Spirituality Column #424
December 30, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

"The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost," Luke 19:10

Jesus arrived in time, space and humanity with a clear mission.  He came as fulfillment, truth, light, goodness, salvation and the only way to God.  He’s also the ultimate answer to the ultimate question: What is the meaning of life?

Take a good look.  HE is.

Jesus Christ, life’s author, presents humanity with the perfect answer in a complete package.  Jesus isn’t just an idea to make us go to church.  He’s not a myth to make us behave. He’s certainly not merely a “teacher” with good ideas and 2,000 years of mystically effective PR.  He’s the perfect image of God because He is God, in whose image man was created in freedom and love.

As we privately diddle with New Year’s resolutions aimed at fixing some small corner of our human experience (lose a few pounds, drop a bad habit, pick up a good book, etc.), there is a better, great big way forward into the New Year found in accepting and reaffirming our adoption in and relationship with Christ.

Don’t imagine it’s divinely glorifying to divide the enormity of God’s grace into bite-sized bits of self-improvement.  Don’t buy into the backwards, omnipresent, secular message that happiness is found within, and Jesus is something we can do without.  Jesus is the human example of what glorifies God.

We forget that our goal is to be human because we ourselves are so busy trying to be God.  We conclude Jesus isn’t God because He doesn’t always do what we want.  There is great competition for temporal glory among fallen mankind’s appetites and insecurities.  We know there is something bigger out there, and culture relentlessly suggests it is us.  No, it’s bigger than that.

In Christ I can endeavor to be fully human, because Jesus is fully human.  He’s also fully perfect because He is fully God.  I’ll fall short of perfection in this life because I’m a lost sinner, weakened by the vagaries of this fallen world and beset on all sides by a cultural message that holds secularism – faith’s opposite – to be profanely, mundanely and inanely “sacred.”  Large swaths of society consider sincere Christian sacredness – which is actually, truly and exclusively the province of the holiness, glory and love of God – to be naïve nonsense.

That’s backwards.  God’s sacredness is as real as secularism’s hollowness.  His glory is immensely and exactly the reverse of mankind’s fallenness.

In Christ, in humanity, in the New Year, go forward.

That’s our mission.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that respect for the individual resides in the humanity of Jesus, not the mechanisms of society.  Jesus seeks and saves.

Spirituality Column #423
December 23, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #422
December 16, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

“And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.” – Luke 2:9 (King James Version)

This familiar passage from the Christmas story in Luke 2 describes an angel appearing to shepherds the night Jesus was born.

Where our modern, sentimental Christmas observance imbued with today’s lightness and irreverence of commerce and non-religious pop culture mostly overwrites the infinite gravitas and universal significance of the incarnation of God, these shepherds were “terrified.”

That’s what “sore afraid” means.

Note closely that the shepherds’ reaction to the angel was not one of warm sentimentality, but of awestruck solemnity.  As the angel bade them “fear not” and announced the “good tidings of great joy” that “Christ the Lord” had been born, and “the heavenly host” suddenly showed up and praised the newborn king, these lowly shepherds immediately grasped the truth – with confidence and obedience – of what they had been told.  They didn’t doubt, or argue, or recoil in sustained terror.

They went “in haste” to see the baby Jesus, and then told “everyone what they had seen.”

The biggest event in the history of man – God becomes human to save us from our fallenness and reinstate our place in God’s eternal Kingdom – is announced at night on a remote hillside to a bunch of illiterate shepherds.  Of all the presumably more logical forums, venues and hierarchies where a divine declaration of this magnitude might be pronounced, it was to obscure, humble shepherds that the humble arrival of God’s son was made known.

The appearance of the “glory of the Lord” – whatever that actually looks like – evidently is what terrified the shepherds.  As the contemporary song lyric goes, “I can only imagine.”  But it’s instructive to note that the news of Jesus’ birth gave the shepherds comfort, curiosity, wonder and the confidence to go seek the Lord “in haste.”

