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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How to Begin a Life of Praise, Part 2 

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Part 1 

Psalm 1 begins Israel’s book of praise by setting forth the way to think and walk in wisdom (Ps 1.1-3). But there’s another choice, a second stanza, and David makes the choice and its consequences clear. Parallel to his first stanza (see Part 1), he describes the person who chooses badly—though his description is brief (Ps 1.4)—and then he identifies the outcome of the choice. 

4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. 5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous (Ps 1.4-5). 

Those who choose not to walk in wisdom, he says, are like chaff, or the worthless husk on grain. Chaff protects the grain during its development, but once you get to the eating stage, it’s just in the way. Every Israelite would be familiar with the process of harvesting grain: cutting, sheaving, threshing, winnowing. You cut the stalks and gather them into bundles for transport to the threshing floor, which is a flat stone surface. Using oxen, you pull a threshing sledge, constructed of heavy wooden beams in which perhaps bits of stone or metal are embedded, across the stalks until the straw is separated from the kernels. 

But now you have the husk problem. How do you get rid of them? Using a shovel or fork, you toss the grains into the air, where the breeze blows away the lightweight husks, leaving the kernels to fall back to the ground. 

Good riddance. 

That’s how David describes the ungodly. His son Solomon will later use a similar metaphor, describing all of life under the sun as “vanity and vexation of spirit”—or perhaps “chasing the wind” (Ec 1.14). 

There is, of course, a wrinkle here, one that David doesn’t state outright but that the rest of Scripture makes abundantly clear. 

Metaphors typically have just a single point of likeness; the thing you’re talking about and thing you’re comparing it to aren’t alike in every respect.

And so, in the contrast between the wise and the ungodly, huskhood need not be permanent. The ungodly can turn and choose to walk in the way of wisdom. Later in Scripture we learn that that’s called “repentance,” which, accompanied by faith, turns the sinner into a saint, the runaway into a child of God. 

For now, David’s not expounding on that. He lays out the two paths and thereby encourages us readers to choose wisely. 

In verse 5 he describes the end of the persistently ungodly. Judgment is coming, and it will not be pleasant. Again his implied appeal is just under the surface: don’t be a fool; don’t choose the evil path; turn and walk with the godly, whose end is glorious. 

David ends the psalm with a summarizing statement: 

6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish (Ps 1.6). 

There are two paths in life, with very different thinking and very different outcomes. One leads to life with our Creator; the other leads to destruction. 

Choose life. 

The next 149 psalms will develop this theme, as will Proverbs and the other Wisdom Books. Wisdom doesn’t require intelligence or good looks or money or a trophy wife. 

All it requires is noticing something that should be obvious. 

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

James’s Big Ideas, Part 2: Wisdom 

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Part 1: Introduction 

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

Where Do You Get It? 

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

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

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

What Happens Then? 

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

Not Like This 

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

James says (Jam 3.15) this “wisdom” is  

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

But Like This 

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by madeleine ragsdale on Unsplash

Dealing with Intimidation, Part 5: A Sound Mind

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Part 1: Facing a Giant | Part 2: No Panic | Part 3: Power | Part 4: Love

When we’re facing something intimidating, God hasn’t given us a spirit that panics and runs away; rather, he gives us a set of gifts that empower us to do the opposite: to move confidently ahead to take on the challenge. The first of those gifts is strength, or power; why panic if you can take the guy? The second is love, which frees you from fearing the personal consequences of the outcome: what happens to others is of more consequence to you than what happens to you.

The third and final gift is “a sound mind” (KJV), or “sound judgment” (CSB), “discipline” (NASB), “self discipline” (NIV), “self-control” (ESV). Admittedly, those alleged “synonyms” cover a lot of territory; we’re looking at a lot of possible nuances.

We should probably start with the underlying Greek word and work our way out. The word is sophronismos, a noun apparently derived from sophos, “wise,” and phren, “understanding.” It occurs only here in the New Testament, but the related verb, sophroneo, occurs 6 times, of which 3 speak of mental health or sanity (twice of the maniac of Gadara [Mk 5.15; Lk 8.35] and once of Paul as a self-reference [2Co 5.13]), and 3 (Ro 12.3; Ti 2.6; 1P 4.7) speak of wisdom, or “self-control over one’s passions and desires,” as one lexicon puts it. Not long after Paul wrote 2 Timothy, Clement, the bishop of Rome, wrote in an epistle to the Corinthian church that the Corinthian women were managing “the affairs of their household in seemliness, with all discretion” (1Clement 1.3), and Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, wrote to the Philippian church that “our widows must be sober-minded concerning the faith of the Lord” (PPhil 4.3).

So this has to do with clear thinking—not so much raw intelligence, but the ability to analyze a problem and to come up with a practical solution.

I had an uncle like that. His name was Clarence, but everybody called him Red, and family called him Hooligan. As a boy I actually thought that was his name, until a teacher looked at me oddly when I referred to “my Uncle Hooligan.” Red dropped out of school after the third grade, I think it was, and went to work doing whatever he could that was reasonably age appropriate. He spent most of his adult life in construction and excelled at it. My Dad spoke almost reverently of his ability to look at a construction problem and just know, apparently intuitively, what the solution was. When he worked with trusses, it appeared to Dad that Red, the third-grade dropout, was doing trigonometry in his head.

I suspect that his skill was a combination of natural ability and lots of experience.

But we have something far more powerful—a divine gift, designed to enable us to see an intimidating problem through to a successful solution. Even beyond that, this is self-discipline; it’s good judgment; it’s moderation. It’s what a drug addict or an alcoholic doesn’t have. In short, it’s the ability to direct your own behavior, the ability to not be out of control.

You are not at the mercy of your own temperament, or your own personality, or your own weaknesses.

Maybe you’re “not a people person”; maybe you’ve always been shy.

Maybe you’re not intellectually gifted and can’t engage in witty repartee. Maybe, like me, you don’t have a natural sense of compassion that spurs you to take a genuine interest in the lives and difficulties of others.

These characteristics do not control you; God has given you the ability to do what He asks, even if you can’t—even if you have no natural ability.

God has given you the ability to choose to do His will.

And when you put all these gifts together, intimidation loses its greatest power. It can make you afraid, but it cannot make you flee the field; it cannot make you collapse in spiritual exhaustion; it cannot make you escape by turning within yourself; it cannot leave you without workable answers.

Exercising these gifts well may take practice and thus time. But the gifts are there.

We ought to use them.

Photo by Astrid Schaffner on Unsplash