Theology – Page 46

On Sin: Sometimes, It IS a Sin to Be Tempted.

October 8, 2018 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

“It’s not a sin to be tempted; it’s only a sin if you give in to the temptation.”

This is one of those axioms of the Christian faith, one of those fundamental propositions that everybody says, and we all accept, first, because it makes so much sense, and second, because it makes us feel a lot better, and we need all the feeling better we can get.

Pretty much everybody teaches this principle as axiomatic. Roman Catholics do. People in the Church of Christ do. Mark Driscoll does. Rick Warren does. Pretty much every conservative evangelical church does.

But is it true?

Well, it must be true, right? If everybody says so. And if being tempted is sinful, we’re all toast, right? What chance do we have?

I’d like to suggest that The Axiom is overly simplistic—that the biblical view of temptation is slightly more complex than we’re seeing.

Here’s why.

The key biblical principle underlying The Axiom is that Jesus was tempted, and he never sinned. Since the Scripture says that directly (Heb 4.15), it is of course true.

So it is possible to be tempted without sin. But the question for us is deeper than that. Is there no temptation that is sinful in itself? Is it only entertaining or acting on the temptation that places us in a position of sin? Is no temptation sinful?

The Bible has a lot to say about the nature and sources of temptation. Paul writes that in our lives before regeneration, we found ourselves following “the course of this world, … the prince of the power of the air, … in the passions of our flesh” (Eph 2.2-3). From there Christian theologians, beginning apparently with Peter Abelard, standardized the sources of temptation as “the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

Which of these served as the source of Jesus’ temptation? Well, in the most famous temptation event—we assume that there may well have been others—his temptation came directly from the devil (Mat 4.1ff; Lk 4.1ff). It’s important to note that these temptations originated outside of him; they were imposed on him from an outside source.

The flesh, of course, is internal to us. And John tells us that the world brings to us “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1Jn 2.16)—which sounds as though it’s at least partially internal to us as well. Did Jesus face the temptation of the flesh? Or the world, in John’s sense of “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”? We have to rule both of those out, given that Jesus, conceived without sin by the Holy Spirit (Mat 1.20; Lk 1.35), did not have a fallen, sinful nature.

But what about us? Do any of our temptations come from within us? Do we ever tempt ourselves? We certainly feel as though we do, and James seals that suspicion by telling us that “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (Jam 1.14).

I would suggest that temptation is sinful when it starts within you. It’s sinful when you do it to yourself.

And we’ve all had that experience.

There’s a part of us that rises up in rebellion against our good and kind Creator, casts aside his laws and his desires, and seeks to go our own way.

And that, my friend, is blameworthy. It’s culpable. It’s sinful.

Whether you act on those desires or not.

Now, how are we inclined to respond to that?

If I’ve already sinned in being tempted, then I might just as well go ahead and do it. Phooey.

Not so, for two reasons.

First, there are practical consequences in pursuing sinful actions, consequences that limit our future choices and which we ought to avoid.

But much more importantly, we’re God’s children; he is our father; and we ought not do those things. That is reason enough.

But all of this is overshadowed and overwhelmed by a great and glorious truth.

All your sin is obliterated. Nuked. Gone. All of it.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you.

Part 4

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On Sin: I’m Guilty of Adam’s Sin? How Is That Fair?

October 4, 2018 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1

In my last post, on the way to making another point, I briefly mentioned the biblical truth of original sin.

In its simplest terms, original sin is the sinful guilt that you came into the world with. Babies are born guilty. Specifically, they’re born guilty of Adam’s sin.

Babies? Really? But they’re so … cute, with their little round bottoms and their little pearly toes and their gas-induced smiles. We paint cherubs as babies just because they’re so, um, cute, and innocent, and stuff.

What do you have against babies, anyway? What are you, some kind of monster?

I can assure you that I like babies as much as the next guy. I worked with my wife in the church nursery for more than 20 years. And for what it’s worth, I learned there that I like my own babies better than other people’s, but I still like them a lot.

But like it or not, the Bible teaches that all of us, at birth, bear the guilt of Adam’s sin (Rom 5.12). We’re not just born with an inclination to sin; we’re born already guilty of having sinned.

I know what your response to that will be; everyone has the same response.

It’s not fair!

And, perhaps surprisingly, I’m going to agree with you on that. Back to that in a moment.

In the Mosaic Law, God said that a child could not be held guilty of his father’s sins (Dt 24.16). So why should I be guilty of Adam’s sin? How can that be just?

The answer—a partial one—is that Adam was representing us in his sin, just as a legislator can bind us with laws because his vote in Congress represents us.

But I didn’t vote for Adam! I never had a say in this!

