Friends: Politics, education, and God. We have nearly educated ourselves out of unity in Christ and into political ignorance. See the column below ...

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Spirituality Column #989

October 28, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Long Division   

By Bob Walters

“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” Psalms 133:1 ESV

Let’s discuss politics, education, and God – the 30,000-foot view – in the context of humans getting along with each other. You may have noticed that lately, we aren’t.

Next week, all indications are that the good citizens of New York City will elect a Muslim Democratic Socialist as their mayor. At issue – truly – are neither religion nor party affiliation; at issue is bad American civics education laced with the dual despair of ever-rising prices and ever-falling hope. New Yorkers crave free stuff to face a fracturing future.

“Free stuff” is always an illusion, mind you, yet an attractive mirage for the poorly educated – college degrees and accreditations notwithstanding – in our current misguided though abating DEI cultural era. Illuminating human experience and philosophical wisdom have been beaten down in recent decades by entrenched socialist trends away from aspiration and merit, and toward equal outcomes for all. “Fairness” is a canard of a rallying cry, and a lie that destroys human flourishing. Division replaces unity.

It's not fair.

Lately, I’ve read two mind-focusing books of recent vintage on American public education. One is titled, The Marxification of Education by James Lindsay. The other is Hide Your Children: Exposing the Marxists Behind the Attack on America’s Kids by Liz Wheeler. Where education has led our nation astray is in our overall ignorance of what Marxism, socialism, and communism actually are: vicious, freedom-wrecking wolves in the sheep’s clothing of “fairness.” College education departments bit the apple long ago.

Socialism has been the overriding template of education training in America’s universities for the past century.  While history departments should be teaching about how America won its precious freedom and how to value freedom as a gift from God, bards of American education theory like Horace Mann, John Dewey, Paolo Freire, and others preached lock-step, socialist obedience in stultifying, one-size-fits-all curricula designed to defeat free-thinking. Once upon a time, to produce employees. Now, to foment activism.

There is truly no mystery why it is often the C students and dropouts who are the entrepreneurs. What we notice about socialism is a distinct lack of entrepreneurship.

Anyway, as I read these books full of anti-socialist scare quotes, what the books didn’t offer was a concise answer to the obvious question, “So, what’s wrong with socialism?” Despite our educational institutions based so heavily in clandestine socialist theory, free Americans still retain a visceral distaste for actually being called socialist.

I think the answer goes something like this: Americans value freedom, and freedom requires – above all else – personal responsibility. Christians are called to love God and love others, and to do unto others as we would have others do unto us.  This requires accountability and an objective, ultimate belief in the reality of truth, good, evil, and God.

What socialism deletes, first, is God, because socialism cannot abide any truth greater than itself. Next goes personal responsibility and with it, freedom. Socialism is people controlling other people; God gets in the way, as does one’s faith in God.

While Marxist/socialist/communist philosophy insists that workers are oppressed and everyone is owed fairness, its “leaders” replace God as arbiters of truth. That’s the lie: socialism calls itself a march out of oppression, yet replaces freedom with slavery.

Sadly, much of America falls for that lie because that’s what we’ve been taught.

There is no unifying force between the divisive, controlling diktat of Marx  and the flourishing of human freedom under the divine and unifying love of the Creator God.

How pleasant it is when humans are united, and how ugly is life when we aren’t.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes God unites us through Jesus; Satan hates it.

Friends: Hope in Christ operates beyond all doubt. See below.

Blessings, Bob

P.S. – Happy birthday 10-21 to my favorite editor, Pam Walters.

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Spirituality Column #988

October 21, 20225

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Unconditional Hope

By Bob Walters

“Always be prepared … to give the reason for the hope you have.” – 1 Peter 3:15

Prior to coming to Christ, attending church, and reading the Bible – all when I was 47 years old – I had attended enough weddings that I had one Bible verse down pat, from 1 Corinthians 13: “And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

I would not have known in those pre-Christian days that it was verse 13, or that Paul wrote it, or that it was a letter to a mess of a church in Corinth, or much of anything else about the New Testament. Well, I knew the Gospels were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and that 1 Corinthians 13 was the “Love Chapter.” But that’s it.

Wouldn’t you know that my first day in church as an adult, the sermon was about I Corinthians 13, the crescendo of which was wonderful preacher Russ Blowers – on September 2, 2001, celebrating his 50^th anniversary of service to East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis – laying out the following about verse 13:

“Faith is about the past, hope is about the future, and love is about right now, in the present. That is why it is most important.” Or words to that effect.

