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

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

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

“We Can’t Be Amish…” or Can We?

30 April 2024

Throughout our time in the positive and neutral worlds, we have been able to take it for granted that a conscientious Christian could be involved more or less anywhere that mattered in our culture. Naturally certain vices were always off limits, but in the positive world they were generally acknowledged as vices, and you could be a fully-participating member of respectable society without them. In the neutral world, these vices were more readily accepted in mainstream society, but still regarded as largely optional.

Under those circumstances, discussion of the ethics of cultural engagement and participation would usually include the line, “Well, we can’t be Amish, so….” “We can’t be Amish” was shorthand for a series of related ideas: “we can’t just abandon cultural production,” “we have a duty to participate in every realm of the culture” and so on. How could you be salt and light, so the reasoning went, if you didn’t participate?

That reasoning no longer holds. As the enemies of God solidify their hold on gate-keeping positions in various institutions and fields, the question is actually quite the opposite: If you meet their criteria for participating, can you still be salt and light? If you had to affirm all manner of sin and wickedness get the job, and if you can only keep the job by soldiering on in complicit silence, are you being salt and light?

I think we all know the answer.

But we should also remember that God is endlessly creative, and loves to insert His people into places where they “have no business” being. Do not forget that Daniel ended up the leader of a pagan emperor’s “wise men” (read: magicians), and no matter what it said in the employee handbook, he got that position without eating the king’s unclean food and without giving up his daily prayers. Joseph was the minister-in-chief of another pagan king. Cyrus rebuilt the temple. Obadiah was in charge of King Ahab’s house, and saved 100 prophets’ lives. Naaman the Syrian was given God’s permission to escort his master into a pagan temple. Jesus got invited to the parties good Jewish boys didn’t go to…and He went. “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.” In the same way that we ought not take someone’s millionaire status as proof that he musta stole something, we have no business deciding that if that guy has that place or position, then he musta betrayed the faith. “I can’t see how a faithful Christian could possibly…” we will say. Just so—you can’t see. But what does that have to do with reality? Once upon a time, Peter couldn’t see how Jesus could possibly die on a cross, either. Turns out God’s more creative than we give Him credit for.

So go ahead and try for positions you “shouldn’t” be able to get. It will be easy enough to look at a particular institution’s public persona and conclude that no conscientious Christian could long survive in that environment. That might be true, but individuals within the institution often vary in their ideological zeal, and some of them still care more about getting the job done than they do about a hard-to-replace employee’s ideological soundness. Any number of conscientious Christians may be laboring away heartily, as unto the Lord, in the bowels of an institution that (on social media, at least) has impeccable pagan credentials. If God is leading you that direction, then off you go!

At the same time, you should remember that God also finds use for a wide variety of sacrifices and martyrdoms. Stephen represented the Lord faithfully and got murdered for it, following the example of Jesus and all the prophets before Him, “from the blood of righteous Abel to Zechariah son of Berechiah, whom they slew between the temple and the altar.” Many of us have since followed Stephen’s example, including the young fellow, one Saul of Tarsus, who ran the coat check at Stephen’s murder. Fortify your soul with their stories. If you’re looking for a good starting point, get Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Read the tales of what they did to us back in the day.

Then, when they’re going to fire you, reflect on the precipitous decline in the quality of our opposition over the past few centuries. They used to be creative. The saints of old were burned alive, fed to lions, staked to the ground at low tide, sewn into a leather bag with wild dogs and thrown into the Tiber. Today, you stand for Jesus, and you get some buffoon ominously talking about…H.R.? A cardboard box and a security escort to the parking lot? “They’re not even threatening to cut off my hand,” you’ll think to yourself, suppressing a giggle.

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. If he wants you to get that fellowship, that job, that professional license, that political appointment, then nobody can stop you. And when His purposes will be better served by demonstrating your immovable conviction in the face of persecution, you will be persecuted, ostracized, fired, expelled.