True. Though I will note that you’ve spent your life demonstrating with your sinfulness that Adam’s apple didn’t fall far from the tree now, did it? So there’s that. Whether you’re held guilty of Adam’s sin or not, you’re still in deep, deep trouble, and Adam’s guilt isn’t going to make your outcome any worse. But that still doesn’t seem to justify holding you guilty for an act that you didn’t actually commit.

So why? Why has God set me up like this?

Ah, my friend, because what you’ve heard so far is not the whole story. When you were still a (sinful) child, you learned that waiting for the end of the story is always worth it.

So what’s the end of the story?

The official name for what we’ve been talking about so far is imputation. Adam’s sin has been imputed to you—placed on your account, like a credit-card charge—so that you are in debt for it.

But there’s more to imputation than just this.

In God’s gracious plan, your sin has been imputed, too. Your sin—every last bit of it—has been placed on the account of Jesus of Nazareth. He’s guilty of everything bad you’ve ever done.

That wasn’t fair, either.

And while you didn’t agree to receive the guilt of Adam’s sin, Jesus absolutely agreed to receive your sin.

How do you feel about the deal now?

And there’s more.

When Jesus came to earth, born as a man, he came as the Second Adam (Lk 3.38; Rom 5.18-21). Because the first Adam was your representative, you can now be represented by the Second Adam. And what benefit does that bring?

Well, when Christ willingly took your sins upon himself and bore their penalty, that wiped out your sin debt, but you were still broke. You went from owing a bazillion dollars to debt-free, but you still didn’t have any money in the bank.

The Second Adam changed all that.

In the third great act of imputation, all of Christ’s righteousness was placed in your bank account (2Co 5.21). All his perfect obedience to the Father throughout his earthly life is now your record. The Father has not only forgiven your sin, but the very record of that sin has been expunged. It’s not there. That’s why he “will remember it no more” (Jer 31.34). You are rich in righteousness, as rich as it’s possible to be. God sees you through Christ-colored glasses.

Now, you can complain about the unfairness of being guilty of Adam’s sin if you want, but that’s a stupidly short-sighted perspective.

Adam’s sin has traveled from him, to you, to Christ, who has burned it in the fires of eternal judgment. And what he has given us in its place is beyond reckoning.

Grace.

Part 3 Part 4

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On Sin: All. He Paid It All.

October 1, 2018 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

At the core of biblical teaching is the idea of the vicarious atonement—that is, Jesus, the Son of God, took our place of guilt before God (2Co 5.21) and thus took our penalty of death (Rom 6.23).

The reason we’re not constantly overwhelmed with the significance of this is that, unfortunately, we’ve gotten used to it. Most of us have been told since age 3 that “Jesus died for my sins!” and now it’s just part of our ordinary universe.

That’s too bad.

We’ve lost the sense of marvel, of wonder, at what that means.

That means …

That God created us knowing that we’d rebel against him.
That he determined to rescue us when we were not only not calling for help, but were actively fighting him off, cursing and spitting in his face, determined to drown in our sin.
That he knew that his nature required a perfect, infinite payment for our sin, a payment that only he could make.
That he knew that making that payment—the death penalty—was something he could not do without himself becoming a mortal. Cur Deus Homo?
That he thus knew that by making even one of these creatures, he was committing himself to becoming one of them—to fundamentally altering the very fabric of the cosmos, or rather, the fabric of whatever there was before there even was a cosmos.

In the beginning, indeed.

We must confess that this is mystery. It’s a place where we tread with respect, with reverence, with awe. It’s holy ground.

But it is no mystery what are the results of this magnificent plan. The Scripture reveals them to us with light and delight.

He was made sin for us, the Scripture says, that we might be made the righteousness of God. And because he stood in our place, he has paid the full price for all of our sins (Isa 53.6). All of them.

What does that mean?

He has paid for our original sin—our complicity in the sin of Adam, our first father (Rom 5.12).
- Wait! You say. I’m guilty of Adam’s sin? That’s not fair!
- We’ll talk about that next time.
He has paid for our sin nature—the fact that we’re inclined to sin, left to our own devices. Our sinfulness is not primarily because the devil made us do it; it’s primarily because we tempt ourselves (Jam 1.13-15). You’re your own tempter.
- Wait! Are you saying it’s a sin to be tempted?!
- In our case, yes, I’m saying that. We’ll talk about that the time after next.
He has paid for every sin you have ever committed. The accidental ones. The momentary flares of evil that we didn’t see coming. And even the ones we planned, hardening our hearts even as we moved purposefully toward some great evil that we recognized as evil and wanted anyway. Every bitter thought. Every evil deed. All of it.
And get this. He has paid for all the sins of tomorrow—all the sins you haven’t committed yet but assuredly will. He’s paid for those too. Yes, you’ll need to confess them when they come, and he will forgive you at that time (1Jn 1.9), restoring the relationship and fellowship that your sin will have damaged, but you will never be in peril of eternal torment for that sin, even before you have confessed it. It’s paid for. All of it.

