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

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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On Providence, Part 6: And the Seed of the Woman

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Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How? | Part 3: Joseph, For Example  | Part 4: And Naomi | Part 5: And Esther

I’d like to present one more example of providence, one I think is the crowning example.

God raises up kings and sets them down again. One of those kings, Nebuchadnezzar, comes to recognize that fact when God turns him into the crazy uncle down the street, eating grass in front of the county courthouse, and then restores him again to his throne—and nobody objects (Da 4.28-37).

Just before this episode, God has revealed his plan to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream (Da 2.26-45). The prophet Daniel interprets the dream to predict that after Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian Empire will come the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, and then Greece, and then Rome.

And it all happens, just as God predicted.

Six centuries later Persia and Greece have come and gone, and Rome has conquered the Mediterranean Basin, including the little province of Judaea, the southern tip of the old land of Canaan, waaaay down at the end of the Sea.

It’s on the list of provinces, and it has a governor appointed by Rome, but it is of little if any concern back in the capital.

What is of concern, though, is the stupendous amount of money needed to run an empire, particularly one with an army large enough to keep the conquered peoples in check. Along about 750 AU (on the Roman calendar), the emperor, Caesar Augustus, decides he needs more money. He orders a census to organize the tax rolls. The order means that all the inhabitants of Roman provinces need to report to their family’s town of origin and sign up.

In the backwater village of Nazareth, in what used to be the tribal allotment of Zebulun back in the Israelite days, lives a construction worker named Joseph. We don’t know his age at this time, but we do know that he’s engaged to be married to a young woman—perhaps a teen—named Miriam. He has a lot on his mind; he’s learned that his fiancée is pregnant–without his help–and soon after, he’s learned that the child is the supernaturally conceived, promised Messiah of Israel. Miriam is now approaching full term.

Both he and Miriam are descendants of David, the great king of Israel from a millennium earlier. Everyone in Israel knows that David was from Bethlehem, in the territory of Judah. So Joseph and Miriam now have to travel overland to Judea to register for the census.

I’m sure Joseph thinks, “Look, I really don’t need this right now.” A full-term pregnant woman has no business traveling close to a hundred miles by any conveyance, let alone donkey.

But Rome.

So they go, at great inconvenience and almost certainly against their will.

When they arrive in Bethlehem, she goes into labor.

And she has a Son.

As expected.

Now, we already know that this is no ordinary son. An angelic messenger has told Joseph, “He shall save his people from their sins” (Mt 1.21). He is the promised Messiah.

Promised, indeed. There has been a flotilla of promises made over the centuries about this child, beginning in the Garden of Eden (Ge 3.15).

And one of those promises (Mic 5.2) is that he would be born in Bethlehem.

Not just any Bethlehem, either. There’s a village named Bethlehem just 6 miles northwest of Nazareth (Jos 19.15). Joseph might well have taken care of the census business there with a day trip. But the prophecy says “Bethlehem Ephrata,” which is the one down in Judah, where David was from.

So in far-off Rome, the most powerful man in the world, who doesn’t care about Judea or Jews or Messiahs or construction workers or prophecies, operating from the least religious motive imaginable, decides that the Empire will be upended and millions of people inconvenienced for his own convenience, and thus forces a full-term pregnant woman to travel a hundred miles on the back of a donkey.

And the rest is History.

God rules.

He does.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

On Providence, Part 4: And Naomi

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Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How? | Part 3: Joseph, For Example

How about another example?

Another famine. Another family that leaves Canaan (now Israel) to seek sustenance elsewhere.

This time the head of the family is Elimelech. He takes his wife, Naomi, and his two sons, and they cross the Jordan into Moab (Ru 1.1-2).

And then he dies (Ru 1.3).

The boys marry Moabite wives, named Orpah and Ruth (Ru 1.4). And then they die (Ru 1.5).

This is a disaster. A woman with no living sons is effectively unsupported. Such women often end up as beggars or prostitutes. The situation is worse for Naomi than for Orpah and Ruth, for two reasons. First, she’s an expat, a foreigner, a “stranger,” “not from around here.” And second, she’s not young enough to attract another husband. She’s bereft, horizonless, hopeless.

