Dan Olinger

Simple Faith. Simple Grace, Part 5: Keeping It Going

March 15, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: The Basics | Part 2: The Way | Part 3: Keeping It Simple | Part 4: Working It Out

We’ve spent some time considering the simple truths of the gospel and the importance of keeping them simple—that is, promoting what the Bible actually says without adding any ideas of our own.

That shouldn’t be difficult to do, but historically it seems to be. In our walk with God, we’ve all had differing experiences—

Our culture brings us to the text with different presuppositions, many of them unrecognized, which flavor our understanding of it.
Our experience of God’s grace is not exactly like anyone else’s; we have a unique set of experiences, including high and low points, that give us sometimes unique insights into what a given passage has come to mean to us experientially.
Our personalities bias us to understand a given text differently from someone with a different set of biases.

Add to this the fact, recently considered here, that everybody is at least a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and you have a recipe for theological disagreement about very simple, but very important, biblical teaching.

A case in point—

More than 30 years ago now John MacArthur published The Gospel According to Jesus, arguing against “easy believism,” fruitless Christianity. Sounds as though there wouldn’t be anything controversial about that. But the book took the evangelical world by storm, eliciting multiple responses and counter-responses. MacArthur was arguing not merely that a convert’s life should change, but that if the “convert” hadn’t knowingly embraced the complete lordship of Jesus Christ at the time of his conversion, he wasn’t really a convert.

MacArthur wasn’t the first to argue this position. Walter Chantry had argued similarly nearly 20 years earlier in his book Today’s Gospel: Authentic or Synthetic?, and Arthur W. Pink had discussed a similar concept back in the late 1940s.

Anyway, books started flying. In his 1989 work Absolutely Free!, Zane Hodges argued against MacArthur’s position, as did his Dallas Seminary colleague Charles Ryrie the same year (So Great Salvation). In an even more provocative book, Charles Swindoll, soon to become the president of Dallas Seminary, added to the fire with Grace Awakening in 1990. Don’t add to the list, they argued; keep it simple.

MacArthur doubled down with The Gospel According to the Apostles and then The Gospel According to Paul.

And evangelical seminary classes around the world went to battle. Lots of discussions about the conflicting views, in classes, in the hallways, over meals, and in what few coffee shops there were at time.

I’d like to suggest that the views are both a little bit right, and they’re both a little bit wrong.

I think MacArthur did what a lot of us do—he read some sanctification back into justification, as exemplified by our point about believing the virgin birth. In that narrow sense, he added to the list.

On the other hand, he’s obviously right that Christ’s followers don’t deny or ignore his lordship. They know his voice, and they follow him—not perfectly, of course, but aspirationally.

So no, the little child doesn’t need to “sign on” to the absolute lordship of Christ when he expresses sorrow for his sins and believes that Jesus, strong and kind, will save him. But if that child comes to me as a college student, whose life has not changed, and asks me for help with assurance of salvation, I’m not going to give him list of verses on assurance; I’m going to point him to the warning passages in Scripture—Hebrews would be a great place to start—and I’m going to challenge the authenticity of his faith. If you’re not hearing his voice, what basis do you have for thinking that you’re his sheep?

Simple faith. Simple grace.

And then, certain growth in Christ, by that same grace, to the glory of God.

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Simple Faith. Simple Grace. Part 4: Working It Out

March 11, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Basics | Part 2: The Way | Part 3: Keeping It Simple

The good news, the gospel, is that salvation is simple. Anyone can understand it, and anyone can do it, by simply turning—turning their heart away from their sin and toward Christ in faith.

Simple faith.

And as we’ve seen, Paul does not tolerate adding anything—even a good and important thing like baptism—to the list.

Jesus said that you come to him like a child, in simple trust (Mk 10.14-15). Children don’t know much, but they do know whom they can trust, who will receive and protect them. Salvation is like that.

But we humans are prone to polarism—to reacting against a bad thing by going to the opposite pole and thinking or doing the opposite bad thing. We often do that in our thinking about salvation.

Salvation is indeed simple and free, but it’s not just a single event at one point in time.

