Why Me?

11 November 2025

Usually we associate “Why me?”with self-pity.

  • The car breaks down: “Why me?”
  • A pipe breaks and floods your bathroom: “Why me?”
  • You come down with a wicked head cold right before you have to give a big presentation at work: “Why me? Why now?”

The answer to those questions is always the same: “Why not you?” The incarnate Son of God was lied about, subjected to a sham trial, mocked, whipped, nailed to a tree and tortured to death, and you want your life to be easy? Get over yourself.

But there’s another time we think “Why me?”

  • God puts it into your heart to lead an initiative to feed the homeless in your city: “I don’t know…I mean, I’ve never done anything like that before…All these other people are so much more qualified.”
  • Your friend is sick, and it crosses your mind how great it would be to pray boldly for her healing: “I can’t do that. Besides, what if it doesn’t work?”
  • The best company you know is hiring for your dream job, and you hesitate to put in an application: “I’m sure there’s, like, a thousand people applying for the job, and why would they pick me anyway?”

Do you hear the “Why me?” behind all those questions?

The answer to both versions of “Why me?” is the same: Why not you? The incarnate Son of God did not let Himself be tortured to death so that your life would be easy. He did it so that you would grow holy and mature, fit for the good works that He planned for you to do. When God built you in your mother’s womb, He built you with a purpose, and He means to see it done.

The Son of God did not allow Himself to be tortured to death because He had nothing better to do that particular Friday. He took all your sin and weakness to the cross so it could die there. He rose from the grave so that you would know that no matter how bad the problem seems right now, there is resurrection on the other side of it. He is ready, right now, to walk with you into the life He intends you to live.

“Why me?” wants to avoid real difficulty, preferring a life of petty comforts and hollow victories over sham obstacles. “Why me?” will settle for a life of mediocrity and smallness.

But you were born for a place in God’s great purposes.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Strong Enough to Dance

9 September 2025

I recently read a rant that started off “Horses built for war don’t dance at weddings.” It then goes on for many paragraphs about how men who are seeking the truth aren’t cut out for bread and circuses, how the system wants you frivolous and weak. When the day everyone thought would never come finally arrives, the author promises, the war horses will be ready. I’d link to the rant so you could read it for yourself, but I’ve already forgotten the guy’s name. (Just as well, I think.)

This is a man who has seen the problem, but doesn’t understand the solution. King David danced. Israel danced on the banks of the Red Sea. Psalms 149 and 150 (which we are all commanded to sing) teach us to praise the Lord with dance. But it’s not just Scripture: at the right times, warriors in every human culture feast and dance and sing. I’ve trained alongside people from the Army, Marines, various SWAT teams, British SAS, road patrol deputies in the Kentucky backwoods where backup is 45 minutes away — they feast. They dance and sing — not always well, but they seem to enjoy it.

But this fellow is too busy being The War Horse to dance at a wedding. He’s too serious to take a lesson from Scripture or history or culture. Don’t be like him. God has called us to be sober-minded, but this is the opposite of sober-mindedness. This is Being Very Stern, and looking at yourself in the mirror while you do it. It will make you grim, ungodly, brittle, and weak. God doesn’t want you to just be strong enough to fight; He wants you strong enough to dance.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Cessationism 101

1 June 2025

If you’re new to this discussion, the claim under consideration is that certain of the spiritual gifts (generally known to their foes under the heading “sign gifts,” e.g., tongues, healing, prophecy, etc.) ceased early on in the history of the church, around the close of the first century. Generally people will identify the cessation of these gifts with the fall of Jerusalem, the death of the apostles, the closure of the canon, or some such. This belief is known as cessationism. The belief that all the biblically attested gifts have continued is known as continuationism. Continuationists don’t typically see “the sign gifts” as a biblical classification; the gift of teaching in operation is just as much a sign of the Spirit at work as the gift of prophecy. (“Charismatic” implies some additional cultural markers that are beyond the scope of this discussion. For our purposes today, just know that anybody who describes themselves as “charismatic” will be a continuationist, but not all continuationists would call themselves charismatic.)

