Friends: Meeting my mom’s long-ago friend “Jeannie” brightened a bleak Christmas in 2002. Here’s the second part of the two-part story we began last week. Blessings! Bob

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Spirituality Column #944

December 17, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Christmas Present from the Past

By Bob Walters

“Shout for joy to the Lord … his faithfulness continues through all generations,” Psalms 100, Mary Jean Alig’s favorite psalm, read at her funeral by her daughter Ginny Cain.

The story began back in the 1940s, I think, when teenager Mary Jean Milner ventured from her family’s summer enclave in Harbor Springs, Michigan, 30 miles north to visit friends in Mackinaw City.

For geographical orientation, look at the back of your left hand – you’ll note it looks like the state of Michigan.  Detroit is down at the base of your thumb; Harbor Springs is at the top of your ring finger.  Mackinaw City is at the top tip in the middle. My parents are both buried there. And, by the way, the city is on the “mainland,” by the Mackinac Bridge, not on Mackinac Island, eight miles or so out into Lake Huron.

My dad’s family, the Walters, had lived or summered in Mackinaw since 1905. Mom’s family, the McKinney’s from Saginaw, Mich. (near the crux of your thumb and forefinger), built a Mackinaw summer home in the 1920s or 30s.  We never asked for specifics.  Dad grew up in Marion, Indiana, and due to a long list of family happenstance, went to Mackinaw City High School during World War II, class of 1945.

The Milners, Mary Jean’s family, were from Indianapolis where her dad, the Rev. Dr. Jean Milner, was senior pastor at Second Presbyterian Church from 1921-1960, first on 38^th Street at Meridian, then north to 7700 North Meridian where it is still located today.

In the 1920s, Indiana’s allergy season led Rev. Milner to find summer solace in Northern Michigan, where he built a log cabin west of Harbor Springs on Lake Michigan, and a shed on the shore that was his “writing room” where he would construct sermons and teaching plans for the coming year.

My wife Pam and I learned this while visiting Mary Jean and husband Dr. Vincent Alig in 2014, standing on the beachfront below their Harbor Springs home. Vince died the following summer in 2015; we kept in regular touch with Mary Jean until she passed last Friday, Dec. 6, at age 95.

Going back to last week’s column (#943 link) about meeting Vince and Mary Jean in 2002 at the Mustard Seed Bible study Christmas breakfast at Indy’s East 91^st Street Christian Church, that “random” meeting, I believed immediately, was no random thing.  The meeting was a God thing, as I and my family grappled with my mother’s severe health decline. Discovering that day that Mary Jean was “Jeannie” my parents, and especially my mom, had spoken of years before, built a welcome bridge to my mom’s youth.

Jeannie, who went to Tudor Hall, a high school in Indy, had a friend named Fred “Fritz” Leete at Indy’s Park School (now Park-Tudor School), whose family had a multi-home estate (“The Leete Fleet”) down Wawatam Beach from the McKinney place. Mom, dad, and Fritz were friends, and Jeannie stayed with Mom in Mackinaw. Vince, whose family, also from Indy, had a summer home on Walloon Lake (also tip of the ring finger) occasionally visited Mackinaw as well.  Everybody knew everybody along the beach

I learned a lot about my now bed-bound mom I had not known.  Mom, Jeannie said, was the “beach gang” leader-of-the-pack. Her family had a nice Chris-Craft motorboat and Mom led various forays over to Mackinac Island or bombing around the Straits. Jeannie told me she remembers Mom barefoot water skiing – I had no idea – and that Mom would brag about speeding back and forth to Saginaw in her dad’s car (Grandpa Doc was a Saginaw ophthalmologist). I remember a pair of wooden “Cypress Garden” water skis – from Florida – in our Mackinaw cottage garage, supposedly the first skis on the Straits.

The most legendary “Jeannie” story was when the gang climbed one of the 100-foot steel fire towers dotted around heavily forested northern Michigan.  Jeannie got about half way up, just above the tree line, said “that’s enough,” and the guys in the group helped her back down. The towers were still there in the 1970s, 30 years ricketier, and I can vouch that climbing them was a scary if thrilling enterprise.

As Mom lay in an Alpena, Mich., nursing home in late 2002, her broken hip well-healing but cranial vascular leakage causing progressive dementia, Mom immediately smiled when I told her about meeting Mary Jean.  “Oh, that was Jeannie,” Mom said, with a smile that grew larger when I showed her the color photo Mary Jean gave me of the “Sag-a-Mac,” the 1940s McKinney Chris-Craft of Mom’s youth.

This was all such a Christmas blessing.  Mom would pass in March 2003, but my friendship with Vince and Mary Jean grew with visits and Bible studies together. She added a dimension to knowing my own mother I and my siblings had never known. She and Vince encouraged my weekly writings, and I’ll always remember this about Mary Jean: when she prayed, you knew Jesus was in the room. Well done.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) compliments Mary Jean’s wonderful family.  Here is her Obituary.

 

Friends: It was a tough Christmas season in 2002, but an angel named Mary Jean Alig rekindled past, joyful memories of my mother. This will be a two-parter. May your holidays be joyful!  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #943

December 10, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Who Are You Guys?

By Bob Walters

Twenty-two Decembers ago, in 2002, my mother Ruth McKinney Walters was in a northern Michigan nursing home with a broken hip that healed and general vascular failure that didn’t.  She would pass away in March 2003.

