CommonChristianity: April 2017

Monday, April 24, 2017

545 - Post-Truth Paralysis

5:42 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 545
April 25, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Post-Truth Paralysis
By Bob Walters

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” – G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925

Last November the Oxford Dictionaries selected “post-truth” as 2016’s “Word of the Year,” it’s relevance hastened by political surprises with Brexit and the U.S. election.

Upon first hearing the phrase, I wrongly assumed it was anti-religious in nature. “Post-truth” instead intones the expiration of the validity of facts and the ascension of emotion as the foundations of influencing public opinion. Absent lucid elitist explanation, these seemingly impossible-to-grasp political developments – Brexit and Donald Trump – were snootily decreed “post-truth” anomalies; the stubborn masses just would not listen to “reasonable” and “factual” and “right” reporting and commentary.

The masses ignored the “truth,” in other words.

To shroud the possibility that the media was wrong and the people got it right, the subtle semantic subversion of “post-truth” is that it is a calming explanatory escape hatch for establishment elites. Rather than admit the possibility that media, academics and politicians lie, “post-truth” implies that people are too dumb to know the difference. “If no truth exists, our opinion can’t be wrong.”

Sigh.

“Post-truth” is a highbrow pejorative leveled against the obstinate, non-theoretical pragmatism of regular folks. Whenever I hear the word “truth” in any context, I think of Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Humans have opinions all day long on every subject, but I’ve settled in my mind that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are free of and immune from opinions; they are the locus and sum total of truth in the cosmos. A post-truth maven’s likely response? That’s just your opinion.

Similarly “post-modern” describes the absence of truth, the myth of objective good and the charade of virtue. It is a philosopher’s stew of divinely vacant and self-absorbed inanities proudly serving rather as an atheist’s comfort food. There is no God.

And so it goes. “Truth” in secular society today is merely a free-floating and bereft intellectual construct of cultural and political fashion rather than both the ultimate expression of God’s love and glory and our ultimate moral purpose as human beings.

But here is why I bring all this up.

The Apostle Paul spends 13 books in the Bible’s New Testament explaining in many ways the truth that we are dead in our sin and life only truly exists in Jesus. That was a tough sell 2,000 years ago and remains so today because we still can’t really see the problem any more than the solution. Each of us feels alive, sure – we breathe, eat, navigate the currents of each day, succeed, fail, emote, etc. But culture’s daily comings and goings regularly flow away from God; not toward Jesus and life’s supreme truth.

Jesus gives us the strength, courage and purpose to go against the stream of errant but popular thought. Our life’s freedom is in swimming upstream toward God – frantically, if necessary – not idly floating downstream toward despair and oblivion.

Better to be energized by God’s truth than paralyzed by culture’s failings.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) doubts himself, not God. And that’s the truth.

Labels: alive in Jesus, Brexit, dead in sin, Donald Trump, elites, G.K. Chesterton, media, opinion, politicians, post-modernism, post-truth, Truth | 0 comments

Monday, April 17, 2017

544 - Command and Control

5:33 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 544
April 18, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Command and Control

By Bob Walters

Broadly, I think American culture looks at the Ten Commandments as good advice.

Narrowly, only theft and in certain situations murder actually violate modern civil law. How one does or does not deal with God is a personal choice, as is murdering an unborn child. Idolatry is intellectually arcane. Capitalism largely laughs at observing the Sabbath. Envy and greed are “good”; accepted as cultural “get-aheads.” Whether bearing false witness – telling a lie – is wrong depends on who has the best attorney. Child protective services will intervene if your parents bug you (if they chose not to abort to start with). Adultery? Oh please … just get a no-fault divorce.

And yet there they still are, The Ten Commandments, represented in stone on the U.S. Supreme Court building and physically etched or displayed in countless courtrooms and public buildings across America. Everyone has heard of them, though few can recite them and fewer heed them. Check them out in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 in the Old Testament, or just Google “Ten Commandments.”

