Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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On Faith and Culture, Part 3: Drawing the Line 1 

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Flexible Evangelism 

In what ways can we accommodate a culture in evangelistic efforts, and in what ways can we not? How do we know? Where do we draw the line? 

This is not just a matter of personal taste: “I don’t like that” or “That makes me uncomfortable” or “That offends me.” And it’s not just a matter of whether a cultural practice seems strange to us. It’s the very nature of cross-cultural work that practices will seem strange until you know why those practices exist—and perhaps after you know as well. 

As always, we Christians take our directions from the Scripture, because it is the Word of God, inerrant and authoritative. Does the Bible have anything to say about how we interact with our culture? 

You bet it does. While it begins with a clear affirmation that all humans are created in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27), it also affirms that all humans have sinned (Ro 3.23). As a result, when sinners form cultures, those cultures reflect the brokenness that sin invariably brings. 

Some cultures may seem more “broken” to us than others, but I suspect that much of that sense springs from our bias toward our own culture. Some cultures require very little clothing; some are in constant warfare with neighboring tribes; some are tyrannical and abusive. But our culture is broken too, given over to the pursuit of wealth and power, worshiping at the false altar of entertainment, and in constant warfare with neighboring political tribes. 

The Bible doesn’t use the word “culture” except in the more paraphrastic versions such as The Message and the Passion Translation. (The King James uses it in the Apocrypha, in 2 Esdras 8.6, but in a different sense.) But there is a word in the Bible that closely parallels the concept. The Bible speaks often of “the world,” and some of those uses mean something pretty close to “culture.” But the biblical sense is uniformly evil, whereas today “culture” includes many things that are not evil at all. But the Scripture does identify some things to avoid in “the world” (1J 2.15-17): 

  • The lust of the flesh 
  • The lust of the eyes 
  • The pride of life 

When a culture embodies or embraces these things, we evangelists cannot adopt them as a vehicle for spreading the gospel. 

The Lust of the Flesh 

When we hear this expression, we tend to think of sexual lust—probably because our own culture is pervasively pornographic. And yes, the incitation of sexual desire outside of marriage is evil, not something we can endorse or accommodate. 

But “the flesh” includes more than just sexual matters. “Lust of the flesh” includes anything that caters to sinful physical desires. 

  • Gluttony is such a lust—and I’ve been in other cultures where their single observation about us Americans is that we all eat too much. 
  • Laziness—the desire for an unjustified amount of rest—is also catering to an inappropriate physical desire. I suppose that would include not just lying in bed all day, but overdosing on entertainment or scrolling on social media for hours. 

A clue, I think, is that if you can’t stop it, then it’s out of control. 

Next time, we’ll finish the list and attempt to draw out some governing principles. 

Photo by Joseph Grazone on Unsplash

On Faith and Culture, Part 2: Flexible Evangelism 

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Part 1: Introduction 

I ended the previous post with the observation that the world and everything in it is broken by sin. Because of that brokenness, Jesus left his disciples a command to go into all the world and preach the gospel (Mt 28.19-20). Even in Paul’s day, and even with the relative cultural unity brought by the Greeks and then the Romans across the Mediterranean Basin, there were cultural issues to address: 

  • Just within Judaism there was division between those who spoke Hebrew/Aramaic and kept closely to Hebrew customs, and those (“Hellenists”) who admired the Greek culture and tried to adopt as much of it as they could (e.g. Ac 6.1). 
  • The division between Jews and “Gentile dogs” was as deep and wide as it could be (e.g. Ac 10.28; 11.2-3). 
  • As Paul traveled the Roman Empire, he faced occasions where he didn’t understand the local religious practices, or even the language (Ac 14.8-18). 
  • Even within the church there were disputes about whether one should keep kosher or celebrate the Mosaic feast days (Ro 14.2, 5), or whether one should eat meat that had been offered to an idol in a pagan ritual (1Co 8.4-13). 

These were real concerns, real disagreements, that caused real divisions. Answering these questions was hard. 