We’ve discussed this issue here before (and here), but I don’t know that I’ve ever summarized the defects of cessationism all in one place. To be clear, this is not my affirmative case for continuationism; that’s another conversation. This is my rebuttal to cessationism; the claim I’m making here is that the biblical case for cessationism makes Swiss cheese look substantial. In order to make my case, I need to clearly articulate the arguments I’m rebutting. To that end, here are the core biblical arguments cessationists will make (if I missed one, put it in the comments!):

  1. The gift of tongues was a temporary sign for (unbelieving) Israel, and is no longer relevant for today. This line of argument points out the connection between 1 Corinthians 14:21-22 and Isaiah 28:11-12, and argues that once Jerusalem was destroyed, the purpose for the sign had ended, and so the gift ceased to be given.
  2. The sign gifts were part of the historically unrepeatable foundation of the Christian faith, and now that the foundation is laid, there’s no further need for them. This argument will cite Ephesians 2:20, Hebrews 2:3-4, 2 Corinthians 12:12 and similar passages that describe the work of the apostles and New Testament prophets as foundational for our faith, and connect the signs to the apostles.
  3. Biblical tongues were discernible languages, not what we know today as ecstatic glossolalia. Here they’ll argue that every biblical occurrence of the gift of tongues was a known language, and argue that the gift of tongues was the ability to speak a language unknown to the speaker (as in Acts 2). They’ll point out (correctly) that Corinth was a busy port city with a ton of languages drifting through it, and argue that 1 Corinthians 14 is addressing how to handle a multilingual church body and the spiritual gifts God gave them to cope with their situation. Modern tongues, by contrast, are ecstatic glossolalia, a learned babbling that has no linguistic content, and also has no New Testament precedent.
  4. 1 Corinthians 13 says that the sign gifts ceased with the closure of the canon of Scripture. The claim here is that 13:8 says that certain gifts will fail/cease/vanish (which it does), and that “the perfect” in 13:10 is the canon of Scripture, so now that we have God’s full revelation, the partial revelation embodied in the sign gifts no longer continues.
  5. Continuing revelation would mean that Scripture is still being added to today. The line of argument here is that if you think modern-day prophecy is really a word from God, shouldn’t you be writing this down? And wouldn’t that be adding an additional book to the New Testament?

Thus far the arguments for cessationism. How do they stand up on examination? Let’s take them in order:

1. “The gift of tongues was a temporary sign for (unbelieving) Israel, and is no longer relevant for today.”

in 1 Corinthians 14:21-22, Paul quotes Isaiah 28 in order to justify his claim that tongues are a sign to unbelievers. In the original context of Isaiah, the sign under discussion is for Israel specifically. We can see that sign play out, for example, in Acts 2, where where the Spirit is speaking through Gentile languages in the heart of Jerusalem. Getting from there to “tongues have ceased,” though, presents some problems. First, work through the logic: Holy Spirit-given Gentile tongues as a sign to unbelieving Jews doesn’t in itself mean the sign is no longer happening. Do we still got unbelieving Jews? Do we believe Israel has a future? Then how does it follow that the sign to them no longer has a purpose? 

Second, the fact that it’s a sign to Jews doesn’t mean it has no other purpose. Paul’s commentary doesn’t say that tongues are a sign to Jews only; he says they are a sign to unbelievers, and this in the context of the Gentile city of Corinth. Do we still got unbelievers? Well, tongues are a sign to them. That’s what this text tells us. Logically speaking, it could be the case that the sign ceased after the first century, but that’s something you bring to this text, not something you get from it. 

2. The sign gifts were part of the historically unrepeatable foundation of the Christian faith, and now that the foundation is laid, there’s no further need for them.

Ephesians 2:20 does indeed say that the apostles and prophets laid the foundation. It goes on to say that Christ Himself is the chief cornerstone of that foundation. We all believe that Christ both laid the foundation and has a continuing ministry. The two simply are not mutually exclusive; why should we believe that apostles and prophets have no continuing ministry just because they were part of laying the foundation? 

Certainly various miraculous signs were associated with the apostles; in 2 Cor. 12, for example, Paul calls the works he did “the signs of an apostle.” There are only two interpretive possibilities here: either he is, or he is not, referring to works done by other people (such as the works mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12-14). If he’s speaking of miracles only done by the apostles (and not to miraculous works done by others), well and good; that’s got nothing to do with what the rest of us do. If he does have in mind the sort of signs mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12-14, then we all agree that people other than the apostles did them. In that case, “signs of an apostle” means the kinds of things an apostle did, but doesn’t mean that only apostles did them. That being the case, there’s no obvious reason to believe that people today could not do the sort of thing an apostle did, even if you don’t believe in contemporary apostles.

3. Biblical tongues were discernible languages, not what we know today as ecstatic speech.

First of all, these two things are not mutually exclusive. Acts 2 tongues certainly are discernible languages, but that doesn’t mean it was not an ecstatic event – read the description. (About which more below.) Second, the context of 1 Corinthians 14:9 is precisely that the genuine gift of tongues is being used and people are not understanding the utterance; hence the exhortation! Paul is making the case that prophecy is superior, because it can be understood. For the public use of a tongue, he requires interpretation (14:5, 27-28) so that the rest of the Body might be built up. He also gives testimony that he has this gift “more than you all,” and that when he uses it, “my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.” That certainly seems to leave the door open to ecstatic speech that he does not himself understand. (Other interpretations are possible, but I don’t think we can rule this one out.)