It begins a lifelong process of walking with God and growing in him—learning from the indwelling Spirit, through the Word, and getting better at obeying God by reflecting more accurately the character of his Son. We call this process sanctification, and I’ve written about it before.

As we proceed down that path, the Spirit changes every part of us—

Our minds—we learn things from the Bible, and from experience. We come to understand theology—what there is to know about God and his ways—better.
Our emotions—we learn about Christ’s compassion, and we begin to feel that compassion toward others; we begin to love the brethren, and our neighbors, more as he does.
Our wills—we get better at making the right choices, even under contrary pressure, because we’re thinking more clearly, and because we want to.

The Bible makes it clear that it’s not healthy just to “get saved” and then just remain as we are; there needs to be growth and change—

Paul tells us to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Php 2.12), and he describes that process in his own life (Php 3.8ff).
The author of Hebrews tells his readers that they need to move on beyond the basics and, frankly, just grow up spiritually (Heb 5.11-6.3).
Jesus told his disciples that those who genuinely follow him will unavoidably bear fruit (Jn 15.1.8).

The list could go on and on.

I’ve been a believer for 60 years now, and I’m still amazed every day at how much spiritual growth still lies ahead of me—at often I tell myself, “Dan, after all this time, you really ought to be better at this.”

So let’s press toward the mark (Php 3.14).

But as we do, let’s keep the gospel true—clean, simple, clear.

Let’s not add anything to it.

Let me close with an illustration that might make you uncomfortable.

Question: Do you have to believe in the virgin birth of Christ to be saved?
Answer: No.

Now, hear me out.

Most of my students were saved as children, perhaps age 5 or 6.

When they were saved, they didn’t even know what a virgin birth was. They were children.

But they were genuinely saved.

Now, later, as sanctification progressed, they were introduced to the doctrine of the virgin birth, and when they heard it, they believed it—because “the Bible tells me so,” and because they were Jesus’ sheep, and his sheep hear his voice, and he knows them, and they follow him (Jn 10.27).

Christ’s people will not deny his virgin birth.

It’s a good and important and true thing.

But they didn’t have to have any intellectual understanding of it whatsoever in order to turn to him.

They just had to turn.

Simple faith. Simple grace. Trusting in an unimaginably exalted God, who in time will take them places they could never imagine. But starting simply, by grace.

Part 5: Keeping It Going

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Simple Faith. Simple Grace. Part 3: Keeping It Simple

March 8, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Basics | Part 2: The Way

Very soon after the apostles began spreading this good news of simple faith, people, some of them undoubtedly well intentioned, began adding things to the list. The first, as far as we know, were the Judaizers, who apparently followed Paul around on his travels and, after he had left a given city, “explained” to the new believers that there was more to the story. You see, the Bible says that God commanded Israel to be circumcised and keep the Law, and since Jesus is the Messiah, the Jewish deliverer, following Jesus means becoming Jewish. It’s right there in the Bible.

Paul was merciless with these teachers, well intentioned or not. He is at his angriest when he writes to the Galatian church, denouncing the teaching with the explosive words, “I wish those who are troubling you would be castrated!” (Ga 5.12). If circumcision is good, then castration would be even better, right? A fortiori. QED.

Adding to the list is not something to be trifled with.

Simple faith. Simple grace.

Over the years some groups—most notably the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ—have noted the mention of baptism in 2 of the 9 passages listed in Part 2 (Ac 2.38; 8.12), and they’ve argued that getting baptized is part of the requirement for salvation.

What about that? It’s mentioned, right?

Indeed it is. There’s no question that baptism is expected of believers. But that’s not the question here. The question is, “Is baptism a prerequisite for salvation?” or, to put in another way, “Does the gospel apply only to those who have both believed and been baptized?”