Throughout this process of early evangelism, the apostles made it clear that there were some things, both doctrinal and practical, on which Christians must agree. They evidenced this primarily in their sermons, all of which tended to focus on the same set of core doctrines, the hub around which the wheel of Christianity turned. (That link is important; take a minute to read the post, and ideally the whole series, since it’s foundational to the current discussion.) They began with the well-founded assumption that the Hebrew Scriptures—what Christians call the Old Testament—are God’s inspired Word and thus to be trusted—and obeyed—implicitly. 

But beyond that core, they demonstrated some flexibility on how they approached various groups. For example, Paul addressed a synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, with a discourse on how Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew Scripture, since these educated, observant Jews had a cultural context for that argument (Ac 13.15-41). But at the Areopagus in Athens, facing a pagan audience, Paul quoted none of the Hebrew Scriptures, focusing instead on the writings of various Greek poets and philosophers (Ac 17.18-31)—specifically, 

By the end of this sermon, however, Paul demonstrated the importance of the doctrinal core by emphasizing unapologetically the resurrection of Christ, an assertion that brought mocking from this culture (Ac 17.32). 

It’s interesting to compare the two sermons more closely: 

  • Opening Hook: national pride (Ac 13.17) vs. “unknown god” (Ac 17.22-23) 
  • Storyline: national covenant (Ac 13.18-22) vs. creation (Ac 17.24-29) 
  • Consequence: Messiah as fulfillment of promise (Ac 13.23-41) vs. certainty of coming judgment (Ac 17.30-31) 

These two commissions—to preach the undiluted and undistorted gospel, and to preach to every culture on the planet—give rise to disagreements. Believers are priests, illuminated by the Spirit, but they’re imperfect, and so they differ as to how to go about this central task. 

  • We are tasked with taking the gospel to every culture on the planet—cultures that exist because we are created in the image of God. 
  • Good stewards will represent Christ, in word and deed, in the most effective way to reach the culture. 
  • But the message must not be compromised by that accommodation to the culture. 
  • While contextualization means doing what’s necessary to make the gospel  understandable in the target culture, it is not a blank check to be as groovy as possible. 

This raises—it does not “beg,” but that’s for a different post—a question. Which ways of making the gospel message more easily accessible by a different culture are appropriate, and which are not? How do we tell the difference? Where do we draw the line? 

More on that next time. 

Photo by Joseph Grazone on Unsplash

On Faith and Culture, Part 1: Introduction

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Times change.

Living for a while will drill that idea into you.

The college students I teach, who have lived for only a generation, don’t have a clear sense of that. They don’t understand that our culture didn’t always include cell phones, or scanners at the airport, or the kind of deep polarization that characterizes culture and politics today.

I don’t blame them for that, because they haven’t lived long enough to see generational change.

I sprang to life as a baby boomer, in a culture full of postwar optimism and relative prosperity—though my family was cash-poor in those days. My peers and I lived with Cold War fears, including the Cuban Missile Crisis; then the assassination era (JFK, RFK, MLK) during the Civil Rights and Vietnam protest times; then the “general malaise” under Carter, before anyone associated him with Habitat for Humanity; the Reagan Era, including the end of the Cold War and the optimism that characterized the imaginings of a world without Communism; then 9/11 and the rise of radical Islamic terrorism. All of this is outside the scope of my students’ experience.

Since Y2K—oh, I didn’t mention that little cultural bleep, did I?—I’ve had the privilege of doing some international travel, in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and especially Africa—and I’ve gained a little more understanding of cultural differences as well.

Time and space. People are different, and times change.

Why is that?

I’d suggest that this diversity is a direct result of the fact that we humans have been created in the image of God. The first thing that the Scripture tells us about God is that he’s creative (Ge 1.1), and the first thing it tells us about us is that we are like him in significant respects (Ge 1.27). We should not be surprised, then, that humans, as a matter of course, come up with different ways of doing things. As they spread around the globe, and as they develop through time, they’re going to think, speak, and live in ways that differ from one another.

We see these differences in thousands of distinctions, big and small. When I was a kid, we learned our friends’ phone numbers, mostly because we dialed them so often. Today nobody knows anybody else’s number, because we never dial them at all, because they’re just stored in our phones—and why do we call punching buttons “dialing,” anyway?