Tongues in Acts 2 are described as languages comprehensible by various people present, but whether this occasion would meet modern church criteria for “orderly” is very much in question. They spilled out into the street all talking at once. Some people thought they were drunk – how did that happen? The point is not to advocate for that kind of ruckus in every public meeting, but to point out that ruckus does not mean the gifts of the Spirit are not present.

In fact, the very occasion for Paul writing 1 Cor. 12-14 was that tongues were not being interpreted or used in an orderly manner; his (Holy Spirit-inspired) diagnosis is not “this is not real tongues,” but that the real gift is being abused. The abuse is real, is sin, and absolutely needs to be repented of and corrected. There are present-day churches that very much have the problems the passage describes. Paul offers a diagnosis; “this is not the real thing” ain’t it.

4. 1 Corinthians 13 says that the sign gifts ceased with the closure of the canon of Scripture.

Various theological and practical arguments get offered in support of cessationism – arguments from dispensational consistency and the like (which are beyond the scope of this post; we’re talking about biblical arguments here). But when we set all the theological constructions aside and just focus on what the text says – when I ask a cessationist “Okay, but where does the Bible actually say that these gifts are no longer in operation?” – this is invariably the passage they come to. At least among the cessationists I know, if they’re going to bring (what they think of as) a knock-down exegetical argument, this is it.

Which is really ironic, because the passage simply doesn’t say what it’s claimed to say. It certainly does say that prophecies will fail, tongues will cease, and [words of] knowledge will vanish away. The claim is that this happens with the completion of the canon of Scripture, but in fact Scripture is not mentioned anywhere in the passage. Rather, the point at which these gifts cease, according to the passage, is when our knowledge is complete rather than partial, when we are fully grown, when we see with complete clarity, and know as we are also known. Anybody think the Church has reached that point? Me neither. 

5. Continuing revelation would mean that Scripture is still being added to today.

This objection confuses prophecy with inscripturation. If we examine the biblical record, we see prophets who never wrote a word of Scripture, from the 100 prophets Obadiah saved, 50 to a cave (1 Kings 18:4), to Philip’s four virgin daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:8-9). We see prophets who were already known to be prophets before they ever said the thing they’re known for in Scripture (1 Kings 20:35-43, 2 Kings 22;14-20, Acts 11:28, 21:10). We see instructions for regulating the exercise of prophecy in the local church (1 Corinthians 12-14) with not a word about writing anything down. If “shouldn’t we be writing this down?” was not a major concern to anybody at times when we all agree that prophecy was active, then it’s not obvious why it should suddenly become a concern to us now.

Rather, the biblical picture of prophecy is that the vast majority of it seems to have been timely words given to God’s people for their moment. Only a tiny fraction of it was ever recorded in Scripture; there’s no reason to expect that finishing the process of inscripturation would automatically end all prophetic revelation forever. Practically speaking, ongoing divine guidance speaks to our lives in ways Scripture can’t and wasn’t intended to: Scripture tells us to do good and to share, but the nudge to take time out to buy lunch for this particular homeless guy at this particular intersection and tell him God hasn’t forgotten him – you can’t get that from Scripture. Or the nudge to text that long-lost friend right now. Or a sudden impulse to deliver the groceries you just bought to a family you happen to know in the neighborhood. Or…but the daily life of Our People is full of such things. All the examples I just gave came from my experience (the first led to a friendship that seems to have gotten a homeless man of the street; the second to a comforting text that “just happened” to arrive in a moment of extreme grief; the third fed my family when we had no grocery money). I expect you can supply more examples of your own.

Conclusion

In summary, the biblical case for cessationism simply doesn’t stand up to close examination. The passages either don’t say what they are claimed to say, or there’s a huge leap in logic between what the passage says and the conclusion it’s supposed to justify.

That said, I recognize that my summary of the biblical arguments for cessationism is my summary. While a summary will never express every nuance or variation, it’s a position I used to hold, and I do understand the arguments. I hope I’ve summarized them fairly. How about it? If you’re a cessationist and you think I’ve left out a passage or mischaracterized an argument, add it in the comments! Let’s talk!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Drawn in the Wrong Place

15 April 2025

Framing eschatology as ‘optimistic’ or ‘pessimistic’ is deliberately tactical; it’s a postmil recruiting tool, and a really useful one, too! (At least for Americans; we are an optimistic people.) As an accurate descriptor of anybody’s Christian eschatology, ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ are lazy oversimplifications. We are surrounded by pagan eschatologies from Ragnarok to heat death; all Christian eschatologies are wildly optimistic.