My dad, John Walters, had died from post-surgical complications in September 1991, and both are buried in Mackinaw City, Michigan, where we have had family roots since the early 1900s.  Mom and Dad met in Mackinaw in the 1940s, and our family grew up vacationing there at our cottage on the Straits of Mackinac’s south shore. The cottage is long gone, but Mackinaw City remains a family cornerstone. We visit there yearly and it is an area that “speaks to me” as a beloved lifelong home.

Growing up I heard countless stories, especially on vacation at our cottage – the longtime McKinney summer vacation venue – about Mom’s and Dad’s friends and adventures in their teens and beyond at Mackinaw. They had a fully-functioning “beach gang” several of whom were around in the 1950s and 1960s with kids my age. Mom’s and Dad’s Mackinaw friends, stories, and adventures were legends of my upbringing.

Anyway, in October 2002 Mom had fallen at home and broken her hip.  She lived alone in Alpena in the house where, in 1980, she and Dad had moved from Kokomo, Indiana, where I grew up. Her injury was an awful ordeal; Mom was alone for two days until a waitress at the coffee shop she frequented daily came by to check on her. 

In the intervening months I was back and forth to Alpena often, but mom wasn’t getting better. My brother and sisters and I felt guilty we hadn’t been there, and Mom’s illness intensified my memories of all those old stories of the great times in Mackinaw.

That said … that same December of 2002 I was here in Indianapolis (we lived in Carmel) at a Thursday morning Christmas carry-in breakfast for the “Mustard Seed” Bible study I attended which was taught by beloved retired minister Russ Blowers. The class in those days met Thursday mornings at the Castleton MCL cafeteria, but the breakfast was at our East 91^st Street Christian Church less than a mile away.

Standing in the E91 Friendship Room breakfast line behind an “elderly” couple obviously of my parents’ vintage – roughly the same age I am now – we introduced ourselves.  They were Vincent and Mary Jean Alig.  I said my name was Bob Walters.

“Hmmm,” Mary Jean queried. “Are you related to …,” and I cut her off. “Naw …,” I said.  “I’m not related to anyone named Walters except my immediate family.  My dad was an only child and his dad was an only child and neither was from here.”

As if Jesus had sent a gracious angel, Mary Jean, who appeared to be about my mom’s age (mid-70s), said wistfully, looking at Vincent, “The only Walters we knew was several years ago; Johnny Walters in Mackinaw City, Michigan.”

Stunned … and I mean, truly stunned … I said, “Who are you guys? My dad was John Walters in Mackinaw City, Michigan.” Many years ago.

Turns out, she was Mary Jean Milner, aka, “Jeannie,” whom I’d heard my folks talk about as one of their summertime Mackinaw friends, and also the daughter of long time Indy Second Presbyterian Church minister, Dr. Jean Milner. More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) became fast friends with the Aligs and learned much about his mom’s younger days from Mary Jean, 95, who died Friday, Dec. 6, in Carmel. Her funeral is 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 12, at Legacy Bible Church, Fishers, IN.

 

Friends: 'Talk about Good News … well, here’s some. Blessings, Bob

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Labels: 2 Timothy 3:16, Bible sales, Circana BookScan Jeffrey Trachtenberg, Pew Research, Wall Street Journal

Spirituality Column #942

December 3, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Booming Bible Sales   

By Bob Walters

“All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” – 2 Timothy 3:16

Speaking of profitable, here is an unexpected headline – and maybe a Christmas gift idea – from the Wall Street Journal this past weekend:

“Sales of Bibles are Booming, Fueled by First-Time Buyers and New Versions.”

For all the non-God cultural lunacy of the past decade or so, not to mention the seemingly monthly negative church polls – thank you, Pew Research – about dwindling attendance, the “Nones,” and diminishing faith of the general population, there is a solid, American uptick in publishing and sales of Christian scripture. I think that is fabulous.

The article by New York City-based WSJ reporter Jeffrey Trachtenberg, whose specialized beat is the print media industry – i.e. books and magazines – displays this sub-head: “Publishers attribute a 22 percent jump in Bible sales this year to rising anxiety, a search for hope, or highly focused marketing and designs.”

Trachtenberg cites a Circana BookScan statistic, showing the 22 percent Bible market gain.  By comparison, total U.S. print book sales were up less than 1 percent in that period. Here is a link to the article: Sales of Bibles Are Booming - WSJ.

In case you can’t get through the Journal’s subscription paywall, let me share some of the story’s quotes and findings, and a few of my own opinions.

For an explanation of the rise in sales, Trachtenberg quotes Jeff Crosby, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, “People are experiencing anxiety themselves, or they’re worried for their children and grandchildren.  It’s related to artificial intelligence, election cycles, and all of that feeds a desire for assurance that we’re going to be OK.” Bible sales can signal aggregate hope, too, not only despair.

“Faith & Life” Christian bookstore owner Bethany Martin in Newton, Kan., is quoted that she is selling lots of Bibles to first-time Bible buyers. “They’re looking for hope in the world the way it is, and the Bible is what they’re reaching for.” The store’s website offers more than 270 Bibles, he reports, noting a veritable explosion in color options and custom versions “intended specifically for men and teens and early readers” along with study Bibles and women’s versions. And, “There is a goatskin version priced at $832.50.”  All well and good, but we know the Bible’s value is its truth, not its price.

