Column No. 498
May 31, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

Through the early chapters of the Bible, God’s covenant with Israel is constantly being defiled by the Israelites and constantly being renewed by God.

God never quits.

As we move on to the book of Psalms and  beyond, the great glory of the prophets is that they look forward – through God’s eyes – to the coming Covenant of Jesus Christ, which itself actually is renewal.  Even God was excited about it.

“… those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

Then comes Jesus, this Son of Man and Son of God, who would renew all things, set right all things, and change all things.  In Jesus was delivered a New Covenant of faith and grace, not laws.  God’s eternal love, truth, mercy and judgment were assured.  This Covenant of resurrection and glory led Jesus to the Cross, the Holy Spirit into the world and humanity into salvation.

Jesus is many things – the Word of God, authority of all creation, author of all wisdom, the savior of mankind freeing us from sin and divine condemnation.  Blessedly and forever, He is God’s gracious gift to a fallen world; the steadfast renewal of hope.

Yes, the Cross of Christ transformed everything about humanity’s opportunity for restored relationship with God, hope for life and love eternal.  But notice two things the Cross actually didn’t change: 1) God and 2) mankind.

God’s love is permanent, eternal and unchanging.  So too, sadly, are man’s unchanging sins of pride, greed and self-centeredness.  God made man free from the very beginning in the Garden, but from Adam and Eve onward we enslaved ourselves by misreading God’s ultimate goal and purpose: His own glory.  We used our freedom to try to be like God, rather than simply using it to love God.

So much of today’s Christianity – and by that I mean churches, traditions, preaching, doctrines, discipleship and the rest – forces a depressing, personal imprisonment dragging along our shame, mistakes, fears, weaknesses and sins for the sake of guilty obedience to a Savior whose stated mission is the joyous, uplifting opposite: to set us free in faith and trust.

Also beware the morally bereft Christianity telling us “whatever we do is OK” and that Jesus lives to provide us with health, wealth, comfort and earthly delights.

Both are awful lies.

“Joy in the Lord” is a real and wonderful thing; the ultimate renewable resource and an attainable blessing in this world right now and forever.

Trust the renewal of Christ and rest easy in His peace.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) sees mercy and judgment as complements, not opposites.

Spirituality Column No. 497
May 24, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

“Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” – Will Rogers

When I think back to my early adulthood and remember some of the truly moronic things I did and believed, it becomes obvious the opportunities for maturity and personal growth were overwhelming.

Without elaborating about various behaviors, please forgive me and just understand that these days I mainly prefer to look forward.  Christianity affords all of us with that gracious option, promise and hope.  As for random dopey things I believed, I suppose the best that can be said is that they help me today to empathize with those still reluctant to accept the many Godly eternal gifts awaiting our simple acceptance.

But the fact is I have grown and learned, and now possess an extensive “before and after” narrative regarding life outside of faith and new life burgeoning with faith.  Yes, I repented and was baptized, but I notice the repentance part never really ends.

It was in my late 40s that Jesus Christ became a personal reality to me.  Concurrently, the Bible began to make sense.  Church, Bible study and theological understanding became central spiritual and intellectual cravings.  A parade of Godly men and women suddenly, unexpectedly, graciously, appeared in my life.  Many of you reading this knew or know Russ Blowers, Dave Faust, George Bebawi, John Samples, Jackie Long and of course my wife Pam, whom I met at Russ’s funeral in 2007.  Several life-long friends “outed” themselves saying they had been praying for me all along.

Some friends didn’t get it, don’t want it, wish I’d quit talking about it.

We are all familiar with the annoying zeal of an ex-smoker eager to preach the evils of tobacco – confusing overbearance with love, mistaking intrusion with compassion, and very likely infusing new accomplishment with old pride.  Similarly, it is a fool’s errand to try to argue faith into an unwilling soul.  Love defies logic, Jesus is a mysterious truth, and God’s glory sadly too often remains hidden to blinded eyes.

This all is just a long way to say that God, despite His cosmic enormity and my own decades-long ignorance, has revealed Himself to be a very knowable commodity.  Jesus Christ is God’s divine light and truth, and the Holy Spirit animates our souls to embrace that light and truth. Logically but perhaps counterintuitively, part of that truth is that we are free to reject God’s love because love can’t be coerced.

But none of us has to remain ignorant about it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), an ex-smoker, prays for light and truth and in his younger days read collections of Will Rogers’ 1920s and 30s newspaper columns.  Rogers famously quipped, “I never met a man I didn’t like.”

Spirituality Column No. 496
May 17, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

“Christianity does not want to propose solutions for overcoming social difficulties; it wants to lead the individual person into the presence of the living God.” - Martin Mosebach

Do you ever entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe, our Christian focus is aimed too broadly at the world and not enough at the bullseye of Jesus Christ?

I’d never heard of Martin Mosebach, but his recent words echo C.S. Lewis’s great line in Mere Christianity: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither.”  The point?  God has to be first.

Paired with Mosebach’s sentiment, let’s reflect on our proper aim as Christians.

Mosebach, a highly acclaimed German novelist, essayist and social observer born in 1951, is a Roman Catholic traditionalist famous for his support of a return to the pre-Vatican II (pre-1960s) Catholic liturgy.  He’s also a critic of Pope Francis’s aggressive social doctrines – issues and conversations for Catholics, not me.

What I as an evangelical take away from Mosebach’s statement is the simple truth of Jesus’s commandment to love others, and I am reminded of the frequent, nearly universal misinterpretation of Christian obedience.  Jesus left us very few rules but we nonetheless legalistically seek, conjure and judge countless ordinances we – and of course we believe, the world – should obey.

Jesus boils down God’s commandments to two: 1) Love God and 2) love others.  The often quoted “The Vine” passage in John 15 is Jesus’s final teaching before the Crucifixion.  As He and the disciples depart the Last Supper for Gethsemane, Jesus instructs, “This is my commandment, that you love each other as I have loved you.” (v.12).

Love is the commandment of Jesus, fruitfulness God’s promise, and fullness of joy the believer’s reward (John 15:1-17; 1 John 3-4).  Pretty simple.

When the resurrected Jesus issues another command to “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19, the Great Commission), the next sentence is “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  Christians read the word “everything” and panic, but “everything” is a very, very short list: love God, love others, and spread the word.

A common Bible-class error is trying to make a rule-book of the parables of Jesus.  Those stories aren’t so much instruction about what to obey; they clandestinely describe the un-divine tarnish borne by the Pharisees on what they wrongly considered to be the “righteous” crown of their errant, self-begotten obedience.  They had made up their own enslaving, unrighteous rules, and Jesus shrewdly called them out on it.

Plainly, eternally, the example of Jesus is love, not rules.

That’s all the obedience we need.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is saying Jesus is easy; it’s the world that complicates things.           

Spirituality Column No. 495
May 10, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

“These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.” – Jesus, Revelation 3:14

Contemporary culture has newly conjured a congratulatory bon mot that, ironically enough, perfectly embodies the moral failure of human pride.

This newly-minted coin of conversational conviviality is to declare, with laudatory enthusiasm, another person’s expression of their talents or identity as “Your truth.”

Here are a couple of cultural way-points to explain.

My wife and I watch The Voice together.  We enjoy the music, the judges’ comments and their repartee’.  A TV competition for pop, blues, rock and country singers (not much rap or opera), the show does not stifle the baseline spiritual component present in music of the Christian faith.  That’s not surprising considering 1) the show’s producer is Mark Burnett, who with his wife Roma Downey produced The Bible TV miniseries in 2013 and 2) a lot of great singers learn to sing in church.

Anyway, twice on a recent show two different judges congratulated competitors’ secular vocal stylings as expressing “Your truth.”  The inflection unmistakably equated a performer’s personal style with the sacrosanctity of Godly truth.  It was “Your thing” confused with a “God thing,” producing an overstatement of misdirected reverence.

Truth has to be everybody’s, or it’s not truth; even if it’s just a TV show.

Similarly, there is a video circulating on social media where a 30-something, white, 5-foot-9 male interviewer asks college students about gender neutral bathrooms.  Everyone proudly supports gender identity-at-will.  Then the interviewer asks, politely, progressively, if he can identify as a woman, as Chinese, as seven years old, asks if he can enroll in first grade, and says he identifies as six feet five inches tall.  The reactions go from “Good for you” to giggles to incredulity.  But “No, you’re wrong” isn’t heard.  Clearly, nobody wants to admit there are, in fact, identity lines that cannot be crossed.

These scenarios expose the incoherence of substituting “Your truth” for “God’s truth.”  We are what God says we are, not what we say we are. Truth is always God’s glorious eternal reality, never my prideful temporal purview.

The Revelation verse above is what truth looks like in the Bible.  It’s far weightier than human opinion or today’s trendiness.  The cognitive dissonance isn’t new, as we’ve had trouble identifying truth ever since Satan arrived in the garden.

These days, it’s hard not to notice the prevalence of confused, PC burdened folks stifling common sense and free speech.  They shoot the messenger and ignore the message in the cause of truth…

…that isn’t true.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes it’s holy to recognize God’s truth and silly to praise Your truth.  BTW, that video link is HERE.

Spirituality Column No. 494
May 3, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

“Physics is the most fundamental of the sciences, undergirding astronomy, chemistry, geology, biology and – absent some paradigm-shattering revelation – human thought and action.” – Wall Street Journal, April 26, Page C5, “Hitching a Ride on a Light Beam.”

Thus opened a recent newspaper review of two new, apparently authoritative and well-written books surveying the current state of physics and scientific discovery.

I’m a science geek of sorts and found the piece fascinating; I love learning how stuff works.  The “hellfire” of the Big Bang is mentioned.  The books are “praiseworthy” in the words of the reviewer, Dr. Alan Hirshfeld, a physics professor at UMass Dartmouth.  What the review fails to mention, I noticed, is what Hirshfeld, the authors and the global scientific community in general are all, ultimately, trying to discover.

All evidence points to the reality that they – in toto – don’t know.

But most assuredly, I do.  What science is trying to find is God, or maybe more properly Christ Jesus: the Word of God, the creator of all things, the author of all wisdom, eternal holder of God’s authority over all things.  Science doesn’t like to say “God,” and refuses, usually with intellectual disdain and embarrassed giggles, to recognize the physical truth of Christ Jesus.

“Hellfire” and “praiseworthy”?  Yes.  “Jesus”?  Not on your life.

Fact is, there exists no more important human pursuit than discovering God.  Call it humanity’s ultimate purpose.  There is the old joke about the scientists who climb the mountain of knowledge, only to discover at its peak a gathering of theologians already there trying to discover God.  The theologians laugh at the scientists.

Then there is the Jewish joke where the rabbi challenges God to a game of hide-and-seek.  God strategizes, “I’ll hide in the human heart; no one will ever think to look for me there.”

God, you see, already inhabits our minds and hearts.  Most of the science world throws a blanket over God because fragile, fallen human egos generally eschew acceding to one so obviously grander, smarter and morally superior to “moi.”

If physics, science, academia, culture, whomever – the world – truly seeks a paradigm-shattering revelation regarding human thought and action,  my suggestion is to study up on Jesus Christ; God in the flesh.  He isn’t overcome or diminished by science; He invented science.  Christ is the paradigm that doesn’t shatter or shift.

“Physics” markets itself as big and all-encompassing yet occupies a subordinate, incomplete and limited material box.  God’s realm includes all matter and movement, plus love, purpose, salvation and glory … without limits.

Science would be more fun, interesting and bigger if it knew – and would admit – what it is looking for.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is saying it’s a small world without God.