Friends: Are you happy for a minute?  Joyous for eternity? Let’s ask a Christian high school economics class. See the column below.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #898

January 30, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Happy for Now

By Bob Walters

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! – Philippians 4:4

I put the simple, first assignment to my high school economics students: Write a paragraph comparing/contrasting “happiness” and “joy.” Are they different?

Our textbook’s introduction presents economics as the science of how and why people make the choices they make. We have unlimited “wants” amid limited resources of materials, time, health, wealth, intellect, space, etc.  We have natural resources from the hand and mind of God, and innumerable resources from the hand and mind of man.

How does one decide what to do?  We weigh what makes us happy, secure, comfortable, and at peace while steering away from fear, chaos, harm, death, and treachery.  Most of us lean toward love and away from hatred … as often as we can.

Since I teach at a Christian high school rooted in the Bible (Mission Christian Academy, Fishers, Indiana), I pointed out that “joy” comes up much more often in scripture than does the word “happy.” The concordance in the back of my NIV Bible lists dozens of citations for “joy,” with only four for “happy.”  Is it just a translator’s choice of synonyms? Or is there an actual difference worth investigating?  Turns out, there is.

I have 28 students in two classes.  Overall, the students came back with ‘happiness” being more of a temporary emotion, and “joy” being a long-term way of life.  Since they are just about all church kids, it isn’t surprising that they see joy, as it is witnessed in the world, generally through the eyes of Jesus.  They can’t help it.  I love it.

One student, writing a longer paragraph pointed to Philippians 4:4, quoted above, about rejoicing always.  Happiness, she noted, is often circumstantial but we are called to joy and gratitude, [e.g.] “this is the day that the Lord has made; therefore, I will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalms 118:24). We spent both class periods discussing responses.

To me, the most surprising information was from a student directly citing the Merriam Webster Dictionary which had joy as the temporary emotion, and happiness as the enduring way of life, just backwards from the Bible. But on quick evaluation, it is also predictable.  Merriam Webster is a secular academic resource, not Christian wisdom.

I was encouraged that almost all the students did the assignment, shared their thoughts, and discussed them in both scriptural terms and by lived experience.  

What I didn’t tell them before, but shared with them in class, was that over the years I’ve written several pages worth of aphorisms and notes about joy and happiness.  The topic / comparison is a particular favorite of mine. My mentor George Bebawi once pointed out that happiness is not really encouraged in the Bible, but joy is.  “Happiness is transient,” he said, “but joy exists in Creation.” I love that line, and it got me thinking.

Happy is about me, joy is about God.  Happy is now, joy is eternal.  Happy is a symptom, joy is a condition. Happy is a circumstance, joy is a worldview. Happy speaks to comfort; joy speaks to love.  Joy, I believe, looks like peace and acts like confidence with a generous dose of wisdom and love.  Joy defeats hate; while happiness is swallowed up by hatred. Our purest joy is facilitating the well-being of others.

I hear secular voices insist, “I deserve to be happy,” or express the notion that personal happiness is the central mission, purpose, and goal of life. We all want to be happy, and I want all people to be happy. But a loving relationship with God through faith, trust, and truth in Jesus and the guiding light of the Holy Spirit, is truly life’s goal.

And that is God’s glory. Our joy in the Lord is our strength … now and always.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) always knew joy existed, but couldn’t prove it until Jesus.

Friends, Modern culture isn’t only working itself away from Christ, it’s erasing reality. Time to wake up.  See the column below ... Blessings! Bob

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Spirituality Column #897

January 23, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Reality? Really.

By Bob Walters

“…the reality, however, is found in Christ.” – Colossians 2:17

I’m somewhat encouraged, from much recent reading, that the heavyweight philosophers and opiners of our time are beginning to catch on to the “Woke” fallacy.

Wokeness is a cultural cesspool, whose name is of recent vintage but with intellectual and academic roots tracing back not years or decades, but centuries.  As “natural theology” broke into the mainstream of divinity studies – some like Francis Schaeffer track its beginnings back to Thomas Aquinas in the 13^th century – man slowly began to redefine God, Christ, and Spirit into a product of man’s own determination.