Now, perhaps a handful of you have had a thought on reading this.

My future sins are paid for?! So what’s the problem with committing them? Why not have a little sin party, since those sins won’t count anyway?

Oh, my friend, there are two great problems with that thought. First, those sins do damage your fellowship with your God—see just above—and that is a price far too high. You can’t treat as trivial the love of one who has done all this for you.

And the second problem derives from the first. Since it’s unnatural for God’s children to trivialize his grace, then your thought calls into question whether you know his grace at all. God’s people don’t think like that.

Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?!
May it never be!
How shall we, who are dead to sin, live in it any longer?! (Rom 6.1-2)

So revel in God’s grace and forgiveness. Drink it all up to the last drop. It’s an infinite gift.

For the next 2 posts we’ll probe some further related thoughts—

Why were we born guilty of Adam’s sin? How is that fair?
How can I say it’s a sin to be tempted? Jesus was tempted without any sin (Heb 4.15), right?

See you then.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

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Sublime to Ridiculous

September 17, 2018 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

God is great, and he is good.

He created all things in the span of six days, and the Scripture describes the origin of all the stars in all the galaxies in all the galaxy clusters in all the universe with just three words (two in Hebrew): “and the stars” (Gen 1.16). And the speed with which he made it all implies no hurry or lack of attention to detail; he made the earth perfect as a residence—a sanctuary—for us humans, with all of our needs—oxygen, water, food, light, heat—freely and abundantly provided (Gen 1.29).

He made us in his image (Gen 1.27) and sought out our companionship in the cool of the day (Gen 3.8). And despite our faithlessness to him and our rejection of his commands (Gen 3), he set out on a long plan to woo us back to himself, as the one whom his soul loves.

Why so long?

For at least a couple of reasons, I think.

First, because his long, unflagging pursuit of us assures us of his love. He’s serious about this. He’s not going away. This is true love of the purest and most devoted kind.

And second, because he gives us time. We are stubborn—he knows that (Ps 103.14)—and we need to be shown that we will not be satisfied with anything or anyone but him. So he lengthens our leash, and he lets us sniff all the sidewalks to our heart’s content. He patiently endures the jealousy his own heart feels toward us, watching us seek satiation in everything else there is. He lets us exhaust ourselves in our foolishness. He’s a patient lover.

And when we’ve come to the end of our orgy, to the end of ourselves, wrecked and ruined and unattractive and repulsive (Ezek 16), then he draws us to himself, graciously, tenderly, and whispers to us of love. And we ought to believe him. His patience tells us of his love; his revelation of himself tells us (Rom 2.4); and most especially, his giving of himself in brutalizing, deadly sacrifice—for our filthiness, not his—tells us beyond any doubt (Rom 5.8).

But even as believers—forgiven, welcomed, indwelt, gifted, guided, protected, loved—we find ourselves faithless. We doubt his promises—or worse, forget them—and fear the place he’s called us to serve. Like toddlers in the checkout line, we find ourselves distracted by bright colors and sugary treats, and we seek our fulfillment in light and worthless things. We go through the motions of marriage to him, but our heart is elsewhere. We’re glad for his grace—don’t you feel bad for all those (other) people going to hell?—but we pursue our own joys and our own ends. We’ve hired other people, you see, to serve him “full-time,” to take the gospel to the ends of the earth as he has commanded us.

And we fear. Oh, do we fear. Will I lose my health? Will the wrong guy get elected? Will the market crash? Will laws be broken?

What if it does? What if they are? Is our God asleep? Is he in the men’s room (1Ki 18.27)? After millennia of pursuing us, is he going to abandon us now?

This isn’t the first time the kings of the earth have raged against God’s anointed (Ps 2). It isn’t abnormal that God’s people are not the powerful of the earth (1Co 1). His plan for us, apparently, is very different from our plan for ourselves. Once again.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me

and delivered me from all my fears (Ps 34.4).

So then.

PSA: I’ve seen all those memes. You know, those fearful and snide and unoriginal and hostile and divisive ones about Colin Kaepernick and Cory Booker and Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein and whatever else. So you can stop posting them now, OK? Maybe you could post about–oh, I don’t know–the things I’ve mentioned above. Thanks.

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Groovier Than Thou

August 20, 2018 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mat 28.19-20).