That’s a change over time; how about a change across space? I’ve written before about my favorite example of cultural difference—how in China, you must never eat everything on your plate, and in the USA you must always eat everything on your plate. Why? Because in the US leaving something on your plate is taken to mean that you didn’t like it, while in China, it means that the host has been so generous that you simply can’t eat any more. Same action has different meanings in the two cultures, making one polite and the other impolite—and both views make perfectly good sense.

Often these differences divide us. The ever-present “generation gap” is an indication of cultural misunderstanding across time, and entire wars have been fought over cultural differences across space.

But the Bible indicates that such divisions are often unnecessary. God seems to want us to be different—to be an expression of our creativity, our different ways of thinking and doing. As just one illustration of that, the Spirit of God gifts his people in the church in different ways, by his own choice (1Co 12.4-11), rendering the body of Christ a diverse unity (1Co 12.12-27), so that it will thereby be more flexible in its abilities and more helpful from one member to another. Paul adds to that idea in his letter to the Romans by essentially demanding that we maintain unity despite our differences that might incline to drive us apart (Ro 14.1-9).

But there’s a wrinkle. The world is not as God made it; it’s broken by our sin, and that brokenness extends to our social and cultural practices, bringing them into conflict. That’s not surprising, given that fellowship—peace with one another—is an outcome of our individual peace with God (IJ 1.3).

I’d like to spend a few posts thinking about how those of us who follow Christ should navigate these cultural differences and the murkiness that our brokenness brings to our decision making.

Photo by Joseph Grazone on Unsplash

On Mental Exercise

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I’ve had the privilege of working at a university my whole adult life—I arrived as a freshman 52 years ago this fall—with more than half of that spent in the classroom. I really believe that thinking and speaking for a living is good for your brain, and for your mind as well (whatever the difference is between those two). I’m constantly exercising my brain with class prep—both content and presentation ideas—and interacting with students about the ideas they bring to the classroom. Further, since I teach at a liberal arts university, I’m surrounded by people who are experts in all kinds of different areas, and I love the interdisciplinary interaction that is routine in a place like this. 

And of course, working with kids helps keep you young. 

Having entered my eighth decade now, I do find my mental acuity losing a bit of its edge, and since I believe that the brain is more like a muscle, to be exercised, than a bucket, to be filled—and since my father presented with dementia in his ninth decade, at the age of 85—I intentionally try to keep my thinker active. I thought I’d share some thoughts on how I do that. 

To begin with, I’m still in the classroom, though I could retire anytime. My primary motivation is a sense of calling and mission, of course, but I figure the ongoing mental exercise can’t hurt. 

I also have a personal daily study schedule, which includes my personal devotions (which I’ve laid out here) as well as reading of other sorts. I follow the news—though my theology gives me what I hope is a healthy lack of fear—and try to read from a broad range of viewpoints. I scan headlines daily from a couple of news aggregators as well as the NY Times, the Washington Post, Axios, the Wall Street Journal, the local NBC affiliate, National Review, The Dispatch, Christianity Today, Red State, lucianne.com, and some others. (I told you there was a broad range.) 

I do academic reading as well. I’m reading through the Apostolic Fathers this year, a bit every day, and I watch the Daily Dose of Greek and Hebrew as well (just 3 minutes each to keep the language tools reasonably sharp). 

And I usually devote half an hour or so in the morning to playing games. Really. Here’s my current list: 

When do I find the time? 

I get up early. I wake up naturally at 5 or so and spend the next 2 hours in reading (devotions, 1 hour; news, 30 minutes; games, 30 minutes) before getting washed, dressed, and off to work by 8. 

Now, that means I’m out of gas at 9 pm, and if you have kids at home, that’s really not an option for you. But there are other ways and times to exercise your brain, and I hope you’ll have success at it. Feel free to comment with your own experiences. 

Photo by Natasha Connell on Unsplash

About that Hiatus …. 

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Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t, but I haven’t posted here for a couple of weeks. I don’t believe I’ve ever interrupted my regular rhythm of two posts a week before, except for when I was taking trips to Africa and was a little busy over there. 

