Friends:  You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Figures never lie, but liars always figure.” The father of lies continues busily attacking Christians, with plenty of eager human help. Truth is better. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #919

June 25, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Liars Always Figure

By Bob Walters

“I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the father but through me.” – Jesus to the Pharisee Nicodemus, John 14:6

Given the evident corporate enormity of the modern and so-called Christian deconstruction movement, I’m struck by the cheapening of what its adherents are willing to call truth.  They figure God is a bad deal. Truth is, Satan is a skilled liar.

We’re going to continue this week with thoughts on the book I’m reading, The Deconstruction of Christianity, by Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. The authors accurately portray and describe the movement, and bear true witness to all the God, Jesus, Spirit, Bible, and church evidence that God’s truth supersedes human knowledge.  Truth is the thing God built into His creation, regardless of our belief.

And we all know who’s at the other end of truth: the father of lies and promoter of man’s distrust of God, Satan.  Deconstruction is our newest word for Satan’s work. 

At its rock bottom is this redefined notion that the magnificent “I” – and not a glorious God – is the appropriate fountainhead and arbiter of truth.  In order to validate the deconstructionist view of truth, it is actually necessary to first destroy the idea of truth, deny truth’s existence, and rewire – or rather, unplug – God’s created reality. This is what “deconstruction” in this context means. “Deconstruction,” the authors write, “isn’t about submitting to the truth, it’s about people choosing their own truth.”

If these deconstructionists – those who redefine and tear apart Christian values and doctrines, and not only leave the faith but encourage, assist, and celebrate others to do the same – coherently valued truth, they would not leave “truth” up to the vagaries of human opinion, conversation, passions, convenience, fallenness, and pride.

Mad at Christianity, the church, a pastor, the Bible, other Christians? Fine. Did we learn nothing about elemental, fallen human nature? Truth is God’s; humans, uh, lie.

“Faith” becomes not so much about “truth” as about alternate reality and about freedom from the “oppressive doctrines” of Christianity. Never mind that Christ frees us from death; a deconstructionist sees freedom as a function only of this life, not eternity.

Enter the alternate realities of current culture. Wokeness insists biological truth is a lie.  Postmodernism denies the existence of objective truth. Nihilism denies the existence of meaning.  “I can do what I want and be what I want and that’s my truth” is the self-focused mantra of the cancel culture which demands, but does not give, tolerance.  Accepting God’s love and forgiveness is Christian oppression and a lie. Ugh.

The book, by the way, does a wonderfully accessible job of presenting the often opaque philosophical and theological – not to mention common sense – aspects of truth.  As scholars try to define truth from time immemorial, Jesus is truth in eternity.

It occurs to me that our knowledge, valuable as it is, does not do what we think it does when it comes to identifying truth.  My college philosophy professor had no Godly beliefs though he could explain any religion and did a great job of teaching how to spot nonsense.  I am pretty sure truth is something that is in God, and only in us as we allow the Spirit to put it there. Faith is not “believing in something;” faith is God’s truth in us.

I was a little worried when I began reading The Deconstruction of Christianity that I might see some logic in the movement’s tenets.  Nah.  I see human pride, of course. And a sad kind of spiritual murder.  And I can certainly imagine Satan yucking it up.

We figure we know truth better than God, and the father of lies knows we don’t.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is happy to trust God’s truth. It’s better than Satan’s.

Friends: Believers have been running away from God since the beginning … the very beginning.  Now we have a 21^st century name for it and an oh-so revealing book, The Deconstruction of Christianity. Read it. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #918

June 18, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Something Else … Again

By Bob Walters

“…for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me.” Paul, 2 Timothy 4:10

Demas (DEE-mus), while not a Sunday school poster boy, was part of Paul’s crew. And I’m betting only you particularly astute Bible readers recognized the name. I didn’t.

But all of us in church recognize the move. With breaking hearts, we’ve watched people walk away from Christ. I don’t mean folks who move on to another church; I mean those who reject the truth and promise of Jesus, and reorient their lives away from the reality of God.  They want something else; they want their own truth.

Adam and Eve did it in the Garden. Examples are listed throughout the Bible, seen throughout history, and modern culture now has a name for it: Deconstruction.

I often read material with a lot of big words, but “deconstruction” was a new one for me this summer in the context of dismantling one’s faith. And it’s a pretty big thing that, I guess, I’ve been insulated from. Now I know. 

It’s sort of an annual thing, actually, that I ask our E91 pastor Rick Grover what he’s reading, and a recent volume he recommended was The Deconstruction of Christianity, by Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett.  Oh my … let the truth fly.

We’ve all seen public polling the last few decades pointing to declining church attendance and a rise of a demographic called the “nones,” those who claim no faith identity. Turns out there is an entire, thriving online marketplace of “deconstruction” websites, coaches, and forums. I had no idea.

But in our age of “do your own thing,” “be your own person,” and “find your own truth,” deconstructing one’s Christian faith is the hot new philosophical fad.  Except … it is a “fad” as old as mankind. I heartily recommend this book because it not only explains the modern movement, but is an easily read and marvelously astute manual of biblical context and philosophical help.

Too often – whether religion, politics, education, or culture – I’ve read screeds of “what’s wrong with things” that expose problems but offer no answers or prescriptives.  The Deconstruction of Christianity is an arsenal of scriptural and relational firepower that pays back its depressing information with well-constructed defense of truth.

Demas, the authors point out, was evidently a “significant player in the early church,” mentioned by Paul as a “fellow worker” in Philemon 1:24 and Colossians 4:14. By Paul’s last letter, 2 Timothy, Demas “in love with the present world” likely hadn’t just abandoned his friends, but – reluctant to share their suffering – left his own faith as well.

“In love with the present world”? Demas had traded eternal hope for earthly comfort; he denied his divine savior for physical temptation. It is still easy to see that in the world today, Christianity has been culturally re-categorized from its proper role as creation-level objective truth to just another subjective choice of existence.

The authors point out that the “Deconstruction” industry went viral around the time of the 2020 Covid pandemic and that, ironically, it was fueled prominently by high-profile faith denials by contemporary Christian pastors and music artists such as the purity movement’s Josh Harris and Hillsong worship leader Marty Sampson.

It’s an interesting if disturbing story. “Exvangelical” is more or less the call sign for the deconstructed, but that also infers a faith that was once there but now abandoned.  They have searched for something else in their lives, but this book makes a strong and highly accessible case for the divine value of what we already have.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has been keeping copious notes.  More soon.    

Friends: When our commitment to Christ is total, we may not have time to judge others. See the column below. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #917

June 11, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Lapse in Judgment

By Bob Walters

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter.” – Jesus, Matthew 7:21

I’ve written often that I believe the most over-quoted and under-comprehended verse in the Bible is Matthew 7:1: “Judge not.”

What I know is that it is our God-given, human judgment that keeps us alive, allows us to appreciate sunrises, flowers, and thunderstorms, and animates our quest for the divine good in life while stirring our wariness of the eternally bad and the evil.  

“Judge not” is a healthy prescriptive: trust Jesus and stay in your lane.  Popularly, though, “Judge not” instead is often meant as, “Shut up and leave me alone.”

What we should read is “Judge well, and know the fruits of the Lord.” God is love, heaven is good, and Jesus guides our path along his Father’s will. As broken as our road may be in this life, judgment is critical to accepting God’s grace and love.  What I ought not do is judge how God views another’s salvation. What I must do is discern the Father’s will by both the truth of God’s word and my loving relationship with Jesus.

Even Satan recognizes Christ; what Satan lacks is sacrificial love.  What Satan has in abundance are sowable seeds of doubt, fertilized by judgment masquerading as condemnation, which grow into mistrust of Jesus and rejection of His promises.  Our defense against Satan’s lies is bedrock trust in Christ’s truth. Faith is total commitment.    

That said, my brain is still stirring about a bit I shared in this space last week, about Canadian psychologist, contemporary philosopher, and best-selling author Jordan Peterson’s wise thoughts on “Pride Month,” but more specifically my ponderance as to how close Peterson is to being a believing Christian.  He sure sounds like one.

And when it comes to the bedrock, practical manifestation of faith, and recognizing that faith is real and God is real and Christ matters, Peterson said this:

“God isn’t something you believe in.  The way we conceptualize belief in the modern world is … shallow.  To believe in God is to commit your life.  That’s what the belief is.  It isn’t the statement, ‘I believe in God.’  The statement can get in the way, it does all the time.  It says in the Gospels, Christ himself says, ‘not everyone who says Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.’ …

He continues: “People say all the time, ‘I’m a believing Christian.’  It’s like, that’s hard, there buddy.  That’s the most difficult possible commitment, by definition, because it’s the hoisting of the cross.  Here’s what you’re committing to: painful, unjust death, accompanied by betrayal, and the perfidy (deceitfulness) of the mob, and the dominion of the tyrant.  And you’re going to welcome that? And that’s not all, because Christ harrows hell.  That’s just where it starts; full confrontation with malevolence.