This is the Big One, the Prime Directive. If we don’t give attention to this, nothing else matters. The church’s job—the individual believer’s job—is to present the gospel to everyone on earth, evangelizing, baptizing, teaching.

This despite the fact that most people aren’t interested (Rom 3.9-18), and that most people, apparently, will never be interested (Mat 7.13-14).

So how do we catch their interest?

There are 2 schools of thought on that.

We make the gospel as attractive as possible by excelling at everything we do, particularly at those things that are already interesting to the people we’re trying to reach. We become the best at academic pursuits, at artistic pursuits, at athletic pursuits, at anything that will provide a bridge to the unbeliever.
We present the gospel as winsomely as possible, but we let it speak for itself. We depend on the Holy Spirit to do the attracting.

I grew up in churches that held to the first view. It was the 60s, and many of us Christians tried to be as groovy as everyone around us, as a lever for inciting interest in the Lord we served. “Real peace through Jesus, baby.”

Sidebar: I know the word groovy hasn’t occurred to anybody in 40 years. It’s anachronistic and therefore odd. It sounds like somebody who’s not cool but who’s trying to be—desperately and clumsily, like a 70-year-old woman with long, bleached-blonde hair, a barbed-wire tattoo, and a bikini. I’m using the word intentionally, and I’ll come back to the anachronism problem later.

I was much older before I understood the theological and historical roots of this approach. It was rooted in a couple of ideas, one centuries old—oddly enough—and one quite recent at the time.

The first theological basis was post-millennialism, which has been around since at least the 17^th century. This view, still popular today, especially in some Reformed circles, is the idea that Christ will return to earth after the church has established the kingdom through centuries of increasing power and influence. Today it’s the basis of Christian Reconstructionism, or Dominion Theology. The view finds its biblical roots most obviously in Jesus’ teaching that the kingdom will arrive slowly; see, for example, the parables of the mustard seed (Mat 13.31-32) and of the leaven (Mat 13.33).

If post-millennialism is correct, then the church needs literally to take over the world, to become its ruler. And if that’s not going to happen by force—I don’t know any post-millennialist who’s advocating force today, despite the fear-mongering from the American political left, which tries to paint all evangelicals as Dominionists, people who want to take over the whole system and impose their beliefs on everyone else—then it needs to happen by influence in every area of life. The church needs to win at everything, in every area of culture.

The second theological basis was a proposal by a leading American evangelical, Harold Ockenga, in the late 1940s. He called for a “new evangelicalism” that would be characterized by 3 distinctives: 1) a rejection of fundamentalist separatism; 2) a commitment to academic engagement with theological liberalism; and 3) a commitment to social involvement. Those who embraced Ockenga’s proposal called for replacing separatism with “infiltration.”

And that in turn opened the door for evangelicals of my generation to try to be groovier than thou.

But as I participated in and observed that strategy, I wasn’t happy with the pragmatics of it. I noticed that we weren’t having much success at attracting long-term disciples with grooviness. They would be more accepting of us—perhaps, if we were groovy enough, and our grooviness didn’t come across as fake and manipulative—but that didn’t seem to translate into their being more accepting of Christ. And I couldn’t help noticing that being groovy affected us, our thinking and our behavior, a lot more than it affected the people we were trying to reach.

I wasn’t happy with the theology of it either. I knew that salvation is God’s work, not ours—from beginning to end. I knew that justification and glorification are entirely God’s work; and I knew that sanctification, which occurs between those two, while something we play a part in bringing to pass, is empowered, enabled, by the Spirit of God.

And so I knew that the very beginning of that process, conviction, is the Spirit’s work as well. It’s not my clever turn of phrase, or my quickness with exactly the right answer to the doubter’s question, or my overpowering intellectual brilliance, or my grooviness—or even Jesus’ grooviness—that brings the unbeliever to Christ; it’s the power of the Spirit, using the living Word of God (Heb 4.12), that confounds the doubter’s resistance from the inside out (John 6.44).

So. I don’t have to be groovy. In fact, since what’s groovy changes as quickly as the word used to describe it—cool, hip, rad, awesome, whatever—I’m going to waste a lot of energy trying to keep up with an ever-moving culture (what?! you mean Hanson’s not rad anymore?), energy that would be better invested in simply telling and living the gospel story.

So I’ve quit trying to be groovy—and that’s made my daughters’ lives easier, if nothing else.

And you know what?

There’s great freedom in not carrying the burden of getting the unbeliever to Christ. God will do that. I don’t have to be cool enough, or smart enough, or quick enough to carry it off. All I need to do is live the fruit of the Spirit, and tell the story.

Or, as my friend David Hosaflook says, “Pray, meet people, and tell them about Jesus.”