This lacuna, as you can probably guess, was due to Hurricane Helene, which plowed through the American Southeast and left an unprecedented wake of destruction, much of it still chaotic, particularly in Western North Carolina. As I write this on Saturday, 10/12, there are still 22,000 Duke Power customers without power up in that region, with the lag in restoration due to the extreme infrastructure damage caused by the storm. Most have heard, I suppose, that the delightfully quaint village of Chimney Rock was just wiped off the map by the raging Broad River, with the nearby towns of Bat Cave and Lake Lure heavily damaged as well. 

Folks around here, including my family, have a lot of fond memories made up in those hills, memories that leave us sober and pensive and wistful as we contemplate the loss. May God and mankind meet the needs of those who have survived, and may he grant rest and peace to those who did not. 

Here in the Upstate of South Carolina we fared significantly better, though many among us saw destruction unprecedented in their time here. There are still power lines lying in the street, their poles snapped or twisted off by the force of the wind and rain, including on the street where we lived in our first house. 

On our current property the damage was less severe. About 4 am Friday I heard a tree fall, I thought in the backyard or near there, but it was still too dark to see. With daylight we saw that a neighbor’s tall pine had fallen from the roots and crossed our property perfectly from side to side, taking out both fences (which weren’t in all that great shape anyway). Some of its branches had nicked the corner of our large shed—the one that Jim Pfaffenroth built all those years ago, when he lived in this house, while he was my university’s corporate pilot, before he moved to the northern hinterlands of Saskatchewan. We’ll need to get that repaired. Otherwise, no damage. 

We still had power that next morning, until it fizzled out about 7.30 am. We were down for 5½  days, but we were fine; some years ago we bought a 13KW dual-fuel generator and had the house’s breaker panel rewired to accept an inordinately large and heavy 75-foot extension cord. It’ll run the essential stuff comfortably so long as we don’t use the heavy loads—stove, microwave, other heating devices. (I managed to get along without a hair dryer all that time.) The furnace and water heater are gas; we had some trouble with the AC, but with the temperatures in the 70s, we were comfortable most of the time. 

The big issue with a generator, of course, is fuel. This one runs propane and gasoline, and to my delight, the QT just down the road had plenty of gas. The first day or two there were long lines, but everyone cooperated, and the employees were funneling traffic around like it was the Chik-Fil-A drive-thru. I love the way people generally cooperate in a crisis, helping each other out, being reasonably pleasant in spite of everything. The image of God runs deep in mankind—so deep, in fact, that it shines through despite all the evil and corruption that makes itself so obvious in cultures. 

But I made a mental note to buy 2 or 3 more gas cans and a couple of extra propane tanks when this all settles down. 

Just one example of that kindness happened right in our yard. The pine tree that fell down was our neighbor’s—though of course any damage is our legal responsibility. Saturday the neighbor’s college-age son came over with a chainsaw, chopped that monster of a tree up, and piled it neatly for disposal. I didn’t ask, and neither did he. 

He’s well on his way to becoming a fine man. 

And I made another mental note, to get my chainsaw blades sharpened. 

Many of my neighbors and colleagues were without power far longer than we were, and some had significantly more damage to deal with. Two local families that I know of had their houses pretty much destroyed, and recovery will take a long, long time. 

But with the help of friends and neighbors, recovery will come. 

Photo credit: Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

On Puzzled Prophets, Part 2

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Part 1 

I’ve given one example of an OT prophet who didn’t understand the message he was given to deliver, and I’ve suggested a couple more possible examples. I don’t know whether you noticed or not, but none of those examples involved a prophet who was puzzled over the specific idea that Peter says puzzled multiple OT prophets. 

And what’s that? It was a twofold question: “searching what, or what manner of time” (1P 1.11)—that is, what’s going to happen, and when is it going to happen? And the “it,” in this case, is a very specific event: 

  • The Christ (Messiah, “Anointed One”) will suffer, 
  • And then he will reign in glory. 

How can that happen? 

