CommonChristianity: July 2016

Monday, July 25, 2016

506 - What Am I Suppposed To Do?

8:00 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 506
July 26, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What Am I Supposed to Do?

By Bob Walters

“And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on His name.” – Paul recounting his orders from Ananias, Acts 22:16

Too often new Christians worry what they are supposed to do. Veteran Christians frequently worry whether they are following God’s will.

In the Bible’s most dramatic conversion story, Paul’s first lesson was learning that to be in the will of God he had to be in relationship with Jesus Christ. Do that – connect with Jesus, trust Jesus, pursue Jesus, share Jesus – and you can quit worrying about seeking God’s will or what to do with it when you find it.

Jesus takes care of that Himself. Just look at Paul.

Saul the Pharisee had been enthusiastically – and in his mind righteously – killing Christians (Acts 8-9). While traveling to Damascus to kill more Christians, Saul was knocked down, blinded and talked to by the now-ascended Jesus. Why Saul? Consider both his legal position as a Pharisee and demonstrated fervor for obedience to God. He was a natural evangelist, but grossly doing the wrong things.

Jesus gets Saul’s attention, then commands wary Ananias, the Damascus disciple, to go to Saul, restore Saul’s sight and deliver the instructions Jesus has determined for “Paul’s” ministry.

It’s funny how so much of life as we know it, live it and define it is based on our own sense of “doing” something. Often it’s doing something we ourselves see as a high and noble purpose. Notice that Jesus starts His relationship with Paul not by having Paul do something, but by forcing “Saul” to do nothing. He doesn’t want Saul just to obey Him but to fully understand who He is and trust Him. It’s this relationship that fuels history’s greatest evangelical ministry and accounts for nearly half the New Testament.

When we look at the most formative relationships in our earthly lives – those of families, spouses and children – notice they aren’t built with a “to do list” or a system or a rule book. They are built with love. Looking back and aligned now with what I see as God’s proper context, I didn’t have to stop and think, “I am a son to my parents,” or “I am a husband to my wife” or even, “I am a father to my two sons.” I was all those things because of relationship and love. That should be where we start with Jesus.

Paul didn’t have the luxury, at first, of experiencing God’s love. That came with time and understanding. Too many folks today sit in churches wanting relief from turmoil, sickness or sadness without first understanding that it is a relationship with Jesus that builds the peace and relief they seek.

Build that relationship, and the Kingdom is yours. What are you waiting for?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) admires the courage and trust of Ananias.

Labels: Acts 22:16, Acts 8-9, Ananias, God's will, new Christian, Paul, relationship, veteran Christian | 0 comments

Monday, July 18, 2016

505 - What's So Important?

6:37 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 505
July 19, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What’s So Important?

By Bob Walters

It’s easy for Christians to answer the question, “What’s so important?”

Jesus is important. God, Christ, the Spirit, the Bible, the church, salvation, faith and love are all important. Living a humble, servant-hearted, God-honoring and faithful life is important. The moral absolutes of God are important. Loving God and loving others are our divine marching orders from Christ.

May I continue? To paraphrase the ShamWow guy, “I could do this all day.”

Christianity easily brings many important things into focus and informs, moment-by-moment, one’s lifelong moral code. Because all Godly authority resides in Christ (Matthew 28:18-20), priorities are bare-faced and simple to a Christian. Jesus is No. 1.

God-directed obeisance diminishes as one gets closer to self-directed priorities. Honoring God and helping others – obviously in a zillion complicated ways – is the simple Christian answer to “What’s so important?”

It’s that simple because God’s authority is that unimpeachable.

So asking a Christian “What’s so important?” isn’t a stumper. The stumper is asking that question to anybody else. Pick a topic or cause, the more controversial the better, and ask its adherents, supporters, champions, leaders, fans or experts simply: “What’s so important?” You’ll get a million different answers but no real authority.

No response will come close to, “Because God said so.”

I bring this up because I had a nice conversational lunch recently with an erudite pastor friend who is a remarkable educator and preacher of the Word. Touching on contemporary social and political issues, we wandered from the hot-topic specifics of LGBTQ ascendancy, the overreach of governmental control (think “Obamacare”), the underestimation of foreign enemies (think ISIS), the abysmally failing and diminishing landscape of American racial relations and violence, the looming, glooming, oh-my-goodness-gracious presidential race, popular science mocking faith, and education expelling any teaching of God’s moral certitude. Identifying the problem purveyors is easy. The one thing neither of us could really answer is, “What’s so important to them?”

Seeing the other guy’s side of the story is one thing. But when you look at the social, political, academic and economic forces arrayed against the simple and unwavering truth of Christ – in a nation that very much depends on individual Christian morality for its ability to function as a republic – looking for another thing that stands as authority, that is truly “so important,” remains a mystery. The “authority” is merely the vaporous, prideful, Satan-inspired human assumption of righteousness in one’s opinion.

Salvation? Everybody says, “I’m a good person,” except of course Christians who really, truly “get it” that our goodness abides only as far as does our faith in Christ. “Goodness” isn’t thanks to us, it’s thanks to God.

Understanding that is really important.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) picked up the check.

Labels: authority, good person, ISIS, LGBTQ, Matthew 28:18-20, ObamaCare, presidential race, ShamWow | 0 comments

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

504 - Face(book) the Nation

5:30 AM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 504
July 12, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Face(book) the Nation

By Bob Walters

“If we are faithless, He will remain faithful …” – St. Paul on Christ, 2 Timothy 2:13

I believe America is basically good and the Bible is entirely true.

I understand many of America’s problems past and present, and most of the Bible’s seeming contradictions.

I observe science as one of God’s greatest gifts and one of Satan’s favorite playgrounds. Science sheds fascinating light on the workings of God’s Creation while providing human comforts, conveniences and conveyances unavailable in nature. What science cannot do is save us from sin…if you believe in that sort of thing.

I think politics is a great jumble of cross purposes and passions of the moment. Some moments are longer than others, and some passions are more productive than others. Former House Speaker Tip O’Neil famously observed, “All politics is local.” Indeed. My faith is as “local” as it gets, and politics is as local as what makes me secure in my home with food on my table and a job to go to tomorrow. Out in society, politics is a perpetually partisan morass of unsettled arguments.

Then last week happens: Hillary’s email/FBI ruckus, racially charged police shootings, and a black man ambushing police who are protecting blacks protesting the police shootings. Social media subsequently burned with high dudgeon, partisan vitriol and panicked pleas. Facebook posts bled with our national angst, calling for prayers and peace and unity. “Heal our nation” was a popular thread.

Over the weekend: more shootings, riots, arrests and pleas. But no healing.

Ahead still lay the hot weeks of summer including two political conventions with passionately divisive presidential candidates looking to replace a dispassionately divisive current president. Abroad, the frightfully perilous Zika-Pollution-Anarchy summer Olympics start Aug. 5 in Rio de Janeiro. Plus, we haven’t heard from ISIS in a week or so. What’ll happen next? I can’t answer that one.

My Facebook wall fairly screams, “Where is God when we need Him?”

Now that one I can answer. God is in exactly the same place all the time. He’s everywhere, He is righteous and He has already answered every need humanity truly has. The ongoing problem is that humanity keeps ignoring the ultimate, all-comers healing answer God bequeathed to humanity two thousand years ago: Jesus Christ.

Believers know it, but until everyone understands, believes and acts on what Jesus says in John 15:12, “This is my commandment; that you love one another as I have loved you,” we aren’t going to fix anything. Neither will science, politics…or God.

God, you see, is perfectly faithful to His own righteousness.

God bless America? The problem isn’t His faithfulness, it’s ours.

Heal our nation? Heal our faith.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) understands taking a “Facebook vacation.”

Labels: 2 Timothy 2:13, America, Bible, Facebook, Hillary Clinton, John 15:12, Olympics, police shootings, politics, racial shootings, righteousness, science, social media | 0 comments

Monday, July 4, 2016

503 - Dignity in the Dock

6:24 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 503
July 5, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Dignity in the Dock

By Bob Walters

Dignitary Harm (legal definition): The pain of being told by others that your choices are immoral.

Think of it this way. If I steal your wallet, I have committed “material harm.” If you tell me stealing your wallet is immoral, you have committed “dignitary harm” on me.

Make sense? Yeah I know, not really …

But, it’s a real term: “dignitary harm.” Legal academics have invented it recently – yes here in America – to describe the shocking awfulness of telling someone that right and wrong matter, that this is right and that is wrong, and that I love you enough to rebuke / counsel / correct your behavior.

Never mind that the U.S. Constitution’s “free speech” clause in the Bill of Rights codifies and expresses the endowment by our Creator of our mutual right of oppositional comment. I may not like your actions and you may not like my religion, but whether the topic is politics, entertainment, child rearing, global warming, body piercing, tattoos, gun control, immigration, personal determinism vs. nationalism vs. globalism, or whatever you can come up with to argue about, it’s a free country and we are free by God’s grace and by law to tell each other about it.

Except, of course, in the case of the sex-and-reproduction culture wars where the rights and legal argument run only one way. Here, any perpetrator of moral dissonance against God’s clear biblical plan retains his or her (you pick which) right to ridicule the Creator as morally insufficient while dismissively mocking as intellectually backwards my faith and trust in God, His Son, His Spirit and His Word.

To avoid committing “dignitary harm” for noticing, labeling and defining “sin” as sin, I am free only to express acceptance and encouragement of these obvious transgressions, lest I commit the sin of thinking, er, judgment. The public forum enforces this unholy ban on questioning the morality of gay marriage and all things LGBT. “Caitlyn,” you may recall, got an ESPN courage award.

Abortion of course remains a manufactured but fiercely protected “right” which, oxymoronically, denies the basic right of life. Material harm? Absolutely; but no foul. Say abortion is immoral, thus committing “dignitary harm”? That’s an actionable tort.

If we go to a church that’s worth our time we should all get a good dose of “dignitary harm” every Sunday morning. It actually is a pretty effective way to encounter the sin in our lives – my sin, let’s start there – and gaze for guidance to the moral perfection of Jesus who suffered the ultimate “dignitary harm” on the cross.

Our lives are that precious and God’s plan is that perfect.

Telling others about it is the moral thing to do.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows God created us all. Too bad so many of us think we created Him.

Labels: abortion, academics, Bill of Rights, Caitlyn, Dignitary Harm, free speech, legal, LGBT, Material Harm, morals, my sin, U.S. Constitution | 0 comments

506 - What Am I Suppposed To Do?

505 - What's So Important?

504 - Face(book) the Nation

503 - Dignity in the Dock

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