Without doing a deep-dive into Trachtenberg’s faith life, what I can discern about his reporting is that he is a serious, veteran journalist reporting the facts without editorializing.  He neither trashes nor promotes faith along the way; he writes it straight. 

And that’s fine; it is a rare and laudable, and classical, journalism characteristic.

Without bias or comment, Trachtenberg reports that President-elect Donald Trump, back in March, “endorsed the ‘God Bless the USA Bible,’ which sells online for $59.99 and isn’t included in Circana BookScan figures. Oklahoma’s education department recently purchased more than 500 of those Bibles for local schools, the Tulsa World (newspaper) reported, referencing copies of purchase orders.” No snark.

Trachtenberg cites recent Pew Research data revealing “28 percent of adults in the U.S. consider themselves ‘religiously unaffiliated.’ Yet Bible sales were 9.7 million in 2019, rose to 14.2 million in 2023, and were 13.7 million the first 10 months this year.”

I often say God doesn’t need polls, but strong Bible sales are surely Good News.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) gives the news a “Wow!” With surprise, and hope.

Friends: Holidays are seasonal fun, but thanks, truth, and Jesus are never-ending.  Happy Thanksgiving. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #941

November 26, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Thankful All the Time

By Bob Walters

“Therefore let no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration, or a Sabbath day. These are shadows of the things to come; the reality however, is found in Christ.” – Apostle Paul, Colossians 2:16-17

“The Holidays” are upon us – Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year – and I love this line about “let no one judge you by what you eat or drink.”        

Whether we go “over the river and through the woods” to grandmother’s house,  revel in the “hap-happiest season of all,” or renew an “auld acquaintance [we] forgot,” we’re lined up for five weeks of frivolity, kicking off with Thanksgiving this week.

You may have noticed that this year is a short yuletide season. Thanksgiving falls on its latest possible day, November 28, leaving a compressed, four-week sprint to Christmas on Wednesday, December 25. Clear the dishes and hang those stockings.

(Given the short season and momentary mild weather, I’m hanging Christmas lights on the house before Thanksgiving this year. We’ll light them, properly, on Friday.)

It was 1941 when Congress declared the American “Thanksgiving Day” – which dates back variously to the Pilgrims, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln – to be the fourth Thursday of November. By 1941, commercial Christmas had coalesced around the Yule celebration and, driven by the pecuniary interests of major retailers, the maximum “shopping days ‘til Christmas” were preserved.

Now, what’s all this about the Apostle Paul and religious festivals, celebrations, and Sabbaths?  His letter to the Colossians gives great, succinct direction for living a Christian life, freed from the written codes of the Old Covenant (see Col 2:14).  It is a key bit of Christianity – of being and living like a Christian – to think like a Christian.

In both the old laws of Israel or the perennial superstitions of pagans, temporal remembrances and “religious” rites were demanded. But that’s not how Christians roll. That’s not what Jesus calls for in the New Testament, where there are no demands for festivals, feasts, holy places, or observant times. I mean, we all celebrate, but the Bible never calls on Christians to do such things. Jesus, you see, is true light, not a shadow.

What Jesus calls us to is full and abundant life with Him (John 10:10), and teaches that He himself, Jesus Christ, is “Lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:1-8, Mark 2:23-28, Luke 6:1-5).  Christian Sabbath – our rest and our peace – is Jesus, always and everywhere, starting with the love in our hearts and the faith and hope of our minds.

Jesus is with us 24/7 as our souls are animated by the Holy Spirit. Christians have different words of expressing these realities, but what is always the same is the totality of God’s love and Jesus’s grace, for everyone (John 3:16).  Jesus didn’t come to save only the Jews; Jesus came to save and to be with His people all the time. 

His presence with us is a benefit, not a burden, and we are under no law to celebrate anything because a written regulation says so. That the U.S. government designates a dozen federal “holidays” provides calendar structure, not demand for obeisance.  That’s what government does: it organizes worldly things. Faith is our own.

Jesus, you see, gives us a continuing and eternal template for faith, hope, love … and thanks. We are thankful because, in reality, Jesus is with us always. Let’s eat.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that truth and reality have no time frame.

 Friends: I’ve developed a fond attachment to the month of November over these later years of my life. It’s when Jesus arrived. Blessings!  Bob

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Spirituality Column #940

November 19, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Sentimental Journey

By Bob Walters

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

It is November, a gloomy weather time of year here in the American Midwest, punctuated by Thanksgiving as we circle in a fitful holding pattern for Christmas.

Fall has mostly fallen, clouds hang heavy, the school year grinds on, it’s “off season” for just about everything except sports, and maybe, just maybe, in our weariness we hang on until hope blooms afresh in the new year, scant weeks away.

In my life up until 2001, when I was 47, that was my attitude toward November. Although in truth, I probably never gave November much thought. But I was baptized into Christ November 18, 2001, and ever since, November has accumulated a special, treasured, and personal fill-up of purpose and sentimentality.  I have a new birthday.

There is a sharp delineation in my life before baptism, and my life since.  As I mentioned in my longer than usual epigram last week, November 2007 was when my dearest Christian friend Russ Blowers, a retired pastor who mentored my first six years as a Christian, died at age 83,

It was at Russ’s funeral, November 15, 2007, that I met my new, dearest Christian friend, my wife Pam. Just a few days after Russ’s funeral, on the 19^th, we went out for coffee. We’ve been together ever since, and married in the summer of 2009.

