopped in Simon’s Town, a beautiful little harbor village on the Cape, where there are plenty of shops.

While they were shopping, I thought I’d use the opportunity to replenish my supply of cash, so I hit a bank machine with my TD Bank debit card to access the team’s account. A quick couple thousand rands, and the transaction’s done. It’s all good.

As I’m leaving the machine, a local man stops me with a kind warning: I haven’t logged out of the ATM, and someone else could come along and access my account.

No, I say, I have my card. I’m logged out.

No, he says, they’ve changed the software; you need to actually log out of the machine, or your account is still open. A random passerby confirms his words. You need to put the card back in and execute a formal logout to protect your data.

I think you can see where this is going.

By the time we’re done, the two guys—they’re working together—have my debit card and the PIN, and they’ve disappeared into the crowd. Three-tenths of a second later, I can see exactly what they’ve done, but it’s too late to catch them.

I’ve been scammed.

Well, this is gonna be a problem. They have access to the team’s bank account.

I make a quick call back to the States to the father of one of the team members, who just happens to be a bank president. He calls TD Bank with my account number, and the account is locked, but not before the scammers have gotten some of our money.

Years later, I can say that it all came out fine. We had plenty of money to pay our expenses, and while I couldn’t access it without the debit card, I did have a credit card that got us through the rest of the trip and home, where we could use the funds still in the account to pay the credit-card bill. No problem.

I’ve learned some things from that valuable experience. (In fact, learning things is what makes the experience valuable.)

Most obviously, things are not always what they seem. We need to pay attention to details; in thinking back over the experience, I realized there were several things that I should have noticed that would have foiled the creeps.

But a greater lesson for me has been the danger of over-reacting—in fear, or in bitterness, or, most dangerously, in cynicism. Not everyone’s a scammer, and while I can engage in practices that lower my vulnerability, I shouldn’t distrust everybody. I should accept legitimate kindness from strangers, and I should offer help to strangers without fearing that they’ll think I’m a bad guy.

There’s always been sin—well, always in practical terms, anyway. The world’s always been a broken place populated with broken people, and nasty stuff happens. But God has called us to shine as lights in that very same world, and the opportunity to shine is only increased by the darkness.

Rather than becoming cynical and distrusting everybody, or becoming fearful and spending our lives in a virtual fetal position, God’s people should march out confidently, ambassadors of the heavenly king, to represent him freely and accurately by taking his love to those who need it most.

Even the creeps.

Photo by Jeremy Paige on Unsplash

Have You Thought about It?

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We live in a world of snap judgments. We read a tweet (now up to 280 characters!), or a Facebook post (better not have to scroll!), or we see clickbait (you won’t believe what happened next!), and we go for it, or we don’t. We hear a sad story (Cyntoia Brown!), or a rage-inducing one (Al Franken!), or a fear-inducing one (Net Neutrality!), or a partisan one (Trump! Clinton!) and we react, research be, um, condemned into everlasting redemption.

This didn’t happen overnight.

Some time back I read a fascinating book by Nicholas Carr called The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. He argues—and, I think, demonstrates—that web surfing has changed the way we think, and not for the better. We’re making decisions, sometimes consequential ones, faster and faster, on the basis of less and less actual information or resulting thought. Research indicates that when we do that as a regular practice, our brains rewire themselves to accommodate that kind of thinking—what you might call “fast-twitch” thinking—eventually to the point where we can’t follow a thought for long at all anymore.

Carr notes that after years of using the web, he’s less patient with long-form articles; he wants to get the quick point and move on.

Have you noticed that happening to your brain? I have. And spending a solid hour scrolling through a Facebook newsfeed every day is just going to make the problem worse.

Why do I say “worse”? What’s wrong with thinking faster? Isn’t that a good thing?

No, and here’s why.

When we routinely think with our gut, reacting instantaneously, we’re not really thinking at all. We’re not researching to get as many facts as we can; we’re not thinking through the consequences of our decision as a matter of cause and effect; we’re not weighing alternatives; we’re not hearing both sides.

We’re not thinking.

And thinking is really important. It helps us make decisions with better outcomes. In short, it makes us wise.

Are the problems our society needs to solve getting simpler or more complicated? How likely is it that we’ll be able to solve them effectively with just our gut?