I suspect that their understanding was clouded by a related issue. It appears to me that the Jews—both before and during Jesus’ day—were expecting four different “coming ones”: 

  • The prophet like Moses (Dt 18.15); 
  • David’s eternally reigning Son, the Messiah (2Sa 7.16); 
  • The Servant of the Lord (Is 42, 49, 50, 52, 53); 
  • And Elijah (Mal 4.5-6). 

They didn’t seem to understand that three of these four are the same person, as evidenced by the people’s questions of John the Baptist (Jn 1.20-21). 

The prophecies are very clear that the Servant of the Lord will suffer (esp. Is 52.13-53.12) and that David’s greater son will rule forever (2Sa 7.16). But those two are the same person, and apparently the prophets themselves didn’t understand that. 

  • This coming one would be despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Is 53.3);  
  • He will bear our griefs, and carry our sorrows (4); 
  • He will be wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities—and with his stripes we will be healed (5); 
  • The Lord will lay on him the iniquity of us all (6); 
  • He will be brought as a lamb to the slaughter (7);  
  • He will be cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgressions of Isaiah’s people (8).  
  • And yes, he will make his grave with both the wicked and the rich (9); 
  • The Lord will make his soul an offering for sin (10); 
  • He will pour out his soul unto death, and make intercession for the transgressors, and bear the sin of many. 

And then, and only then, he will see his seed, and prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. 

Why Peter Says It 

Now. 

Why does Peter bring this up? What’s his point, in this context? What does this have to do with our suffering? 

I can’t read Peter’s mind, but let me hazard a suggestion. 

Peter’s writing about the confident hope we have in suffering. But how can we have a confident hope when we just don’t understand why stuff happens to us the way that it does?  

First, we have the example of the prophets, who didn’t understand—for the rest of their lives—and they believed anyway.  

  • Doesn’t it make sense that an infinite, ineffable God would occasionally do some things that are beyond our intellectual reach? What kind of a God would it be who did only things that our finite minds can understand?  
  • Doesn’t our confidence increase when we realize that our failure to understand isn’t evidence that anything is wrong with God’s plan?  

Further, we have the historical example. Unlike the prophets, we have the benefit of hindsight: we have seen their prophecies fulfilled, even though they sometimes didn’t have the foggiest notion of what they were talking about. We know how the Servant could make his grave with both the wicked and the rich.  

What about those prophecies yet unfulfilled—the ones we still don’t understand?  

Do you think this God will fulfill those promises too?  

I do.  

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

On Puzzled Prophets, Part 1 

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Recently I preached in chapel for BJU Seminary. Here’s a summary of that message. 

This semester in chapel, BJU Seminary is working through 1 Peter under the theme “Exiles with Expectant Hope.” Peter begins this letter, which is going to talk a lot about suffering and persecution, by pointing out the confident expectation that God’s people have of an inheritance “reserved in heaven for you” (1P 1.4). And this despite the undeniable fact of “manifold testings” (1P 1.6), which, he says, are not a sign that anything has gone wrong with God’s plan for us, but rather are the very means God is using to prepare us for future eternal service that brings glory to God (1P 1.7). 

And then, suddenly, Peter puzzles us, on two counts: 1) what he says in verses 10-12; and 2) why he says it at all in this context. What’s his point? 

Do you like puzzles? Let’s work on one. 

What Peter Says 

Peter says, quite surprisingly, that at certain times the Hebrew prophets did not understand the messages they brought from the Lord. Why is that surprising? Because the prophet’s whole job is to bring a message from God to a given audience—Israel, Judah, occasionally one of the neighboring countries. How can he do that if he doesn’t understand the message? What’s he going to say? 

I suppose, to be thorough, we should look for specific examples of puzzled prophets in the OT. The one that comes most immediately to my mind is in Daniel 12, where Daniel is given a message from God, through a messenger, apparently in a vision. He sees two men, one on each side of a river (Da 12.5), one of whom asks a third person, “When does the end come?” (Da 12.6). He answers, “A time, times, and a half” (Da 12.7). 

Do you find that perfectly clear? I certainly don’t. (I know, several interpreters see that as 3½ years, or half the tribulation period—but I’d suggest that all these years later, the whole thing’s still pretty obscure, as is evidenced by the fact that believers hold any number of eschatological positions.) 