Never mind that God created us and that the goal of each of our particular lives is to ascertain God’s goals for us, to enjoy restored human relationship with the divine through Jesus Christ, and to seek through prayer and service the Spirit’s wisdom and comfort.  The gift of God’s freedom to us – Jesus – is our freedom to be with Him.

We’ve spent roughly 800 years putting the wrong-sized shoe on a wrongly-measured foot.  Wokeness is about redefining freedom in God to freedom from God.

And when one takes God out of the freedom dynamic, things like responsibility, common sense, and reality itself eventually will go with it.  Enter “Wokeness” and the human spirit-killing chaos of a secular world endowing spurious authority to “My Truth.”

As we have seen public figures and intellectual chatterers of the recent years assert deepening idiocies on society’s proper conduct and attitudes – traditional marriage is oppression, abortion is “women’s health,” gender fluidity is freedom, critique of any non-white person is racism, American wealth is a construct of colonial chattel slavery, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are settled as moral goals for their own irrational sakes, looting is proper recompense for social injustice … you get the idea – “freedom,” in elite halls, has been defined away from all vestiges of responsibility.

“Responsibility to what?” one may ask. Responsibility to the capital T Truth, which is synonymous with capital R Reality, i.e., the Word of God, and the fact of God’s Creation, will never be subservient to the rantings of worldly, philosophical man trying to replace the will, purpose, and plan of God with an empty freedom absent God’s wisdom.

The “Woke” eruption of recent years is the logical, spiritual result of “theology” that went off the rails long ago.  Through the Reformation, Enlightenment, and the ascendant human freedom defined by American independence, what was at first considered the gift of God – our freedom – is now thought to be a restriction by God.

Tom Sowell’s recent book, Social Justice Fallacies, Schaeffer’s classic Escape from Reason, and numerous think-piece articles have put divinely rational lyrics to clear-thinking anthems rebelling against the sanity-breaking zeitgeist of Woke ideology.

The disingenuous modern academy has redefined “Freedom” to exclude truth, attempting to capture truth’s Godly purity for its own impure purposes. It won’t work, because truth’s purity resides first in Christ, and then in our human comprehension of responsibility, common sense, and reality.  That which is not real – My Truth – is a lie.

Regarding the inescapable anger of the reality-flouting Woke, First Things editor R.R. Reno’s recently penned, Idealistic Nihilism. It’s a heavy lift, but illuminating.

The aim of Wokeness is the freedom to destroy the “wicked oppression” that binds us to reality, without, of course, the responsibility, plan, or love, to replace it. 

Jesus is our true and only link with God’s reality. The Woke are dead asleep to it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays for those who lie to themselves. Really.

Friends, Jesus gave his life, but what did God get out of the deal? Are Christians supposed to be “givers” or “getters”? See the column below. Blessings! – Bob

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Spirituality Column #896

January 16, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Trading Up

By Bob Walters

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like unto it, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” – Jesus to the Pharisees, Matthew 22:37-39

Are you in church because you love something?  Or because you want something? Because of what you can give, or what you can get?

The greatest commandment, in the words of Jesus above, says our purpose in Christ is to love God and love others.  Jesus came to earth for our salvation because God is love and, in His grace, God is supremely giving.  What did God want?  He wanted us.  He had created us, and sent Christ not to tell us what He wanted, but to show us His love and give us a divine gift: restored relationship with God.

It is a gift we are fools not to accept, and we do not learn the lesson of Christ by sitting in church – or even by “being Christians” – because of some earthly thing we feel we want or need.  God had to give away His son to receive what mattered most in Heaven: the return to heaven of His favorite creation … us.

How many times have we heard someone – believer or non-believer – ask, in whatever words and however phrased – “If God wanted to save us, why go through all that Jesus-Crucifixion-Death-Resurrection business?  Couldn’t God just say, ‘You’re all saved!’ and been done with it?” You could call it, “Snap of the fingers” salvation.  It sure would have been easier for everyone.

Had that been God’s plan, I think we’d be justified sitting in church thinking of what we wanted rather than who we love and what we could and can give.  Because in that case, God would not have had to express His love and grace, and then to join in His eternal life, neither would we.  The lesson of Jesus – our lesson as Christians – is that value comes from love and grace, not from convenience and comfort.

