Friends: Fear shouldn’t be the coin of the realm, but it often is.  Love is so much better. See the column ...  God bless! Bob

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Spirituality Column #956

March 11, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Fear and Loving   

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

Perhaps you’ve noticed the cultural forces of fear embedded in and surrounding our politics, journalism, government, education, entertainment, and religion. Common sense and faith are healthier than fear, but fear is the greater driver of control.

You want people’s unquestioning action or compliance? Scare ‘em. Threaten them. Punish them.  Mixed in with adequate doses of hatred, distrust, stupidity, and prevarication – i.e., lying to folks – one can perpetrate the most awful, damaging, and vicious violations of the human spirit.  We willfully harm our fellow humans; we all suffer.

You want divine relationship, hope, and peace? All you need is love.

Considering the New Testament was written nearly 2,000 years ago, and the Old Testament was coming together for a couple thousand years before that, fear’s impact on the human psyche and actions is nothing new. Fear of the unknown and the punitive wrath of a righteous God were logical upshots of human sin and the Fall.

As Adam and Eve stood naked and ashamed in the Garden, they hid from God, fearing what He would think of their disobedience. But we can only “hide” from God for so long, and the important third lesson here – after lesson 1) shame and lesson 2) fear – was even though knowing what Adam and Eve had done, God went looking for them.  

Lesson 3: God cares.

There is a reason Jesus, in the New Testament bringing a new covenant of faith, repeatedly says to believers, “Do not fear.” After thousands of years of human disobedience, Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the perfect beacon and representation of God’s love, grace, mercy, and truth, came looking for us, “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8). And we are still sinners today, but now we know Jesus.  Game changer.

The OT massively speaks of fearing God, while God’s love is rarely mentioned. God’s character – His creativity, righteousness, truth, and glory – is on full display.  The New Testament’s full display of Jesus’s character is faith, trust, obedience, and love of God.  What we must learn is that what is good for God is good for us.  Our “obedience,” etc., doesn’t improve God’s life; it improves ours. God’s glory can’t be harmed; but our unbelief – our fear – harms everyone.  That is what living in fear does to humanity.

The OT reveals not just the character of God but the character of humanity. What Jesus – God the Son – does is reveal the way cursed man is restored, by faith, to relationship with God the Father. That is why in information presented to me, whether in a sermon, a newscast, on the Internet, in commentaries, books, or whatever – what I am listening and looking for is the glory of God found in restoring my divine relationship.

I see far too much divisive human communication aimed at fomenting submission to ungodly ideas fueled by fear.  Truth is better because Jesus is truth and God is love.

I’ve learned that joy comes in the love part of it, not the fear part of it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that today’s column title, “Fear and Loving,” is a rip-off of Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 book, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” about the fall of America’s counterculture.  Love is better than fear; that’s all Walters is saying.

Friends: Pam’s daughter Lauren married Greg Saturday, blending families and going forward in life.  I officiated the service and wanted to share the homily I wrote on love. Blessings, Bob

Spirituality Column #936

October 22, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Complete Love

By Bob Walters

“Love … always perseveres.” – The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:7

Lauren and Greg, with her three small children and his one, were married and became a blended family last Saturday.  It was a career first for me, officiating the small, cozy ceremony among their dearest family and closest friends. I thought I’d share the homily:

Not one of us, individually, is “complete.” I believe our singular human incompleteness was and has been part of God’s plan since the Garden of Eden. We need a sure savior. We need trusted friends. We need nurturing family. We need a loving mate. It is a blessing to have loving children.  Hope resides in all these things.

The Bible says, “God is love,” but our earthly, human, temporal understanding of love we have in this life is better experienced in the context of God’s giving, sacrificing, eternal love. It is with God, and with each other, that we discover our completeness.

Consider that God – who we know as the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit – God Himself is a community of three.  Why a community? Because love cannot exist alone, as one. 

A wise man once said that God is three because three is the smallest number of a community. God, therefore, can be – and is – love, and teaches that we are to love those whom he created in His own image … us.

It follows that the great commands of Jesus are to love God, and to love others.

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4-7:

“Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres.”

Notice that the things that cast light on ourselves – envy, boasting, pride, self-seeking – are warned against.  While things that express love, patience, kindness to others, and truth are recommended.

Chapter 13 of the Bible’s New Testament book of 1^st Corinthians is a staple of Christian and even not-so-Christian weddings, as we proclaim the strivings of human love. But the chapter is primarily about God’s perfect love.

