Politics

E Pluribus Unum

July 19, 2021 by Dan Olinger

My wife and I were eating lunch in a restaurant yesterday when a girl walked by in a T-shirt that said “Lexington Soccer.” I caught her eye and asked, “Lexington where?” She said, “Massachusetts”—as I hoped she would. I smiled and said, “I graduated from Lexington Christian.” She said, “So did my Dad.”

Small world.

And that got me to thinking about all the places I’ve lived and people I’ve known—which leads me to recycle what follows, a minor reworking of something I posted on Facebook on September 4, 2016.

I spent the first half my youth in the Pacific Northwest (Spokane, to be precise), and the second half in greater Boston (Newton, mostly). (And when I say “half,” I’m being precise; we headed east 3 days after my 10th birthday.)

But I’ve spent well over 2/3 of my life in the American South. There are lots of things I like about the region:

Barbecue. And to my friends in California, bless your hearts, you’re not “barbecuing”; you’re grilling. It ain’t barbecue unless you’re usin’ wood and takin’ more than 8 hours.
- Side note: in South Africa they “braai,” and they use wood, but they cook hot and fast rather than low and slow, so that’s not barbecue either. Though it is delicious.
The way Southerners soften their insults with “bless your heart.”
Biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast.
Calling other adults “Sir” and “Ma’am,” even when they’re younger than you.
Dinner on the grounds. And persimmon pudding. Preferably simultaneously.
Fireflies.
The good people in mill towns like Poe and Slater and Zoar and Lockhart. (RIP, Eunice Loudermilk.)
The way everything’s sweeter here–cornbread and potato salad and of course iced tea.
The sound of the kudzu growing on a dog day afternoon.
Grits. Yes, really. Fresh and hot, with butter and pepper—and not a single crystal of sugar. What were you thinking!?

I am blessed for having lived in multiple regions. It’s helped me realize that despite our differences, we are all more alike than we think–that there really is more that unites us than that divides us. That reaching across regional boundaries and disbelieving stereotypes is good for the soul. And for the country. And that as polarized as we are in this country, “e pluribus unum” really is possible. But it starts with us, one at a time.

Our leaders, and our journalists, and social media are united in their efforts to keep us ginned up, angry and hostile toward the “other side.” They’re doing it almost entirely for the ratings, for the money, for the power. They’re posturing; they don’t believe half the things they’re saying, and you shouldn’t either.

Don’t buy it. You’re in the image of God; you’re not a beast. Think for yourself. And reach across the unbreachable boundary. Because they’re in the image of God too.

Photo by Joey Csunyo on Unsplash

It’s Not Martyrdom If You’re Being Obnoxious

July 15, 2021 by Dan Olinger

There’s a lot of talk about Christians being persecuted these days.

I’d suggest a couple of moderating thoughts.

First, if you’re talking about in the US, then, no, they’re not being persecuted, relatively speaking. There are some instances of their being harassed, and that’s wrong. I think the well-known case of the Colorado baker is a pretty clear instance of that. But harassment, while condemnable on both ethical and legal grounds, is nothing like the persecution faced by the early church, or by the modern church in many places of the world. I’ve been in some of those places, and when American Christians cry “persecution,” it strikes me as just as inappropriate as calling an ID requirement for voting “voter suppression.”

Second, there’s some biblical wisdom that we can apply profitably to the matter of either harassment or persecution. To begin with the really big picture, God has designed the universe so that in general it rewards wise behavior and punishes foolishness. If you respect physical laws by not putting your hand into a flame or stepping in front of a city bus, you’ll live more comfortably—and probably longer. If you acknowledge the fact that your fellow humans are created in the image of God and therefore worthy of respect, courtesy, and care, you’ll have fewer interpersonal problems. Even in its pre-fallen state, the world may well have carried the potential of causing you pain if you didn’t pay attention. I suspect that if pre-fallen Adam had beat his head against an Edenic tree trunk for a while, he’d have decided not to do that anymore.

And in its post-fallen state, the potential rises exponentially. Now the world is broken. Creation groans (Ro 8.22), giving us earthquakes and tornados and tsunamis and pandemics. And we, as part of the broken world, engage in thinking and behavior that rejects the good God and denies his image in those around us. That kind of mistreatment and perversion of the designed order causes unfathomable pain. As Jesus’ half-brother James noted, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? ²You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel” (Jam 4.1-2a).

All of this means that when Christians suffer, there are more possible reasons than just “suffering for Jesus.” Christians, individually or corporately, might be suffering because they’ve said or done stupid things, placing themselves under the divinely designed cosmic order, whereby life is tougher if you’re stupid (as John Wayne allegedly said). Or they might be suffering because they’ve engaged in sinful thinking or practices that have social or legal consequences.

I’m not making this up; the Bible actually warns God’s people against this very thing. Perhaps the most concentrated biblical teaching on Christian suffering is 1 Peter, which lays out the fact and causes of suffering and then applies it in the three major institutions of life: the home (1P 3.1-12), the state (1P 2.13-20), and the church (1P 4.7-5.11). As part of that instruction, Peter says,

¹⁴If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. ¹⁵Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; ¹⁶but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name (1P 4.14-16).

If you’re going to suffer—which is likely, he says—then suffer for a good reason. There’s no spiritual profit in suffering in itself—everybody suffers for one reason or another. So don’t suffer for stupid reasons.

Peter lists four behaviors here. Two of them are the specific sins—crimes, in fact—of murder and theft. The third item is a general term for evildoing. The fourth is a bit of a puzzle, what New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner calls “one of the most difficult interpretive problems in the New Testament.” Because it’s a rare word, we don’t have much basis from usage for assigning it a meaning. Etymologically it’s “overseeing the affairs of others,” but what that means in a negative context isn’t clear. I’m inclined to read it as “being meddlesome,” “sticking your nose into other people’s business.”

Big sins will bring you trouble. So will little ones. I’d suggest that commenting on every passing social media post, whether or not you have any idea what you’re talking about, will bring you trouble. I’d also suggest that approaching people with a hostile attitude and confrontational speech will bring you trouble. And I’d suggest, finally, that blaming Jesus for your trouble in those cases is just wrong.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

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

February 25, 2021 by Dan Olinger

Part 1: “You’re Both Right!”

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

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

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

On the one hand, we’re created in the image of God (Gn 1.26-27). There’s considerable discussion about what that means precisely, but most would agree that it includes the abilities to think, feel, and decide, as well as an innate sense of right and wrong, and the ability to rule, to take dominion over the created world in various ways. We have the ability to seek truth and to discover it.

On the other hand, we’ve been damaged by our sin, damaged in every corner of our being (Ro 3.23). Our thinker is busted and can’t be trusted; our feelings may misguide us; our decisions are not always based in truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yikes.

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

But that outburst is just inexcusable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

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

February 22, 2021 by Dan Olinger

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

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

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

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

There—did I leave anything out?

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

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

Feel free to add to the list.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part 2

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

On Living by the Loopholes

January 18, 2021 by Dan Olinger

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then comes the Samaritan.

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

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

Nancy Pelosi. Kamala Harris. AOC.

A Democrat.

You know, somebody like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now Jesus tells the story.

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

What’s the point?

Who is my neighbor?

It’s anyone who needs my help.

Anyone.

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

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

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

No. It’s not.

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

What if?

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

After the Storm

November 12, 2020 by Dan Olinger

In the American West, where I grew up, the sky is big. The land in Eastern Washington is flat, and the horizons are long and low. As a result, you can see a thunderstorm a-comin’ for a long ways. You can see the sheets of rain falling from the thunderhead long before it reaches you, and in the summer I used to enjoy sitting out in the pasture and just waiting for it. Then it would arrive, the warm rain, and you could get completely soaked and not care—indeed, you could relish it as a delightful experience.

The aftermath was enjoyable too. There was the decrescendo of the storm, the petering out of the patter of the rain; the petrichor; and the calm silence, all the quieter in contrast with the recent rage.

