Friends: John Samples, born in Kentucky 93 years ago, surely had a Godly voice. He encouraged me greatly and is now home with our Lord. See the column – Bob

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Spirituality column #1041

October 27, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

John C. Samples, My Friend

By Bob Walters

“I am with you until the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:20.

The first thing you’d notice about John Samples was his voice: a beautiful, kindly, reassuring, drawling preacher’s baritone, smooth as a richly aged Kentucky bourbon.

One would not presume that spirited timbre to look at him. Already slightly-built and growing thinner as the years passed and health faltered, John’s steady resonance of faith in Jesus Christ was a mountain of encouragement for all who knew him.

Some preachers thunder; John’s tone was more like a pervasive, deep-cleaning, confident, comforting, and nurturing forest rain. The kind that presages God’s blessings, not His wrath.  It was natural. John prayed that way and expressed his heart that way.

John, 93, was my pastor and friend, and pastor and friend to all he might meet. He was a dominant presence in my faith life ever since the Lord found me 25 years ago. As I mentioned in recent columns, John died peacefully October 6. His celebration of life service will be next Sunday, November 1 at 4 p.m. in the Worship Center at East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis. Visitation is 2-4 p.m.

This is an impossible column to write, because life’s most difficult things to explain are often the things you love the most and understand the best. John has been that kind of presence as was his wife Joyce who went to the Lord October 15, 2022. My parents passed decades ago yet John and Joyce filled that generational void in my life.

We all thought we’d lose John before Joyce, as he was extremely ill in 2018. Joyce had various health issues in that same time frame, and while John got better, Joyce slipped into heaven first. What I’ve decided to do this week is to provide links to columns I’ve written regarding John and Joyce, with his official obit capping off the list.

275 LINK - Love, Endurance, and Prayer 2-14-12 – A Valentine’s Day tale for the ages, Joyce plus six siblings all celebrated 50^th wedding anniversaries. It’s my favorite story.

535 LINK - Directional Stability 2-14-17 – Joyce had plenty of observations about scripture and Christian life, and for several years wrote and texted daily “Ponders.”

678 LINK – Reasonable Faith 11-12-19 – My encouragers: Russ, Dave, George, John.

764 LINK - 'How About Tomorrow?' 7-6-21 – John married Pam and me in 2009; his pre-marital counseling was about 20 minutes long and consisted mostly of Kentucky jokes. (See also 763 LINK - Our Pastor's Funeral 6-29-21, and 765 LINK - 'That Summer Before He Died...' 7-13-21. It is our wedding story, my favorite series in 20 years of this column.)

831 LINK - She's No Angel 10-18-22 – Joyce went to heaven as an heir, not an angel.

908 LINK - This Exchange Doesn’t Change – ‘He is Here’ 4-9-24 – John's 2024 Easter communion message. It was always a divine treat when John led communion.

957 LINK - The Tie That Binds - 3-18-25 – John’s tale of a neck tie and Russ Blowers

105 LINK - When the Phone Rings Late at Night 11-11-08 – Pondering one year after the night John called at 1 a.m. to tell me of Russ Blowers' death. 

LINK Remembering John Chapman Samples – John’s obituary.

So many other stories. Over lunch, John and Joyce related to Pam and me when they were young and poor, driving home from a preaching gig. They had money for two hot dogs with four people (young sons Dain and John W.) in the car. Everyone got half a hot dog.  Their later affection for birthday and anniversary $1.50 hot dog meals at Costco makes sense. George Bebawi called John the “Cardinal” (Russ was “Pope,” I was “Archbishop”).

John’s rich life in Christ is proven in the wealth of faith, hope, and love he shared with all. We will miss him, but his memory will reside in joyful hearts for ages to come.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) follows up last week’s column with the good news that Pam’s nerve block injection in her leg has helped enormously. Pain largely abated, and walking … may be temporary, but likely found the culprit. Continued prayers, please.    

Friends: We don’t have to want something when we already have it … as a gift. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1040

October 20, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

“… I Shall Not Want”

By Bob Walters

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” – Psalm 23:6 ESV

The structural center of David’s Psalm 23 (verse 4) reads, “for you are with me.”

Jesus promises, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

Jump to Romans 8:31, Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Here in God’s Word, we see the faith of David, the love of Jesus, and the hope of Paul. God, we can be assured, is with us: He follows us, He leads us, He pursues us.

All we have to do is look to see if God is there.  He is … and He is Jesus.

And He has been very close to us – personally – lately.

My wife Pam and I have been going through a bit of a health “season” these past five months. Well, her more than me, but we are in it together. And Jesus is, too.

Pam woke up May 27^th with upper left leg nerve pain so severe she was unable to walk. The emergency room doctor said it was sciatica. The chiropractor said “I can’t help you, go get an MRI.” The spine PA said, “it has to be a spine issue.” The pain specialist ordered, and sensing danger then cancelled, a spinal pain block. Two different neurology offices declared Pam’s case as “interesting.” Five MRI’s and a spinal surgery later (plus draconian physical therapy, two epidurals, a hip steroid shot, various pills, and blood work), we have ideas but no diagnosis and a train of baffled doctors and providers.

Throughout, Pam has been able to stand for short periods, take a few, slow, halting, painful steps, and blessedly, sleeps soundly, albeit in a pillow-laden reclining chair. She teaches, planted in a tall seat, and gets around school on a red scooter we named “Mario” (as in Andretti, not Kart). The MCA staff and students are amazing: caring, helpful, prayerful, and good-humored about Pam’s current mobility challenges.

I’m saying all this not as a plea for pity but as a witness to God’s closeness and Pam’s faithful steadfastness. Perfectly timed, Psalm 23 popped up this week in my Ray Stedman devotional emails. “Goodness and mercy ... follow[ing] me” got me to thinking.