As further evidence, I note the very next verse, where the prophet himself says, “I heard, but I understood not.” You too, huh, Daniel? 

So he does the reasonable thing and asks for an explanation—he repeats the original question. 

And the angel says (this is the Olinger Revised Version), “Never you mind, fella.” He asks for clarification—and is refused! 

Why? 

The messenger tells him this much: “It’s not for now; it’s for later” (Da 12.9). 

And then the book ends. 

Whaaat?! 

Well, whatever else we think about this specific prophecy, we have confirmation that Peter is not exaggerating. Here’s at least one case where the prophet does not understand the prophecy he’s given. 

Are there others? 

I don’t know of any others that are specified as fitting the pattern—though Ezekiel’s wheel vision comes pretty close—but I can think of several that the writers might not have understood: 

  • Did Moses, writing Genesis and describing the Fall event in chapter 3, understand that very odd phrase “the seed of the woman” (Ge 3.15)? Adam and Eve almost certainly didn’t, given that at the time there hadn’t been even one baby born yet; but what about Moses, maybe two or three millennia later? Did he think, “Hmmm. virgin birth?” 
  • Did Isaiah, seven centuries after Moses, understand when he wrote, “He shall make his grave with the wicked, and with the rich” (Is 53.9)? Is there any chance at all that he could have described with any degree of accuracy what would eventually happen? 

We don’t know for sure, of course, because the Bible doesn’t specify, and we know that God doesn’t like it when we say he said things that he didn’t (e.g. Jer 14.14). But deep down inside, I doubt that they understood. 

Next time: what specifically they were puzzled about, and why Peter brings up this point in the first place. 

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

James’s Big Ideas, Part 4: Works 

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Wisdom | Part 3: Words 

One more theme makes itself obvious in James’s little letter. Multiple times he uses a Greek verb, or its noun equivalent, to speak of our works. 

He notes a couple of ways that humans naturally “work” evil: 

  • We exhibit wrath (Jam 1.20). 
  • We discriminate against people—specifically the poor (Jam 2.9—translated “commit” or “committing” in many of the English versions). 

But God doesn’t leave us in our sorry state. The first thing James comments on in his letter is that God “works” in his people through trials, to develop endurance in them. When he has rescued us from our inborn proclivities, he begins to work on us, shaping us, trying us, so that we will be mature examples of his people. 

And what do you suppose happens then? 

We begin to “work” in ways that we were unable to before. In fact, it becomes impossible for us not to respond to God’s work in us with our works—works that provide evidence of the genuineness of our faith. In James’s memorable words, “Faith without works is dead” (Jam 2.20). 

He gives us two historical examples of believers who demonstrated their faith by their works: 

  • Abraham (Jam 2.21), who obeyed God’s command to take his promised son, Isaac, to Moriah and sacrifice him, until God stopped him at the very last moment (Hebrews 11.19 tells us that he believed that God would raise his son from the dead after he had sacrificed him.) 
  • Rahab (Jam 2.25), who protected the Israelite (enemy!) soldiers and enabled them to escape the Canaanite forces 

This kind of obedience perfectly exemplifies the attitude James has already described—and commanded—in chapter 1: that we should be doers of the Word, and not merely hearers (Jam 1.25). Abraham heard the word directly, of course; God spoke to him audibly (Ge 22.2), as he did relatively often in those days before the arrival of the Living Word (He 1.1-2) and the completion of the Written. 

But the case of Rahab is less obvious, more subtle. There is no indication that God ever spoke to her. She and her people had heard—through the rumor mill—of the parting of the Red Sea and of Israel’s defeat of the two Amorite kings (Jos 2.10). I suppose we could say that the word Rahab heard from God was general, rather than special, revelation. But while her countrymen had responded as unbelievers, in fear, she had responded in faith: “Yahweh your God, he is God in heaven above and in earth beneath” (Jos 2.11). And that faith unavoidably made itself plain in her decisions and the consequent actions. 

Here we have clear evidence of God’s working in the hearts of those who believe in him to produce evidentiary works. 