Back in verse two, Paul says “if I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”  Love is how we are completed in God’s eyes.  Our ability to see through to the eyes of God is the gift of Jesus Christ, and of those we love.

The passage also says that we must “put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). That is because we have grown and learned a greater love – a sacrificial love – for others and humility for ourselves.

Yes, in our earthly life we can have many things, talents, desires, dreams, and intentions.  But in the end, Paul says, faith, hope, and love remain; the greatest of these being love.   Love is the greatest because it invites divine relationship, and is God’s language of community, and completion.  

Greg and Lauren, may your lives and love become complete with God, with each other, and with your children, in heaven’s earthly realm. AMEN.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) obtained one of those “online ordinations” to be “legal” for the ceremony, but prior to the ceremony counseled with several personally known and trusted pastors for their blessing and imprimatur for him to officiate.  

Friends: Understanding God’s love is perhaps life’s greatest mystery and humanity’s greatest gift. The Bible tells us so.  See the column below.  Have a great week!  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #909

April 16, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Love is the Greatest

By Bob Walters

“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” – 1 Corinthians 13:13

This verse, 1 Cointhians 13:13, is the one that hooked me my first day in church.

Russ Blowers was preaching – September 2, 2001 – on his 50^th anniversary of tending the flock at East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis. I was an unbeliever somehow in church (sitting in the back row), and Russ said, approximately:

“We learn faith from the past, we have hope in the future, but we have love in the present.”  Learning later that C.S. Lewis wrote, “… the present is where eternity touches time” (The Screwtape Letters), the idea, well, the reality, that God is Love, God is eternal, and God stepped into the present in the form of his Son Jesus Christ, solved Russ’s words and put my esteem of love’s stature in theology at the head of the line.

There are dozens of personal, corollary stories (rabbit trails, my wife calls them) that could stretch the above three paragraphs into days of self-reflection, but I recently learned something new – a brilliant perspective – on all that 1 Corinthians 13 says about love with a nearly perfect blending of Paul’s “fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22-23.

First Corinthians 13:4-8 says “Love is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not proud, does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeps no records of wrong, does not delight in evil, rejoices in truth, and always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres.”

Galatians 5:22-23 says, “the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

My friend Craig Streett, at a recent E91 Mustard Seed Bible class, shared the following handwritten card stuffed in his Bible from a lesson long ago.  Its precis was this: Love is the chief and true fruit of the Spirit, and all other fruits flow from love.

Note: this doesn’t divide the fruits, but we must never divide love, because God is love and we mustn’t divide God.  But what about Father, Son, Spirit?”  My advice is to consider the math problem of the Holy Trinity – 3 in 1, 1 in 3 – as multiplication, i.e., 1x1x1=1, that gives us a loving community of one, not a divided crowd of three. 

So, without division, notice how these two “truth” and “fruit” passages of Paul’s sync up pretty well when love takes the lead over all fruits of the Spirit. Here’s the note:

         “The fruit of the Spirit is love …

1.    Joy is love’s strength.

2.    Peace is love’s security.

3.    Longsuffering is love’s patience.

4.    Kindness is love’s conduct.

5.    Goodness is love’s character.

6.    Faithfulness is love’s confidence.

7.    Gentleness is love’s humility.

8.    Self-control is love’s victory.

Against such as these there is no law.”

When we see love’s fruits in our lives, we have love’s gifts in our hearts.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes this list originated with BibleProject.com. And ... next week we'll review Dave Faust's new book "Not Too Old, Turning your Later Years into Greater Years." Available at Amazon and CollegePress. E91 has planned a book signing session with Dave Sunday, April 28, where books will also be available.

Friends, If life’s purpose is to glorify God, then our proper gauge is our delight, or rather, the deeply personal appreciation of God’s gift: not a payment made on our behalf. See the column below.  Blessings! Bob

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Spirituality Column #853

March 21, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Delightful Gift, Part 2

By Bob Walters

“Delight is what distinguishes a gift from a payment.” – Ephraim Radner, First Things

 Please forgive my continuing presence on this soap box mounted last week regarding the ubiquitous presence – in modern Christian worship and doctrine – of transaction theology that says it is payment, not grace, that frees our souls.

Disagree?  Count the times in a church service – in prayer, singing, homilies, or sermons – that our salvation is somehow tied to Jesus paying a mysterious price.  Our souls were purchased at a price. Jesus paid our debt.  Jesus was punished for our sins.

