Monday, January 28, 2019

637 - A Little Tiny Box


Spirituality Column #637
January 29, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Christianity

A Little Tiny Box
By Bob Walters

“The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.” – G.K. Chesterton

To anyone with even the barest inkling of belief in the existence of God, it’s highly unlikely that that person’s mind thinks of God as something small.

Confusing and overrated maybe, but not small.

As one’s faith grows, so does one’s perspective of God.  The crowd that says “There is no God!” or assumes that the pursuit of science, logic, and evolution somehow replaces the “myth” of God, brings no one any closer to joy, humanity, or understanding.  That’s because man himself cannot create eternal purpose; God does.  Human disbelief in God, or thinking God can be “replaced” by human cleverness may create a temporal “How” but it falls short of and even ignores humanity’s greatest question.  “Why?”

Likewise, the person who pursues faith only for the attainment of compensation or to avoid punishment – you know: make it to heaven or to avoid hell – is trading-in the enormity of God’s love and creativity for the smallness of a scorecard and a transaction.  Heaven and hell are destinations, not purpose.  Love, I believe, is God’s purpose.

God’s mysteries abound, no doubt.  To me, that’s the fun of it: that there is so much to learn, to think about, to feel, to believe, to hope, to trust, and to love. Even when the answer of a situation appears to be, “There is no answer,” that should teach us something about whether we are asking the right questions or pursuing the right courses of action.  It’s always a mistake to answer, “God doesn’t understand.”

But that’s often the human default position.  Instead of trusting God - who shared not only His laws with the Jews but then sent Jesus to reveal His love and purpose for all humanity – man goes rogue.  We tend to insert our own truths – smallish opinions – and ideas of “what’s fair” into our perception of God. Why do we shrink our existence like that?  It is only in divine truth and divine righteousness that we will discover the purpose of God, and that’s bigger than anything humans can manufacture or conceive.

So what is God’s purpose for us?  Well, His commands through Jesus are to love God and to love others as ourselves.  I used to think that meant our only purpose in life is to glorify God, accomplished by believing in Jesus and selflessly helping others.

Pretty good, I thought, but my friend George Bebawi – I write about Him all the time – believes it’s bigger than that. “If your only purpose is to glorify God, then you are merely a tool of God; that is the Augustinian view,” George said.  “The Alexandrian view (Origen of Alexandria, second century AD) is that God created us in His image to be free, and to love and enjoy each other in the same way the community of the trinity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – love and enjoy each other.” That, friends, is a good purpose.

We are enduring, right now, a season of extreme and difficult-to-watch cultural chaos where the small and shortsighted ways of man seek to overturn the infinite, loving truths of God.  They can’t, but it’s scary and disgusting to witness.  I am sure that it is man’s arrogance that properly occupies a tiny little box of purpose, and God’s righteous magnificence that opens the expanse of the heavens to the eternal truth of His love.

Christians need to think big.  It is the world Satan is trying to make small.

Walters (Rlwcom@aol.com) keeps going back to how man blocks out the big riddles of God by praising the small solutions of man. Talk about “non-sustainable.”

Monday, January 21, 2019

636 - Finding a Foothold

Spirituality Column #636
January 22, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Christianity

Finding a Foothold
By Bob Walters

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” – Jesus, John 14:27

Any time you need Jesus to “talk you down” – to calm you, restore you, encourage you, distract you – you can do a lot worse than read John 14, all of it.

At the Last Supper after washing their feet, Jesus in Chapter 13 has just told the disciples, basically, that He will be betrayed and denied by them, is leaving them and going to a place they cannot go, commands them to love one another, and expresses doubt whether they will “really” lay down their lives for Him.  How did they feel?

Scared, perplexed, perhaps angry, it had already been a wild week: Jesus arriving in Jerusalem to hosannas followed by teaching, trouble, turmoil, and looming disaster. The disciples knew of the mobs turned against Jesus, certainly sensed “something up” with the Pharisees’ plot to have Him killed, and are now, evidently, being both dissed and soon-deserted by their teacher they still don’t entirely understand.

Nothing made sense.  I’d surmise that all of us have had those life moments-and-seasons of struggling to find a foothold and catch a breath of calming air.  What was different for the disciples was that they were having dinner with the guy and had been physically with him for nearly three years.  They knew Him, saw His miracles, watched his interactions, heard His teaching … and nearing the end - crucifixion awaits - they still didn’t get Him.

Fast-forward to our experience today.  Thank God for the Bible, churches, preachers, Christian fellowship, and the Holy Spirit, so that the knowledge, faith, and hope the disciples had so much difficulty discerning is explained to us in pretty plain language. Jesus is the Son of God, He is God, He came in truth to fulfill the Law and the words of the prophets, and to redeem all humanity, in freedom and love, back to God.

It still doesn’t make sense to a lot of people but when it does make sense – when we do live our lives in relationship with, with faith in, and in the truth of Jesus Christ – our hope can be renewed every morning because our walk with Jesus is renewed every morning.  The person of Jesus is our Sabbath, and His peace is with us always if we’ll sincerely connect to it in faith.  We must rest in our trust rather than squirm in our doubt.

That, to me, is where John 14 comes in.  It begins, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.”  Jesus was saying this to people who knew Him, not to people who didn’t know Him.  As Christians today we know Jesus in faith, we know Him in mystical but sure ways we cannot fully describe to others – though we try – and when we ourselves need a foothold to remind us of who Jesus is and what He is doing, John 14 in the light of the Holy Spirit provides solid pavement.

What we forget, and what Satan obviously prefers we would forget, is that God is righteous all the time, Jesus is truth all the time, and the Spirit is with us all the time. John 14 is a gracious, calming, and true reminder that amid the chaos, uncertainty, and dissension of a fallen world, our hearts can find peace all the time, any time … in Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) “came from the other side” so to speak and so understands how stupefying John 14 can be to a non-believer.  Now, he gets it.
Monday, January 14, 2019

635 - Let's Be Friends

Spirituality Column #635
January 15, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Let’s Be Friends
By Bob Walters

The Bible has plenty to say about friends and enemies, and I think the manner in which we choose both says a lot about our attitude – and happiness – in this life.

Simply and most likely, we’ll be friends with that which we love and makes us feel secure, and enemies of that which we hate and makes us feel insecure. And here’s a news flash … no two of us have the exact same formula or priorities in establishing this life-defining, decision-making dynamic but many of us, over time, develop the same incredibly effective starting point: Jesus Christ – Lord, friend, shepherd, and God.

That’s certainly not where I started and not where I spent most of my life, which has been predominantly rich with great friends and relationships and occasionally burdened with a few clunkers.  But it was just the most surprising thing a few years back when, sitting in church for the first time as an adult – a middle-aged adult at that – with no expectations whatsoever, and realized right then and there that Jesus had taken a seat right next to me.  And I – however it happens - knew it was time to become friends.

Thankfully at that particular time, I knew absolutely nothing about the Bible except that I didn’t understand it.  I had no theological training whatsoever.  I had only the barest comprehension of doctrine and church history from what I remembered from being an altar boy in the Episcopal Church as a kid.  I had the Father-Son-Holy Spirit basics: God created the world, Jesus His Son died on the Cross and was Resurrected – which somehow resulted in my being forgiven for sins to which I was reluctant to admit because I “wasn’t a bad person “– and this Holy Spirit was a third, mysterious part of the Trinity and had something to do with prayer.  The Bible?  Just an old book; no big deal.

That was Bob vis-à-vis God in 2001: a blank slate, with a new friend, Jesus.

And since then I’ve never stopped learning.  In my case I could tell Jesus was a true friend because He brought, almost immediately, the most amazing parade of Christian mentors and church opportunities into my life, and it has continued ever since.  Friendships with devout Christians developed.  Importantly, the Spirit turned on the lights when it came to Bible study.  Within a couple of months I was baptized; within a year of that, I had read the entire Bible.  What ensued was a wonderful education in knowing Him and learning faithful Christian theology, doctrine, and history.  There was growth, change, and so many new friends – none more evident than Jesus Himself.

So call me crazy for saying this, but it’s these friendships with Him and through Him that I treasure above all.  It’s greater to me than the promise of salvation, more than eternal life, more than the prospect of whatever it is that’s going to happen in Heaven, more than the forgiveness of my sins.  I’m glad all that happened/will happen, but it is the faith in Jesus that I possess right now and somehow, mysteriously, understand, that lights my path.  The “next life” stuff still coming is great, I “get” it, but marvelous things – wide-open and huge things – attend a deep friendship with Jesus Christ … today.

That’s my attitude; it’s what I love, makes me secure, and brings a smile.  This new friend provided a new starting point, a stirred soul, and a finish worth shooting for.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) doesn’t keep a running salvational score, but prefers the peace of friends over the chaos of enemies and figures God – who is Love – sent Jesus to accomplish exactly that.
Monday, January 7, 2019

634 - Friendly Fire


Spirituality Column #634 
January 8, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Friendly Fire
By Bob Walters

“We as sinners are God’s enemies, but Jesus “fixes” that with His love.” – me, “Comfort and Joy” column #632, Dec. 25, 2018

I wrote that sentence a couple of weeks ago in the Christmas Day column and I’d imagine most folks agreed with it.  My friend Bob Farr didn’t.

The part about Jesus “fixing” our sin with his love was OK; all good there.  It was the part about our being “God’s enemies.”  Bob wrote back almost immediately, “Got a couple issues with this one, brother.  … ‘We as sinners are God’s enemies.’ [?] Was the prodigal son his father’s enemy?  Is the lost sheep the enemy of the shepherd?”

Point goes to Mr. Farr, who always gets me thinking, and here’s what I thought: Bob is exactly right and we do this to ourselves all the time.  It’s a mistake to think we are God’s enemy and a sneaky but self-evidently errant crux of most modern western Christian culture and teaching.  We think our sin makes us God’s enemy when it was our sin that revealed God’s greatest love – His plan for our salvation in Jesus Christ.  We imagine God looks at us the same way we look at Him and at each other.  Oh my … is that ever wrong; God’s divine grace through Jesus is our only weapon against Satan’s rot and humanity’s fallenness.  See Isaiah 55 about “God’s thoughts and ways.”

We are more our own enemy than we are God’s enemy.  Instead of nurturing a relationship of love and confidence, much modern Christian culture teaches and encourages us to couch our relationship with God in negative terms of sin, conflict, debt, shame, guilt, fear, payment, separation, condemnation, “my life’s a mess,” and other ways that ring nearly opposite of what the Bible actually tells us about that relationship.  Most notably I’d go with “God so loved the world …” (John 3:16-17) and “… it is God who justifies … nothing can separate us from the love of God.” (Romans 8:33-35)

True, we are commanded to “love our enemies” so maybe we can get half a point by saying “God loves us even if we are His enemies,” but the whole point is God’s free and unwavering love and grace, not man’s Satan-stirred conflict and condemnation.

Still, why is it that modern Christian doctrinal exposition is so focused on negative stimuli?  Certainly, on the one hand, our sin and fallenness mess up our relationships not only with God but pretty much everyone and everything around us.  I can’t think of one thing my sin improves.  But on the other hand – and this may be difficult to read but I believe it’s true – guilt facilitates earthly control of us whether it be by other people, the church, leaders, family, co-workers, or whomever.  Freedom in Christ demands love, not guilt; and O, how our own guilt allows legalistic leverage to be brought against us.

It’s interesting to note that in the Bible the captives who truly fear Jesus are all demons.  I surmise that’s because they truly understand His righteousness where most people – even many professing Christians – hedge their bet about whether God is right all the time.  We’ll insist, “A good God wouldn’t allow …” this or that, because we think we are in a better position than God to judge and assume the posture of an enemy. That’s a mistake.  God is trying to help us, yes, but His righteousness is unyielding.

The Prodigal Son couldn’t imagine such love, and the lost sheep was too stupid to know it was lost. I am glad to know Jesus is there when I make those same mistakes.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) welcomes Mr. Farr’s critiques.  They come often.

Archives

Labels

Enter your email address to get updated about new content:

Popular Posts