Monday, June 29, 2020

711 - Gimme Shelter, Part 3

4:55 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #711
June 30, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Gimme Shelter, Part 3
By Bob Walters

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty … ‘The Lord is my refuge’…” Psalms 91:1,9

Earlier this month I enjoyed reading the book Jesus Skeptic by John S. Dickerson about how “big” Jesus is.

Dickerson, pastor at Connection Point Christian Church west of Indianapolis, was an investigative journalist who, ala Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ, et all), turned his reporter’s skills not so much onto whether Jesus is real – He is – but on whether Jesus is the most important, influential, and consequential figure in all human history.

Knowing little about Dickerson when I first picked up the book (didn’t know he was a pastor), his beliefs were not immediately obvious.  So I looked toward the book’s last section wondering if I would be reading a believer’s account or more of an atheist / skeptic’s polemic.  Relieved to see that Dickerson had the theology right, I could relax and enjoy the book rather than debating in my head everything he said.  I do that.

I thought Dickerson admirably proved his case for the breadth, spread, and enormity of Jesus’s impact on humanity and history regardless whether one is a Christian, of another faith, or really not a believer of anything at all.  It reminded me of the Rick Mears tribute story I started the series with (#709) about what it felt like to encounter in my working life the feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself.  Then last week in Part 2 we went into some detail about the mistake of making Jesus and Christianity “all about me” when in truth and practice, it must be all about Him.

Our human purpose – the lone “life’s purpose” that makes ultimate, final, and eternal sense – is the combined ethic of glorifying God by believing in Jesus and loving others.  That is the Great Big Thing that shelters us and is our refuge if we just accept it.

We are free – it is a God-ordained, Jesus-proven fact of our existence – to create and pursue for better or worse any earthly, self-directed “purpose” to which our desires, fears, greed, pride, passions, strengths, weaknesses, appetites, and aspirations may lead us.

Why freedom?  Because love cannot be coerced.  If we are to love God and others fully in the Holy Spirit, we must discover in our own heart the freedom to love and then cleave to it in our own faith, hope, and actions. That’s the part that’s “all about me,” but also about something way, way bigger than me because it embraces the Holy Spirit.

This divine freedom and bigness is a fairly simple truth with enormously complex implications: What shall I do with my life?  How shall I love?  How shall I be brave in the storm?  What must I give to – and demand from – humanity?  What is God’s will for me?

This challenging age – every age – includes the inner and eternal shelter and refuge of God’s righteousness, truth, trustworthiness, and faithfulness.  In this week when we celebrate God’s freedoms bestowed on this nation two centuries ago in a brilliant statement of independence from man’s tyranny, let us neither assert, cheer, nor fear the many snares attendant to our present time.

With courage and God’s shelter, let us cherish the bigness of trusting Christ.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays Psalm 91 as defense against demons. Amen.
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Monday, June 22, 2020

710 - Gimme Shelter, Part 2

5:30 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #710
June 23, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Gimme Shelter, Part 2
By Bob Walters

“I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’” – Psalm 91:2

If I have a constant pick with modern-day Christianity it is how much of what passes for doctrinal presentation about God’s goodness, Jesus’s truth, and especially the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, involves the secular question, “What do I get in the deal?”

Whether the latest Christian come-on is …

- an evangelical sales pitch – “Your sins are forgiven!  Jesus loves you!  You go to Heaven!  You get rewards!  You avoid Hell!” (all true, by the way),

- a holistic self-help proposition – “You’re a mess!  You’re scared!  You’re guilty!  You’re disorganized!  You’re a failure!  Jesus will make it better!” (nefarious, I think),

- a health/wealth/success negotiation – “Get right with God and your problems will go away!” (not even close),

- or any other “What’s in it for me?” scheme of personal enrichment, Christianity will never work properly if I’m more worried about what I get than what I give.

The love of God and our salvation in Christ combine to be life’s essential truth of being.  That’s why we are here.  That’s how we can live.  That’s where we can go.  That’s our peace, our purpose, and our eternal joy.  Our faith and trust should be outwardly manifested in praise of God’s glory, not inwardly directed toward worldly comforts and self-fulfillment.  
Twenty-one times Jesus said, “Follow me.” Never once, “Don’t worry, be happy.”

What we have in Jesus is a calling – an announced opportunity really – to let go of life’s secular pitches, propositions, and negotiations and instead cleave to His “truth.”  Which truth?  That Jesus brought to humanity the reality of God, His example of faith and obedience, and the initiation of God’s kingdom on Earth.  It’s a work in progress, for sure, but Christ shows us the proper direction and application of our faith and praise.

Often our “refuges” and “fortresses” – things upon which we rely, we worship, and vigorously defend – are the passing fancies of societal passion.  Our time is replete with political intrigue, media prevarications, social upheaval, uncivil riots, idolatrous sports loyalties, entertainment insanity, scientific disingenuousness, and a pandemic nobody seems to coherently understand.

We pray – fruitlessly, really – for “our Jesus” to make “our problems” go away on “our terms.”  What actually works is to live with God through Christ in perpetual trust.  God’s righteousness, our freedom, and humanity’s fallenness combine for a relational dynamic that creates for us great exposure and discomfort.  Our shelter in God is not a pop-up umbrella; our refuge in Him must be a way of life – the life of Jesus.

I think of Jesus calming storms in the Bible – asleep in the boat amid panicked disciples (Matthew 8), and then walking on water toward panicked disciples (Matthew 14).  In the first case Jesus chides, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” (Matthew 14:26), then calms the waters.  In the second, Jesus comforts, “Take courage!  It is I. Don’t be afraid.” (Matthew 14:27), and the waters go calm … and Peter nearly drowns.

Yes, Jesus can calm storms as we panic; He chides, He comforts.  But He reveals in His obedience the absolute necessity – and joy – of trusting God with faith and courage.

What’s in it for me?  Knowing that the Lord will always be bigger than my panic.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) shelters in God’s grace, an infinitely sturdy structure.

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Monday, June 15, 2020

709 - Gimme Shelter, Part 1

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #709
June 16, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Gimme Shelter, Part 1
By Bob Walters

“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.” – Psalm 91:14

It was admittedly an odd spot to have this particular revelation, and it was long before I came to know Christ, but I remember the moment vividly to this very day.

The topic here is “realizing you are part of something bigger than yourself,” even if the lesson emanated from secular life.  For me I think it was helpful – maybe even necessary –to get that concept in worldly perspective before I could truly appreciate being attached to the divine perspective that is bigger than all things – Jesus Christ.

The occasion – this is the “odd spot” part – was the retirement tribute program at the Indianapolis Athenaeum in May 1993 for four-time Indianapolis 500 champion Rick Mears.  I spent a chunk of my career writing about and publicizing professional racing and in 1993 was the Public Relations Director at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

I hired into that job a year earlier in January 1992, still nearly 10 years personally away from Jesus.  But I understood the Speedway’s “bigness” … with an ecclesiastical spin.  When asked what it was like to “work at the Speedway” I had a ready aphorism: “If you’re going to work in religion, you may as well work at the Vatican.”

I really felt that way; IMS was and is a very big deal in auto racing.  And after nearly eight years traveling with the family circus of drivers, teams, sponsors, officials, and media of Indy Car and NASCAR I pretty much knew everybody.  It was all normal.  I was like the fish who doesn’t get the concept of water because it’s in it all the time.

It wasn’t just the race tracks.  There were fancy “do’s” like the NASCAR banquet in New York City, any number of formal events around Indy and CART, parties here and charity benefits there.  That was a time in my life I owned two tuxedos.  Both fit.

Don’t worry … I’m not going to compare Rick Mears to Jesus.  But I knew Rick well enough to like him and that 1993 Indy event Marlboro hosted for him – the program itself – was remarkably well done.  Rick had sustained crash injuries the previous two years and at age 41 probably retired “before his time.”  It fed the emotion of the evening.

In that program the best-known, best-liked, best competitors and personalities in racing brought their “A” game to honor Rick’s driving career.  I don’t remember a single specific thing about the program, but strolling out into the theater lobby at its conclusion it struck me not “how lucky to be a part of it” but how much bigger than me it all was.

Well, the glory days.  I internalized this idea of “bigger than me,” though it didn’t change my life or “save me.”  What I had, in a revelatory and newly mysterious way, was gratitude for a larger “thing” in relation to the relative smallness of my own being.

Next week we’ll talk about something “bigger than me” – a shelter – that changes all of us.

Walters  (rlwcom@aol.com) then had no idea how “bigger than me” Jesus was/is.
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Monday, June 8, 2020

708 - Express Lane

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Spirituality Column #708
June 9, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Express Lane
By Bob Walters

“Don’t have anything to do with foolish or stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.  And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel, instead he must be kind to everyone.” – Apostle Paul, 2 Timothy 2:23-24

“It has been a great tragedy of our time that people were taught to read and not taught to reason.” – G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Heard anybody express a quarrelsome opinion lately?

Yeah, me too.  No shortage of that.  I have a couple myself.

When we start thinking – hopefully we think first – and then go on to talking and/or sharing/broadcasting whatever expression, observation, opinion, criticism, witticism, sarcasm, or mental spasm may emanate from either the shallows or depths of our conscious being, we are expressing God’s greatest gift to us: our humanity.

Consider: the “life” God’s spirit breathed into our created beings and souls at the beginning and into each our individual lives one at a time and uniquely ever since.  That breath expressed God’s intention to bring into his creation a sentient being in His own sentient image: humanity.  That is who and what we are – thinking, creative, expressive humanity.

Quite often we make a hash of it, the God-thinking part.  I’d say this historical moment is one of those times.  In fact, we may well be experiencing humanity’s closest brush yet with the apex of human argumentativeness.  Why?  In this unique era, we are all in the conversation and all seem to be outraged at something, shattered in disagreement, steeped in our own narratives.  Truth avoidance is a condition deeply unhelpful to humanity’s Godly expression of itself.

Humans have always debated and fought about both serious and frivolous stuff.  What’s different at this moment is 360-degree internet and broadcast mass communication; we are all members of the news media.  Our expressed ideas and actions are immediately known and evaluated by the aggregate “everybody.”   Walter Cronkite only occasionally had to consider what his audience thought of his newscasts; few of them could “get” to him.

Today … we all can; we just reflexively put it out there.  That’s not an example of humanity’s highest expression of God’s highest gift.  What gift?  His bestowal upon us of sentient creativity, and then the revelation through Christ’s obedience of God’s truth, goodness, love, charity, mercy, and that great, troublesome elephant in the room: God’s righteousness.  We are righteous only in Christ, and then only because He covers our sins. 

We mistake our human, sentient capabilities for self-authorized moral righteousness, tacitly arguing against the real thing – God’s immutable moral righteousness.  God’s is the only righteousness that ultimately counts; Jesus is the only truth that ultimately matters. 

In 2 Timothy 2:23-24 cited above, Paul is using his “pastor” hat to explain specifically to ministers of the Gospel of Christ – or really to any servant of Jesus – that the best way to express our most sincere, closest-to-God humanity is with kindness.  Maybe in this moment we will all learn – especially those expressing the Gospel to others – that condemnation is no substitute for kindness, love, and responsibility.  Kindness is what sells the message.

Maybe in one of those crazy ways that God does things – as only God can - this whole Covid-19, racism, protest, riot, civil-authority-dysfunction climate of fear, distrust, and condemnation will serve – somehow – as a wake-up call to an improved expression of our humanity.  Our best human expression will reveal the truth of God’s image inside of us.  We are off course en masse, speeding down the passing lane carrying anger, fear, and hurt.

The fast lane to expressing peace – our best humanity – is expressing Christ.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) once wrote: Isn’t it funny that when a person does something really good, they’re a humanitarian; but does really something bad, they’re “only human.”
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Monday, June 1, 2020

707 - Completing the Course

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #707
June 2, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Completing the Course
By Bob Walters

“… if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” – Jesus to the disciples, Mark 11:25

I was listening to an older adult (though younger than me) last weekend wonderfully, excitedly describing his newly burnished faith in Jesus Christ.

His testimony, which took the shape of a warm and engaging “coffee shop” interview with his pastor, was the recorded centerpiece of his church’s Memorial Day weekend online worship service.  I listened to it with great interest since he is a former work colleague and friend.  I smiled a lot listening to the sincerity of his budding faith and seeing the joy emanating from the peaceful glow on his face.  Powerful stuff.  Praise God.

The core of his conversion, as he laid it out, was coming to the critical knowledge that through God’s son Jesus he is forgiven of his sins, that God in heaven loves him, and that heaven will be his home – all holy gifts he has sturdily embraced.  Praise God, again.

For his privacy and our focus, it is not his name but the lesson embedded in his testimony into which I would like to delve.  And we will start where he starts, with the most common and heavily “merchandized” aspect of Christian evangelism: forgiveness.

Ask 100 Christians, “Why are you a Christian?” and – ball-park guess – 99 of them will say some version of, “Because my sins are forgiven, Jesus loves me, and I get to go to heaven.”  The other one might say something about the music, the pastor, the fellowship, or possibly offer up some theological or scriptural profundity about love, truth, obedience, humanity, freedom, divine relationship, serving others, or maybe accepting the offer and demands of joining God’s glory.  Or that one person might say, “I don’t know.”

But, “My sins are forgiven, Jesus loves me, and I get to go to heaven” is the preponderant batter’s box / starting blocks / green flag of any walk, run, or race with Jesus.

That said, salvation is not achieved standing on the self-directed trinitarian starting line of “my, me, and I.” The gracious lesson of Christ is not what we get for our faith, but what our faith provides others.  It is not “God’s forgiveness of me” that saves me; it is my forgiveness and Christlike love of others, glorifying God, that saves me.  How do we know?

Read the Gospels.  Yes, Jesus remarkably offers forgiveness throughout, but notice that those instances are incidental to His more profound mission and message.  Jesus’s deepest teaching is about Who He Is as a person – the Son of God – and about His obedience to God, God’s love, His oneness with the Father, humanity’s creation in the image of God, our suffering, the truth and peace of the Holy Spirit, and the necessity not just to love God and others as Jesus commands in the upper room (John 13:34), but, as Jesus says in Mark 11:25 (above), our forgiveness requires that we forgive others.

Certainly, Jesus came to save and forgive us; it is plainly laid out in John 14:6 that Jesus is the only “way, truth, and life” for us to come to the Father; we receive and accept salvation.  We often talk – in some error, I believe – about the “cost” or “price” Jesus “paid” for our sins.  Jesus’ work of forgiveness on the cross was an act of God’s love, Holy truth, and Christ’s human obedience, not an exchange or a transaction or a credit card swipe.

No, our true Christian mission is not to be forgiven, but to forgive and love others.

When my friend understands that, his testimony – and his peace – will be complete.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that all kinds of folks in the Old Testament ask for or predict God’s forgiveness; God’s full answer to their prayers and pleas is Jesus Christ.
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