Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2020

697 - A Lenten Fast

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #697
March 24, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

A Lenten Fast
By Bob Walters

“Interesting times they are. And all the more interesting that – as we are made to slow down, to live in the moment, to deny ourselves the pleasures to which we are accustomed, and to think about our neighbors – it is Lent.” A recent text from a friend.

It strikes me that the November-December Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season would be the very most inconvenient time of year to have a pandemic.

But early spring can’t be far behind.

Where Christmastime is the season of largesse and lights, families and friends, traditions and get-togethers, springtime is the province of sports and spring breaks, school plays and senior class shenanigans, of flowers and showers and … oh yeah in Indiana in March … basketball.  Lots and lots of basketball.

This would have been the week leading up to the 110th Indiana boys basketball high school state finals played every year since 1911 – 109 years in a row surviving two world wars.  But now, not 110.  Our 2020 NCAA March Madness died the day it was supposed to start – depending how you count – when the Big Ten men’s (and other conference tourney games) were cancelled as teams were warming up in the gym.

There would be no 2020 Big Dance, and no Big Dance card.  Just … cancelled.  Surely somewhere a Sweet 16 is prepping for this weekend’s NCAA Regionals?  Nope.

My more philosophically-minded friends noticed early on that it was healthy to look at this culture-jerking, school-cancelling, sports-crushing, restaurant-and-retail-closing season as an opportunity for introspection.  My erudite friend quoted above put it in the Christian context of Lent, the Holy season of privation leading up to the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross at Golgotha.  I like my friend’s perspective.

Not every Christian observes a Lenten fast, but the Easter season is an apt and prayerful counterpoint to the raucous secularism of cultural Christmas.  Lent prior to Easter gives Christians six weeks of daily opportunity – in the spring, in this season of renewal – to encounter and reflect on their relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

As we are mindful that the reason for the cultural shutdown, social distancing, and basketball void is an impending burst of disease – a tidal wave I am convinced is nearly at hand – we can pray for clearer understanding of God’s grace and mercy.

I look at Jesus as the locus of my peace and hope, not of the world’s fear and disaster; that’s Satan’s party. The cross of Christ was ugly – as ugly as anything in human history – but Lent provides this opportunity to meditate on the beauty of God’s love within the Father-Son-Spirit Trinity, His love for us, and our love for Him and others.

We are still in the adventure phase of this coronavirus ordeal.  When sickness draws nigh the dynamic will change quickly from curiosity and inconvenience to, I pray, one of strength, courage, forbearance, and peace that passes all understanding.  We’ll need to be strong for our families, friends, and communities … and vice versa.

Of everything one can give up for Lent, I can’t think of a better fast than fear.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) does not feel like a lamb led to slaughter; he feels like an American Christian blessed with freedom, responsibility, opportunity, and hope.
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Monday, August 12, 2019

665 - I'm Afraid Not

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #665
August 13, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

I’m Afraid Not
By Bob Walters

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” – Ryan O’Neal, Love Story, 1970

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” – Ryan O’Neal, What’s Up Doc? 1972

We Baby Boomers and The Greatest Generation before us suffered the whiplash of sudden cultural self-awareness in the 1960s followed by the grinding self-indulgence of the “Me Decade” in the 1970s.  Christianity could barely catch its breath.

Not that I was a Christian at that point.  Navigating my middle-teen years and the bounty of intelligence, introspection, and worldly wisdom (cough, cough) I was to gain through college and into my early 20s and subsequent career, I had drifted completely away from my religious youth as an altar boy in the traditional Episcopal Church.

No, I didn’t know Jesus, but Father Cooper was a wonderful and kind man, and I knew the old communion service by heart.  It wasn’t until 30 years later that I came to understand and appreciate the beauty and depth of those words I could recite at 14.

The difference later was that I came to know Jesus, the Bible, and met so many Christians who were everything I didn’t think they’d be.  They were smart, kind, creative, educated, funny, generous, prosperous in their faith, highly productive in their vocations, and unwavering in their belief that Jesus is the Christ, Son of the living God, trusting Him as their Lord and Savior.  I learned all that in a church that reads the Bible.

None of that last paragraph would have made any sense to me prior to 2001, at age 47, when I very suddenly “got it.” Jesus made sense and the church came alive.  Most importantly, from an operational standpoint, the Bible mysteriously, magically, wonderfully before my eyes turned from opaque gibberish into utter clarity.  I saw God’s person, Jesus’s truth, humanity’s great fall but great opportunity, and the excitement, adventure, and joy of so much of life making an eternal kind of sense I had never seen before.  Why, even my childhood church liturgy morphed into a new creation of wonder.

All these lights coming on comprised the greatest gift imaginable.  They provided to me a life-changing, mind-altering, priority-shifting, and truth-testing reboot not just of worldview but of hope (eternal), understanding (divine), and love (other-directed).

So, here’s my point, which despite the preceding autobiography is really nothing about me.  It is everything about why and how we are encouraged to go to church, be in Christ, seek comfort and wisdom in the Holy Spirit, discern God, and consume our hearts with the grace, peace, trust, and compassion of Jesus.  What I’m saying is:

Fear and guilt can never build a loving relationship; trust and responsibility do. A self-focused life will imagine that “being loved” means “doing whatever I want.”  My own glory requires, “I gotta be me!”  Ergo, one never has to say, “I’m sorry.” Rubbish.

A worldly, liberal church going overboard to make your magnificent “You!” front-and-center-relevant misses the key message of Christ that this life is about God’s glory more than mine or yours. And a church holding everyone’s sin and stumbles in constant reproach for the “price Jesus paid” and the “punishment we deserve” is preaching worldly transaction and retribution instead of extolling God’s divine grace in Jesus.

That’s when freedom and love die at the altar of control by fear and guilt.  Amen.

Satan applauds self-focus because it creates comparison, envy, and division.  Loving relationships grow amid mercy, encouragement, and trust, not self-obsession.

Still think it is all about you?  Sorry … I’m afraid not.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is not afraid of God; he is thankful God is there.
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Monday, October 15, 2018

622 - Fear Itself

5:30 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post

Spirituality Column #622
October 16 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Fear Itself
By Bob Walters

“Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Here is a wonderful Chesterton analogy of Christianity’s unique freedom.

Imagine a rough-and-tumble yet joyous and passionate community of people playing and fighting and creating and worshiping and producing and singing and arguing and learning and laughing and crying and agreeing and disagreeing.  The image of an elementary school playground at recess comes to mind.

Now, put that community of all ages on a tall, tall butte or mesa – a plateau – with fathomless, deadly, clouds-in-the-depths cliffs on all sides.  Surrounding the top rim of the plateau is a sturdy, reliable, and utterly safe wall that provides a divine and unwavering boundary for the rough-and-tumble proceedings of the population within.

The community is humanity, and the protective wall is the truth of Jesus Christ.  In this scenario, everybody understands the wall is there, even those who don’t dwell on the philosophy, theology, or penalty of the cliffs just beyond.  So regardless of what anyone thinks (or doesn’t think) about the wall and the deadly “other side,” the faithful community thrives joyously, hopefully, and safely with great comfort and trust in the truth of the protection of that wall.  Life is routinely raucous and messy, but eternally safe because the wall shelters all from the death of the unknown depths.  The boundary accommodates the wise, fools, and contradictions.  It forbids wars, and produces wars.

Chesterton then describes a second scenario, the same plateau but without the wall.  Instead of protection and freedom within its boundaries, the deadly maw of certain death surrounds all who might press the boundaries of a world where the truth of Christ – i.e., the saving wall – does not exist.  Now, the once-lively rough-and-tumble of freedom within the boundaries becomes the deathly pall of fear and sullen terror of the abyss.  Instead of love, industry, play, passion, freedom, and bouncing-off-the-wall life within the boundaries, the fear-stricken population – horrified of the unknown and in the absence of truth – huddles timidly in the middle of the plateau.

No one dares to venture out; fear has overcome freedom.  Instead of everyone knowing they are guarded by the wall of God’s merciful, eternal love through Jesus Christ, they become impotent victims of maniacal dread.  The immutable wall of divine truth is replaced by the capricious opinions and vagaries of the worldly unrighteous.

Written more than 100 years ago, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy explains why he personally was compelled to believe Christianity as humanity’s unique and supreme saving grace.  He notes the many, many differing faces of human morality and industry, but also notes the broad accommodation of Christian expression within the boundaries of Christian truth, from the holy silence of monks to the strident voices of martyrs.

Freedom is having barriers we trust, and playing wildly within them.  Life won’t always look the same, but Christ provides sane truth toward which we can always look.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) sorts out politics by discerning which leaders value the wall (the power of freedom) and which ridicule God’s safety net (the power of fear).

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Monday, August 28, 2017

563 - Who's Responsible?

4:34 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column No. 563
August 29, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
 
Who’s Responsible?
By Bob Walters
 
There’s a preacher over here on the radio holding our feet to the fire for every sin we’ve ever committed.  Oh Lord, I can’t bear the guilt …  Fearful punishment awaits.
 
There’s a preacher over there on TV who owns a private jet and says the secret to health, happiness and financial well-being lies in how well we pray … and if we send money to support his “ministry.” Oh Lord, give me more stuff!!!  Prosperity rules.
 
Punishment and prosperity are alarmingly ascendant aesthetics of today’s public Christianity.  Too bad that’s what the “outside” world often and untrustingly sees when deciding whether Christ and Christianity are what humanity needs to broaden, give purpose to, and heal our earthly lives.  And I’m telling you, folks, fear and “more stuff” are not the road upon which to have a joyous, loving, self-sacrificing, trusting, faithful, certain and obedient walk with Jesus Christ.  His road is as true as it is eternal.
 
Picking on broadcast preachers certainly amounts to going after the easy targets not because they are all bad but because they are so visible.  I listen to doctrinally deep and uplifting Christian radio all the time (though I have to confess, with just a couple of exceptions I gave up on TV preachers a long time ago).  Discernment is a must.
 
But the tendency – or maybe it’s a strategy – of dangling either guilt or greed from a public pulpit as bait for Jesus Christ can’t possibly be what Jesus was talking about when he told his disciples they would become “fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19).
 
We live in a “me-first” world of concerns for our own well-being.  “Today” overtakes “eternity” when our rightful joy in Jesus is overwritten by disingenuous bait-and-switch gospel pandering to fears of “what God will do to us” or the dead-end lust of worldly wealth.  The hook is, “Can we get you to worry about it?”
 
Come back next week for more.
 
An Indianapolis TV news director told me a few years back that after 9/11, surveys proved that the No. 1 concern of folks tuning in to the news is, “Am I safe?”  The far better question, in my mind, would be, “Is it true?”  But safety is what we crave while truth, in the public square, has taken hit after hit.  Certainly, people have always had existential worries – famine, wars, etc. – but if you are fishing for an audience and that audience wants to worry about safety, then you preach fear and danger.  Anxiety, whether about what to fear or what to want, dependably tickles the ears (2 Timothy 4:3).
 
Christianity is best, and only truly is “Christianity,” when it preaches truth.  When our outward Christian lives suggest full confidence in the words of Jesus that He is our savior, shepherd, forgiver, eternal light and our “all in all,” “safety” takes on a far larger context in faith, and worry a much smaller one in our daily trials. Boldness in Christ 1) frees us from the guilt and 2) shrinks the greed that diminishes joy and limits hope.
 
Jesus promises us a big, big, glorious world – His Kingdom – that we can barely glimpse from this side.  But it is our responsibility – and opportunity – to seek it first.
 
Forego the guilt and greed, and listen for truth. Jesus is trying to reach you.
 
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves boats but doesn’t like to fish.
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Monday, March 14, 2016

487 - Anger Management

4:52 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #487
March 15, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Anger Management
By Bob Walters

“I feared the anger and wrath of the Lord …” – Deuteronomy 9:19

Moses fasted and laid prostrate before the Lord for 40 days and nights – twice – just trying to get God’s Ten Commandments down the mountain once and into the hearts and minds of the nation of Israel.

Both times this divine delivery was met by a stiff-necked, sinning, idol-forging nation.  The first time, Moses himself hurled and broke the tablets of God’s covenant in disgust with Israel’s sin.  The second time, Moses begged God’s mercy not to destroy His chosen yet rebellious people.

Deuteronomy 9 is a concise, instructive snapshot of God’s righteousness, generosity, faithfulness, anger, wrath and mercy, not to mention Israel’s utter rebellion, Moses’s unfailing faithfulness to God and Israel, and Old Testament intercessory prayer at its finest.

Moses talked God into a mulligan.  Deuteronomy 10 opens with another set of tablets, another chance for Israel, and continues in copious repetition (from Exodus and Numbers) of God’s laws and stern reminders to fear God’s wrath and anger.  Telling Israel once was not enough; “Deuteronomy,” after all, means “repetition of the law.”  Even the Ten Commandments took two tries to be delivered.