We all have our “default” setting of how we read scripture and what various verses mean.  It is the strength of the Bible that it can be so all-encompassing and at the same time be so personal.  I have always read “follow me all the days of my life” as though it meant God would stay with me as I aged.  Well, I am old, I guess (so is Pam), but the abiding presence of Jesus is not about our latter days; it is about every day.

This challenging season has emphasized closeness to and trust in Jesus, not distance or disappointment. Hebrew literary structure often locates the main point in the middle of a passage, not at its beginning or end. Knowing that structure dramatically expands our understanding, for example, of Paul’s letters. In the 23^rd Psalm, the important Hebrew middle reads, “for you are with me.” God sent Jesus to “be with us.”

I’m not sure I had previously noticed that this “Psalm of David” models exactly the presence of Jesus in humanity and our salvation in His sacrifice. Jesus gives us what we need, and we know it, as long as we are at his side. We may “want” only healing; but Jesus strengthens our faith and assures our hope. It is not always easy.

This is indeed the “age” of Jesus, all 2,000 years so far. And despite that which is demonstrably against us in this world – sickness, sin, despair, disappointment, whatever – trusting the divine presence of our Creator, our Savior, and the Lord of all truth and goodness, molds the daily, sustaining strength and courage of seasons such as these.

We don’t have to “want” it because in His grace, we already have it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) (Pam) notes the on-going power of prayer, as the best medical efforts, so far, have been generally ineffective while the prayer of friends and family has sustained her – and us – massively. Nerve block this week … we’ll see.

 

 

Special note ... our dear friend and pastor John Samples passed away peacefully Tuesday morning, October 6. Pam and I visited John Monday and are thankful we had the chance to say goodbye (John married us in 2009). John’s Celebration of Life will be at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, at East 91^st Street Christian Church, Indianapolis. Visitation 2-4 p.m. – Bob

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Friends: Ask a simple question, get a simple answer. Some questions appear harder than they are.  Blessings, Bob

Spirituality Column #1039

October 13, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Simple Stuff, Part 2   

By Bob Walters

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth … and in one Lord, Jesus Christ … who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven …” – from the Apostle’s Creed, Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal Church, 1789

Here is where we ended last week: “…it is the simple stuff of Christianity – the orthodoxy and doctrines – that our students need to have on hand without hesitation or confusion.”

Mission Christian Academy in Fishers, Ind., where Pam and I teach high school English (her) and history/civics (me), is a highly biblically literate environment.  Faculty and staff all sign Christian faith statements, while the students (and their parents) who are drawn to that environment don’t have to sign anything; they just know what – and Who – is there.

Also mentioned last week in Part 1 was that teaching western culture, literature, history, civics, and economics becomes a much more complete experience when the foundation of western culture, i.e., Jesus Christ (we’ll get to the Greeks, Romans, and Jews in a minute) and the Bible, are not ignored, pre-empted, or outright banned as they have been in American public education since the early 1960s. (U.S. Supreme Court refresher:  Engle v. Vitale, 1962, vigorously restricted public prayer; Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963, banned mandated daily Bible readings and recitation in public schools.)

Twenty-first century anti-Christian sensitivities and atheistic liberalism have made cultural things worse, spiraling into the Woke, DEI, gender fluid, critical race theory, globalist morass that now defines universities, the media, entertainment, public school, much industry, and government bureaucracies. It is called “Progressive,” but I see no progress toward truth.

I see zero progress, in the public academic square, toward Jesus.

Anyway, back to my MCA students.  A few weeks ago, in both U.S. history and American government, we were studying pre-Revolutionary War colonial society including the Great Awakening of the mid-1700s. The Awakening developed a spiritual cohesion among the not-always-copacetic Christian denominations that coalesced into a common cause for developing a free nation independent from the British king.

In the discussion of how these 13 separate colonies – separate nations, really, each with a dominant local denomination – united in a religious sense toward becoming one nation, words like “doctrine” and “orthodoxy” came up.

If I ask almost any of my students simply “what do you believe,” they would effortlessly answer that they believe in God, that Jesus is Lord and Savior, and that one day they will go to heaven, forgiven of their sins. And most would add flourishes beyond that. 

But, ask them to name one orthodox Christian belief, or to explain any part of Christian doctrine, every student in every class clammed up. They didn’t realize they already knew the answers.

The problem was the words, “orthodox” and “doctrine.” These are simply descriptors for articles of faith that remain the same across all Christian denominations. Things like the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That Jesus, the Son of God, was fully human and fully God. That Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, lived, taught, was crucified, was dead, buried and resurrected. That his death was a perfect sacrifice that frees us from our sins and restores our relationship with God the Father.

That, forgiven, we will spend eternity in a new life in heaven with Jesus and the communion of saints.  That the Bible is Spirit-inspired and carries God’s authority. That the Old Testament prophesizes about Christ.

Every one of these is an orthodox Christian belief; each is a bit of universal Christian doctrine.  Christians have fought to defend them since the time of Christ. Depart from any, and you may have a religion but it is heretical in relation to Christianity.

The miracle of America’s founding had help and inspiration from the pre-Christian Greek and Roman republics, and of course the Jewish laws, scripture, and commandments. Even the more modern Enlightenment asked many right questions about man’s sovereignty vs. government.

Our job is not to freeze up when asked about our faith; the basics are pretty simple.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that the phrase “Judeo-Christian” came into modern parlance in a 1939 book review by George Orwell; the phrase wasn’t known at America’s founding.     

 

(Special note ... our dear friend and pastor John Samples is in hospice. I just found out this afternoon.  I have no more details, but please keep him, his son John W. and wife Bobbi in your prayers.  I spoke with Amy B. from E91 a few minutes ago. May we all be at peace. – Bob)

Friends: What are the basics of what you believe as a Christian? Creeds are an answer, but what is your heart telling you?  It’s kids’ stuff, really. See Part 1 of the column below. Have a great week!