When we’re talking about prophecy, I often recommend that we go back and look at prophecy that’s already been fulfilled in order to get our bearings. As a test case for the labels ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ within the biblical milieu, let’s consider the first advent. There’s a raft of prophecies that the coming Messiah would conquer and reign; this is what Peter, et al., expected Jesus was going to be about — an optimistic eschatology if ever there was one! There’s also prophecies that the coming Messiah would suffer and die. How pessimistic! But it turns out that both of those things are true, and it didn’t look how anybody expected.

Anyone who thinks that we win in the end, and knowledge of the glory of Yahweh covers the earth like water covers the sea — all those people are expecting victory, and have reason to live like it.

Of course, if you think that victory to be inaccessible now…I wonder. But that’s not a premil/postmil thing; it’s a “Is the Kingdom of God a present reality?” thing.

But that isn’t a package deal with your eschatology. I’m a convinced premil, because as far as I can tell that’s what the Bible says, and I know that the Kingdom is a present reality, because — wait for it — that’s what the Bible says. Jesus wasn’t embarrassed to talk about the Kingdom coming in the present; can’t think why I would be. If the Kingdom came when He cast out a demon, then it’s coming when we cast out a demon. It’s coming when an addiction gets broken. It’s coming every time we face a temptation and say no, and it’s coming every time God gives us an opportunity to serve and we say yes. We pray for it — “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” — and God is pleased to answer our prayers.

Premillennialism’s critics frequently characterize us as thinking that “we lose now, but we win in the end.” Unfortunately, there are actual premillennialists who really think that. But none of them — neither the shallow premil guys nor our critics — have thought about it deeply enough. If Jesus dying on the cross was losing, if Stephen being stoned was losing, then sure, premil means “we lose now.” What nonsense. God never wastes anything; every good deed done here lives forever, one way or another, and God is brilliant at victories that don’t seem like victories as the world reckons things. The final destruction of the world is one more such death, and it will be followed by one more such resurrection! It may be the case that every paper copy and recording of Handel’s Messiah is going to melt with a fervent heat, but do we seriously think we won’t have Handel’s Messiah — with a rousing polyrhythmic djembe section that’s not been written yet — in the Kingdom? And knowing that, is there any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and write that bit today?

People who think the bright lines in eschatology are between amil, postmil, and premil are fundamentally mistaken about the discipline. It’s a common misconception bred by the fact that far too many of our theologians never get out of the classroom. Here’s what matters far more: When we wake up in the morning to a headline that tells us the kings of the earth have taken counsel against the Lord and His Anointed, what do we do? We know what God is doing — He’s laughing. Psalm 2 says so! He thinks it’s hilarious, mock-worthy. The question is whether we laugh with Him, or whether we go out in the yard and do our best Chicken Little imitation. THAT is the bright line in eschatology, and people who think it tracks with a-, post-, or pre-mil need to get out more. I’ve known postmil folk to fall apart at a headline, and my people here are overwhelmingly premil folk who join in the mockery.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Hacking Our Virtues

4 March 2025

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues….The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.” – G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

For Christians interacting in the public sphere, it is often true that “the sons of this world are more shrewd…than the sons of light.” One common tactic Christian voters fall prey to is an appeal to hard cases. The enemies of the truth often don’t really need you to support wickedness; it’s enough that you’re silent about the common good. How do they achieve your silence? Easy. Given any proposal, find someone who will be adversely affected, and then make you feel uncharitable, unfair, and unchristian if you back the proposal. While you’re stymied into silence, a united block of opposition crushes the measure. In this way, Christians are repeatedly shamed into silence.

Simple response: Ask yourself, “Does this person share my values?” If the answer is no, then get really suspicious. If you’re letting someone who thinks it’s ok to dismember babies in utero appeal to your sense of fairness, for example, that calls for a closer look, don’t’cha think?

For example, take the current hullabaloo over the question of having to identify yourself in order to vote. In a country with our democratic system–only citizens can vote, and each person may vote only one time–voter identification seems like a very basic requirement. Yet political progressives have managed for decades to stymie multiple proposals to protect the integrity of the system by requiring voters to show a valid ID. It’s racist, you see. Or sexist. Or ableist. Or something.

In recent conversation with a friend, one of the common objections came up: “My mother is disabled and can’t really leave the house. Does that mean she shouldn’t be able to vote anymore?” This is exactly the kind of thing that trips Christians up. We want to be fair, and we want to value the disabled members of our community. So far too often, all it takes is a question like that, and we wilt.

Don’t wilt. Of course the disabled woman should still be able to vote! She’s disabled, and that means this is going to be harder for her than it will be for other people who don’t struggle in that way. It may take a major effort and some help. It may be that she really does need an absentee ballot (as various Americans abroad will also). That sucks! It’s not ok. But it’s not ok that the poor woman needs help to get to the toilet, either. Let’s stop pretending that this is some insurmountable barrier.

