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.