Theology – Page 30

How Not to Have a Civil War, Part 2: Acknowledging the Divide

October 1, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Paul writes a letter to the Christians in Colossae because he’s heard things that trouble him. There’s false teaching there, and some in the church are at least thinking about going that way—elevating the role of angels, embracing various restrictions in order to feel more godly. Paul, knowing that falsehood always brings division, writes to straighten things out with the truth.

He begins with the simple fact that Christ is all—he created all (Co 1.16); he maintains all (Co 1.17); he is the King (Co 1.13); and he is the source of our spiritual life (Co 1.14). He has first place in everything (Co 1.18). He is the one in whom all things are reconciled to God (Co 1.20ff)—and by logical extension, to one another as well. Christ’s cross is the basis for whatever peace there is in the universe.

As a result, all the world is divided into two groups: those who are “in Christ,” and those who are not; those who live for eternal goals, and those who are consumed with the present. It should be no surprise that the latter group will be in perpetual conflict, since temporal goals—power, wealth, prestige, resources—are in finite supply. Someone’s going to have the power—the privilege, if you will—and others aren’t—and those others are going to want it badly enough to fight for it.

But those living for eternity, and not merely for the next election—and the power and resources it will bring—are not inclined to live as combatants for those temporal things; they have other desires, and the fulfillment of those desires is guaranteed by divine omnipotence.

Given their different goals, desires, and levels of confidence, these two groups live in very different ways. While many passages of Scripture (e.g. Ga 5.19-23; Ep 4.17-32; 1Th 4.3-10; 1P 2.1-3) contrast these two lifestyles, Paul’s discussion in Colossians benefits from being based directly on the Christology he’s presented earlier in the letter. When he moves from the doctrinal disquisition to the application of those truths to lifestyle, he sharply contrasts these two ways of life.

In Colossians 3.5-9 Paul summarizes the old way of life, which is the standard lifestyle for what he elsewhere calls “the natural man” (1Co 2.14)—which is all of us, from birth. This is the default lifestyle in the US and everywhere else. It’s a lifestyle that naturally eventuates in division, and in certain circumstances, all the way to civil war.

But that’s not the way people with eternal priorities live. Those who are “in Christ”—through no merit of their own—live, or ought to live, in ways that not only avoid those disastrous divisions but often help to heal them even in the broader societies in which they reside. Paul lays those characteristics out in the next paragraph, Colossians 3.10-17.

On this passage one commentator remarks,

The outstanding feature of this part of the letter is the sharp contrast between the old life and the new … . It is salutary to ponder the characteristics of the one for a while, to sense its whole mood and style of life, and then to switch suddenly to the other. They are indeed worlds apart. In the one we find attitudes and behaviour that cause inevitable fragmentation in human society and even within individuals: in the other, a way of life which integrates both individual persons and groups of people. The former, in other words, steadily obliterates genuinely human existence: the latter enhances it (Wright, Colossians, Tyndale NT Commentary, 133-34).

“Genuinely human existence”—as designed by the human’s Creator, in his image (Gn 1.26-27), for a redeemed and righted world. That’s where our heads should be, even when the world we live in is still broken and fundamentally unsatisfying—in the most significant ways, still “unformed and unfilled” (Gn 1.2) but headed toward a glorious and certain future.

This is where we find ourselves. What remains is for God’s people to define, examine, and contrast the two lifestyles and to adopt the one appropriate to our spiritual state.

We’ll start on that in the next post.

Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash

How Not to Have a Civil War, Part 1: Introduction

September 28, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

It’s not news to anybody that US culture is highly polarized and has been for some time. This polarization shows up most readily in political disputes, and especially in presidential election years, when all the disputes come to a head and when the consequences of victory and defeat are most clearly obvious.

Presidential elections have always been rowdy affairs in this country, at least since Adams v Jefferson in 1796. Some are rowdier than others, of course—Adams/Jackson (1824), Hayes/Tilden (1876), and Nixon/Humphrey (1968) come immediately to mind. Anybody currently over the age of 40 knows that every election since 1992 has been “the most important election of our lifetime.”

Even so, it feels like this year is extraordinary. There’s been fighting in the streets that reminds us old-timers of 1968, combined with a general sense of being on edge due to all the coronavirus issues. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that with social media, now every nitwit can be a publisher, with no editorial constraints—and we all know nitwits who are taking advantage of the opportunity. And now there’s a third vacancy on the Supreme Court in just 4 years.

Polarization. Tribalism. And lots of fuel to pour on that fire. Historians know that a key cause of the Civil War was sectionalism, and to them all this is looking pretty familiar. Here the divide is not as clearly geographical as it was 160 years ago—which in some ways makes the situation even worse—but it’s still eerily familiar.