We live in such a convenience-addicted culture that we forget: inconvenience is just inconvenience. “Difficult” does not mean “impossible.” And the truth of the matter is, the inconvenience here is pretty minimal. We make you show a valid ID to buy beer, a pack of cigarettes, or even cough syrup. That’s not because there’s a smoke-filled room in Washington where they’re plotting to deny women and people of color access to cough syrup.

So yeah, an ID requirement might make voting a bit more inconvenient. So what? Meaningful community participation is often inconvenient. Pretty much everything worth doing is inconvenient. Hard cases are hard; no one is saying otherwise. But let’s be real: this is not remotely an impossible problem, and there’s no reason to pretend that it is. We have always had people with a legitimate need for an absentee ballot, and we’ve long had the ability to accommodate that. I don’t see that going away; in fact, internet technology has made it even more possible to satisfactorily demonstrate your identity at a distance. In fact, just recently I had to set up a financial account online that required a scan of my ID plus other identifying information, and then compared that to government databases. I never left the couch except to get my wallet. If we can manage this sufficient for tax/banking purposes, we can manage it for voting.

Inconvenience is not really a sound argument against protecting the integrity of the system. The argument here is that it’s worth the inconvenience. I remember voting being inconvenient for my parents, too. I grew up so poor we ate the seed potatoes–breakfast, lunch, and dinner–one winter because we had literally no money to buy food. My parents always found a way to get to the polling place, because it was important, worth sacrificing for. I remember, because they certainly didn’t have money for a babysitter — I got dragged along with ’em, right into the voting booth.

In a nation of 300 million people, are we going to be able to find someone who should have been able to vote, but couldn’t because of this law or that one? Yes. No matter what the law, there will be such a case somewhere, no question. And it will be a travesty, and we should fix it. But exceptions are exceptions, and ought to be treated that way. Most people will have no such difficulty, and there’s no reason to use a fractional minority of hard cases to avoid taking the same sort of commonsense precautions we routinely navigate to buy beer, cigarettes, and cough syrup — particularly when we’re facing a massive (and thoroughly justified) drop in public confidence in institutions.

Do not allow people who do not share your values to hack your virtues in order to paralyze you. A policy need not be perfect to be an improvement on what we have now. Support common-sense reforms because you love all your neighbors, but don’t stop there. No matter how good the policy, some people will fall through the cracks. So step up yourself and do your best to take care of them, too.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Reason, Excuse, and Apology

10 December 2024

A friend recently explained a situation that keeps recurring for her. In the wake of some situation or other, someone will ask her, “Why did you do it that way?” She’ll begin to answer the question, only to get cut off with “I don’t want to hear your excuses!”

“What is going on with this?” she asked. “What’s the difference between a reason and an excuse, anyway?”

Defining reason versus excuse is fairly straightforward. In a nutshell, a reason is just a factual account of the process: A led to B led to C. An excuse has an additional moral dimension to it; it’s an attempt to exculpate yourself. Put another way, “reason” is the historical explanation for why you did what you did; “excuse” is a moral explanation for why something isn’t your fault.

But of course it’s more complicated than that, because most people asking “the “Why did you do it that way?” aren’t all that clear on the distinction between reason and excuse, and often aren’t consciously aware of what they want from the conversation. There are pitfalls to navigate both in the question they ask and the answer you give.

