Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #815 (6-28-22), “Lively Fourth of July.” It’s a lively time in America, Independence Day is next Monday, and a recent poll tries to imply God is failing.  Get real.  See the column below, at our blog CommonChristianity, or on social media. Enjoy the week, and God bless the U.S.A.

Bob

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Labels: 4^th of July, America, culture, faith, Gallup Poll, God’s truth, politics

Spirituality Column #815

June 28, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Lively Fourth of July

By Bob Walters

“Belief in God in U.S. Dips to 81%, a New Low” – Gallup Poll headline, May 2022

Let’s begin with a reverent, grace-infused, all-church chuckle at any notion that a Gallup poll of humans has any effect on the absolute truth and righteousness of God.

No matter who does the poll when or where, polls measure humans, not God.

This was a recent poll and yes, it is a particularly lively time in America. We shake our heads as a congregation – the macro, unified congregation of saved sinners and believers in Jesus Christ – at the God-bereft messaging swirling in our nation. 

We look around … at culture, politics, education, social priorities, unpunished crime, inflation, unsecure borders, charlatan news media, raunchy entertainment, selective prosecution, fraudulent science, mindless internet influencers, dysphoric gender promoters, bad-faith government, rich liberal elites, poor urban slums, dark-web conspiracists, and neighbors with non-sensical justice signs in their yards … and sigh.

I fly an American flag on our house, so I’m one of the commenting nuts as well.

We may well be personally in the Bible, God’s word, every day, in church every Sunday, and praying without ceasing in our hearts.  But when we survey modern America’s ideological landscape – every jot and tittle of public discourse – it’s admittedly easier to behold culture’s diminished belief in God and gross abandonment of morals and truth than to grasp faithfully the accessible grace and always-there truth of Jesus.

When will we remember? It is the truth and grace of Jesus that fixes all things.

God’s truth, morals, and righteousness are eternal. Of that, I’m 100 percent sure. 

They are objective. They don’t change. They are not subject to earthly principalities, kings, fashion, expedience, comfort, phase of the moon, position of the stars, a lawyer’s argument, a politician’s wiles, or my own personal best guess on the right thing to do.

God is neither less righteous, less alive, nor less authoritative today at 81 percent of folks believing, than He was in 1954 at 98 percent.  That was Gallup’s record high since the poll began in 1944.  But … the poll is about us, not God; God is 100 percent.

I don’t blame the internet and mass-media fueled glut of information for the variety of opinions, passions, and positions across the spectrum of America.  We are created equal and are free to form our opinions but not our own truth.  God does that.

America is the great experiment in enjoying freedom at the head of the line and at the point of the spear; we are free to do whatever we want but are responsible for whatever we do.  God didn’t make us to be the same; but He made us to love Him, to love others, and to honor His truth with our faith and work. That’s the message of Jesus.

God’s important and we’re important. Truth is eternal and our opinions are … not.

Today’s great cultural error – though truly I believe it constitutes willful, strategic, sociological malfeasance in the service of ungodly political power – is forcing tribal “diversity” or group segregation that destroys the freedom to build broad relationships.

We Americans – sinners all – are only a “moral people” as far as we understand, accept, and act on our relationship to God and each other 100 percent of the time.

That’s the truth, with no dip.  And we shouldn’t need a poll to tell us that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) celebrates God’s truth every day, the 4^th of July, too.  America’s freedom of individual uniqueness and opportunity are the envy of the world.

Spirituality Column #814

June 21, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Change for the Better

By Bob Walters

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” – Peter, Christianity’s first sermon, Acts 2:38

Newly empowered by the Holy Spirit on the first “Christian” Pentecost, the Apostle Peter outlined in no uncertain terms the good news / bad news dynamic of recent events regarding Jesus Christ.

The Good News Peter declared back in verse 21, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

The bad news, Peter recites in verse 36: Israel had had the true Lord and Savior Messiah sent by God, i.e., Jesus, crucified.

Ancient scripture, prophecy, and the very teaching of the Lord and human Jesus notwithstanding, many in Israel hearing Peter speak that day suddenly realized they had been party to the mistake of all mistakes: they had killed God.

Now, we needn’t panic, because the perfect sacrifice of Jesus at Passover was God’s necessary vehicle for sinful man’s salvation into heaven and restoration to eternal relationship with God; Jesus died and came back.  Jesus was the light of truth for mankind; He came from God, for God, and as God and man to renew our hearts and minds in this life.  His sacrifice freed us from the despair of death and shackles of sin.

By His resurrection, Jesus assured us our lives would go on … with God.

Jesus ascended to the right hand of God 40 days after His resurrection.  Fifty days after the fateful Passover that saw Jesus crucified, came the great festival of Pentecost commemorating messenger Moses bringing God’s Law down from Mount Sinai.  This time, just as Jesus promised, God sent another, divine, game-changing and now final messenger to earth: the Holy Spirit, to indwell and lead believers like Peter.

Pentecost often drew larger crowds than Passover anyway, and recent events gave the newly indwelt Peter an especially huge audience. Imagine the buzz.  All knew of the crucifixion; many had seen Jesus alive and days earlier rise to heaven. Peter’s charge to the assembled believers, semi-believers, and non-believers who – now realizing fully what they had done in killing Jesus – pled with Peter, “What shall we do?”

Full of the Holy Spirit, Peter commanded, “Repent, and be baptized.”

Our modern knee-jerk reaction upon hearing the word “repent” is to apologize for our sin.  We consider “repent” to be an expression of regret and a promise to “do better.”  Hence, we make Christianity all about our behavior.  But Jesus tells us plainly and often that our life in Christ requires the re-wiring of our thoughts to understand, identify, and love Jesus Christ as the Son of God. God wants our hearts and minds.

“Repent,” when you look at the Aramaic and Greek, doesn’t mean, “Change your behavior.”  “Repent,” in Greek metanoia actually means, “Change your thinking.”

Unhelpfully, every modern dictionary search I found cites “repent” tightly linked to sin, regret, guilt, shame, apology, and an intent to shape up.  What Peter was preaching in the Holy Spirit was that mankind needed to “repent” by changing how it viewed the Old Covenant, the Jewish Law, pagan gods, and man’s own sin, pride, lusts, power, treachery … all the horrendous negatives of fallen human nature. “What shall we do?”

We repent; we continually accept Jesus as the Son of God and adjust our minds toward Christ.  As our worldly circumstances change, we keep Jesus first.  In baptism we declare, “Jesus is Lord, and I am a Christian.” There is no better change than that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) offers this true equation: Less Sin = More Joy.

 Spirituality Column #813

June 14, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What Shall We Learn?

By Bob Walters

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously without finding fault.” James 1:5

In darkest circumstances, sometimes the essential thing we lack is not wisdom, but the comfort of an answer that explains, eases, vindicates, affords closure, or justifies hope to go on. 

Sometimes the essential thing we lack is the right question.

Sometimes a situation is so awful that questions, answers, and explanations offer only superfluous misdirection.  Our brain, heart, emotion, and soul are wadded in a knot so tight as to choke off the merest notion of comfort, leaving an insulting and unsettled void.  Where do we find answers when there are no answers?  When even a good question eludes our grasp?  When “Why?” echoes emptily and purposelessly in the vacant, dreadful canyon of despair that brooks no comfort and offers no resolution.

What could be that bad? Our dear friends have a son whose wife exploded into a terrifying, never-before-seen rage and committed violent suicide.  That is that bad.

We all find ourselves seeking answers and wisdom that could explain the unimaginable.

But here we are.  Many answers will remain unknown.  Wisdom, we pray, will creep into the tattered edges of tragedy.  Hope and comfort will eventually arrive, as we allow it.  Life will go forward in halting steps, stubbornly, as we pursue it. Yet … where shall we go for help?

Is the Bible sufficient?  No … the Bible is wonderful and helpful, but only the abiding person of Jesus Christ can shine hopeful light into these darkest nights of despair; the Bible is a flashlight, but Jesus is the actual light.  Our own wisdom will never suffice.  Be aware of that.

The Bible tells us to “rejoice in the Lord always.”  To not be anxious because “the God who transcends all understanding is guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:4-7). It says the “God of all comfort” comforts us in our troubles so we may comfort others (2 Corinthians 1:3-7).  In Christ, the Bible says, we are “being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).  Let’s be encouraged, and meditate on that. 

These verses are from Paul, who was very wise.  In each of his 13 New Testament letters, he posts the greeting, “grace and peace.” Never think that line is a perfunctory “Hello.”  Jesus Christ is grace; that’s who He is.  Jesus Christ provides peace; that’s what He does. Paul is expressing the person and purpose of Christ: grace and peace.  Let’s remember that.

Christians have many problems with suicide, the biggest being we don’t know what to think regarding the soul’s redemption.  I’m leaving that one to God.  Jesus said he did not come to condemn (John 3:17), but to bring hope; to heal, not to harm.  Let’s cleave to that.

By my count there are six examples of suicide in the Bible; Judas, who famously hung himself (Matthew 27:5), and five others (King Saul, Abimelech, Samson, Ahithophel, and Zimri).  Each passage notes only that “they died” … without judgment.  Let’s consider that.

As a palliative to ourselves, we might explain that suicide bespeaks madness, and therefore absolves responsibility.  That makes some sense, but I am as convinced demons exist as I am convinced angels exist … and angels don’t always win.  This we are wise to learn.

The “flashlight” I flip on here to see Jesus is again Paul, in Romans 8:34-35: “Who is the one who condemns?...Christ Jesus is interceding for us … Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”  This gives me peace and belonging.

I am praying for Godly wisdom to help my friends, and that this tragedy may drive them closer to the bosom of Jesus now … and to each other in their family.  And I pray it boldly.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was able to share these thoughts on a beautiful, intimate day with our friends on the Straits of Mackinac, where Hannah’s ashes were scattered.

Spirituality Column #812

June 7, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Person to Person

By Bob Walters

“Had Jesus only been entirely God he could not have died for us.  It is the very fact that Jesus was fully human and fully God that makes Jesus our savior.” – Titus 2:13-14

Let’s talk about the “personhood” of Jesus and discus whether it is His person or His cross that saves us.  Good question, huh?  I bet you didn’t see that one coming.

It is by default that most of Christianity looks at the Cross, looks at Jesus, and says, “the Cross saved me.”  Yet just like the Bible never specifically uses the phrase “the person of Christ,” it also never says the Cross saves us.  The Bible says Jesus saves us.

Jesus bestows personal salvation often in the Gospels before His death on the Cross.  He tells the sinful woman who anoints his feet (Luke 7:50), “Your faith has saved you.”  In His healing miracles, it was a person’s faith in Jesus that healed them.  To the woman who touched the “fringe of his garment,” Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” (Matthew 9:21-22). To the centurion whose servant was near death, Jesus says, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.”  Examples abound.

On the Cross, to the Good Thief next to Him, Jesus cites the thief’s belief and assures, “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). It is our recognition of Jesus as the Son of God that saves us.  How do I know?  Because in John 14-16, at the end, it is recognizing His identity as the Son of God that Jesus hammers home to the disciples; not their behavior, and not specifically His death on the Cross.  They must know Who He is.

If one does not believe Jesus was fully God and fully man, a discussion of His saving personhood is superfluous. But the point I’m making is that it was the coming of Christ among mankind that was God’s move to save us.  Our sin brought death; our belief in Jesus, acceptance of forgiveness, and repentance brings eternal life. 

The Cross is a powerful symbol that proved Jesus’s love and obedience, and the Cross is the perfect picture of the perfect sacrifice we all must make in a world that not only disbelieves but hates Jesus.  In His empty tomb and resurrection, we see the proof of what Jesus had been claiming all along; the proof that He was indeed God.

But what exactly saves us?  What gives us God’s life?  I believe Christianity looks – and is lived out – very differently depending on how we answer that question.

The Cross of Christ is a horrible symbol of pain and suffering; we may feel that pain personally, especially every Good Friday, when we consider the enormity of what Jesus went through to prove His love for us and His obedience to God.  To His suffering and pain, we tend to respond with guilt, focus on sin, fear punishment, and remain tied to our sins, perpetually apologizing for that for which Jesus died and God has forgiven.

It is a clever, earthly powerplay if you can make people feel guilty instead of free.

And free is what I feel in the love of Jesus Christ.  Not free to sin, but free to love Jesus for His grace and compassion, and for His image of perfect sacrifice that I must live up to in the spirit of love for God and for mankind.  It is the person of Jesus I love.

One can view God – through Jesus on the Cross – as the “punisher of sin.”  But punishment is not ever how the Bible presents the Cross: atonement, obedience, love, and healing, yes, but not punishment or payment.  We say that; but God doesn’t.

By our faith we are saved: faith in the God and powerful person of Jesus Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes joy comes from the love, not fear, of God.