Friends (column below), First: Here’s a “tip” … MCA, the school where Pam and I teach, is raising funds to put a basketball floor in our huge (currently plain concrete floor) “warehouse” area.  Feel like helping?  Donation link: Mission Christian Academy Gymnasium Fundraiser. THANKS! (Psst …we’re off to a fabulous start! Campaign just tipped off last Tuesday, Sept. 19). Give us a hand!

Now, here is Common Christianity column #880 (9-26-23), “Teacher as Student.” It’s funny what you learn when you are teaching others. Blessings!  Bob

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Spirituality Column #880

September 26, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Teacher as Student, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?’” Exodus 5:2

I have been reading the Bible diligently and coherently since coming to Christ as a middle aged adult in September 2001.

At that time, suddenly and miraculously, the Bible began making sense which previously, to me, it had not.  I don’t just mean about the basics of the Jesus story … I got that in my childhood in Episcopal Church Sunday school and teen years as an altar boy.  I mean the Bible “sense” one gets when the Holy Spirit is aboard, opening our eyes and heart to growing faith horizons and scripture’s truth, eternity, and love beyond.

I was an encyclopedia nerd as a kid, always on the intake of history, geography, random information, how things worked, where things were made and who made them.  I would, say, pull out volume “S” from the World Book white-with-green-trim deluxe set on our family book shelf and spend hours perusing what it had to offer. I loved to learn.

Now I’m immersed in information daily, unexpectedly teaching high school history (world and U.S.) and American government.  And I’ll add, as an aside, that yes, it is one wacky time to try to explain the current government of history’s greatest experiment in democracy (and for you sticklers out there, yes, I am aware America is a republic).

But … at a Christian school – Mission Christian Academy here in Fishers where I teach and where my wife Pam is the high school English teacher – one can learn astounding things that one misses when one studies history without a sense of the Bible, or the Bible without a sense of history.  Our textbooks include both dimensions.

For example, World History.  We all know about Joseph and the Jews going to Egypt (Genesis 37-50), and then Exodus: the slavery, Moses, God’s plagues, parting of the Red Sea, wandering in the desert, etc., a great Bible story. But what about Egypt?

Well, when Joseph arrived in Egypt it was in a peaceful era called the “Middle Kingdom,” the “Time of the People” following the less hospitable “Age of the Pharaohs.” The Pharaohs did little for the people, instead building pyramids and other monuments to themselves. I never understood; the Jews arrived as refugees but became slaves?

Here’s how.  In their 430 years in Egypt – 1876 BC to 1446 BC – the Israelites at first were allowed to keep to themselves peacefully. Around 1650 BC a warring people called the “Hyksos” took over Egypt, and it is believed it was they who began enslaving the Jews.  By 1570 BC, Egypt’s own warrior kings expelled the Hyksos and Egypt became a powerful nation, conquering Palestine, Syria, and “Upper Egypt” – i.e., the southern Nile area. Thebes was Egypt’s capital, and the Israelites remained in slavery. 

A rare woman leader of this newly toughened Egypt, named Hapshepsut (hap-SHEP-sut), ruled peacefully.  But earlier as “Pharaoh’s daughter,” she is thought to be the young princess who rescued Moses from the bullrushes of the Nile (Exodus 2:5-10).  

Her reign was followed by Thutmose III (thoot-MOS-uh), a warrior king, the “Napoleon of Egypt” who, if modern Egyptology is correct, is the “Pharaoh” who refused Moses’ pleas to free the Israelites (Exodus 5:2, 7-14).  It was his reign that endured God’s ten plagues, and his army that drowned in the Red Sea.  I learn new stuff every day.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wonders if he is the only one who errantly thought the Pilgrims on the Mayflower were Puritans. That – and a word about “1619” – next week.

Friends,  We have a lot to think about these days. God helps us with what is important.  See the column below.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #879

September 19, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Protect the Lovely Things   

By Bob Walters

“…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” Paul to the Philippians, 4:4

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Paul to the Galatians, 5:22-23

These are two of my favorite scripture verses because they direct human beings to nurture our most loving, restorative, redemptive, and peace-building impulses.

Humans must understand these are not rules to be checked off in order to please a Creator God who loves us; these constitute the roadmap to human flourishing.  These are the tides of Godly living that lift all ships and nurture all fields.  We do these things for us: not because God told us to, but because this is how human things work best.

