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On Sleep

January 11, 2021 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

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

Top Ten

December 30, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Here at year’s end, it’s customary to list the year’s top ten blog posts. Here are mine:

And here are the top ten for all time:

And here is a list of my personal favorites.

Photo by HENCE THE BOOM on Unsplash

On Thanksgiving

November 26, 2020 by Dan Olinger

Here’s my annual Thanksgiving post.

Even in tumultuous times, we have much to be thankful for.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Why Putting Bullets in the Stove Is a Bad Idea

November 9, 2020 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Every so often I take a post here to share a personal story I find entertaining. This seems like a good time to lighten the mood a bit.

This story actually isn’t about me; it’s about my Dad.

Dad grew up on the frontier, in primitive conditions. His father homesteaded just up the Lemhi valley from Salmon, Idaho, on Sandy Creek, just a couple of miles down from the Continental Divide. They eventually lost the farm and ended up sharecropping on another piece of land nearby (the “Kadletz ranch,” as he referred to it). When that wasn’t all that successful either, they ended up in town (Salmon), in a small house with one of those desk-sized woodburning stoves that functioned as a combined furnace, stovetop, and oven—you know, the ones with those circular “burners” that you could lift up by hooking with a handle, to see how the fire was doing underneath. A stovepipe came out of the top and angled out through the wall.

Charlie and Minnie (Agee) Olinger on the Sandy Creek homestead, about 1920.

Dad was the second-youngest of 11 kids. Most of the older ones were on their own by this time, and his mother had died several years before. As a result, he was often left alone in the house to entertain himself.

One day he discovered, over in the corner, a coffee can full of ammunition—miscellaneous rounds for miscellaneous firearms. It occurred to him that it might be fun to drop a .22 short into the stove, by, you know, lifting up the circular burner thing with the hooked handle.

He did.

And after a few suspenseful seconds, he was rewarded with a “pop!” and the sound of the slug ricocheting around inside the stove.

In retrospect, he showed remarkable self-restraint for a 12-year-old. I’d have emptied the whole can that day. But he decided that every day, as a special treat, he’d drop another round in the stove after his Dad left.

Time passed.

And as he got down toward the bottom of the can, he found a rifle shell. I don’t know exactly what it was, of course, but probably something along the lines of a .30-06, with, you know, a more serious gunpowder charge and a pointed slug.

This’ll be fun, he thought.

The next morning he managed to contain his excitement through breakfast, waiting for his Dad to leave the house. When he (finally!) did, Dad rushed over to the can in the corner, grabbed the rifle round, ran to the stove, lifted the circular burner thingy with the hooked handle thingy, dropped in the round, and stood back to see what would happen.

At that moment his Dad came back into the house. Apparently he’d forgotten something.

It was a cold day, and his Dad walked over to the stove to warm his hands, then turned around to get some BTUs on his behind, when

Ka-BLAM!

The round went off. The little circular burner thingies went cartwheeling across the room in random directions. The stovepipe came out of the wall. The room filled with smoke and soot.

And my grandfather—whom, incidentally, I never met—spun around and said something I can’t in good conscience report here, but which could be loosely paraphrased as “Well, what do you suppose might be the matter with the stove, eh?”

In the split second before H-hour, he had noticed that his 12-year-old son was in the corner, hunkered down, as though he suspected there might be something about to happen.

The stove wasn’t the only warm thing in the house that day.

For years I thought this had happened when Dad was around 3 or 4. Toward the end of Dad’s life, we were talking about it, and he said, no, he was actually about 12 at the time.

I said, “You were old enough to know better!”

He said, “Seems to me Dad said something to that effect at the time.”

Apply this true little parable any way you like.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

On Retreating

September 21, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

I’ve just returned from the annual BJU Seminary retreat at The WILDS in North Carolina. The event made several impressions on me, all of them positive:

I drove one of the vans up, carrying 7 students, both graduate and undergrad. As it happened, mine was the “late van,” leaving well after the main vehicle surge, to enable students with late commitments to attend. The van was filled with chatter and laughter as the students interacted as friends and colleagues in this adventure called school. They know they’re having a good time, but they probably don’t realize to what extent these experiences, and especially the relationships and interactions, are formative, changing them in ways that will endure for decades. We have serious conversations as well, about doctrine and ministry and the questions that most young people in this stage of life wrestle with. If Jesus tarries, I’m confident that this generation will carry well the load that their times place on them. I’m especially sure of that when I recall that my generation grew up in the 60s, when our parents had every reason to despair of the future—the times, they were indeed a-changin’—and by God’s grace we carried our load as well.