And, come to think of it, that requires all the energy I’ve ever had.

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On Beginning Another Academic Year

August 13, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Today is the first day back in the office after a summer of activity, rest, and refreshment. Year 24 of teaching. (I was a teaching assistant during my seminary days, and I’ve been teaching fulltime since the fall of 2000.) Every year means refocusing, fine-tuning, tightening both philosophy and technique.

Every faculty member at my institution has expressed a personal philosophy of education, which he includes in his annual portfolio. What follows is mine.

__________

My educational philosophy grows out of two broader, over-arching philosophies: my life mission and the mission of the institution where I serve.

My life mission is to glorify God by edifying His people and helping prepare others to serve Him. It finds its foundation in Paul’s statement to his Corinthian friends: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all things to the glory of God” (1Cor 10.31; my translation). It finds its specific application in Paul’s words to another group of friends, this time in Ephesus: “[Christ] gave [gifted people to the church] … in order to equip the saints for the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph 4.12). Like my fellow believers, by God’s good plan and providence, I am where I am, and have the gifts that I have, in order to use those gifts to build up members of the body of Christ. There is no greater mission. And as a fringe benefit, God is a good and gracious Master.

By that same providence, I find myself in the corner of the vineyard that calls itself Bob Jones University. By contracting to teach here, I have agreed to its mission, which is to build Christ-like character in students through the medium of liberal arts higher education. That means that I have a dual focus as I teach: to teach my students the Scripture itself, by which God, over the years ahead, will change them from the inside out, to make them more like Christ (Acts 20.32; 2 Cor 3.18); and to give my students the tools to teach themselves and others the ideas of Scripture (which is my subject area), so that they in turn may present it clearly to those who are seeking and may serve other believers with its truths.

That’s a big job, impossible without divine enablement. Thus I need to begin in reliance on God Himself, nurturing my relationship with Him, praying for direction and empowerment each day, recognizing and embracing each day’s circumstances and challenges as divine appointments. Since I will give account to Him one day for my stewardship (Rom 14.12), I need to prepare myself for each day’s responsibilities, first, and in general, by keeping my academic and spiritual qualifications sharp, and then by evaluating carefully each day’s objectives and planning how best to reach them.

Since the same divine appointment has placed each specific group of students before me, I recognize them as the Bible describes them: made in the image of God (Gen 1.26-27), and therefore worthy of my best effort, regardless of their individual academic abilities or personal character flaws. My goal is to meet each student where he is, and to bring him, by God’s grace, as far as I can down the path of Christ-like character and preparation for skillful service. The Scripture also tells me that my students, like me, are broken images, with sinful natures and evil tendencies (Rom 3.23). That means that I have to encourage them to progress down that path even when they are—often—not inclined in that direction. I may use positive motivation, such as encouragement or praise, or I may need to use what the student may view as a more negative experience, such as exhortation, academic penalty, or even careful criticism. While I never assume that students will naturally do the right thing, I try to approach them positively first, resorting to harder measures only as the softer ones prove insufficient.

My classroom technique is an outgrowth of my own nature. (I believe that had I been born two decades later, I would have been diagnosed with ADHD as a child.) As a student, I needed to be interested in what I was seeing in order to engage it. As I teach I am constantly driven to present material that is both at a reachable level and enjoyable. That means that I first need to couch the material in terms that communicate to the students directly and clearly, and then in a way that is engaging and attractive. I use everyday language, and I define useful jargon as I present it. Since my courses typically need to cover a lot of relatively technical material, I find that I have to use lecture predominantly, but I try to make it engaging by using a lot of humor and demonstrating my own interest in the subject. I’ve learned that a light in the eyes goes a long way.

I find that I cannot reach these goals effectively without at least encouraging my students to interact with me beyond the formal classroom environment. I regularly eat lunch with students in the University Dining Common; I hold scheduled office hours each day; I meet each week with a prayer group in the men’s residence halls; and when I pass students in the hallways or out on the campus, I make a point to catch the eye of each one who will look up, and offer a friendly greeting. (When I’m walking, my cell phone is in my pocket, where it belongs.) When I notice that a student has an uncharacteristic look, I’ll seek an opportunity to take him aside and ask if there’s anything I can help with.

God gifts His people to serve Him, and each one has something he can do well. I find that when I’m in the classroom, I am most at ease; that’s where I fit. (Well, or in Africa with a team of students—but that’s teaching too.) There’s nothing else I would rather do; I don’t talk about “hump day” or yearn for the weekend, and I don’t eagerly count the days until I retire. By God’s grace, I’d like to die with my boots on—teach the last class, deliver the last lecture, turn in my grades, and step through to God’s plan on the other side.