Throughout his epistle James gives us plentiful specific examples of the kinds of works we will produce as God works in us. 

  • Enduring temptation (faithfulness) (Jam 1.12) 
  • Control of anger (Jam 1.19) 
  • Responding to the Scripture’s correcting work (Jam 1.25) 
  • Helping widows and orphans (Jam 1.27) 
  • Nondiscrimination (Jam 2.1) 
  • Giving to the poor (Jam 2.15) 
  • Controlling the mouth (Jam 3.2) 
  • Sorrow for sin (Jam 4.9) 
  • Rejection of materialism (Jam 4.13) 
  • Honesty (Jam 5.1, 4) 
  • Prayer (Jam 5.16) 

And so it must be with us. We demonstrate our genuine faith through our “conversation,” our lifestyle, including both words and works, that displays the fruit of obedience. And that, James says, is wisdom (Jam 3.13). 

So here, at the end, we find that all three of these Big Ideas come together. We gain wisdom from God, and that wisdom leads us to works that are consistent with our condition as believers, including words that bring life rather than death. 

This epistle from the first generation of Jesus’ followers is as relevant today as ever. 

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash

James’s Big Ideas, Part 3: Words 

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Wisdom 

We turn now to the second of James’s three big ideas. In multiple chapters he warns against improper use of the tongue. He begins chapter 3 with a paragraph or two of stark words, demonstrating the tongue’s outsized significance in human relations. 

To begin with, he says, if you can control your tongue, you can control any other part of your body; disciplined speech is a mark of maturity (Jam 3.2). For “control,” he uses the word “bridle”—and that clearly calls to his mind a whole list of analogies. A tiny bit in a massive horse’s mouth will redirect him (Jam 3.3). Similarly, a relatively small rudder will turn a large ship in whatever direction the captain wishes (Jam 3.4). 

Years ago I had an opportunity to spend a Saturday sailing an iceboat on a frozen Lake Cochichuate in Massachusetts. Sailing across the wind, with the single triangular sail pulled in tight, you can go much faster than the wind is blowing—in fact, 50 or 60 mph. It was delightful. 

But the rudder. There’s the rub. The little single-passenger boat didn’t weigh very much, and the rudder couldn’t get much of a purchase on the surface of the ice. I was all over that lake. In liquid water, however, it’s different. There, the rudder will turn the whole ship—perhaps not fast, but surely. 

In both of these instances—the bit and the rudder—a tiny thing has an outsized effect. And the tongue is such a thing. A few words can change a life, for better or for worse. 

James turns to a different metaphor. Fire, he says, can start small but wreak widespread devastation (Jam 3.5-6). Many people don’t know about the largely abandoned town of Centralia, PA, where a fire has been burning for decades in a coal seam beneath the ground. The surface is warm, or even hot, to the touch, and all the real estate is worthless. “How great a matter a little fire kindleth!” (Jam 3.5). 

James climaxes his presentation with the last metaphor: poison (Jam 3.8). Just 15 milligrams (half a thousandth of an ounce) of strychnine, I’m told, can kill you in as little as 5 minutes. More recently, the US has become aware that just 2 milligrams of fentanyl is fatal. 

And the tongue, James says, is like that. 

Yikes. 

And yet, James has already told us two chapters earlier that someone who cannot control his tongue has “vain” religion. His profession is empty, vapid, worthless. 

A few verses further down in our passage James asserts that mankind has tamed all the fauna there are (Jam 3.7)—to varying degrees, of course. Even a lion is held at bay with a relatively small whip. But the tongue, he says, is beyond taming (Jam 3.8). 

So what can we do? Are we hopeless? Is genuine faith, manifesting itself in constructive speech, forever out of reach? 

Certainly not. Again, back in chapter 1 James has already laid out the solution. It is God’s word—the fruit of his tongue, if you will—that “begat” us, or gave us spiritual life. It is the “engrafted” word—that which he has implanted within us—that saves our souls (Jam 1.21). And consequently, as hearers who are alive spiritually, we can respond to that word by obeying it (Jam 1.22-25). 

So how do we prevent ourselves, and those with whom we interact, from being poisoned by our undisciplined tongues? 

