Saturday, December 29, 2012

320 - All These Broken Pieces

Spirituality Column #320
January 1, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

All These Broken Pieces
By Bob Walters
 
“I am leaving you with a gift – peace of mind and heart.  And my peace is a gift that the world cannot give.  So don’t be troubled or afraid.” – Jesus (John 14:27)
 
This is Jesus at the last supper telling His disciples that His gift to them will be peace, followed by comfort God will send in the Holy Spirit.
 
The disciples at this point of course are still clueless, confused, and most likely increasingly anxious.  Jesus is talking about His leaving, their staying, His dying, their living, His coming back, and His Father sending comfort they cannot possibly understand referring to a Holy Trinity they cannot yet imagine.  Faith was all they had.
 
As we watch our modern world try to cope with so much daily brokenness, it is mystifying that so many people with so much information have so little faith and endure so much pain.  The disciples were seeing something entirely new; modern mankind steadfastly ignores truth that is widely and plainly available.
 
We have the Bible, churches, preachers, teachers, fellow believers, global mission organizations, and 2,000 years of scholarship, history, evidence and tradition to teach us what the disciples could only guess.  Here in the United States we have an entire nation predicated on the foundational truth that human freedom and creativity are divinely righteous gifts straight from God – the first of first things in our souls’ DNA.
 
The first of all God’s gifts to mankind, of course, is life itself.  One would think that all together – personally, corporately, globally – the family of man would do a better job of defending life.  Somehow though, defending life has become the hottest of political hot potatoes, rather than the dearest of God’s gifts.
 
Nowhere is the brokenness of mankind more in evidence.
 
I’m thinking of the Sandy Hook shootings and how our nation has fervently mobilized on either side of the specific political question of gun control rather than the vast spiritual question of Christ’s salvation for a fallen, broken world.
 
To me it’s instructive to look at the Bible for an overall perspective on mankind’s defense of human life: we’ve never been very good at it.  Throughout the Bible chaos, mayhem, deceit and death consistently befall mankind.  No guns were involved.  God’s laws did not solve the problem then; man’s laws will not solve the problem now.
 
Our ultimate problem isn’t broken laws; it’s broken humanity.  We have no way to pick up life’s pieces, save for the peace God promises solely in the gift of Jesus Christ.
 
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is writing about salvation in Christ (see John 14), not politics, yet notices the mind-numbingly oxymoronic irony of stricter gun control laws juxtaposed with liberal abortion laws.

 
Monday, December 24, 2012

319 - Shopping for Innocence

Spirituality Column #319
December 25, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Shopping for Innocence
By Bob Walters

Two carefree, local elementary school students happily hopped off a Friday afternoon school bus recently and their tearful mother fairly rushed the curb, hugging the bewildered children tightly and kissing them furiously.

Viewing the scene through my windshield and having been listening to the radio, I knew something the startled children didn’t: that their mother’s heart had melted-down with that day’s news of the Sandy Hook K-4 elementary school shootings in Newtown, Conn.

The bus’s red flashing stop arms held the moment: the mother’s children were safe; their world is not.  Not even at Christmas.

I caught the mother’s eye, nodded and touched my hand to my heart, a knowing, sincere salute to her fierce love and to the beautiful innocence of her children.  Emotion and tears came easily.  Is there any time of year when a child’s innocence is more valued and celebrated?

If we are selfish and frivolous, we will dwell on the inconvenience of this tragedy so close to “our” Christmas.  If we are circumspect and serious, we will add God’s message of Jesus Christ to our calculus of assessing both this tragedy and the holiday’s true significance.

We want Christmas to be gentle, but for God to be powerful and tough.  We want God to stop the bad guys.  We want him to protect us along with the people and things we love.  If Jesus was sent as God’s servant, then we want Him to serve us … now.

Ironically, our macro-culture is too modern and educated to believe all that religious nonsense, yet privately we are too desperate and confused to entirely discount God.  We shop for God “on sale” – on better terms for us with less at stake.  We eject God from our public midst but blame God for our troubles.  We opine, “God wouldn’t let this happen.”  Then we demand, “Well God, I’m waiting.  Fix this mess.”

We don’t know who is surrendering to Whom.

This Christmas my thoughts go to King Herod (Matthew 2).  He tried to kill Jesus but instead killed every other baby boy in Bethlehem.  Baby Jesus born in that Bethlehem manger is the innocence and righteousness that God truly desires for mankind, once the perfect image of His Creation but now fallen in sin.

Sadly, the innocent and the righteous are not protected from the fallen world’s viciousness and violence; look at what happened to Jesus on the Cross.  We are shocked at Newtown, but evil is nothing new.

