Monday, August 12, 2019
665 - I'm Afraid Not
Spirituality Column #665
August 13, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
I’m Afraid Not
By Bob Walters
“Love means never
having to say you’re sorry.” – Ryan O’Neal, Love Story, 1970
“That’s the dumbest
thing I ever heard,” – Ryan O’Neal, What’s Up Doc? 1972
We Baby Boomers and The Greatest Generation before us
suffered the whiplash of sudden cultural self-awareness in the 1960s followed
by the grinding self-indulgence of the “Me Decade” in the 1970s. Christianity could barely catch its breath.
Not that I was a Christian at that point. Navigating my middle-teen years and the
bounty of intelligence, introspection, and worldly wisdom (cough, cough) I was to gain through college and into my early 20s
and subsequent career, I had drifted completely away from my religious youth as
an altar boy in the traditional Episcopal Church.
No, I didn’t know Jesus, but Father Cooper was a wonderful
and kind man, and I knew the old communion service by heart. It wasn’t until 30 years later that I came to
understand and appreciate the beauty and depth of those words I could recite at
14.
The difference later was that I came to know Jesus, the
Bible, and met so many Christians who were everything I didn’t think they’d be. They were smart, kind, creative, educated, funny,
generous, prosperous in their faith, highly productive in their vocations, and
unwavering in their belief that Jesus is the Christ, Son of the living God,
trusting Him as their Lord and Savior. I
learned all that in a church that reads the Bible.
None of that last paragraph would have made any sense to me
prior to 2001, at age 47, when I very suddenly “got it.” Jesus made sense and
the church came alive. Most importantly,
from an operational standpoint, the Bible mysteriously, magically, wonderfully
before my eyes turned from opaque gibberish into utter clarity. I saw God’s person, Jesus’s truth, humanity’s
great fall but great opportunity, and the excitement, adventure, and joy of so
much of life making an eternal kind of sense I had never seen before. Why, even my childhood church liturgy morphed
into a new creation of wonder.
All these lights coming on comprised the greatest gift
imaginable. They provided to me a
life-changing, mind-altering, priority-shifting, and truth-testing reboot not
just of worldview but of hope (eternal), understanding (divine), and love
(other-directed).
So, here’s my point, which despite the preceding
autobiography is really nothing about me.
It is everything about why and how we are encouraged to go to church, be
in Christ, seek comfort and wisdom in the Holy Spirit, discern God, and consume
our hearts with the grace, peace, trust, and compassion of Jesus. What I’m saying is:
Fear and guilt can never build a loving relationship; trust
and responsibility do. A self-focused life will imagine that “being loved”
means “doing whatever I want.” My own
glory requires, “I gotta be me!” Ergo,
one never has to say, “I’m sorry.” Rubbish.
A worldly, liberal church going overboard to make your
magnificent “You!” front-and-center-relevant misses the key message of Christ that
this life is about God’s glory more
than mine or yours. And a church holding everyone’s sin and stumbles in
constant reproach for the “price Jesus paid” and the “punishment we deserve” is
preaching worldly transaction and retribution instead of extolling God’s divine
grace in Jesus.
That’s when freedom and love die at the altar of control by
fear and guilt. Amen.
Satan applauds self-focus because it creates comparison, envy,
and division. Loving relationships grow
amid mercy, encouragement, and trust, not self-obsession.
Still think it is all about you? Sorry … I’m afraid not.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is not afraid of God; he is thankful God is there.
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