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I Was Born That Way

August 9, 2018 by Dan Olinger 6 Comments

I was.

And so were you.

I’ve never understood why many of my fellow believers apparently reflexively argue with those who say that they were born with an inclination that my friends view as immoral. Why couldn’t that be the case?

Now, I’ll grant that it’s difficult to imagine particularly sexual orientation being present from birth, since it seems to take some time for any child to develop any sexual orientation whatever. But I’m happy to concede to my (e.g.) gay friends that they have felt inclined toward same-sex attraction from their earliest memories.

Two reasons for that. In reverse order of importance.

Personal experience

No, I haven’t wrestled with same-sex attraction, and I’ve never felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body. But from my earliest days, I’ve known that there was something seriously wrong with me.

My older sisters could tell you that I was a difficult child. Loud, obnoxious, without self-discipline, generally a pain in various parts of the anatomy. I drove them to tears, more than once.

And here’s the thing. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be good. I wanted to add to the joy rather than the misery of whatever the event was. I wanted, as my mother would often admonish me, to “be a help, and not a hindrance.” Every year, right after getting a new crop of school supplies, I would tell myself that this year I was going to be good.

But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. Things would just pop out of my mouth, and I would see the hurt on the face of a loved one, or the frustration on the face of a teacher, and I would feel my own frustration with myself rise.

I couldn’t do the good that I could aspire to.

I was born that way.

Scripture

Not surprisingly, the Scripture endorses my experience. It tells me that I shouldn’t be surprised by what I find in my heart.

It tells me that everyone is a sinner (Rom 3.23).
It tells me that all of us start out as sinners, from the very beginning; it’s nature, not nurture (Ps 58.3). My children could lie (with their expressions) before they could speak, and so could I.
It tells me that even Paul the Apostle felt the great internal double-mindedness that I do (Rom 7).

But the Scripture tells me something that my experience doesn’t.

It tells me that there’s a solution.

The solution is not in good intentions. Peter denied Jesus even though he intended not to (Mat 26.33).
It’s not in gritting my teeth and trying harder. Paul demonstrates that (Rom 7).

The solution is not in me at all. I’m bereft.

The solution is in Christ. My righteous Father, the Scripture tells me, has placed my voluminous sin on His righteous Son: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned–every one–to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isa 53.6).

How does that happen? By faith.

What does that mean?

I believe in Christ; I trust the effectiveness of his action on my behalf, and I trust that he will forgive me as he has promised. Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5.1).

I was born that way. But I’m forgiven. None of that garbage counts against me. “My sin … is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more!”

And, remarkably, that’s not the end of the story.

The Scripture tells me 3 more really encouraging things, even as my struggle with my dark heart continues.

God has not only forgiven my sin debt, but he has deposited in my account all the righteousness of Christ himself (2 Cor 5.21). He sees me as not just sinless, but the producer of all kinds of good. He sees me through Christ-colored glasses.
God has placed in me his Holy Spirit, who enables me to do better; as a believer, I now have the ability, if I will but use it, to do those things that I aspire to (Rom 6). I don’t have to lose anymore. He who lives in me is stronger than my own evil impulses (1 Jn 4.4). I’m still struggling, as is everyone I know; but we have strength that we weren’t born with, and that’s very good news.
The present struggle isn’t going to last forever; my current frustration is temporary. The day is coming when God, as he promises, will make me like his Son (1 Jn 3.2). There really is light—great light—at the end of this very dark tunnel.

Yes, I was born that way. And so were you. And there is not only some amorphous “hope,” but there is an answer. A solution.

By faith.

Photo by Bruno Aguirre on Unsplash

7 Stabilizing Principles in a Chaotic World, Part 8

August 6, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Number 7: Fellowship. You need those people who disagree with you.

Believe it or not, one year I played football. American football. I was an offensive lineman.

Pop Warner League. Seventh grade. Weight limit was 110 pounds at the top, 75 at the bottom. I was 2 pounds too light, but they let me play anyway.

We called ourselves the Patriots. (We were in a Boston suburb.) We lost every game but one.

That experience didn’t jump-start my career, but it did teach me a lot of things. Most important, it forever changed my thinking about diversity.

As with any team sport, football has different positions, and they have different requirements. The offensive lineman has pretty much one job: be a wall. Protect the quarterback. Give him 2 or 3 seconds to get the ball where it needs to go.

So what does an offensive lineman look like? He’s big. Really big. 350 pounds big. His job is to get in the way and stay there.

Out at the far end of the line is the wide receiver. What’s his job? Get down the field—sometimes waaaay down the field—and catch the ball. And then run with it. He needs to be fast. And agile, to out-maneuver the defensive secondary. And it helps if he has some vertical reach so he can catch a broader range of passes.

