Friends, I’m not thinking about Halloween, I’m thinking about intellectual life in Christ … and it is a real treat.  See the column below ...

And … Aiden Joseph Walters (7lbs 13oz, 20in) was born to younger son John and wife Jeni at 7:50 a.m., Monday, Oct. 30, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Their first. My brother is John’s Uncle Joe, and I see “A.J.” in that name. He is grandchild #3; #4 is on the way in February in Utah. Now … let me collect myself …  the column …  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #885

October 31, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Do You Mind?

By Bob Walters

“‘For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.” – Paul, 1 Corinthians 2:16 NIV

My longtime Christian mentor Dr. George Bebawi made a frequent point of the fruitlessness of arguing scripture with a non-Christian, non-believer, or “other” believer.

Whether with an atheist academic, an agnostic scold, or practitioner of a non-Bible faith, George noted the uncrossable gulf of scriptural obliviousness present in the non-Christian mind.  One has to believe scripture to truly understand it, and an intellect dismissive of God, Son, Spirit, and scripture is unlikely to be lured into faith by mere words that one’s “intellect” does not consider to be capital T Truth, i.e., God’s truth, objective truth, eternal truth.  Only the mind of Christ – the Spirit – fords that barrier.

That is why the way we live as Christians – our “life’s witness” – speaks louder to the outside world than our words.  Early Christians drew others to faith both with the first witness of Jesus Christ resurrected, but also and importantly, by the lives of the Christian believers who loved and took care of each other.  Prior to the arrival of scripture, sophisticated Christology, and church doctrines, it was fellowship and community – and the simple light of the Holy Spirit – that attracted and held first-century new believers in a faith heretofore unknown.

On an intellectual level, it is also why the apostle Paul, cited above, plainly says that prior to Jesus, no one knew the mind of God. This scripture passage, 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, is subtitled “The Wisdom of God” and is worth reading for anyone thinking that catching converts is a matter of spouting scripture. That is for believers, and what a comfort!  But only the Spirit of God has the Wisdom of God, and Jesus is the one who sent us the Spirit of God. Many, then and now, want to instruct God; it is a fool’s errand.

Are we as smart as Jesus?  No, but that’s the secular world’s primary anxiety that we “think we’re so smart.”  What we are is faithful, and that’s why “we get it,” thusly:

“This is what we speak, not in words taught to us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:13-14). Then, in the Spirit, we either get it or we don’t.

It is the Holy Spirit’s job to light the lamp of spiritual knowledge in a person’s soul.  Until that happens, all we can reasonably do is live a consistent Christian life (harder than it sounds), abide by and testify to Christian truth, pray, and especially be a 24/7 witness to the Big Two: Love God and love others. Then do the hardest thing: trust God.

Maybe the great surprise to the outside world about entering into Christian faith is that Jesus is a thinker’s realm.  Paul talks about “wisdom of this age” (v6), i.e., Paul’s era, and is referring to the Greek philosophers, Roman justice, and the Hebrew religion.  Paul then cites God’s “secret wisdom … hidden for our glory before time began. (v7)

As the world scrambles for definitions and debates, the mind we have through God’s Spirit – the mind of Christ – unlocks God’s words and shines an otherwise unknown light onto the straight path toward and narrow gate into God’s kingdom.

Stay in that light, share scripture as the Spirit leads, and keep your mind sharp.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reminds all: pick your battles carefully, and pray.

Friends ... News you can trust is infinitely more satisfying than news you can’t.  See the column below.  

First, a couple of love notes.  My younger son John and his wife Jeni in Fort Lauderdale are due to have their first child, a SON, Oct. 30 – next Monday.  Elder son Eric and wife Lindsey in Utah, also expecting but not until February, had the gender reveal party Sunday and it’s a GIRL to go with big brother Banner (4) and big sister Haven (2). My cup runneth over.

For you mathematicians, 884 weekly columns divided by 52 weeks a year makes this week’s column the completion of 17 consecutive years writing Common Christianity.  Shooting for 17 more!

Now, here’s the column.  God bless.

Bob

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Spirituality Column #884

October 21, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Info Central

By Bob Walters

“Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.” – Psalm 51:6, David’s beautiful lament to God after Nathan pointed out David’s sin

Why is it I can find the most disturbing parts of the Bible somehow calming, and almost any aspect of modern news media and commentary wrenchingly disturbing?

I’ve settled on this answer: it’s because I trust the Bible as God’s unwavering and righteous truth, and understand the media as merely man’s catalog of loaded opinions and politically-philosophically-socially “correct” – and so-often bogus – narratives.