Deuteronomy is great instruction about a great God, great faith and a greatly sinful humanity.  But as Christians we must always be vigilant of what’s missing in these Mosaic stories, and that’s the New Covenant of Jesus Christ.  It’s a spirit-rending mistake of the first order when Christians seek out the wrathful God of the Old Testament without taking along our relational, sin-covering Jesus to understand the unsolvable, condemnational problems humanity had prior to the coming of Christ.

The Old Testament tells us about an unchanging yet somehow relational God, His Creation, our humanity, and the problems that arise from God’s love having righteously provided man with virtually unlimited freedom.  God’s plan is for humanity to use its freedom to discover God’s love and glory so that it may freely love Him back. Satan urges us to use that freedom to shame and humiliate God by venerating, loving, and promoting our self-interests.  Satan smiles when human anger is directed at God.

The lesson God has shown to mankind through Jesus is divine love that sacrifices for others, finds peace in humility, pride in God’s glory, strength in God’s truth and courage in everlasting salvation.

Anger and fear, ever-present in our fallen, worldly existence, are central themes of the Old Testament.  Love and peace – the love of God and others, and the peace of Christ – are eternal truths of the New Testament.

Learn from the Old, yes, but please, live in the New.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that people don’t change without Christ, and God doesn’t change, period.
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Monday, March 7, 2016

486 - Now Fear This

5:53 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #486
March 8, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Now Fear This
By Bob Walters

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” – 1 John 4:18

Everybody preaches it, but nobody believes it.

Or if they do believe it – that John is right when he says “God is love” and that Jesus is speaking truth when He says, “for God so loved the world …” – they’ll still sit perfectly still and listen to a Sunday sermon blasting forth on the wrath of God, the guilt and punishment of sinners, the shame of the unrighteous, the condemnation of all mankind and the fear of God that must be the foundation of one’s Christian life.

Because the Bible says we must “Fear God,” right?

Whew.  That is some kind of screwed up marketing plan.

It is scripture’s seemingly perfect contradiction – God’s love vs. God’s wrath – and the most common stumbling block and joy-stealing paradox in Christianity.  How can both be true?  God loves you – “be humble;” but God is furiously angry with you – “beware.”  Where in that spiritual eddy is there room for our joy becoming complete in Christ?  Where is there opportunity for anything but relational wrong-footedness, behavioral confusion and doctrinal misunderstanding?

Mankind has built the bride of Christ, the church, into an institution quite often focused more on man’s sins than on God’s love.  Sermons preach the “straight and narrow” – and oh, brothers and sisters, the road is straight and the gate is narrow – but we complicate the GPS (God’s Pro-active Salvation) coordinates with the chains of our earthbound journey.  Applications and challenges abound promoting works and legalism rather than the grace of God’s love, Christ’s work, and the Spirit’s presence.  The glorious, true freedom of a loving God and a saving Christ is muddled amid fear-mongering, transactional pulpit language of payment, punishment and purchase.

It’s mystifying to outsiders:

“This is a free gift but it comes at a cost!  Any questions?”

“Um, yeah:  Which is it?”

The answer appears in the opening verses of each of Paul’s 13 letters in the New Testament.  “Grace and peace” is his signatory greeting, not “payment and fear.”

God has created each of us in His own image, endowed us with spiritual freedom, instilled in us a will to live, and implanted in our hearts and minds a basic knowledge of right and wrong, of good and evil.  Jesus is God’s proof that He loves us, because Jesus cleans up the mess our imperfect fears create.

Our joy is complete when our worldly fear turns to trust in God’s perfect love.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) considers “Fear not” to be the most valuable yet underutilized advice in the Bible.
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Monday, December 2, 2013

368 - Giftwrapping the Cosmic Truth

4:53 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #368
December 3, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

A Christmas Series - 1 of 4
Giftwrapping the Cosmic Truth
By Bob Walters
 
Upon perusing one’s cosmic, Christian, Christmas shopping list, which of the following would you rather gift wrap for any random human:

- a loving, productive and rock-solid faith in Jesus Christ, or

- a no-bones-about-it fear of Hell?

Yeah, me too: let’s definitely go with gift number one.  Love and faith and Jesus are way more appealing than fear and Hell.  But make no mistake: the reality of Christian truth is that salvation available only through faith in Jesus Christ (John 14:6) is concurrently both the greatest gift on record and the only antidote to Hell.

And I make that statement knowing this much: people hate hearing about Hell. 

Contemporary culture at-large tends to reject the specifics of both Christ and Hell.  Not-completely-sure non-believers cautiously rationalize that avoiding faith in Christ altogether somehow exempts them from the calculus of judgment, Hell and damnation (the exact opposite of what the Bible says).  Plenty of sitting-in-church believing Christians – ironically and perilously – believe everything the Bible says about Christ and nothing it says about Hell.

Sadly, and incompletely, a lot of modern “churchianity” imagines the “carrot” of a loving Christ while ignoring the “stick” of eternal damnation.  And I say “imagines” here because the extant truth is the mystery of creation, salvation, love, glory and the Holy Trinity, not a trade-off of carrots and sticks; not a cosmic tit-for-tat.  Modern culture operates in the alternately attractive, and then horrific, muck of fallen worldliness, crazily demanding concrete answers to divine questions when it has forgotten about God and convinced itself to disregard Hell.

We must remember: the whole story of salvation in Christ – for everybody ever created – includes that which mankind is saved from, i.e., Hell, not just that which we are saved to, i.e., heaven.

I’ve often written in this space of my disdain for salvation fear-mongering; of the draconian “Christian” tracts distributed on street corners attempting to scare the lost into salvation by threatening Hell.  And I’m repulsed when I learn of Sunday school curriculums designed to scare children about sin and Satan rather than to teach the love of Jesus Christ.  I believe these are examples of awful, if occasionally useful, witness.

There is a certain utility in owning a healthy fear and understanding of Hell if it helps to turn one’s mind, heart, and discipline away from sin and toward the glory of a saving God.  A properly functioning, mature Christian can be both aware of sin and wary of Hell but still have a joyous, productive and glorifying faith in Christ. 

The Bible tells me so.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) urges a Hell check: visit Brent Riggs - What the Bible Says About Hell.  Read the outline that appears below the “listen” button.
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Monday, May 14, 2012

287 - Sin and God's Savings Plan

6:41 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #287
May 15, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Sin and God’s Savings Plan
By Bob Walters

Plenty of Christians look up and out from their Bible or Church and see a world full of sinners who ought to be punished.

Much of that world looks back at Christians, shakes its collective head, and wonders, “If Christianity is about sin and guilt and fear and punishment, how is that better than the life I’m leading right now where I don’t judge anyone … and I don’t fear anyone or anything judging me?”

I’m afraid I know this one to be true: that a Christian with a heart full of zeal to save sinners can be the worst witness of the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  That’s because, to the non-believing world, the suffering Christ up there on the Cross of Crucifixion is anything but a picture of love.  And I know that any conversation that starts, “Let me tell about how Jesus died for your sins,” contains the presumption of condemnation, as in: “Hi, how do you do?  You’re a sinner.  You’re condemned.  And this guy, Jesus, died for you.”  Huh?

I’d wonder, “Well, if that guy really died for me, why am I still condemned?  And hey, who are you calling a sinner?”

It is the Christian who is supposed to understand that the first and worst sinner he or she sees every day is the one staring back at him or her from the mirror.  And as a believing, studying Christian, I know that Christ’s work on the cross was a whole lot more involved, and important, than just forgiving and covering my many sins.

Christ on the Cross restored and reconciled the fallen world with the Creator God Almighty.   At the cross – in grace not transaction – the eternal destiny of all mankind was set upright.  At the cross, everything changed.   At the cross Christ …

... restored our our relationship with God, defined our proper fellowship with each other, defeated death, adopted us as children into the Kingdom of Heaven, revealed the truth and the true God, hastened the arrival of the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and defined our human lives in terms of sacrifice, service, and most importantly, love.

Christ gave us the peace of repentance, freedom from guilt and fear, and blessed us with the joy of hope and fullness to replace the despair of regret and emptiness.  And, oh yeah, our sins were forgiven, too.

Don’t sell Christ short thinking His death was solely about sin.  God’s savings plan is about a world full of sinners who need to be – and ought to be – loved.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) shakes his head at how many Christians condemn others rather than love others.  Buy Bob's book, Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary at Amazon.com or Lulu.com .
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