Blessings, Bob

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October 6, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Simple Stuff, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth … and in one Lord, Jesus Christ … who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven …” – from the Apostle’s Creed, Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal Church, 1789

I am going to talk about the faith and witness of Christian high school students, not the history and esoterics of creedal Christian faith, but let’s review some basics.

Basics of the faith, I mean, along with some post-Reformation church history.

Bible-based evangelical Christianity, by and large, does not depend on the ancient creeds (list of beliefs) for its understanding of Jesus, church, or scripture. We read the Bible, study the Bible, pray with the Bible, and we ingest all the preaching and teaching and Christian church fellowship we can consume. Ideally, we live daily and perpetually, with faith in Jesus Christ, love for God, love for others, reliance on the Holy Spirit, and the imperfectly understood but absolute truth and authority of the Bible. Sola scriptura.

The above quoted bit of the Apostle’s Creed, dating from the second century AD, and it’s slightly longer and younger cousin, the Nicene Creed, fourth century, have differences but say pretty much the same thing. If you’re inspired to do so, Google both and enjoy the deep dive.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church, where Bible literacy among the congregation was far subordinate to a congregant’s trust in the church, its priests, its traditions, and its authority.  Prior to its arrival in the American colonies, it was the Anglican Church, founded in 1534 by Britain’s King Henry VIII. This followed a tiff with Roman Catholic Pope Clement VII regarding Henry divorcing his wife, Anne Boleyn. You can Google that one, too. The upshot? England gained a church; Boleyn lost her head.

Like the Catholic Church, the Anglican and then Episcopal Church in its worship practices is creedal, with established liturgies (weekly worship plans), litany (prayers), and hierarchies (leadership). That big book on a Catholic or Episcopal Altar is not a Bible, it is a Missal, or what I grew up knowing as the Book of Common Prayer. While the Bible is a direct conversation with God, in my experience, the Book of Common Prayer is more of a training-wheels version of what church is supposed to be like.

Meaning, it contains the curated basics of the church, including much scripture, prayers, Psalms, and rituals (e.g. baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc.). My point is that knowing Church basics is not necessarily knowing Christ. And here’s where I wanted to share something about my Christian teenage students and “the basics.”

Our Mission Christian Academy in Fishers, Ind., where my wife Pam and I teach high school English (her) and history / civics (me), have plenty of students who know the Bible pretty well.  Many of them can cite all 66 books from memory, know the Old Testament from the New, know the Gospels from the Pauline letters, and attend weekly extracurricular Bible studies and church youth groups. By and large, the students know Christ.

That makes teaching Western literature and civics a more complete enterprise because Christianity is the foundation of Western culture the past 2,000 years.  We can include the reality of God, the truth of Jesus, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the authority of scripture, and the communion of the saints (church), Were there other influences? Of course – Greek, Roman, and Jewish philosophy before Christ, and the Enlightenment and modernism that has tried to re-define God the past 400 years or so.

Plus Islam, since the seventh century, which has tried to erase the whole thing.

But it is the simple stuff of Christianity – the orthodoxy and doctrines – that our students need to have on hand without hesitation or confusion. More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) still has his mangled Book of Common Prayer from his Episcopal confirmation in 1965, which his dog Kramer Too chewed up 15 years ago.

 

Friends: We always love talking about Jesus, but that doesn’t mean we can always be sheep. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1037

September 29, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Gentleness, Respect, and Tenacity

By Bob Walters

“… Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” – 1 Peter 3:15

This is among my favorite Bible verses for a couple of reasons.

First, it is calming; I only have to explain why I, personally, have hope. I can do that all day long. I can always explain Jesus to my own satisfaction, but whether I can explain Him adequately to someone else is a more daunting challenge. We find Jesus in our own hearts; that is why we know Him as a personal Lord and Savior. He is everyone’s, as well as ours alone. That is why everyone’s testimony is unique.

I envy, in a good way, the natural evangelists; but my gifts lie elsewhere.      

Second, the verse instructs us not to be a jerk about Jesus; to have “gentleness and respect.” Jesus was kind, but also direct with the truth and creatively vivid with His illustrations (swallowing a camel, plank in the eye, brood of vipers etc.). People will argue about whether Jesus ever laughed (the Bible doesn’t tell us), but it takes an educated, period-specific, cultural sense of Jewish humor to cull the humorous bits from the Gospels. My erudite Bible mentor George Bebawi, who grew up Jewish (in Egypt of all places) before finding Christ in his late teens, thought Jesus was hilarious.

Anyway, we should fearlessly share about Jesus, live in confident hope, be kind to others, show our faith by virtue of a caring and intelligent demeanor, love – but do not bow to – our enemies, and pray mightily for guidance, discernment, and the right words.

Jesus knew how to temper his language. He spoke kindly to the lost, softly and confidently to the demons who knew who He was and feared Him, but was often harsh and condemning – and cunning – with the Pharisees who refused to recognize Him.

The Pharisees, you see, had inherited the “world,” i.e., status, wealth, power, pride, and jealousy of their position. They forgot there was a Messiah with whom they could inherit the Kingdom of God. They lost sight of the truth, and could not see Jesus.

And that’s today’s lesson for today’s Christians: let’s keep clear sight of Jesus.

Jesus was tenacious and wise. By his truth and authority, believers were drawn to Him then and are still drawn to Him today. Hebrew scripture, i.e., the Old Testament, was replete with prophesies of His coming, His person, His purpose, His providence, and His destiny. The Pharisees of His time were willfully blind to the scrolls, but John the Baptist, the Disciples, and many others saw the divine in Jesus’s person.

