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 91^st Street Christian Church.

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.

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

By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary




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?”



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.

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.

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

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.