Which is all to say that I, now and for some time, have harbored a profoundly sentimental attachment to November.  It was the month when I learned about resting from burdens, trusting the gentle, liberating, and loving yoke of Jesus, and about trusting a humble heart. I learned the sweet grief of watching a saint go to heaven, and grasped the deepest thanks for God revealing His truth to sinful man in the loving life and sacrifice of Jesus.  Pam and I, and so many others, share this blessing.

We don’t have to live up to the demands of Jesus; we get to live with his promises and love.  The “rest” Jesus promises is both a rest from the law which brings death and countless demands, and the rest we have in the new covenant of faith, salvation, and life of the new Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus Christ. 

We have to remember that Jesus promises persecution and pain, a seeming logical disconnect. But it is the demons of this world who tempt us with the burdens of this world, which come gift-wrapped as candy but are poison to the soul. We choose the love of the world or the love of Jesus, and that is a choice that will delineate one’s life.

My life, for example.

I now know life with Jesus, but once lived life far from Him. Then He invited me in, and weariness faded. November is now special.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was born May 23, 1954, reborn Nov. 18, 2001, and writes a thank you letter on that date each year to Dave Faust, who baptized him.

Friends: Do we want a humorless society that is rife with condemnation and hate? Elon Musk asked that question back in 2021, bought Twitter in 2022, and may have changed the country in 2024. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #939

November 12, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Prayers, and $44 Billion in Free Speech

By Bob Walters

“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Jesus, John 8:32

It sure has been a newsy week.

Happy, thankful Republicans have been spreading around credit and glee for a decisive, multi-level victory.  Saddened and shell-shocked Democrats are variously assigning blame and steeping themselves in angry denial over a repudiating loss. 

The wise on the left are engaging in introspection; the wise on the right are hoping for peace, sanity, and truth. We all should pray for unifying our nation.

It is fine if you view things differently, but rage one way or gloating the other helps no one. Love God, love thy neighbor, love thy enemy, help the nation heal … and pray. And do something nice for someone.  It is amazing how that lifts one’s own spirits.

That is all I want to say today about politics.  Sure, I have many thoughts – as do we all – but I’ve said this much politically only in order to look back at something I wrote nearly three years ago, and an unexpected election-game-changing event from 2022.

It is a story centered on Elon Musk, free speech, and my favorite Christian and political/cultural satire site, the Babylon Bee, “Fake news you can trust,” hilarious daily.

If, like me, you long ago lost your trust in the media, generally – especially the legacy and narrative-controlling media who non-stop purvey and champion seemingly every toxic idea in America (wokeness, anti-racism, gender fluidity, open borders, “Trump is Hitler” and his supporters are garbage) – here’s a perspective I had missed.

Back in December 2021, Elon Musk, notably apolitical but leaning left, appeared on the Babylon Bee podcast with owner Seth Dillon and editor Kyle Mann. One hundred minutes of great conversation (LINK: Elon Musk Sits With The Babylon Bee) concluded with Dillon and Mann, Christians, seriously asking Musk if he would accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. Musk, then recently named the richest man in the world and who during the podcast had expressed his surprise that “anyone had actually read the entire Bible,” responded to the Jesus question by asking if they meant, “the God of Spinoza?” Uh, no.

Here’s what I wrote about the Bee and Musk then (LINK: “The God of Spinoza”).  I ended the column encouraging prayer for Musk’s faith; he would make a great Christian.

Scant weeks later in the spring of 2022, Twitter suspended the Babylon Bee’s account because of a joke it posted about trans-female (i.e., biological man) U.S. health official Rachel Levine, naming her “Man of the Year.” Sticking to its free speech guns, the Bee refused to retract the joke and was de-platformed by Twitter in April 2022.

Some months later Musk, righteously outraged at Twitter’s suspension of the Bee and suspicious of Twitter’s truth-stifling censorship, in October 2022 bought Twitter for $44 billion (with a B) and fired 85 percent of its staff. It turns out that to empower free speech, Twitter – renamed “X” – didn’t need all those “fact checkers,” i.e., censors. Truth wins.

To understand Twitter’s deleterious influence and sway on American opinion in recent U.S. elections and, really, all American culture, watch this brief, four-minute, post-election opinion video by Peter Heck (LINK: How The Babylon Bee helped shape election history). It explains much about what happened last week, and how truth was recovered.

Free speech doesn’t always yield truth, but censorship always protects lies.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thanks Heck, and continues to pray for Musk’s faith.

P.S. The Babylon Bee has a companion daily “news” site, LINK NottheBee.com, with sarcastic spin on actual news.  Also highly recommended.

P.S.S. Sunday, Nov. 10, was the 17^th anniversary of Russ Blowers’s death in 2007.  He was a great preacher and friend to us all, and continues to be an inspiration. My wife Pam and I met at his funeral, Thursday, November 15, 2007, at East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis. See Common Christianity columns Nos. 763, 764, and 765 for the story.

P.S.S.S. I missed an anniversary.  Last week’s column began the 19^th year of Common Christianity, published now 939 weeks in a row dating back to Nov. 6, 2006 when it first appeared in the Current in Carmel weekly newspaper (through 2015). During that first year, my editor each week was Russ Blowers until he got sick in the late summer.  Early on I didn’t publish anything Russ hadn’t seen. Now, I don’t publish anything Pam hasn’t seen.

P.S.S.S.S. – Since this is going out on Veterans Day, Vets, thank you for your service! Especially my brother Joe (Coast Guard 1979-2000) and my Gold Star Uncle Bob McKinney, RIP (WWII Navy aviator, 1941-1943).

Friends: Why did God bring His Word to humanity in the flesh, rather than in the Spirit? Maybe because flesh is common to everyone? Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #938

November 5, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

All Systems Go, er, God

By Bob Walters

“And the Word became flesh.” (John 1:14)

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, John 4:24

Listening to Moody Radio’s Christian programming while running errands late Friday morning, a message about marriage being a covenant with God (agreed) sent my mind in another direction.

The preacher noted that we often sort and prioritize our jobs, faith, marriage and many other things in different “compartments” of our lives. His point was that faith in God should never be separated from other parts of our existence.  Agree, and agree.

What got me was when, speaking of Jesus, he said this: “God didn’t come as spirit; he came as flesh,” i.e., a human being. I caught on right away. “God is spirit,” but Christ came as a human. Hmm. I thought about how many people I’ve heard in my own life, declare, “I am a very spiritual person, and/but I don’t need Jesus to be spiritual.”

Those are the words of a secular person whose God-given soul may well strive beyond mere flesh, but has not yet discovered that statement’s dead-end emptiness.  There are many spirits out there, and it is only in and through Jesus that we find the life-giving and eternal Spirit of God. We are wise to be very picky about the spirit we seek.

I searched the word “demon” in the BibleGateway.com ESV app. The word appears just three times in the Old Testament, but 73 times in the New Testament including 64 times in the four Gospels. Point: Jesus encounters and deals with demons – bad spirits, Satan’s spirits – a lot. Early in my Christian life I heard pastor Dave Faust preach, “The reason you don’t mess with the occult (demons, witches, Satan worship, and the like), isn’t because there is nothing to it, but because there is something to it.”

I suppose this is timely since we are just coming out of Halloween “celebrations” (not a fan), but let’s be sure we are pursuing the proper spirit, the Holy Spirit, in Jesus.

Given how often evil spirits are mentioned in the Bible, I’m convinced they are real, and have known people who have journeyed into and out of occult practices. Even famed news commentator Tucker Carlson last week released a video about his “very intense desire to read the Bible” after being attacked by demons in his sleep [LINK].

My late mentor George Bebawi’s advice when we feel the presence of demons is to pray Psalm 91, cling closely to Jesus, and don’t talk to the demons (or Satan).

The Moody Radio pastor’s core point was God’s presence in, and the Bible’s comments about, marriage (all good stuff).  But he recited a good chunk of John 1:1-14 to make the point that Jesus is the Word of God (the Logos), and that “the Word became flesh” (v14).  “It doesn’t say, the Word became Spirit,” the radio voice intoned,

Wow, I thought. “The flesh.” That’s every bodily system, organ, and structure, and every physical action and interaction we experience. God is Spirit, and Jesus is us.

Some may brag about being a “spiritual person,” but God coming as the human Jesus tells us God is part of our entire life and not just one mental “faith and spirit” compartment of it.  He’s in every spiritual, physical, and mental aspect of our existence.

Jesus tells us to worship “in spirit and truth.” That’s the system of God’s love.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows there is an election today. Here’s a warning.

Friends: With the U.S. election on our doorstep, what role in government should Christians assume to be our own? What about the politicians? May our nation be saved. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #937

October 29, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Shepherd, Hireling, or Wolf?

By Bob Walters

“He who is a hired hand (hireling) and not a shepherd … sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. I am the good shepherd. I know my own … and I lay down my life for the sheep.” Jesus, John 10:12,15 (ESV)

This presidential election next week, combined with a random comment I heard in church on Sunday, got me to thinking.

For President of the United States, will our nation be better off electing a shepherd, or a hired hand? While I am set in my preference of the candidates, it also is obvious that nobody wants to elect a disinterested hired hand. A shepherd is better.

So, later I was thinking about the shepherd/hireling dichotomy vis-à-vis the election and realized I was asking the completely wrong question.  Christians often say that we are electing “a president not a pastor,” supposedly removing religion from the docket.  And for darn sure, we had better not be mistaking – or imagining – that either “shepherd” elected is Jesus Christ. My point: is it a “shepherd” we should even seek?

I suppose there are many folks who do indeed view, errantly, that they are voting for some sort of civic or cultural shepherd or “savior.”  Huh uh, no.  It is not Jesus the electorate imagines it is voting for; it is Satan the electorate imagines it is voting against.

But back to my continuing thoughts on the shepherd/hireling thing.  Driving home it occurred to me – and I teach high school American Government – that I don’t want to elect a shepherd at all.  As an American citizen – you, me, all of us – are not sheep, not where our government is concerned. The government is supposed to be our servant.

Is that currently an accurate reflection of the state of American government on almost any level?  No … the government is a wolf. But you know what else? As an American citizen, I am supposed to be a wolf. A hungry, free, independent, responsible, purposeful, creative, and aspirational wolf. That should be my civic identity, not a sheep.

The Lord, not the government, is my shepherd. Let me be a citizen wolf.

Now, am I a sheep in the kingdom of God? Oh yeah. And on all matters divine, Jesus is my Shepherd, Savior, Lord, Way, Truth, Life, and Body and Blood of all my faith, hope, and love.  That is who Jesus is, but it is not who I’m voting for. Jesus has no “term in office” and is not up for election.  Christ is permanent, forever, just, and good.

Jesus was and is the Son of God, maker of all that was made, savior of mankind, and our only mediator with God. But his first and greatest duty was and is as a servant.

So, let’s not confuse the government of the heavenly realms with earthly politics. That “pay grade” thing our American leaders often joke about when faced with a task larger than their office, should never be confused with Jesus, or fanciful about the extent of what an American leader needs to be: a servant. Like Jesus? Sure. But not Jesus.

Most nation/tribal leaders in all history have been wolves.  The U.S. Constitution, written with a close and sacred understanding of the Bible, works only with a just, moral, and Christian people. Obedience? Yes … but not sheep. Love God, love others, be just.

Romans 13:1-7 tells us government is to provide order, protect citizens, and help the citizens protect their persons and their aspirations.  Where God is concerned, I’m part of the flock. Where this election is concerned, I’m howling against false shepherds.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes: wolves are loyal mates and protect the pack.

Friends: Pam’s daughter Lauren married Greg Saturday, blending families and going forward in life.  I officiated the service and wanted to share the homily I wrote on love. Blessings, Bob

Spirituality Column #936

October 22, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Complete Love

By Bob Walters

“Love … always perseveres.” – The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:7

Lauren and Greg, with her three small children and his one, were married and became a blended family last Saturday.  It was a career first for me, officiating the small, cozy ceremony among their dearest family and closest friends. I thought I’d share the homily:

Not one of us, individually, is “complete.” I believe our singular human incompleteness was and has been part of God’s plan since the Garden of Eden. We need a sure savior. We need trusted friends. We need nurturing family. We need a loving mate. It is a blessing to have loving children.  Hope resides in all these things.

The Bible says, “God is love,” but our earthly, human, temporal understanding of love we have in this life is better experienced in the context of God’s giving, sacrificing, eternal love. It is with God, and with each other, that we discover our completeness.

Consider that God – who we know as the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit – God Himself is a community of three.  Why a community? Because love cannot exist alone, as one. 

A wise man once said that God is three because three is the smallest number of a community. God, therefore, can be – and is – love, and teaches that we are to love those whom he created in His own image … us.

It follows that the great commands of Jesus are to love God, and to love others.

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4-7:

“Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres.”

Notice that the things that cast light on ourselves – envy, boasting, pride, self-seeking – are warned against.  While things that express love, patience, kindness to others, and truth are recommended.

Chapter 13 of the Bible’s New Testament book of 1^st Corinthians is a staple of Christian and even not-so-Christian weddings, as we proclaim the strivings of human love. But the chapter is primarily about God’s perfect love.

Back in verse two, Paul says “if I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”  Love is how we are completed in God’s eyes.  Our ability to see through to the eyes of God is the gift of Jesus Christ, and of those we love.

The passage also says that we must “put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). That is because we have grown and learned a greater love – a sacrificial love – for others and humility for ourselves.

Yes, in our earthly life we can have many things, talents, desires, dreams, and intentions.  But in the end, Paul says, faith, hope, and love remain; the greatest of these being love.   Love is the greatest because it invites divine relationship, and is God’s language of community, and completion.  

Greg and Lauren, may your lives and love become complete with God, with each other, and with your children, in heaven’s earthly realm. AMEN.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) obtained one of those “online ordinations” to be “legal” for the ceremony, but prior to the ceremony counseled with several personally known and trusted pastors for their blessing and imprimatur for him to officiate.  

Friends: Meet Cliff.  Cliff’s awesome.  If you haven’t run into him on the internet, you might run into him on an American college campus explaining Jesus. Posting early this week due to MCA Fall Break. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #935

October 15, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

School Spirit, Part 3 – True Religion

By Bob Walters

“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. Do this with gentleness and respect.” – 1 Peter 3:15

“What I am saying is true and reasonable.” Paul to Festus and King Agrippa, Acts 26:25

Over the past couple years Cliffe Knechtle has become something of a YouTube, internet, and college campus sensation with brief videos airing all over social media.

Ask Cliffe a hard question about Christ, the Bible, or religion in general, and right there, whether amid Christians or – quite frequently – a skeptical crowd on the campus square, he’s always prepared to provide true, reasoned, gentle, and respectful answers.

Whether it is a Christian school or even the lion’s den of the Ivy League, dialogues range from reassuring explanations to rebuttals of challenges.  My favorites are the arrogant, cynical, know-it-all undergrad philosophy majors who take the tone of patronizing this poor sap who actually thinks Jesus, salvation, eternity, the Bible, God, and the Holy Spirit are true. And, for questioners from other faiths, that God is the One True God. Cliffe immediately says things in reasoned ways I wish I could think to say.

Cliffe is fun to listen to. But an overnight sensation?  He has pursued his “Give Me an Answer” college ministry for 40-plus years, including television in the 1990s.

A gifted street preacher and apologist, Cliffe is also senior pastor of Grace Community Church in New Canaan, Connecticut, which was actually organized in 2001 around his Bible teaching talents. His books include Give Me an Answer (1986), Help Me Believe (2002), and Heaven Can't Wait (2005).