If we learn anything from the life of Jesus, we learn that he is sovereign and active in the storm as well as in the peaceful, pastoral scene we think of when we hear him called “the Good Shepherd.” We learn that he accomplishes his will as certainly and easily in the storm; we might even say, if I can do so reverently, that he does some of his best work precisely at those times.

We’ve been through a storm, haven’t we? We’ve been surrounded by chaos, much of it intentionally designed; we’ve been told by people we trust that we need to be angry, agitated, active, desperate; that Those People are evil incarnate, and irremediably dangerous, and if we don’t stop them, It’s All Over.

God has graciously designed us humans so that when the situation turns desperate, we’re able to cope with it in surprising ways. There’s adrenaline, which can empower a man of average build to lift a car off someone. There’s the flight response, which enables us to get outta here faster than we ever thought possible.

But adrenaline’s a dangerous drug (so to speak), and we don’t do well as drug addicts; we don’t thrive under constant chaos and ongoing pumped-up responses to perceived threats—real or exaggerated.

We’re made for peace—peace with ourselves, peace with one another, peace with God.

The storm can be exciting—the adrenaline rush can be stimulating and energizing—but we’re not designed to live there.

In the face of the greatest storm in cosmic history—that day when the heavens were darkened, the Godhead was rent, the sins of the world crushed the Creator himself—Jesus had a surprising message for his friends.

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful (Jn 14.27).

Peace in the storm, with a view to long-lasting peace after the storm.

So how shall we, as disciples of Christ, live after the storm? Paul writes to Jesus’ disciples in Thessalonica,

⁹Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; ¹⁰for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more, ¹¹and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, ¹²so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need (1Th 4).

After the storm, peace. Excel at loving one another. Get all stirred up about leading a quiet life. Mind your own business. Make something. Be a wholesome, productive, contributing part of the community.

Especially given that much of the recent storm was of our own making, how about if we just live quietly, peaceably, faithfully for a while?

You know what Paul talks about right after this? Jesus’ return (1Th 4.13-18). It’s coming. What say we focus on how the Good Shepherd will deliver us, rather than on fighting transient earthly opponents with carnal weapons?

Photo by Paul Carmona on Unsplash

On Civil Disobedience

August 10, 2020 by Dan Olinger

There’s been a lot of talk about civil disobedience lately, across the political spectrum. Since it seems to me that much of the discussion among my fellow Christians has been out of focus, I thought it might be the time to reconsider basic biblical principles.

To begin with, one of the key distinctives of evangelical Christians is biblicism, or the recognition of Scripture as the ultimate authority for faith and practice (and for everything else); back in 1989, David Bebbington defined evangelicalism with the “Bebbington quadrilateral” of biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. For me and my house, then, the directives for addressing the question of civil disobedience are the same as for every other question: we’re going to take our orders not from Thoreau but from Scripture.

Undoubtedly the most well-known biblical statement on the question comes from Romans 13.1-7, where Paul lays down the foundational principle:

Civil authority is put in place by God. Obey it.

Other lesser-known passages repeat the principle (1P 2.13-14; Ti 3.1).

But that’s clearly not the whole story, for the Bible contains examples of civil disobedience and presents those examples as, well, examples for us to follow. Two of the three most well-known examples are in the OT book of Daniel; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego refuse Nebuchadnezzar’s order to bow to an idol (Da 3.9-12), and Daniel himself openly disobeys the king’s order forbidding prayer (Da 6.7-10). In the NT, Peter faces down the Sanhedrin and refuses to obey its order not to preach about Jesus (Ac 4.18-20). Perhaps less well-known is the Hebrew midwives’ refusal to kill the male Jewish babies (Ex 1.15-17).

So there’s a mitigating principle:

Sometimes refusing to obey civil authority is the right thing to do.

Now we have another question to ask: when should we disobey?

