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.