CommonChristianity: April 2018

Monday, April 30, 2018

598 - Old School

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

Spirituality Column #598

May 1, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Old School

By Bob Walters

Learning from the past, which is important, doesn’t mean living in the past, which is devastating. Hope’s only direction is forward.

Humanity has a long, long written history of what works and what doesn’t: what thinkers have thought, dreamers have dreamt, schemers have schemed, statesmen have wrought, and lovers have loved. The last couple of centuries have seen astounding new technology provide marvelous physical enhancements to the human experience while humanity’s broad contemporary cultural thought-life and moral composure, perhaps now more than ever, has stumbled dangerously and sadly off the well-documented path of truth and righteousness. Forward, suddenly, looks backwards.

The document I’m thinking of, as you might expect, is the Bible, yet there is so much more to a hopeful, trusting, and morally assured human spirit. The Bible is not an end in itself; the Bible is the Holy Spirit’s gift to all humanity shining light on the path of God’s truth and righteousness embodied in Jesus Christ. My view of the critical contemporary cultural mistake being made all around us is that somehow all this technology has made people think that human truth has changed. It hasn’t.

Our hearts remain sinful, our eyes lustful, and our passions self-directed while our minds perpetually search for meaning, our souls yearn for peace, and our spirits hunger for purpose. Technology provides comfort but not coherence, and therein lies the confusion of our time: we do so much and understand so little.

My own intellectual comfort comes not so much from consuming cultural commentary (of some value) and certainly not from watching mainstream news (of no value), but from knowing that smart humans have pondered the classic themes of humanity for thousands of years. Love, power, survival, politics, philosophy, theology, sexuality, societies, family, clans, nations, warfare, arts, religion … feel free to add to the list … all have massive, historical literary, deliberative, practical, and trustworthy commentary. Yet how often the earnest student asks: “Why study the old stuff?”

My answer is, “Because there is truth in the old stuff.” Go anywhere you want in literature: the Old Testament, Greek-Roman philosophers, Jesus, the New Testament, the Church fathers, Cicero, Charlemagne, or Shakespeare. There is copious advice on the right and wrong ways morally as it regards humanity and God’s promise in Christ.

It is telling, to me, that faith and philosophy faltered at roughly the same time Darwin’s theory of Evolution and scientific advancement and technological development became ascendant. Christianity has taken a horrible hit in culture, probably because it contains the ultimate inconvenient truth which is that God is sovereign, righteous, and active in this world that humans, in recent times, believe they can run on their own.

When the teacher of Ecclesiastes – the wise Solomon – says repeatedly, “Everything is meaningless,” he is referring to errant human aspiration, accomplishment, and arrogance that believes it supersedes God’s wisdom, glory, and righteousness.

It is foolish to think we need to “start over” intellectually and spiritually with every generation; it is wise to use all that God has given us before to move ever toward Him.

Truly, “nothing is new under the sun.” Solomon knew that 3,000 years ago.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reminds all that we have not yet sinned tomorrow.

Labels: classic literature, Ecclesiastes, everything is meaningless, Evolution, humanity, learning, morality, philosophy, Truth | 0 comments

Monday, April 23, 2018

597 - A Little Bit Benedict

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

Spirituality Column #597

April 24, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

A Little Bit Benedict

By Bob Walters

Wincingly observing the daily, ongoing train wreck that is the American news media makes me especially glad I have a Bible, a church, and a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jesus is my true north; and the media compass is spinning out of control.

This isn’t to fecklessly complain or whine about the absence of Christian truth, hope, promise, piety, and decency in the current mainline, cultural narrative – though it truly is not there – it is to point out that no voice in the breezy, intellectually lockstep commercial realm of mainstream public information processing and delivery (i.e. journalism) can or wants to communicate Christian, biblical, Jesus ideals effectively.

Why? Because human truth is all Jesus; and modern journalism is all politics.

These days, it seems, never the twain shall meet. What a shame.

It is a soul-stealing crisis that a secular “there is no God” baseline governs our American news and political media narrative. Freedom “yes,” but God “no.” I don’t know how anyone can encounter the miracles of freedom embodied in the U.S. Constitution and not grasp God’s very special providence in ascribing humanity’s natural rights, each person’s divine liberties and responsibilities, and the ensuing nation it conceived.

Oh wait … there is a discussable “God,” just not a very powerful one. God becomes – in these times of human arrogance – a “god” who needs to be confined to terms that satisfy cultural fashion, political expedience, and moral fluidity. This certainly isn’t the God of ultimate love, not Jesus Christ with all authority over creation, wisdom, truth, and life, and not the Holy Spirit offering divine light and animating every spirit.

Instead what we witness in the general media’s public square is a conditional god desperately requiring doctrinal, politically minimizing labels like “evangelical” because, I can imagine the media thinking, “I can’t argue with Jesus but I can sure besmirch an evangelical.” Talk about identity politics run amok. The media is using every club in its bag to insert a God it doesn’t understand into a situation it doesn’t like.

And what it likes less then God, at the moment, is President Donald J. Trump.

Specifically we see that now even Christianity – well, American political Christian thought leadership – is starting to consume its own franchise, like a snake eating its tail, by focusing not on the truth of the biblical Jesus but on the efficacy of joining the secular media in expressing abject horror at the moral abjurations of the U.S. president. They had a serious conference on this recently at august Wheaton College. Really.

Pompous Christian thinkers – and there are plenty of them – rush to scourge, as one wrote in a recent mainstream column, “the naiveté and self-sabotage of the Trump evangelicals.” But the “thinkers” spurn their own proper focus on the centrality of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and promise of sufficiency in Him alone; not politics.

I want to shake them and say, “It’s not about Trump! Stick to Jesus!”

The “Benedict Option,” referred to in the title, is to pull away from society and live in monastic-ish seclusion. Nah, I love too many people and want to share Jesus with too many people to simply shun society. Instead, my “little bit of Benedict” is to be very, very selective when I read anything about Jesus or evangelicals in the general media.

I won’t disengage, but generally speaking, I know the media is not on my side.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is a Christian, not a Trump evangelical.

Labels: Benedict Option, Christian thinkers, culture, identity politics, media, Trump evangelicals, Wheaton College | 0 comments

Monday, April 16, 2018

596 - 'Our' of Power

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

Spirituality Column #596

April 17, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

‘Our’ of Power

By Bob Walters

“… thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” – Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:57

For each of us who claims Christ as our personal, eternal savior, we must never forget that Christianity is the ultimate team effort.

Jesus is our savior. One’s faith is dead if Jesus is considered only “my” savior.

I thought I was onto something new recently as I was nearing the end of reading Kenneth Bailey’s wonderful book “Paul through Mediterranean Eyes.” It is a brilliant dissection of the literary and rhetorical construction of 1 Corinthians and how it is actually five exquisitely constructed separate essays made up of individual homilies. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians with metaphors that would relate to the Corinthians (e.g. mountains, military, sports, labor) and with philosophical and rhetorical constructions that would resonate with both Greek and Hebrew intellectuals. There is a lot more there, I discovered, than first meets the eye. Bailey offers astounding insights.

Anyway, the final line in Paul’s essay on the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-57), is the one noted above: “our Lord Jesus Christ.” Bailey’s commentary on that particular line keyed not on thankfulness and victory, but on the word “our.” When “our” faith, together, is focused not on me but on “our Lord Jesus Christ,” most of the problems of any church – such as the multi-cultural and doctrinally competing quagmire in the Corinthian church that Paul was addressing – go away. How? Because of “our.”

Says Bailey: “If Paul’s readers can reflect deeply on those four words [our Lord Jesus Christ], all will be well. … Jesus is Lord in a way Caesar is not. Let the Romans and Greeks take note. Jesus is the Messiah (Christ); let the Jews take note. He is our Lord, not my Lord. Together we have one Lord and one Father.”

Bailey made such a powerful case for the shared power we have in “our” God through Christ that the idea popped into my head about how many New Testament prayer pronouns are in the plural (“Our Father,” “deliver us,” “give us,” etc.) while so many Old Testament prayer pronouns are in the singular (“The Lord is my shepherd,” “Create in me a pure heart,” “expand my territory,” “the Lord is my strength,” etc.).

My runaway brain fast-forwarded to the community of the Father-Son-Spirit Trinity of the New Testament vs. the more singular-appearing God of the Old. And isn’t it interesting how Jesus uniquely provides us a personal relationship with God in faith while the Old Testament covenant is with all of Israel in common obedience to the Law? Had I landed on the cusp of some new plural vs. singular prayerful covenantal insight?

Visiting with my friend and mentor theologian George Bebawi last week, He said no, that’s nothing new and really not even a “thing.” He pointed out that most of the Psalms reflect personal experiences and I was seeing things that weren’t really there.

Much, I would suppose, as did many in the Corinthian church. Mea Culpa.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) appreciates the power of our faith together, the correction of the occasional comparatively neophyte error (mine), and prays for George who is in the hospital sorting out a chronic heart/kidney ailment.

Labels: 1 Corinthians 15:57, communion, George Bebawi, Kenneth Bailey, Paul through Mediterranean Eyes, prayer, pronouns | 0 comments

Monday, April 9, 2018

595 - Easy to be Hard

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

Spirituality Column #595

April 10, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Easy to be Hard

By Bob Walters

“La science qui rapproche l’homme de Dieu.” (“Science brings men nearer to God.”) – Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

I like this quote not because it is the best thing anyone ever said about science or God – it’s not – but because it is so on-point in today’s off-point, build-your-own-truth, over-thinking-“reality” and under-selling-Jesus cultural atmosphere.

Christians know that it is not science, a “what,” but Jesus, a “Who” – a proper person – Who ordains reality and brings us closer to God. That’s because Jesus is God, Who became a man, God’s Son, Who in God’s loving grace restored fallen humanity to God’s Kingdom, and upon Whom God bestowed all creative authority over all creation.

That’s reality; that’s Who Jesus is. Jesus is why we are already nearer to God.

At the same time, science reveals God and I thank Him for Louis Pasteur’s (and countless others’) many medical, scientific, and technological discoveries. I especially appreciate Pasteur’s sincere and thoroughly appropriate nod to the deity Who so much of modern scientific, social, political, philosophical, and media realms pretend doesn’t exist. It’s as though folks think it’s a personal insult that God is smarter than they are.

Tracking the past 300 years or so, it’s easy to see that many do think they are smarter than God when Jesus, truly, is the good, divine light of discovery and wisdom.

The Enlightenment – the enduring philosophical movement of the 1700s and 1800s – was a whole lot less about the “light” of Jesus and much more about the “dark” of the mind of man. Lots of great stuff and lots of terrible stuff happened during and as a result of Enlightenment thinking. I would list the American government and medical, communication, construction, and transportation technologies among the great stuff. I would list Marxist governments and the errant but undeniable cultural diminishment of Christian moral authority among the terrible stuff. Feel free to make your own list.

The Enlightenment Now, a new book we mentioned a couple months ago, is a cheerfully vacant release by Harvard atheist and psychologist Steven Pinker. His view is that things really are quite good these days, culturally and scientifically, because the Enlightenment has done so much to rid humanity of the intellectual rot of religious myths and impinge the faithful pursuit of Jesus Christ. Hence, praises Pinker, it “gave us the Modern World.” All, I suppose, for the ultimate purpose of … nothing in particular.

There is some accuracy to Pinker’s observation if not depth to his end-game.

Israeli biblical scholar Yoram Hazony, commenting on Pinker’s book in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, noted that Enlightenment advocates like Pinker “oversell the benefits of unfettered reason.” Pinker, Hazony notes, praises worldly Enlightenment philosophers (e.g. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche) who “replaced dogma, tradition and authority (i.e. God) with reason, debate and institutions of truth-seeking.”

I prefer Jesus in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Now that is truly God, up close and personal.

Beware philosophy that – and a philosopher who – makes truth harder than it is.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows that life’s biggest truth and easiest yoke is faith in Jesus Christ. Another big truth is that Bob was terrible at French in college.

Labels: Enlightenment, John 14:6, Louis Pasteur, nearer to God, science, smarter than God, Steven Pinker, The Enlightenment Now, Yoram Hazony | 0 comments

Monday, April 2, 2018

594 - Measuring Stick

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

Spirituality Column #594

April 3, 2018

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Measuring Stick

By Bob Walters

Americans culturally are an especially competitive and commercial lot.

We The People want a rulebook, a scorecard, and referees in order to know how we rate. And when it comes to the action-reaction marketplace dynamic of reward and punishment, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, all the world's a trade.

Unfortunately and errantly, that's often how people go to church. Christ freely offers to us grace, love, freedom, hope, and truth. We don't have to compete, we don't have to "keep track," and we don't have to toe a line; we needn't fear the scorekeeper. But we take what we learn in secular culture and apply it to the "religious experience" and clog up our divine joy in Christ with the transactional rubbish of this world.

In that sense, "Christians" are no different from those who ignore God; who also are competitive and commercial - usually with a different moral playbook and notion of grace - and still striving against life's measuring stick. It is a peculiarly American trait.

So … in this corner we have love, Jesus, and the Kingdom of God, and in that corner we have Satan’s Hell of eternal damnation. Reward over here; punishment over there. Faith, mercy and joy in this corner; the blind despair of “I don’t care” in that one.

We ask competitively “Where do I stand?” instead of “How do I stand with Jesus.” We fear “punishment” but sincerely wonder, “Do I really need to worry about Hell?”

That’s our culture: “What do I have to do?” and “What can I get away with?” So it is “Whew!” though false news when clergy – whether it be Rob Bell, an Anglican Bishop, or the Pope in Rome just before Easter – provides a notion that Hell does not exist.

I’ve grown in my faith to the point that I don’t look at Hell so much as the justice of punishment, but more like it’s a highly predictable finish for those absent God. What is Hell like, exactly? I don’t know, but the Bible convinces me I don’t want to find out. And who goes there, exactly? Honestly, I’m not sure about that one either. But I surmise persons who spend their lives rejecting Jesus, insulting God’s plan, denying the Holy Spirit, and ignoring the opportunities of faith, the Bible, and the consequences of sin, spend no serious time in this life believing in Heaven or Hell anyway.

Simply put: Without Jesus, our sin – and we all have it – leads us to Hell. Of that I am certain. But it’s like the guy who prefers jail to freedom; is Hell really “punishment” if one wants nothing to do with God? And why debate “punishment” at all? The Bible’s language regarding the Cross of Christ is about defeating sin and death in love and obedient sacrifice. Punishment, depending on the translation, is barely mentioned.

Still, if I want to control you I’ll scare you by preaching “punishment for sin.” Whereas if I love you, I’ll preach God’s love, the truth of His righteousness, the sacrifice of Jesus, the miracle of His resurrection, the joy and greatness of the Kingdom of God, and the freedom of this life when our hope and trust points to eternal life.

God’s righteousness is unassailable, and that’s all I really need to know about Hell. It is my comfort, though, to know in Christ I don’t have to worry about it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes sin, Satan and Hell all exist, and that bad preachers and the secular marketplace work like crazy to make us think they don’t.

Labels: American culture, competition, heaven, Hell, keeping score, no Hell, punishment, righteousness, Rob Bell, the Pope | 0 comments

598 - Old School

597 - A Little Bit Benedict

596 - 'Our' of Power

595 - Easy to be Hard

594 - Measuring Stick

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