Monday, July 30, 2012

298 - Drawing a Blank on Old News

Spirituality Column #298
July 31, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Drawing a Blank on Old News
By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

I couldn’t think of a thing.

At the end of a good sermon recently about Abraham almost sacrificing his son Isaac (Genesis 22) and how Abraham had obediently left all behind to follow God in the first place, the pastor called people to come up front who prayerfully had something "they wanted, needed to leave behind."  It’s a common altar call to help people replace the snares and despair of today with the hope of Christ in the future.

I thought and thought and – I do not say this boastfully – seriously couldn't come up with anything to leave behind.

I'm big on memories, pretty good with trivia, and am very sentimental about people and things past.  It’s not like I forget where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to.  But the Bible is pretty clear that life in Christ is about the future (2 Peter 3:14).

I encounter my own sin and guilt on a daily basis.  But I also deal with it on a daily basis, with repentance and extreme thanks that I’m forgiven.  Sometimes it takes a lot of prayer to redirect my gaze from something I’ve done that was hurtful, stupid, or just generally short of God’s glory (hey, that hardly ever happens …), but eventually I’m looking forward.  And while that may be the greatest, most comforting truth of the Christian life, regrettably, you have to be careful who you share it with.

Many Christians come unglued if they can’t feel bad about their sin, and are indignant if someone they meet isn’t feeling bad about theirs. “Something bad has happened in your life?  Well … you’re a sinner and a just God is punishing you!”

I’m a sinner, yes, but thankful for and praising a just God who forgives anyway.

My walk with the Lord is joy.  But when you tell some people – “Hey, I really get this Christian thing and God is great and Jesus is not just mine but the whole world's savior already and the Spirit is here if you'll just listen” – they can't share your joy if they can't first indict your sin.  And then they wonder why people won’t follow them to church.

Journalism school taught me that it is always more valuable to tell someone what's going to happen than what has already happened (would you rather have tomorrow’s lottery numbers, or last night’s?).  You want good news?  Find a future in Christ.  You want old news? Try to earn salvation by dragging around your own sin, guilt, fear, and anger.

It hasn't worked yet.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is looking forward to welcoming Rick Grover this Sunday (Aug. 5) as the new senior pastor at East 91st Street Christian Church.
Monday, July 23, 2012

297 - The Elephant in the Room

Spirituality Column #297
July 24, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

The Elephant in the Room
By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

A thoughtful reader named Greg responded to a recent column and provided an elegant encapsulation of modern American secular narrative.

In “The Rocket, the Republic, and Romans 13” (July 10), I went on about faith and how God’s truth and justice is superior to man’s or government’s or the U.S. Supreme Court’s truth and justice.  This column’s customary italic epigram stated that “God’s truth and justice is the American way,” and that “we are losing our way.”

Greg, in erudite disagreement, wrote “it’s the person whose bias is that his/her own god(s)’s truth and justice is the American way who has lost his/her own way.”  So, that would be me.  Greg argues for the “aggregate ways of individual Americans,” a “consensual social contract,” that knowledge is “justified belief,” that truth is merely “human sensory witness” and that faith is a theocratic “presumed socio-political prerogative.”  In other words truth, like America, is a collection of secular parts.

It was a great email, eloquently stated.  It intended to obviate God’s place in the “American Way” conversation, which secular America is desperate to do.  I thanked Greg and asked what he considered to be “truth,” and whether or not “hope” was a proper aim of democracy.  I loved Greg’s response.

Greg related the oft-cited “Elephant story,” where four blindfolded people – a father and three sons – touch a different part of an elephant and think it is four different things.  Since the father touched the trunk and thought it was a snake, he forced his will on the sons who thought they had touched a bird (ear), a tree (leg), and a rope (tail).  Dad had the power … dad said it was a snake … so, it was – incorrectly – a snake.

Greg’s point is that truth and faith are matters of opinion depending upon which part of the elephant we touch.  And “power” should never determine whether “truth” is a snake, ear, tree, or whatever: you cannot force truth … or faith, belief, or love, for that matter.  But the “snake” conclusion is a perfect, multi-entendre picture of secularized philosophy, academia, politics, culture, and justice getting it completely wrong.

Here’s why:

The family grasped the parts, but missed the elephant.   Truth is a whole thing that a real God presented to a fallen world in the real person of Jesus Christ.  And while an elephant is big, God is bigger.  I want American ideals and my faith to be bigger and stronger than any part of an elephant; not as small and weak as manmade truth.

To perpetuate that bigness, God’s truth - not man’s opinion - is our greatest hope.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) invites reader response and archives his columns at commonchristianity.blogspot.com.
Monday, July 16, 2012

296 - Don't Worry, Be Faithful

Spirituality Column #296
July 17, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Don’t Worry, Be Faithful
By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

My friend Larry, a retired school superintendent in our Sunday morning Bible fellowship, had a frightening stroke last month but has bounced back pretty well.

He’s at church each week and endures a slight physical impairment with good humor and a still-razor-sharp mind.  He shared with us that, because he credits his faith in Christ for his even-keeled, almost unconcerned reaction to his medical situation, his physical therapist calls him the “independent stroke patient.”

That got a laugh from our group, and it prompted me to blurt out loud (as I too often do), “Isn’t it odd how a Christian who trusts and relies on the Lord is considered to be “independent” by the outside world?”

Truly, life in Christ is liberating.  But not in a way that our self-centered world, culture, and society readily understands; not in a way any human mind could have conceived to bring peace, joy, and salvation.
 
Christian freedom requires complete dependence on Christ.  Jesus had to die to beat death so we could live eternally.  The only way to be a master in the Kingdom of God is to be a “dulos” (which in Biblical Greek really means “slave” but is antiseptically translated in modern Bibles as the less-contentious “servant”).  None of these truths makes earthly sense; but they do, in Christ, make a pathway to God.

How?  Jesus was 100 percent about giving.  We ask “What’s in it for me?”

That’s not a new question.  Peter asks Jesus in Matthew 19:27, “We have left everything to follow you!  What then will there be for us?”  Jesus’ answer in verses 28-30 is at once remarkable and, I’m sure to the disciples’ ears, incomprehensible. 

Sit on a throne in heaven … judge the nations of Israel … receive a hundred times as much (as you gave up) … inherit eternal life.”  While our minds are stuck on earthly payback, God’s plan is eternal Glory.

You want to be greatest in the Kingdom?  Be the least.  You want to be first? Be last (verse 30).  Get on your face in complete humility with faith in Christ and praise God.  There is no way to trade for the grace of Christ, because grace is all about giving.  Like my pastor friend John Samples said, “When all you want to do is give, you will never be disappointed.”  That’s true independence.

Larry doesn’t ask, “What’s in it for me?”  His faith is sufficient, and he knows he has nothing to trade for the grace of Christ.  The world wants Larry to worry; he knows Christ wants us to trust.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) swiped the Matthew 19 reference from John Samples’ most recent E91 Thursday morning Mustard Seed Bible study.
Monday, July 9, 2012

295 - The Rocket, the Republic, and Romans 13

Spirituality Column #295
July 10, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

The Rocket, the Republic, and Romans 13
By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

There sure has been a lot of high-impact national legal news recently, what with the rulings on Obamacare, Arizona’s immigration issues, child punishment limits, and all.

But prior to the Supreme Court launching its multi-headed, end-of-session jurisprudential howitzers and accompanying confusion into the national conversation late last month, an earlier story already had me thinking critically about truth, justice, and the American way: the federal “not guilty” verdict for legendary baseball pitcher Roger Clemens, aka, “the Rocket.”

My initial reaction had and has nothing to do with baseball, Clemens’ celebrity, his accomplishments, whether he used performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), whether he lied to Congress, or whether he should be in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

What caught my attention was how many media outlets bundled the Clemens “not guilty” verdict with similar PED verdicts for baseball’s Barry Bonds and cyclist Lance Armstrong, and reported those successful defenses as “losses” for the United States government.

That gave me pause.  First, because I question how a legal finding that exonerates a citizen is a “loss” for the republic.  And second, because I think that God, not the government, is the only, proper, and final arbiter of truth and justice.

Our secular government courts – whether by judge or jury – do the best they can to assess legal vs. illegal, but nobody should assume that every American judicial decision is on a par with God’s righteousness. Secular justice is in the eye of the beholder; look at the O.J. trial, for heaven’s sake.

Romans 13 tells us that God ordains governments, and that “the one in authority is God’s servant” (verse 4).  I see plain and persistent evidence that the government and media are perpetually confused about who is the servant and who is God.  Only God is God, and justice is His alone.  Read about the kings of the Old Testament who thought justice was theirs rather than God’s.  It got ugly; it almost always does with earthly kings.

When the media – however indirectly, absentmindedly, or irreverently – implies that government is the ultimate arbiter of justice, that’s a red flag.  It’s a sign the media has succumbed to thinking that justice is Caesar’s (i.e., the government’s) rather than God’s.  The overarching yet oh-so sublime problem is this: Government has no God, only people do.

In Romans 13, Paul reminds us that we have to adjust to life and “justice” in this world, but not by forgetting God.  Then in Philippians 3:20 Paul declares that for Christians our true citizenship is in heaven.  That’s important to remember.

As citizens, this life matters most when we understand that justice is God’s alone.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thinks that God’s truth and justice actually is the American way, but thinks it is pretty obvious we are losing our way.
Monday, July 2, 2012

294 - The Good, the Bad, and Democracy

Spirituality Column #294
July 3, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

The Good, the Bad, and Democracy
By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.”
    – Sir Winston Churchill

Democracy is a funny animal.

I can’t think of another form of government that so thoroughly, broadly, and top-to-bottom intrinsically frees and animates both the best and worst aspects of human nature.

Humanity’s best aspects are those we get from God – love, serving others, the greater good, duty, humility, generosity, honesty, mercy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.  Galatians 5:22-23 calls these things “fruits of the spirit,” and Jesus is God’s perfect example of humanity.

We are blessed if we witness at least glimmers of these traits in our neighbors, family, friends, and government on a daily basis.  American democracy facilitates these positive attributes whether we attend church or not; and anyway, we are made in the image of God whether we believe in God or not.  God’s image in democracy is the shiny fruit and bright reflection of personal freedom, creativity, and respect for others.

Our worst human aspects come from Satan – pride, greed, sloth, hatred, rage, sexual immorality, drunkenness, treachery, and the like.  Galatians 5:16-21 is a concise catalogue of what God considers to be elements of the “sinful nature.”  To Satan these elements are “business as usual”; democracy selectively defends some as “rights.”

Obviously, we see a lot of this around us every day as well.  Humanity’s worst aspects, like its best, are dependably distributed among a democratic population irrespective of professed religion, church, worship habits or generic “faith.”

Exceptions aside, Americans with or without a defined faith generally assume the existence of God.  That’s a good thing.  But widespread cultural confusion regarding religion, morality and freedom is destructive.  That’s a sign of human fallenness, not of God’s flaws.

Our national character is diminished rather than buoyed by the ongoing systematized, politicized, “de-religioning” of America.  That’s not a good thing.  Our culture is especially, grievously hard on the most important things: prayer, the Bible, Jesus Christ, Christian truth, and the absolute trustworthiness of God’s morality.  Our doubt is a recipe for unexceptionalism.

Oddly, it’s academics who refute religion and God’s truth most loudly when one would think true intelligence would defend God most fiercely.  I can’t begin to fathom how de-emphasizing God ever marks moral progress or cultural strength.

As we celebrate our American democracy and human freedom this Fourth of July, let’s pray for God to help us nurture and share our best human aspects.  Satan will certainly be nearby willing to help with the rest.  After all, this is a democracy.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), who will talk about “justice” next week, posts a former column “Classic” each Friday here at www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com.

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