In the four cases mentioned above, the defied order is clearly a violation of the direct commandments of God: idol worship is clearly forbidden; prayer and gospel preaching are clearly commanded; and killing babies, of any ethnicity or sex, is a direct attack on the image of God in mankind. So we can edit our first two principles into a single comprehensive one:

Civil authority is put in place by God. Obey it, unless doing so is to disobey God.

So far, pretty much all Christians would agree. But here is where it gets sticky. I’d like to start into the key area of disagreement by observing further on the biblical material.

Many times in the Scripture you have evil rulers—both Israelite and Gentile—who rule godlessly. I find it surprising that you find relatively few occasions where those rulers are openly disobeyed, and the disobedient subject (we’re dealing exclusively with monarchies here) is commended. As just one example, we find Paul coming into conflict with unbelieving Jewish authorities and their Roman overlords across the empire, and Paul seems to use cleverness rather than direct disobedience. He’ll leave town—once, over the Damascus city wall (2Co 11.33), and another time leaving Thessalonica in the middle of the night (Ac 17.10). On one occasion he’ll prevent a beating by claiming Roman citizenship (Ac 22.25), and on another he’ll take the beating and then use it essentially for blackmail (Ac 16.37).

I’d like to suggest that civil disobedience in the Scripture is a last resort. Recognizing that God has intentionally and purposefully given us the authorities we have, we should seek to respect the wisdom of his providence and use all our creativity to find a way to obey evil authorities while obeying God. Only when all possibilities—all possibilities—have been exhausted are we forced to disobey earthly authorities.

Do we do that secretly or publicly? Well, Peter defied the Sanhedrin to its face; Paul sneaked over the wall at midnight. Study your Bible and make the wisest choice you can.

But I would suggest that we can’t disobey a law or mandate just because we disagree with it, or it won’t work, or it’s stupid, or it’s an abuse of authority, or it’s applied selectively, or even because it’s unconstitutional. The US system provides legal ways to address stupid or abusive or unconstitutional laws, and disobedience doesn’t seem to be a biblical option in those cases. Seek an injunction, or sue, or protest, but obey the mandate while doing so.

Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

Peace Redux

June 15, 2020 by Dan Olinger

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

When You’re Tempted to Hate People, Part 10: Relenting

October 17, 2019 by Dan Olinger

As we’ve noted earlier, this list of God’s core attributes is repeated throughout the Old Testament, all the way through the age of the prophets and to the return from Babylon. Interestingly, the prophets add a line to the description: “relenting of evil” (Joel 2.13) or “one who relents concerning calamity” (Jonah 4.2).

As the NASB makes clear in the Jonah passage, the word translated “evil” refers here not to moral evil, but to calamity or disaster. God had warned Israel that if they departed from him, he would send calamity their way (Dt 30.15-20). He warned of specific calamities: drought, famine, war, disease (Dt 28.15ff). And Israel played that script out multiple times.

But when his people repent, God relents. He restores the relationship, despite the offense.

Now, when we talk about God relenting, or repenting, or changing his mind, that raises all kinds of logical and theological questions. I plan to deal with that issue in a future post. For now, let’s just grant that the Scripture uses that kind of language about God, as astonishing as it is.

I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t forgive people until they repent, because God doesn’t. Fair enough. But there are some further considerations to the point.

Since God is omniscient, he knows whether our repentance is sincere. Can we know that for certain?

No, we can’t. And interestingly, Jesus tells us to forgive people whenever they ask, with no reference to “sincerity” (Mt 18.22)—and frankly, if my brother asked me to forgive him 490 times for the same thing, I’d start to wonder whether he meant it. But Jesus says to forgive him anyway.

And, come to think of it, when we repent, God know whether we’re going to fail again (and usually, the answer is yes). And he forgives us anyway.

If God, whose plans are perfect, who is never surprised, can forgive and relent of planned disaster, what about us? We’re not omniscient, and our plans aren’t perfect, and we are often surprised. If God can relent, shouldn’t we?

Why not go to your enemy, and offer him your hand, your arms, your friendship? Why not take back the things you said, the threats you made?

