Spirituality Column #794

February 1, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

A Sinner’s Lament, Part 1

By Bob Walters

I’m afraid the day is coming, perhaps soon, when being a repentant sinner with church-going, praise-offering faith in Jesus will not be enough to call oneself a Christian.

In fact, I’d say we are living in a time of American Christian luxury in that “my sin” – our personal fallenness, repentance, redemption – stands front and center as the most important matter in church.  We should continue to have it so good.

Oh, we may not hear a lot of “Sin, Hellfire, and Damnation” from the weekly pulpit – that would be a bummer and make me unhappy – but sin is the overriding dynamic of the contemporary church narrative.  Want to test it?  Do what I’m doing right now, and note the horrified look on your faithful friends’ faces when you assert that sin is not the most important thing we as Christians have to deal with.

It’s not; though I daresay given many alternatives, sin is the easiest.

Hear me out.  We’ve all been sinners, we’re going to stay sinners, and given enough chances, our sin will wreck our own lives and perhaps the lives of others.  We are likely blessed to know people who seem far closer to eternal redemption than we might be, the Lions of the Faith who may be in our churches, prayer groups, study groups. I’m thankful to know and frequently see people who remind me of God’s truth, hope and strength, the examples of a redeemed, loving life in Christ. They’re out there.

Sin is awful, and our hope in Jesus isn’t just for His forgiveness – the hope for the help and truth of His strength to conquer our behavioral sin.  Maybe we can sin less, find joy, encourage somebody else, and allow the Spirit to comfort us in peace.  Still, sin is awful. But it shouldn’t be the only thing we talk about.  Denying Christ is worse.

Quick review … Jesus’s human life, death on the Cross, and resurrection established, once for all, forgiveness of our sin and sins.  The good news, Jesus came for everyone.  The bad news is, so did Satan.  Jesus came for God’s glory.  Satan came to destroy God’s glory.  But Satan’s trick isn’t to make us sin; it is to make us deny God.

Frankly, the more somebody talks about sin or tells me about my sin or tells me I'm going to hell if I don't stop sinning because I won't be forgiven, the less I want to listen to them.  They are saying salvation is a “deal,” not the pure love of God in Christ.

I’m not looking for a deal.  In Jesus I have found truth, and the greatest truth He brings is not that I’m a sinner – I already know I am and so does He – it is that Jesus presents me with an utterly unique opportunity to know and trust that I have found the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) into the Kingdom of God, and to say so.

My opening statement (above) about “the day is coming” when sin will be a secondary Christian issue is because of a couple things. 

One, I’ve been reading The Church History by Eusebius (c. 300 A.D.).  In those early Christian days of persecutions, martyrs, and heresies – you have to read it to appreciate it – you don’t read much about sin; there wasn’t time.  But you read a lot about people who denied – and more importantly saints who did not deny – Christ.

And two, Rod Dreher’s 2020 book, Live Not by Lies, is a reality dose describing America’s woke, coming Christian persecutions that will test our will to confess Christ.

Martyrs were not told to repent of their sins; but to confess against Jesus.  

Could you do that?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wrote about Dreher before and will again, next week.

 Spirituality Column #793

January 25, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Atheists Don’t Cut It

By Bob Walters

"The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, they cannot see the light of the gospel ... the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." - 2 Corinthians 4:4

 There sure are a lot of folks coming after Christians these days and I don’t think it’s because the critics are atheists.  Most people who call themselves “atheists” – in my experience – don’t really know what an “atheist” is, or how empty that bucket truly is.

What they tend to be are people who’d simply rather not be bothered with the whole “supreme being” dynamic.  “Who is more supreme than me?” they might ask.

No kidding here.  What the Apostle Paul is talking about in the above verse from his second letter to the church at Corinth – 2,000 years ago – are “unbelievers” who specifically do not believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of the Father, Creator of all things and judge of all men.  He rebooted the entire believing world, including Israel. 

Jesus was a whole new idea, and replaced every religious leader, emperor, and god anybody had ever conjured with His own holiness and the actual, absolute, saving, humanity-fulfilling and divine Truth from the mind of God.  Jesus was/is the real deal.

Anywhere in the world in those days there was no shortage of gods, worship, pagans, and beliefs in nature, spirits, demons, idols, you name it.  Greek philosophy was big, as were the mythic but created and fictional gods of the world’s great cultures and empires. Everybody believed in something; an atheist would have been…an oddity.

Anywhere in the world today, it seems you can believe – by law – in anything except Christianity.  Examples are rife; it is Christian teaching and prayer outlawed in public schools and politics, while any nutty, destructive personal opinions are bogusly canonized.  “My own truth,” I think, is more accurately a plea to justify, “My own lie.”

Jesus the Son of God, who is Truth, is who culture tries to silence.  Who’s smart?

Look around the world.  We have it pretty good in the west, Christianity wise, but the fashionable “religion” is sterile “belief” in … well, nothing.  The self-deifying “I believe in me” is perhaps a bit more responsibility than a sane person would want to undertake.

Personally, I’m joyous that trustworthy truth – Jesus - exists external to my own fallen and I’ll admit sometimes crazy notions, appetites, temptations, and opinions. 

The god of this age – today, not 2,000 years ago – is an amalgamated self-centered muck of fame, money, fluid self-identity, freedom from “judgment,” immunity from having one’s judgments challenged (think “CRT”), and the collective contempt of and disregard for the absolute, eternal Truth of God, Jesus.  “I want my own truth!”

But that’s not atheism.  Hating God isn’t atheism; it’s simpleminded fallenness.  Not understanding God, or not believing Christ, is lack of education and perhaps absence of the Spirit.  The Bible is clear that not everyone will understand.

Our best play is to stick to the Bible, understand the Spirit, fellowship with believing Christians (those who know, trust, love, honor, obey, and believe in Jesus; you know, the Church), and endeavor to live out the simplest and most direct commands of Christ: love God and others.  You’ll not argue the Spirit into a soul, but love might work.

Yes, it is hard to be a Christian, but it is the path to eternity … not to emptiness.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that God gave us freedom to believe what we want, and gave us Jesus to know what is true.  Atheism is a short walk to nowhere.

 Spirituality Column #792

January 18, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Life Change

By Bob Walters

It dawned on me a few days ago that this month marks the 30^th anniversary of the biggest and most welcome job move and life change of my professional career.

In January of 1992 I hired on as the public relations director at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  I’d worked in the media and in sponsor/team public relations in both Indy Cars and NASCAR auto racing in the late 1980s.  Coming back home to Indiana to work at the 500 was a job I’d been praying for, and it happened.

That job, in my eyes, was akin to working in religion and landing a spot in the Vatican.  I say “I’d been praying for” it, but it wasn’t like I was talking to Jesus back in those days.  I was praying for the IMS job the way a whole lot of people pray – without any recognizable relationship with God and purely for favor, whether for self or others.

I didn’t meet up with Jesus for another 10 years.

That job in 1992 was my central purpose in life.  I was married, our second son John was born that month – January 18, in fact, the date of this column … Happy 30^th Birthday, John! – and it was joy upon joy to move back to Indiana after five years away in St. Louis and Albuquerque.  We were home, and I had the best job I could imagine.

Great times, those 12 seasons (1985-1996) working at the very top of American auto racing.  It would be a book-length yarn to tell in adequate detail, but not here.

That adventure for me ended with bumps and bruises amid the turmoil of the Indy Racing League vs CART battles through the latter 1990s.  Life changed again.

Instead of working and/or traveling literally dozens of weekends per year, I was home and got to truly know my sons Eric (now 34) and John.  I coached kid baseball, was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout leader and went camping, and helped out with the boys’ elementary school events.  I learned to have conversations with neighbors about subjects other than the 500 and auto racing. 

A few consulting gigs aside, my career in PR was basically over.  I’d felt I’d been dropped on my head, hard, leaving those heady days of high-profile motorsports, but I was learning, however slowly, that my life’s central purpose was being redirected.

As it turned out, because I was now home most evenings for dinner, I was sitting at the table when Eric asked – out of seeming nowhere – “How come we don’t go to church?”  That was August of 2001 – 20 years ago this past fall, if you’re counting.

My central purpose in life once was my career.  Then my central purpose in life was my kids.  Then through no expressed intent of my own – let’s be clear, I wasn’t looking for Jesus – we went to church one Sunday.  Guess who sat down next to me?

Yep, Jesus, who over the next several years introduced me in the Spirit to my new central purpose in life … doing what I could to glorify His Father God.

God’s most significant physical gift to me was time.  Time is part of the physical world, not the eternal world.  But I was gifted with time to learn, grow, write, teach, and understand the greatest central purpose of human life: loving Jesus to glorify God. 

My career didn’t teach me love; my boys did.  And Jesus put it to good use.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), because fast cars are still fun, provides this LINK of a Czech mogul driving a $3M Bugatti Chiron 260 mph on the Autobahn … for Jesus.  Also, 30 years ago was 1992; 30 years before that Walters was in second grade.

Spirituality Column #791

January 11, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

‘What Do You Seek?’

By Bob Walters

“What do you seek?” – John 1:38, Jesus’s first words to his disciples in John’s Gospel.

Upon identifying Jesus, John the Baptist’s disciples John and Andrew immediately left him to follow Jesus.

Note that John and Andrew were not invited by Jesus, nor prodded by John.  No instructions were voiced. John’s simple statement, “Look, The Lamb of God!” (1:36) was all it took.  They knew Jesus was the prophesied Holy One of God, and off they went.

It’s a familiar Sunday school passage, and Jesus’s greeting to them, “What do you seek?” has launched a thousand Sunday sermons on purpose and meeting Jesus.

We look toward Jesus … and what do we seek?  Or maybe, whom do we think He is? Afterall, that is Jesus’s No. 1, most important question He asks others throughout His earthly ministry, “Who Do You Say I Am?”

The correct answer of course is that He is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ, the creative Word of God, the Logos, the Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice, the salvation of mankind, the personification of God’s love for Creation.  Jesus, when it comes to God’s relationship with humanity, is the whole ball game.

Yes, God loves us, and yes, the Spirit abides with and comforts us.  But Jesus is Who came for us to sort out this mess we have made of our sinful, fallen lives.

But Jesus doesn’t start with “Who” they think He is; Jesus knows they were following Israel’s teaching, Laws, and truth about the promised Messiah.  Just like people today, whether one believes in Jesus or not, most folks have at least a vague idea of whom Jesus is.  John and Andrew, on the other hand, would have carried the intense excitement of their entire culture and faith to meet this “being of God.”

Jesus’ opener is, “What do you want?”  That’s a far more important place to start.

Think of how many sermons you’ve heard in your life – if you happen to be in the regular habit of listening to sermons, that is – telling you that you should be “looking for Jesus.”  That’s all well and good, but finding Jesus is nothing like knowing what you’re supposed to do with Him when you find Him. 

Hence, “What do you want?”

The sad modern truth of humanity is that we want Jesus to be what we want Him to be.  You don’t need another Barna survey suggesting folks have become less interested in going to church; they have.  And that’s because society and culture overall have become generally atheistic in a way it doesn’t even recognize of itself.

What today’s culture pursues is the personal attainment of a utopia-paradise-“heaven” of our own definition, not a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.   We have come to believe “talking about” God somehow is a stand-in for real obedience to God.  What our culture does is worship its own idols of self, greed, power, politics, wealth, fame … and think all that personal desire adds up to the Kingdom of God. 

Doesn’t that sound crazy?  Equating human, sin-generated nonsense with “the Kingdom of God”?  Chasing the “Kingdom of Me,” not following the example of Christ?

Jesus is right to ask what we want.  The sinful “me” wants my version of heaven.  The Godly servant wants to glorify God ... that’s how you start a walk with Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) had to learn to want Jesus.  It’s not always easy.

Spirituality Column #790

January 4, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Holding It Together

By Bob Walters

“… in him all things hold together.” – Colossians 1:17, Paul describing Christ

Mankind, overall, has a great and destructive talent for making an unrecognizable hash of even the best things life has to offer.

Cynical as that sounds, let’s laser-focus on the single best thing of humanity: the human, divine, risen Christ – Jesus – who offers us new birth in God’s love and restoration to the eternal paradise of God’s Kingdom.  It’s what we were made for.

Accepting that gift – choosing and allowing the Holy Spirit to give and teach us new life in Christ – ought to be the most thankful, joyous, satisfying, calming, loving, peace-giving experience of life.  And no doubt for some of us, it is.  But because of mankind’s jealousies, greed, pride, and Satan-supported desire to be god-like within ourselves, we often don’t hold together in this thing that should be most precious to us.

Jesus warned his disciples constantly of the difficulty they would have in following him.  The world would not understand them.  The world would hate them.  The world would mock and persecute them.  In the smallness of their human worldview, it’s likely the disciples thought this only meant the disapproval of the Jewish leaders.  Jesus, however, plays the big game.  Jesus meant everything and everybody. 

As great a gift as Jesus provided to humanity – restored relationship with God – the disapproval of sinful man would follow the disciples everywhere as they took the Word to the ends of the earth.  And the amazing thing is – despite the hatred and persecution – somehow His Word and teaching held together for 2,000 years.

That gives me the hope and confidence it’ll hold together for a couple of thousand more.  In fact, I’d bet on eternity.  You can yell at the truth of Jesus, but you can’t change it.  His truth holds together without fail; it’s people who tend to fall apart.

Certainly, each of us experiences times in our lives when we don’t think things are holding together especially well, Jesus or no Jesus.  Some of the great calamities of my own life came well after I’d accepted the Lord 20 years ago.  But I experienced both calamities and successes before Jesus, and have seen calamities and success since.

The point is that Jesus holds all things together: not just us, not just our sense of well-being.  Jesus is the everything God.  Mankind, as I mentioned above, doesn’t have near the ability to hold itself together as does Jesus.  We tend to see things in small terms of just our own lives: passions, social comforts, finances, health, that kind of stuff.

When Paul says Jesus “holds all things together,” he means all things in creation seen and unseen.  The atomic structure and molecular makeup of all matter?  The vastness of the heavens?  Jesus holds them together because He created them.  As the Gospel of John 1:3 tells us of Jesus, “Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that was made.”  Jesus is far bigger than we often imagine.

You aren’t alone if you wonder whether or not mankind can hold things together for another year.  I mean, we do always seem to get to the next New Years, for better or worse.  I doubt this year will be any different.  Humanity will muddle on.

What I’m sure of is that we can rely on Jesus to hold up His infinite end of the bargain. A great New Year’s resolution for us is to make less of a hash of His loving gift.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows Jesus is life and that we’re dead without Him.