High-alert discernment is wearying; truth waggling is insulting; the news is tiring.

I like to think it was not always that way … about the media, I mean.  I grew up in journalism.  My dad worked for the Associated Press in Detroit and then was a city editor for a newspaper in Michigan. I wrote sports for my local newspaper starting in my senior year in high school, earned a journalism degree in college, and spent roughly 12 years writing and editing daily sports news.  Dad always hoped I’d become a “real journalist” and cover the city hall and crime beats.  I was having fun in sports, thank you.

But in Dad’s era – the 50s and early 60s – journalism held fast to straight news and objectivity. Sure, different newspapers had different and well-known “slants,” but headlines provided information, not teases.  Truth was pursued; facts were honorable.

Stories were “inverted pyramids” of prioritized facts in descending order, the better to cut copy from the bottom when space ran tight.  The readers’ time was considered valuable: “tell ‘em what they need to know” … quickly.  The readers’ reasoning powers were trusted; specious and purpose-pitch insinuations were ridiculed.

Today in online “print” news with infinite space, we have click-bait heds and shaggy-dog ledes to draw us inward to intrusive advertising surrounding and embedded in imprecise paragraphs.  Broadcast news, commentary, and even “entertainment” largely toes an annoyingly Progressive “don’t think, just believe us” line of arrogance and deadly falsehoods.  Trust wanes.  Most media offer pot holes and land mines.

George Orwell … we never should have doubted you.  Prevarication reigns.

Conversely, much of my life – I am 69 years old – I did not know or trust God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, or the Bible. That has changed. Truth and righteousness reside with them, and I know searching the scriptural path will lead me to peace.  Reading the Old Testament, the first time through, for me, was devastatingly upsetting in some parts and overwhelmingly boring in others (all those “begats,” tribal lists, and laws). Yet, it is the story of God and the story of humanity: a catalog of what does not work for humans.   Jesus is the culmination of that story; faith in Him is true and the end will be glorious.

Jesus has been left behind in our large media picture, just like I left Him out of my life’s worldview and philosophy for many years.  Truth was elusive and hope was a situational and materialistic variable, not the spiritual surety Jesus has brought to me.

I sparingly, warily, look at a dozen or so news websites daily, receive the print editions of both the Wall Street Journal and the Epoch Times, and stopped watching TV news and commentary after the 2022 election. It has been the most satisfying and healthiest ceasefire since I quit smoking 30 years ago (January 1, 1994).

My ever-dwindling time now is focused on my trusted family, friends, colleagues, students, and a Lord I love and trust.  Peace in this life is indeed elusive, and I know exactly where to go for Good News, truthfully, anytime I need it.  Wisdom comes at last.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) can handle bad news but hates being lied to.

Suppose a living, holy Messiah came from God and nobody noticed.  Or few people noticed … or made up their own meaning.  It’s a 2,000-year-old quandary of Christianity.  See the column below. - Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #883

October 17, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Eyewitness Views

By Bob Walters

“Many will seek, but few will enter.” – Luke 13:24, Jesus speaking of God’s Kingdom

Podcaster friend Richard Jacobs, who is Jewish but nonetheless intensely curious about Christian beliefs, sent this question a couple weeks ago.  How would you answer it?

“If Jesus was crucified in 33 A.D., someone who was 15 years old at that time would've been cognizant of what was going on, and that person would've been born in 18 A.D. approx.  By 85 A.D. most, if not all, the direct eyewitnesses to Jesus were passed away. How do you think culture and humanity changed once the original first hand eyewitnesses passed away?

Well, what would you say?  Think about it for a few moments. 

I was a guest on Rich’s “Finding Genius” podcast in June (LINK) and after a brief “we must do it again” email exchange in early July, had not been back in touch.  I love these kinds of “what if” posers” but when the email arrived had time only to return this quick note:

“Great to hear from you Rich. Yes, too long! Can't respond in depth at the moment, but great question. The apostle John was just such a person: he witnessed the crucifixion, was younger than Jesus, and died approximately 100 A.D. Many heresies sprang up almost as soon as Jesus died; many persist today. Will be back in touch. Love this question.”

Slightly edited, here’s what I sent to Rich a few days later (before the Hamas attack):

“Hey Rich, getting back to this. First thing to consider, in my view, is how long after the Resurrection it took for anybody to actually understand what was going on: forgiveness. Many disciples, followers, and other people – according to the Bible – saw the resurrected Christ, but few if any figured out Jesus was the seal of their salvation, eyewitness or not.

“I mean, ‘Jesus back from the dead; neat trick,’ yet it was former Pharisee Paul, with a comprehensive command of Jewish scripture and called as an apostle a few years later, who put the tinsel on the tree and preached Christ the savior. John wrote his Gospel perhaps as late as 90 A.D.  It was still decades/centuries before a full ‘Christology’ was discerned. Eyewitnesses got the ball rolling, but Jesus’ truth had only begun to be grasped.

“And remember, the whole point going forward – ‘the New Covenant’ – was faith not proof.  Jesus had to die, come back, and then ‘go away’ to activate the faith dynamic. Despite all the instruction of Hebrew scripture, i.e., the Old Testament, almost nobody knew what Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection meant – for sure – so folks concocted stories.

“The church at Corinth Paul chided was an apostate mess.  The Gnostics and other heresies sprang up like daisies in various iterations saying Jesus had to be spirit or flesh but not both. The Jews were having none of it, over time doubling down with the Talmud and Mishnah re-explaining and re-emphasizing Jewish law still awaiting a Messiah (of David?) to adjudicate injustices against Israel. Today dispensationalists, end times prophesiers, and messianics are holding their breath – along with the rest of us – watching the war in Gaza. 

“The truth that Jesus was the fulfillment of Israel (Matthew 5:17) and is the only way, truth, and life of humanity’s eternal return to God's Kingdom (John 14:6) remains a point of contention for all outside Christian faith and even some in it. Jesus said ‘few would believe’ and like everything else, Jesus was right.  Most people on Earth, to this day, don't believe.  

“My thought is that this is as it was supposed to happen: faith, no faith, re-packaged expectations for a Messiah who will elevate the Jews over all, and secular nonsense of personal ‘truth’ untethered from a savior and Lord they cannot and or will not see.

“I think we're right where God figured we’d be: mostly fallen; and where Satan hoped we would be: largely confused. Our one opportunity to know God’s truth and salvation was right there on the cross. We either believe or we don't, and the secular circus continues.” 

Maybe we’ll have a chance to discuss it further on another of Richard’s podcasts.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) realizes he is one voice in a rather strong whirlwind.

 Friends, Remember that guy who “discovered America” in 1492? Yeah … don’t say his name.  And remember the Mayflower in 1620? Forget that, too. Let’s talk about 1619.  See the column below ...  Bob

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Spirituality Column #882

October 10, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Teacher as Student, Part 3

By Bob Walters

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil …” – Isaiah 5:20

Honestly, this column topic date wasn’t planned, it just fell this way.

Since mid-September I’ve wanted to write about two ship landings that happened in America in 1619.  That was a year before the ship Mayflower with its Pilgrims – who last week we learned were not Puritans and were not until many years later called “pilgrims” – arrived at Plymouth Rock, and 128 years after Columbus “discovered America.”

So today we will conclude a three-part series inspired by history lessons I’ve learned from teaching high school history at Mission Christian Academy, Fishers.  From World History, Part 1 (#880, HERE), we discussed the pharaohs in Egypt at the time of Moses.  Last week, Part 2 (#881, HERE) was about the “Separatists” who actually were on the Mayflower, not Puritans.  Now in Part 3, we’ll learn about a couple of English ships that landed in Virginia in 1619, one being the White Lion, carrying African slaves.

The irony of this particular column’s timing is that over the last several decades our nation has increasingly vilified – and now basically cancelled – the memory of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus who, under Spanish sponsorship, sailed across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean Sea in 1492.  In three trans-Atlantic trips Columbus never actually set foot on North American soil.  Yet, he is blamed for unleashing the “evils” of white European culture not just on the indigenous peoples of the western side of the Atlantic, but by extension, facilitating what followed, including slavery in America.

The irony? This column is dated Tuesday, but column distribution is Monday, Oct. 9, which this week happened to be C*l*m*u*s Day – whose name we dare not say – the now-verboten celebration of the “discovery of America.”  It is politically incorrect.

A fair study of Columbus’s 1492 Spanish ships and the English privateer (pirate) vessel White Lion 127 years later would reveal no connection between the two.  But since 2019, four years since the leftist New York Times Magazine with its silly-but-Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project undertook to rewrite American history, progressives are re-defining all European exploration and settlement of North America away from its intrinsic human greatness and applying it to destructive narrative and racial animus.

As for the White Lion, the English pirates had kidnapped the slaves from a Portuguese ship and then traded the Africans for ship’s provisions, i.e., food, at Point Comfort, now known as Fort Monroe near Hampton, Virginia. See a good history HERE.