One of those problems she can fix. She can go home again. Which she decides to do (Ru 1.6).

Orpah opts to stay with her people (Ru 1.14). That’s clearly the wise choice. Young enough to have children, she can find a nice Moabite man and marry again.

But Ruth shocks us. She opts to go with Naomi, thereby leaving her people and all the life she has ever known (Ru 1.16-17).

There’s no rational explanation for this. She has seen no reason to follow Israel’s God, and as we shall see, Naomi doesn’t seem to either.

And so they arrive in Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem. Naomi is clearly not pleased with God. She accuses God of emptying her of all that she had (Ru 1.19-21).

And, frankly, she’s right.

Well, these unsupported women have to eat.

Israel’s law says that they can glean grain from the corners of any fields; in fact, farmers are under legal obligation not to harvest the corners (Le 19.9).

So Ruth, the young strong one, goes out looking for a field (Ru 2.2). She goes to the community field in the little town, and she starts gleaning the corners of one section of it. She doesn’t know who it belongs to, and she doesn’t care; it’s all grain to her.

A few hours later the owner shows up (Ru 2.4). He notices the foreigner and inquires of his foreman (Ru 2.5), who says she’s been working hard (Ru 2.6-7). He speaks with her and encourages her to keep gleaning in his section of the field (Ru 2.8-13) and even to eat with his workers (Ru 2.14). He tells his workers to drop grain on purpose for her to pick up (Ru 2.15-16).

Two good people.

By the end of the day she has plenty of grain (Ru 2.17).

Naomi, the empty one, is delighted by what Ruth has gathered (Ru 2.18). And she is astonished when she finds out who the man is. Of all the men in the village, he is the second closest relative, next in line under a legal obligation to restore Elimelech’s property to Naomi (Ru 2.20). She also reads the tea leaves, so to speak: sounds like the man has his eye on the young woman.

So she hatches a plot (Ru 3.1-5), and it works just as she had hoped. Ruth tells the man (whose name, by the way, is Boaz) that he has a legal obligation (Ru 3.6-9), and he demonstrates immediately that he’s willing to do it (Ru 3.10-13); he even fills her apron with seed as a sign of good faith (Ru 3.15). He lays a legal claim to redeem Naomi (Ru 4.1-4) and clears the way to marry Ruth (Ru 4.5-12).

And then, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, he fills her apron with seed a second time, and she has a son (Ru 4.13). Now there is a future for these formerly bereft women.

And what a future it is! Ruth’s son is the grandfather of a boy named David (Ru 4.21-22), Israel’s greatest king and recipient of God’s Messianic covenant (2S 7.8-16). David’s greater Son will redeem Naomi and Ruth and Boaz and you and me and anyone who believes (Ga 4.5; Ti 2.14).

And by the end of the story the baby is not in Ruth’s arms; he’s in Naomi’s (Ru 4.16). God has not emptied her after all; her temporary emptying was simply a step toward a fulfillment far beyond what she could ever have imagined. She becomes a significant part of God’s promise to crush the serpent’s head through the seed of the woman (Ge 3.15)—and an illustration of the process of redemption by which the Seed would accomplish that.

In our pain, let us not dream small dreams. Let us anticipate the kind of good that only God can do.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

On Providence, Part 3: Joseph, for Example

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Part 1: Where? | Part 2: How?

So far we’ve been considering God’s providential workings more or less in the abstract. I find that it helps me to look at specific, concrete examples of his working to get a better feel for their characteristics; that way I’m more likely to be able to think broadly, positively, and optimistically about what God might be doing in my life, particularly in those times when I’m tempted to think that he’s not paying attention to how hard it is.

I’d like to start with Joseph.

Joseph’s life starts out pretty well. He is the first son of Rachel (Ge 30.22-24), the patriarch Jacob’s great love, the woman for whom he worked seven years (Ge 29.15-18). (Yes, it was actually more complicated than that, but those were the terms he agreed to.) No doubt because of the identity of his mother, Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son (Ge 37.3)—and at the time he had 11 of them. Jacob makes this favoritism obvious in ways that Joseph would have noticed; his brothers certainly did (Ge 37.4).