When we live by these canons of behavior we abide in the heavenly realms of the Spirit whose light shines a full, recognizable measure, recognition of and yearning for truth, beauty, and joy.  That is what God wants for us, what we hope for us, and what we should bestow on others.  And that’s where the Spirit leads, given the chance.

Notice that in Galatians 5, the preceding verses 17-21 outline what humanity becomes – what it does to itself – when it lives in conflict with the Spirit. Things get ugly.  

That said, I am wondering if, lately – and I’m speaking specifically to Americans – have you watched the news, considered the culture, evaluated education, assessed the state of artistic expression and critique, attempted to make sense of politics, or otherwise noticed American society tumbling into a cultural abyss from which we may not soon escape?  Have you noticed how an evil aesthetic of “ugly” is overtaking – has overtaken – the godly and spiritual aesthetics of “lovely” and “beautiful? 

It is a new-ish theme I’ve noticed frequently in my general reading of news, commentary, theological observation, and the more learned ruminations of cultural grist-grinding.  It is a timely discussion I am happy to see, because I am very tired of the ugly.  Ugly is what our pervasive and leftist/progressive mass media, politics, academics, entertainment and often even art foist onto our culture as “transgressive truth.”  It is an ugly “truth” of destruction, not God’s loving truth of human flourishing.

Humanity is drawn to the beautiful because beauty draws us toward God.  True beauty, along with the divine aesthetics of virtue and happiness – as we may discern them – are byproducts of other endeavors.  We can’t create beauty on its own … but when we seek to express the Godly in love, truth, and excellence, that is where beauty will be found.  Beauty resides in our growth in, and striving for, relationship with God.  

I had not previously paired our very obvious cultural rot with this evil aesthetic of anti-beauty, which undermines our faith and trust in God’s love, hastening man’s death.

Much of society and culture, sadly, not only ignores God but works to destroy beauty and goodness.  Language is coarse, behavior is untethered, decency is mocked, sanity is canceled, science is driven by narrative, truth fades, and politics serves itself.

Remember when buildings in America were beautiful? Even architecture now expresses unadorned and angular contempt for humanity, not love for Creation.

The times are ugly, but God has no law against beauty or loveliness. Think about such things, and protect such things.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes: evil destroys, Godly Spirit builds. Always.

All those opinions don’t add up to reality, because opinions vary.  Truth is real all the time. See the column below.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #878

September 12, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Truth Is …

By Bob Walters

“I am the way and the truth and the life …”, Jesus answering Thomas and the disciples at the Last Supper, John 14:6.

“Where are You going? Where are we going? What do You mean??? How can we know?” That was basically the aggregate question disciple Thomas asked Jesus, and what all the disciples were wondering.  What is the truth here?

Jesus had just told them He was leaving, would be back, would gather them, take them with Him, and, don’t worry because you already “know the way” (John 14:4). 

In another context perhaps Pontius Pilate asked the question best: “What is truth?”  In front of both the disciples at the Last Supper and in front of Pilate in the palace stood the truth, the answer to their questions: Jesus, the Messiah, Son of God.

Note that Jesus answered the disciples, for they were truly His.  Note that Jesus said nothing to Pilate, whose “truth” resided in Rome, with Caesar. Regardless, all of sinful humanity asks: What is truth?  For better or worse, it is where our heart is.

I believe truth is a longing akin to the desire God puts into every human heart, the desire to know “beyond” this life to the realm of “Where did I come from?”  “Why am I here?” “Where am I going?” And as we all grasp the reality of death, “What’s next?”

This is the same broad category – ingrained by God in our humanity created in His image – that makes us, as humans, yearn to worship something; ideally the thing that we know is true.  Thing is, God also granted us the freedom to discover what to worship.  And when we worship properly, we discover God’s essential, core being: that He is love, and He wants us to love Him, others, and within that, to know His truth.

Satan corrupted that design for truth by tempting Adam and Eve in the garden.  Humanity’s truth of perfection in paradise became our questioning tarnish of the ages.  Ever since, it has been life’s central drama: What is truth?  We have too many answers.

Consider, as we look at modern American life, “What is truth?”  Survey culture, society, politics, media, education, entertainment, the implied-but-false majority of wokeness, the conundrum of “reverse racism,” the practical insanity of open national borders, assorted spurious public health and climate scares, a politicized two-tier justice system, and a forced absence of God.  Falsehoods and vacant, vile opinions abound.