So what do we do? A few suggestions—

  • Do long-form reading, regularly. Keep your brain’s “slow-twitch muscles” strong. Wrestle with complicated questions—net neutrality would be a good one to start with—and read deeply about them on both—or all—sides.
  • Limit your “fast-twitch” reading to a few minutes every so often. Don’t make it regular, and for sure don’t make it all the reading you do.
  • Don’t “Like” something the first time you see it. How can you possibly know enough about that particular thing to offer an informed opinion?
    • OK, I’ll give you a pass on videos of people falling down. Or babies. Or cats. Or especially puppies.
  • If you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t comment.
  • If you’re not sure whether you know what you’re talking about, you don’t.
  • Start by thinking about my suggestions carefully and critically. Are they any good? Or are they just sound and fury, signifying nothing? And for Pete’s sake, don’t “Like” this post; you just saw it, for crying out loud.
  • If you’re interested in thinking more about this phenomenon, read Carr’s book, and then read a bunch of the negative reviews, and then talk to informed people about it, and then take some time coming to a decision.

And now, a word to those who are upset about the Cyntoia Brown reference—if you’ve read this far.

It’s a sad story, and some celebrities are promoting it. But it’s also an adjudicated case, and the law is complicated. (I’m not saying that’s a good thing.) I found myself forming an opinion about what I read, as you did too. But I don’t know anything about the case—I haven’t read any of the trial transcripts, or the judges’ opinions, or even any long-form articles about the case. My uninformed opinion—I do have one, and you’d probably like it—is worth precisely nothing. If there’s injustice there, then let those who have the best and most complete information weigh in on it. Better yet, become one of those people yourself, and then make all the noise you want. Justice is worth the fight.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

The Great Sin of the Evangelical Right

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A few posts back I mused about one of the church’s great purposes: to be a place where God’s people use their gifts to serve one another, to love their neighbors as themselves. 

There’s an even greater purpose, to which that one contributes. The church is to be, as the theologians say, doxological; it is to bring glory to God, to incite praise. 

How does it do this? Well, when the church gathers, we praise God in worship, and that’s certainly part of it. And as we use our gifts to nurture growth in others and help them become more like Christ, that’s part of it too. But there’s another way; it’s described in Ephesians 3. 

The church is God’s creation, not ours. He is the one who envisioned and then brought into being an organization—an organism—that is not limited by bloodline or geographical boundary, like OT Israel. It consists of Jews and Gentiles (Eph 3.6), from all over the globe, who are brought together in unified worship of God. 

And what is his purpose in doing that? Take a look at verse 10: 

To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God. 

That is, that the heavenly beings (“principalities and powers”) might look at what God has done in the church and recognize the rich wisdom of the God who did it. 

What does it take to impress someone who goes to work in heaven every day? 

And why would the unity of God’s diverse peoples be so impressive? Because Jews and Gentiles are supposed to be enemies, not friends. If natural enemies are gathered together, united in worship to God and in loving care for one another, there’s no earthly reason for it. Only God could do that. 

And now to explain this post’s title. 

Since the days of Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority—and long before that—some Christians have listened to the siren song of political influence. They have chosen to position themselves publicly as the political enemies of the very people God has called them to reach, to draw into this inexplicably unified body. And for any number of reasons—fear of loss of earthly freedom or comforts, discomfort with or even disdain for people who are radically different from them, even perhaps the desire for power—they have devoted their energies to increasing the divide rather than tapping into the divine power that brings people together in one body, in Christ, despite those differences. 

But those other people are so different! They’re so wrong about so many things! 

Yes. Precisely. Only God could bring us together, by changing us—all of us—from the inside out. But he can and will do that. So why add to the momentum in the other direction? Why oppose his cause? 

Why tweak the political opposition for the lapses in logic of their political positions, when the cause—the real cause, the eternal one—is so much greater and so much more worthy of your limited effort? Do you really think that if you zing that leftist, he’ll be inclined to come to you for guidance to the grace that is truly greater than all his sin? Or do you not care whether he does at all? 

To whom have you shown such grace today? You know, the kind of grace God has shown you? 

There is a woman in my church who recommitted herself to Christ late in life. She comes whenever she can, despite significant physical obstacles. She asks me questions if something I’ve taught hasn’t been clear. And when she gets home, she downloads the Sunday school and sermon notes from the church website and pores over them, line by line, with her Bible open on her lap, filling her mind and her heart with the promises and commands of God. 

