Spirituality Column #276
February 28, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

God Is All Over the News
By Bob Walters

For better or worse, good or bad, fun or serious, small or big – God seems to be all over the news in recent months. Some clips …

- We have a new gerund: “Tebowing” is an identifiable Christian “thing.”

- Indianapolis Super Bowl CEO Allison Melangton regularly listened to K-Love Christian radio in her office as her crew rocked America’s biggest party.

- The Roman Catholic Church, which mounted a nationwide advertising campaign over the holidays (CatholicsComeHome.org), has modified its liturgy. Now, “Passing the Peace” at Mass includes saying “And also with your spirit,” an appropriate nod to the Holy Spirit, the all-too-often-underappreciated essence of the Trinity.

- As for the Mayan Calendar “End of the World” thing next Dec. 21 … who’s running the show, anyway? God, or the Mayans?

- I think it’s creepy when any government official – left, right or center – compares his social/economic agenda to the will of Jesus Christ by proof-texting the Bible like President Obama did Feb. 2 (Luke 12:48, much given, much demanded, etc. to raise taxes)at the national prayer breakfast. That’s a red flag, and unprecedented even at that event.

- Also, the President’s yes-we-will, no-we-won’t federal health insurance contraception contradictions involving Catholic charities tangles public policy and Church doctrine. Pope Paul VI’s 1968 “Humanae Vitae” is revealing, and history shows the Pope had it right (see page 100, column #93, Aug. 18, 2008, in my book Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary).

- The Susan G. Komen Foundation exists to protect humanity from breast cancer, but willingly bows to pressure from Planned Parenthood not to protect humanity in the womb … oops, I mean, “not to infringe on a women’s freedom of choice and right to reproductive health.” See Psalm 139:13. I believe God is serious about his knitting.

- Creationism was going to be, but now will not be, taught as science in Indiana high schools. Fine. Why not just accept science as a fascinating part of the search for God, and thereby allow God in the classroom without trying to dissect Him on a lab table? If anything is a Creationism lab experiment, it’s us, not God.

- A Sept. 14, 2011 “errant” internal memo suggested that Walter Reed Army Hospital ban Bibles and other faith items. Oops! The ban was rescinded as soon as it became public.

- The political, sectarian, tribal, genocidal and budding nuclear hornet’s nest of the Middle East and Africa grows uglier daily. Will God be more glorified if He fixes it, or if we trust God and pray for the strength, courage, and wisdom to endure what comes?

Sadly, the news isn’t always good; but thankfully, God is always the truth.

Walters (www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) is an Evangelical but heard the new Catholic liturgy Jan. 1 at beautiful St. Ann’s Church in Harbor Springs, MI.

Spirituality Column #275
February 14, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Love, Endurance, and Prayer
By Bob Walters

My friends John and Joyce (Estes) Samples have been married 61 years.

Not bad, but this is amazing: Joyce and her six still-living Estes siblings - two brothers and four sisters – have all been married for more than 50 years.

That’s right, seven brothers and sisters from the same family have each celebrated Golden Wedding Anniversaries. Youngest sister Sue’s 50th in February 2008 was the seventh and inspired national news coverage.

The Estes siblings and current years of marriage are Agnes 65, Doug 64, Charles 61, Joyce 61, Eula 58, Sue 53, and Gladys 52. They were born in Kentucky but grew up near Richmond, Ind. Joyce and husband John, a minister, live in Fishers.

Thirteen of the 14 Golden celebrants are still “alive and kicking” today (Gladys’ husband died in 1999). Another brother, Joe, died in 1992 after 48 years of marriage to Ruth, a marriage delayed three years by World War II. So that’s another 50-year-plus commitment. A ninth sibling sister died when she was less than two years old.

As you might expect, their parents C.M. and Minnie Estes marked a long marriage – 59 years before C.M. passed in1975. Minnie died in 1997 at age 99.

Add it all up and that’s 521 years of marriage for these Christian, church-going, prayerful kinfolk who provide a Valentine’s Day reminder that love can indeed endure.

But rather than making this about Christian marriage or a secular holiday (the “Feast of St. Valentine” has been dropped from the official Roman Catholic calendar), let’s talk about love, endurance, and prayer in broader terms.

Most of us, when we pray, pray for deliverance. We pray for God to fix this problem, heal that sickness, smooth life’s rough spots, or calm troubled waters. “Deliver us from evil” we pray, because we think “evil” must be this thing making me crazy either in life or at this particular moment. But what are we doing for God?

Jesus prayed for deliverance, sure, “Take this cup from me …” (Matthew 26:39), but then expressed his faithfulness to God (26:42), “May your will be done.” And when Jesus prayed for Himself, the disciples, and all believers (John 17) in the Garden before His Crucifixion, He prayed for endurance for the sake of God’s glory.

Try praying “for endurance for the sake of God’s glory,” and see what happens.

The proof of love is in our endurance – just ask Jesus. Or an Estes sibling.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) learned that Jay Leno invited the Estes siblings and spouses to fly to Los Angeles and appear on The Tonight Show, but some of the Estes siblings don’t fly – never have, never will. Endurance, evidently, has its limits. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Spirituality Column #274
February 7, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

He’s Got the Whole World …
By Bob Walters

Is there anything anywhere that is not – somehow – attached to God?

For believers, the answer is easy: “No.” Everything was created by God, is attached to God, is finally answerable to God, and ultimately (if only in eternity) glorifies God. God is in and around everything, whether we understand it or not.

Believers’ identifying quote: “Praise God!”

For modernists, the answer is complex. Modernists – the philosopher modernists, we mean; the existentialists (“thought begins with man”) and secular humanists (rights of man) – generally allow for the existence of God but draw subjective lines of opinion and confinement around what is and is not in God’s purview.

Modernism presumes mankind and creation are capable of generating thought and things independently from God, making mankind responsible for truth, justice, and judging right and wrong. Modernists – the Enlightenment crowd, Darwinists, Evolutionists, etc. – cast a wary, often intellectually pitying eye on those poor dumb annoying believers. For man to be big, modernism insists God be made small.

Identifying quote: “God is a matter of opinion.”

For postmodernists, the answer is irrelevant because the question is invalid: God is merely an indefinable myth for the weak minded. Everyone worships something, and postmodernists seem to worship experiential, demonstrable, situational expedience filtered through power and money yielding an unprovable version of operable truth and reality in the here and now. There is no “good” or “right or wrong” or even “proof,” there is only “what is” and “whatever.” That’s it. Absent a more appropriate subspecies identifier, most of these folks typically are identified – hailed, really – as “intellectuals.”

Identifying quote: “Don’t tell me what to think.”

I’m comfortable that all intelligence, wisdom, truth, morality, judgment, the good, the bad, the ugly – all of it – goes back to God. This is not to knock human intelligence or intellectuals, but to recognize and celebrate God’s uniquely prospering and challenging gift to man – the brain in our head.

An old theological joke recounts how God, playing hide and seek with man, hid in the human heart figuring it would be the last place man would look. People the world over yearn to worship something, but use their “wisdom” to keep the real God at bay.

Jesus says we are to seek God (Matthew 6:33, “But first seek His Kingdom”), and that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). We may first feel God - sense Him - in our hearts, but it takes an engaged mind to appreciate that God is attached to every part of our lives.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com ) knows lots of smart people but doesn’t pray for their wisdom, he prays for God’s … with mixed results.