And so there’s open talk about civil war. Red vs blue. Urban vs rural. Liberal vs conservative. And unsurprisingly, the joke about one side having all the guns doesn’t ease the tension.

I’d suggest that the solutions most commonly bandied about aren’t solutions at all.

Force—and the unconditional surrender of one of the parties—isn’t a long-term solution, as World Wars 1 and 2 so clearly taught us. The simmering rage of humiliation eventually breaks out again, and the second time is often worse than the first.

Appeasement doesn’t work either—again, as the World Wars demonstrated. (Think Neville Chamberlain.) When two sides each see the other as the enemy of their aspirations, eventually they’re going to resort to force.

In our situation the problem is compounded by the sheer number of things that divide us. We’re divided by race; by economic status; by political philosophy; by sex. These divisions go to the very core of our perceived identity; we’re not going to compromise them.

We can avoid civil war only by finding some part of our identity that is more powerful than the things that divide us. For many years, our shared identity as Americans was enough to do that. Often it’s the existence of a common threat, as in World War 2 and again for a few months after 9/11. For much of my lifetime there have been those arguing for unity on the basis of our shared humanity—who usually are dismissed as dreamers in the image of John Lennon.

I’d like to suggest that the Scripture speaks repeatedly of something that breaks down the racial and sexual and political and economic barriers that persistently divide us—and, perhaps surprisingly, it is based, in a specific way, in our shared humanity. The Bible doesn’t just dangle this idea out there as a carrot to get the kids fighting in the back seat to finally get along (and, I suppose, to stop mixing their metaphors); on the contrary, it presents the unity of peoples across significant barriers as a central part of the plan of God—something that he not only desires but is applying his divine power to accomplish with absolute certainty: that “God [is] in Christ reconciling the world unto himself” (2Co 5.19), so that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, … slave nor free man, … male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Ga 3.28), toward the goal of “a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes” (Re 7.9)—a unity so spectacular, so unimaginable, and so unbelievable even by those witnessing it, “that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places” (Ep 3.10); that is, that even supernatural beings are taken by surprise.

Wow.

There are lots of places in the Scripture where we can read about these ideas. I’ve chosen a section of Paul’s letter to the Colossian church, where I’ve been studying this month. We’ll embark on that study in the next post.

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On Jesus’ Baptism—and Our Incompetent Repentance

September 24, 2020 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

We all know the story of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan. We know that God chose this event to reveal publicly his approval of Jesus as “My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3.18). We know that this event is one of the clearest exhibitions of the Trinity in the Scripture, with the Father speaking from heaven, the Son standing in the Jordan, and the Spirit descending like a dove and landing on the Son.

But as familiar as this story is to us, we find ourselves still wondering, with John, why Jesus came to John to be baptized. As John protested, “You should be baptizing me!” Was this just Jesus’ way of announcing the onset of his public ministry? And if so, what did Jesus mean when he said, “This is necessary for us to fulfill all righteousness”?

There’s been a lot of ink spilled by writers of commentaries over these questions. When that happens, it usually means that the Scripture itself doesn’t give a clear answer to them. And when that happens, the systematic theologians step in and offer speculation—ideally, well founded and scripturally based.

I’d like to do that here.

To begin with, we should notice what John intended his baptism to mean. He called it “a baptism of repentance” (Lk 3.3; Mt 3.11); by agreeing to be baptized, people were acknowledging their sins and turning from them (Lk 3.10ff). And this makes the image of Jesus’ baptism all the more odd—and John’s objection to it all the more sensible—since Jesus had nothing to repent of.

Which brings us to our second consideration—Jesus’ statement of his own purpose in being baptized: “to fulfill all righteousness.”

What does that mean?

Perhaps we should consider his words against the larger theological significance of his incarnation. He came, of course, to die for the sins of mankind (Mk 10.45). But in order to get to that point, he had to present himself as a spotless lamb; he had to demonstrate his own sinlessness through a perfect life, the perfect fulfillment of the Law, thereby putting in place a righteousness that could be reckoned to our account (2Co 5.21). Theologians call this his “active obedience.”

That done, he offered himself up, dying on the cross in our place—vicariously—paying our sin debt and putting us into position to receive his righteousness, also earned vicariously.

He lived in our place, and he died in our place. He fulfilled all righteousness for us.

Hmmm.

That’s what he said to John, back at the baptism—remember?

The baptism was necessary, he said, “to fulfill all righteousness.”

The baptism of repentance.

Which he didn’t need. Because he didn’t need to repent.

What if—what if—he repented for us?

We’re terrible at repenting, you know.