Today, we have the whole New Testament to explain prophecy to us and we wonder how anyone, ever, could be in the presence of Jesus, whatever he looked like, and not sense the glory of His person, relationship with God, and love for mankind.

But … folks make those errors all the time.  In our current age, in a rapidly deteriorating post-Christian American culture, our mission becomes not just personal reflection and prayer, but the tenacity of Jesus and of Jude 1:3-4, “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. … [against] ungodly people who pervert the grace of our Lord.” How do we contend for the faith … our faith?

One way is simple: vote. Get to the polls this fall. Don’t lay back. Be tenacious against threats. In a nation slipping from its Christian underpinnings, whether by the ignorant secular culture or heretical progressive Christians – e.g., “Islam is just another religion,” “Jesus was non-binary”– sane Christian citizens must pick up the mantle of tenacity defending our nation from those who attack truth and seek to remove our freedom to worship.

The ungodly, freedom-squashing left will be at the polls. Will we?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) asserts the current American faith and political contest is not between Christianity and Islam; it is between a Constitutional Republic and Sharia Law.

Friends: Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father in eternal Heaven and occupies space in our hearts here below. When does He have time to love us? Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1036

September 22, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Never a Time  

By Bob Walters

“And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” – Jesus praying for himself in the Priestly Prayer, John 17:5

“… before the world began.” For all the discussion in Sunday school and Bible study about “who” and “what” Jesus was, here we’re confronted with “when” Jesus was.

Christian orthodoxy – the basics of the faith, not the capital “O” Eastern church – tells us that Jesus was fully God and fully man. That’s a mystery I can’t define or explain, other than to say that the Almighty trinitarian God – Father, Son, and Spirit – reached down into history and in the person of Jesus, saved us from our sin.

Salvation means our curse and separation from God is resolved by the sacrificial work of Christ on the cross. From His seat in eternity, Christ entered humanity as Jesus of Nazareth, born of the virgin Mary and the seed of the Holy Spirit. Jesus lives, laughs, and suffers among humanity, is baptized, preaches God’s truth, rebukes Israel’s leadership, is crucified by the Romans, died, is buried, resurrected, and returned to his heavenly seat beside God. Then, the Spirit arrives to live in the hearts of the faithful. Our faith, trust, and love of Christ express our acceptance of eternity’s grace.

That’s “who” Jesus was, and is. As to “what” Jesus was and is, meaning His essence in the Trinity of being “from God” or “of God” – topics deep in the theological fabric of Christian truth, opinions, and heresies for 2,000 years – I go with the eternal, uncreated reality of God as a society, community, and relationship of goodness and glory that allows John to say “God is love.” Humanity is an expression of that love, and Jesus the Messiah Christ is Who rescues and heals humanity. He is the Word of God.

What anchors my faith, recognizes this truth, and cements my trust is that the story of Jesus has been discussed, challenged, and protected constantly for 2,000 years.  The fact that smart people have disagreed – and still disagree – on various doctrinal points does not tell me that the story is wrong. That the core Christian beliefs of Jesus’s life, death, burial, and resurrection have endured tells me it is safe to weather any storm, or celebrate any joy, in the name of Jesus.  He is the real deal; done deal.

So, Who Christ is and What Christ does isn’t screaming for further definition in my faith life.  God’s love – for me and others proven through Christ – is truth enough. My love for God and others, thankfully, “covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

I’ll gladly take it.

But this idea of “When” Jesus was, is currently occupying space in my brain. I heard a phrase this past week, regarding the Trinity as existing “before eternity.”  “Before” puts eternity in time, and I’m pretty sure that is not how eternity works. There is no “before eternity” or “after eternity.” Eternity, like the Trinity, was/is just always there. Our human minds, living as we do within the rhythms of God’s Creation of time, space, and matter, measure everything. The definable and measurable world is where we live.

Eternity – and it’s the same with God’s love, the sacrifice of Jesus, the indwelling of the Spirit, the authority of the Bible, the fellowship of the faithful, and probably many other things I’m forgetting – cannot be measured.  These are qualitative realities, not quantitative observations. Jesus on earth somehow had a foot in both camps.

My question: Jesus is in eternal heaven, but He is also in my earthly heart. Does that mean that Christ is there? Or here? Or both? And “when” am I in all this?

Fear not. I realize there is never a time Jesus doesn’t love every one of us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) cites C.S. Lewis: “The present is where eternity touches time.” – The Screwtape Letters

 

Friends: Jesus came not to win a war against the Romans, but to bring victory to humanity.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1035

September 15, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Peace with God

By Bob Walters

 “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Jesus), and through him to reconcile to himself (God) all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.” – Colossians 1:19-20

The Jews of the first century made a huge mistake in their expectation and understanding of how to deal with the prophesied Messiah of ancient scripture.

This is a commentary, not a criticism, because I doubt I would have expected or thought any different. The Romans kept the peace and enforced civic order – often harshly – but were not the Jews’ idea of salvation. The Romans were a burden, and pagan: idolators with false gods and earthly deities. Fear and violence were their justice.

What the Jews – what Israel – had going for them was a defined relationship, albeit shaky, with the One True God. God wasn’t shaky, but the Jews were. They had laws and traditions to outline their divine relationship, but their practice of worshipping God had become infested with self-imposed legalities that masked God and elevated the human leaders of Israel.  The Jews and the Romans focused on conflict, not peace.

Jesus, the promised Messiah, came, I believe, not so much as a rebuke to Israel – although He was definitely that – but as the fulfillment and deliverer of God’s intent for all mankind. How, where, or when better to do that than in the center of God’s Israel where the world’s most powerful empire held earthly dominion?

Jesus came to address both problems: 1. the Jews’ mistaken idea of the Messiah, and 2. the Romans’ mistaken idea of manmade authority.

The Jews’ mistake was praying for a Messiah whose mission was to kill the Romans and exalt Israel to political and religious dominance over all the earth.