Why not make the first move?

__________

The premise of this series is that we ought to treat others—all others—as God has treated us. Mockery, disdain, sarcasm, dismissal, ranting, vilification—God has never done that to us, although we have repeatedly deserved it for the way we’ve treated him.

No, God’s character won’t allow that. Just as he can’t lie, so also he can’t treat us in the ways we so naturally treat people we disagree with, or people we dislike, or people who lie about us or trivialize our concerns.

We need to be like him.

Pick somebody you really dislike—maybe a public figure, maybe a personal acquaintance.

And then think about how God would treat—indeed, has treated—him:

Compassion
Grace
Patience
Loyal love
Faithfulness
Forgiveness
Justice with mercy
Relenting of calamity

And do those things.

And to get really serious, pray that God would do those things for him too.

Maybe, one relationship at a time, we can be agents of peace rather than strife—lights in the world, instead of darkness.

If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Mt 6.23).

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

When You’re Tempted to Hate People, Part 9: Justice and Mercy

October 14, 2019 by Dan Olinger

We’re exploring God’s foundational description of himself, on the assumption—well founded in Scripture—that we ought to treat others the way he does. We’re getting to the end of the list, where there’s a cluster of attributes that we really need to discuss together.

Exodus 34.7 puts it this way:

yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

We’re tempted to find this troubling. God’s a hard master, demanding perfection and beating us when we fall short, and even bringing our grandkids into it.

Oh, that’s not what this passage is saying at all. Like all of God’s other attributes, this is a good one, one to delight in.

To begin with, let’s observe that he brings justice to the guilty. There’s no reason we ought to look askance on that. In fact, if you’ll think about it, we all want justice, when people have wronged us. The only situation in which we don’t want justice is when we’re the guilty one—or when of one our friends is.

Test yourself. Suppose someone committed a heinous crime against your family, and at his trial the judge said, “Look, I know you’re basically a good person. If you’ll promise not to do anything like this again, we’ll just forget it ever happened.”

How happy would you be?

Not at all. We want justice.

The world’s an unjust place. There’s abuse, and fraud, and falsehood, and violence, and murder. We have justice systems, but we often don’t get it right. We ought to do better. And it’s good—a delight—to know that there’s someone keeping records, who has the power to right all these wrongs, and who will certainly do so.

So the first clause is a good thing. God will right all the wrongs.

But what about the rest of it? What about visiting the sins of the fathers on the children? How is that just?

Well, God has designed the universe so that if you do right, things generally turn out better than if you don’t. (Yes, in a sin-broken universe it doesn’t always turn out that way, but that’s still very much the pattern.)

Now, suppose I kill somebody. I’m not the only one in my family who’s going to be affected by that. I’ll go to prison or even be executed, sure. But my wife will have to carry on without my help, and my children won’t have a Dad—and if they’re school age, they’ll face the reproach of classmates, and on it will go. Because of that trauma, there may well be ongoing effects in their children, and even in their grandchildren. Three or four generations.

God has designed the system that way, and the design encourages us to do the right thing. That’s a good thing.

But maybe there’s still a little itch inside you that wonders if he couldn’t have designed things better than this.

OK, it’s time to broaden the context.

The first time this principle is stated in the Bible is just a few chapters earlier, in the Ten Commandments. Here’s the specific wording:

I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, ⁶but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments (Ex 20.5b-6).

“To thousands” of what? The context is clear: to thousands of generations.

How long is a thousand generations? 20,000 years? 25,000 years?

I’m a young-earth creationist. I don’t think the earth has even been here that long.

Yes, sin carries consequences that involve more than the sinner himself. But grace—that goes on forever. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds (Rom 5.20).

So here in Exodus 34, I think we can tie several clauses together—

who keeps lovingkindness for thousands [of generations], …
yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished,
visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

This is all one attribute: he maintains justice while extending mercy far beyond the reach of the most heinous sin. He does all things well.

And what of us, and the way we treat our enemies?

Justice. But superabounding mercy.

Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash