CommonChristianity: March 2017

Monday, March 27, 2017

541 - Run to Jesus

5:31 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 541
March 28, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Run to Jesus

By Bob Walters

“I have given them the glory you have given me” – John 17:22, Jesus praying for all believers in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion.

In this suddenly, seemingly upside down world of snowflakes and safe spaces, of microaggressions and trigger warnings, and of big lies, vacant truth, backwards morality and intensely unjust and mockable “social justice,” why is culture running from Jesus when humanity’s most secure shelter, rest, peace and purpose is Jesus?

Maybe it’s because folks see Jesus – if they see Him at all – as the ultimate parole officer, the prosecutor of our sins and the judge of our sinfulness. “Love of Jesus”? Yeah, sure. “But be sure to duck if you do wrong” is the received message. “Forgiveness sounds nice but do you see what they did to Jesus on the cross? If He was perfect and was treated that way, what are they going to do to me?”

Which is to say, Christians frequently kill our own narrative. We preach the Bible’s forgiveness but our witness often appears hypocritically unforgiving. Freedom in Christ takes on the appearance of condemnation in Christ. Christians who truly do understand Christ’s love and grace too often present Jesus in terms of commandments, obedience, punishment, payment and price. Folks get plenty of that in their day jobs.

We all have friends and family who regard a trip to church as a trip to the spiritual police station. Nobody wants to face the desk sergeant. Or, as Jesus is the great physician, going to church is a trip to the spiritual hospital: “Yes I want to get well but I also want to get out of there as soon as possible.” Jesus is only a visit, not a lifestyle.

Instead of using the Bible and church mostly as wrecking balls for sin, we as Christians have to improve our ability to communicate the rock solid building blocks of Christian faith and life. “Made in God’s image” (Genesis 1:27) is the foundational truth of humanity. That we are all sinners (Romans 3:23) is the unavoidable truth. That Jesus restores us not just from sin but into the holy family of God (John 17:22, “I have given them the glory you have given me”) as children and co-heirs (Romans 8:17) is a prize of unimaginable scope and a responsibility of eternal consequence.

We chase holiness and people laugh at the notion because we all know we are not holy. That’s because our holiness never comes from us; it comes from Jesus. We are all unique in our particular sins but we are, as believers, all the same in our holiness because holiness is entirely God’s. With our faith in Christ, God’s glory is our glory.

That makes it a big, big deal to sit in fellowship and worship with other believers knowing that together we share Christ’s glorious promise of life and eternity with God.

Now that is a safe space, and the only way there is to run to Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) isn’t holier than thou, he is merely a different type of sinner than thou. Also, hat tip to Wednesday night E91 Bible teacher Dr. George Bebawi for the John 17:22 reference.

Labels: Christian witness, God's glory. our glory, John 17:22, Run to Jesus, safe space, social justice | 0 comments

Monday, March 20, 2017

540 - Swinging for the Fences

4:36 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 540
March 21, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Swinging for the Fences

By Bob Walters

Public opinion polls these days fairly pulsate with bad news for the Christian faith.

Endless journalists and authors predict looming cultural destruction. Political and media savants pontificate daily that civilization’s sky is falling because of the godless “other side” (liberal vs. conservative, etc.). Theological sages insist the church must expand; the church must contract; the church must withdraw; the church is irrelevant.

Woe is us! God is losing! “Nones” are ascendant! America’s moral compass is lost. Millennials don’t do church. Boomers spoiled their children. Academia has gone secular. “Love God and others” is now “If it feels good do it (with whomever you want).”

Hysteria reigns, possibly because personal “opinion” is now culturally sovereign having conversationally replaced divine “truth” almost everywhere. That doesn’t truly mean God is behind, Jesus is losing or the Holy Spirit is taking a few days off. It means we are living in a time when culture’s most aggressive, pervasive and powerful communicators do not intimately know God, Christ, the Bible, Church or religion. They’ve heard of it but don’t know it. They certainly don’t trust it; it’s just an opinion.

Thus has arisen today’s quasi-god culture that freely invokes divine-sounding expressions – “You are a blessing to me,” “May god bless you,” “I pray to god,” “God help us,” “Jesus Christ!” (the expletive) and many others – without a second thought as to their true divine meaning, the divine realness of who and what they are talking about, and the eternal efficacy of figuring out divine truth in the context of their words.

Truly knowing God, you see, is a good thing.

Instead people emptily, mindlessly, chat up “faith” or “belief” without offering the bedrock context of something really big out there worth faithfully believing in: a true, righteous, relational and loving all-powerful God. Secular folks intone small godly bon mots with sincerity of their own earnest but shallow purpose, or to encourage others as an expression of compassion. They offer nice words that have no cosmic juice.

And it is shake-that-person-by-the-shoulders maddening to see how little they understand about and expect from God. God is relationship, Jesus Christ is explanation and the Holy Spirit is wisdom. This God is the biggest thing going. Faith and belief are only a small start, maybe a sacrifice bunt, toward learning what God means in our life now and forever. It is trust and relationship that awaken the true “swinging for the fences” powerhouse of intimately knowing God with our heart, mind, soul and strength.

There is no opinion poll that can track that. Paying lip service to some god as we express a sincere personal intention about some worldly concern is a stillborn exercise of vanity; a baseless hope. A seeking human heart’s love and thirst for Jesus, on the other hand, is the thundering long-ball of infinite, eternal trust and relationship.

That is the faith and belief – God’s Grand Slam – that will get you home.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes baseball starts soon. Polls suggest the Cubs are 4-1 favorites to repeat as World Series champions. Anybody got an Amen?

Labels: Faith and belief, God's Grand Slam, home run, media, opinion polls, relationship, secularism, theology, trust | 0 comments

Monday, March 13, 2017

539 - Prophet and Loss

4:09 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 539
March 14, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Prophet and Loss

By Bob Walters

If there is a worse job in the history of mankind than being a prophet of God to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, I can’t imagine what it would be.

Prophets were the all-time, all-star, all-truth bearers of what certainly sounded like bad news for a nation of sinners that plainly did not want to hear it. Israel was so busy believing its ancient press clippings about being the chosen of Almighty God that its people forgot about God’s almighty righteousness. Israel sinned and rejected and was disobedient, and God through the prophets told Israel what he would do.

It wasn’t pretty and a lot of the Bible is hard to read: blood, chaos, death, war, disease, plagues, earthquakes, floods, enslavement, destruction of whole cities, exile of entire populations and in every way imaginable being disowned by the Creator of the universe and their sworn protector. It was a message no one wanted to hear.

Then there was the Good News of the coming deliverance through and salvation in Jesus Christ for all mankind. To ancient Jewish ears, the message of this coming Messiah was largely misunderstood gibberish. Suggesting that God was going to tear down this nation like a lion but then deliver the whole world through his Son “a lamb” only added “crazy” to the people’s disbelieving assessment of the prophets’ messages.

The people took God for granted and most of the prophets for crackpots.

It really wasn’t any better for Christ Jesus the incarnate Son of God and his apostles. In Jesus mankind encountered not merely a message or a prophet but the divine person of God’s love, truth and forgiveness, along with an invitation for eternal relationship with God in heaven. How was that received? Jesus and most of the apostles died violent deaths at the hands of disbelievers, typical of the difficulty and resistance mankind has always had hearing, trusting and acting on God’s truth. Maybe because so many of us don’t trust ourselves, we don’t or won’t trust God.

Well, God is righteous; we can trust that.

In the Old Testament we think God looks mean. No, He is righteous.

In the New Testament we think – and this is an egregious error – that God is punishing His Son instead of us. No, Jesus on the Cross is God becoming sin and defeating death for the sake of God’s righteousness because God’s righteousness is His love. If we understand nothing else about God, we had better understand that.

God’s love gives us hope; God’s righteousness tells us He’s God.

We make a mistake if we look at God’s actions anywhere in the Bible and see retribution rather than righteousness. Retribution is a reaction, a trade, a transaction, a change, and God does not change. Righteousness is the unchanging truth and purity of God’s love. With our sin reconciled in Christ, Godly relationship becomes possible.

We can freely change our hearts and accept God’s righteousness, but God does not change. That’s what the prophets tell us and it’s our loss when we miss it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was no prophet but worked in PR for many years.

Labels: bad news, God does not change, God's actions, Good News, prophets, righteousness, trust God | 0 comments

Monday, March 6, 2017

538 - Hey, Wait a Minute ...

5:06 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 538
March 7, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Hey, Wait a Minute …

By Bob Walters

The Ten Commandments, Old Testament precepts, obedience, mankind’s sin nature and wondering about heaven are all great grist for any Christian’s mental mill.

But not one of them can save us; only Jesus can do that.

Christians study, pray, listen, read, watch, act, serve, praise, worship and love … and then argue about whether this or that biblical concept, doctrinal theory or religious practice opens the true and unique and unshakeable door to understanding life’s biggest question: “What am I supposed to do right now?”

And life’s second biggest question, “What happens next?” (after we die).

Just recently I’ve witnessed each of the above mentioned Christian mental bits generate quarrelsome heat between believers, and I mean real sincere believers whose lives are devoutly ordered by their trust in Jesus, love of God and love of others.

Each time, I’ve thought just afterward, “Hey, wait a minute. The point is never ‘What I think’; the point is always, ‘Jesus Christ is Truth.’” And I put that capital “T” there on purpose. Jesus is Truth. Jesus is my savior. Jesus is Lord. Love God and love others. Worry about that and it’s amazing how quickly we enter the realm of the “peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) rather than the arena of perpetual dissension over things that don’t truly matter.

OK, maybe they matter some; but they aren’t Jesus. Focus on Him.

In this age of global networked mass communication it is easier than ever to grab a rhetorical club and beat one’s opinionated way into conflict over politics, social priorities, academics, entertainment, sports, science or of course, religion. Mankind has become expert on many useless things, and forgotten critical things … like God.

The culture-wide mistake is plugging religion into the realm of personal opinion rather than accepting Jesus Christ as the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth for He is God. Christians make the same divisive mistake in church, finding opinions to fight about that contradict the inspired biblical direction of Jesus.

Obey the Ten Commandments? Sure, it’s a start. But Jesus said love God, love others and follow me, not “Make a list.” Old Testament precepts tell us who God is and what He does, and who we are and what we do. But the New Covenant in Christ tells us, definitively, in grace, where we are going and how to get there: by Jesus, not works.

Sin nature? It is all around us and in us, but frankly I care less about whether we are born with it or grow into it than that Jesus, for sure, is my only shelter through it.

‘Gotta go see The Shack movie to learn “the real story” of God and heaven? No, see it as a sweet but theologically lopsided springboard into productive discussion of biblical realities of a fallen world, a loving and righteous God and the Holy Trinity.

And remember, in a world of confusion, Jesus is sufficient as Lord and Savior.

Don’t fight about that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) may not be right, but knows Jesus is.

Labels: Christian conflict, Jesus is truth, Philippians 4:7, Precepts, Sin nature, Ten Commandments, The Shack movie | 0 comments

541 - Run to Jesus

540 - Swinging for the Fences

539 - Prophet and Loss

538 - Hey, Wait a Minute ...

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