This to say: be curious about what God might be doing. Don’t decide in advance what God can’t do. But also, be faithful. Don’t bow to the idols. If that means you’re going to get consigned to “being Amish,” then so be it. Don’t take full participation in the culture for granted; as the culture gets grosser, you won’t want to fully participate anyhow.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“Not A Young Man”

30 January 2024

Among the list of qualifications for eldership is “not a novice” (1 Tim. 3:6). Depending on the translation you read, it may say “not a new convert” or “not a recent convert” or “not new in the faith.” The words “convert” and “in the faith” are simply not in the passage here. The word is νεόφυτος, and it means “young man.”

So why did some translators add the extra words? For the same reason they usually do: for clarity in English translation. There are two possible meanings: a literal reading (“not a young man”) or a metaphorical extension (“not young in the faith”). Translators who favor the metaphorical interpretation have often chosen to clarify their meaning by adding the additional words. In this case, that is a mistake.

First, let’s start with the vocabulary. Paul uses two different words in his writings to refer to the office under discussion here. The one in this passage means “overseer,” and the other word literally means “old man.” So when Paul says that the appointee should not be “a young man” — well, I ask you. The word Paul chose for this qualification refers to a new-growth plant in Job 14:9 and Isaiah 5:7; it’s applied to the younger generation in Psalm 127:3 and 143:12. In other words, Paul’s Greek OT source material uses the word literally.

Does that mean it can’t be metaphorical here? Not at all. Paul could be crafting a novel metaphor by applying the literal term in a new metaphorical context. As Christians, we already refer to conversion as being born again; calling a new convert a “young man” regardless of his chronological age would make a certain sort of sense. (In fact, that’s exactly the process by which new metaphors enter language.) But is Paul doing that here? If he were, how would we know?

One obvious way would be for Paul to add the extra words himself. If he’s crafting a novel (if fairly obvious) metaphor, it would be fitting to specify it: “not a young man in the faith.” But he doesn’t do that. Another way would be for the context to make it otherwise obvious that’s what he must mean. Proponents of the metaphorical view will argue that this is the case, because Timothy himself is a young man. Surely Paul can’t be giving young Timothy the job of appointing elders, and then telling him, “Don’t appoint someone your own age.”

Ah, but he could! In fact, we already know that Timothy doesn’t meet all the criteria in the list of qualifications. Being unmarried, Timothy isn’t the husband of one wife (for that matter, neither is Paul). Timothy doesn’t have a household to rule well. We don’t need to claim some special spiritual meaning for these terms, as if “husband of one wife” would refer to Timothy’s fidelity to the Church, the Bride of Christ, or that “rules his household well” must mean that Timothy functions properly in the “houselold of God.” No, “husband” and “household” have their ordinary meanings, and Timothy is a valid exception.

How is Timothy supposed to function in that situation — appointing people that meet qualifications he doesn’t? He’s exemplary. The overriding qualification is blamelessness. Paul has that, despite not being a husband. Timothy also has that, despite being young. When we’re evaluating elder candidates, if a man gives us reason to doubt his faithfulness to his wife, he’s not qualified. If we look at his household and think “yikes!” he’s not qualified. And if we look at him and see that his youth is a drawback, he’s not qualified. If, in contrast, we look at him and think “I wish I was like that” — if he’s exemplary despite being young — then he is qualified, in the same way that Timothy was qualified.

The older men who are married and running households are wishing they were like Timothy in word, conduct, love, spirit, faith, and purity. He’s setting an example for them, not the other way round. Because Timothy is exceptional, Paul has recognized him as an exception. And thus we can see that “young man” refers to age in the same way that “husband” refers to marital status and “rules his household well” refers to familial and business affairs — all the terms have their ordinary meanings in the context.

So how do we apply the criteria like Paul would? Clearly it’s not the case that no young man would ever serve as an elder, but it would be rare, and with good reason — chronological age actually is a concern. On the face of it, this ought to be obvious just from the terms chosen for the office: one means ‘overseer,’ but the other literally means ‘old man.’ Maturity matters, and most young men haven’t taken sufficient advantage of the scant time they’ve had, or haven’t had enough experience, to season them out. Life experience and maturity are simply more common in older men, thus most of your elders will be, well, elder men.

If the candidate you’re looking at strikes you as a greenhorn in any sense, you probably shouldn’t pick him. On the other hand, if he’s been raised in the faith from childhood, as Timothy was, and he presents himself as exemplary in word, conduct, love, faith, and purity, as Timothy did — sure, go with that guy.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Shiny Foil Wrappers

10 October 2023

Many times here in Englewood, I’ve seen Christians practicing so-called “Christian charity” by giving warm burritos to homeless folks. They’re doing exactly the same thing as when our local pagans give out burritos. Exactly. Right down to the delicious bacon crumbles and those shiny foil wrappers.

The parallels are really quite disturbing. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, people! Don’t be deceived!

***

“Pagans do something that looks like this” isn’t a valid means of discernment. Pagans pray, perform acts of charity, eat apple pie, go to work, wear clothes, make love, raise children. Pagans turn water into blood and staffs into snakes, and yet Moses is one of the good guys. We have to learn to pay attention to the difference that makes a difference.

An American soldier from WWII and a German soldier from WWII look an awful lot alike in dress and equipment. Suppose we have those two men in a lineup, along with a Minuteman and a Navy SEAL with the latest equipment. Which ones look most alike? The two guys from WWII, of course–but that doesn’t tell you which side they’re on.

We want discernment to be easier than it is. We want the good guys to look entirely unlike the bad guys. We want criteria we can photograph from across the street, and very often, it just doesn’t work that way. If we’re to believe the examples furnished to us in Scripture itself, God regularly steps over lines we wouldn’t. We need a discernment in the church that’s willing to reckon with the kinds of surprises God likes to give us.

  • There was no biblical precedent for God revealing Himself in a burning bush or a wet fleece…and yet He did.
  • Touching bones makes you unclean, and yet the guy who touched Elisha’s bones was raised from the dead.
  • Touching lepers makes you unclean too, but Jesus did–and they didn’t make Him unclean; He made them well! He let an immoral woman touch Him, too.

The key in all these things is not “does this look like something the pagans might do?” The key is “What has God given us permission to do? Is He in this?”

If the answer is yes, then get to it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Torah as Wisdom Literature

29 August 2023

tl;dr: The Law isn’t law for us, but it *is* wisdom literature!

In my early Bible classes growing up, I was taught that there were three divisions to the Torah: moral, ceremonial, and civil. It wasn’t until seminary that I realized that as helpful as those categories sometimes can be, they are not organic to the Torah — you’ll search the Torah itself in vain for any such division. In the actual books of Moses, the Law is presented as a whole, and you can die for murder, gathering sticks on the Sabbath, or offering strange fire on the altar.

Therefore, when Paul says that we are not under the Law, he doesn’t mean just the ceremonial portions. He means the whole thing. The Law is a whole, and we are not under the Law as a rule of life, period. No part of it.

That said, Paul also says the Law is holy and just and good, and if you’re having trouble seeing that, then pray Psalm 119:18: “Open my eyes, that I might see wondrous things in Your Law.” We’re supposed to be singing the Psalms in the New Covenant anyway (see Eph. 4:18-21, Col. 3:16, Jas. 5:13), so this is a good start! Jesus Himself, and the NT writers who followed Him, all made great use of the Law in making spiritual and moral arguments. Paul does the same (see, for example, 1 Cor. 9:9, 14:34, 1 Tim. 5:18). So while we’re not under the Law as a rule of life, Paul continues to appeal to it. Why?

Because it’s holy and just and good. It reveals God’s character, and the truths thus revealed apply to our situation, even if we’re not in ancient Israel and aren’t going to do exactly what they did. So Paul borrows a command about how Israelites treat their oxen to make an analogy to how the church treats its elders.

Likewise, since we’re in possession of a civil law code created by Almighty God Himself, nothing could be sillier than to ignore it in our pursuit of the common good. He made it for Israel, not for us in the Gentile nations, but He says He made it for us to marvel at.

“Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?” (Deut. 4:5-8)

If we’re looking at the Law and all we have to say is, “Thank goodness we’re not under that!” then we’ve missed something crucial. We ought to be asking how we can appropriate that wisdom and apply it well in our own situations.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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