  1. The question can mean two very different things.
    1a. Sometimes “Why did you do it that way?” is a rhetorical question, grounded in the assumption that “that way” was a self-evidently foolish decision. In that case, the question is functioning as a demand for an apology, and the expected response is something like “I’m sorry; I don’t know what I was thinking.” From within that frame of reference, describing your thought process registers as an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for your actions, and therefore triggers the “Don’t make excuses” response.
    At that point, you may be tempted to respond in anger: “If you didn’t want to know, why did you ask?” As you probably already know, that’s not likely to be productive. Rhetorical questions are a pretty normal communication strategy, even if you don’t happen to like them. Making war on an entire category of normal communication isn’t likely to take you where you want to go.
    The best way I’ve found to navigate that is to just ask: “Are you actually asking about the thought process, or are you hoping I’ll just apologize so we can move on?” If I’m not sure I did anything wrong, I’ll often add, “I’m not making any promises here, I’m just curious about what you’re hoping for.” Then we can navigate from there.
    1b. Sometimes the question really is a request for information, but that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods. Often, even when the asker is genuinely trying to understand, they are also seeking assurance you won’t do the thing again. They often won’t explicitly tell you that’s what they’re hoping for; it’s so self-evident to them that it just won’t occur to them to articulate it. If your explanation does not provide the hoped-for reassurance, the asker can grow frustrated, and that frustration can trigger the “Don’t make excuses” response.
    If you started with the recommended clarifying questions in 1a, above, then at this point you can loop back to them. “You said you were asking about the thought process; I’m telling you, and you’re clearly frustrated with it. What are you hoping for at this point?” Please note that this response does not accuse them of hypocrisy or blame them for being frustrated; it just situates the present moment in the conversation and invites them to clarify what they want.
  2. All of the above can be rendered far more effective by three additional things.
    2a. Be the sort of person who simply doesn’t lie about this stuff. That means you don’t say you were wrong if you don’t think you were, but once you think you were wrong about something, you don’t avoid saying so, even if other people aren’t owning their part. (You can take time to calm down, sleep on it, seek wise counsel, retain an attorney, etc., as appropriate to the situation. There’s a certain personality that’s tempted to immediately assume the blame for everything in order to ease the tension in a situation; you shouldn’t give in to that temptation either.) You can and should be exquisitely clear about what you are and aren’t taking ownership of, but if you’re sure it’s wrong and it’s yours, don’t shilly-shally around, looking for a way out. This is a superpower that leads to other superpowers, and over time, it dramatically cuts down on the nonsense in your life. Being willing to take responsibility for your errors attracts like-minded people, and clearly refusing what’s not yours repels those who are trying to evade responsibility.
    2b. Have a deep understanding of apology. Not everybody is looking for the same thing. “I’m sorry” is an expression of regret. (It usually helps to be very clear about what you regret. “I’m sorry I did that” and “I’m sorry you got hurt” are two very different sentiments.) “I was wrong” is a moral or factual determination. “Please forgive me” is a request for forgiveness. “I see that my actions resulted in __ for you” is an expression of empathy. “I won’t do it again” is a reassurance. People seeking apology and reconciliation often are seeking some blend of these, and usually won’t be consciously aware what they’re looking for. Know that it can be any or all of the above, and navigate the conversation accordingly.
    In my family of origin, a proper apology was “I was wrong when I [clearly state what you did]. Will you forgive me?”
    2c. You can pre-empt a good bit of all this by being clear up front in how you answer the “Why did you do it that way?” question. I often start by saying, “Listen, if I was wrong, I’ll have to own it. I’m not making excuses for myself. But since you asked, here’s what happened….” At crucial points in my account, I often insert little reminders: “Again, I’m not making excuses here; I’m just telling you how this was for me” or “Of course I now see things differently, but at the time, here’s what I was thinking.”

Now, all this comes with an important caveat. If you need everything to be someone else’s fault, none of the communication strategies I’ve laid out above will do you any good, because in the end the problem is not in the communication, it’s in your heart. That doesn’t mean there’s no hope; it just means you need Jesus to free you from your sin and nonsense. Ask Him to; it’s a prayer He delights to answer.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Reading Both Books

29 October 2024

Read the first few chapters of Matthew, and take note of the Old Testament prophecies he cites. When Matthew cites Micah 5:2, the meaning is very clear. God made a predictive prophecy about where the Messiah would be born, and that prophecy is fulfilled when Jesus is born in that exact town. But that’s not the only thing “fulfill” means here.

Consider “Out of Egypt I called My son.” The son in question in Hosea 11 is Israel—not just the man Jacob (although he’s included) but the whole nation that came from him. “When Israel was a child I loved him” might refer to the man Jacob, but “out of Egypt I called My son” can’t mean just that one guy, because that guy died in Egypt, and what was called out of Egypt was not that one man, but all his descendants, 400 years later. So “Out of Egypt I called My son” is the utterance of a prophet, but it’s not a predictive prophecy; it’s a comment on Israel’s history. In what sense can it be “fulfilled”?

In order to grasp Matthew’s point here, we must first pay careful attention to the meaning of Hosea. Knowing that Israel is God’s son, Matthew shows how Jesus walks in the steps of Israel. He’s making two points: first, that Jesus is Israel (in a meaningful sense that Matthew will spend the whole book exploring), and second, that the land of Israel has become spiritual Egypt—a point that would be reinforced by John the Baptist when he calls the remnant out into the desert to pass through water. Jesus adds to Hosea; we can’t read Hosea 11 anymore without also thinking of Jesus’ flight from Herod as well as the Exodus. The words of the prophet have been “fulfilled,” made more full than they were before.

We don’t want to read something into the text that isn’t there. At the same time, we don’t want to miss something that is there—and the New Testament writers show us repeatedly that there’s a lot more there than one might think at first glance. From Jesus Himself proving the resurrection by exegeting a verb tense in Genesis to the fulfillments of the first few chapters of Matthew to the dizzying displays of Hebrews, the New Testament authors show us a way of reading the Old Testament that we wouldn’t have come up with on our own. It had to be revealed to us.

In theologically conservative circles, we have gotten our hermeneutics from the Book of Nature (mostly as read by E. D. Hirsch), which is very useful as far as it goes. But there’s two books, and the Book of Scripture also has something to teach us about how to read. We should read both books.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Got That List From Demons

9 July 2024

I recently found myself once again in a conversation about yoga. We’ve discussed that (and yoga’s history) here before, but in this case, the question specifically centered on the postures involved in modern yoga practice. “Isn’t it true,” the questioner wanted to know, “that certain postures are worshipping a particular Hindu god (i.e., a demon)?”

It’s a good question to raise, and the answer is no. Some Hindus say that particular poses mean you’re worshipping some specific god. Silly Christians believe the false prophets of the demons rather than their own Scriptures, which tell us that “the earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” and “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” I can’t believe I need to say this, but I heartily recommend believing the Bible, not the demons!*

Certainly some demon — let’s take Hanuman for example — might proclaim dominion over some posture or another. As it happens there is a posture in yoga called “Hanuman’s posture” (Sanskrit hanumanasana). It’s essentially a front split with the arms reaching straight up. Is it the case that every gymnast who’s ever done a front split is unknowingly worshipping Hanuman? Don’t be ridiculous.

“But it’s not just a front split,” says the suspicious Christian. “See the arms reaching up? Is that praying hands I see?”

Let me tell you why the arms are reaching up: the fascial network. Specifically, in this case, reaching up helps open the superficial and deep front lines. Better yet, let me show you. You don’t even need to do a split for this. Get into a deep lunge, with the right leg back. As deep as you can reasonably manage. Now, look straight up, and reach straight up (or maybe even slightly back) with both arms. Feel that additional stretch and opening through your right front ribs, abdominals, hip, and quads? That’s why.

Now, can someone use this posture to worship Hanuman? Of course! Might it even be standard practice among Hanuman-worshippers? I suppose it could. Is it therefore true that everyone who adopts this posture into their exercise is worshipping Hanuman? Of course not. Hanuman might claim that is the case, of course, but Hanuman is a liar just like all the other demons. There’s no reason why we–indwelt by the Holy Spirit as we are–ought to take them seriously. Certainly you can sin with your body (stealing, committing adultery, and the like), but we know those things are sins because God told us so. You will search the Scriptures in vain for some divinely sanctioned list of postures that irrevocably belong to demons and are off-limits to Christians. Yoga’s Christian despisers claim to have such a list, but they got that list from demons. The truth is that if it’s healthy for your body, it’s fair game, to the glory of God. “Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

*This recommendation would fuel a variety of inflammatory statements if I cared to make them. Can you imagine if I took to Twitter to say, “The problem with Dave Hunt is that he trafficks in demonic revelation rather than Scripture”??? But in this case, it’s true, isn’t it?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Shadow Sins

11 June 2024

Some sins are fully conscious. You’re doing someone wrong, taking advantage of their weakness or their goodness or their inattention, or you’re cynically manipulating them to your advantage, and you are fully conscious of what you’re doing.

Some sins are fully unconscious—just as wrong, but you have no idea you’re doing it. Even when someone calls an unconscious sin to your attention, it can be extraordinarily hard to see, not because the act is particularly subtle, but because you’re genuinely unaware of what you’re doing. You are responsible for your unconscious sins—it’s not as if someone else should be apologizing for the things you do—but you can’t do anything about them until you become aware.

There’s also a third category: semiconscious sins. This is where a lot of the trouble happens. These are often patterns of behavior that have worked for you in the past, and like all people you habitually resort to things that have worked before. (This is called “learning,” and it’s how we become able to ride a bike or throw a ball or anything else we do: repeat what worked, and don’t repeat what didn’t. But learning is not a fully conscious process, and not all the behaviors we learn are good.) These semiconscious sins involve patterns of behavior that sin against the people around you, and they often involve violations of your self-concept.

For example, if you think of yourself as a generous person, you would probably not allow yourself to be stingy on purpose—say, by always being the last one to buy a round of drinks. If you were fully conscious of the implications of the act, you wouldn’t let yourself do it. But if you somehow acquired the habit back in your poorer days, and it’s worked for you, you will probably will continue the habit even though you don’t actually need to spend less money now. You will simply allow the program to run in the background, as it were, without examining it closely.

How do we know this semi-conscious category even exists? First of all, because the Bible talks about it in terms of self-deception. If someone else is deceiving you, then you can be fully unconscious of a thing, but if you are deceiving yourself, then some part of you knows. Apologist Greg Bahnsen likens self-deception to holding a beach ball underwater: it’s a demanding task, and there’s no way to be successful without being at least somewhat aware of what you’re doing.

Secondly, you know this category exists because you’ve experienced it for yourself. We’ve all had the experience of someone challenging a pattern of our behavior: “Hey, have you ever noticed that whenever you’re in this situation, you do X?” a well-meaning friend will say. X — as your friend is describing it — is clearly sinful, or at least a rotten thing to do to a friend. You’re offended, and you begin to object: “I do not! I would neve….” and then you can’t even finish, because all the times you’ve done exactly that come flooding into your mind, and you experience the stomach-dropping sudden cessation of ignorance: “He’s right! I totally do that!”

Now, if you were fully unconscious of what you were doing, that realization wouldn’t come so easily. And if you were fully conscious, you wouldn’t have been able to start the instinctive defense, only to stop when you suddenly realize your friend is right. That experience only happens because you were semiconscious of the pattern to start with. Someone had to connect the dots to make it fully visible, but the dots were all visible over in the corner of your eye, not quite out of view, just waiting for someone to connect them.

These three different categories call for somewhat different responses. Of course, you should repent of all your sin, but if you’re fully unconscious of a sin, you can’t very well repent of it. Rest assured, there are items in this category for you, and thank Jesus that He cleanses you of all sin. That’s pretty much all you can do, until God makes the sin conscious. Trust me, it’s on His to-do list.

If you’re fully conscious of the sin, and you were conscious the whole time, there’s nothing to do but repent, fully and immediately, and take your lumps.

The third kind is a little trickier, but the brief is ultimately pretty simple: “rebuke a wise man, and he will love you,” and your job here is to be the wise man. Learn to love the people who will grab that thing that was over in the corner of your peripheral vision and drag it into full view. Don’t punish your friends for bringing things to your attention; encourage them!

One of the best things you can do is cultivate a ruthless honesty. Repent of exactly what you’ve done, and don’t repent of things you haven’t done. Depending on your personality, you’ll be tempted in one of two directions. Some people will be tempted to repent of nothing in the past. “I wasn’t aware of it,” they’ll tell themselves, “and I can’t possibly be responsible for something I’m not aware of. Of course I won’t do it in the future.” This won’t do, for the simple reason that you did what you did, and you need to own it. Your heart is a dark, deceitful place, more than capable of hurting your friends for your advantage and lying to you about it. You let it run around without a leash, and that’s on you. So confess it and forsake it.

Another sort of person will be tempted to over-confess, to not only own his actions but apologize as if he’d been cynically conscious of it the whole time. To this person, “I didn’t see it” will seem like a lame excuse he wouldn’t dare to make. But it is a sin to lie to your friends, in either direction. You may not under-confess, and you may not over-confess. Tell the truth: “I never quite thought about it like that, but now that you’ve described my behavior in those terms, I see that you’re right. I was wrong, and I’m so sorry I put you through that.”

And then go and sin no more.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Self-Medicating With Memes…or Laws

14 May 2024

If your approach to public policy is dictated by your empathy, then you are self-medicating. You feel other people’s pain, and you want to do something to relieve the pain. That’s a genuinely good desire, but understand that you are prone to the risks and temptations that always attend self-medication, chief among them numbing the symptoms without finding the real cause, and low sales resistance to hucksters. 

As to numbing the symptoms without uncovering the cause: the pain you feel is mostly not from people you directly know, it’s from media images. The pain you are dispelling isn’t their pain; it’s yours. Here’s how I know: when you hear the plight of whoever, you feel the burning need to do something. Then you do a thing, and you feel better. But that thing you do — what is it? You sign a petition, share a meme, make a donation, vote for a particular measure or person. Even if it was the right thing to do vis-a-vis the problem at hand, you feel better long before your actions could possibly have rippled out to the point where they’ve had any real effect on the actual situation. That person’s pain has not yet been alleviated, but you already feel better. That means you’re not in pain because they’re in pain. You’re in pain because you heard about their pain. 

Your pain doesn’t go away because their pain went away. Your pain gets alleviated because you obeyed your internal mandate to “do something.” Long before you have any way to know for sure if what you did helped them, hurt them, or simply did nothing, you’re going to feel better regardless of the eventual outcome.  

That serves to make your low sales resistance even lower. You’re a decent person; confronted by human suffering, you genuinely want to relieve it. Which means you want to believe (1) that there’s a way to relieve it, and (2) that way is accessible to you. Can you see that your thirst for an accessible fix already makes you more likely to fall for a smooth operator with a slick line of bullshit? It may not actually help anybody except the charity professionals making a salary off your contributions, but if it sounds good, your vicarious pain will evaporate when you click the ‘donate’ button or share the meme. Under those circumstances, the proposed fix barely even has to be plausible, because you already want to believe it. It’ll alleviate your discomfort just because you “did something.”

That sort of foolishness is an abuse of your drive to do something. That drive is given to you by God for the purpose of moving you to change the world. Don’t fritter it away sharing memes; get off the couch and actually do something for the problems that are nearest and clearest to you.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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