That’s a good question, and it deserves a thoughtful response. Several considerations:

It’s true that baptism is mentioned in connection with salvation in 2 of those 9 passages. But that means that it’s not mentioned in that way in 7 of them. If it’s necessary, if you’re not going to be saved without being baptized, then it’s inexplicable that both Peter and Paul repeatedly omitted it when instructing people how to be saved—especially since Peter himself is the one who mentioned baptism at Pentecost, the first public offer of the gospel.
In one of the accounts, that of Peter’s sermon to Cornelius’s household, the group receives the Spirit before they are baptized (Ac 10.44-48). In fact, Peter’s judgment is that they ought to be baptized because they are showing evidence of a salvation already acquired (Ac 10.47).
Paul later says off-handedly that he has baptized almost no one, because “Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel” (1Co 1.17). He appears to show no interest in even recalling whom he’s baptized (1Co 1.16). Given Paul’s feverish devotion to Christ’s commission to take the gospel to the Gentiles, his words make no sense if baptism is a requirement for salvation.
Jesus assured the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23.43), even though he was clearly not baptized, and was not going to be.

So no, we can’t add things—even good things, even significant spiritual exercises—to the gospel. The death of Christ for your sins is applied to those sins when you repent and believe. Like a child (Mk 10.15).

Simple faith. Simple grace.

Jesus said that faith doesn’t have to be strong or great. Faith the size of a (tiny) mustard seed, he said, is all it takes (Lk 17.6). Many of us have had the experience (probably as young teens) of lying in bed night after night, filled with fear, praying, “Lord, if I didn’t really mean it last night, I really mean it tonight.” That’s sad, because it’s completely unnecessary.

Faith doesn’t depend on the intensity of the faith of the one believing; it depends on the faithfulness of the One being believed. You’re not saved because you scrunched your eyebrows sufficiently close together (<7.6mm!) when you asked Jesus to save you; you’re saved because you asked Jesus, and he keeps his promises.

So away with this “enough faith” nonsense. Jesus directly spoke against that.

Did you believe in Jesus? Even more simply, do you believe now?

Well then. Bask in the sunlight of warm assurance.

It is finished.

There’s one more thing we need to give some attention to—the question of antinomianism, or fruitless faith. We’ll look at that next time.

Part 4: Working It Out | Part 5: Keeping It Going

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Simple Faith, Simple Grace, Part 2: The Way

March 4, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Basics

In the previous post we let Paul define the gospel:

Christ died for our sins,
- Certainly.
And he rose again,
- Certainly.
And all this was planned.

Simple enough.

Now, what does this have to do with us? Why is it gospel—good news? To us?

This death, Paul tells us, was “for our sins” (1Co 15.3). It was about us—about dealing with the problem we ourselves had caused. We’ve sinned—broken the cosmos, including ourselves—and we’re now in deep trouble—

We’re defective models of the original design, so we’ll never work right (Ro 3.23).
And we’ve broken the world we live in, so it will never work right, either (Ro 8.22).

As the wisest man who ever lived once wrote, this is a recipe for frustration (Ec 1.14).

But it gets worse.

Since sin violates God’s nature, he’s justly angry with us, and the relationship we were designed to have with him is impossible. We cannot love and serve him—now or forever.

Deep trouble, indeed.

But, as Paul has told us, God himself—the angry party—has taken action to solve our problem (Ro 5.8). In the person of Christ, God the Son, he has paid “for our sins.”

That’s really good news.

All this raises another question, of course.

How do we appropriate Christ’s work for us? What causes his death to be applied to the debt of our sins?

There are several places in the Scripture where the answer is given. In many of those places someone asks that very question upon hearing of Christ’s death, and the responses are strikingly similar and simple—

³⁷Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (Ac 2.37-39).
“¹⁹Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, ²⁰so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Ac 3.19-20).
“⁴³All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Ac 10.43).
“³⁸Let it be known to you therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; ³⁹by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (Ac 13.38-39).
“³⁰Then he brought them outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ ³¹They answered, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household’ ” (Ac 16.30-31).
“⁴Paul said, ‘John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus’ “ (Ac 19.4).

And in other passages we’re told that people responded to the gospel in specific ways that were effective:

“¹²But when they believed Philip, who was proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Ac 8.12).
“¹²When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was astonished at the teaching about the Lord” (Ac 13.12).
“¹²Many of them therefore believed, including not a few Greek women and men of high standing” (Ac 17.12).

So what’s called for in our response to this good news?

Repent
Believe

Repentance is turning from your sin. Faith is turning to Christ. They’re both one action, the action of turning. You say, “I don’t want my sin anymore; I want Christ instead.” And in your mind, your heart, you turn.

We call that turn conversion. One simple act.

Simple faith. Simple grace.

There’s much more to be said, ironically, about the simplicity of the gospel. More next time.

Part 3: Keeping It Simple | Part 4: Working It Out | Part 5: Keeping It Going

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Simple Faith, Simple Grace, Part 1: The Basics

March 1, 2021 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

It’s important, every so often, to revisit the basics, to go back to first principles.

These days I’m working on something that has me thinking about how to communicate the gospel, and the basics of the Christian life, to those for whom it is a brand-new concept.

It was a long time ago—about 60 years, in fact—when the gospel was new to me. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about the gospel and about its effects and outcomes. I’ve also had the privilege of teaching Bible and theology in several widely different cultures. Time and experience tend to fill your mind with lots of related and derived concepts, to the point that you need to remind yourself to just go back to the beginning and think about the topic simply, as if for the first time. The first time I heard it, as a five- or six-year-old boy, it was simple enough for me to understand and believe.

Paul defines the gospel for us in 1Corinthians 15.3b-4—

that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, ⁴and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

A lot of people read this as signifying that the gospel has 3 parts: death, burial, and resurrection. But that’s a misimpression that derives from the place where we stop reading—and where I stopped quoting. There’s more in verse 5—

… and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

As you know, Paul continues in the next verses to name a good many other witnesses of Christ’s post-resurrection appearances.

Death, burial, resurrection, witnesses.

Is the fact that there were eyewitnesses a part of the gospel? Does it have four parts?

Well, you’ve probably noticed that a phrase appears twice in this passage:

according to the scriptures

If you look at the passage closely, you’ll notice that it’s a pair of couplets:

that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,
- and that he was buried,
and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures
- and that he appeared.

What’s the point of his appearances? They demonstrate that he rose.

What’s the point, then, of his burial? It demonstrates that he died.

So what’s the gospel?

Two points:

He died for our sins. Certainly.
He rose from the dead. Certainly.

And a corollary:

This was predicted. Planned.

That, my friends, is the gospel. God made it simple so that the least of these his brethren could understand it. I was able to understand it as a pre-school child with no previous Christian training. The history of missions tells us that in every culture in the world, in every kingdom, tribe, tongue, and nation, the gospel can be understood and received.

God is not the God of the elite—although the elite are welcome, if they will not count on their elititude.

God is the God of all who will come. And his Good News can be understood and embraced by them all.

So we’ve defined the gospel. But now we face another question:

Why is it good news? What do Christ’s death and resurrection have to do with us?

We’ll survey the biblical data on that in the next post.

Part 2: The Way | Part 3: Keeping It Simple | Part 4: Working It Out | Part 5: Keeping It Going

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

February 25, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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.

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

February 22, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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

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On Cultural Understanding, Part 2: The United States

February 18, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The World

For all of America’s geographical isolation and reputation for cultural closed-mindedness, I’d suggest that the US has much more cultural diversity than many people realize—diversity from which we all can gain the same benefits enjoyed by multicultural societies in the rest of the world.

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

At that tender age I was given the pronounced privilege of glimpsing a sample of the cultural diversity of my own country.

The American West is still driven by its frontier past, which includes ranching (“cowboy,” if you will) culture: you herd animals, not people. You don’t tell people what to do; you show them a more efficient way—by example—and you leave them to make the free individual choice to adopt it. Discovery learning at its best.

My Dad, born on the frontier in 1918, always groused at the stanchions and cords set up to direct large crowds through long lines. “Sheep,” he would mutter.

Westerners are more likely to stop and help somebody who’s stranded on the highway. It’s big country out here, and we look out for one another. In many ways this thinking is similar to the hospitality culture of the Ancient (and modern) Near East.

Moving to Boston was an experience. New England is older than the PNW—Washington had been a state for only 80 years when I lived there—and considerably more set in its ways. (The phrase “Boston Brahmin” means something.) People are more taciturn, less likely to run on about their opinions or to listen to yours. My public schools in Newton were considerably more liberal politically than those in the hard-scrabble desert farmland of Eastern Washington. I had a lot to learn.

(An aside—of course we’re in danger of stereotyping here. But there are real and significant distinctions between these cultures, observed and catalogued by serious sociologists.)

I left Boston for college in the South when I was 17 and moved there permanently, as it turned out, at age 27 after my graduate work. Now, in my sixties, I’ve spent nearly 3/4 of my life in the American South. This is a region that, frankly, is held in low esteem by much of the rest of the country, often the target of stereotypes and ridicule, as well as a certain level of distrust that is historically well-founded.

But 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.
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.
The good people in mill towns like Poe and Zoar and Lockhart. (RIP, Eunice Loudermilk.)
Country roads slicing through the kudzu.
The way everything’s sweeter here–cornbread and potato salad and iced tea.
Tommy’s Country Ham House, which is closing due to Tommy’s imminent retirement, an announcement that has us all reeling.

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

You won’t be sorry.

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On Cultural Understanding, Part 1: The World

February 15, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

I’d like to recall and expand on something I posted on Facebook on 9/4/16.

I’ve been privileged over the years to do a fair amount of international travel. I’ve taught in India, China, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, Mexico, and in 3 of the 4 major regions of Africa (East, West, and Southern). One of the keys to effective teaching anywhere on the planet is to understand something about the culture of your students; it affects how they think and thus how they learn.

Teaching in China was particularly educational for me. Because the Chinese language (I’m thinking specifically of Mandarin, in which I’ve had most of my experience) has to be memorized—you can’t know how to pronounce or define a character just by looking at it—much of Chinese education is based on memorization as well. The teacher lectures, the students take copious notes and memorize them, and nobody asks any questions. (I’m stereotyping just a bit.) Teachers are highly respected, and they must not be challenged. If a teacher asks a student a question, the assumption is that he thinks the student is not paying attention and wants to shame him.

You can imagine how a highly interactive, collaborative, “discovery” learning experience would be perceived in that culture.

In Africa, the British educational tradition, in which I’ve worked almost exclusively there, has a similar approach—stand and recite.

Now, it’s really important for the teacher to be aware of and accommodate those features if he’s going to keep the door of communication open with his students.

Which brings us to the main obstacle I experienced—being an American.

Americans are separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans. That means they don’t get overseas much.

Yes, it’s a lot easier these days than it used to be, but it’s still pretty expensive, and we don’t pop over to France as easily as Germans can and do. (My trips were paid for primarily by donations.) A great many Americans have never been outside their own country. (Some Americans have never been outside Brooklyn. :-) )

That fact has consequences. Most Americans have direct acquaintance with only American cultural standards and are fluent only in English. And that has led many Americans into a sort of cultural arrogance born, ironically, of ignorance. They just don’t know that in China, you’d better not eat everything on your plate, and that in Muslim-influenced countries, you’d better not give or receive anything with your left hand. It’s common overseas for Americans to be stereotyped as loud, obnoxious, inconsiderate, impatient, and arrogant—and the stereotypes are based in actual examples and experiences. The phrase “the ugly American” didn’t arise out of nowhere.

“You don’t speak English?! What are you, stupid?! Can you get me somebody who can actually help me?!”—to which the most logical response, I suppose, should be, “You don’t speak the local language? What are you, stupid?”

Unlike Americans, isolated between their oceanic buffers, most of the rest of the world lives close to, and even in the midst of, multiple diverse cultures with which they routinely interact and in which they routinely operate. Speaking multiple languages fluently is the rule rather than the exception; many of my African friends speak 4 to 8 languages and think that’s nothing unusual. Many of my American friends would be astonished at how much cultural diversity there is across the African continent (don’t even get me started on “the African jungle”)—or even within the one small country of Ghana, which has well over 50 tribal languages and whose Muslim Upper West Region is far more distinct from the largely “Christian” Greater Accra District in the South than the American South is from the West Coast or New England.