Also in 1619, another ship – name unknown – arrived in Jamestown, “carrying 90 eligible women for purchase as wives for the cost of their passage, or 125 (155) pounds of tobacco (which served as currency at the time).” So says our U.S. History textbook. Story HERE.  One wonders why that, among feminists, hasn’t been a scandal as well. 

History tells us that while Spanish exploration here was more military and avaricious in nature, the English and others sought commerce, religious freedom, and fresh starts with families far from the monarchs and religious wars of Europe.

My thoughts on Columbus, slavery, and God are here, Sailing the Ocean Blue.  I’ve not read the 1619 Project, but here is a good explanatory piece by Jarrett Stepman in the Daily Signal: Historians Challenge New York Times' Dubious 1619 Project. I’d advise not wasting one’s time on the Times’ “1619” for the same reason I’d advise a friend not to patronize an obviously filthy restaurant; I’ve had a taste.  Yuk … nasty.

I am not blind to the faults of America but think it is dishonest to ignore its good.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will return to a more theological theme next week.

Friends, There were no Puritans on the Mayflower … I had always thought there were.  Also ... folks asked about the MCA gym floor fundraiser I mentioned last week, and if you want to help but do not want to donate through the school LINK, mail a check to MCA / Gym Floor at 13095 Publishers Dr., Fishers, IN 46038. Now, here’s the column.  Blessings!  Bob

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Spirituality Column #881

October 3, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Teacher as Student, Part 2

By Bob Walters

“By this all people will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – Jesus, John 13:35

Let’s visit the Christian underpinnings of America.  And we’ll start with this:

Christians throughout history have spent as much time fighting among themselves, it seems, as they have spent evangelizing the Gospels out to the world.

Time and narratives have a way of blurring historical facts – often facts that don’t matter a lot – but when I learn I’ve always been wrong about something, even if it happened in 1620 specifically and the early 1600s generally, I celebrate the discovery.

In last week’s column (link: 880 - Teacher as Student, Part 1) I explained my fascination with teaching high school history at a Christian academy where “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.” We study both, and church history too.

Last week it was World History and the ancient Egyptians at the time of Moses; this week it is U.S. History and the New World arrival of English Christians at the time of the Mayflower – 1620, Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims, William Bradford, Puritans, etc.

Except … there were no Puritans on the Mayflower, nor was “Pilgrim” a word that William Bradford ever heard.  It was religious “Separatists” on the Mayflower – Brits who sojourned actually from Britain to Holland, then in 1620 back through London and on to North America. Wait, what?  No Puritans on the Mayflower? I had to look deeper.

According to Donna Curtin, executive director of Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts, “Capital-P Pilgrim didn’t appear until 1800, when citizens in Plymouth proposed [a] ‘Pilgrim Society’ to celebrate their heritage.”  Nor did “pilgrims” wear pricey black hats with buckles. These “first-comers” were generally poor upon their arrival in 1620 and remained near Plymouth, devoutly faithful to Christ and scripture.

The Puritans, also religious dissenters, didn’t arrive until 1629, a thousand strong sailing on 17 ships from England into Massachusetts Bay, north of Plymouth.  Puritans wanted to belong to the Church of England but purify it of its Catholic ways such as priestly garb and certain doctrines, including salvation through the church rather than faith.  They had a new start in America, and were a strong and initially faithful group,

The Puritans were wealthier than the Separatists, better prepared, founded Boston, and, ironically, proved less tolerant of religious differences than the British church they left.  Exhibit A would be the Salem Witch Trials, prosecuted by Puritans.

“Separatists” wanted to be wholly separate from the “heretical” Church of England and had been persecuted and often killed as traitors in England, which is why many left for Holland.  Separatists especially bristled at the heavy Roman Catholic influence of the Church of England, later known in America as the Episcopal Church.

To understand the English church requires knowledge of how, in the 1500s, England whipsawed back and forth, first between heavy support of Catholicism in the face of the Martin Luther-led Reformation in Europe, then Henry VIII’s formation of the Church of England in opposition to the Pope, then back to Catholicism, then not, then …

Anyway, by the time of the King James Bible in 1611, the Church of England was solidly ensconced under the authority of the King, not the Pope.  To learn more, here is a link from History.com: What’s the Difference Between Puritans and Pilgrims?

I think we’ll save the events of 1619 for next week.  There’s a lot there, too.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) teaches at Mission Christian Academy, Fishers, IN.