It is maybe our worst modern trait – we think we are owed comfort, simplicity, happiness, and esteem, because that is what the modern world offers us. It is the core of our sin: not to want freedom, but to want free stuff … and easy stuff.  Freedom truly is never free; and freedom never comes without truly enormous personal responsibility.

And our own personal level of responsibility shows up in our own expression of love and grace … and giving.  Remember the famous John F. Kennedy quote – “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”?  Replace the word “country” with the phrase “God and others” and you have one of the most accurate, Christian, theologically loving propositions of all time.  To want? Or to give.

We live our lives – especially our American, secular, free lives – in the habit of even trade, fair wages, expected justice, due reward, reasonable punishment, a better tomorrow, the occasional calamity, probably some nagging guilt and regret, and most assuredly hoping we “get what’s coming to us.” We are sure it will be something good.

As a sinner saved by Christ … the last thing I want is what I truly deserve.

I’ve often made the point that I first showed up at church not because I wanted anything or feared something; but also, certainly, not because I wanted to give anything.  My own love and grace in Christ were still far down the path, but through time, prayer, study, and fellowship I see that what I’ve received is an opportunity to love with God.

I never see salvation as a purchase or transaction, but as an expression of God’s love.  And from my former earth-bound life, I can’t help but think I’ve traded up.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is thankful, not cocky.

Friends, I believe our human minds are God’s greatest gift to us, and that it is God who gives our brain its greatest workout. Some experts agree. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #895

January 9, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

‘Atheism is Rather Simplistic’

By Bob Walters

“The fool says in his heart, there is no God.” Psalms 14:1, 53:1

I lived the first 47 years of my life blankly unaware – not hostile to, not angry at, just, unaware – of what it would mean to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

When faith arrived, church became a weekly thing and the Bible began making sense.  Through no discernable work on my part, the Holy Spirit did what it does and life was redirected toward new thoughts, new friends, new priorities, and mammoth, new curiosities. I had no preconceived notions, nor a shopping list of expectations.

I didn’t “want” anything; and I wasn’t begging forgiveness for anything.  Maybe I should have been, but it wasn’t greed or guilt, nor even hope or peace, that drew me in.

What truly sucked me in was 1. how many smart people seemed to be around church, and 2. how immediately I was intellectually sure this was no wild goose chase.  The mystical reality of God, faith, eternity, humanity in God’s image, and this unseen but deeply felt realm of transcendent purpose set like quick-dry concrete.

And when study began in earnest, meeting more people at church, and over time encountering Christian history’s preachers, authors, saints, thinkers, and philosophers, it was surprising and exciting to learn how many smart people over the past 2,000 years – including today – really “got” this whole Jesus thing.  Christianity isn’t going away.

Today’s breathless Christian pollsters incite panic about a culture of descending faith and diminishing church attendance, tracking “the nones” – those folks who claim no “religious” affiliation.  Well, I don’t think God depends on polls.  People are wise to depend on truth, which can be plainly stated as that which is always true, always real. 

America and England are arguably the most tolerant religious cultures on the planet, and also where religious nay-sayers find ample room at the public trough.

In the past 20 years we’ve seen the rise and fall of something called the “New Atheism.”  British scientist and renowned atheist Richard Dawkins wrote a book called The God Delusion in 2006, which was more of a harsh attack against believers than a reasoned debate against faith.  While its criticism was leveled primarily at Christians, the book’s timing – five years after 9/11 – proposed that all religion is bad because all religion causes violence.  So … let’s get rid of God.  Even Dawkins can’t do that.

Dawkins is prickly and condescending in his public statements about Christianity, and presents Darwinism as the be-all-end-all explanation of all things moral and existential.  His vigor, over time, has boomeranged, and “New Atheism” has faded.

I’ve just ordered Oxford Theologian Alister McGrath’s new book, Coming to Faith Through Dawkins.  It’s a compilation of essays by a dozen intellectuals from around the globe describing how they left atheism and found faith in Christ specifically because of Dawkins’ unkind and draconian – and some would say intellectually specious – polemics.  He called for examination of God … and the truth revealed itself.