So what does he look like? He’s not 350 pounds, that’s for sure. He’s thinner, more like an Olympic sprinter, and he’s usually tall, with an ability to jump. And he has great hands.

Now, which of those body types is better?

Neither one, obviously. They’re both necessary for the success of the team. You put an offensive lineman out at the wide receiver’s position, and he’ll be worn out after 2 or 3 plays. You put the wide receiver in at left guard, and they’ll be carrying him—or the quarterback—off the field in short order.

You need them both, and you want them both. It’s the diversity that makes your team great.

What about church? What about life?

It’s human nature to want to be with people who are like you. They look like you, they think like you, they live like you. Other people are unwise, or icky, or nuts. Anybody who drives faster than you is a maniac; anybody who drives slower is a moron. So we go to church with people like us.

And our church is all wide receivers, or offensive linemen, and we wonder why we don’t win any games.

You need to surround yourself with people who are different from you. Sure, racially different—whatever that means—but different in the more important ways as well. Different in the way they think. Socially different. Culturally different. Politically different.

Different, in significant ways.

Why?

Because you’re not good at everything, and you need them to be good at whatever you’re not. You need their strengths, their insights, and especially their correction. You need them.

For many years I was on the elder board of my church. As we wrestled with hard cases and difficult decisions, I came to appreciate the fact that we had different kinds of people at the table.

We had men with the gift of mercy. They would bring a situation to the table: here’s someone who doesn’t have enough to eat. And they would weep, and they would say, “We need to help this family!”

But we also had men without the gift of mercy. They would listen, and they wouldn’t weep. And they’d say, “Why do they not have enough to eat? Is it because he’s foolish with his money? And if so, should we be giving him more money? How about if we buy him a bag of groceries, and then have one of the financial advisers in the church give him some pro bono help setting up a budget and learning how to stick to it?”

(I’ll let you guess which of those groups I was in.)

Now. Which of those people on the elder board is more important?

You need them both. You need the one who weeps, and you need the one who doesn’t. They both make you a better team.

Now let me place the rubber on the road.

When families are being separated at the border, you need people with the gift of mercy, and you need people without it.

You need people who get righteously angry at the suffering that’s going on. You need people who call down a system that takes 3-year-olds to court. Without their parents.

But you also need people who say, “These people are in this predicament because they broke the law. And if we subsidize their behavior, we’re going to get more of it. And that’s not good for us, and it’s most certainly not good for them. We ought to do what we can to discourage this kind of behavior.”

You don’t need to be all in at either pole—you probably shouldn’t be. But you should listen to them.

And we—we—should work together to bring about a system that works.

We can’t do it without each other.

Photo by Keith Misner on Unsplash

7 Stabilizing Principles in a Chaotic World, Part 7

August 2, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Number 6: Responsibility. You can and should control your reactions. You should resist being manipulated.

When Adam sinned, God confronted him. And in a really remarkable display of chutzpah (was the first language Yiddish?), Adam blamed his wife. And then, in the same breath, he blamed God himself: “the woman, whom YOU gave to me … “ (Gen 3.12).

From the very beginning, we’ve been blame-shifters. When we can be cajoled into reluctantly admitting that we’ve done something wrong, our natural reaction is to blame the whole thing on somebody else. Our children do it. And so do we.

You don’t understand. It happened this way, under these unique circumstances. This is different.

We’re really good at blame-shifting, because we’ve had a lot of practice.

And Scripture will have none of it.

Adam’s problem wasn’t his wife; it was his own willingness to ignore a direct order from his Creator (Gen 2.16)—and we now stand guilty not of Eve’s sin, but of Adam’s (Rom 5.12-14). Moses’ problem wasn’t the infuriating thanklessness and complaining of the Israelites (Num 11.11-12); it was his prideful rejection of God’s instructions (Dt 32.51). David’s problem wasn’t Bathsheba’s carelessness in bathing where he could see her (2Sam 11.2); it was his lustful eagerness to steal her for himself (2Sam 12.7-10).

Your sin, your failures, are your own fault.

Now, I’m not suggesting that only your sin is significant. Others have sinned against you and me, and their actions leave scars, sometimes life-changing ones. But how you behave is not their fault. You are not an animal; you can make moral decisions and carry them out. You can do the right thing despite what others have done to or around you.

You don’t have to be a victim.

So when people make you angry, or when they make false statements, or when they demonstrate that they’re just idiots, they’ve done what they’ve done; but now you need to decide what you’re going to do. And your responsibility is to act in a way that demonstrates love for God and love for your neighbor (Mk 12.29-31).

