Spirituality Column No. 520
November 1, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

It is Satan’s favorite question.

It is post-modern society’s perpetual challenge.

It is, sneakily, the intellectual antithesis of open-mindedness.

When a believer preaches Godly good, Christian love, Spiritual wholeness and biblical truth; or maybe asserts that “this is right and this is wrong according to God’s word,” the secular world’s default, go-to response of dismissiveness, derision, and, sadly, despair is, “How do you know?”

Doubt is the world’s prevailing response to Godly faith.  Why?  Because Satan is lord of the world, is God’s enemy and his mission is the removal of faith, hope and love.  Satan makes stumbling blocks for humans out of these “image of God” components built into our humanity.  That we know, trust and love God, and love each other, honors God.  Our doubts amuse Satan because he works against God’s glory and our love.

This is Satan’s game, and he’s skilled at it.  Consider the Garden of Eden.  Satan insulted God’s sovereignty; tricked mankind into disobedience; set Adam against Eve; shamed both of them before God and each other; and did it by using against Adam and Eve humanity’s best Godly attribute: freedom.  Not a bad day’s “worldly” work.

Satan’s game in the Garden was, essentially, “How do you know?”

In our post-modern world broad swaths of society deride the very notion of God as being illusion, folly or a sign of feeble-mindedness.  Since God plainly tells mankind throughout the Bible that we will not see or understand much of what He does, Satan has taught us to ridicule faith and demand proof, tickling our doubts with the inadequacy of worldly evidence. By challenging our trust, Satan encourages us to reject God.

“How do you know?”  Game and set to Satan.

You may have noticed that open-mindedness is the intellectual coin and relativistic moral true north of the post-modern realm.  But open-mindedness that believes the absolute truth of God?  Never!  What a conundrum.  God’s greatest gift to humanity is freedom because only in freedom can we discover the divine love that glorifies God, and glorifying God is the entire point of life.  Whatever you may be feeling, if is coerced, self-centered and not free, it is not love.  So the world – Satan – declares morality to be relative thus requiring the Christian be open-minded about secular ways when in truth, doubting secularists would be better off being open-minded about God.

I, personally, don’t see any future in being open-minded about Satan.

And the world says: “How do you know?”  I’m glad they asked.

Because I don’t doubt Christ.

Game, set and match to God.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), who did in fact (long ago) play small college varsity tennis, here marks 10 years – 520 consecutive weeks – publishing this column. His next book, Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary, Volume II, is in the works.

Spirituality Column No. 519
October 25, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column No. 518
October 18, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

The multiple, halting, emotional speeches hung so very, very thickly over Baby Willow’s funeral Saturday.

Born at home healthy, vibrant and hungry early October 6, Willow stopped breathing some four hours later.  No warning, no explanation … and no amount of emergency care could bring her back.  Willow’s ashes rested in a polished wooden box as parents, family and friends gathered to say we love you and good-bye.

Praise God, Willow insisted we do much more.  She insisted that we in our heartbreak encounter Jesus in all His power, promise, trust and truth.  Willow allowed no other gaze than for us to fix our eyes on the healing love of Jesus Christ.

In this season of crushing grief, Willow’s parents Michael and Maggie and all four grandparents courageously, tearfully spoke words of healing and encouragement and witnessed profoundly to the unlimited faithfulness and tender mercy of Jesus.  When so many might wonder, errantly, “How could God do such a thing?” as take young Willow, Willow’s family stood faithfully and said, “How could we survive such a thing without Jesus?”

Maggie told the funeral gathering that the day following Willow’s death she experienced a vision of Jesus.  He stepped between her and Michael, comforted them and in a voice Maggie clearly discerned said of Willow, “I have to take her now.”  Numerous other signs, works of Christian love and even rainbows appeared through the week.  When one is in the faith, such signs are unmistakable evidence of God’s nearness, relationship and compassion.  Jesus is there.

Pastor Dave Rodriguez at Grace Church (Westfield, IN) looked at the funeral gathering and noted, gently, that he understood there likely were people there who didn’t “get” the Jesus thing and more likely would be on the page of, “How could God …etc.”  Dave noted that the hurt and the love and the healing and the faith permeating that particular room, not to mention the faith witness of Maggie and Michael’s entire lives, would appear to some unbelievable; certainly not real.

Dave spoke a measured, earnest, caring truth: “This is as real as it gets.”

Willow didn’t let anyone out of the church without facing the reality that is the truth of Jesus Christ.  These are the times, the pastor noted, that God shows up and is not subtle.  Times like these are why we were created in the image of God, or else where is our comfort?  In times like these words may fail us but God doesn’t.

Like Dave, I pray someone curious about Jesus asks Michael and Maggie about this God they know.

They know Him very well.

Walters’ (rlwcom@aol.com) son Eric was roommates with Michael in college.  They grew up in faith together at East 91^st Street Christian Church, Indianapolis.  By the way, Michael and Maggie have a son Rhett whom they adopted a few months before learning of her pregnancy. 

Spirituality Column No. 517
October 11, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column No. 516