With the news of the baby Jesus, the shepherds were told, essentially, of what we know today as Christmas.  Gospel writer Luke’s description is the only place in scripture that we see a celebration of the birth of Jesus: when the heavenly host – a multitude of angels – sings “Glory to God in the highest.”

We’ve made Christmas into a modern festival of sentimentality.  It’s nice.  We gather with family and friends.  We revel in our memories and traditions.  We exchange gifts and, hopefully, experience an extraordinary peace that mysteriously, wonderfully, permeates the season.  Much too often, we don’t know why.

Maybe it’s because the Bible doesn’t prescribe sentimentality.  It teaches us – implores us – to confidently seek Jesus Christ.  That’s the real lesson of Christmas.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is a lifelong sentimental sap.

Spirituality Column #421
December 9, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

It’s pretty normal to ask someone, “What did you get for Christmas?”

It’s pretty not-normal to ask, “What did you give for Christmas?”

Which question reveals the truer spirit of Christ?  Which reveals the more accurate manifestation of modern Yuletide, um, observance?

Yes, I know, easy questions.  Everybody knows Christmas is about giving.  Even the most politically intransigent civic-religious separationists probably buy a gift for someone, or charitably give of their time or treasure in the spirit of the season.  This cultural and commercial “Winter Break” spectacle that Shall Not Be Named in public schools or courthouses – convoluted mess of intentions and theology that it is – brings out the giving nature God most assuredly put in our hearts.  All our hearts, I think.

Contrast that with the gaudy and seeming dehumanizing tribulation of commando shopping forays on Thanksgiving Evening or Black Friday or whenever prices are low, crowds are thick, desired objects are in limited supply and the Christmas clock is ticking toward zero-hour when Santa’s bounty is presented to anticipating recipients.  We’re even willing to fight to give the best gifts.

Still, isn’t it odd that in this “season of giving,” for some reason, what we “get” is fair public information, but what we give is reverentially and almost universally respected as one’s own private affair?  A boast about a gift we received is OK.  Boasts about gifts we give are unseemly and coarse.

There is a theological lesson about the incarnation of Jesus Christ in all this talk of giving and getting, and a practical application, too.

Christmas is a celebration of God’s great gift to mankind: the humanity of His son Jesus.  It is in Jesus, the only perfect human, that we find our true humanity.  That’s important because God created humanity in His own image; we fell from that image in sin but in Jesus never truly fell from His grace or His love.  Jesus Christ, incarnate son, the Light of the World, came with a message: in My humanity your sins are forgiven, your humanity is restored, and you are adopted into the Kingdom of heaven.

Our faith in that message saves us from eternal death; it is the only thing that does.  No gift we can give, outside of selflessly loving others, comes close to measuring up to God restoring our humanity through the human person of Jesus Christ.

Salvation is very, very personal, as personal as it gets, because Jesus is right there between you and God.  You can get salvation, but you can’t give it.

But if you get it, believe it.  And don’t keep it a secret.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) opines that “happy” is about getting, but “joy” is about giving.

Spirituality Column #420
December 2, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville- Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

In October 1963 singer Andy Williams released his first Christmas album which included the newly-written but soon-to-be holiday standard, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

A breezy tune with a light-hearted and happy lyric, the familiar carol wonderfully transmits the fun, emotion and tradition of family and community Christmas celebration.  Why do we go back home for Christmas?  Because “it’s the hap-happiest season of all.”

And oh, how humanity – especially American humanity – pursues happiness.  Whatever else we want, we want it to bring us happiness, the pursuit of which is right there in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitutional DNA.  As busily as the modern PC crowd works to kick “Christmas” off the calendar and Christ out of the classroom, nobody is going to assault the American pursuit of happiness.

And that’s why I think Americans are especially un-European (Thank God!) in our stubborn non-acquiescence to the politics of “Don’t Say Jesus or Christ or Christmas.”  As noisily as some cry “separation of church and state,” and as grating as it is to hear the awkwardly forced, carefully inclusive and politically correct greeting, “Happy Holidays,” I think Christmas is here to stay.

Why?  Because I don’t think a generic Winter Holiday or “Winterval” (shorthand for “Winter Festival,” or possibly the winter “Interval” between academic semesters) will ever make us as happy as Christmas; there is no reason for it to.  What’s the big deal with a festival in winter?  There’s not.  The only big deal and happiness is for a tradition that means something.  And that tradition, that truth, is the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Pagan’s of old – way old – celebrated the lengthening of days right after the winter solstice which occurs December 20-23.  The gods had been robbing light from the day, and were suddenly returning that light to the earth, etc.  The ancient Roman holiday “Saturnalia” in late December was just such a celebration.

The birth of Jesus likely occurred not on December 25 but earlier in the fall, when harvests were in and taxes were collected (see Luke 2).  The eventual Christian celebration of God’s son incarnate in humanity, this Light of the World reconnecting our misdirected pathway of sin into the perfect light, love, grace and salvation of Jesus Christ, overwrote pagan superstitions with Godly, miraculous, and biblical truth and supplanted Saturnalia with Christmas.

O happy day!  Christ came and freed our souls.

It’s not just the most wonderful time of the year; it’s the singularly most outstanding event in all human history.  Merry Christmas.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) looked into it and learned the “scary ghost stories” lyric in this carol refers to an old Victorian Christmas tradition – think Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”

Spirituality Column #419
November 25, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville- Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

In the thankful spirit of the Thanksgiving season, be diligent in thanking God that the heavy lifting of salvation is already done.

When will we be saved?  That’s easy.  We already are.

Our Western culture looks at things – things like history, politics, wealth, education, families, recreation, morality, hunger, disease, abuse, strife and even religion – as works in progress.  We are a linear sequential society with clocks, calendars, goals and to-do lists.  We start there, work here, and finish somewhere up ahead.

St. Paul had some linear-sequential in him, even back in biblical times.  He talks about running the race, chasing the prize, finishing well, and looking forward.  But Paul was pressing onward … always onward.  He knew a better life was ahead.

One of the great things about Christian life is its focus on the future, a redeemed future.  Meanwhile the secular world tries to figure itself out by examining the past.  That’s frequently unsatisfying and far from liberating because it is so easy to get trapped in the past, either by the gentle snares of nostalgia or by the sharp, tangled claws of pain, guilt, shame, loss, regret, remorse, injustice or plain old bad breaks.  In Christ, in His forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others, we can look forward.

The Old Covenant of the Bible’s Old Testament required keeping very close tabs on one’s righteousness via obedience to religious laws, observance of feasts and offering of sacrifices.  I have no doubt that God loved the nation of Israel – it makes sense to me that He would … He had to.  But that covenant wasn’t about love; it was about God choosing a people to represent Him on earth.

The New Covenant of salvation is different, embodied not in a pact or agreement but in the eternal person of Jesus Christ.  This covenant is not compensation or an enterprise we work at to make it happen.  It’s already happened in the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.    When we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) we’re not “working” our way into heaven.  We are accepting the grace of Jesus Christ and strengthening the relationship we have with God thanks to the work of Christ.  We do that with prayer, service, humility, and love.

On the Cross when Jesus cried, “It is finished,” (John 19:30) it is our eternal salvation that was at that moment, and from that moment on, “finished.”  When we accept that gift, trust God’s mercy, are assured in the Holy Spirit and look forward to this immeasurable prize, it’s the biggest thing I can think of to be thankful for.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that our thanks is never finished.

Spirituality Column #418
November 18, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville- Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters


During the 30 or so years of my life when I ventured nowhere near any church, there were few encounters I found more annoying, less useful and downright silly than with Christians – especially born-again Christians – telling me about their faith in Jesus.

- Annoying because I thought such tales revealed their private emotional and intellectual shortcomings.  I didn’t want that; didn’t even want to be close to it.

- Not useful because I did not perceive the wisdom, feel the need or understand the truth of God’s glory and the mystery of salvation.

- Silly because after attending church in my youth, the ensuing years of a college education and communications career taught me so much about reason and outcomes that “seeing was believing” and believing without seeing was just plain silly.

So imagine my surprise 13 years ago today – Nov. 18, 2001 at age 47 – when I came up out of the water as a baptized believer in Christ.

It wasn’t as though demons suddenly, violently departed from my being at the command of Christ (Luke 8:26-39).  I didn’t perceive that I had been shackled naked in a cave, sinner that I was and am.  There wasn’t much to tell “all over town.”

No, my new birth from non-believer to believer was gentle like a sunrise, not rattling like a lightning bolt; an awakening rather than an alarm; a process, not a punch.  Jesus didn’t throw a net over me and force my faith.  Jesus did what He always does: He patiently waited for the right time in the right setting and knew the right way to reveal to me – personally, with His insistent gaze – what I had been missing.

Because that’s what Jesus is, a person; and does.  It’s what makes Jesus divinely unique: He is specifically and exactly personal, and He is infinitely, eternally and gloriously one with the One God Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth.

Jesus is Emanuel: God with us.  He seeks our love and trust.  He fights for us and draws us near, yet gives us freedom in His life, love and grace to reject Him.

When He personally invites us into the battle, it’s crazy to ignore it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays that you recognize the light of Jesus whenever and however it shines in your life, and praises God for this continuing opportunity to tell about Jesus “all over town.”

Spirituality Column #417
November 11, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville- Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

This column is not big on nakedly discussing cultural or public affairs because what we are trying to explain is Jesus, not society.

Pick an emotionally charged social topic – abortion, gay marriage, health care, race relations, public education, immigration, climate change, political parties, Ebola quarantines, etc. (sorry if I left out your favorite), start a Christian discussion about it, and see how quickly Jesus – Lord of All – either gets lost in a disputatious maelstrom, blamed for a human injustice, or underestimated as too small, inconsequential or ill-equipped to solve “such a big problem,” whatever it is.

In my experience, believers easily arrive at opinionated disparities and fearful dissension regardless of whether we are talking with other Christians, followers of other faiths, or intelligent, secular, engaged, garden variety non-religious non-believers.  Contretemps are more likely than productive discussion where social issues are concerned.  Don’t we each figure we are experts on “the right thing to do”?  Witness the insipid infestation of postmodernism: that the universal, cosmic, moral absolute of Jesus Christ and the ultimate truth and embodiment of Right and Wrong that He surely is, just aren’t hip these days.  Modern knowledge and sensibilities supplant divine authority.

Conflict is natural to the fallen world; people would rather fight than switch. It’s hard to invoke the loving, righteous message of Christ in a contentious environment because, as a general rule, when people are angry they don’t listen and can’t learn.

We Christians often don’t help matters.  We may clearly see the truth of Jesus Christ, but we make the same mistake non-believers make in thinking that we ourselves, with our words, actions or intentions, can fix the world’s oldest and biggest problem – i.e., Sin – from which all others emanate: the fall of mankind.

Besides, it’s almost impossible to explain Jesus to a lot of people – not in the sense that Billy Graham explained Jesus to “a lot of people” but in the sense that a lot of people simply don’t or won’t accept the gift of grace and relationship Jesus presents.

Ask Jesus, listen to Jesus, trust Jesus, praise Jesus.  Life is no more complicated than that if we’d just believe it.  But we come up short.  We rely on ourselves, trust our instincts, and go with our gut.  We muddle God’s plan.

Our human efforts are not now, never have been, and never will be the answer to fixing the social problems of this fallen world.  The answer is to find Christ, and we can, if only we’ll look for Him.

One thing you can trust is that Jesus is always looking for us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes Christianity is not about our earthly needs or opinions; it is about God’s glory.

Spirituality Column #416
November 4, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

C.S. Lewis once opined, “If you asked 20 good men today what was the highest of virtues, 19 of them would reply, Unselfishness.”

in his brief 1959 work, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Lewis says 19 of 20 good men are wrong.  All the great Christians of old, Lewis asserts, would identify the highest virtue to be Love (Colossians 3:14, e.g.).

The error, Lewis instructs, is in the trading of the Gospel’s outward-directed positive, “Love,” for the secular, self-directed negative, “Unselfishness.”

Lewis expounds, “The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but with going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point."

See the twist?  Unselfishness for its own sake cripples Christian doctrine by subordinating celebration and praise of God – which deserves first priority – to one’s self-denial.   Everyone lists selfishness as a sin.  Lewis is saying that unselfishness, too, is “all about me.”

The point when praising God is never my actions, my works, my efforts, my intentions, my knowledge, my obedience, my self-denial, not even, I would argue, “my faith.”  The point is God’s glory.  God’s glory is not a function of my faith; it’s intact whether I have faith to see it or not.  Love is what God sees.

Jesus doesn’t sacrifice himself in self-denial; He sacrifices himself as an act of love for the glory of God.

The Old Covenant’s weakness is the Law’s tendency to make one wholly immersed in one’s behavior, i.e., Am I following the law?  In life, prayer or worship, my focus slips away from God and toward myself and my obedience.  Next I’ll probably compare my obedience with that of others, hence doing what we are told repeatedly in the New Testament not to do, which is to judge the righteousness of others.

Our great modern Christian problem, and the reason we mention “mercenaries” in the title, is that our intellects and psyches have been constantly whipped by philosophy, education, politics, social convention and in some cases even religion to believe that desiring good things for ourselves is a bad thing, a selfish thing; that we are “mercenaries” of faith if we accept God’s love.  Lewis traces this error back to Kant and the Stoics, adding that joylessness has no place in Christianity.

The New Covenant’s perfection is that it relies wholly on God’s strength, mercy, truth, power, justice, faithfulness, humility, oath, promise and love.

Our human goal is for our joy to reside in the glory of God’s love, to love God, and to love others as ourselves.  That makes us Christians, not mercenaries.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) trusts God’s character far more than his own.

Spirituality Column #415
October 28, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

“Are there angels in church?”

You never know where our Wednesday night Bible study teacher George is going with this type of question.  I mean, of course there are angels in church, but ….

Dr. George Bebawi, theologian, church history expert, Bible translator and retired lecturer from Cambridge University’s school of divinity, was discussing the Gospel of Luke and noted that angels appear throughout the Bible, especially in the early parts of the four Gospels.  Think of Gabriel delivering messages to Mary and Joseph, parents of Jesus, and to Zechariah and Elizabeth, parents of John the Baptist.  Angels comfort the shepherds, minister to Jesus, are constantly “going up and down” from heaven and are regularly God’s messengers in the Gospel narrative.

George chuckled at the notion of wispy, delicate angels with wings, an image he pointed out is not the least bit biblical despite being very much a part of medieval church artistic lore.   When you think about it, most of the Bible’s angels are actually warrior, counselor types.  The TV mini-series “The Bible” presented angels that looked and acted more like communicative Navy Seals on a mission than dainty cherubs of myth.

Anyway, if you know the Bible, you understand angels are real.

But are they in church?

We twisted in our seats, wondering how to answer this intuitively easy question with intelligently discerned biblical assurance.  In a room of mature, thoughtful Christians, nobody blurted out an answer.

George finally broke the tension.  In the Bible, he pointed out, angels are constantly around Jesus, so if Jesus is in church with us – which we believe He is – then angels are most certainly there, too. Easy enough.

George then offered a couple of stunning observations about worship, angels and the destiny of mankind.

In church, we worship God, yes.  But how much more properly are our hearts in tune for worship if we realize that we join in praising God with the entire heavenly host – the angels and saints – who are praising God loudly and always (Isaiah 6, Luke 2, Ephesians 1:6-10, etc.)?  In church, we sing with the heavenly choir.  I love it.

George further noted that after His death on the cross, Jesus didn’t become an angel; he became a resurrected human.  As the image of God, our goal isn’t to become heavenly angels, but to perfect our humanity in Christ.  It was the human person of Jesus who was crucified, buried, resurrected, and then ascended to the right hand of the father.

Angels are messengers, but they are neither the message nor the goal.

Jesus Christ is the message, and humanity is our goal.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) can’t sing especially well but often blurts out answers.

Spirituality Column #414
October 21, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

An Evening with George
By Bob Walters

For the past decade – since September of 2004 – most of my Wednesday evenings have been spent studying with and pondering lectures by Christian scholar, Bible translator and Carmel resident Dr. George Bebawi.

George, retired from the Divinity faculty at Cambridge University, England, prepares lengthy notes for each class and then like the university lecturer he is, often puts the notes away (figuring you can read them later) and lectures on corollary topics.  East 91^st Street Christian Church in northeast Indianapolis is host of the weekly series and this fall George is teaching The Gospel of Luke: Witness to the Gentiles.

A recent class handout discussed the birth of John the Baptist in Luke 1.  Among his notes George listed several echoes and fulfillments of Old Testament prophecies, promises and personalities.  John’s mother Elizabeth, like Isaac’s mother Sarah, was well past child-bearing age.  John is filled with the Holy Spirit, as was Elijah.  John’s father Zechariah, a priest who entered the Holy of Holies, emerges mute, unable to pronounce the customary blessing “The Lord bless you and keep you …, etc., that appears in Numbers 6:24-26.

Good, standard stuff.  Then came George’s zinger: Why was Zechariah mute?  Well, because the priestly blessing from the Old Testament is about to become unnecessary because the True and Final blessing – the person of Jesus Christ – is on the way in the womb of Elizabeth’s young relative Mary.

Like so many things George says, I’d never thought of that.

His lecture included other pearls.  Warning against “biblical anemia,” George listed several things we miss if we read the Old Testament without understanding the tangible arrival and work of Jesus Christ in the Gospels of the New Testament.

For example, in the 23^rd Psalm the Lord is a comforting Shepherd, even as we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”  In the New Testament our shepherd is Jesus Christ, who dies for us.  I hadn’t thought of that, either.

George pointed to four things missing in the great Old Testament prophesies of Isaiah: 1) the actual fulfillment of those prophesies, 2) the real arrival of the Messiah, 3) the materialization of the light of life in the person of Christ, and 4) and the coming of God himself among us in His son Jesus.  Isaiah presents true predictions, but the Truth of Jesus Christ comes to fruition in the Gospels.

George also had compelling things to say about angels, worship, humanity, and the truth of our destiny in the person of Jesus Christ.

All something to think about.

More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) coordinates George’s E91 class, which is free and open to the public Wednesdays 6:30-7:45 p.m. in the upstairs Sun Room.

Spirituality Column #413
October 14, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Christians know plenty of people who are unwilling or unable to believe in Jesus Christ because we can’t prove His divinity, resurrection, truth and worth to them.

I have a driver’s license in my pocket that proves I am a licensed driver.  Somewhere I have a diploma that proves I graduated from college.  The fact that I am in church most Sundays proves … that I go to church.

But the Jesus license I carry in my heart is not something so easily revealed to, proved to, or understood by others.  If Heaven is a diploma, I can’t dig in a dusty box and say, “See? Here it is.”  If I attend and am involved in my church, it takes Jesus or other Christians to understand and judge my actions.  The life we lead, the love we share, the servanthood we offer, the peace-patience-mercy we demonstrate, the perseverance we exhibit can all be evidence of Jesus Christ in our lives.

We all know lots of people with these generally “good person” traits – generosity, humility, a magnanimous spirit toward others; you know, nice folks – who would never darken the door of a church or seek the light of Jesus.  To believe Jesus is real, they demand clear, unarguable evidence: a license, diploma or visible proof – not mystery.

The New Testament hammers home the centrality of faith as our proof and love as our purpose as the core of the Gospel truth, the good news of Jesus Christ.

A Christian’s demonstration of a loving attitude, exhibition of knowledge, or even an offering of works won’t be enough to “prove Christ” to an unbeliever.  Anyone can be even-tempered, bright and generous; anyone can be deceived by “a fine-sounding argument” (Colossians 2:4).  Faith is bigger than actions or argument.

God loves us enough to sacrifice the most precious life He knows – that of His son Jesus – to cover the sin of man’s worldly existence.  No government bureau or academic institution can issue that kind of credential; only the Holy Spirit can.  The joy of being a Christian is our shared, loving relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ thanks to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

The Jews and Gentiles of Jesus’ time had a similar problem accepting the reality of Jesus, because Jesus wasn’t one to fully disclose, codify, or systematize the truth He brought of God’s love.  “Jesus doesn’t fully disclose himself because faith only develops if you make your own discovery,” teaches Christian scholar Dr. George Bebawi.

Our faith is our proof; sharing God’s love is our purpose.

That’s the point Jesus was trying to make.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) for most of his life preferred argument to belief.

Special note: Walters coordinates Dr. Bebawi’s Wednesday night Bible study at East 91^st St. Christian Church, Indianapolis, 6:30-7:45 p.m., upstairs Sun Room.  Free and open to the public.

Spirituality Column #412
October 7, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

The teenager walking into the public junior high school wore a t-shirt with one word on the back.  In large, bold letters it read: “Justified.”

I thought, “How awesome!  Here is a young Christian professing faith in salvation, who knows Jesus, knows enough theology to praise Jesus’s sacrifice for our sins, probably got the shirt while participating in an uplifting Christian youth program, and is courageously wearing that message into public school.  Right on!”

Then I saw the front of the shirt, which named the school mascot followed by the word “Pride.”  It was a school spirit shirt, not a Holy Spirit confession.  The shirt’s message, coming, was “School Pride.”  Going, it was “Justified.”

My creative hope for this small slice of spiritual revival had rushed ahead of reality.  It was just an innocuous, secular piece of community-building apparel, not a crusade.  While my brain had run on ahead to all that the Bible and especially the Apostle Paul had to say about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross providing sinful man with justification before God, the student had merely pulled on a t-shirt and gone to school.  Most likely it wasn’t even a prideful decision, just the next shirt in the pile.

And so it goes in our daily lives.  Even if we aren’t teenagers, how many of us just “pull the next shirt out of the pile” and go about our day without ever thinking about the great spectrum of divine life?  How many folks in the world rarely make a decision based on Christ’s mercy, God’s glory, or the leading of the Holy Spirit?

Of course, one of the main problems we all encounter is that our “shirts” are often stacked against us.  The world’s message is focused on the “seen” and the “felt,” not the mystery and subtlety of God’s message.  The world sees the word “justified” as a simple descriptive for self-evident authority, not as the first phase of our soteriological (salvation) journey to a redeemed life in the eternal heavens glorifying God Almighty.

The world promotes taking pride in ourselves for our own sakes rather than endorsing pride in Jesus Christ for God’s glory.  Paul encountered the Corinthian church in all its legalisms, Judaizing, false teachings and idols, and encouraged the right-believing Christians there to take pride in the truth of Christ, to “take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart” (2 Corinthians 5:12).

The “seen” is the world, and “what is in the heart” is Jesus Christ.

We are justified, truly, only when our pride rests in Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) can read a lot into a t-shirt.

Spirituality Column #410
September 23, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #409
September 16, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

“… though the eye of sinful man, Thy glory may not see.” – from the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy.

Among my favorite Bible head-scratchers is God’s dual creation of light.

On Creation’s first day, God creates the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1), there is “darkness over the deep and the Spirit of God over the waters” (verse 2), and God says, “Let there be light” (verse 3).

“Light” is the first thing that God says is “good,” and it divided the darkness.  But it is not the light of the sun, the moon, the stars, the heavens, a campfire, or a light bulb.  That kind of light, the light of physical illumination that allows physical sight, isn’t created until Day 4 (verse 7).  Why does God create light twice?

Well, He doesn’t.  The Bible’s “first” light is God’s light of truth, love, power, goodness and relationship.  It is the “information” component of Creation.  As opposed to all the physical things that can “be” – such as matter or energy, or even “animal, vegetable or mineral” – God’s “light” is what installs a purpose and moral order to His physical Creation.  Without God’s light, Darwinian evolution may as well be true because no moral information would be needed.  The faithful in Christ believe in and fight for the light of Creation because that light is God’s truth.

Momentarily and mistakenly, we might think the “light” created in Genesis 1:3 actually is Jesus Christ, but it can’t be – Jesus Christ isn’t a created being.  He is an eternal, uncreated part of the Trinity and the exact reflection of the glory of God (see Hebrews 1:2-3).  Like the Spirit “hovering over the waters,” Christ the Son was already here at the beginning, not created after it.  It was God’s placement of His Son, the “heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2) with “authority over all things” (Matthew 28:18), that brought the light of God’s truth into the world – “His life was the light of all men” (John 1:4).  That Jesus is the “light of the world” (John 8:12) speaks to the incarnation of God on earth.

That first-day darkness must have been an unholy emptiness, a void then dramatically filled by the animating, loving, relational, creative, light of God.  But ever since man was created on the sixth day, just as man’s eyes adjust to physical darkness, so man’s soul adjusts to spiritual darkness.

Satan – a created being and fallen angel – is alive and busy wherever a soul’s darkness persists with festering blindness to God’s light.

In Jesus Christ – the eternal shepherd of God’s light – man overcomes his blindness to the glory of God.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes the Earth was once all water – Genesis 1:2,9. Hmmm.

Spirituality Column #408
September 9, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

- Steadfast conviction in the Lordship of Jesus Christ,
- Perpetual immersion in the comfort and peace of the Holy Spirit,
- Resolute vigilance against the evil of the enemy and great deceiver Satan.

A Christian could do worse than to possess and exhibit these traits.  But we are instructed by countless secular, philosophical, academic and atheist demagogues to take their word for it, there is no brilliant light, absolute truth, or unwavering good.

Faithful, steadfast, perpetual, resolute?  No.  The great, dynamic drama of God’s creation and man’s role in it – we are advised – is a myth for suckers.  Further, only misbegotten arrogance would cause one to call anything “evil.”  Culture dismisses both divine glory and fallen evil – “it’s just your opinion,” “don’t judge me,” “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” “I’m a good person,” etc.

Talk about “misbegotten arrogance.”

Man was created by God with both the desire to worship something and the freedom to decide what that would be.  Satan suggests we direct that worship toward ourselves.  We go a step further and create our own gods.  Political correctness and social science reign as the quasi-spiritual coins of the earthly-focused modern realm.  That’s how society rolls these days and, we suppose, largely how fallen man has rolled ever since Satan suggested Adam and Eve deserved equal knowledge with God.

Our problem is that we generally have more questions than answers about the One True God.  Jesus constantly tells the disciples there are things about Him they cannot understand.  God told Isaiah that His thoughts and ways are higher than man’s thoughts and ways.  We imagine it to be an unfair allocation of thoughts and ways.

With Satan’s urging and glee, we demand answers.  The self-piously educated world erroneously supposes man’s character to be the final arbiter of morality. We shouldn’t be surprised it has come to that.  Modern mankind has put vast cultural energies into education in humanities, science and technology.  Our lust for answers has overtaken our reverence for God’s sovereign plan for the glory of His Creation.  We imagine the answer to the eternal equation is: “Me.”

Among the groanings of the Holy Spirit, the revelation of the Bible, the traditions and fellowship of the Church and the lessons of all the saints – merged with sober, reflective time in prayer – one can develop a pretty vivid understanding of God’s intentions.

And His intention is for us to trust Him, and to understand that we must have the right answer for Him. And that answer is “Yes.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has learned that seeking truth doesn’t always mean demanding answers.  Often it means “praying for faith.”