We tell God we’re sorry, and we’ll never do it again.

And we’re not lying. We mean it.

But we do do it again, don’t we?

In spite of all our good intentions, and in spite of all we can do, we break the most important vow we ever make to God.

We can’t even repent right.

We’re miserable failures.

What if, at his baptism, Jesus offered the Father a repentance that was worthy of the name?

What if he repented—and never went back on his promise?

And what if that perfect repentance was offered to the Father—for us?

In our place!

“Let me do this,” Jesus said to John.

“It’s necessary to fulfill all righteousness.”

If I don’t do this, nobody else ever will. My Father will never get a decent repentance. I’ll do it for him. And for them.

And over the next 3 years, the Father received a repentance, and a life of obedience, and a sacrificial payment for sin, that were all perfect. In our name, and credited to our account.

Perfect. For us.

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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.

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On Filling Up Our Sins

September 17, 2020 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

They are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, ¹⁶hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the utmost (1Th 2.15b-16).

Paul is writing here of his unconverted Jewish opponents, those who followed him around from city to city and tried to undercut his evangelistic and church-planting work. In the process of noting their doom, he uses an odd expression: “they fill up the measure of their sins.”

What does that mean? And is it unique to Paul’s Jewish opponents, or is this something that other cultures should be wary of?

I think it’s easier to answer the first question if we begin by answering the second.

Similar language appears in 3 other places in the Scripture:

In Genesis 15.16, God tells Abram that his descendants will be exiled for 400 years, after which they will return to the Promised Land of Canaan, “for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full.” Here we learn that God is showing mercy to the Canaanites, whose land God has promised to Abram and his descendants, by giving them 400 years to repent (or, as my Dad would have said, “straighten up”). God knows, as he knows all things, that they won’t repent, but rather “fill up” their sins, bringing judgment on themselves.

In his prophecy of the coming world kingdoms, Daniel reveals (Dn 8.23) that an evil ruler (commonly interpreted to be Antiochus IV “Epiphanes”) will arise “when the transgressors have filled up.”* Again, the context is of evil cultures exceeding all moral norms and “maxxing out” their sinfulness.

Finally, in his condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees of his day, Jesus tells them to “fill up … the measure of the guilt of your fathers … from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah … whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar” (Mt 23.32-35). He concludes the outburst by saying, “Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation” (Mt 23.36). That is, the bowl of guilt has been filled to the brim; it’s time for judgment. And what a judgment it was—the city of Jerusalem and the cherished Temple reduced to rubble, and the Jewish people scattered to the four winds for nearly 1900 years.

The picture in all these passages is consistent. Mankind, inclined to evil, rejects God’s will and pursues his own. In kindness and grace, God withholds punishment, giving mankind ample opportunity to come to his senses and repent, righting the wrongs that he has perpetrated. But he sees the apparent lack of punishment as “getting away with it,” and he accelerates down the slope of rebellion without compunction or restraint.

But God is just as well as merciful, and his compassionate mercy does not allow for perpetual unrighted injustice. A day of reckoning will surely come. The vessel of sin will eventually be full, and the time for justice will arrive. Wrong will be righted. The offender will be held to account.

Since God does not change, this principle applies to our culture as certainly as to any in the past. We live in a society that is rapidly filling up the measure of its sins—in its arrogance against God and his people, in its rejection of his wise design for sexual behavior, in its worship of all things temporal, in its love for violence, in its denial of justice to the poor and otherwise powerless and favoritism toward the powerful and favored.

God’s people can take comfort in the surety of coming justice, from a God who can execute it in ways far more just, pervasive, and thorough than anything we can devise for ourselves.

* For the nerds among my readers, I note that the verb “filled up” in 1 Thessalonians is anapleroo, the same verb in the Septuagint (LXX) of Gn 15.16. The verb in Daniel (LXX) and Matthew is pleroo.

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

September 14, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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

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

Walk humbly.

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

First, the humility.

Frankly, God shouldn’t have to say this.

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

We can hardly believe it’s happening.

Even being in the presence of certain people humbles us.

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

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

Humbly is the way we should walk.

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

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

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

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

The first kind is typified by an elevator ride.

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

1 … 2 … 3 …

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

4 … 5 … oh, look! There’s a 6!

How can we explain this odd behavior?

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

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

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

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

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

We just want to be together.

“Walk humbly with thy God.”

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

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

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

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

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

How much?

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

This is what the Lord seeks from us.

To walk humbly with our God.

Let’s not treat it like an elevator ride.

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

September 10, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Justice

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

Love mercy.

This is a big word.

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

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

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

Favor
Goodliness
Goodness
Kindness
Lovingkindness
Marvellous
Mercy
Pity

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

One scholar defined the Hebrew word this way:

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

One of my theology professors put it more concisely:

“Steadfast, loving loyalty.”

Several concepts going on here:

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

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

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

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

It’s living out James 2:15-17—

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

We’re to love mercy.

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

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

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

He’s given me life, in a world designed to support life profusely and lavishly.
He’s brought me under the sound of the gospel, through extraordinary circumstances.
He’s poured out spiritual blessings in abundance on his unfaithful son.

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

Indeed.

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

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

And may we love it.

Part 4: A Humble Walk

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

September 6, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction

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

Do justice.

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

Can we right the deep wrong of the American practice of slavery by doing something today? Well-intentioned people will argue all day about how to do that.

But the family that poured their life savings and sweat equity into a small business only to have it burned to the ground by rioters? That’s just not right.

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

How then are we to do justice?

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

But how?

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

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

How do we get to know God?

Through his Word.

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

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

You call that systemic racism.

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

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

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

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

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

Part 3: Mercy | Part 4: A Humble Walk

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

September 3, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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

And why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you want, anyway?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

Silent, but Working

August 27, 2020 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Why doesn’t God do something? Why doesn’t he show himself? Why is he silent?

Over the centuries God’s people have asked that question often. We want help. We want vindication. We want solutions.

But the question “Why doesn’t God do something?!” is deeply misguided.

There are many places in the Bible where we could demonstrate that, but I’m going to suggest the book of Esther.

When my daughters were small, this was their favorite Bible story—I suppose because it involves a strong, smart woman, and plenty of suspense, and rich irony. They would often ask me to tell it, and if I left out a line, they would interrupt and remind me—“No, Daddy, you forgot to say that the Jews don’t bow to anyone but God!”

We all know the story; I don’t need to recount it all here. But perhaps you’ve never noticed that throughout this ancient classic, God’s name is never mentioned.

It’s as though he doesn’t exist.

The closest the writer comes to mentioning God is when Mordecai—who’s apparently named for the Babylonian god Marduk—tells his cousin that perhaps she has come to be queen “for such a time as this” (Est 4.14)—implying some kind of guiding hand in history.

No, God is not mentioned. But throughout the story there’s evidence of his hand at every turn—

The evil king Xerxes (that’s the Greek form of the name Ahasuerus) deposes his queen because she won’t degrade herself before his drunken friends.
This evil king decides to replace her by a holding a sexual tryout among the most beautiful women of the land, appointing his favorite as queen and relegating the rest to his harem. This is not exactly a godly activity, though culturally allowed. Esther’s beauty gets her into the trial, and eventually he appoints her queen.
Her cousin happens to overhear two members of the court plotting to assassinate the king. He reports the plot, saving the king’s life, and a cuneiform tablet recording the deed is added to the voluminous court archives.
A proud member of the court, one who clearly has designs on the throne, is enraged by Mordecai’s refusal to bow to him and evidences his racism by planning to kill Mordecai and all his people. He builds an execution stake and goes to ask the king’s permission to execute Mordecai.
At the climax of the story, the king has insomnia. Of all things. He asks a servant to bring something from the archives to read; surely that will put him to sleep.
The servant, probably rubbing the sleep from his eyes, wanders into the warehouse, yawns, and grabs any old cuneiform tablet from Section 427Q—or whatever—and returns to the king to begin reading.
We all know which tablet he grabbed, probably without looking. The king learns, apparently for the first time, that an assassination plot has been foiled by a low-level government functionary.
He wants to reward the fellow, so he asks for ideas. “Is anybody in the court?” And there stands Haman the proud, waiting for morning—he wants to be the first in line—to get approval for Mordecai’s execution. The very Mordecai that the king wants to reward.
And the story goes on.

Too many coincidences. Too many unifying events in the plot development.

Somebody thought up this plot. Somebody wrote this story. And everybody who reads it, from my little daughters to the most aged saint, knows that. Now what would you think if somebody wandered into this narrative and asked, “Why doesn’t God do something?!”

We’d say he’s clueless. We’d say he needs to sit up and pay attention.

Throughout biblical history—by the most conservative estimates, maybe 4000 years—miracles are quite rare. They occur in spurts, during the lifetimes of Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Christ and the apostles. About 5 or 6% of the time. (If you think the earth is older than that, the percentage is even lower.)

Even in the Bible, at least 94% of the time, God’s not doing miracles. He’s doing ordinary things, directing the affairs of people and nations.

We call that providence.

And he continues that work today, in your life and mine, ordinarily, unspectacularly, beneficially, lovingly, wisely.

We need to sit up and pay attention.

Photo by Wes Grant on Unsplash