So here’s a post: “SHARE IF YOU THINK HILLARY SHOULD GO TO JAIL!”

Some observations:

The poster has no right to tell you what to do. You are not obligated.
The decision as to whether Hillary goes to jail or not is not a matter of democratic vote. You do believe in the Constitution, right? :-)
Further, the decision is not up to you, unless you get chosen to be on the jury. If there is a jury.
- And even if there is a jury, and you’re on it, you may not be tasked with any decision for the penalty phase of the trial.
So sharing is a complete waste of your time.
And it fills a lot of other people’s timelines with nonsense, a complete waste of their time—which can hardly be said to be loving.
And it gives the impression that you care about that more than other stuff, stuff that’s really worth caring about.

You don’t have to share it.

So why do we do it?

Typically, one of two reasons. Rage, or humor.

Either we’re really ticked off about whatever, or we want to stick it to the other side.

I’ve commented before on the essential fleshliness of sticking it to the other side. And, for that matter, about the needlessness of being enraged by the professional agitators.

Some closing thoughts:

Things are rarely as bad as they seem. #freakoutthounot
There’s plenty of noise out there. Why add to it?
Don’t you respect the guy who stands in the middle of the maelstrom, clear-headed, focused on the solution, bringing order and calm and clarity to the chaos?
- Be that guy.

Part 8

Photo by Keith Misner on Unsplash

7 Stabilizing Principles in a Chaotic World, Part 6

July 30, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Number 5: Peace. God enables his people to have inner peace amidst outward turmoil.

I’ve been fishing this lake since I was 10—since Dad first took me out on his boat. I’ve been working it professionally since I was 16, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day—well, except when the weather was too bad. I’m a professional; I have enough sense to stay off the lake when the weather could kill you. And I’ve seen weather like that, more than once. But I have never—never—seen a storm like this. It’s sudden, and violent, and powerful beyond all my experience to deal with it. We’re essentially baggage, being thrown around the boat by a storm the likes of which we’ve never seen.

We’re toast.

And he’s asleep.

Seriously?! How does he do that?!

Peter would soon find out how he does that. In a few moments, shaken awake by lifelong sailors who think they’re about to die, he speaks a few words, and the storm is dead, the water calm, the threat just a memory, as if a dream (Mk 4.35-41).

He does that because he’s Lord. He’s in charge. There is no threat.

__________

This summer I took my 5^th trip into Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, one of the 4 premier safari locations in the world. On 4 of those 5 trips we’ve found lions. We drive up in our safari vehicles, to within perhaps 10 meters of the beasts, and we turn off the engines and just sit in silence, most of us taking photos as quickly as we can.

And what do the lions do?

Nothing.

They sit and stare across the plains, completely ignoring us. They may get up and walk around a bit, sometimes even rubbing up against our vehicles, but paying no attention to the people inside.

One year, it was a mating couple. Another, a female lion and 2 cubs. Another, 17 males sitting in the shade of a single acacia tree.

They ignore us. Why?

Because we’re no threat. The lion is the king of the jungle (and the savannah); he has no predators, and he knows it.

He’s at peace.

Now, the peace is deceptive; he’s capable of sudden, rapid, and brutal action. One year we saw a lioness take down a wildebeest literally 15 feet in front of our front bumper—eyes on us the entire time.

And that power is part of the reason for the peace. He has no need to fear.

__________

Jesus is like that. He has no fear, because he has no predators. He’s in charge. He’s king of kings.

And as we’ve noted, he’s directing all that’s happening around us, to his own spectacularly good ends. And he intends for us to play a part in how it all turns out.

That means we have no reason to be afraid. We ought to be at peace as well.

But God knows our frame; he knows that we are but dust (Ps 103.14), because he’s the one who formed us from the dust in the first place (Gen 2.7). And so he knows that we’re going to be afraid, even though we have no reason to be.

So what does he do?

He doesn’t just say, “Stop being afraid”—though he does do that (Lk 12.32).

He gives us his peace. He bequeaths it to us, a gift from the one who always gives the perfect gift for every occasion.

Peace he leaves with us. His peace he gives unto us. Don’t let your heart be troubled, he says, and don’t let it be afraid (Jn 14.27).

Throughout the Scripture God tells his people not to fear their enemies (Dt 1.21; Dt 31.6), or their circumstances (Gen 21.17; 1Ch 28.20). Why not? Because I am with you, he says (Dt 31.6; Isa 43.5). Reach up, take my hand. I won’t let you be destroyed.

But he does tell us to fear—not enemies, not circumstances—but him.

Fear God, and keep his commandments (Ecc 12.13).

And be at peace, no matter how violent the storm.

Part 7 Part 8

Photo by Keith Misner on Unsplash