The WILDS is a remarkable resource. It’s designed for its purpose—to enable fellowship with one another and with God—and it’s run by people who are committed to that purpose, who are competent, and who are as selfless as any I’ve ever met. Every time I go there I see some other activity or facility set up, ready to increase the overall strength of the program and reinforce the mission. I have lots of memories there—the record for terminal velocity hitting the post at the bottom of the land trolley is one that I’m particularly proud of—and all of them tied directly to experiences with God and with his people in ways that have influenced my thinking and direction in life. They have been an unmitigated blessing to me.

The Seminary is a grace-filled institution, with faculty who combine solid biblical scholarship with whole-hearted devotion. It’s good to see that balance maintained in the fifth decade after I studied there.

General revelation is indeed revelation. Every camp ministry knows that when you get people out into nature, their thoughts tend to turn Godward. All our senses are bombarded with evidence of the Creator’s greatness and goodness—the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the textures all draw us back to our roots in him, to his ample and rich provision for us as inhabitants of this planet, and to the wonder of what he has done in creating a world at once complex, beautiful, and calming. In the artful words of Odell Shepard,

All the wisdom, all the beauty, I have lived for unaware
Came upon me by the rote of highland rills;
I have seen God walking there
In the solemn soundless air,
When the morning wakened wonder in the hills.

But these beauties are not gods. They are rather gifts from the One True God, to be delighted in, but not to satisfy apart from him. As we were reminded in the sessions by our former colleague Dr. Robert Vincent, Christ is all, and he is more than enough. To delight in his gifts, but to have no meaningful relationship with him, is to miss the whole point. To delight in him is to be fulfilled in the only ways that matter. By a kind providence, my personal Bible study during August and September is in Colossians, where Bob’s point this past weekend is precisely Paul’s point. We are offered many substitutes for Christ—the Colossians were offered angels—but he is before all, above all, over all, and he is Enough.

What a gift of 26 hours filled with reminders of God’s goodness and greatness. The surroundings, the people, the shared experiences, the worship, the time with God, all serve together to draw us to him, to extract our thanks, to strengthen us for the tasks that lie ahead.

God is great, and God is good.

Let us thank him.

Photo by Wes Grant on Unsplash

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

Memories of Merciful Teachers

June 18, 2020 by Dan Olinger 7 Comments

The COVID upheaval has made teaching really interesting. For most teachers in the US, there was a “pivot to online” around mid-March, as the students began “learning from home.” Teachers had to rethink their course presentation and assessment, and they had to do it in a hurry. For me it was fairly simple—I credit previous experience teaching online (a gracious providence), the nature of my subject area, and the fact that I’ve already largely done away with unit tests in favor of other assessment methods (another gracious providence). I know that for my colleagues in activity-based subjects (e.g. fine arts, lab sciences), the pivot required a lot more adjustment and creativity, and my hat’s off to them.

Part of that change of situation included considering the various stresses on student performance. For my students the most obvious stressors were reduced access to library resources, lack of a place to concentrate, and in some cases reduced internet access. Some had family or other housing situations that greatly interfered with their studies.

And all of that calls for flexibility and other types of mercy. I didn’t tell my students this ahead of time, but I essentially did away with late penalties, and I let them try again when they really botched an assignment. And there were other considerations.

My thinking in this area has been influenced by past teachers who showed me mercy. I’d like to recount a couple of those instances.

For second-semester Greek—my undergrad minor—I had Dr. Richard Taylor, who is now a professor of OT at Dallas Theological Seminary. Going into the final, I had a high A and calculated that I could get a D on the final and still keep the A. No sweat.

I got careless in my preparation and completely overlooked what turned out to be a major emphasis on the exam (for you Greek bodies, it was the -μι verbs).

I flunked it. Ran the numbers, and my semester average was now 89.4. Juuuuust barely lost the A.

I went to Dr. Taylor’s office ready to plead my case. I’ve done solid A work all semester. I’ve demonstrated that I can master this stuff. I knocked and heard “Come in!”

“I’d like to talk about my grade,” I said. “About the B+.”

He pulled out the little green gradebook (remember those?) and looked it over, and then he looked up with just a hint of a smile.

“I don’t see any B+,” he said.