Dawkins is happy to call those of faith something less than cerebrally gifted, but shies away from taking on a first-rate Christian thinker in an open debate.  William Lane Craig comes to mind; many Christians have read Craig’s “A Reasonable Response.”

McGrath – I’ve read his popular Christian Theology college textbook (twice) and his The Intellectual Life of C.S. Lewis – notes of Dawkins’ misfire that “life is complex and atheism is rather simplistic.” A rejection of everything will never illuminate the truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), age 69, offers this link (HERE) to a good, 28-minute podcast with McGrath by First Things contributing editor Mark Bauerlein. His review to follow soon.

Friends, Ever struggle explaining your faith in Christ to an unbelieving family member?  Consider the newly anointed Apostle of Christ Paul going home to his pious Jewish family in Tarsus. See the column below. Blessings and peace in the New Year.  Bob

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Spirituality Column #894

January 2, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Welcome to the Family

By Bob Walters

“… because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” – Romans 8:14

The Apostle Paul wrote 13 of the New Testament’s 27 books explaining the kingdom of God, the person of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the mission of the church, and human life in Christ.

The four Gospels tell the story of Jesus. Acts tells the story of the early church, Peter, and Paul; the various letters of Paul and others explain the Good News of Jesus and what humanity is supposed to do about it.  Suddenly, in Christ, we are heirs.

It’s not surprising Paul was so adept and well-practiced at illuminating this newly arrived “Light of the World” – Jesus – who “came for all mankind” (John 3:16) and fulfilled the promises God made to Israel (Matthew 5:17). Jesus came into this world not to start a new religion, but to cement the divine-human relationship God set in motion in the Garden of Eden through Adam and Eve, in the seed of Israel through Abraham, and with the Law of Moses on Sinai.  Jesus came to complete God’s family.

Unlikely as Paul may have seemed – as “Saul” Paul had been killing Christians in defense of the Jewish Torah – Paul was the right man for the job of explaining deeply how the One God entered humanity through Israel in the person of Jesus to renew and restore the fallen world riven by sin and living far from its creator, the One God.

Paul brought many assets to the mission, including brains, energy, persistence, and faith in the One God.  Paul was thoroughly versed in Israel’s scripture as a Pharisee, schooled in Greek culture, was a Roman citizen, and who, despite being a zealot against the first Christians, became the tireless champion of the early church …  and not only because the resurrected Jesus appeared – forcefully, dreadfully, familiarly, personally – to Paul on the road to Damascus.

My holiday reading this year – we’ve had a couple weeks out of school – has been British professor (N.T.) Tom Wright’s book, “Paul: A Biography,” 432 pages published in 2018. Wright is called “St. Paul’s greatest living interpreter” and I’ll not attempt a “review” of the book.  I will say that its depth and common sense assumptions add new dimensions to the readings of Paul.  It’s a big read, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Wright drives home the point, vigorously described by Paul, that Christianity is a completion, not a replacement, of God’s great glory and purpose. And for all the book’s fresh and fascinating information and detail, one aspect I’d never before considered stopped me cold: Paul had to explain his faith in Jesus to his own pious Jewish family.

Shortly after beginning his ministry in Damascus and Jerusalem, “speaking boldly,” “Grecian Jews tried to kill Saul” and “the brothers” sent Paul back home to Tarsus (Acts 9:28-30) for what is thought to be a period of nearly 10, silent years.

Wright sets a fascinating narrative for this period before Paul wrote his letters: the zeal-filled Pharisee Saul goes home to his Jewish family in his Jewish neighborhood of Tarsus – where he had likely learned the family tentmaking business – now bringing zeal for Christ into a family environment that remained zealously pro-Torah. 

One never need wonder how Paul became so good at expressing the inheritance in Christ of the human family under the One God, saved by Jesus.  Paul began with a decade of trying to explain it to his own family and neighbors. That’s serious conviction.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is aware of the many “controversies” regarding the actual authorship of the various “Pauline” letters and other books of the Bible as well, but accepts the truth of the biblical canon as God’s Word.  Satan prefers we doubt.