For reasons I could not even guess, that line struck me as the most rational, graspable, philosophically divine Bible explanation I had ever heard.  And remember, at that point, I knew virtually nothing about the Bible. Raised in the Episcopal Church in the 1960s and serving as an altar boy, I knew the Book of Common Prayer, the Nicene Creed, the communion service (Holy Eucharist), and when to ring the bell. That’s it.

The Bible, writ large, remained opaque in my understanding until I was 47. But that day with Russ in the pulpit, something clicked in my soul.  I call it my “Awake Date,” not as a boast, but as thanks for where life in Christ has led me from then until now.

Russ’s “argument” was simple. The past is where we have seen and trusted God’s presence in life and Creation, giving us faith.  We haven’t seen the future, but our faith in what has been leads us to hope in what will be.  And love is what we know right now, the present of God’s presence and life that guides us moment to moment.

That put God in my life right now. God was, is, and always will be present. I believed, and tears welled in my eyes.  I knew this was truth; moreover, that truth existed, and that it existed in the person of Jesus Christ.  I can’t define another’s hope in Jesus, but this is the reason for the hope that I have, and I want to tell everyone.

Last week I wrote about God’s unconditional love not being a transaction but a personal, divine experience. We strive for that in our humanity but only God does it perfectly: an always present relationship with God through Jesus who covers our sins.

Today I’d like to turbocharge the meaning of “hope” up from a conditional doubt about the future to an unconditional, steadfast divine gift of God’s truth, as real as love.

Faith offers proof from the past; we have seen it, thought about it, and know it.  Hope on the other hand often bears a tacit burden of uncertainty.  Because we have not yet seen, we are forced to consider what we “hope for” to be eternal reality dangling by an un-securely tethered cord into this life’s as-yet unseen future. I.e., “What if?”

Hebrews 11:1 says “Faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.” I may hope, with legitimate doubt, about this life’s twists and turns. But divinely, my hope assures God loves, Jesus is King, and the Spirit abides.

Unconditionally.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will publish column #1,000 January 13, 2026 … Lord willing.

Friends: We as humans pursue unconditional love, but only God gets it right.  See the column below. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #987

October 14, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Close, But Not Quite …

By Bob Walters

“[May you] grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” – Ephesians 3:17

“Only unconditional love in some facet of your life gives you the proper perspective to appreciate what is great about transactional things, but allows you to see them for what they are, which is transactional. There’s no Valhalla at the top of Rock Mountain. – Billy Corgan

Valhalla is the mythical, majestic mountain where Norse god Odin houses warriors who died bravely in battle. At Valhalla the warriors feast at night but train during the day to fight alongside Odin against giants in the ultimate battle at the end of the world.  One could say Valhalla is sort of the Norse version of Heaven, but not quite.

Billy Corgan is/was an alt rock music star – the lead singer for The Smashing Pumpkins (very big in the 1980s and 1990s) – who was recently on Bill Mahar’s show. I have seen Corgan interviewed before and he is well-spoken and a deep thinker.

At the top of “Rock Mountain,” he noted – i.e., his music career – no amount of fame and money truly fill and complete one’s life. He asserted such things are “transactional,” meaning you give something, then get something, then … dial tone.

Billy is saying that only unconditional love – something that isn’t a trade for anything, something that isn’t tangible, or a measurable condition or return for something you yourself do – provides the mystical, fulfilling, next-level, beyond-this-world understanding of the limitations of worldly success. Worldly success falls short; worldly love is imperfect.

Unconditional love is not a transaction; it is a revelation of divine experience.

This would all make complete sense if Corgan were speaking as a Christian, of the love of Jesus Christ, of the grace, mercy, and righteousness of the One True God, of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the eternal hope and promise of Heaven. But Billy is not quite there. 

In the interview he goes on to talk about the unconditional love of his family, which is worth more than all the trappings of a glittering rock and roll career.  But a “trap” is what money and fame often are, and we know, as Shakespeare said, “all that glitters is not gold.” Billy sees truth, but imperfectly.

Mahar is an entrenched atheist, but reasonable when confronted with life’s mysterious human truths of love and loyalty. He just can’t see far enough up the mountain to understand human truth is actually God’s truth, and that it is not for sale.

Corgan eloquently describes unconditional love, but you want to nudge him to move from the imperfection of human love to the only perfect love, that of God. Billy’s observation is a great object lesson for Christians whose faith tends toward the reward and punishment dynamic of what we “earn” with our worldly actions as opposed to what Jesus promises us in our divine faith: the unconditional love of God.

Billy's thoughtful description of "transactional" shortcomings in the material world got me thinking.  We miss a key aspect of God's love and Jesus's sacrifice when we say Jesus "paid for our sins" or even that he was "punished for our sins," both of which are considered heresy in the Orthodox tradition because Christ’s work is unconditional love, not a trade or a cost.

Today's marketing oriented, transactional Western culture insists that if we do something bad, we should be punished, and if we do something good, we should be rewarded.  Pay or be paid.  That, sadly is what the modern Western church has largely come to, and it’s not quite right.

The purest love I have in this world is with my wife and my sons, but I don't pay them, and they don't pay me. The very purest love of all is God's, and how could God or Jesus or the Spirit pay or be paid for anything? They can’t and they don’t.  Of that, I am sure.

None of us is going to get a "bill due" when we get to heaven.  We'll either get a hug (I like to imagine) and invited in, or ignored – "I never knew you" – and exist elsewhere. The transactional will stay right where I believe it belongs ... in this not quite satisfying world.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes God’s love is transcendent and transforming, and thanks Peter Heck’s Dashboard Jesus podcast for noticing Bill Mahar’s interview with Corgan.

Friends: A book has been published containing several of Abba Philemon’s letters to our great spiritual friend George Bebawi. The story and a link to the book is below. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #986

October 7, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Letters to George

By Bob Walters

“He is very dear to me … both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.” – Philemon 16.

From the fall of 2004 through 2017, Dr. George Bebawi (1938-2021) taught a series of Bible and theological classes in the fall and spring at East 91^st Street Christian Church here in Indianapolis.

All who spent any time in the class remember George’s copious pre-class notes filled with his own observations, writings of the ancient Christians, various Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic Bible translations with contexts and evaluations of modern Christianity.  This was no light Bible study; it was a deep dive into the spirit of the Lord.

And a special treat most weeks would be a brief piece of wisdom tucked in his class handout, a letter excerpt from George’s spiritual mentor, a monk he once knew named Philemon at the Monastery of St. Macarius in the desert north of Cairo, Egypt.

George grew up Jewish in a Muslim neighborhood in Cairo, learning the Koran with his young neighbors and then preparing for rabbinical school as a teenager. Raised by his Jewish maternal grandmother, George’s father, a Christian physician, was the one who said George ought to learn about the people around him, mostly Muslims.

This obviously gave George a 360-degree perspective of the Abrahamic religions, but the big surprise came at age 18 when both he and his grandmother converted to Christianity. George soon went to seminary, and became a priest in the Coptic (Egyptian Orthodox) Church founded by St. Mark in the first century.

It was early in his priesthood that George investigated becoming a monk and on a visit to Macarius monastery met Abba Philemon, an older, quirky brother of extreme biblical learning and spiritual depth whose birthplace and birthdate were unknown.

In his mid-20s, George was off to Cambridge University, England, for a masters in Christian Theology and a doctorate in Orthodox Studies. George became a renowned Eastern church scholar and expert on the Patristic period of the church fathers in the earliest Christian centuries.  Google “George Bebawi” (or GeorgeBebawi.com) and many resources pop up including his organizations and full Wikipedia biography.

Until Philemon’s passing in 1977, George regularly corresponded with him on deep personal and spiritual matters. This included frequent letters from Philemon in reply to George’s questions or difficulties. They also had numerous conversations at the monastery which George recorded from memory. Philemon claimed to be uneducated and most brothers thought him illiterate, but his letters belie a powerful intellect.

George often regaled our E91 class with stories about Philemon, many of them situated between hilarious, charming, and Oh My God revealing anecdotes. I still have 14 years of George’s class handouts plus my own notes, all peppered with Philemon’s erudite nuggets of faith, truth, Godly love, scriptural revelation, and the truth of Jesus.

The class ended in December 2017, and George died February 4, 2021.  Three years later, a surprise showed up, a book of Abba Philemon’s Letters to George (LINK).

Last fall a friend of George’s wife May – my classmate Joyce Van Atta – handed me a small book of Philemon’s letters to George. I couldn’t find any information about it then, but now it is available on Amazon.

George was a good man and a dear brother in the Lord, and I know many of his students and friends will be happy to hear that Philemon’s words live on.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) coordinated George’s classes at E91, but has no idea who actually published the Philemon book.