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).

Spirituality Column No. 550
May 30, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters


Package deal; one or the other.  Not both.  Which would you pick?

Let’s admit that we might be so caught up in worry, guilt, shame, pain and misery that either choice would be a quantum improvement.  Many of us would simply say: “Forget truth and wisdom, just give me a big bank account and I’ll handle it from there.”

My friend Dick Wolfsie, the Indianapolis TV personality, humorist, writer and late-in-life Hoosier original, is a self-described “secular Jew” (he argues for  “Jew” over “Jewish person”) and this summer will be an artist in residence of sorts at the downtown IndyFringe Theatre, the edgy and culturally uber forward MassAve performance center.

What does “uber forward” mean?  It means that most of my Christian friends probably won’t have IndyFringe on their summer entertainment schedule.  It’s not a venue I’d likely frequent, either, but no harm, no foul.  I’m invited; just like anybody there is invited to church.  We all gravitate toward where we believe we will find the truth.

And I’d say that is an observable truth of human life.

What got me going on this is Dick’s performance subject: “Wisdom and Jewish Humor.” Dick arrived in Indianapolis in 1983 from New York City where he was a TV talk show host (WABC predecessor to Regis Philbin) and had grown up the son of observant immigrant Jews.  Dick spoke at a luncheon last week at our church and in a test-run of his presentation he made us laugh and think, made us smarter, and made us worry about his salvation.  But that’s what we Christians do; worry about salvation.

Jews, as Dick very eruditely pointed out, tend to worry about wisdom.  And when you consider the Old Testament, it obviously speaks of truth as the words of the Lord God, and it is weighted toward wisdom as the application of God’s truth.  Read about King Solomon in 1 Kings, or read the Book of Proverbs.  Solomon asked for wisdom to rule God’s people and God generously granted that gift: “the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.” (1 Kings 3:28).  Truly, not everyone “gets it” when they read the Bible but almost everyone understands the Book of Proverbs.  It speaks wisdom for all mankind.

The New Testament includes plenty of wisdom but is heavily weighted toward truth, because the person of Jesus Christ is repeatedly, specifically described as God’s Truth, nowhere more definitively than John 14:6 where Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”

That’s the story, the fact and the purpose of Jesus: He is the way, the only way and there is no other way into the Kingdom of heaven.  Critics say that makes me (and any Christian) a bigot, but I say that makes me share truth, freedom, joy and love.

It may not be funny, but it’s the God’s honest truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays for wisdom and is thankful for friends like Dick.

Spirituality Column #374
January 14, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

I suppose I’m as politically and socially opinionated as anyone I know.

And I know some very opinionated folks.

But let’s explore how God’s truth is distinct from and superior to human opinion.

For starters, nothing frosts someone who has an opinion more than someone else who has the truth.  And nothing is more commonly troublesome in human relationships than confusing opinion with truth.  All kinds of religions are full of all kinds of people with all kinds of political and social opinions, and certainly all kinds of opinions about the religion itself.  Even non-religious folks have strident opinions about religion.

People form opinions based on available human information, which has the nettlesome short-coming of variable translation depending on a person’s viewpoint, experience, and temporal interest.  Plus, human information is always changing.  Moving target or not, we mistakenly think energetic and clever argument reliably pins down truth.  Hence we argue, often pointlessly, but with gusto nonetheless.

God’s information, on the other hand, does not change.  His truth is both the end of the argumentative line and the beginning of inarguable, eternal love.

The Christian faith starts with Jesus Christ being the truth that never ends.  He doesn’t merely tell the truth, He is the truth.  God is love, Jesus is the truth, and the Holy Spirit informs our souls.  One can legitimately harbor an opinion as to whether this is the best way to describe the Trinity, but that Jesus is God’s truth transcends opinion.

Jesus instructs us to worship God the Father in the truth (John 4:23) and that we will know the truth through His teaching (John 8:31).  Jesus the author of truth asserts that the truth will set us free (John 8:32), and tells us He is the truth (John 14:6).  Jesus prays by God’s truth (John 17:17), and constantly says, “I tell you the truth … .”

I tend to be in prima facia agreement with people who say religion is an opinion because there are so many human shadings to church life and faith doctrines.  It’s unavoidable that any church full up with human beings will be full up with opinions, while any church that is full up with God will be full up with truth.

Honestly, or perhaps I should say, in my opinion, that is a church we would rarely experience because that would be the exact church of the mind of Christ.  Humanity isn’t there yet.  But we go to church, pray often, read scripture and serve others in humility, all in order to encounter the only truth unhindered by earthly opinion.

And that is Jesus Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) finds that airing one’s worldly opinions darkens one’s ability to illuminate Christ’s truth.