Whether or not the Romans thought much about the world beyond the Mediterranean, or say, from the British Isles to the west and Persia/India to the east, isn’t often discussed. But Rome’s wide dominance allowed only for Caesar, not Jesus.

Jesus came not to kill the Romans or elevate Israel. Jesus came to make peace between God and humanity. Peace was the goal; that was the victory on offer.

We think of “victory” as implying, of necessity, a “loser.” Victory as reward, victory as vanquishing an enemy, victory as gaining power. Leafing through the New Testament, whether the Gospels or epistles of Paul, Peter, James, John et al, we don’t see military or political dominance as God’s goal or Jesus’s mission.

What we see in Christ is endurance, patience, obedience, faithfulness, righteousness, truth, and love. When we in this life encounter “trials of many kinds” (James 1:2-4), our victory and goal in overcoming those trials is peace in knowing Jesus is Lord, Jesus is our Savior, and Jesus is with us always (Matthew 28:20). God cares.

Where the Jews saw war and persecution and the Romans saw empire and order, Jesus came to save mankind from our true enemy, sin, which brings death. Salvation is forgiveness, grace, and love. Jesus’s blood brings peace, not war.

We may be in a war with Satan and his earthly and spiritual “princes and principalities” (Ephesians 6:12), but our victory, and Satan’s defeat, is peace with Christ.

It is that peace, and our trusting faith in Jesus, that invites us lovingly into the Kingdom that overcomes the world, restores fellowship with God, and brings eternal life.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) paraphrases: Make peace, not war. God loves you.

Friends: Humans can do something animals could never imagine doing ...

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Labels: humanity, G.K. Chesterton, nature, Orthodoxy, our dog Kramer, wild animals

Spirituality Column #1034

September 8, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Imagine That

By Bob Walters

“Man is the only truly wild animal.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Our little dog Kramer – marking his 16^th birthday last week as a slightly pudgy, aging Bichon Friese that’s blind and deaf but otherwise healthy, hungry, continent, and in seemingly good spirits – has exhibited some surprising talents in his life.

Now a 20-pound white fluffball, we got him as a puppy from a very nice kennel – Tea Pups – in northern Indiana near Lake Wawasee. We had first pick in the litter, and he chose Pam and me as much as we chose him. He had a big head and was sitting on top of the other male pups. I picked him up and he licked my face, then went for Pam’s.

The previous 15 years Pam had a Bichon named Kramer, who died in the spring of 2010. In November that year, figuring she’d never reset her brain for a Bichon with a different name, we dubbed our new 10-week-old puppy, “Kramer Too Walters.”

He has been a great dog.  If he wandered, he found his way home. Like most dogs he barks when it is meal time and stands by the door when it is time to go out. He has never shown fear of fireworks or thunder. He loved splashing in the lake up north and riding around town with his head out the window … on days that are now past.

As a young dog Kramer developed a uniquely creative trick and we could never understand how he came up with it. We were living in an apartment with a carport requiring a walk across the complex’s main drive. Kramer just naturally “heeled” – we don’t know why – so we typically didn’t leash him at home. Then one day as we all exited the car headed toward our apartment, Kramer sat down by the rear bumper.

We didn’t notice his absence until we traversed the dozen or so paces to the main drive. When we checked to make sure he was with us and safe, we looked back and saw him sitting – his head slightly cocked forward, intently peering at us – waiting.

Waiting for what? Waiting for one of us to signal, “Come!” From then on, he’d wait by the car until we checked traffic and signaled, then come tearing across the drive to our door like it was a game. He had trained us. How? We’ll never know. Smart dog.

But was he creative?  I think most likely not. Animals recognize patterns and places, sense danger, are drawn to those they “trust,” seek food and shelter, and somewhere in that equation Kramer mimicked what to us looked like intelligence.

But to Chesterton’s point that man is the only “truly wild animal,” what Kramer can’t do, and no animal can do, is to go against its nature. They can be trained to mimic intelligence or observed behaviors, but their natures are set by creation, i.e., by God.

That is where, Chesterton observes, man is wildly different. Created in the image of God, man can do creative, intellectual, philosophical, and charitable – or horrible – things. That is the spark of freedom and creativity God placed in no other animal.

Survival instincts? All living things have those. Man is the only creature that can disrupt his own survival instincts. We have an imagination, gifted by God, to do good or evil. You can’t blame an alligator that eats, say, Kramer, and call it evil. It’s an alligator obeying its natural, uh, nature. It is instinct: not creativity, not hostility, not morality.

I heard someone say last week that man (i.e. humans) cannot create anything because God is the creator of everything. I get the sentiment, but not the practical reality.  I’m on the side that understands why smart dolphins don’t build hospitals, and why God-given human talents and aspirations can imagine, and do, great things or terrible things.

Of course humans can create – or destroy – at will. And I notice, so can God.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes man’s first job was to create names for animals (Genesis 2:19).

Friends: I call Sept. 2 my “Awake Date,” and here’s why … 25 years ago this week. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1033

September 1, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Flash in the Pan   

By Bob Walters

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” – Ephesians 1:3 NIV

This fall is a season of personal milestones, marking 25 years of a life in Christ I never expected and for 47 previous years I never imagined.

That takes us back to 2001 – September 2, to be exact – then a personal season of significant turmoil none of which, consciously, was leading me to Christ nor looking for answers from Jesus. Crisis was real, but, stubborn me, I never tried to solve it in church.

My very fun career in sports writing, media relations in college and professional sports, and 15-ish seasons in auto racing PR had foundered. Debt was high, the house was in jeopardy, my marriage was in trouble, and bankruptcy loomed on the very near horizon.

Oh, and the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks on the nation were nine days away.

It all sounds like a perfect precursor to “Let’s find Jesus!” It was nothing like that.