“You’re going to commit to that, are you?”

I think Peterson has it right: the full impact of God’s love and the action of Christ’s sacrificial love bring to this life’s front porch the reality of the greatest possible triumph over the worst possible enemy for the greatest possible purpose: restoring our relationship with God.  The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the model for that.

That is the will of the Father. That is the arena of Christian judgment. And that is the mystery of Christian life: love that will confront death. That is the key to heaven.

You want the truth of God? I’d say we’re too busy to judge others.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) received a delivery update on his Butker jersey (see last week’s column) … it was sent in an NFL email celebrating Pride Month.  Perfect.

Friends: Let’s not confuse tolerance with the truth. Opinions vary, but God’s truth should shape our lives. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #916

June 4, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Close Tolerances

By Bob Walters

“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why then are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?” Habakkuk 1:13, the prophet speaks to God

I am fairly certain that I am not the only one studying the political, cultural, and educational American landscapes of late and reaching for the aspirin bottle.

All this head-shaking begins to hurt. Am I an open-minded, compassionate, and tolerant Christian? Yes, I believe I am. But do I see through the mirror to the other side of the secular image and sense that the specific virtue of “tolerance” – so insisted on by the crazies with the worst ideas in America – is the province of a one-way mirror?

Compassion isn’t giving someone their own way; it is helping them grow in Christ. Open-mindedness does not mean one’s brain becomes unmoored; it means God’s truth and reality grow brighter and more helpful.  Tolerance speaks to rational boundaries, not irrational social constructs meant to muzzle intellectual freedom and confuse our understanding of God’s creation, love, and purposes. It is not a new construct.

Habakkuk’s Old Testament lament of God wasn’t the evening TV news; it was the Babylonians whom God was preparing to turn loose on the Jews to conquer apostate Judah in 605 B.C.  “You’re going to let those awful Babylonians capture us? But … but …”

It is still nothing new today – when justice and sanity have gone akimbo – for humanity to turn to God and ask, “What gives?” Today’s Jews have to have much the same questions.  And Christians are held by secular society to a tolerance secular society cannot imagine being levied on itself: “You Christians must be respectful; while we disrespect everything you stand for.” I keep reminding myself: Jesus Christ was disrespected a lot.

A believing Catholic pro athlete delivers a Catholic message at a Catholic college graduation ceremony?  Harrison Butker hurt my feelings! Social blasphemy!  Hey!  Truth though it was, he wasn’t talking to you! As for me, I ordered one of Butker’s football jerseys.

Trump yes. Trump no. Trump 24/7. It is not Trump under the bus; it is the credibility of the American government and legal system … the one Romans 13 says God puts in place to keep order among his people.  We get what we earn.  Yikes.

And happy June, traditional month of brides and now the month of pride.  Feisty Canadian psychologist/author Jordan Peterson, whom I am sure any day now is going to come out as a spectacularly coherent Christian, was right over the target when he said this:  

“First of all, what are we celebrating?  ‘Pride’ is a cardinal sin.  And you might say, well, they don’t mean ‘pride’; they mean it’s a group of oppressed people and now they are finding their identity and they’re getting some security in that identity. [But] the word is ‘pride.’ That’s the word that was chosen and – as far as I can tell – it’s pride in relationship to nothing but hedonistic self-gratification. Your identity is going to be your sexual desire?” Peterson queries. “You’ve reduced your identity to the most immature and hedonistic part of you, the part that would exploit someone else for your own gratification. The part that would exploit you for your own gratification and now that’s your identity? It’s a very bad idea.”

Christians are expected to tolerate woke ideology and nefarious politics, but there seems to be no window in the public square where one can order up some tolerance for ideas that undergird family, Jesus, objective good, innocence of children, and dignity.

I think it is important that the secular world tolerate Harrison Butker and Jordan Peterson because their bones ooze truth.  Nobody is going to accuse President Trump of “oozing truth,” but he does have a knack for calling a spade a spade. I tolerate that.

Habakkuk called for God’s righteousness?  That’s a promise God always delivers.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) can only say: careful what you wish for.