When you operate in a culturally diverse area, you accrue a lot of advantages—

Multilingualism
Greater cultural understanding
Greater ability to read the people you interact with
Openness to better ways of doing things
Humility—sometimes :-)

I may sound as though I’m being pretty hard on Americans. That’s not how I think at all. First, I am an American, and I love my mother country, flaws and all. Second, I recognize that my country’s geographical isolation is a function of topography, which itself is a result of divine providence, for which I have a profound respect and admiration. Providence has been kind to the US in inestimable ways.

And third, I think America has more cultural diversity than we often realize, from which we all benefit.

On Personal Diversity

February 11, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

This probably isn’t about what you think.

I’m not talking about quotas, or intersectionality, or affirmative action.

I’m not talking about labels and classes of people.

I’m talking about individuals.

I’ve been thinking lately about how diverse human beings are. We teachers have to take some of these differences into account when we teach. Students have different academic levels, of course. They have different backgrounds that can significantly affect their readiness for the material and their ability to process it. Teachers famously think about learning modalities; I’m inclined to think that the traditional list of “visual, auditory, and kinesthetic” is far from exhaustive. I remember how revelatory it was for me when I realized that I just don’t process things auditorily, that I have to see things to remember them.

The school where I teach has a fairly large department devoted to helping students succeed by finding their strengths and making reasonable accommodations for their weaknesses. I’ve grown to appreciate the fact that as a teacher I’m responsible to make these accommodations so that each of my students—all of them created in the image of God himself—can be the best he or she can be.

Our diversity extends far beyond our academic pursuits. People have different personalities—what in theology we call “natures.” Some people, like me, like to be on stage and presenting things we believe strongly. Others literally fear public speaking worse than death. Some people are introverted; some are extroverted. (And most, I suspect, are a complicated mixture of the two.)

Our families make us different. Our cultures make us different. Our place in time makes us different. And on and on it goes.

The Bible makes all this diversity unsurprising—first, because we’re created by a God who demonstrates the richness and complexity of his creative inclinations at every hand, and second, because a major emphasis of the New Testament is the diversity of believers in the church, both because of the breadth of God’s plan for his people—they will be from every kingdom, tribe, tongue, and nation (Re 7.9)—and because of the work of the Spirit in gifting his people for a wide range of ministry. On more than one occasion (Ro 12.4-8; 1Co 12.4-31; Ep 4.11-16) Paul compares the church to a body with one essential purpose but a wide variety of parts, each of them excellent at something, able to do things for the body that other parts cannot.

And that means that while there will be similarities in how we live out the Christian life—we will reverence God, and trust and obey him, and experience the Spirit’s conviction when we sin, and respond to that conviction with repentance—there will also be significant dissimilarities.

We’ll have differing salvation experiences. Some of us will experience great emotion, and others not so much. This is not an indication of the genuineness of our experience; it is simply a manifestation of our way of responding to even the most significant of life experiences.
We’ll have differing experiences of the means of grace.
- We’ll apprehend Scripture differently, depending on our learning modalities and a thousand other differences. Sure, we should embrace a careful and defensible hermeneutic, and not engage in exegetical fallacies; but the experience of reading, absorbing, and implementing is not going to be the same for everyone. We’re going to see things differently, and we should share those insights to add to the richness of the biblical tradition.
- We’ll pray, and experience prayer, differently. Some will be more conversational; others will work a list, and some lists will be more complicated than others—pray for these people on Monday, these on Tuesday. Some will pray with deep emotion; others will matter-of-factly present their requests to God and with relative ease will trust him to do the best thing. The Scripture doesn’t bind us as to prayer technique, and we should be free to express ourselves to our heavenly Father in ways—loving, reverential ways—that are most effective and genuine for us.
- We’ll worship differently. Some will be inclined toward more formal, even liturgical services, while others will flourish in the environment of the old-time camp meetin’. More power to all of you.

Recognizing the creative complexity of our God, and of his image in us, liberates us to be genuine—within the bounds of morality, of course—and to make our unique contribution to the larger body.

It’s good for us. All.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash