Yes, 2 plus 2 still equals four, even at a Christian school.  See the column below ...

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Spirituality Column #858

April 25, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

 

Creative License, Part 2    By Bob Walters

“How do they do math at a Christian school?” – honest fifth-grade query on a public school bus

Thus was one thoughtful response after I told my fifth-through-eighth grade riders of my pending retirement after 11 years driving an HSE school bus.

My answer? “Just like they teach math everywhere else.”

In last week’s column I buried the lede down near the bottom, sharing that I’m retiring off the school bus and shifting gears into a change-up career teaching high school at Mission Christian Academy here in Fishers, Indiana.  In August this year, I’ll be full time at MCA teaching economics, government, U.S. history, world history, and as of right now, one section of sixth-grade English.

For you teachers out there keeping track … yeah, five preps.  The good news is that MCA meets only Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday, then heavy student homework for Friday and Monday.  This “hybrid” school model, growing in popularity, is an olio of home schooling (flexibility and truth), regular school (teachers and classmates), and home-school co-ops (group efforts for art, music, performance, sports, etc.).

This affords, as I said last week, a spiritually rich education that needn’t duck the reality of God, the truth of Jesus, or the authority of the Bible.  Nor is it shackled by the zeitgeist (spirit of the age) of cancel culture, critical race theory, gender fluidity, or forced equity dynamics, all of which rob young minds of their courage, creativity, aspiration, and uniqueness. “Do not love the world” (John 2:15) has never been better advice.

We are all equal before God, and we are all uniquely created by God.  In MCA’s case we actually mean it and teach it in the unblinking context of the entirety of reality and truth.  We do not edit-out the actual capital-G God; this isn’t half an education.  We encourage rather than mock a life of Christian love, service, and grace fully engaged in the rough and tumble of the marketplace, professions, community, culture, and evermore-unhinged societal enforcement of unworkable, spirit-killing victim chic.

Anyway, the question about math was my favorite.  Kids in their early teens don’t question why you are crazy enough to take on a new challenge like this when sneaking up on 70 years old.  Kids just want to know how stuff works, and “Christian school” to this wonderful young fifth grader sounded like full time Sunday school even if, unlike growing up 60 years ago, a lot of kids today don’t know what “Sunday school” is.

While finishing out the current school year on the bus, I’m teaching two mid-day classes: high school economics and 7^th grade U.S. history.    

In encouraging my juniors and seniors to take seriously the challenge of reading difficult material (e.g., economics) and being patient for understanding to come, I asserted that no matter their future academic goals, a Christian life is going to be filled with ongoing Bible studies and reading. They mustn’t shy away from the hard stuff; scripture and robust study enrich the Christian heart.  “Train your mind” (2 Cor 10:9).

A Christian’s best weapon against the wiles of the fallen world is a courageous and well-developed mind that beholds opportunities, discerns truth, and marches in peace and grace ever-closer to God’s heart.  All kids deserve the best possible start.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) “clearly doesn’t understand this retirement thing” said high school friend Carla Anderson, chairman of last summer’s 50^th class reunion. BTW, see “about us” at the school’s website MissionChristianAcademy.com; both Pam’s and Bob’s bios are in there. (Psst … if you missed it last week, Bob’s wife Pam is MCA’s HS English teacher.)

God gives us a mind so we can find and glorify Him.  It’s why we go to school. See the column below, and remember Solomon ... Blessings, Bob

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Labels: 1 John 4:8, 1 Kings 3:9-12, ask of me anything, economics, Genesis 1-2, image of God, John 14:13, Mission Christian Academy, school, Solomon, Trinity

Spirituality Column #857

April 18, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Creative License, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“Behold, I have given you a wise and discerning mind.” God to Solomon, 1 Kings 3:12

Today, I’m burying the lede (newspaper talk for “main idea”); so hang with me.

Solomon is famous for asking God for wisdom, though depending on which translation of the Bible one reads, Solomon asks God (1 Kings 3:9) either to “give your servant an understanding mind” (ESV) or an “understanding heart (KJV, NIV, etc.).

What the obedient and young King Solomon wanted, and what God understood and provided, was the wisdom and means Solomon knew he needed to govern God’s people in a way glorifying to God and beneficial to them; he loved God and others.  It is wise to understand that “mind” and “heart” – synonymous – are God’s unique gifts to humanity.  Developing them in service and love to God and others is our holy calling.

Consider Genesis 1 and 2, where God gives this gift of “a discerning mind/heart” to Adam and Eve as they – and we – are created in God’s image. Interestingly it is phrased thusly in Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  And let them have dominion over [all other animals].”  Let’s take a few notes.

Note 1: “us, our, and our” – God’s plural self-reference appears three times in the first sentence.  This denotes God exists as a relationship, which we now know as “Father, Son, Spirit.”  That is why Jesus’s apostle John can repeatedly write, “God is love,” (1 John 4:8).  God is a divine, eternal relationship – the Trinity – and love must be shared to be love. God is generous; our image both reflects and is God’s love, made to freely join that relationship.  We call that relationship the Kingdom of God,

Note 2: “And let them” – again in the plural, tells us “they,” i.e., God, intended “persons,” not just Adam.  “Male and female he made them,” says Genesis 1:27.

Note 3: “In His own image he created him,” also Genesis 1:27. Maybe this phrase is singular because God makes us one at a time?  Just a guess.  But we humans are unique in God’s Creation as the image of God, imago dei.  We can think and we can be creative. God made us that way; creativity separates us from beasts.

Moving on, Jesus at the Last Supper declares to the Disciples, “ask me for anything in my name and I will do it” (John 14:13). Most folks reflexively ask to be (or their loved ones to be) rich, smart, good looking, happy, healthy, comfortable, or safe.

I had occasion this past week to use John 14:13 to encourage a group of bright Christian students as to their studies: remember Solomon, and ask for wisdom.

Here is where the digging stops and the buried treasure, er, lede, is revealed.

My life is changing.  The student setting was a high school economics class I began teaching last week at Mission Christian Academy in Fishers.  In August, that will be my full-time “unretired” function, teaching high history, government, and economics. After 11 years, I’m retiring May 23 as a Hamilton Southeastern Schools bus driver.

For now, I’m also at MCA, teaching Economics and 7^th grade U.S. History, two mid-day classes that fit comfortably between my AM and PM bus routes.  I felt a real call from above about this decision, and now realize the joyous freedom of education that is unbridled from denying the reality of God and the authority of the Bible. More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) joins his also-unretired wife Pam – a career English teacher at Lawrence Central H.S. – who teaches high school English at MCA.

 Friends, We can call ourselves anything we want … but if we get it wrong, it hurts us, not God. We live because He lives. See the column below. Blessings, Bob

Spirituality Column #856

April 11, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Living for Glory

By Bob Walters                                 

“The glory of God is a living human being ...” – St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies

Of all places to run into my old friend Irenaeus (eye-ruh-NAY-us), last Friday’s Wall Street Journal “Houses of Worship” column expounded on what I thought was an enlightening and timely critique of the human body (material) vs. the human soul (spirit).

Serving as a rudder in the discussion – of the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion, and then noting the ancient heresy of Gnosticism which cleaves human body from soul – Irenaeus reminds us that God’s glory manifests in our entire being.

It is important not to believe, like the Gnostics, that – in a nutshell – matter is evil and spirit is good.  Hence our bodies are throw-away vessels of sin and it is only our soul / spirit that lives eternally. This is timely because it sheds light on the “religious” though heretical underpinnings of things like the current “gender” madness.

We are, physically and sexually, what God made us to be, from our external and obvious anatomical features all the way down to sub-microscopic strands of DNA.  We must not, like the Gnostics, diminish the importance of our body by casting off its creation as something evil from the start.  Because in that case, if my body is already evil, why can’t I screw it up further by claiming it to be what it is not?  Who cares? 

Well … God does.

And not because we hurt God when we misinterpret His Creation.  What we hurt with our misinterpretation and sin is His Creation … i.e., us.  And this is surely the season when we see God’s concern and love for us; we see it in His Son Jesus on a Cross, crucified to cover our sins and bring us back into full life with God.  We know we are restored to full life with God because the tomb was empty and Jesus was restored to full life with God.  That’s what Easter means … our lives are restored to God’s glory.

We are “created in the image of God” (Genesis 1:26-28), and Irenaeus, a second century Greek bishop who preached extensively in what is now southern France, spoke forcefully against Gnosticism, a leading heresy of the day.  Gnostics, among many other things, denied God could become material, i.e., the human Jesus, and denied the resurrection.  Irenaeus declared the totality of the person of Christ as man and God.

“For the glory of God is a living human being,” Irenaeus wrote. “And the life of the human consists in beholding God … the glory of the human being is God.”  We behold God in Jesus Christ with the totality of our being: our bodies, minds, souls, and spirit.

The Internet is awash with memes that distort Irenaeus’ words to “The glory of God is a human being fully alive,” and overlay them on all manner of “life on the edge” activities, or in some cases, images of serenity and contemplation.  The resulting error is that we make our lives “full” and glorify God by our activities, not by our faith in Jesus.

Easter reminds us that “fullness of life” requires God. That is what Jesus meant when He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

Like the Gnostics, we are free to maim our physical lives to our least holy whims, though I don’t know how God deals with that in the end.  I do know that joy, peace, grace, and love, in Christ, make God’s glory shine with a full life in the here and now.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) considers Irenaeus an “old friend” because of how often mentor George Bebawi mentioned him in his Wednesday classes at E91.

This finishes a four-part series regarding the modern church lexicon that gives so much credence to price over grace and payment over gifts … I think it’s a throw-back to the Old Covenant playbook.  Easter blessings to all.  Bob

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Spirituality Column #855

March 28, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Delightful Gift, Part 4  

By Bob Walters

“Delight is what distinguishes a gift from a payment.” – Ephraim Radner, First Things

What price did you pay to be married to your spouse?

The correct response, of course, is, “I married my spouse for love, for our life together, for our family, and for too many reasons to count.  Price?  My spouse is a delight; priceless!”

That’s the way I think we should approach our relationship with Jesus Christ, and embrace the safe assumption that it’s how Jesus looks at us.  It is relationship too big for measurement, and can only be expressed in love.  And if one could arrive at a material price, to whom would one pay it?  And what, besides love, could the currency possibly be?

Our churches endlessly put forth the notion that Jesus “paid a price” for our salvation in the form of His pain, suffering and death on the cross. The metaphor works as a relatable expression of “one thing leading to another,” for Jesus’s violent death allows our eternal life.

Where the metaphor does violence to our understanding of salvation is in applying the Old Covenant’s measurements to New Covenant grace.  God’s work cannot be measured, while man’s work under the Old Testament Law is nothing but measurement.

God’s Creation and his love are compared to the “stars in the heavens” (Genesis 26:5), the “grains of sand by the seas” (Psalms 139:18), counting “the hairs on our heads” “(Luke 12:7), and as “far as the east from the west” (Psalms 103:12).  When Jesus describes the magnitude of God’s love and generosity in the parables, He speaks of amounts so vast or so small and love so pure no human value can be assigned it.

On the other hand, look at the Law.  Everything in the Law is about price and transaction: payments for this, atonement for that, punishment for this, retribution for that.   That’s the law, specifying quantifiable actions, sacrifices, amounts, cost, price – even locations, worship, feasts, and festivals.  All are carefully described and commanded. 

The Law specifies human transactions to honor God.  Love isn’t in the equation, and neither, you may notice, is freedom.  Why? It is love, not the Law, that breeds freedom.

With Jesus, it is love that is the completely different and newly inserted dynamic in the New Covenant.  If one sees “love” as a “price” for something, one sees love as a quantity, not a quality: as a restriction, not freedom … as an obligation, not a cause for joyous thanks.

And as I can measure quantities, so can I compare yours with mine, keep a scorecard of blessings and sins, and turn my walk with God into an empirical exercise.  I become a judge of “quantities” … oops.  Life with God – you know, eternal life – is life in the quality of divine love.

One may easily notice that measurements and comparisons beget jealousies and factions.  Do I sense that God loves you more than me?  I am jealous.  Or loves me more than you? I am prideful.  In love, I am never jealous of another’s walk in the Kingdom … or station in the world.  The proper posture in Christ is to praise Him, thank Him, love Him, and love others.

And speaking of loving others, rather than comparing ourselves to others, Matthew 22:29 says the greatest command is “to love God, and to love others as ourselves.”  Am I to love myself?  Yes … I am a creation of God and it is my duty to love that which God creates.  It is also my duty to love others, who God also created. It’s not about me; it’s about God.

When Jesus is challenged about paying a tax to Caesar (Matthew 22:15-22), Jesus says “give to Caesar what is his,” i.e., money, and “to God what is God’s,” i.e., love.  Jesus knows that the way of the world is keeping close count on quantities.  Jesus also knows that the way of God’s Kingdom is freely and enormously bestowing love and grace.

Occasionally we see “price” in the New Testament, like the “price” of thirty shekels (Matthew 27:9) the Pharisees paid to Judas to betray Jesus; i.e., the Law’s price of a slave.

Instead, I’ll take God’s freedom and life expressed in Revelation 22:17, “Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”

Delight may be in the Law of the Lord (Psalms 1:2), but the gift of Jesus is greatest of all.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes: Jesus’s value is too big to be imagined … or priced.