It’s no wonder that we hug our innocent children tightly.

Oh, for a world where we hug Jesus even tighter than that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) prays along with so many others for peace, mercy, comfort … and truth.  Have a merry and gentle Chistmas.
Monday, December 17, 2012

318 - Shopping, Rebellion, and Surprise

Spirituality Column #318
December 18, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Shopping, Rebellion, and Surprise
By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Two thousand years ago the humble baby born with the Name above all names hastened a rebellion above all rebellions.
 
Jesus born in the flesh was God become incarnate.  Everything the world thought it knew about itself and about God was turned on its head.  The God of creation, laws and power revealed Himself through humanity, faith and humility in an obscure baby born to a teenaged virgin.
 
Every Christmas we shop to surprise our loved ones with gifts.
 
God surprised everybody with Jesus.
 
Whether it was Hebrew history, Greek philosophy, Roman law, pagan gods or Asian mysticism, Jesus Christ was exactly what the world needed but absolutely not what the world expected … or wanted.
 
Hebrew scripture was rich with stories of a relational God Who was at once utterly loving and relentlessly just.  He inexplicably favored some people, and rained down wrath on others.  His standard was His own.  God’s story written in the Bible’s Old Testament assured His unique, uncreated but creative being.  Amid sin and law, amid temporal love and ceaseless treachery, fallen man wallowed in an unrelenting pit of self-interest.  God’s prophecies pointed to a coming Messiah Who would set the fallen world right with the example of God’s gloriously unselfish love, righteousness, and power.
 
The Hebrews expected the Messiah to come and kill the Romans.  The Romans, who insisted that everyone worship Caesar, were duped by the Hebrews into killing Jesus, the Messiah King whom the Jews would not worship.  The Greeks, largely unaware of Hebrew scripture, philosophically posited an objective, infinite and eternal good, never expecting that particular, personal and enormous “good” to divinely arrive on earth, in humanity, in history … in a Palestinian manger.
 
Globally, mankind created gods in every imaginable image, including his own.  Mystics and philosophers imagined a Great Beyond of riches or emptiness – man’s way of explaining the unexplainable.  Jesus Christ was God’s way of explaining His goodness, humility, love and truth.
 
With faith, Jesus toppled every other king, god, idea, and human power – defeating death by dying, erasing man’s sin with His pain on the cross, restoring man’s image in God’s glorious kingdom, and assuring man’s eternal life with His resurrection.
 
Nothing else in man’s history is as radical as that.  Man’s pedantic rebellion against man – the perpetually cross-purposed politics of society, governments, cultures, nations, religions, philosophies, and lately, science – is a ho-hum charade of pyrrhic righteousness.  Rebellion is empty without the Creator God’s Holy Son in our lives.
 
In our tongue-tied times, we are chastened to worship Jesus without His name and to celebrate Christmas without Christ.
 
It’s surprising how good it feels to rebel and say “Merry Christmas.”
 
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) would add, “Jesus loves you.”
Monday, December 10, 2012

317 - Shopping for Hope

Spirituality Column #317
December 11, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Shopping for Hope
By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

During the thirty years of my life that I spent religiously not going to church, I don’t recall ever searching for “hope in Christ.”
 
I hoped for all kinds of other stuff … hoped I’d get a job, get married, have children, do well, stay healthy, etc.  I hoped this opportunity would pan out.  I hoped that problem or pain would subside.  It never occurred to me to examine the quality of hope or where it came from.  I was fortunate to ride out life’s good times and bad in the hope that things would get better, rather than in despair that they wouldn’t.
 
A lot of people have hope, especially Americans.  Optimism and freedom, the essential seeds of hope, are an American birthright.  Hope in the world, to me, didn’t seem especially better or worse than hope in the Lord.  Hope was hope.  Freedom was freedom.  What’s the difference?
 
Well … big difference, obviously, but it took faith to make me see it.
 
Right now millions and millions of optimistic, non-churched Americans are planning and hoping for a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday or whatever.  And they will have one.  They are shopping, they are decorating, they are coordinating, and they are aware that the greatest joy of this season is in the giving not the receiving.  They get the Christian meaning of the season.  They share in its joy.  But they shortchange themselves by limiting their hope to the secular holiday.  They miss the cosmic enormity of hope given to us by God in the eternal salvation and divine New Covenant power of faith that was introduced to humanity in the humility and fragility of the baby Jesus born in the obscurest of humble mangers.  The manger is Christmas, but Jesus is life.
 
Why are people so hard to evangelize when the most basic Christmas messages of giving, of peace, and of joy, are at once shared and commonly desired by almost everyone?  Because putting one’s entire life, hope and eternity exclusively into the hands of Jesus Christ through our faith requires forfeiture of our assuredness in our own power.  Even if that human assuredness is a false truth and temporal mirage, it’s easier to understand and explain than the divine assuredness of hope in Christ.
 
Christians, in love bordering on desperation, want to give that gift of hope.  And while it is more blessed to give than receive (Acts 20:35), hope in Christ has to be received in faith before it can be given in love.
 
Maybe that’s why it never occurred to me to shop for it.
 
Walters (commonchristinity.blogspot.com, rlwcom@aol.com) went to church as a kid but didn’t find his faith until he was 46.
Monday, December 3, 2012

316 - Shopping for Encouragement

Spirituality Column #316
December 4, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Shopping for Encouragement
By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Rarely when we shop for the perfect Christmas gift are we thinking about the best gift of all – encouragement.

We generally purchase gifts based on what we think will make someone “happy” by meeting a material desire or temporary comfort.  Instead of building people up by providing the stuff of encouragement – peace, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and hope – we shop for the stuff of this world and then beat down doors at midnight to get it cheap.

Anybody see any Bible parallels or problems there?

The gift of encouragement is a much tougher “find.”  Few people put “encouragement” on their Christmas wish list.  I didn’t see a single Black Friday sale featuring a discount on or special shopping hours for “encouragement.”

Christmas gift-giving winds up being about expressing our love – a good thing – by making other people happy, preferably at a righteous discount.  But holiday gift exchanges are mostly semi-redundant expressions of our affection.  We present gifts to, and receive them from, people who already know we care.  I mean, it’s creepy to get a Christmas gift from someone we don’t like, isn’t it?  And who shops for their enemies?

This is all to say that Christmas gift-giving is geared not so much toward mimicking God’s universal encouragement of mankind but toward simple and transitory, worldly expressions of “I didn’t forget you” or “I want you to be happy.”

That’s all fine, but … the entire dynamic is out of sync with the actual story of Christmas and the glorious incarnation of God on earth.  Jesus was God’s ultimate gift of gracious, eternal encouragement to a world that didn’t know Him, would largely ignore Him, would treat Him as an enemy, mock Him, and kill Him.  Mankind never even asked for the gift God so spectacularly provided (John 1:1-14).

This was the gift of all gifts: God’s encouragement in the form of man’s eternal salvation through the humble human life and sin-cleansing death of his Son and our Lord, Jesus Christ.  The entire Old Testament points to this coming gift, but people interpreted scripture and prophecy to mean that God would give them happiness and comfort in exchange for their obedience.

People expected a trade, a transaction, a quid pro quo.  Almost everyone missed the cosmic, life-altering importance of divine encouragement – the love, freedom, grace, and life – God sent in His gift of Jesus.

Be encouraged and think about that while you’re out shopping.

Speaking of Christmas shopping, Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) published  Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary, a book of his first 260 Current columns, available at (click one) Amazon.com, Lulu.com, Barnes&Noble .  He’d be encouraged if you gave somebody one as a gift. 
           
Monday, November 26, 2012

315 - Shopping: That Giving Spirit

Spirituality Column #315
November 27, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Shopping: That Giving Spirit
By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Providing that domestic political issues and dangerous international developments have not yet overshadowed the start-up frivolity of our American Christmas holiday, this is a good time to talk about …
 
… Christmas shopping, when we buy stuff to give away.
 
Let’s start by saying giving is good.  Christianity is about self-sacrifice, selfless love, sacrificial love, and the loving, giving, divine community of God in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It’s fairly easy to read the Bible and get the idea that a relational God created us to love us and – critically, importantly – gave us freedom either to love Him or not.  In faith we are free to decide what we give to God.
 
Christmas, which commemorates divine giving, often seems more about what we give to each other than what we give to God.  Our Christmas-shopping-focused culture rarely uses Christmas to overtly and seriously consider what God has given to us, so let’s stop and look at God’s gift list.
 
God gives us life and freedom through his creativity and love, gives us divine relationship and eternal salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, and gives us comfort and knowledge through the Holy Spirit.  God didn’t “shop” for these gifts, or mention Christmas in the Bible.
 
People, I think understandably, invented Christmas to celebrate the eternal God’s incarnation into humanity, time, space, and history.  We see the real action of Christmas in Matthew 1, Luke 1 and 2, and, specifically, John 1:14 – And the Word became flesh.  The eternal, loving Word of Almighty Creator God – the Logos, Jesus Christ – became human for God’s glory and our salvation.
 
Again: God the loving Creator, as Jesus, became what He Created, human, to save what had become lost, humanity, to restore all Creation and give eternal life, communion and love to you and me … for God’s glory.  Reading the biblical accounts of Mary, Joseph, the Angel Gabriel, the trembling shepherds, the Heavenly Host, et al, you can’t miss God’s intention to reunite fallen mankind with God’s eternal, uplifting love.
 
We can be sure God was thinking in bigger terms than Christmas gifts.  The incarnation was an infinitely huge, loving, giving, life re-creating, eternal God thing.
 
America, sadly, seems largely oblivious to all that, instead consumed with the commerce of Black Friday that now irreverently encroaches upon Thanksgiving, our day of thanks for God’s blessings.  Then ensues a season of self-inflicted, joy-killing stress to “celebrate” the arrival of God’s eternal promise of peace in our hearts.
 
That all seems sort of backwards.  We should never give away the joy of Christ.
 
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) considers “Black Friday” to be a poetically apropos accounting term for misplaced priorities darkening this joyous season of God’s light.
Monday, November 19, 2012

314 - Thankful for a God We Can Know

Spirituality Column #314
November 20, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Thankful for a God We Can Know
By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

I am blessed to be around intelligent, bright-eyed teenagers on a regular basis.

Recently, upon learning that I write Christian commentary, a particularly upbeat eighth-grader sincerely and innocently offered: “I don’t know what religion I am, but I believe in God.”

I responded warmly, “That’s a great start.”

Yes, a great start indeed.  I am so very thankful there is a God we all can know; a God Who has put it in our hearts and heads that He is indeed there, whether we know Him, want Him, love Him, praise Him, pursue Him, fear Him, trust Him, blame Him, or ignore Him.  God is there and anyone can get to know Him.

Each human story for “getting to know God” is unique.  That reflects the truly unique nature of the Christian faith: the personal, relational presence of the Holy Creator and Almighty God in our lives and humanity.  That Presence – the One who God sent amid humanity to restore, adopt, and save us into eternal loving relationship with God – is the Lord Jesus Christ.  And the only way we can know that is through our faith in God, Christ’s grace, and the comforting, illuminating work of the Holy Spirit.

That is the face of the Trinity; the God who Himself works as a loving community to bring us into loving community with Him.  Sometimes it’s gentle love, sometimes it is tough love, and sometimes it is truly inexplicable love.  But we must begin to know God by remembering that love didn’t start with reason and people; love started with the Creator God: “His love endures forever” (Psalm 136:1 and hundreds of other verses).

“Forever” – that’s past, present, and future; beginning, middle and end.

Believing in God – which is common to many faith traditions – is different from knowing God.  The terms on which we “know God” – sacrificial love (Christianity), the Law (Judaism), God’s power (Islam), elimination of self (Buddhism), or whatever – defines our religion.  What God offered to humanity through Jesus Christ is not only the unique physical human presence in time, space, and history of the one and true eternal Creator God, but also the renewed gift of eternal human relationship with God.

Rationally, linguistically, and humanly, “love” implies relationship.  Mercifully and uniquely, God’s love implies His active relationship with humanity and all His Creation.  God reaches deep into our hearts, minds and souls to make us aware He is there.

In His love, God lets us decide freely, seriously, and independently, “what religion we are.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), still reeling from the national election results, is  thankful for this unprecedented opportunity to exercise faith and trust in Christ alone.  Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.

 

 

 
Monday, November 12, 2012

313 - Finding God, Finding Ourselves

Spirituality Column #313
November 13, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Finding God, Finding Ourselves
By Bob Walters

However fervently we may seek – or help others find – God, we can take heart and trust that God is pursuing each of us.
 
The Bible is rich with evidence.  God went looking for sinful, ashamed Adam in the Garden of Eden.  God pursued bewildered but faithful Noah, made Abraham the father of a great nation, wrestled with Jacob, empowered Moses, trusted Job, forgave David, delivered Daniel from the fire and the lion’s den, and visited righteous prophecy on countless seers.
 
If we learn nothing else from the Old Testament, it is that God relentlessly pursues active relationship with flawed humans … humans He created perfectly in His image with freedom and love, and humans who regularly succumb to the overwhelming temptation to try to be God instead of being satisfied worshipping God, accepting His love, glorifying His name, and obeying His commands.
 
As clearly as God told humans – specifically His chosen nation Israel – what they should and should not do, humans rebelled.  They made golden idols, insisted on earthly kings, and worshipped God’s laws with personal pride rather than humble obedience.  They made an unseemly show of earthly works and a shambles of divine faith.  They confused internal righteousness with outward appearance.
 
Something had to give, and God gave … again.
 
God sent His son Jesus – the Word became flesh (John 1:14), fully God, fully human, the only perfect human – into the world to reset the perfection humanity lost in the fall and restore humanity’s righteous relationship with God.  That’s the New Covenant, the basic doctrine of the Christian faith: the perfectly human Jesus reconnecting mankind, in pure faith, with a perfectly righteous and eternal God.
 
We predominantly focus on God’s forgiveness of sin through Christ, but Jesus gives us so much more: adoption into the kingdom of God, participation in the divine life, sharing God’s glory, communion with the saints, eternal life, dwelling in heaven, and the perfect love, mercy, compassion and peace of God.
 
In pursuit of us, God sent His healing glory into this world in the perfect humanity of Jesus.  If I’m going to find God and any part of myself worth finding – it’s a work in progress – it will be in the only human perfection or divine righteousness I can know: through faith and in relationship with the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ.
 
The whole world groans in longing for the restoration of God’s perfect Creation, which is the ultimate promise of Jesus.  As we go looking for God, we will find our perfect humanity and true selves only in the perfect person of Jesus Christ.
 
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), citing 1 John 4:7-8, deduces that God doesn’t come looking for us with wrath, but with love.
Monday, November 5, 2012

312 - Reason, Faith, and God's Will

Spirituality Column #312
November 6, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Reason, Faith, and God’s Will
By Bob Walters

The great platitudinal prayer of our time is “Everything happens for a reason.”

It offers the grandly inclusive and non-specific subject “Everything,” the blanketing verb “happens”, and a twaddling prepositional phrase of modernist intellectual obeisance, “for a reason.  Strangely – and really for no “reason” whatsoever – the phrase dominates generic, quasi-faith, public attempts to face worldly calamity with a whimsical, faux-spiritual sense of higher, abiding, and comforting peace.

It’ll be OK.  Everything happens for a reason.

While the phrase implies “God’s will,” at heart it is a soft bromide vaguely affirming the possibility of God and salvation, but without the encumbrance of admitting faith specifics.  “Specifics” would include intellectually and faithfully proclaiming that there is a serious, real, willful Lord God Creator Almighty in Heaven Who sent His son Jesus Christ to restore the glory of our human relationship with the divine, and Who issued forth the Holy Spirit to illuminate the divine truths of eternal love and salvation.

That, I think, is God’s will.  That endorses powerful faith.  That is truth.  That subordinates reason to the lesser, earthly, fallen realm of “proof.”  

Faith and reason, you see, are both intellectual functions but are not the same things.  Treating them as such constitutes what theologians and philosophers call a “category mistake”, or what the rest of us might call “mixing apples and oranges.”

Christian faith in an abiding, relational God is something God cleverly avoids allowing to be reduced to the merely rational, evidential, empirical, or the seen (2 Corinthians 4:18).

One can prove God only to one’s self, and then only in faith with the help of the Holy Spirit.  Certainly our witness can help others find God, and the witness of others can help us find God.  But it is a fool’s errand to attempt to prove God to the worldly, rational satisfaction of others.  The only sustaining proof of God we’ll know in this life is in the combined mystery and assuredness of faith residing in our minds and hearts.  For evidence we have the Bible, the Church, our faith, and our fellowship with each other.  It is the Holy Spirit’s job to do the heavy lifting of illuminating God’s truth in human hearts.

God sent Jesus into this fallen world to restore us eternally, not to avoid this life’s trying times but to endure them.  Amid confusion, chaos, pain, danger, despair, or even unsettling election results, proclaim God’s truth in Heaven when reason on earth fails.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests reading 1 Peter 3:8-22 on suffering if the election rattles your faith or if you need a refresher course on God’s will.
PS – Congrats to Current’s sixth birthday, and praise God for this weekly space.
Monday, October 29, 2012

311 - The Simple Mark of a Christian

Spirituality Column #311
October 30, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

The Simple Mark of a Christian
By Bob Walters

I am a Jesus-believing sinner at the foot of the Cross who hesitates when marking the “religious preference” box on personal information questionnaires.

“Roman Catholic,” “Orthodox,” “Protestant,” and maybe a blank beside “Other,” typically are the Christian choices.  Rarely – in fact I think never – have I seen a box that simply says “Christian.”   Since “Christian” is all I really want to be, whenever possible I check “Other” and write in “Christian.”  It’s minor mischief that makes me smile.  Here endeth the rebellion.

This is not to disrespect those who check a different box.  I deeply appreciate Christianity’s rich and diverse doctrinal history – John 1:14, Christ on the Cross, Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection and ascension, the Pentecost, the Apostles, the Revelation, the church fathers, the canonization of the Bible, the heresies, Rome, Constantinople, Orthodoxy, the Council of Nicaea, the Great Schism, the Reformation, the Great Awakenings, the Evangelical Movement and on up to Humanae Vitae, the modern Popes, televangelism (for better or worse), and contemporary worship.

It is of great intellectual comfort to my own faith knowing that smart, spiritual humans have been thinking, interpreting, praying and writing about Christian doctrine for 2,000 years.  What I encounter on any given day as a Christian, including any given Sunday at worship, may be refreshing, enlightening, and new.  But I know that Christianity is old, that God is eternal, and that Jesus is more than an idea.  Jesus, the person who is also God, is the perfect and complete image of God’s original plan for a Creation that glorifies.

Fallen humans are errantly prone to heap superfluous constructs – i.e., legalisms – upon otherwise simple faith in Christ; faith that should lift us atop God’s foundational glory of love, grace, mercy, freedom, and joy.  Too often that faith becomes buried beneath worldly systems and suffocated by sin, fear, guilt, works, and sadness.

I mourn for churches that sacrifice the truth of the Bible for the weight of tradition, and lament churches that perilously ignore tradition while over-worshipping expedient scripture paraphrases.  I shake my head when churches promote worldly and off-point dogmas of “Jesus as Homeboy” or the “Prosperity Gospel of Me and My Needs.”  The “living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9) created, loves and pursues humanity.  We are to love God, pursue His truth in Christ, and share that truth, that spirit, in love and service, with others.  Christ should be the center of all.

By believing in Christ, I am not burdened with having to believe in anything else.

All I have to do is mark “Christian.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wanted to avoid the timely and tendentious topics of Halloween tomorrow and the election next week.  “Boo” if you must, but absolutely – for Heaven’s sake – vote.
 
Monday, October 22, 2012

310 - Polling Data and God's Truth

Spirituality Column #310
October 23, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Polling Data and God’s Truth
By Bob Walters
 
I wonder how God views polls.
 
Not the political polls about November’s election, but the recent Pew Research and PBS polling about our population’s beliefs, religion, and spirituality.  Twenty percent of Americans claim no religious affiliation; 48 percent say they are Protestant, 22 percent are Catholic, nine percent are “other”, and three percent claim atheism – that God doesn’t exist.
 
I can’t imagine that God is the least bit surprised by polls so for sanity’s sake, believers and church-goers shouldn’t impute unsettling truth that isn’t implied.  While polling results may be “accurate,” they reflect human preference and opinion, not divine truth or God’s efficacy.  From my Christian perspective, the only Truth that is important is the combined life, person, and promise of Jesus Christ.  One may have a life-truth different from that, but whatever it is, I bet it was formed by faith, not a poll.
 
Religion, church, preachers, teachers, scholars, worship practices, traditions, even the Bible – and of course things like these polls – are enlightening tools that can be systematically seen, felt, heard, learned, observed, and pondered.  They help us reach out to God, see Jesus reaching out to us, and discern the presence of the Holy Spirit.  True faith however – just like love, freedom, truth, and life – cannot be simplified into a system that can be polled accurately.  God’s truth is too big to be contained by the limitations of a system, wherein we trade our freedom in the enormity of God’s life and love for adherence to the limitations of man’s systems and knowledge.
 
That’s not a knock on the Bible, church, religion, or anything else.  It’s simply an endorsement of true relationship with God the Father Almighty through Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Human polls cannot gauge or reflect the divine Holy Spirit.
 
These polls, by nature, have human bias built into them and human bias coming out of them.  And while bias is sort of an ugly word, as are bigotry and prejudice, those are human words we use to paint somebody else’s preference with sinister intent.  Man’s polls, at best, define a present worldly condition.  God’s truth is eternal love.
 
The strength God enjoys over religious polling data is that His truth, light and life are not subject to percentages and variances.  Those are things mankind brings to the equation.  Our society certainly loves to search for truth in polls, opinions, and trends, but then loses God in the glare of its own opinionated and fallen reflection.
 
We honor God sincerely by reflecting His light on others with our lives, not our opinions.
 
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is convinced quite completely that God’s life, love, and existence are immune from opinion poll results.
Monday, October 15, 2012

309 - Forgive Me for Asking, But ...

Spirituality Column #309
October 16, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Forgive Me for Asking, But …
By Bob Walters

When asked “What’s Jesus done for you?” many Christians quickly answer, “He died on the cross to forgive my sins.”

True enough.

But if we honestly believe that answer – that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins – why do so many of us still pray daily for God’s forgiveness?  Forgiveness has already happened, and that idea is as plainly and clearly presented as any in the Bible.  Over and over (Romans 6:10, Hebrews 7:27, 10:2, Jude 1:3, etc.) the New Testament instructs us that Jesus died “once for all” – for all mankind, for the forgiveness of all sin, and for the restoration of all creation.

My email pen pal Bob recently opined that asking Jesus for forgiveness again and again is akin to asking Jesus to go to the cross again and again.  Jesus has been there, done that, and is sitting in Heaven with the scars to prove it.  We’re forgiven, already; not by our request but by God’s grace and Jesus on the cross.

In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly offers forgiveness (Matthew 9:2), claims the authority to forgive (Matthew 9:6), and commands us to forgive (Matthew 18:35).  But humanity asking “for forgiveness” is not something Jesus ever mentions.  Nor is it something mankind ever thought of asking for.  The Jews of Jesus’ time believed their divine deliverer would provide spectacular, triumphant, and righteous military power, not humble, servant-hearted, and righteous forgiveness of sinners.

Jesus tells us to pray, repent, be baptized, and to follow him (Mark 1).  For our salvation we are to love God, trust Jesus, rely on the Holy Spirit, and both love and forgive our neighbor.  But from the cross, our forgiveness through Christ is eternal and ongoing – a “done deal.”  Continuing to ask Jesus “for forgiveness” seems ungracious, tantamount to doubting His word, His promise, His authority, His power, His love.

But still … we sin, feel guilty, and reflexively pray for forgiveness.  Isn’t it far better to recognize and repent of sin, and then – with faith and perseverance – strengthen our relationship with the one risen Lord?  We do that by building, growing, learning, nurturing and trusting in Jesus Christ: that He is who He says He is, has done what He says He has done, and will do what He has promised to do.

My teacher George recently remarked that many Christians are addicted to praying for forgiveness.  I’d never heard it put quite like that.  Certainly, prayer is good, but our prayers should reflect our total trust in the grace of Christ Jesus.

For what is grace if not forgiveness?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) doesn’t pray for God’s forgiveness; he thanks God that His forgiveness is eternal.  Peace and mercy to all.
Saturday, October 6, 2012

308 - When Religion Is Truly Taxing

Spirituality Column #308
October 9, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

When Religion Is Truly Taxing
By Bob Walters

A recent Associated Press feature story described Germany’s nine percent tax on religion.
 
This isn’t a tax on the church; it’s a tax “for” the church, a government collection plate forced upon the officially Christian faithful.  Germans desiring a church wedding, funeral, absolution, communion, or plain old membership, must pay to pray.
 
Astounded, I went online and dug for more background.
 
The tax has a complex litany of definitions, inclusions, and exceptions.  But bottom line, in the name of the German government, Christians must pay the tax or disavow church membership.  While religious education is required in German schools (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Ethics), religious neutrality, not tolerance, is strictly enforced.  A female Muslim teacher, for example, doesn’t have to pay the tax but may not wear a head scarf in school.  Christian church members must pay the tax, but Christian symbols are similarly verboten in schools.
 
Germany’s “church” tax is codified, evidently, so as not to include Jews, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses and certain other faiths.  Obviously, a Synagogue or a Mosque or a Kingdom Hall is not a “Church,” but the point here isn’t the nature of church but the nature of tax, and by extension, the reaction of man.  What would chase people out of a church quicker than a government tax on membership?
 
Perhaps the grandest irony is that in Germany, the home of Martin Luther and the 16th century Protestant Reformation and split with Rome, Roman Catholics today receive more government funds than the Protestants.  And to think Dietrich Bonhoeffer died a martyr under Hitler in WWII defending the Lutheran capital-C Church.
 
The German tax is said to be rooted in pre-Christian Teutonic tribal tradition – which sounds a whole lot like the Levitical tithes of the Old Testament – and exists to “help” the mainline Church.  God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7), but man’s joy and generosity reside in his heart, not a tax code. 

Whither America?  Everybody I know has an opinion on whether America is or should or must or must not be a “Christian” nation.  I think we should be a nation of free individuals loving God and others.  I also think that it is very, very apparent that freedom in Jesus Christ provides the essential, animating moral foundation for democracy.

A global missions team recently told our Sunday school class that Europe has the lowest Christian conversion and baptism rate on the planet.  What could be a better advertisement against “official,” government-taxed religion?

God’s grace, mercy and love are free gifts through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.  That’s freedom, and no government should tax it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays for Europe … and America.
Monday, October 1, 2012

307 - The Gospel Makes No Sense

Spirituality Column #307
October 2, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

The Gospel Makes No Sense
By Bob Walters

Logic and reason may be the twin towers of worldly intellectual life, but faith and freedom are required to experience and apply the wisdom of God.

We can thank the ancient Greeks for modern mankind’s obsession with physical evidence, reverence for forensic consensus, and stubbornness against accepting the truth of faith.  “Truth” credited to Socrates (469-399 B.C.), Plato (427-347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), and championed by philosophers through the ages, grips both the highest reaches of contemporary academia and mankind’s simplest common sense.

That “truth” in a nutshell?  Things are only true if one can explain them.

It is among Satan’s cleverest deceptions, convincing humans that ultimate truth a) resides inside each of us and b) is limited to what we can prove to others.  God, desiring love and faith above all, bestows intellectual freedom on us to discover His truth.  Some people do find God through Christ, but many find only themselves, or the world’s pleasures, or despair, or confusion.  Some find only emptiness.

Absent faith in the ultimate goodness of God, the truth of Jesus Christ, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, countless thinkers have busied themselves trying to make sense of the world by worshipping explanations or devising systems.  They attempt to explain that which is unexplainable without faith in God; we mistakenly think ultimate truth will include a clear explanation.  Not so.

In the world’s realm of evidence, power, and self-examination, the Gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t make sense.

God became human?  Prove it.

Almighty God, in the person of His own sinless son Jesus the Prince of Peace, died a violent sinner’s death on the cross to … free mankind from sin?  Be serious.

Christ’s resurrection assures believers eternal life?  Who have you ever seen “resurrected”?

God did all this to save the weak?  This life favors the strong and powerful; if God exists, He (or She) favors them.

Historical ironies abound.  Greek philosophy flowered in the intertestamental years between the writing of the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi (circa 500 B.C.) and the birth of the ultimate authoritative teacher, Jesus.  From then until the 18th century A.D., academic and intellectual investigation was overwhelmingly devoted to discovery through the infinite lens of Christ’s wisdom.  Today, the academy satisfies itself – restricts itself, actually – with the pocket magnifying glass of man’s knowledge.

In Greek-educated Paul’s 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, esp. v19, “the learning of the learned I will confound,” God declares the folly of intellectually “going it alone.”

Of course, we are free to think differently.  But it’s not wise.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is studying 1 Corinthians Wednesday nights at E91 church (class open to all) with former Cambridge University lecturer Dr. George Bebawi.
Monday, September 24, 2012

306 - Reporting the Good News

Spirituality Column #306
September 25, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Reporting the Good News
By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

News stories typically use an informational structure known as “the inverted pyramid.”

It refers to the way a reporter prioritizes, organizes, and presents information.  Visualize an upside-down triangle (an “inverted pyramid”), with the wide base at the top and the smaller point at the bottom.  News is written to tell us the most important information first, in the lead – the “wide” part – of the imaginary pyramid.  Less important information comes later in the pyramid’s narrower, descending part.  Obviously it’s important not to lose “the point” in the process.

The inverted pyramid does a couple of things.

First, it quickly relays the most important information in case one reads only the first part of a news story.  Second, it makes the story easy to shorten if space is tight.  Rather than requiring a time-consuming rewrite, the story is simply cut from the bottom until it fits.  The most important stuff is already up top.

I’m glad the Gospel writers of the Bible – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – didn’t cut off the end of the story as they revealed the truth of Jesus’ ministry.  That last part in each of the Gospels about the death and resurrection of Christ isn’t exactly extraneous information.  But as I was reminded listening to a recent sermon on the Gospel of Mark, it’s really important that we pay close attention to the first things the Gospel reports – not just the spectacular last things – of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

The lead of the “Good News” of the four Gospels, the first thing Jesus did when entering into his relatively brief but world-changing, life-restoring, and soul-saving ministry was to be baptized by his cousin John the Baptist (Mark 1:9). Jesus’ first message? “Repent and believe” (Mark 1:15).  His first ministry invitation / command?  Follow me” (Mark 1:17). 

Too often, Christians jump straight to the gory and glory parts of faith: crucifixion, dissecting our sin, being forgiven, rebirth, expecting life ever after, and then saying to Jesus, “Here’s what I want You to do for me…”  When that happens we’ve buried the lead, lost the joy, missed the story … missed the point.

The first information of the “Good News” is that we are to be baptized into Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit; to repent – recognize, apologize, and dry our eyes – of our sins before Jesus Christ; to believe in Jesus Christ; and to follow Jesus Christ.

Be baptized, repent, believe, follow.

Now that is the lead to the ultimate Good News story. That is the lead of Christ as we write our own story as Christians.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thanks E91 pastor Rick Grover for the inspiration and sermon on Mark.

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