personal

On Almost Crashing. In a Plane.

March 2, 2020 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

Every so often I like to pause my serious blogging and throw in a story, just for fun. (My last one of those was about being in jail.)

Here’s another one.

My Dad was an old-school private pilot, taught by his older brother in a tail-dragger out of Thompson Falls, Montana, back during the Depression. He flew just intermittently—renting an airplane was expensive—but during my early teen years the frequency picked up, as he was able to get a little financial support from his employer when he flew himself around for work-related things. I went along every chance I got, and I became pretty proficient at navigation with the radios (VORs, in the trade) and with take-offs, though I was never really very reliable on landings. My height being what it was, I sat on a small suitcase so I could see over the instrument panel on final approach, and that would occasionally get distracting.

Comments on the above paragraph are completely unnecessary. You know who you are.

We were living in the Boston area at the time, and since Dad and all of us kids had been born in the Pacific Northwest, our family would occasionally fly out to Spokane for family reunions on the Olinger side. For one such trip, Dad rented a Cherokee Six to accommodate the five of us and our luggage, which, since three of us were females, and two of those were teens, was fairly substantial. But the Six could handle it quite nicely.

We flew from Hanscom Field northwest of Boston to Spokane in a couple of days with no problems, Dad doing the flying and I doing the navigating from the right seat. After several days with extended family (Dad was one of 11 kids), we began the return trip, which was to be significantly longer; Dad had a younger sister in Duncan, OK, who hadn’t been able to come to the reunion, and we thought we’d drop by there for a visit. The Six could do that leg in a day, but it would be a long one, and we’d need to refuel twice to be safe.

About a third of the way, we decided, was Worland, WY. (The second stop would be Liberal, KS, which is a whole ‘nother story.)

We landed at Worland, taxied to the ramp, and called for refueling. The Six holds 84 gallons, which weighs, oh, about 500 pounds.

Now, ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a problem; we’d taken off in Spokane fully fueled, and Dad, as a careful pilot, had done the weight and distribution calculations carefully. So we were fine for takeoff in Spokane.

But Worland is not Spokane. Most importantly, Spokane’s elevation (specifically that of Felts Field) is just under 2000 feet, but Worland’s elevation is more than twice that. And as you may recall from high-school science, atmospheric pressure, and thus air density, drop with increasing altitude. And as the density drops, the amount of lift you can generate drops with it.

And that’s not all. As it happened, that summer day in Worland was hot; Worland routinely hits the high 90s during mid-summer.

What’s air like when it’s hot?

Thinner yet.

Even less lift.

Dad, bless his heart, forgot to factor all that in.

We received clearance for take-off, lined up on Runway 16, and Dad gave the Six full throttle.

Runway 16 is 7000 feet long, which is respectable, a lot more than the Six ought to need. We used all of it, and we were about 2 feet off the ground.

That’s not normal.

Maybe 1500 feet beyond the end of the runway, there was a fence. I remember it as a split-rail fence, maybe 3 feet high, though of course there’s a higher chain-link fence there now. I distinctly recall lifting my feet off the floor in a well-meaning attempt to help us get just a liiiiiittle more altitude.

A bit further out was a set of telephone poles, which experienced pilots know are usually connected by invisible wires, and I honestly didn’t know whether Dad was going to go over or under them.

He went over.

And in the expansive area of relatively flat prairie beyond, we tooled around until we finally got enough altitude to get out of there.

I really thought we were going to have to put it down and maybe even get tangled up in telephone wires.

But Dad knew the fundamental rule of flying: Keep flying. If you can.

And he did.

When we were in stable flight, he looked at me, and with a tone of utter disgust with himself, he said, “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

Dads don’t like to make mistakes that can kill their family.

I learned a lot from that.

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

On My Time in Jail

August 1, 2019 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

The last few posts have been pretty serious. I think it’s time for a break.

I’ve had a lot of interesting experiences, and I like to tell stories. I think every so often, when we need a little break here, I’ll tell about an interesting experience.

When I was in college, the school required four semesters of physical education as part of its general education requirements. They had lots of offerings in the area, and for my four semesters I took two semesters of judo, a semester of karate (shorin-ji, to be precise), and a semester of security training. (Seriously.)

In those days there was an outreach group that used judo as an evangelistic tool, and after I got my brown belt I joined them. The Judo Gentlemen. (Judo means “the gentle way” in Japanese, in reference to the fact that you could practice it without hurting the other student, unlike jiu-jitsu.)

Some years later—I was in Seminary and a teaching assistant in English—we scheduled a meeting in Canton, NC. It was a church banquet; we’d entertain them with a funny skit, and one of us—that would be me—would bring a short devotional.

As we were en route, I realized that I had miscalculated the drive time, and we were going to be late. So I did what any good steward would do—I adjusted the speed to solve the problem.

The highway patrolman clocked me at 71 in a 55.

When he approached the car, which I had borrowed from my roommate from Ohio (and thus had Ohio plates), he asked for my license and registration. Couldn’t find the registration. I handed him my Massachusetts driver’s license. He asked where I was from.

I said Greenville.

It went downhill from there.

The fine was $36, $20 plus a buck for every mph over the limit. (That was a long time ago, friends.)

Though I was in a 3-piece suit, most of the guys were in their judogis, which have no pockets. I had my wallet, of course, and I think maybe 2 of the other guys did as well. We had $32 among us.

We followed the officer in to the Buncombe County Magistrate’s Office, where they told me that I’d need to stay until the guys could get the extra 4 bucks. Something about reciprocity between states.

One of the team members, Bobby, was an officer in the Marine Reserves. He tried to get me released on his recognizance, like he would do with Marines having too much alcohol on leave.

No deal.

OK then.

I sent the guys on, appointed one of them to play the clown in the skit instead of me, and Bobby said he’d preach. Also instead of me.

I don’t recall what I was planning to preach on.

The team went on to Canton and planned to take an offering to get $4 to get the originally scheduled preacher out of the pokey on the way home.

The police took my shoes, belt, wallet, and Bible (it’s a sword, you know) and put me in the drunk tank, which was relatively crowded on that Friday night. I settled in and made friends with a fellow who was in for driving moonshine down from North Carolina. The others, being in various stages of inebriation, weren’t much for conversation.

At one point one of them roused himself from the floor, looked blearily at the (bullet-proof) window, and decided to break out. He got going as fast as he could in the limited space, hit the window with his head, and immediately resumed his original position on the floor.

I’d preached in jail a number of times. This was my first time as a client. I suppose I could have preached, but your credibility takes quite a hit when you’re a client rather than a visitor.

After about 4 hours (seemed like a week), the guys came back with the $4. The desk clerk had some trouble finding my things—they were filed under “Clinger”—but soon we were on our way home.

I walked into my apartment, where my roommate was up studying. He glanced up and said, “How did it go?”

Oh, you know, the usual.

To this day I believe that I’m the only BJU faculty member ever to have been incarcerated while on the faculty and still be employed. But in my defense I must add that I was never actually convicted. Of a felony.

This story is entirely true. If you don’t believe me, check with my roommate. His name is Dr. Dan Nelson, and he’s the administrator of Bob Jones Academy.

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

Fables Again, Differently

September 20, 2018 by Dan Olinger 4 Comments

A week ago I posted about possible lessons from Aesop for weather forecasters. This time I’d like to broach the subject again in a very different context.

In my university’s chapel program today, my colleague Eric Newton briefly referred (about 16:30 minutes in) to my experience of having my faith rescued through the study of OT genealogies. Since others may find the story helpful, I share it here.

In seminary I had to study a lot of theology, including aberrant theologies. Those included the first major theological innovation of the 20^th century, neo-orthodoxy, tied to the thinking of Karl Barth. Barth’s system and writings are complex, but the feature that got my attention was his “two-story” hermeneutic. There are two kinds of history, he said. There’s the stuff that really happened, which he called by the German term Historie. That’s the first story of the house, where we live. But there’s an upstairs too, with another kind of history, Geschichte. That’s the stuff that we believe. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t; that doesn’t matter. What matters is that our belief helps us make sense of a confusing world and, more importantly, it energizes an existential experience with God, which is the whole point of being. There’s no staircase in the house; we can reach the second story only by an existential leap of faith.

Neo-orthodox thinkers make this kind of thinking clearer to the average guy by calling the Scripture’s early history “fable.” They don’t intend the term to be an insult; in their minds, it’s a great compliment. Fables are delightful and artful literary works, and they play an important role in our education and broader culture. For example, Aesop told a story about a boy who cried “Wolf!” It teaches us that we shouldn’t lie. That’s important.

Now. In what country did this boy live? In what century?

Ah, my friend, by asking these questions, you’re indicating that you completely miss the point. It doesn’t matter where or when he lived—in fact, it doesn’t matter if he lived at all. The point is the lesson, and historicity is irrelevant. Just learn from the story. Recognize the literary technique, and don’t be such a knuckle-dragging literalist.

Well. That concept hit me pretty hard. What if Barth’s right? What if we’re completely missing the author’s intent? (Authorial intent is a really big deal in biblical interpretation, right?) What if none of it’s true? And then, what’s the point of Jesus being the Second Adam to solve the problem of human sin (Rom 5), if there was no First Adam to originate the sin in the first place?

Maybe it’s all just stories.

At that point in my thinking I made a really foolish mistake. Being too proud to ask any of my teachers—or fellow students—for help, I determined to push through this on my own. That was foolish for a couple of reasons—first, because human beings aren’t designed to suffer alone, and second, because, as I later realized, I was surrounded by people who could have given me the answer without my having to spend weeks in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

But, foolishly, I spent some time as a doctoral student at BJU wondering whether there’s even a God, and whether there’s light at the end of this dark valley.

Well, there is light. God is gracious; he knows and loves and cares for his children, and as he always has, he overlooked my foolishness and treated me with grace instead of giving me what I deserved.

I was seeking the answer to the question of authorial intent: did the narrators of early biblical history intend for me to read their accounts as fable, or as Historie? Is there evidence in their literature that would answer that question?

Yes, there is. One day it hit me like a brick. It’s the genealogies.

You see, when you tell the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!” you don’t tell how he grew up and had a son, and then a grandson, and then a great-grandson, and how his 200-greats grandson is the mayor of Cleveland. It’s fable; you leave it in the world of fiction.

That’s not what the authors did. They tied those very early people to the people of their generation. And later authors recognized that and extended the genealogical record through 4000 (or so) years of history to the central figure of history, Jesus Christ himself.

Barth was creative, but he failed to analyze the literature carefully. He missed clear evidence of the obvious answer to the most basic question—what did the author intend to say?

Postscript

Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is profitable (2Tim 3.16). All of it. Even the boring parts. Even the parts you tell new believers to skip.

Don’t do that. It’s all profitable. It’s there for a purpose. Recognize, embrace, and live in the light of that purpose. My 200-greats grandfather, Adam, would tell you the same thing.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash