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 What We Learn from Looking Around, Part 5: Closing Thoughts

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Omnipotence | Part 3: Omniscience | Part 4: TLC

There are other things we learn about the Creator by observing his creation. I’ve written before about a number of implications from the fact that God is our Creator. Here I’ll mention a couple of related thoughts in closing.

First, we know almost instinctively that when someone makes something, he gets to decide what to do with it. My father was skilled with his hands, and when I was a boy he made a workbench that he intended to use for working on automobile engines. The surface consisted of a long row of 2 x 4 beams turned sideways, so that the tabletop was 4” thick. As it turned out, I don’t remember him ever using it to work on engines; he did other things with it. He’s allowed to do that. It’s his table; he made it.

Similarly, the Creator has the right to govern his creation. We call that sovereignty. What he says goes.

Now, we’ve already established that he is powerful—able to do what he decides to do—and wise—able to determine the most effective uses of what he has created. We’ve also noted that he’s good; he doesn’t abuse any element of his creation, most especially us, but rather cares for us. I’ve written elsewhere about that fact that everything we really need is free.

All this means that his sovereignty over creation is no threat to us—unless we foolishly decide that we know better than he does. And unfortunately, the tendency to do that is part of our fallen nature.

A second thought derives naturally from the first. We ought to respect the Creator’s wisdom and follow his direction. Again, I’ve developed this idea elsewhere. You can use a chainsaw any old way you like, but if you reject the engineer’s recommendations for safe and proper use, don’t be surprised if you end up getting hurt.

Some years ago I recall seeing a commercial for Sherwin-Williams paint. The video began with a shot of the space shuttle on the launch pad, with a voiceover saying, “Sherwin Williams designed the paint for the space shuttle.” Then you heard the countdown, and at “Liftoff!” the screen went white as the exhaust from the solid rocket boosters obliterated the view of everything else, and the roar of those engines drowned out the voice. Then the image changed to a different kind of white, and as the camera zoomed out, you realized you were looking at a door. It opened away from you, and you saw a typical residential bathroom. Against the quiet, the voiceover said, “Chances are we can handle your bathroom.”

When I consider God’s heavens, the work of his fingers, I am driven to a simple confidence. He can handle my life: needs, wants, questions, doubts, sins, perplexities, griefs, all of it. I can trust his wisdom, his power, his goodness, for all that lies ahead, just as for all that he has brought me graciously through.

And, by his grace, I will.

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On What We Learn from Looking Around, Part 4: TLC

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Omnipotence | Part 3: Omniscience

There’s something else we learn by observing creation carefully. Despite its brokenness, it seems to fit our needs just perfectly.

Our planet is in the solar system’s “Goldilocks zone”: like the fabled baby bear’s porridge, it’s “not too hot, not too cold—just right!” Further, the temperature is finely tuned by the planet’s slant on its axis, which gives most of the inhabited areas seasons—whether 4 or 2—and furthers the thriving of plant and animal life. And unlike its sister planet Mars, ours has an atmosphere, an ocean of air, with just the right amount of oxygen to support human and animal life, and just the right amount of nitrogen to keep the oxygen from causing us to burst into flame at inopportune moments. (And from what I’m told, all moments are inopportune for that.)

The balance of the biosphere is a remarkable thing; as we breath oxygen, we exhale carbon dioxide, which the plants use to produce more oxygen. Helpful little critters, no?

And it turns out that the sun that warms us and lights our days is also something of an enemy; it sends out radiation at levels that are harmful to us from even more than 90 million miles away. But invisibly surrounding our planet are streams of charged particles, driven from the sun but held in place around us by the planet’s magnetic field, that serve as a shield to divert the lethal levels of that radiation away from us.

Let’s see; what else?

Well, areas of the planet feel really crowded, and sometimes folks in those areas wish there were more land. I grew up in the West, “big sky country,” where we didn’t feel that pressure so much—and preferred it that way. I note that the planet’s average density of humans per square mile is just over 39—though of course, much of the planet’s land surface is uninhabitable (think Antarctica) or nearly so (think Sahara). But the Creator was being kind to limit the extent of the land mass, because the rest of the surface—ocean—is a gigantic water purification system that collects, distills, and then delivers drinkable water right to our feet.

Now, our environment’s not perfect. I mentioned a few words back that the system is broken. Lions choke wildebeests to death—I’ve seen it happen, up close and personal—without mercy and without apparent regret. Some people are inclined to focus on the brokenness; Jack London made a living writing stories about a nature that was “red in tooth and claw.” I think it’s important to note the brokenness, first, for our own preservation, and second, for evaluating the brokenness that we’re causing and then remedying it. After all, the Creator has made us responsible for the care and preservation of the planet as well as its wise use.

But the obvious brokenness makes creation’s general kindness all the more impressive. We deal everyday with things, creations of fellow humans, that don’t work at all when any little thing goes wrong. That’s why so many people make such good money repairing and maintaining expensive systems.

But creation just keeps doing what it does so well—supporting life. It amazes me how desperately life wants to continue. You can be out in the middle of a lava field, and there’s a little weed growing up through a crack, clinging to a few grains of something resembling dirt, raising its tiny leaves to the sky and soaking up the sun, yearning to grow.

Of course it’s true that by foolish mismanagement we humans can interfere with the Creator’s systems and make life difficult or even impossible (think Chernobyl). But it really is astonishing that a system so complex continues to support life after millennia of inattention or even abuse.

Whoever made all this must really, really like us.

Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator (1P 4.19).

Part 5: Closing Thoughts

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On What We Learn from Looking Around, Part 3: Omniscience

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Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Omnipotence

The second thing that I notice when I study the cosmos is its complexity. Again, from the macroscopic to the microscopic level the universe is just unbelievably complex.

At the largest scale there are gravitational forces affecting everything—not just galaxies as they rotate, but galaxy clusters, and even the “great wall” macrostructures of galaxy clusters. Astronomers tell us that there isn’t enough visible matter—stars—in a galaxy to account for its rotation, and hence they postulate “dark matter” to account for it. We can see that the system is complex over unfathomable distances (boy, there’s an insufficient adjective if ever there was one), and invisibly so at that.

At the other end of the spectrum, quarks—several kinds of ‘em—and muons and fluons are doing their things at the minutest of scales, while electrons orbit, or populate shells, or something, and the strong nuclear force keeps all those protons in the nuclei from repelling one another, and the motions are frantic—and the elements appear to us to be pretty much standing still.

So is light a particle or a wave? And why not?

And we haven’t even talked about living things yet.

The more we learn about the cell, the more complicated we realize it is. And the DNA and RNA that it contains are equally complex, containing—and writing—instructions for all the characteristics that make one life form different from others, and from other examples of the same life form. Not to mention epigenetics.

(I have no idea what I’m talking about.)

One of my favorite examples of complexity is symbiosis—the mutually beneficial relationships between life forms. And my favorite one of those involves the termite.

As someone who has bought and sold a couple of houses, I’m no fan of termites. Pretty much all they do is eat. And they eat just one thing—wood. They’ll wreak havoc on the joists and other wooden components of your house—which is why you can’t sell a house without a “termite letter” from an inspector, confirming that there is no termite infestation in the house and that any damage from previous infestations has been properly repaired.

Interestingly, though, the termite’s digestive system is unable to digest cellulose—which is what wood is primarily made of. Which means that he could eat like a madman all day long and starve to death—his entire dietary intake would go right through him.

But as it happens, there live in the digestive tract of the termite a bunch of little microorganisms called flagellates. They excrete a substance that renders the cellulose digestible by the termite.

How fortunate.

But there’s more to the story.

The flagellate is anaerobic.

What does that mean?

It means he never exercises.

No. #dadjoke

It means that oxygen is toxic to him. If he’s exposed to the air, he dies.

So the flagellate keeps the termite alive, and the termite keeps the flagellate alive.

Now.

Which one of those little beasties do you suppose evolved first?

And it’s actually more complicated than that.

You see, both the termite and the flagellate reproduce sexually.

Without going into too much detail, that means that there has to be a boy flagellate and a girl flagellate. In the same place. At the same time. And they have to like each other.

Same with the termites.

And, of course, all four of them—actually much more than four—need to be together, because, as you recall, they’re keeping one another alive.

There are lots of other examples of symbiosis, little macrocosms that represent just a small picture of what the cosmos itself is—an infinitely complex system, in perfect balance, running smoothly for thousands of years, and so reliably that we can literally set our watches by it.

Whoever made this place must be really, really smart.

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, [that] the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? [there is] no searching of his understanding (Is 40.28).

Part 4: TLC | Part 5: Closing Thoughts

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On What We Learn from Looking Around, Part 2: Omnipotence

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Part 1: Introduction

So what do we learn about the Creator by observing what he has created?

I’m not going to be picky about the order here—I suppose different people will notice different things at different times—but the one that jumps out at me first is power.

Whoever made this place must be really, really strong.

Philosophers note that effects have causes—that’s the basis for all science—and that the cause is typically greater—more comprehensive, more powerful, more something—than the effect.

Why do I start with strength? Because the cosmos is so big.

Unimaginably big.

The fastest any human being has ever traveled is just a hair under 25,000 mph. That was the crew of Apollo 10, returning to the earth from the moon. Now, suppose you start at the sun (I know, if you start at the sun you won’t get anywhere, because you’ll be incinerated. Work with me here.) and head outward at that speed.

  • If my math is right, you’ll reach Mercury in 60 days.
  • Venus in another 56.
  • Earth in 39 more.
  • Mars in 78 more.

By the way, this assumes that the planets are all lined up in a row, which they never are, and ignores Newtonian physics, which encourages rocket scientists to save fuel by using the gravitational forces of planets to accelerate a spacecraft by “slingshotting.” This means that your rockets will have to be firing all the time, and you could never carry that much fuel. But again, work with me.

So far this seems doable. But as you probably know, the distances start to increase outside Mars’s orbit.

  • Jupiter is 576 days more. 800 total so far. That’s between 2 and 3 years.
  • Saturn is another 700 days. Almost 2 additional years.
  • Uranus another 1500.
  • Neptune another 1650.

You’ve reached the edge of the solar system, in just 12 years and 9 months. And oh, my friend, you’re just getting started.

  • The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is another 115,333 years. I hope you brought a book.
  • The nearest edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is another 670.5 million years.
  • The nearest galaxy, Andromeda, is another 53 billion years.
  • The edge of our “local” galaxy cluster is another 2.65 trillion years.
  • The edge of the observed universe is another 131 trillion years.

Now, we’ll see in a bit what the James Webb Space Telescope shows us. If the Lord tarries, I expect we’ll keep developing technology that allows us to see deeper into space, using various frequencies. And I also suspect there will always be more—that we’ll never come to the “edge” of it—whatever that means.

The sheer scope of the cosmos tells us of the power of its Creator.

Consider a different aspect.

The sun, they tell us, is an average-to-mediocre star. Yet it’s an 800,000-mile diameter ball of raging nuclear fusion, with a core temperature of 16 million degrees. (That’s Kelvin, but with these numbers the scale you use doesn’t really matter.) It shoots out flaming geysers of gas 200,000 miles high for hours at a time.

And if you took the most powerful power plant on earth and duplicated it 2.5 billion times, and collected all the power that army of plants generated in a year, it would equal the output of the sun in just 1 second.

Yikes.

There are lots of other evidences of the Creator’s power. I’ve stood on the “hurricane deck” at the foot of Niagara Falls and been nearly knocked to my knees by the power of the falling water—and there’s a bigger waterfall right next door.

I’ve stood at the edge of Victoria Falls (“the smoke that thunders”) in Zambia and placed my finger in the water, knowing that the precipice stretches across the Zambezi River for more than a mile.

Apparently Isaiah gave some thought to this concept:

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, [that] the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? (Is 40.28).

You don’t need a Bible to know that whoever did all this is really, really strong.

Part 3: Omniscience | Part 4: TLC | Part 5: Closing Thoughts

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The Incomparable Christ

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We’re all thinking about the best way(s) to start off the New Year, and it occurs to me that for Christians, who are forever in Christ (Ro 8.1, 12.5; 1Co 1.30), it’s only sensible to begin the year with a meditation on him.

There are many biblical passages on which we could choose to meditate. One of my favorites is the opening paragraph of Hebrews. I’ve used it before as an indicator of the way God speaks, but it will serve well for this purpose too.

The point of Hebrews, as you probably know, is to demonstrate that the Hebrew Scriptures are fulfilled in Jesus, who is the climax of all that they anticipate. In just the opening sentence, the author tells us much about the greatness of Christ:

  • He is the heir to all of the Father’s authority (He 1.2).
  • He is the creator of all things (He 1.2).
  • He is the perfect expression of the nature of God (He 1.3).
  • Like the Father, He holds omnipotence in His very words (He 1.3).
  • He has cleansed us of all our sin debt (He 1.3).
  • He has finished His saving work and is now exalted in a position of honor in the heavenly throne room (He 1.3).

In the rest of the book, the author is going to demonstrate that Jesus is superior

  • in his person—
    • greater than the angels (He 1-2)
    • or even than Moses (He 3-4)
  • as well as in his work—
    • in the priesthood (He 5-7)
    • in the New Covenant (He 8-9)
    • and in the offering of himself as the perfect sacrifice (He 10)

The author spends the first chapter listing passages from the Hebrew Scriptures that demonstrate that Jesus is far superior to the angels—

  • Citing Psalm 2 and the Davidic Covenant in 2Samuel 7, he notes that Jesus is the Son (He 1.5), whereas the angels are commanded to worship him in Deuteronomy 32.43 (He 1.6).*
  • Angels are referred to as “servants” in Psalm 104.4 (He 1.7, 14), but the Son is described in much more elevated language in Psalm 45.6-7, Psalm 102.25-27, and Psalm 110.1 (He 1.8-13).
    • He holds lordship over the universe (He 1.8)—indeed, he holds lordship over the world yet to come (He 2.5-9)
    • He is unchanging (He 1.11-12).

In this connection it’s worth noting that while angels often announced God’s redemptive work –

  • Gabriel announced John the Baptist’s birth to Zacharias (Luke 1:13ff)
  • Gabriel announced Jesus’ birth to Mary (Luke 1:26ff)
  • An angel announced Jesus’ birth to Joseph (Matt. 1:20)
  • An angel announced Jesus’ birth to the shepherds (Luke 2:9ff)
  • An angel warned Joseph of the danger from Herod (Matt. 2:13)

… they never actually accomplished any of that work. That was all Christ’s—

  • Perfect obedience to the Law (Ro 5.19; He 4.15)
  • A perfectly atoning death as the Lamb of God (Ro 8.3)
  • His own resurrection and the consequent defeat of death (Jn 2.19, 21)**
  • His intercession for us in the heavenly throne room (He 9.24; Ro 8.34)

The Son, the Messiah, the uniquely Anointed One has proved himself not only sufficient, but superior in all the ways that matter. As we start into a new year, many of us with dread or at least apprehension, we can proceed confidently, knowing that our Forerunner has planned and prepared the way and determined the perfect outcome for his people.

The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven;
his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men (Ps 11.4).

* A textual variant has resulted in the cited material in He 1.6 not appearing in most English translations of Dt 32.43, but it’s there. That’s a really interesting story; maybe a post on it would be worthwhile.

** Of course, because of the unity of the Trinity, the Father (Ac 5.30, 10.40) and the Spirit (Ro 1.4, 8.11) are said to participate in Christ’s resurrection as well.

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On Christmas

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This Christmas season I’d like to engage in a thought experiment by telling a story that I’m pretty sure never happened.

__________

An angel walks into the Executive Office Wing of heaven and steps up to the receptionist.

“I’d like to see the Son, please.”

The receptionist replies, “I’m sorry, but you can’t see the Son right now.”

Now, this is the first time those words have ever been uttered. The angel is taken aback.

“I can’t?! Why not?!”

“Well, he’s not in.”

“He’s not in?! What do you mean, ‘He’s not in’?! He’s omnipresent; how can he be ‘not in’?!”

“Well, he’s not here.”

The angel sputters.

“OK, you’re not making any sense, but I’ll play your little game. ‘Where’ is he? If you’ll tell me ‘where’ he is, I’ll go ‘there’ and talk to him.”

“Well, I could tell you where he is, but even if you go there, you won’t be able to talk to him.”

“Why not?”

“Well …”

The receptionist pauses for an awkwardly long time.

“Um, he can’t talk.”

The angel is apoplectic.

“He can’t talk?! What kind of nonsense is this?!”

“Well, … he’s a fetus.”

__________

There are several reasons that I’m fairly sure this scene never happened.

For one thing, while I suppose it’s possible that the executive offices of heaven have a receptionist, there don’t seem to be any of the usual reasons why one would be needed, and there’s no biblical indication of such a position.

Second, my story has a logical problem. Why is the angel bamboozled by the concept of “going there” to talk to the Son, if he’s come to the Executive Office Wing to talk to him?

For another, I’m quite doubtful that any unfallen angel was surprised by the incarnation. This event had been predicted in the Garden of Eden—possibly by the Son himself—and angels seem to be the kinds of persons who pay attention.

So it almost certainly never happened.

But it illustrates a few of the complexities that we celebrate at this time of year—complexities that we often gloss over because we’re just so familiar with the whole concept that God became man.

What an incomprehensible thing.

What happened when a member of the Godhead became germinal (pre-embryonic)? Did he, unlike other germinals, know what was happening? If his knowledge was limited in some ways during his season on earth (Mk 13.32), how extensive was that limitation, and did it change over time? If he is fully human, did he have to grow a brain during his embryonic stage? And if so, did he have any human consciousness before his brain developed?

The Bible tells us that the Son is the agent of providence; by him all things hold together (Col 1.17). Was he maintaining the universe and directing the affairs of people and nations while he was a fetus? Or is there some sort of 25th Amendment in heaven, whereby the Son hands over those responsibilities to the Father or the Spirit while he’s temporarily intellectually incapacitated?

We have no idea what we’re talking about.

He learned, right? How did that work?

Did the 12-month-old Jesus walk the first time he tried, or did he “fall down and go boom” while learning? Did Joseph ever say to him, “Now, Son, if you hold the hammer that way, one of these days you’re going to hurt yourself”? Did Mary ever say the Aramaic equivalent of “No, Jesus, it’s not ‘Can me and Simeon go out and play,’ but ‘Can Simeon and I go out and play’ “?

The Bible doesn’t speak to these things. It does tell us that he developed “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2.52). How did he grow in favor with God?!

I’ve studied the Son at a serious level for five decades. And the more I think and read, the more convinced I am that there is more to this person than we will ever know. And there is more to the Incarnation—to Christmas—than we can possibly conceive.

At some point, we simply have to thank the Almighty.

And worship.

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On Stillness, Part 5: In Your Heart

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Part 1: It’s a Good Thing | Part 2: Thinking in the Silence | Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works | Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word

As I noted last time, thinking deeply on God’s Word is easier to accomplish if you have it in your head—and your heart. The obvious way to accomplish that is by memorizing it. I’ve written on that before, but I’d like to extend those thoughts more specifically here.

Everyone can memorize—in fact, all of us do. There are learning disabilities that make memorization more difficult, or in some cases impossible, but the great majority of people can memorize large quantities of material reliably. Doing so requires just one thing: regular, spaced repetition. Now, doing that can get burdensome if you’re not interested in it or committed to it, so I find that success also depends on interest in the material. For Christians, who have spiritual life and the indwelling Spirit, interest in the Bible should be well within reach.

Regular, spaced repetition. Each of those words is important.

Regular. Memorizing well requires that you work on it at consistent intervals. For most people, that means daily—at least initially. For some people, especially those just starting out, efficient success may call for multiple brief sessions daily. The key is that you not skip a session.

Spaced. This seems at first to contradict the first requirement. Most people who fail at memorization miss the importance of this step. They spend an hour or two trying to mash content into their brains, and they wonder why it doesn’t stick. It doesn’t stick because you’re not giving your brain a chance to engage in simple recall—to exercise that brain muscle. Instead of spending an hour or two, spend 5 minutes, to the point that you can say the verse correctly from memory. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” You can do that in 5 minutes—or probably much less. Then set it aside and go think about something else for a while. After an hour or three, come back to it. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Got it in 60 seconds. Great. Now go fix dinner, and help the kids with their homework. And as you’re getting ready for bed, say it again from memory. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Spaced repetition. Get some sleep, and run through it again tomorrow. You’ve spent probably less than 10 minutes today, and you’ll spend even less time on it tomorrow, and in a few days you’ll have it reliably—if you don’t already.

Repetition. Keep at it. Don’t quit. As you continue working on a passage, you’ll need review to be less frequent, but keep going back to it—eventually once a month, or every other month, or every 6 months.

God has made everybody different. The frequency of repetition, the length of time it takes to say a given passage correctly from memory for the first time, and many other things will be unique to the individual. But as you work at it, you’ll learn what it takes for you.

Let’s talk about what this looks like in practice. Here’s the system that works for me.

I typically memorize no more than 1 verse per day. Psalm 1, for example, has 6 verses. Monday I work on verse 1; Tuesday I add verse 2 and review verse 1; Wednesday I add verse 3 and review verses 1 and 2; and by Saturday I can recite Psalm 1 from memory.

Every day after that, I recite Psalm 1. If I get it right on the first try for two days in a row, I move it to reviewing every other day. When I get it right on the first try two sessions in a row at that pace, I move it to once a week. Then every other week; then monthly; then every other month; then every third month; and so on.

Right now I’m working on memorizing several key Psalms. I’m reviewing Psalm 1 on the first Sunday of even-numbered months; Psalm 8 on the first Sunday of every month; Psalms 2, 14, 27, and 29 on odd Saturdays (1st, 3rd, 5th); Psalms 11, 16, 19, and 24 on even Saturdays; and other things on the daily schedule.

One verse a day, a bite at a time, with regular, spaced repetition.

One note. Sometimes you just get tired. When I sense my motivation flagging, I’ll take a break from adding new material for a while. I’ll keep up the review but not pour anything fresh into the hopper just to avoid that overwhelmed feeling that Lucy had in the chocolate factory.

Work at a comfortable pace. Something is better than nothing.

You’ll find that the Word begins to move from your head to your heart.

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On Stillness, Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word

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Part 1: It’s a Good Thing | Part 2: Thinking in the Silence | Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works

The Bible commends one more topic for our meditation.

  • As Joshua assumes the leadership of Israel after the death of Moses, God tells him, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful” (Jos 1.8).
  • The first Psalm, the roadmap for the rest of Israel’s hymnal, begins by saying, “1 How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! 2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night (Ps 1.1-2).
  • Psalm 119 is an extended meditation on the power and goodness of God’s Word. Every verse in this longest chapter in the Bible asserts this theme; here are just a few examples:
    •  I will meditate on Your precepts And regard Your ways (Ps 119.15).
    • Even though princes sit and talk against me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes (Ps 119.23).
    • O how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day (Ps 119.97).
    • I have more insight than all my teachers, For Your testimonies are my meditation (Ps 119.99).
    • My eyes anticipate the night watches, That I may meditate on Your word (Ps 119.148).
  • And lest you think that this is “just an Old Testament” concept, let me note Paul’s words to Timothy: 12 Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe. 13 Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching. 14 Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. 15 Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all. 16 Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you (1Ti 4.12-16).

Paul, like David, was obsessed with the Word of God, and he thought it was essentially the most important thing for him to recommend to his protégé.

This is life-changing stuff.

I’ve written before on my own experience of long interaction with the Scripture, and the reasons that I believe its claims to divine origin. I have benefited immensely—immeasurably—from studying it; I’m deeply thankful for the providence of God that has allowed me to study the Bible professionally for 5 decades—and by “professionally,” I mean that I was able to get paid for it. What grace.

It’s worth the time to study it, to think about it.

It should be obvious that if you have that word deposited in your mind, it’s easier to meditate on it.

  • Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You (Ps 119.11).

God through Moses makes the same point, commanding Israel to fill their heads with his Word (Dt 6.4-9). Family life was to revolve around knowledge of and gratitude for the promises of God.

Just as our minds want to think, so they want to know and remember. As I took care of my father through the last 6 dementia-filled years of his life, I was struck with how aberrant, how dehumanizing, how pathological the inability to remember is. This wasn’t the same person that I had known for all those decades.

If you have a normal human brain, you can know and remember God’s Word.

More on that next time.

Part 5: In Your Heart

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On Stillness, Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works

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Part 1: It’s a Good Thing | Part 2: Thinking in the Silence

We’re using times of quiet to do some deep thinking. Last time I suggested that we begin by thinking carefully about the attributes of God. This time I’d like to suggest taking the obvious next step: thinking carefully about his works.

The attributes of God have to do with who he is; if we were describing a human friend, we’d refer to his “personality”—that is, his characteristics, what he is like. God’s works, on the other hand, have to do with what he does. And the Scripture commends thinking in that direction specifically—

  • I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds (Ps 77.12).
  • I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands (Ps 143.5).

Organizing your thoughts around his works can get a little complicated, if you’re trying to be theologically precise. Officially, the works of God are just three in number: creation, providence, and miracles. Creation is the work by which God brings all things into existence; providence is the work by which he maintains and directs those things; and miracles is anything that doesn’t fit into the first two categories. (Theologians have offered more technical definitions of the word miracle, but I’m inclined to see shortcomings in each of those definitions, and so I use this as a simple, practical workaround.)

Some would make miracles a subcategory of providence, and most would see two other subcategories as well: preservation and government. The former is God’s maintenance of what he has created (think science), and the latter is his direction of the affairs of people and nations (think history).

The question is further complicated by a theological concept called “inseparable operations” in the Trinity. This is an attempt to highlight the unity of the Godhead by asserting that all the works of God are performed by all three persons in the Trinity. The standard exceptions are that the Father eternally begets the Son, and that the Father and the Son (unless you’re Eastern Orthodox) send the Spirit—or rather, that the Spirit “proceeds” from them.

(Can I say “them,” if God is One?)

As you can see, the attributes of God, which are infinite and thus beyond our complete comprehension, make our meditation on his works complicated as well.

There is constant opportunity here for wonder and for worship. If you think you understand it, there’s something you haven’t thought of.

But God, in grace, has revealed himself in his Word and in his works, and the fact that he’s infinite doesn’t mean that trying to understand and know him is a fool’s errand. We cannot know it all, but we can know—and experience—what he has revealed of himself.

I’ve organized my daily thanksgiving prayer around God’s works as well as his attributes. I thank him for Creation—and as anyone born in the American West knows, there’s a lot of creation to be thankful for. Its beauty and grandeur are beyond words, from the complexities and mysteriousness of subatomic particles, to the cell, to Yosemite Falls, to the interworkings of biomes, to the Great Wall of galactic clusters in the ubercosmos—or as D.A. Carson put it, “every galaxy, microbe, and hill.” Even in its broken state, God’s work of creation commends him.

I thank him for his providence, before I existed and since. It took me just a few minutes to jot down a whole catalog of good providences from which I have benefited. Some were painful, and some were not, but all were from God’s hand and have worked good in my life, my mind, and my soul.

I thank him for his miracles, most especially the work of new birth, and all the works that led up to it and have proceeded from it.

God is unspeakably good in his works. The more I think about the topic, the more convinced I am of his might and of his love.

God is great, and God is good.

Next time, we’ll suggest one more topic for deep thought.

Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word | Part 5: In Your Heart

Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash

On Stillness, Part 2: Thinking in the Silence

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Part 1: It’s a Good Thing

Years ago I read that the brain is not a bucket to be filled, but a muscle to be exercised. That is, your head is not limited in capacity in such a way that you need to save it for just the most important stuff. Rather, it can keep adding material forever; in fact, the more you exercise it, the more it can hold.

That concept has heavily influenced my thinking, my studying, and my teaching. Our minds don’t need rest; they want to be active. Oh, they do need change, or variety; I’m often encouraging my students to study in sprints rather than marathons, to stop and think about something else for a while. But even when we’re asleep, our minds are busy, making up stories, many of which make no sense at all. Thinking is what we do by nature.

The advantage to thinking in silence is raising the focus, and thus the quality, of how we’re thinking. I know it’s alleged that kids these days, I suppose largely because of Starbucks, need background noise in order to think—that sheer silence overwhelms them. I haven’t seen that demonstrated; in fact, I see indications that when my students think they’re “multi-tasking,” they’re really just doing several things poorly. (And I have the test scores to prove it.)

So what should we do with the silence that we find so rejuvenating?

The few biblical passages I noted in the previous post at least imply that we should be using the quiet time to think.

To think about what?

Again, the Scripture gives us some direction.

Think About God

The well-known passage cited earlier says simply, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Similarly, while hiding from King Saul in the Judean desert—where it gets really quiet, especially at night—David wrote,

5      My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,
and my mouth praises you with joyful lips
6      when I think of you on my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7      for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy (Ps 63).

I suppose David had an advantage there, in that as he lay on the desert ground at night, with no light pollution, he had a spectacular display of God’s glory in the canopy of stars and planets and meteors and the bright ribbon of the Milky Way. Saul doesn’t seem like such a big deal out there.

There’s a lot to think about with reference to God. (Understatement of all time.) I find it highly profitable to list, organize, and meditate on God’s personality—his qualities, what theologians call his attributes. I’ve worked a list of them into my prayer life, meditating on a different one each day. I find that having such an attribute in your head at the beginning of the day tends to give greater clarity—and peace—when the day gets noisy.

There are lots of places you can get information on God’s attributes. Any systematic theology book will have a section, usually a whole chapter, devoted to them. Many people have been helped by J. I. Packer’s Knowing God; Arthur W. Pink and A. W. Tozer both have books on the topic as well. Tozer’s book Knowledge of the Holy is also helpful. If you want something more challenging, the Puritan Stephen Charnock’s work is the standard.

There are also several helpful websites—

Next time, we’ll get further guidance from the Bible on what to think about in the silence.

Part 3: Thinking on God’s Works | Part 4: Thinking On God’s Word | Part 5: In Your Heart

Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash