CommonChristianity: November 2017

Monday, November 27, 2017

576 - Sweatin' the Details

4:28 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #576

November 28, 2017

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Sweatin’ the Details

By Bob Walters

“There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.” – Jesus speaking to the Disciples, Luke 12:2

Bible-reading Christians are well aware that God’s judgment awaits each of us in the land beyond death.

And it won’t be like some private conversation in the principal’s office discussing a classroom indiscretion, with a follow-up note going home to Mom and Dad. Far scarier than that, from God’s judgment seat our entire life’s detailed list of willful activities is broadcast point-by-point on the open airwaves; all of our good deeds and all our bad deeds will be revealed to everybody. Good deeds? Great! Bad deeds? Uh-oh.

Exactly how this judgment seat drill all plays out, and when, and with what effect – Heaven or Hell? – is not something I can begin to understand. But I do know that shining the bright light of heavenly truth into the litany of my own life’s darkest moments and decisions isn’t going to come close to being overshadowed by some meager listing of the things I got right. Shame will run rampant over pride; it always does.

The Bible is consistent in its insistence that “all will be known” in the end. And by the variety of Bible verses on the topic, it seems likely that not only will everything be known – good and bad – about each one of us, but that everything will be known about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as well. That’s going to be very, very interesting.

Luke 12:2 listed above seems more likely to refer to this second scenario of the revelation of the truth of Jesus and of his grace and ministry of salvation. This and similar verses (Luke 8:17, Matthew 10:26-33, and Mark 4:22) appear to be more about the lampstand of Christ’s light overcoming, specifically, the darkness of the Pharisees’ unbelief, but in the long-run this includes all non-believers. Jesus is telling those near him not to fear the Pharisees, because His own truth which includes Heaven, grace, love, and mercy will ultimately win out.

Then there are the verses where Paul variously describes the judgment seat (as in 2 Corinthians 5:10, 1 Corinthians 4:5, and Roman’s 2:16) plus John’s prophecy in Revelation 20:11-12. On that seat the privacy that comforts, cushions, and hides our earthly transgressions will be stripped away. Excuses, at that point, are null and void.

Today’s culture, academia, politics, and news media offer an impossible-to-pin-down daily mosaic of shameless conventions and shaming accusations. Over here, these God-denying, humanity-nullifying abominations are perfectly OK. But over there, God-fearing, life-affirming, scriptural truth is not. Worldly pride and shame vacillate.

On that subject of this life’s pride and shame, it recently occurred to me that they really won’t be an issue for believers on the judgment seat and beyond.

Why? Well, three reasons. First, our sins are covered by Jesus; the principal’s door remains shut and no note goes home. Second but more importantly, our faith and trust in Jesus assure us of His mercy. And third, minus our pride and shame, we too – finally – will be as merciful as Jesus.

Those are details to celebrate, not to fear.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) anticipates a merciful heaven … details to follow.

Labels: airing of our sins, judgment seat, lampstand, Luke 12:2, mercy, modern culture, pride, Revelation, shame | 0 comments

Monday, November 20, 2017

575 - Excellent Advice

4:23 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #575

November 21, 2017

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Excellent Advice

By Bob Walters

It takes some discipline, I’m discovering, to disconnect the lies of this world from the truth of Jesus Christ.

Look at the news, any poll, culture, politics, education, science … shoot, look at religion … and the heyday of boorishness, deceit, incivility, disingenuousness, misinformation, overreach, and miscreance is surely upon us.

Satan has to be doing a happy dance. There’s an old saying, “No news is good news.” Today it’s, “Bad news is the only news.” Everywhere we turn, the merchants of panic ply their trade. Love your neighbor? No! Tell him he’s wrong! And not safe!

Pick your persuasion – liberal, conservative, leftist, elitist, gender fluid, binary, American, first world, third world, Christian world, Muslim world, rest-of-the-world, ad infinitum – and I cannot imagine there is a person in a corner of this earth’s human race who surveys the publicly visible horizons of society who says, “Golly, this is going well.”

The Bible says in Philippians 4:8, “Whatever is … excellent … think about such things.” Instead, today’s world hands us a steady diet of whatever initiates anxiety with Satan as its cheerleader. We have wandered so far afield from the Creator in whose bosom our own nation was founded that our national narrative is consumed not with excellence but with overwrought, overthought resentments and under-taught simple civics and kindness. It does not have to be this bad. Here’s how I know.

Jesus, you see, is impervious to polls. What “73 percent” of scholars or millennials or senior citizens or whoever think, just isn’t news to Jesus; He already knows. Satan’s best day is when he can shake a Christian’s faith, scoring a supposed victory against God’s glory by robbing Him of a human soul. But of course the one thing Satan knows that most of the world seems to refuse to know is the final score: that God wins, that Jesus is God’s son the Christ Who is the perfection, truth, creativity, and glorious final victor of all eternity. None of that changes no matter what a poll says.

Satan hates that, I’m sure, but he also knows we are free to pick a side … of which there are only two: God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit … or not. And guess who is semi-permanently waiting next to “not”? Trust me … it’s not a third-party write-in, it’s not evolution, it’s not some man-conjured philosophy, and no, it’s not “nothing.

Satan’s best lie is that “man should be and can be God.” A close second is, “if the world is this bad, there is no God.” We swallow Satan’s hate-mongering and God-robbing poison in this life with ignorant enthusiasm; and he loves the polling numbers going his way. But there is an antidote that we already possess: God’s love, Christ’s sacrifice, and the Spirit’s knowledge. Humanity can counter Satan’s poison with its faithful consumption of and confidence in the goodness of Jesus.

He’s got this.

Satan will continue to surround us with awful, “How dare you!,” love-killing outrage, but there exists sufficient grace, truth, and peace to forgive, love, overcome, and settle our hearts to pursue, strive for and connect with God’s excellent things.

And Jesus is the most excellent thing God gives us.

Nurture the discipline to call on Him first. It’s excellent advice.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is thankful for the truth of Jesus. Amen.

Labels: bad news, excellence, final score, lies, news polls, Philippians 4:8, Satan, society, Truth | 0 comments

Monday, November 13, 2017

574 - Get Real

4:34 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #574

November 14, 2017

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Get Real

By Bob Walters

“Nobody in the West can be wholly non-Christian. You may call yourself non-Christian, but the dreams you dream are still Christian dreams.” – Don Cupitt, Philosopher of Religion, Scholar of Christian Theology, Author, Atheist and Life Fellowship holder at Emanuel College, Cambridge University, England

Leave it to an atheist theologian – a formerly-ordained Anglican curate and career-long Christian “non-realist,” no less – to exist within this stated bundle of oxymoronic footings and perhaps unawares express a valuable truth of modern liberal politics and culture. A more Christ-centered way to put this would be:

“You can run but you can’t hide.”

As virtually all of the Western world’s public (and many non-public) colleges in the last century have replaced “Theology” departments with secularly correct departments of “Religious Studies” – thus absolving scholars of the too-often humiliating need to publicly profess Christian faith – since the 1960s Cambridge’s ancient school for priestly training is host to Cupitt, one of Britain’s most prolific and well-known non-God, non-Jesus, non-Holy Spirit purveyors and media darlings of Religion Without God.

Personally, I don’t blame Cupitt’s empty faith on Cambridge, because that school also produced and for many years was home to my fervently faithful and brilliant Christian brother and mentor Dr. George Bebawi, who was a divinity lecturer there. When I asked George about Cupitt, whom he knew, George assured me that Cupitt was never considered a major intellectual player nor given a teaching job. Family financial contributions to the school, he explained, account for Cupitt’s presence there.

Forty books and a broadcast career later, Cupitt is commercial evidence of the secular world’s spiritual thirst for “something greater” in this life without the intellectual entanglements and ultimate reality of Jesus Christ. The notion of One True God is an absolute buzz-killer for today’s progressive liberals who seek spiritual meaning without accepting God’s objective truth. Hope for a Christian is the ultimate good and eternal home we have in Christ. Secular “hope” – consider the energy expended on today’s non-Christian political agendas – is assigning one’s untethered cultural expectations to worldly political programs. Its creed declares: “Mankind can fix its own problems.”

Good luck with that. Secular religion offers no redemptive “endgame,” what Christian theologians call the eschaton, i.e., “How it all ends.” As we read in Revelation, the Christian “end” proves Jesus is real, God wins, and through God’s grace and love humanity is rescued from its sin by faith in Jesus Christ. Secular theology’s “end” offers nothing more real, true, permanent, or moral than the next election, debate, or protest.

The seeds of God’s truth are everywhere, and I believe John 3:16 is correct in saying Jesus came for all humanity, so let’s not leave anyone out. Cupitt’s “Christian dreams” are God’s seedlings, and God’s harvest means eternal Jesus is looking for us.

The reality is: religion without God is as imaginary as love without relationship.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) offers evidence of “secular religion”: just look at the next “coexist” bumper sticker you see. God is whatever you want, or not.

Labels: atheism, Cambridge, Christian dreams, Don Cupitt, eschaton, godless religion, love. George Bebawi, progressive liberal | 0 comments

Monday, November 6, 2017

573 - Performance Anxiety, Part 2

5:28 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #573

November 7, 2017

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Performance Anxiety, Part 2

By Bob Walters

“For in The Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” – Romans 1:17

As a young Catholic seminarian, priest, and monk, Martin Luther spent ten miserable years trying to confess enough of his sins to feel worthy of God’s redemption.

It was no picnic for the other priest, either, hearing Luther’s hours-long sin confessions of even sins he wasn’t sure he had committed, but they crossed his mind so Luther confessed them too, and then wondered about sins he might commit. It was exhausting and Luther was depressed; he could not be good enough for God.

Luther was certainly no obscure, crazed ascetic as legend sometimes implies. He was a near-legendary student, became a monk, was quickly elevated to Wittenberg University’s theological professorship, was the local church’s priest, and while still in his twenties was pastoral overseer of eleven churches. Luther even visited Rome early on as an emissary for his local archbishop in Saxony, Germany, on a matter of Church control and politics. Yet he still couldn’t pray his way to perfection; couldn’t work his way to redemption, couldn’t confess enough sin to be rid of it.

But Luther had done one specific and unique thing upon entering seminary that few others did, and it was what ultimately delivered him from depression and re-ordered the Church: Luther took the Bible he was given upon entering seminary and read it – something few priests did – and then applied it and preached it. That would get my vote for the greatest thing Luther did: he brought the Bible back into western Christianity.

His famed Ninety-Five Theses of 1517 were really just points of discussion, not rebellion, and written in Latin, like Bibles of the age, so few people could read them. The Theses focused on Indulgences (paying the church for “time off” in purgatory), not the whole of Catholic tradition and doctrine. But when others translated the Theses into German, and Luther himself translated the Latin Bible into German (New Testament 1522, Old Testament and Apocrypha in 1534), and Gutenberg’s printing press provided unprecedented mass production of these documents, soon the entire continent – including England - was scrutinizing, protesting and reforming Christian practices.

It is a deeply rich, complex, and continuing story. To me the touchpoint is Luther’s personal struggle with “not being good enough for God” but finding the answer – e.g. Romans 1:17 – in scripture. Even today, sincere, Biblically savvy Christians struggle with obedience, guilt, and shame, pleading for Godly knowledge and assurance that “they are good enough” and have “done enough.” Such personal angst often leads to sinful judgment of others’ “works” in a wrong, downward spiral of personal pride.

Are we good enough for God? No, not as we are, because God is perfect and we are sinful. But each one of us is created by God, in His image, in His love, for His glory. So be thankful first that God gave us the free will to seek and love Him, to believe in Him, and that He sent Jesus as our saving Christ who covers our sins and overwrites our earthly unworthiness into eternal glory. Our righteousness before God is a free faith thing, not an anxious human performance thing. Luther read all about it in the Bible.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves church but lives by faith in Jesus.

Labels: "good enough", Bible, confession, faith, indulgences, judgment, Martin Luther, Ninety-Five Theses, Reformation, righteousness, Romans 1:17 | 0 comments

576 - Sweatin' the Details

575 - Excellent Advice

574 - Get Real

573 - Performance Anxiety, Part 2

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