I’m told that an adage among lawyers is “When you’ve won, shut up.” So I did. And today my transcript shows an A- for Greek 102. (I just checked.)

Another example.

I took a course on the Pauline Epistles taught by Dr. George Dollar. Dr. Dollar was an old-time, fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist, perhaps the prototype for the stereotype. As I recall, he taught at BJU for only a few years, and he never shied away from a fight.

The biggest assignment for that course was that we had to write a commentary on 1Corinthians. We had all semester, and I went right to work. I read and read and wrote and wrote. The day before it was due, Dr. Dollar reminded the class that our commentary on 2Corinthians was due tomorrow.

Second Corinthians?! I wrote on First Corinthians!

Yikes.

After class I stumbled down to the front of the lecture room and admitted my stupidity. To my astonishment, Dr. Dollar smiled and said, “That’ll be fine.”

“That’ll be fine.” And indeed it was.

Now, these are (or were, in the case of Dr. Dollar) two very different men, with very different personalities, approaches, and teaching styles. But in my formative years in academia they both showed me mercy, and nearly 50 years later I still remember. When a student comes to me needing mercy, even if he kinda deserves justice, I think of those two experiences—sometimes I even take the time to tell one of the stories—and I say, “I’m going to show you mercy. Someday you’re going to have an opportunity to show somebody else mercy, and on that day I want you to remember this one.”

To show mercy is to reflect the image of God. We will never show anyone as much mercy as God has shown us. These days, mercy is more needed than ever.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Peace Redux

June 15, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

It’s a mess, isn’t it?

A while back I wrote about peace. I hope you’ll take the time to read it. The specifics have changed, but the principles remain.

Now more than ever.

Photo by Sunyu on Unsplash

On Almost Crashing. In a Plane.

March 2, 2020 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

Every so often I like to pause my serious blogging and throw in a story, just for fun. (My last one of those was about being in jail.)

Here’s another one.

My Dad was an old-school private pilot, taught by his older brother in a tail-dragger out of Thompson Falls, Montana, back during the Depression. He flew just intermittently—renting an airplane was expensive—but during my early teen years the frequency picked up, as he was able to get a little financial support from his employer when he flew himself around for work-related things. I went along every chance I got, and I became pretty proficient at navigation with the radios (VORs, in the trade) and with take-offs, though I was never really very reliable on landings. My height being what it was, I sat on a small suitcase so I could see over the instrument panel on final approach, and that would occasionally get distracting.

Comments on the above paragraph are completely unnecessary. You know who you are.

We were living in the Boston area at the time, and since Dad and all of us kids had been born in the Pacific Northwest, our family would occasionally fly out to Spokane for family reunions on the Olinger side. For one such trip, Dad rented a Cherokee Six to accommodate the five of us and our luggage, which, since three of us were females, and two of those were teens, was fairly substantial. But the Six could handle it quite nicely.

We flew from Hanscom Field northwest of Boston to Spokane in a couple of days with no problems, Dad doing the flying and I doing the navigating from the right seat. After several days with extended family (Dad was one of 11 kids), we began the return trip, which was to be significantly longer; Dad had a younger sister in Duncan, OK, who hadn’t been able to come to the reunion, and we thought we’d drop by there for a visit. The Six could do that leg in a day, but it would be a long one, and we’d need to refuel twice to be safe.

About a third of the way, we decided, was Worland, WY. (The second stop would be Liberal, KS, which is a whole ‘nother story.)

We landed at Worland, taxied to the ramp, and called for refueling. The Six holds 84 gallons, which weighs, oh, about 500 pounds.

Now, ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a problem; we’d taken off in Spokane fully fueled, and Dad, as a careful pilot, had done the weight and distribution calculations carefully. So we were fine for takeoff in Spokane.

But Worland is not Spokane. Most importantly, Spokane’s elevation (specifically that of Felts Field) is just under 2000 feet, but Worland’s elevation is more than twice that. And as you may recall from high-school science, atmospheric pressure, and thus air density, drop with increasing altitude. And as the density drops, the amount of lift you can generate drops with it.

And that’s not all. As it happened, that summer day in Worland was hot; Worland routinely hits the high 90s during mid-summer.

What’s air like when it’s hot?

Thinner yet.

Even less lift.

Dad, bless his heart, forgot to factor all that in.

We received clearance for take-off, lined up on Runway 16, and Dad gave the Six full throttle.