Turns out Cliffe and I are the same age, born days apart in May 1954. And, the church he pastors first met on Sept. 2, 2001, the exact date I first attended church as an adult … any church.  It’s what I call my “Awake Date.”  Maybe that’s why I like him.

Age 70, then, and Cliffe isn’t slowing down. Three weeks ago at the invitation of the Yale Christian Union, Cliffe (and son Stuart, a minister) spent six hours sharing with and being challenged by Yale students in Beinecke Plaza. Here is a five-minute clip of a discussion with a Jewish student about the Bible, morality, and modern values (LINK).

Video snippets of Cliffe’s encounters pop up regularly on social media.  His ministry has 719,000 subscribers on YouTube and 1.4 million followers on Instagram.

Cliffe won’t solve the entire problem of the Christian deserts that American colleges have worked so hard to become – officially and administratively – but ministries like his prove the Spirit moves in places where Christ’s truth is attacked.

And one more thing about the event at Yale … it was not a “school sponsored” event by an approved student body club.  ChristianUnion.org (LINK) is a ministry based in Princeton, N.J., that has a dozen chapters around the Ivy League and other schools. My guess is that “Christian Union” is on the more liberal side of the Christian doctrinal ledger: its website talks a lot about “transforming society” but not much about Jesus.

That’s a warning light, to me, but as long as Christian Union is willing to put Cliffe unmuted on the college green, the seeds of Christian truth are sown.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays the soil is fertile, not fallow. Come, Lord Jesus.

Friends: American academia may have kicked Christian clubs off campus or out of school, but Jesus isn’t that easy to get rid of.  The faithful persevere, spirits are revived.  See the column...   Blessings, Bob

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Labels: Christian campus ministry, Ephesians 2:2, father of lies, Isaiah 57:15, John 8:44, religious studies, revival, truth

Spirituality Column #934

October 8, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

School Spirit, Part 2 – Seeds of Revival

By Bob Walters

“For this is what the high and exalted One says – he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.’” Isaiah 57:15

Last week I took the spiritual status of American university academia to the woodshed.  It has been an ugly thing the past 150 years as bedrock Christian theology classes have been largely replaced in colleges by soft-core “religious studies,” and detuned as the central fabric of society. “Higher” education? Higher than God?   

Yet … there is a glimmering light.  Christianity tends to be hard to get rid of. While universities have expunged Jesus from their curriculums – I mean the real, Son of God, Lord and Savior, Jesus, the way and the truth and the life of the Kingdom of God Jesus – no shortage of Christians and Christian missions are alive and well on campus.

Of all the ironies of Christianity – the King of Creation arrives as the humble, helpless child Jesus; His death brings our freedom; His resurrection assures our restoration, God’s Spirit animates our hearts for God’s Kingdom, God’s mysteries somehow seal our faith in love and truth – Church history teaches us that it is during persecution when Christian light burns hottest. From darkness comes revival.

As in: after Jewish leaders conspired to have Jesus murdered on the cross, His resurrected body and life lit the fire of faith in thousands … then millions.  After Romans persecuted Christians for two centuries, Emperor Constantine became a Christian.

Today, doctrinally true Christian clubs and ministries are largely banned on campuses whose administrations – and student bodies generally – place a higher value on individualism of identity, freedom for sins, and group-think than discovery of truth.

While we might wonder what is better than forgiveness of sins, or more individual than a personal relationship with Christ, academia frets that its secular, homogenized, “truth” will be challenged. Yet it is not truth; it is a false gospel of false uniqueness. 

God’s Truth, the truth that governs reality, is eternal. But Satan – as the “Lord of the air” (Ephesians 2:2) and “the father of lies” (John 8:44), - creates perennial temporal havoc.  Humanist philosophies and pagan gods/worship go back thousands of years across all cultures. Satan’s greatest enemy is the truth of Jesus Christ.

Campus ministries organized as “approved student activities or clubs,” have been mostly defenestrated by university administrators under their “anti-discrimination” policies (speaking of ironies).  But plenty of students have their “swords” – Bibles – with them, share in Christian fellowship with their sisters and brothers in the faith, and evangelize on campus not with argument, apologetics, and protest, but with “the hand and heart’ of service and kindness. That was the social model of the earliest Christians.

University sponsored/approved Christian clubs may be nearly extinct, but outside churches, ministries, and missions either amid or near college campuses love, support, and encourage faithful students. Among the most effective campus ministries nationally are the hundreds of Catholic parishes adjacent to colleges but controlled by the church and “energized by its theology of the body.” (LINK: The Campus Ministry Boom).

Jesus hasn’t left campus, even as campuses try to leave Him. More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) repents, having once thought Christians were weirdos.

Friends: Christian faith and knowledge – along with truth, generally – have slipped off the radar screens of most American college and university curriculums. Next week ... seeds of revival. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #933

October 1, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

School Spirit, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“If the world hates you, keep in mind it hated me first …” John 15:18, NIV 1984

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” John 16:13, NIV 1984

Our E91 pastor Rick Grover mentioned in a sermon a few years ago that his son had headed off to a Big Ten college that was, Rick offhandedly said – accompanied by a nervous chuckle – “one of the largest Christian mission fields in America.”

What he was saying was, his son’s faith would be challenged. We all understood.

Let’s not reveal or pick on that particular school because the modern university academy – in toto and nationwide, big or small – does indeed comprise arguably the largest, most hostile, unchurched, uncomprehending, unsympathetic, unfaithful, and unknowledgeable Christian environment in our nation. At least, that I can think of.

College USA is now Satan’s favorite playground; Jesus need not apply.

Consider the trajectory. Virtually all early American colleges were formed as seminaries or religiously sponsored schools. After the Civil War, Land Grant colleges popped up across the United States emphasizing science, technology, engineering, and math. Religion and philosophy were supplanted by the empirical sciences.

By the 1920s, smaller Christian schools bloomed as havens of Christian thought, truth, and doctrine. In the 1930s the philosophy of public education began to stray from its Christian grounding, and in the 1960s Christian prayer and the Bible – by act of the U.S. Supreme Court – were expunged from public schools and most public places.

On college campuses in the later 1960s and 1970s – those of us of a certain age well remember – were violent protests over Viet Nam, establishment politics and Watergate, not to mention far-reaching and enduring racial, sexist, and sexual tensions. 

In the past decade we have witnessed a “breathtakingly rapid sprint” (LINK) of identity politics through virtually all our institutions – not just colleges and public schools, but government, business, sports, entertainment … even many churches and ministries.

The Woke virus seemingly traveled faster than Covid.  Colleges whose earlier mission was to teach “expert competence” (LINK) in a recognizable and marketable skill now focus almost entirely on identity politics, victimhood, and the condemning of oppressors.

Engineering? Computer science? Health care? Law? Education? OK, we will educate you, the colleges say, but have your politics right, first. If you don’t? Keep your head down and your mouth shut.  How about a nice degree in Gender Studies?

I don’t think it is possible to overstate the pervasiveness of anti-Christian bias on most of today’s college campuses, who administratively and among the broadest swath of faculty evince an overt hostility against exactly what Christianity provides: the reality of God, the truth of Jesus, the presence of the Spirit, and the authority of the Bible.

Oh … and the correct interpretation of “Love God, and love others.” Love itself is not the God, or rather, god, that the identity-first crowd thinks it is.  Love is the truth of God’s intention and purpose for creating us in the first place: in His image holding us up to His standards.  God’s righteousness flies straight into the face of Woke humanism.

Welcome to college. 

But all is not lost. Next week we will examine some encouraging seeds of revival.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes Rick’s son majored in Law Enforcement, faith intact. P.S. – the LINKs embedded in the column are both to the following article, referenced in previous columns: The Age of Incomplete Religions | Joshua Mitchell | First Things

 

Friends: Humanity’s spiritual sin debt is settled in hope and sacrifice, while our modern spiritual social debt is mired in irresolution. The right hand needs to understand what the left hand is doing … and fast.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #932

September 24, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Debt Load   

By Bob Walters

“…forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Jesus, Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:12

In the beginning, there was debt.

With only barely-necessary apologies to Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning,” etc.) – whether considering Genesis 3, the Code of Hammurabi, Plato’s Republic, Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, or humanity’s march through history – we see justice, price, and the paying of debts as the “central consideration from the very beginning of human civilization … No agreed understanding of debt, no civilization.”

So asserts Georgetown political theorist Joshua Mitchell in his recent First Things article, The Age of Incomplete Religions. (Link below.)  Yes, Mitchell does a laudable, circumspect job of assessing the Christian, historical, and political ubiquity of debt in human interaction.  But his assessment of contemporary social debt, I think, is brilliant.

As we wonder and lament why so much of current western civilization makes so little sense, Mitchell’s description of the pervasive, incomplete religion of identity politics lays out a coherent and rational – if disturbing – description of debts and economies.

As sin debt is unpayable by us, so is our social debt to the perpetually offended.

While Jesus settled sin debt on the cross to bring forgiven believers back to God, the social debt charged to us by the identitarian left perpetually boils in a cauldron of hate.  It is not forgiveness that is sought or even on offer.  Just, agree … or be purged.

Mitchell makes the good point that long trusted, conservative political kill-shot descriptives like “Marxist,” “Communist,” and “Progressive” are now neutered.  Bernie Sanders’s Marxism, for example, isn’t the enemy; the enemy is Identity Politics.

On a fervored religious par with Christianity, this unpayable social debt of grievance-based politics is the incomplete religion about which Mitchell writes.  Christianity is complete because it divinely shepherds us into the eternal. Any number of social movements in history (The Terror of the French Revolution, for example) or today guarantee only a pious busyness in this life of inconsequential, self-made angst. 

Wokeness, LGBTQ, Critical Race Theory and the rest constitute an overall religion that offers no salvation and won’t follow one’s soul into the grave.  Or, maybe it will, but the religion itself is temporal and only of this world.  What happens next?

Let’s just say I’d rather be right with Jesus.

Mitchell tracks conservative confusion regarding this new “truth,” if you will, to previously understood human debt in three categories. One is the spiritual debt about which we are speaking, and the other two are economic and traditional debt.  Economic debt is about money; traditional debt is about what we owe our fathers (both Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc., and our parents). Conservatives understand them.

A Christian’s spiritual debt is vertical … it goes upwards to God.  Social debt, in a telling turn of phrase, goes sideways.  It is demanded by the all-virtuous “pure, mortal, innocent victim groups,” i.e., the liberal left, from “impure, mortal, transgressor groups,” i.e. the conservative right. Forgiveness is not on the table, but civilization is on the line.

Politically, and in light of the election, may I suggest we know left from right.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) highly recommends The Age of Incomplete Religions.