We consume the Scripture, in the largest quantities for which we have capacity. We determine what those ancient words require of us in our very different time and place. And we put them into practice. 

The Scripture, we know, is a means of grace. It is in itself the source of our power to obey it. It’s time for us to read, listen, and watch God work. 

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash

James’s Big Ideas, Part 2: Wisdom 

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Part 1: Introduction 

One of James’s greatest emphases, from the beginning (Jam 1.5) to the end (Jam 5.20) of his epistle, is wisdom. James is using the Greek word sophia, from which we get our words sophisticated, sophomore, and philosopher. In the Bible, it doesn’t mean “smart” or “intellectually gifted”; there are many examples in the Bible of smart people who weren’t wise, and of wise people who weren’t particularly smart. The Bible uses the word to describe people who are good at figuring out what is the right or most effective or most appropriate response to a situation. It’s about the practical side, not the mental or intellectual side. 

Where Do You Get It? 

James begins his epistle by implying that you get wisdom from experience, specifically trials and testings (Jam 1.2-4). In the hard days of life you learn to work through those difficulties to a solution; and whether your “solution” is a good one or not, you learn from it, whether as a positive or negative example. After a sufficient number of those experiences, you find yourself “mature and complete, not lacking anything” (Jam 1.4 NIV). 

But then, to drive his point home, he speaks directly: if you need wisdom, ask God for it. God will give you all you need, and he won’t be bothered that you asked (Jam 1.5); in fact, he’ll be glad you asked. You demonstrate humility and teachability by asking, and those qualities set you up for wisdom. 

But—and here’s a fundamental qualification—you need to trust the God you ask (Jam 1.6). He will answer, and effectively, and he will bring you out at the right place. As James has already implied, wisdom comes through difficulty—and when God begins to answer your request by sending hard times, you need to trust him by expecting the hard times to come, facing them directly, and working through them to the end and the resulting wisdom. There’s no room for “going wobbly” with the all-wise and loving God when he’s acting—as he always does—in your best long-term interests. If you don’t face the difficulty and drive through to the end, you’re not going to be any wiser for the experience (Jam 1.7). 

What Happens Then? 

Wisdom has specific characteristics; when you get it, you’ll be able to recognize it. In the middle of his epistle, James tells us what it doesn’t look like, and then what it does. 

Not Like This 

James says that the world has a certain way of looking at things, a way that it thinks is “wise” (Jam 3.14-15). It’s characterized, he says, by “bitter envying and strife” (Jam 3.14). We certainly see that around us, from Tik Tok influencers to tensions between global superpowers. I want something that someone else has, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get it. The world calls this “initiative” or “drive”; but what it really is is rejection of providence and lack of trust in the goodness and wisdom of the Director. 

James says (Jam 3.15) this “wisdom” is  

  • Earthly: focused on the temporary, the trivial (think pop culture) 
  • Sensual: focused on what makes you naturally feel good (think promiscuity, addiction, laziness) 
  • Devilish: focused on the selfish pride that characterizes the evil forces 

But Like This 

True wisdom, on the other hand, evidences itself in a person’s choices (Jam 3.13)—specifically (Jam 3.17), choices that reflect  

  • Purity: morally clean living 
  • Peaceableness: a tendency to radiate and encourage peace rather than conflict 
  • Gentleness: refusal to insist on your rights; tending to yield 
  • Entreatability: willingness to hear the other side and to be convinced 
  • Mercifulness: kindness to those in need; willingness to withhold punishment 
  • Good fruits: actions that are useful or beneficial 
  • Impartiality: treating others with fairness and respect 
  • Genuineness: being what you claim and what you advocate 

Did you notice that at the beginning of this post, I listed James 5.20 as advocating wisdom? Did you check that reference? It doesn’t use the word; the last explicit reference to wisdom is here in James 3.17. But if wisdom is the ability to choose the right response in a situation, then James 5.20 is talking about it, even without mentioning it. 

If you look at our current culture, you probably find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that we live in a foolish, foolish age. 

How about if we choose to go against the flow and raise our culture’s wisdom quotient rather than making the world more foolish? 

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash