CommonChristianity: January 2018

Monday, January 29, 2018

585 - Dearly Beloved ...

5:00 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #585

January 30, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Dearly Beloved …

By Bob Walters

“Take my wife … please!” – Henny Youngman

Let’s look at a routine marriage relationship and hold it up to the contrasting light of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

These relationships – with one’s spouse and with one’s Lord – really should be pretty similar in nature; a hand-in-glove type fit. But so often these critical bonds are more like mismatched boxing gloves. Cultural and church assumptions for the one routinely conflict with the cultural and church teachings of the other. Taking the Bible’s cue, they should be more alike and work together; we’d all be happier.

If you ever wondered where the template for a proper “wedding ceremony” is in the Bible, don’t bother looking. It’s not there. Marriages and weddings are mentioned often in scripture, but it’s more like they are assumed and observed, not described and dissected. If you read closely, you’ll note biblical marriage is a game of one-on-one: a man and a woman – anything other than that is assumed and observed as sin. Case in point: Solomon’s 700 wives, etc., were not God’s sign of Solomon’s wealth and stature but a worldly sign of Solomon’s sin. The woman at the well? Not married. Sin.

Never mind for now what the Bible does and doesn’t say specifically about marriage and, less relevant here, sexuality. What the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us in scripture is how things will go best with humanity per God’s design in our relationships. “Love God and love others” isn’t just the commandment of Jesus; it is the best of all possible advice for 1) glorifying God and 2) peacefully getting along with others.

Christians regularly march to the tune of the Ten Commandments: Thou Shall and Thou Shalt Not. Fine; it’s good to have guardrails. But the temptation of fallen humans is to add and add and add commandments – rules – fashioning a list of holy fulfillment parameters. Then we judge each other, deceiving ourselves by mistaking self-righteous, sinful pride for holiness. That’s what the Pharisees did; Jesus hated it.

Any relationship that is a list of rules is a system, not love. Systems and programs, by design, create enforceable power structures and judgments. A love relationship is a very different animal; it seeks to forgive with selflessness, sacrifice, sharing, mercy, and intrinsic trust; all in humility and without guardrails. Lord knows, fallen humanity needs the guardrails; but absolute freedom is the key to absolute love.

And that is the model – the truth – of relationship with Jesus Christ.

Still, how many Christian pulpits preach the wrath of God, eternal condemnation, the shame of sin, the burden of obedience, fear, and three points of application til next week? Well … lots, because it creates a system of control. Suppose we came home at the end of each day to a spouse whose “love” modeled that pulpit? Yuck. A disaster.

No, I assume and trust my wife’s love, patience, mercy, forgiveness – i.e., grace – with no illusions about her capacity for wrath, either. So don’t cite a list of frightening rules and call it Godly relationship; give me the loving Jesus model I see at home.

Like Mr. Youngman said, “Take my wife.” And praise the Lord.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is no marriage expert, but trusts Jesus. Amen.

Labels: Henny Youngman, love, marriage, personal relationship, Solomon, Take my wife, Ten Commandments, Woman at the well, wrath | 0 comments

Monday, January 22, 2018

584 - Are You Sure About That?

5:00 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #584

January 23, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Are You Sure About That?

By Bob Walters

“Materialists and madmen never have doubts.” – G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy”

If only Chesterton could peek into this world of 2018 one hundred and ten years after he wrote those words. He’d find a world not so new, just one that proved his point.

Chesterton had a lot of good points in his 1908 classic, Orthodoxy, a relatively short book in which he describes his Christian faith. The book was gestated as a counterpoint to his earlier work, Heresy, which described what was wrong with other religions. Picking up a public challenge – Chesterton was a noted British philosopher, author, and columnist – he wrote Orthodoxy to say what was right with Christianity.

Orthodoxy – my paperback copy is 168 pages, well-worn, and heavily-underlined – is a book I pull off the shelf and re-read every couple of years. Chesterton’s understanding of Christ is certainly illuminating but his understanding of humanity truly masterful. And let’s be clear, it is important never to split those two up – Christ and humanity – because when you lose one you lose them both.

And in many modern precincts, we have lost them both, owing to the ferocious obeisance most of society assigns to the ascendant, virulent, absolutist-though-hollow virus of secular “faith” and its accommodation – mistake really – of personal “If it feels good, do it” freedom over right behavior, civil responsibility, and sacrificial love.

Christians are properly free to debate and even doubt many aspects of their Christian walk – especially the part that involves their own behavior, choices, love, obedience, discipline, etc. But it is not proper to doubt the righteous love of God, the truth of Jesus Christ, the accuracy of scripture, and the stirrings of the Holy Spirit.

A century ago Chesterton put it this way: “A man was meant to be doubtful about himself but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. … The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not doubt – the Divine Reason.”

Welcome to 2018, G.K. We still celebrate ourselves, not God.

Granted, we all struggle with exactly which spirit is stirring us. But the Christian spirit affirms loving others and sharing with others, hence the perpetual importance of church fellowship and also of evangelizing – sharing Jesus – with non-believers. We Christians are sinners like everybody else, but unlike everybody else our joy is in freely sharing Christ’s love with others we seek and encounter. God is glorified in our love, not in our mere freedom. If I love only myself and my freedom, I will likely harm others. It is using our freedom to love God and protect others that is the proof of Jesus Christ.

Chesterton quips that man is the only truly “wild beast” because he/she is the only animal capable of acting both rationally and against its own nature. Our truest, best nature, we discover – doubts and all – is best served within the love of God and the commandments of Jesus. The Bible is a comprehensive book on just that subject.

Sadly and revealingly, our growing secular culture tolerates no doubts about its artistic, moral, and sexual freedoms. But the truth is … it could use a few.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) isn’t reading Orthodoxy at the moment; just thinking about how very unalike were the weekend’s Right to Life and Women’s March rallies.

Labels: doubt, G.K. Chesterton, humanity, Orthodoxy book, Truth, wild beast | 0 comments

Monday, January 15, 2018

583 - When Truth Showed Up

5:43 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #583

January 16, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

When Truth Showed Up

By Bob Walters

“And the Word became flesh.” (John 1:14)

In ancient times, the Greeks were pretty smart. But for all their philosophy and politics they had no idea what the truth was that they were, presumably, looking for.

Today in Western culture, we enjoy unparalleled heights of education, technical innovation, communication, mobility, and social opportunity. We can access previously unimagined troves of facts and ideas; we have the science to unlock many of the universe’s secrets. But it seems hardly anyone is actually looking for truth.

Therefore it seems worth noting that between the ancient Greeks and today, Truth – in an objective, eternal and Capital T kind of way – showed up.

By “ancient Greeks” I mean the intellectual realm of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They were the Big Three, the sages of Hellenic thought generally regarded as the originators of what became Western Civilization. Their scholarship flourished during the fourth and fifth centuries BC, early in the “intertestamental” era between the end of the Hebrew writings of the Old Testament prophets and the incarnation of Jesus, a Jew, the Messiah/Christ, whose presence re-set and defined not merely our annual calendar but established the anchor of all truth for all time.

I notice a couple of things here. One, the ancient Greek philosophers had faint knowledge of, and certainly no intellectual interest in or dependence upon, the Hebrews or their God, scriptures, history, or culture. Though situated in the same general corner of the world, Greek society knew little of the Jews; a nether-regions nation with a much lower class of people and, as Paul tells us later, an “unknown” God (Acts 17:23).

Two, while the Greeks and then the Romans set the early Western worldly standards of power, conquest, government, philosophy and culture, it was out of the obscurity of Palestine that arose this unique Hebrew God of truth, light, and life – Christ Jesus, the son of God, fully human, fully God – to re-start the clock of history.

Jesus was the most unexpected, unusual, unheard of, unwelcomed, and unimaginable power and personality the world has ever known. He was clearly foreseen by Hebrew prophets, but when He arrived, almost nobody grasped His mission or appreciated his presence. To paraphrase 20^th century monk Philemon of St. Macarius: “Jesus is God’s Word, His divine truth, in the flesh. By his incarnation our Lord contradicted everything we imagined about God. He revealed His utter humility, used His power to preach, to heal the sick, and to restore the dead to life. His power was patience and persuasion: patience for us to grow up and mature; persuasion because coercion removes freedom, and without freedom there is no love.”

Philosophy is great at formulating points of view and considering their validity, while untethered human ingenuity provides vast ideas, technology, and comforts.

But it was Jesus who bestowed upon humanity the Truth: His sacrificial, gracious divine love, delivered with mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and utter trustworthiness.

Unless we are looking for Him, truth will forever elude us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thought it was a good week to discuss truth.

Labels: Ancient Greeks, Aristotle, Jesus as Truth, John 1:14, Philemon of St. Macarius, philosophy, Plato, Socrates, Truth, Western culture | 0 comments

Monday, January 8, 2018

582 - Optional Equipment

5:58 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #582

January 9, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Optional Equipment

By Bob Walters

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” – Jesus, John 14:6.

I don’t see a lot of options in this verse. I see freedom – come to the father or not; your call – but no suggestion of a by-way, other way, or highway. And no “my way.”

“Through me.” He says. No options. Jesus is it.

But, “it” for what? And what if I don’t want whatever “it” is? As a late-to-the-faith Christian myself, I spent 47 years of my life bouncing around the optional edges of “it,” er, Christianity. Yes, I went to church as a kid … all the time, in fact. But the world around me presented tons of options and distractions in my teen years, and then on into college, adulthood, career, marriage, parenting, successes, failures … life, in other words. But there was no church in those years. I was ideally set up for what qualifies as a razor thin, surface, secular, American cultural understanding of Christianity.

And in those terms of Jesus in the most limited sense, “it” is eternal life, heaven, and forgiveness. Oh, and going to church. Those four things are really all I knew about Jesus and probably cover the broadband understanding about Him of many non-Christians, “Nones,” disenchanted ex-Christians, agnostics, atheists, etc. They know a little about Jesus and likely have a dim view of more than a few Christians they know.

Why? Well, there is all that “judgment of sin.” You know, wrathful God, fires of hell, condemnation, etc. Christians are arrogant hypocrites; think they are better, etc.

Sheesh. No thanks. No fun there. What kind of valid options are those? Folks cannot really imagine eternal life. Most assume they’ll make it to heaven – if heaven’s not a myth – because “I’m a good person.” They don’t appreciate your tone when you suggest they need forgiveness. And they prefer Sundays on their own terms. “Why go to church and be judged? I have lots of other options. I just want to be happy.”

Sound like anyone you know?

Well, my young (to me anyway) late-to-the-faith friend Katie Crebo, a Carmel, Ind., attorney whose parents I’ve known for several decades, put the proper gloss on this topic recently, reviewing her own journey the past year. It included a fairly awful divorce but also a sincere surrender – finally – to Christ. Here’s what she noticed.

“So many people live and hold Jesus as an option, not a necessity, and that’s what I lived and held before I was saved. ‘Ah yes, there is Jesus,’ people say. ‘What a nice option to have. I will get to him when I can or really need to. No hurry.’”

Katie’s witness resonated truth; it was no fleeting cry of desperation after a tough year. She was paying attention, discovering the Spirit’s enduring revelation of what Jesus offers and actually is, and it’s the Gospel Gift A-List: divine relationship, sacrificial love, peace, truth, and adoption into God’s Kingdom sharing the glory of all creation.

Jesus is not some seasonal option; He is forever love showing a better way.

And out of necessity – and freedom – the only way. For all of us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) asks: What’s truly necessary in your life?

Labels: freedom, good person, Gospel Gift A-List, heaven, John 14:6, Katie Crebo, necessity, Nones, options | 0 comments

Monday, January 1, 2018

581 - Backward and Forward

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

Spirituality Column #581

January 2, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Backward and Forward

By Bob Walters

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” – Hebrews 13:8

Unlike Jesus, history is a remarkably unstable thing … its facts and truth so often becoming manipulated slaves of current cultural fashion.

Whether it is the sin of presentism – judging the customs and constructs of the past by the political correctness of today – or the mischief of disingenuous embellishment – altering yesterday’s known facts to press a trendy agenda coyly presented as a “settled narrative” instead of a case for civil discussion – both smack of dishonesty.

Truly, the political, social, economic, scientific, educational, entertainment, religious, or any other sphere of human endeavor exists today in a light different than ever before. Communication technology has made it as fast and easy to promulgate bad ideas as it is to share good ideas. The difference in the dissemination dynamic – of the bad or good, I mean – historically remains about the same. Unhappy people tend to play at a louder volume in the aggressive key of outrage, while happier folks tend to avoid rocking the boat. Truth is less important than timbre; facts subordinate to agenda.

I’ve never read of a rebellion started by passivity, and know of only one that ever started with pure humility. We’ll get to that in a minute but first, “history” is often “wrong.”

My wife and I have been smitten by the current Netflix series “The Crown” about the reign of Queen Elizabeth and 20^th century Britain. Meticulous in its setting details, well written, and beautifully shot, its “poetic license” miscasts several historical character relationships. The recent movie “The Post” recounts the liberal Washington Post newspaper’s coverage of real 1960s government lies, the Pentagon Papers, and the Vietnam War, but a reflexive, decades-old real-life leftist media/entertainment bias requires attacking Richard Nixon … for events that occurred before his presidency.

For those now fashionably disaffected by the actual history of the United States – a disaffection plainly infecting so many modern academicians – socialist Howard Zinn’s broadly-distributed U.S. history book is a weapon of mass mis-instruction so fashionable for the globalist, anti-patriot, open-immigration, “America is Unexceptional” left.

Another glaring media weak spot is polling, posing insecure and often spurious narratives of “truth” fashioned from fallen human opinion. People demand truth! But I think not really. What I realize, truthfully, is that neither my “right”-trending opinions nor another’s “left”-trending opinions alter one iota of the only real truth that’s ever existed.

And that secure, humble, final truth – causing that humble rebellion mentioned above that began two thousand years ago – is the truth of Jesus Christ because it is the righteous, final truth of God. Not “my” truth, “your” truth, historical interpretation, poetic license, political spin, or polling data. Jesus is the singular truth of God, forever.

I’m OK knowing I’ve gotten so many things wrong in the past – everybody has – and I pray for discernment sorting today’s mistaken narratives. Truth in Jesus is already with us, stays with us, and guides us if faith in Jesus lights our path to the future.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) appreciates truth that leads us forward without tying us to or confusing us about yesterday. Happy 2018! May it be a year of strong, joyful, true, and forever faith.

Labels: Hebrews 13:8, Howard Zinn, opinion polling, past and future, Queen Elizabeth, Richard Nixon, right and left, The Crown on Netflix, The Post movie, Truth, U.S. history | 0 comments

585 - Dearly Beloved ...

584 - Are You Sure About That?

583 - When Truth Showed Up

582 - Optional Equipment

581 - Backward and Forward

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