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.