And she voted for Obama. 

Twice. 

And though I didn’t (even once!), I’m OK with that. Because she’s a reminder that the grace of God that has brought us together is greater than the forces that appear to be great enough to drive us apart—even to drive this great country to the brink of civil war. 

May her tribe increase. May our churches be filled with people who disagree with me and you about really important things—politics, lifestyles, culture, food and drink, medical approaches, whatever—and who are drawn together as one body by the far more powerful grace of the God we are all determined to love more than anyone or anything else. 

May people in our community who are angry, embittered, frustrated, frightened, hopeless see in our church clear evidence that there is a power that unites us that is infinitely greater than the nonsense around us—that our hope for today and tomorrow, as well as for eternity, is not in a president or a Congress or a Supreme Court, or even in violent confrontation in the streets, but in the one in whom we live and move and have our being—in the one whose will is done just as certainly on earth as it is in heaven. 

When we mock political opponents, when we add to the national polarization, when we speak passionately about this world more than the next, we make the mighty grace of God look weak and even inconsequential. And then we wonder why our countrymen mock him. 

God reigns. Why do so many of his people behave as though he doesn’t? 

Photo by Matt McLean on Unsplash

Grateful for Grace

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Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

Early in our marriage, when we were in the process of making friends with other young couples, my wife and I would occasionally notice that as we socialized in our home or in someone else’s, some people always seemed to be upset about something. They’d tell us the story of how they were wronged in some way, how some injustice was done. The next time we were together, they had their tails in a knot about something else. Always upset, always holding on to wrongs, real or imagined.

Once, we made the conscious decision to minimize our socializing with one such couple. These days the internet memes say, “You just don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.” And it’s true.

It puzzles me how some people can be so ungrateful. People don’t treat them right; they don’t get paid enough; their mother-in-law is a pain in the neck; their boss is an idiot. And on it goes.

A colleague of mine remarked to me several years ago, “You know, life’s going to happen, no matter what you do. Some of it will be unpleasant. You can be bitter about it, or you can be happy in spite of it. The choice is up to you. I decided,” she said, “to be happy.” And boy, was she.

As result of her example, I began to think about all the ways I’ve been blessed. And one day it occurred to me that everything I need—literally everything—is free. That’s the way God has arranged the universe.

Don’t believe me? Think about it.

What do you need more than anything else in the world? If you lack it for 30 seconds, it will be literally all you think about until you get some.

Yep, oxygen.

Free.

You’re swimming at the bottom of an ocean of it—an ocean that God has kindly diluted so you won’t burst into flame at the slightest spark. God’s even given you a scoop on the front of your head so you’ll get your share of the stuff. Some of you he gave a larger scoop to, and you have the gall to be upset with him about that. Shame on you.

What’s the second most necessary thing? Water. They say you can last 3 days without it—some maybe as much as 8 to 10 days under certain conditions. But not long.

Most of the globe is covered with it. And that water mass feeds a delivery system that brings it right to your feet, purified, for free. (Unless you live in the Atacama, which hardly anybody does.) And again, many of us complain when it rains. Especially at the beach.

Granted, I pay a water bill, but I’m not really paying for the water; I’m paying for someone to clean it up and bring it to my house. I choose to do that, but I have a big ol’ plastic barrel that I could use to get my water for free.

What’s next? Food. Grows right out of the ground, from plants that are already there. Free. Again, I pay for my food, but only because I don’t feel like growing my own. So I pay somebody else to grow and harvest and deliver it; and sometimes I go out to a restaurant and pay somebody else to cook it and bring it to my table. But the food? The food’s free.

And then there’s light, and heat, and all the other physical necessities. All free.

God has been remarkably good to us.

But you’re thinking (I hope), those aren’t our greatest needs. They’re just temporal. We have greater needs: forgiveness, relationship, grace, mercy, peace. Love.

What do you know? They’re all free, too.

Everything you need is free.

I don’t mean to minimize anyone’s suffering. The world is broken, and we and everyone we know here are broken as well, by sin. Suffering is real. Abuse is real. Pain is real. Death is real.

But we have much to be grateful for, and these jewels shine all the brighter against the black background of pain.

Today’s homework: read Psalm 145.

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously [freely!] give us all things?” (Rom 8.32).