Akin to a paraphrase of Thomas, we may ask "What the heck is going on?”

Thomas was looking for truth, and in point of fact, Thomas was looking at truth.

Truth is something that is real all the time. Our modern souls still and stubbornly look for truth in all the wrong places. Yet truth resides where it always has: in Jesus Christ.

What philosophers call “metaphysics,” the search/effort/yearning to define and understand “reality” – real reality, the truth, not just the opinion of an age – is a mosh-pit of competing ideas that dependably mirrors Pilate: “I’ll ask what truth is, but I really don’t want to know.” Like Pilate, much modern “truth” is “in Rome with Caesar,” and isn’t true.

Sin resides in this age we occupy, and is a human marker of all the ages.  When we know that Father, Son, and Spirit are real all the time, trustworthy all the time, righteous all the time, and good all the time, then we have the perspective of looking at, knowing, living, and sharing reality. In my opinion, that is truth, and the best way to live.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has opinions about Christ, yet knows Christ is truth.

On every Labor Day my thoughts go to the purpose of a Christian life.  Not because I want to work harder, but because I am thankful. And … a Sept. 5, 36^th birthday shout-out to my elder son Eric, who at the start of 8^th grade in 2001 wanted to go to church.  I am so very thankful. - Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #877

September 5, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Labor of Love   By Bob Walters

“Do this in remembrance of me. … For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:24-26

This past Sunday, for the third straight year, I randomly drew church communion meditation duty on or just before Labor Day weekend.  For me, it is a happy fluke.

That’s because 22 years ago, Labor Day weekend in 2001 – Sunday, Sept. 2, to be exact – was the day I first believed.  It was my “Awake Date” in Christ.  I had much to learn, but since that day, then at age 47, I have believed and however imperfectly, lived the faith and been blessed. I wrote about that day in church HERE.  Now, to today.

Our independent Christian church, East 91^st in northeast Indianapolis, celebrates bread-and-cup communion in each service, every Sunday. In our traditional service, a staffer or member of the laity, like me, presents communion. I draw duty twice a year.

Not long after the 2001 Awake Date, I was baptized. Over the next year I read the whole Bible, and over time I grew in knowledge and figured out that not just my purpose in life but ANY Christian’s purpose in life is simply this: to glorify God.

That’s what I talked about in communion this past Sunday, to remember our purpose of glorifying God each time we celebrate communion in Christ with the bread of fellowship and the cup of life.  In communion, Jesus said, “Remember me.” Christians often focus on the “bread of the broken body” of Jesus and the “blood of the death” of Jesus.  In reading the specific communion passages in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and in 1 Corinthians 11, and examining John’s Gospel account of the Last Supper and walk to Gethsemane with the disciples (Chapters 13-17), we know our communion in Christ is about so much more than a broken body and bloody death.

Communion is about remembering the obedience and truth of Jesus, and God’s eternal love, and our forgiven redemption as Jesus defeated death upon the Cross.  In our communion, together, we remember Jesus and our life’s purpose of believing … in His person, His identity as the Son of God, and His Lordship of all Creation.

We proclaim the Lord’s death until He returns, but I honestly don’t think the primary purpose of Jesus on the Cross was His death; His purpose was our saved lives.

Why the Cross?  Well, our sin, of course.  But I think the motivators were God’s love, Jesus’s truth, and the power of the Holy Spirit that could then be unleashed for God’s redemption of humanity.  We are invited into the Kingdom of God: the Garden.

Our purpose in remembering Jesus on the Cross is to glorify Him, and glorify God. My mentor George Bebawi memorably challenged that notion about a “sole purpose to glorify God” because, importantly, he said we must take it one step further. 

Glorify God, yes; but that’s not enough.  By Jesus’ sacrifice, we are invited not only to Glorify God. We also, ourselves, participate in God’s glory not just by going to heaven when we die, but in this life as well by living and sharing our faith with others. This life’s heavenly realms blossom by trusting Jesus not only as savior, but as Lord.

That is the New Covenant, and Jesus will direct our paths … if we let Him.

That is something to remember when we share communion.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that believers glorify God uniquely; God made us that way. Walters has written often about his “Awake Date,” and always mentions he was in church only because his 13-year-old son Eric wanted to go. The service that day was led by then senior minister Dave Faust as E91 celebrated the 50^th anniversary of beloved Russ Blowers’ ministry there.  Dave baptized Bob in November 2001.