Interestingly, in the New Testament’s most succinct listing (Mark 10:19), the Rich Young Ruler parable ticks off the last six commandments, ignoring the first four about God. All 10 are scattered elsewhere, though “observing the Sabbath” is redefined because the person of Jesus became humanity’s Sabbath. But our central point is not what the Ten Commandments are, but what a “commandment” actually is.

Spoiler alert: Commandment doesn’t mean what most people think it means.

Once again, thanks to Bible teacher George Bebawi for a good perspective on this as we’ve recently been studying the “submission” section of Colossians 3. To wit, commandment doesn’t mean “have to” and “submission” doesn’t mean tyranny.

The best place to start is with the Romans: the empire, not the book. Much of how we today regard command, control, obedience, submission and punishment comes from the Roman legal model of 2,000 years ago. Follow the law or be punished. Fear the Emperor, his laws, his court and his army. Submit to Caesar or die.

God’s commandments, on the other hand, are about well-ordered life, not death. They are directions for how things work best both before God and in human society. The heart of the Hebrew word “Mitzvah,” translated “commandment,” much more deeply implies Godly opportunity, understanding and principles, not a threatening “or else.”

Our submission to God and others is to be a divine exercise in love and trust, not fear and tyranny. Look at how Jesus submits to God. Paul and Peter instruct wives to “submit to your husbands” and today’s feminist world glows with rage. Yet biblical submission is a shared life journey of love, fellowship, trust, help, responsibility, sanctity, family, faith, hope and freedom. Fallen people in a fallen world need to cooperate.

Before there were commandments there was love, and before fallenness there was perfection. The Good News? We can win it all back. It’s called victory in Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) responds better to love than to commands.

Labels: American culture, commandment, Deuteronomy 5:6:21, Exodus 20:1-17, Mark 10:19, Rich Young Ruler, Roman Empire, Sabbath, submission, submit to your husband, U.S. law | 0 comments

Monday, April 10, 2017

543 - Conditioned Reflex

5:18 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 543
April 11, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Conditioned Reflex

By Bob Walters

God’s love is unconditional, Christ’s forgiveness is unconditional, our acceptance into the Kingdom is unconditional, and our need to complicate things is unconditional.

When will we ever learn?

We hear “It’s a free gift,” and then sing about how much it cost.

We hear “Once for all,” and then worry if it’s enough and includes me.

We hear “I am your peace and strength,” and then in anxious weakness, doubt.

We hear “Nothing can separate us,” and then conclude sin separates us.

In our quid pro quo culture of marketing and merchandizing; of “can do” confidence and intellectual self-sufficiency, it is perhaps our toughest, practical, human theological hurdle to take Jesus at His word and God at His love. His kingdom, glory and eternity are ours in Christ. Sin separates us from God? Jesus came for sinners, not the righteous. That’s God’s grace. We once were lost, but now are found. Done deal.

Through the Bible the Holy Spirit heralds this Good News to each of us: “You are in.” There is nothing we can do, say or believe that undoes the divine side of that truth. Jesus has erased our sins and we are righteous before God. Welcome home.

Certainly, the secular, atheist, modern, post-modern “smarter than God” world thinks the whole idea is nuts. But that doesn’t change God. The Bible is pretty clear that only a few folks will actually embrace the truth of Christ even though it applies to everyone. You cannot point to one person in all of history Jesus did not come to save, but there remains a broad sweeping swath of humanity that without eyes to see or ears to hear, remains lost. As for Christians, well, we believe, but often want to edit and “conditionalize” the simple, joyous unconditional truth of salvation in Christ.

We recently got into this topic of “unconditional” in our Wednesday night E91 Bible study with Bible stalwart Dr. George Bebawi. Most of us recoiled and pondered: Aren’t our own personal acceptances of Jesus and responses of repentance, faith, baptism, confession, love and obedience all “conditions” of our salvation?

George smiled and sparred with us, noting that a “condition” is a negative, something that takes away from freedom and love; that we place conditions on God usually due to our own guilt. We figure God is mad at us when the obvious, entire truth of the New Testament is: Jesus came to heal us. Accepting that truth is “a condition”?

One classmate noted, “It’s like a free restaurant; all you have to do is go in and eat.” Free delivery, too. It occurred to me later that we operate our smart phones and computers, if we can, in the way that works best – not in obedience but in thankful, enthusiastic agreement. In the E91 pulpit last Sunday longtime friend and preacher Dave Faust talked about loving God, believing Jesus, reading the Bible, going to church, etc., in freedom because we “get to,” we want to; not because we have to.

Amen to that.

Our condition in Christ is freedom. We should take that thought captive.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is in no condition to judge anyone.

Labels: conditions, Dave Faust, free gift, freedom, George Bebawi, once for all, secular culture, separation from God, unconditional | 0 comments

Monday, April 3, 2017

542 - Opportunity of a Lifetime

3:31 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column No. 542
April 4, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Opportunity of a Lifetime
By Bob Walters

Our anxious human moments rarely involve actual heart-racing concern for the spiritual gifts of God in Jesus Christ: salvation, righteousness, glory and eternal life, for example.

Not without help, anyway. We are more likely to be “Oh my God!” worried about the tangible but temporal “real” stuff of this world – money, security, health, home, family, esteem, politics, etc. – than we are about God fulfilling His unshakable promises. It takes a really loud preacher, or maybe Satan, to jar our hearts into the realm of worrying whether God is good for His word to share His glory with us, or if we are good enough to receive it. Satan and more than a few preachers want us to fear God’s wrath rather than trust God’s word. God is out to get us; we’re not worthy, yada, yada, yada.

But hear this: No matter what else we think we see God doing, every moment of our existence should be cognizant of the truth that God is out to love us, not hurt us.

With Holy Week approaching – from this coming Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday next – we encounter a risky season of tough and misunderstood divine images and often bad doctrine. Depending on the church we attend, we may see a tortured Jesus on a cross, absorb a withering sermonized assault on our sinful behavior, or hear a mindless sales pitch about all that Jesus wants to do for “You!”

Why now? The world pays subtle and serious attention to Christians and Christianity at Easter. As a holiday, Christmas has so much fun wrapped up in it that the history-changing fact of the Christ child is culturally overrun by frivolity, gifts, commerce and folksy tradition. Easter, however – religiously – is all serious business.

On the one hand, Christian movies proliferate and promote the Easter season. On the other, the non-believing world ramps up its dissention and ridicule of all things sacred. Atheist groups advertise their “more-reasonable” worldview. The media seeks out and reports whatever bad or unsettling news it can find about church attendance, diminishing poll approval for God, imagined faith contradictions, whatever.

Believers at any level of knowledge know that Good Friday’s spectacle of Jesus dying on the Cross followed by His holy, bodily and spiritual resurrection on what we now call Easter Sunday is the solemn core of God’s loving promise to mankind: to come and get us in our sin and re-attach our hearts to His glory through His son Jesus.

My prayer for you this Easter week is that you hear an encouraging message that increases your trust in God’s promises and convinces you more of your place in God’s glory. These seeming abstractions that are the spiritual gifts of God are mysteries, yes, but truly tangible in our hearts and minds as peace, joy, rest, freedom, faith and hope.

The message of Jesus Christ is that we have less to worry about, not more.

God’s love is unconditional, and it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was attracted to Jesus by His love, not his own fear.

Labels: Christmas, Easter, glory, God's gifts, Holy Week, movies, Satan, unconditional love, worthiness | 0 comments

545 - Post-Truth Paralysis

544 - Command and Control

543 - Conditioned Reflex

542 - Opportunity of a Lifetime

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