Runway 16 is 7000 feet long, which is respectable, a lot more than the Six ought to need. We used all of it, and we were about 2 feet off the ground.

That’s not normal.

Maybe 1500 feet beyond the end of the runway, there was a fence. I remember it as a split-rail fence, maybe 3 feet high, though of course there’s a higher chain-link fence there now. I distinctly recall lifting my feet off the floor in a well-meaning attempt to help us get just a liiiiiittle more altitude.

A bit further out was a set of telephone poles, which experienced pilots know are usually connected by invisible wires, and I honestly didn’t know whether Dad was going to go over or under them.

He went over.

And in the expansive area of relatively flat prairie beyond, we tooled around until we finally got enough altitude to get out of there.

I really thought we were going to have to put it down and maybe even get tangled up in telephone wires.

But Dad knew the fundamental rule of flying: Keep flying. If you can.

And he did.

When we were in stable flight, he looked at me, and with a tone of utter disgust with himself, he said, “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

Dads don’t like to make mistakes that can kill their family.

I learned a lot from that.

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

On a New Year

January 2, 2020 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

This is my 65th New Year. The first few I was completely unaware of, but since then, like a lot of other people, I’ve enjoyed the sense of excitement and optimism that our culture associates with the date. There’s something bracing about turning the page, starting out fresh, doing things better this time around.

Sometimes those among us who have half-empty glasses feel the need to point out a couple of things about the new year—as a public service, of course—

There’s really no such thing as a new start, you know. We carry with us the consequences of our previous sins and failures and misjudgments.
If the past is any guide, your good intentions are going to fade in a few days, and statistics show that pretty soon you’re going to be back in the same old rut.

As someone whose glass is perpetually half full—with contents that are quite tasty, thanks—I’ll observe that while those two statements are technically true, they’re practically false by virtue of their incompleteness. Let me explain.

First, it’s true that we carry with us the consequences of our past failures. The founder of my university used to say that if an inebriated bar patron loses an eye in a bar fight, and then gets gloriously converted, he’ll be forgiven, but he’ll never get his eye back. There are consequences of our sin that are inescapable.

True enough. But let’s not forget that he does get gloriously converted, and that’s nothing to slough over. And with conversion comes a whole raft of change and empowerment that will certainly affect the path that the convert takes for the rest of his life.

So yes, you do bring some baggage into this new year, and you can’t pretend that the baggage is weightless. But if you’re a believer, you have the Spirit of God indwelling you, changing your thinking, enabling you to act on that new way of thinking, and surely and powerfully bringing you, over time, into conformity with the Son of God (2Co 3.18). This new year is another step in that sure process.

Divine enablement is a powerful, powerful thing. If your New Year’s resolutions involve spiritual progress, they come with serious momentum behind them.

Now about that second point. Let me note first that statistics don’t “show” anything about the future. They show tendencies about past activities. But rare things do happen.

It’s demonstrably true that most people accomplish less toward their New Year’s resolutions than they intend. But that says nothing about how you’ll do on yours. The fact is that a minority of people do make and maintain significant changes. Somebody’s going to succeed; why can’t you be part of that group? Set reasonable goals, lay out a plan, pray for grace, and go for it.

Maybe you’ll accomplish less than you intend. Fine. But you’ll accomplish something. Refer to point 1.

So much for the naysayers.

My experience also tells me that some new years seem to hold more promise for change than others. In my lifetime, the Big One was Y2K, which involved the potential End of Civilization As We Know It and turned out to be, well, a dud. (Yeah, I filled some containers with water so we’d at least be able to flush the toilet after the End. Can’t hurt to make simple provisions.)

This one is 2020, which is a new decade, and a balanced number, and carries the connotation of clear vision, so who knows? Might be a big year.

But we make too big a deal about Big Years.

Of course our lives include major events—birth, marriage, parenthood, maybe a championship of something, or some other form of public recognition—but the important stuff, the really important stuff, is typically all about simple consistency and attentiveness and faithfulness. The wedding is a Big Deal, but the marriage involves simple daily kindness, gentleness, and thoughtfulness. The birth of your child is a Big Deal, but parenting is a daily slog that is sometimes difficult and frustrating but in the end leaves delightful memories.

So this year, steward your goals, and make them achievable. Make them less about the fireworks and more about faithfulness in the shadows. And watch God keep his promises for your growth in him.

Happy New Year.

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