Prayer was the one thing I hadn’t really tried.  Through most of my life in times of turmoil I’d say the Lord’s Prayer because it was the only prayer I knew, left over from my youth in the Episcopal Church. I knew the prayer, but didn’t know Jesus. I watched a fair amount of Christian TV on cable those intervening years, but none of it really stuck.

Maybe it was the cable TV preachers that softened me up for the day I woke up to Christ, September 2, 2001. I found myself sitting at East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis and – almost inexplicably – feeling very happy about being there.

I’ve written this many times, but two weeks earlier my then-8^th grade son Eric, at the dinner table, asked, “How come we don’t go to church?” On the school bus, kids around him talked about what churches they attended. He simply asked his mom and me why we didn’t.

This was a school bus in Carmel, Indiana, a thriving community of money, education, families, achievement, and as it turns out, faith.  Six of Indiana’s largest churches, along with three huge Catholic parishes, are either in Carmel or in communities adjacent to it.

These are the kinds of communities that attend church. I thought it was only the mono-syllabic country folk who actually believed this stuff. My whole life I’ve been blessed with really smart friends. Now, smart friends with deep faith would raise the intellectual bar.

Anyway, Eric and his younger brother John bought into the idea of church. Their mother Jean (my wife until 2006) had a sister who was looking for a new church, and they settled on trying E91 because it was almost exactly between our two homes.

We dropped the boys off in their respective Sunday school areas, which were lively, welcoming, and fun. We adults headed to the sanctuary; it was my first exposure to contemporary worship, extemporaneous prayer, and communion without all the priestly robes and ceremony of the Episcopal “high church” liturgy and eucharist.

Culture shock aside, E91’s wonderful longtime pastor Russ Blowers, who had retired in 1996 but was still a rock of the congregation, happened to be celebrating his exact, 50-years-to-the-day anniversary – since September 2, 1951 – of serving the church.

Russ, sharing the pulpit with E91’s senior minister Dave Faust, preached on 1 Corinthians 13, the “Love” chapter, a Bible verse I’d heard many times at weddings. Never thought much about it. This was different: Faith is past, hope is future, and love is now.

Russ’s delivery, Dave’s follow-up, and the congregation’s expressed love for both of them, not to mention the church’s obvious corporate and personal understanding of Jesus, turned this from a mere visit into a new life direction. It was the day I awoke to God’s truth.

During the sermon, my eyes welled up and my throat clutched. Over time I’ve realized my career years amount to a flash in the pan. Faith in Jesus, happily, is not.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) apologizes if this is repetitive, but it is his favorite story, and Ephesians 1:3 is the first Bible verse he memorized. Russ, by the way, baptized John in 2004 and Eric in 2005. A dear friend, Russ died in 2007.

 

Friends: Our MCA school year has begun with double last year’s enrollment, and it is a joy to be in the thick of it.

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Spirituality Column #1032

August 25, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Children of God

By Bob Walters

“Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth,” – 1 John 3:18

Most teenagers recoil when being described as “little children.” But for the new Christian, to whom John’s epistle was referring when Christianity itself was brand new – and when John was writing – “little children” was about one’s nascent faith, not physical age.

In my own advancing years, I’m thankful for having been around a lot of teenagers these past couple of decades.  This includes my own two sons who are now well into their 30s, and my “retirement gigs” as a full-time high school substitute teacher, a school bus driver (talk about a detour), and now teaching history and civics at Mission Christian Academy, in Fishers, Indiana.

For me it has been 25 years since coming to Christ, September 2, 2001, at age 47. And it has been at this latter stage of my life that I too became a “little child” in Christ. When I was actually a little child, back in the 1950s and 1960s, I went to an Episcopal Church that instilled in me the stories about Jesus but not relationship with Christ. I chalk that up to my own immaturity; my faith was passive / dormant for many years. Jesus was just a teacher; the Bible was just a book. Ho hum.

For any actual kids reading this, please understand being a “child of God” isn’t about one’s youth. It means one is in God’s family: an heir, a son or daughter. We are no longer a slave to the law or to our sin. The Bible speaks both of “spiritual milk” for babies and meat for the mature in Christ. My walk has been rich and I hope fruitful; in league with the “heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:3) in this life. Christian maturity or age notwithstanding, I hope never to not be a child of God.

(How does God keep us “young in Christ”? Did you ever notice how often when we read a familiar Bible verse, it speaks to us in a new way? How scripture has endless discovery? Newness and wonder are how a child views the world, and how we view the Spirit’s gift of relationship to God and salvation in Christ. “Morning by morning, new mercies we see” – Lamentations 3:22-23).

I want to share this week about the high school kids I’m around these days, and the spiritual and educational environment we co-habit at Mission Christian Academy. Most of the students – and we as faculty – have a joyful understanding of being a child of God in the arms of Jesus.

MCA isn’t Sunday school. In only its seventh year, it is an accredited Indiana learning institution just shy of 800 students in grades K-12. Students don’t have to be believers, but as faculty we roll with our Christian faith in all aspects of our teaching, activities, and interactions. Most kids get it.  Jesus and faith-message t-shirts are common in the student body. Prayer clusters are common. Encouragement is common. Gossip is communally discouraged. Faith is the common denominator, and you can hear it in the joyful noise of an energetic student congregation throughout the day.

With enrollment doubled from last year, a new administrative face at MCA is Matt Vander Wiele, dean of students and our high school Bible teacher. His first-day address to the students described his opening impressions of the school. Matt noted kindness, effort, respect, and fun as MCA’s core, observable student characteristics. From where I sit, he nailed it right off the bat and I reinforced his observations with my students in each of six classes that first day.