Joseph has interesting dreams (Ge 37.5, 9). He may not have known that they were divine revelations and thus prophetic, but they certainly showed him in a favorable light. And the fact that he told them to his family (Ge 37.6-11) indicates to me that he was confident around them, perhaps naively so, not suspecting trouble.

In Joseph’s experience, life is very, very good.

And then.

As the Brits would say, it all goes in the loo.

His brothers, unsurprisingly jealous, turn on him, initially planning to kill him (Ge 37.20), then to leave him to die in a pit (probably a cistern) (Ge 37.22-24), but then “improving” the outcome by selling him to slave traders (Ge 37.25-28). He likely walks, hands tied, all the way through the Negeb and the Sinai to Egypt, where he is sold to a government official named Potiphar (Ge 37.36).

We don’t know anything about the early days of his slavery, but it appears that he works hard and well and distinguished himself from day one, to the point where he becomes Potiphar’s house steward (Ge 39.1-4)—better living conditions than a menial slave, certainly, but still slavery. (I once spent an evening in jail. The conditions were reasonably comfortable, but when you’re not free, you’re definitely not having a good time.)

And then.

Potiphar’s wife takes a shine to the young man, and he refuses her advances (Ge 39.7-12). She accuses him of sexual assault (Ge 39.13-18), and Joseph goes to prison (Ge 39.19-20).

I’m told ancient prisons were even unpleasanter than house slavery. (See under “solecism.”)

He has a couple of cellmates who are former slaves from Pharaoh’s court (Ge 40.1-4), and they have dreams (Ge 40.5). Joseph now knows that these dreams are prophetic revelations—maybe he did when he was a kid, but it doesn’t say—and he informs one of the men that he’s going to be released and returned to Pharaoh’s court (Ge 40.9-13).

Which he is. Joseph asks him to put in a good word for him (Ge 40.14-15). He doesn’t (Ge 40.23).

Two years later Pharaoh has a dream himself (Ge 41.1). His slave—finally—remembers the dream interpreter he met in prison (Ge 41.9-13). Pharaoh sends for Joseph (Ge 41.14).

Joseph interprets his dream (Ge 41.15-36), and—here it gets interesting—Pharaoh believes him (Ge 41.37). (Must have been the shave and change of clothes.) Even without any confirmation—there’s no time for that—Pharaoh appoints Joseph to oversee preparation for the famine that his dream predicted (Ge 41.39-45).

And just like that, Joseph is vice-Pharaoh in the most powerful empire of his day—which is worth a lot more than a bucket of warm spit.

Now, here’s what I haven’t mentioned. Four times during this account, the Bible says simply, “Yahweh was with Joseph” (Ge 39.2, 3, 21, 23). The man might well have been tempted to say, “Where is God in my life? Doesn’t he see? Doesn’t he care?”

God was with him. And even though God loved him, and cared about him, Joseph experienced these brutally hard things.

I said, “Even though,” but there’s no contradiction between God’s love for Joseph and the things he endured.

If his brothers hadn’t sold him into slavery, they all would have died in the famine.

If Potiphar hadn’t believed his wife’s lie, Joseph would have lived out his years as a house slave, and his family back in Canaan would still have died in the famine.

If he hadn’t gone to prison, he never would have interacted with a member of Pharaoh’s court.

Could God have accomplished the deliverance of Jacob’s family some other way? Of course he could have. He could have made their jars of oil not run out (1K 17.8-16), or done a thousand other things.

But he didn’t.

His ways are best, even when they’re hard.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

On Providence, Part 2: How?

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Part 1: Where?

The Scripture describes God as working providentially in specific ways. These ways seem to reflect his orderliness, in contrast to the mythological gods, who generally act impulsively, selfishly, and even without regard to the consequences of their actions.

Preserving Creation

God is committed to maintaining what he has created, in an orderly state, even in its brokenness. When we create systems, we aim for simplicity; the more complicated something is, the more critical points of failure there are, and the more likely they are to grind to a halt. God has created the most complex physical thing imaginable—the universe—and even though we have broken it, it continues to run with remarkable smoothness.

After the most violent upheaval in history—the Flood—God says to Noah,

While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day  and night Shall not cease (Ge 8.22).

For all its brokenness, it runs like a clock, and the sun will indeed come up tomorrow. He has kept that promise.

Providing for Creation

The Psalmist describes the sea’s creatures as waiting on the Lord for their food:

25 There is the sea, great and broad, In which are swarms without number, Animals both small and great. 26 There the ships move along, And Leviathan, which You have formed to sport in it. 27 They all wait for You To give them their food in due season. 28 You give to them, they gather it up; You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good (Ps 104.25-28).

Now, we know that animals think constantly about what they’re going to eat next. I suspect that the Psalmist is describing not so much the psychological processes of fish as the simple fact that God provides what they will eat. All earth’s creatures, in all its varied biomes, are provided for, often in remarkable ways. (Check out the anglerfish sometime.) And again, this despite that fact that we have broken what he has created.

Directing Natural Events

God most famously sent a three-year drought at the request of the prophet Elijah (1K 17.1-2; Jam 5.17-18), and there are references to other actions as well (2K 8.1; Is 50.2-3). One prophet describes God as having his “way in the whirlwind and in the storm” (Na 1.3), and Jesus demonstrates that fact for his disciples directly (Mk 4.35-41).

Directing Historical Events

Paul tells the Athenians that God has determined where peoples shall live as well as when they shall come into existence and when they shall disappear (Ac 17.26-27). I grew up in Washington State, where the state’s political and social culture is directed by its topography: the Cascade Mountains cause lots of rainfall in the west, and the resulting rainshadow makes the east a desert. Today western Washington is reliably liberal Democrat, and the irrigating dirt farmers in the east are reliably conservative Republican. And never the twain shall meet. 🙂

Of course, God also directs in more, um, direct ways. He sets up kings and takes them down again (Da 2.21), and he works in innumerable other ways to direct the outcomes of history.

Directing Personal Events

David tells us that “the steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD” (Ps 37.23), and his wiser son notes that “a man’s heart devises his way, but the LORD directs his steps” (Pr 16.9). We see God’s providential direction of human choices and outcomes throughout the Scripture, and we see it in our own lives as well. I’ve recounted one personal example here.

There’s much to learn from all this. We learn that God is involved; in theological terms, he’s immanent as well as transcendent. And that means that he cares—something that opens up the possibility of personal relationship, and a positive one at that. It also begets confidence that God will direct our own lives in love and grace, and also in power—his will in fact will be done in us. That’s a liberating thought.

I think we’d benefit from some specific examples of God’s providential working. The next few posts will dip into that.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

On Providence, Part 1: Where?

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One of my favorite theological topics—one of my favorite topics of any kind—is providence, the biblical teaching that God governs all things. I mention it often in this blog; if you search for it in the archive as of this writing, you get, by my count, 34 posts out of 580. Two reasons for that: first, I like it a lot, and second, by its very nature providence is pretty difficult to avoid mentioning. Once in a quiz I asked the class to identify an example of providence in history, and as we were grading it I realized that literally any historical event would be a correct answer.

That’s pedagogically embarrassing, but it’s theologically exhilarating.

I’d like to spend a few posts surveying the biblical data on the topic. I don’t intend to get into the thorny arguments that have arisen around the topic and its implications, but I would like to soak awhile in what the biblical authors thought it healthful to consider.

I suppose we should start with a definition of sorts: what are the spheres of providence? Or in less technical terms, where is God governing?

When I put it that way, you’ll be tempted to snort, “Well, duh. Everything.”

And this is one temptation I am fiercely encouraging you to give in to.

Of course that is the right answer. It is inherent in the meaning of the word sovereignty. If God’s not in charge everywhere, then he’s not really in charge, is he?

And the Scripture confirms that idea by direct statement. Just look at where the Bible says that God is in control—

  • In the cosmos. Psalm 19 famously begins by asserting that God’s glory—his handiwork—is apparent everywhere in the physical universe (Ps 19.1). The Psalmist focuses, of course, on the universe as he knew it, before Galileo and before NASA; he exults that this knowledge is plain throughout the whole earth (Ps 19.3-4a). He chooses as his primary illustration the sun, both in the faithfulness of its daily appearance (Ps 19.2) and in the all-pervasive power of its light (Ps 19.4b-6). Every natural phenomenon, both the edifying and the destructive, are from God’s hand and subject to his perfect will.
  • In human life. God is intimately involved with the life of each of his human images, whether or not they realize or acknowledge it.
    • He gives life. God is the one who decides whether a human life will begin. As Moses succinctly put it, “He is your life, and the length of your days” (Dt 30.20); in other words, he brings you into the world, and he takes you out of it. When I was a boy, the family next door had two sons, one about my age. The older boy died of cystic fibrosis as a young teen. A few years later, his brother, the one my age, died in a car accident. Two of my schoolmates died young, one just before graduation (another car accident) and the other just after (she was murdered). But I’m pushing 70. Who made those decisions? None of us did; God determines our birth and the length of our days.
    • He directs life’s circumstances. David observes that God “knows” everything he does (Ps 139.2-3); but he’s clearly thinking of more than just an academic knowledge: he says, “You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me” (Ps 139.5 NASB95). Is that true only of David? Or is he speaking of the normal human condition? The rest of the psalm answers that question clearly.
    • In national affairs. Daniel says (and he was certainly in a position to know) that God “removes kings, and sets them up” (Da 2.21). He raised up Assyria against Israel; he raised up Nebuchadnezzar against Judah (Jer 25.8-14); he raised up Cyrus to return Judah from captivity (Is 45.1-4). He has raised up our government—Democrat and Republican, wise and foolish, good and evil, competent and incompetent.
  • In heavenly affairs. Paul writes, “By him [Christ] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him” (Co 1.16). He’s describing supernatural powers here—angels and demons. And they answer to God and obey him—even (as in the case of Satan himself) when they do not want to (1Co 2.8).

Yes, God’s in charge. Everywhere. At all times.

Next time we’ll look at some specific ways he demonstrates that principle.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Worthy, Part 1: Nothing, a Donkey, and an Unsatisfied Craving

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Once there was nothing. 

No time. No now, no then. No was, no will be. No yesterday, no tomorrow. 

No space. No length, no width, no height. No up, no down, no left, no right. 

No light; but no darkness either.  

Nothing. 

But there was someone. Or someones, depending on how you count. There were three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in perfect harmony and at perfect peace, as One God. They—He—were/was not lonely; they—He—needed nothing.  

There was God. 

And there was all that God is. There was holiness; there was truth; there was goodness; and there was love. 

For His own reasons—which are all the reasons there were—God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was unformed and unfilled, and covered with a new thing called darkness. And the Spirit, like a mother hen, nestled over the dark surface of the earth, covering, embracing, enfolding. 

And then, following the Father’s plan, the Son spoke. 

“Let there be light.” 

And there was light. 

And over the next six days—there were days, and thus time, because there was light—the Son spoke again, and again. And every time He spoke, His words—His commandments—came to pass. The earth, unformed, began to take form. And the earth, unfilled, began to be filled, with life. 

And on the sixth day, the Son stopped speaking. He arose from His chair, so to speak, and He stepped into what He had spoken into existence. He knelt in the red clay outside Eden, and with His hands, he began to work. 

This time, unlike the other times, He was taking some time. His hands moved skillfully, purposefully, perfectly; and soon there was, lying on the ground in front of Him, the very image of Himself: a body just like the one He had temporarily assumed. Except—it was red, but not yet pink; it was lifeless. Still kneeling, the Son crouched over the lifeless body, placed His mouth on its ashen mouth, and breathed into it. 

And man became a living soul. Adam—“Red”—pinked up. The image of God lived. 

And then, something even more remarkable happened. The Son—God Himself—spoke to His image. He began to tell him things, about who He was, about what He liked and didn’t like. He offered Adam a chance to know Him. From the very beginning, God wanted to talk to His creature. 

Then the Son fashioned a wife for Adam, also in God’s image, but different from Adam in ways that made him better, more complete. And He told her about Himself too. He offered them both Himself. 

We all know what happened next. After Eve was deceived, Adam knowingly rejected God’s offer of fellowship and plunged all that God had made into chaos and death. And though God expelled them from the Garden, He kept talking to them and to their descendants. 

He spoke in an audible voice. He spoke in dreams and visions. He spoke through dew on a fleece, and through a bush that burned but wouldn’t burn up. Once he even spoke through a donkey. 

And along the way, even though He was communicating already in all these ways, He went even further. He began to see that the things He spoke were written down, so that more people could read His words than heard Him speak them. 

And the story He told had a single theme, in three parts. In the first part, called the Torah, God gave His people priests and sacrifices to wash away their sin and bring them back into fellowship with Him. But the sacrifices had to be made every day, twice a day. And there were other sacrifices: sin offerings, guilt offerings, trespass offerings, peace offerings, heave offerings, wave offerings. Why wasn’t there a priest who could offer a complete sacrifice—who could get the job done, and wash away our sins once forever? 

In the second part, called the Prophets, God spoke to His people through special spokesmen. There were many of them, and they spoke faithfully. But they, too, had a problem: sometimes they couldn’t understand their own messages, and sometimes they couldn’t describe what they saw in words that made sense to us. They spoke of wheels within wheels, and of a man who made his grave with both the wicked and the rich; they spoke of little horns and abominations of desolation, and it was often deeply confusing. Why wasn’t there a prophet who could speak clearly—who could tell us, in words we could understand, what God is like, and what He wants from us? 

In the third part, called the Writings, God gave His people kings to fight their battles for them. The first king was tall and handsome, and everyone liked him. But he was a real disappointment. So God picked a king for them, a young man with a soldier’s skill and courage and a musician’s tender heart. And for much of his reign he was joyously good; but in the end he fell into sin and descended his family into the same kinds of chaos that Adam had brought on us all from the beginning. The next king, his son Solomon, began well, but by the end of his life he was worshipping idols even after he had built a magnificent temple for the true God. And then the kingdom split, and while a few kings glimmered with hope and light, most of them just descended deeper and deeper into darkness. Why wasn’t there a king who could rule us well—who wouldn’t disappoint us? 

And so God’s Word to Israel, the Tanakh, ends, leaving us craving what we need from God, but unsatisfied. We need a priest. We need a prophet. We need a king. Even just one of them would be a blessing. 

The story continues next time.

Part 2: Utter Satisfaction, Utter Joy

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

On Muddling Through

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8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (He 11).

I’ve heard a lot of people comment these days on the uncertainty of our lives. It seems unusual, they say, the degree to which things are in general upheaval. They tend to focus on Covid, of course, especially with the Delta variant and the looming return of restrictions of various kinds. But they note that there’s more to this feeling, especially in the significant societal and cultural changes that seem to be accelerating.

There’s a part of me that says there’s nothing new under the sun; I’ve always been skeptical of the constant claim that “young people these days have it harder than ever.” But it does seem that the pace of change is speeding up.

I know a lot of people who are pretty much in Full Bore Linear Panic over all this. At the risk of being accused of insufficient empathy, let me offer a few words of psychical stabilization. (And yes, I know that no one in the history of the world has ever been calmed down by being told to calm down.)

I’ve written before on the societal uncertainty that the pandemic has brought, but I’d like to share some further thoughts along that line.

There is a very real sense in the Scripture that we’re mostly blind and consequently just sort of muddling along through life. We’re constantly reminded that we’re not God—though by nature we’d very much like to be—and that our knowledge and wisdom are infinitesimal in comparison with his. Paul tells us that “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2Co 5.7), and the writer to the Hebrews develops that concept at considerable length in chapter 11, a portion of which appears above. Abraham, we’re told, went out, not knowing where he was going.

We all feel like that sometimes.

Maybe you know people who started life with a plan and executed it perfectly. My life, in contrast, began with making a plan and seeing it crash when I was 16, and then just sort of stumbling along as doors opened. At the time, it wouldn’t have impressed any career coaches. But in retrospect, it’s been a straight line and makes a lot of sense.

Life’s funny that way.

To one degree or another, we’re all Abraham. We come from somewhere else and are just resident aliens here, living in tents (most of us metaphorically).

Some immigrants cling tightly to their ethnic identity. When my people came over from the Rhine Valley in 1741, they settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, briefly but soon hiked down to a German colony in Newmarket, Virginia, where they helped start a Lutheran Church—that’s what Germans do, right?—and married other Germans. From my youth in Boston I recall fondly the Italian North End and Irish South Boston, and the clear cultural identity of those places.

But eventually, typically, immigrants blend in, intermarry, and assume the culture to which they’ve come. It happened to Judah in Babylon; it happened to the Olingers in America; and it happens pretty much everywhere.

In a spiritual sense, though, we don’t have that option.

We’re from someplace else, and we’ll always be from someplace else, and we can’t—mustn’t—make this place the determiner of our fortunes, our emotions, our spiritual health. The uncertainties that are part of living in a foreign place must not drive us to fear, because we have a Father who knows all and directs all, even though he often doesn’t clue us in to everything that’s going on. What looks like chaos to us looks like a beautiful fractal to him, and he’s doing something spectacular.

We don’t know what that something is, exactly, but we know whose work it is, and that fact gives us the ability to be calm in the midst of the storm, confident in the midst of uncertainty, joyous with anticipation in the midst of societal panic—not because we don’t care, or because we’re not empathetic, or because we’re just stupid, but because we know where it’s all heading.

In short, because we believe Dad—which, given his record, is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Silent, but Working

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s as though he doesn’t exist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We call that providence.

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

We need to sit up and pay attention.

Photo by Wes Grant on Unsplash

The Names of Christmas, Part 3

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Part 1 Part 2

So both of the Christmas names—Jesus and Immanuel—highlight the fact of the Incarnation, that God became one of us. As I put it last time, the eternal God the Son added to his (divine) nature, or set of characteristics, a second, human nature, a different set of characteristics.

That’s a unique event. No other person, not even the Father or the Spirit, has ever had two natures.

We have trouble with unique things, because we like to learn by comparing the new thing to something we already know. And when there’s nothing to compare the new thing to, we end up scratching our heads and asking questions that we have insufficient data to answer.

How does a divine person add a human nature? How does any person add any second nature?

The early church spent 400 years trying to figure that one out, and pretty much every theory they came up with along the way was a heresy. Finally, in AD 451, at the Council of Chalcedon, they managed to formulate a statement of what happened—a statement that has stood the test of the centuries since—but they gave up forever the possibility of actually explaining it.

Really—how does a person with two natures live out his life? How does he think? How can he be both mortal and immortal? How can he be both omnipresent and corporeal? How can he be omniscient and yet say, matter-of-factly, “I don’t know when I’m coming back” (Mk 13.32)?

I’d like to make up a story that I’m pretty sure never happened, just to make the point.

—–

An angel shows up in the executive wing of heaven and approaches the receptionist.

“I’d like to see the Son, please,” he says.

The receptionist replies, “I’m sorry, but you can’t.”

Now, that answer has never before been given to that request, so the angel is puzzled.

“I can’t?! What kind of an answer is that?! Why can’t I?”

“Because he’s not here. He’s out of the office.”

The angel is nonplussed, whatever that means.

“What do you mean, he’s ‘not here’?! He’s omnipresent. How can he not be here? That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“Well, it’s a little difficult to explain, but I assure you that he’s not here.”

The angel, perplexed, gives in.

“OK, I’ll play your little game. He’s ‘not here.’ Well, then, ‘where’ is he? I’ll go ‘there’ and see him.”

The receptionist takes a deep breath.

“Well, I can tell you where he is, and you can go there, but even if you do, you won’t be able to see him.”

“Why not?”

Another deep breath.

“Because he can’t talk.”

“He can’t talk?! Are you kidding me?! How can he not talk?!”

The receptionist clears her throat.

“Because he’s a fetus. He’s not going to be able to talk for a couple of years yet.”

—–

As I say, I’m pretty sure this never happened, first, because our imagined angel seems a little impatient for somebody who’s not a sinner, and more importantly, I don’t think any angels were surprised by the incarnation. Oh—and I doubt that the executive wing of heaven has a receptionist, although I can’t be completely sure of that.

But let’s take some time to think about this.

Paul tells us that among other things, the Son is the agent of providence—by him, all things are held together (Col 1.17). As far as I know, there’s no 25th Amendment in the Constitution of Heaven, whereby a member of the Godhead passes off his duties to another member in anticipation of his temporary incapacitation. So is the Son running the universe from Mary’s womb? as a fetus? as an embryo?

Is it true that “little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”? Does he learn to walk the first time he tries, or does he “fall down and go boom”? Does Mary ever have to correct his grammar? Does he always get A’s in school? Does Joseph ever have to tell him, “Now, Joshua, if you keep holding the hammer that way, you’re going to hit your thumb!”?

My friend, you think you know this person, but there is more to him than you can ever know. He is unfathomable, unimaginable, indecipherable.

And he did this for you. When you were his enemy and determined to stay that way.

Immanuel. God with us.

Merry Christmas.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

On My Father’s 100th Birthday

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Today would have been my father’s 100th birthday. He lived only (?!) to the age of 90, but he had a really interesting life—railroad conductor, printer, pilot, kinda travel agent, small business owner. He was never boring. Scary maybe, but never boring.

The thing that I find really remarkable about his life is the amount of change he saw.

He was born on the frontier. His father, after the murder of his own father, headed west from Missouri looking for opportunity. Eventually he homesteaded—that Homestead Act was a real boon to upward mobility—just below the Continental Divide outside Salmon, Idaho, on land that no one had ever tamed before, and he and his wife and 11 children worked like oxen to make a living for themselves.

And here’s the thing. They lived, in 1918, pretty much the same way people lived in Abraham’s day. They built their own houses by hand, carried water in from the creek, fended off the darkness with oil lamps, powered their farming with animals, and did their excretory business in a hole in the ground. Oh, eventually they got electricity, and my grandfather even bought a car before it was all over, but when Dad was born, the routine of daily life hadn’t changed much for 4000 years.

Dad’s mother died when he was 7, and his father when he was 13, and from then on he was raised relatively haphazardly by a series of older siblings as they were able. Graduated from high school a year or two late, eventually served his country in World War II—as part of the greatest generation—and came home to work with his hands to scrape together a thousand bucks or two every year to feed the wife and three kids. Leave it to Beaver, indeed.

Not well educated, but a constant reader, he created a fully organic subsistence farm, before hardly anybody was even talking about such things, on a mere two acres of land in (really) Greenacres, Washington, then piled the whole family into a Rambler station wagon and a ’54 Nash to move clear across the country for a white-collar job. (No, my name’s not Joad.)

After they finally got the kids out of the house, he and Mom retired to southern New Mexico, where within a few short years Mom died and he was left pretty much alone with his tool-sharpening shop. After he’d spent 25 years there, an ER doctor called me from New Mexico and said, “You need to come get your Dad.”

And for the last 6 years of his life, as his well-used but well-worn mind slowly ebbed, I cared for him as he needed it, but left him his independence as much as I thought was safe.

And one evening the two of us sat together at my computer, fired up Google Earth, and went back to Salmon. He guided me up the Salmon River to Baker, where he went to school (yep, on horseback, in the snow) and then north up Sandy Creek to the old homestead. It was right here, on the west side, he said. And I dropped the perspective as low as I could, and we stood on the old land and looked up Sandy Creek to the Divide, where he’d hiked over into Montana one time when he was a teen and got upset with somebody.

In one lifetime, he went from the days of Abraham to Web-based virtual reality on a laptop. In one lifetime, his life changed in pretty much all the ways that the world has changed since it began.

What a time to be alive.

Dad didn’t make it to 100—here, anyway—and I’m confident that he wouldn’t have wanted to. But what a life he had, and what lives he has left behind. Sons and daughters who have all known success, all in remarkably different ways. Two grandsons who are Service Academy graduates, and two granddaughters with great abilities and extensive experiences around the world.

And life, for him, goes on, in a way that I don’t have the experience to describe.

Hallelujah.

Photo by Ember + Ivory on Unsplash