There is a cheerful church youth group vibe at MCA; kids are kind to each other. They are happy and open, not suspicious or fearful of saying “hello.” It is especially noticeable in the amiable and constant passing period and lunch room chatter. They treat others as they want to be treated.

Kids put in a good effort. Partly that’s because of their parents being involved, partly because there’s a common fellowship of faith, and certainly because they work hard. MCA had 100 percent college acceptance of 2026 graduates who applied, with SAT scores in the top 10 percent nationally. Not every out-bound road is perfect, but kids leave knowing they are loved: by the Lord, and by us.

Students are effortlessly respectful to staff and to each other. Occasional hiccups happen, but the high schoolers especially are noticeably comfortable around adults, each other, and know they are there to learn. That said, our main goal is for them to grow in Christ, in peace and truth.

Fun … the kids work hard and play hard. Sports, social events, summer camps, missions, and school service opportunities reveal their already established appreciation of freedom and accomplishment. Growth is as intentional as it is organic. The Holy Spirit is welcome and moves freely.

MCA students are no more special than any other human youth, and Jesus came for all so that none would perish. It is a blessing to be where “children of God” are openly celebrated.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) and wife Pam (English teacher) are MCA’s oldest children of God.

Friends: You can’t get to heaven with good deeds, but they sure make the trip more enjoyable.  See the column below. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1031

August 18, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Car Keys and Life Keys

By Bob Walters

“I’ve learned that doing good and good deeds are not the key to going to heaven.” – Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the “Bless Your ’Hardt” video podcast last week with wife Amy.

“For by grace you are saved through faith … not by works.” – Ephesians 2:8-9

This column is going to be a bit of a mash-up of thoughts from my earlier life and my current life, but generally this is about “doing good,” why we do good things, and who benefits from the good deeds when a Christian believes in and obeys God.

First … my former life. It’s hard to believe it has been 30-plus years ago, but my working career from 1985 well into 2001 focused almost entirely on auto racing. I worked first as a sportswriter and then in media relations in the top echelons of motorsport: the Indianapolis 500, CART Indy Car, NASCAR, and NHRA Drag Racing.

These were fun jobs at the pinnacle of a highly visible, boutique, and closely knit industry.  Let’s spare you the details of my resume, but in the 1980s and 1990s I either knew, worked with, or was loosely acquainted with most of the drivers, sponsors, events, sanctioning bodies, and especially the media involved in elite auto racing.

I don’t follow it much anymore as I got away from it, grew past it, and the players changed and charged into a new generation. I pestered Bernie Ecclestone relentlessly from the late 1990s into the early 2000s to establish a Formula I public relations office in North America and hire me to run it; he did neither. That was my last gasp in the trade.

My racing years were years far from Christ. But I was always taken by the large turnout on NASCAR race mornings for the drivers’ and families’ chapel services in the garage area, which I never attended but were open to anyone with a garage pass.

I still see lots of motorsports content on Facebook, and Dale Jr’s quote about good deeds and heaven (FB Link, 1:01, Dale and Amy – language warning) are, as they say in racing, “spot on.” He was voted NASCAR’s most popular driver 15 times and is worth a reputed $300 million. He’s done well, though his witness would be strengthened without the cuss words. He’s obviously “getting it” that faith in Christ begets the deeds that matter.

And good deeds matter because they improve our lives and the lives of those around us. We don’t do good deeds “to get into heaven;” we do them because living in faith with the Spirit improves the lives we lead now. Our good deeds today reveal the heavenly realms of a life being lived for Christ and with love for others. That’s a reward in this life.

I don’t think I ever met Dale Jr. He was shifting into the top realms of racing as I was heading out to pasture. But I knew his dad, Dale Earnhardt Sr., “The Intimidator,” who was as rough-and-tumble as his moniker suggested. I didn’t know Dale Sr. well, but I knew him well enough to like him and was devastated when he died in a crash at Daytona in 2001.

Now here we are 25 years later. Something else happened in 2001 that changed my life and how I looked at everything in it.  Sitting in church that Labor Day weekend 2001 – my first Sunday church visit in 30 years – I teared up and realized this Jesus thing was no joke. The Holy Spirit has had me ever since; I was baptized weeks later on November 18.

Today I’m teaching high school history and civics at Mission Christian Academy in Fishers, Indiana, and married to Pam, who is MCA’s junior-senior English teacher. Together we marvel at God’s gift of putting us in this spot at this advanced time in our lives where we can share both our knowledge and our faith with teenagers thirsty to live by the Spirit in an ever more challenging world.  It unlocks God’s love and truth, and gladdens our hearts.

As our MCA school year began last week, it was a joy to return to an environment where faith in Christ and the positive impact it has on our own lives and the lives of those around us – especially teenagers – are celebrated and cherished. More on that next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays for Dale Jr.’s continued growth in Christ.

Friends: Western commercial culture insists that everything has a price. What if an ultimate price is really an expression of ultimate love?

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Spirituality column #1030

August 11, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Payment Plan

By Bob Walters

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son …” – Jesus, John 3:16

The following puts me at friendly odds with every evangelical preacher I can think of, but I think modern western Christianity has it wrong, or at least misdirected, by insisting Jesus died as a “payment” for our sin. I.e., a quid-pro-quo transaction, not grace and love.

In Orthodox circles, this transaction of the cross – an idea Anselm of Canterbury conceived in the early 1200s that grew into the stubbornly western mainstream doctrine of “penal substitutionary atonement” – is considered worse than head-shaking bad teaching. To the Orthodox, it is more like a heresy and considered an insult to Christ.

Now, we hear about Jesus “paying the price” every Sunday. It fits our western, commercial culture of cost and reward, penalty and payment, punishment and prize, etc. If we do something good, we get something good. If we do something bad, we get something bad. But we all know that’s not an accurate picture of how the world and humanity work.

Jesus, God’s son, the only perfect human, was given by God into the world, into humanity, to restore our divine relationship with our Creator; a relationship that was broken in the fall. Curses aside (read Genesis 3 for a refresher), God pursued humanity and Jesus was point of reconnection. In Jesus we know God is real, because Jesus was with us, and sacrificed mightily to cover our sins, ransom our souls, and restore us to God.

We think, generally, of sacrifice and ransom as payment options. But what if instead of a transactional installment payment, the Cross was a positive action of love? What if the Cross isn’t a metaphor for “final payment,” but instead is a freeing sacrifice of faith?

I see the Cross not as the wrath-driven payment of an ultimate price, but the gracious expression of an ultimate love. Do we see God’s wrath in the Bible? Sure, but we also see His righteousness and His truth. When Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” that is God saying to humanity that His righteousness, commands,  truth, and sacrifice are unassailable and reveal the heavenly realms of His existence.

We diminish it horribly, I think, by defining Christ’s person and faith with a price tag.

It’s not just a linguistic trick or a moot point of semantics – a gift vs. payment – that sustains this view in my mind.  There is the practical, obvious question of, “If Jesus paid a price, to whom did he pay it?” Certainly not to God, because He is God.  And certainly not to Satan, because God owes Satan nothing. Atonement and ransom are conditions that result in forgiveness and freedom. The cross is an invitation of faith, in faith, through faith.

And if 1 John 4:8 is correct, that “God is love,” think about the maximum and defining loves in our own lives.  Is my love for my wife a payment plan? Or for my children, my grandchildren, the friends in my life I cherish the most? Or for my country?

My longtime Bible mentor George Bebawi always willingly swam upstream on this issue of the Cross as a payment vs. the free grace of God’s love. He was a Coptic priest (Egyptian Orthodox), multi-lingual Bible translator, a divinity lecturer at Cambridge University, England, among other places, and renowned Patristics expert, the study of the early church and the church fathers. I studied with him for nearly 20 years,

George would joke that if modern Western evangelism and substitutionary atonement were correct, then John 3:16 should read, “For God was so mad at the world that he killed his only son.” That’s because we see salvation as a “deal,” not perfect love.

We see God’s wrath and Jesus’s punishment, not righteousness and obedience.

I could go on. I don’t write about this often, but I think about it all the time. Christianity survived its first millennia without “penal substitutionary atonement.” The Bible was taken at its word, and the glory of Christ was not reduced to a payment. I like that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wrote about this in 2015; see “The Price is (not) Right.”

Friends: Knowing Jesus and being saved are not the same. 

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Spirituality Column #1029

August 4, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Even Demons Believe

By Bob Walters

“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that.” – James 2:19

Christians are supposed to “fear God,” right?

You know who really fears God? Demons.

And you know who really doesn’t fear God? Unbelievers and atheists, who do not understand or accept who God is, who Christ is, who the Spirit is, the Bible’s authority, and what our divine mission on earth* is set up to be.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell who the demons actually are.

Sometimes, sorry to say, it’s hard to tell who the Christians are.

Usually, it’s not that hard to tell who the Jesus-ambivalent and atheists are.

As far as Christians fearing God, in a biblical sense, I think we can all settle on the translation of “fear” as awe and respect, not cowering in terror. I don’t perceive God (as a comedienne once put it) as “daddy with a switch.” Jesus came to love us and save us, not punish us. “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17) and “There is now no condemnation in Christ” (Romans 8:1) are the two most overlooked – and calming – verses in the Bible. They preach peace.  

Terror? That’s what the demons experience. The demons famously possessing the wild man named Legion, terrified when Jesus approached, knew exactly with whom they were dealing.  Read about it in Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, and Luke 8:26-39,

E.g., Matthew 8:29: “What do you want with us, Son of God? Have you come to torment us before the appointed time?” Don’t miss that last part, “before the appointed time.” The demons know Jesus, know he has power and enmity over them, and even seem to know there is a coming “appointed” time when their cause – and Satan’s – will be lost.

They ask to be sent into pigs and killed rather than deal with Jesus. Pigs! We are reminded of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) whose sign of abject failure was tending pigs.

I once read that “No one can be ambivalent about Jesus: You either love him or you hate him. No one is neutral.” I’d debate that because of how much of my life I gave no thought to whether or not I was saved. Live and let live was my attitude toward Christ.

I was neutral then, but no longer. Salvation beckons, and we all hope for the best.

Still, Christians may wonder if we, me, I, individually, are saved. Historic Protestant theology provides an interesting three-part salvation test I had not previously seen until this week. It came in a podcast clip with Dallas preacher Josh Howerton (link below).

First, do we have knowledge (notitia) of Christ? Most atheists know that the church down the street worships a guy named Jesus in a book called the Bible. That is a fact.

Second, do we accept (assensus) that this story is true. That yes, Jesus is the Son of God, the Bible is real, and that in Christ we are offered salvation of eternal life. Fact.

A good example of the notitia person is Judas, who never affirmed Christ’s truth. Of assensus, those possessing knowledge and accepting Christ as God’s son, but don’t care and don’t love. There is no better example than the demons, who knew and feared Jesus.

Third is the clincher, trust (fiducia), or our acceptance. As Howerton explains, it is “when I put the entire weight of my life on that fact” of Jesus as Lord, and I act like it. This is the obedience part that sometime gives me the cold discomfort of, “Will I measure up?”

My hope isn’t in the reality of salvation in Christ: that is truth; I already know it. My hope is that the grace of God in Christ is greater than the weight of my sin. I don’t fear it; I trust it and pray.

When I have the chance to hug Jesus, I hope he hugs me back.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that our *divine mission on earth is to glorify God and to be part of that glory as we were created to be. That starts with believing in, living as, and loving Jesus as our Lord and Savior … and acting like it. Howerton Link - YouTube