No one can point to the recipient of the “payment” – Jesus is already God so He’s not paying God, and I’ll lay great trust on God not paying Satan to “free” us – but that’s our modern, earthly, mercantile, unwavering metaphor for the saving wonder of God’s love, grace, and obedience.  God simply picked up the tab by killing himself. We’re on the payroll.

That rankles me every time I hear it and I hear it a lot.  More details on that are available in last week’s opening salvo (852 – Delightful Gift, Part 1). Today I wanted to fill in some blanks, still holding the belief that my delight is the gift of Jesus, not the lingering guilt of forlorn sin and an unrepayable debt I can barely comprehend. 

Love … I understand that.  Grace frees me … in humility.  Obedience? I try.

First blank to fill … who the heck is Ephraim Radner, author of the wonderful aphorism on the top line above? He was born to a Jewish father and lapsed Catholic mother who himself joined the Episcopal Church at age 14 and is now a priest, theologian, professor, writer … and current occupant of The Back Page column – an institution in itself – of my beloved First Things, a conservative Catholic journal of theology and culture.  I read it because 17 years ago, Russ Blowers recommended it.

The Back Page column is usually the toughest thing in the magazine, if you don’t count the theology arguments in the Letters section.  Radner here (March 2023) is analyzing another philosopher, but notes this: “In a created world, delight fuels the energy of our lives and, rightly understood, marks the governing purpose. Every moment or thing of delight is the incarnate articulation of God’s glory.” 

If life’s purpose is to glorify God, then our proper gauge is our delight, or rather, the deeply personal appreciation of God’s gift: not a payment made on our behalf.

Early in my tutelage under Dr. George Bebawi – my friend, mentor, and weekly Bible study teacher at E91 from 2004 through 2017 – he emphasized the laziness of reducing the love of Jesus to a simple idea of “payment,” “purchase,” or “cost.”

Though perhaps useful as analogy and metaphor, they diminish our potential for deep love and relationship with Jesus.  I don’t remember how he said it, but I’d express it as being similar to being friends with someone to whom you owe money.  That debt is always the first thing you think of, not the love or relationship. I’ve had that experience.

Is it a “salvation issue” thinking Jesus paid a price?  Not sure … not my call.  I would say it is a quality-of-this-life and joy-in-the-here-and-now issue.  Did you ever try to pay someone who didn’t want to be paid?  Or, they try to give you your “grace” back and both parties are embarrassed?  Maybe its unintentional and well meaning, or even noble, as in, “I should pay for this.”  I think Jesus tells us, “We should love for this.”

This is why God loves a joyful giver and, I’d add, a delighted receiver. Joy and love don’t keep score, and delight sweetens life.  In Jesus, we needn’t sweat the payroll.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) years ago tried to find the “paid the price” doctrine in scripture and was convinced only that it really and truly is not there.  That’s next week.

 I am thankful to be forgiven in Christ, but I’m not sure what forgiveness feels like.  Plus, I know there is something more.  See the column below.  Bob

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Spirituality Column #847

February 7, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Forgive the Feeling

By Bob Walters

“…forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you …” – Jesus, Mark 11:25

We have a lively, mature Sunday school class full of prudent, Bible-savvy, loving, life-long believers and church leaders.  And then there is me.

I’m a late-to-the-faith guy who talks too much, but 21-years in (baptized at age 47 in 2001) I have pretty much merged into the life-affirming surety and joy in Christ these folks – and many others I’ve met – have known most of their lives.  Theirs is a weekly fellowship and witness I have been taught, and encouraged by, for more than 20 years.

A few weeks back I said something I believe fully but that obviously shocked the class; at least, it shocked Sandy.  I don’t remember what we were discussing but I made the sincere point that I can’t really “feel” forgiveness, even though I know I am forgiven.

Sandy – that’s her real name – is a caring, Bible-bearing servant of God who almost immediately, lovingly, responded (approximately), “You can’t feel forgiveness?  I think that makes me very sad.”  And I knew exactly what she meant – it was care, not criticism – but I could also sense the room’s general agreement with her and didn’t want to pull the discussion off in another direction … which I have been known to do. 

But it is true.  I think of my life given over to Jesus – I’m still a fallen sinner – and I can’t for the life of me figure out what forgiveness is supposed to feel like.  Further, I’ve come to believe that forgiveness, great as it is, is not the main point of our life in Christ.

God’s glory and our place in it, I am convinced, is the point of our life in Christ.

Jesus came to fight a very unusual war: to show us God is worth it, and we are worth it.  That was His mission.  Jesus’s emphasis more critically was our knowing that He is the Son of God, part of which is our knowing that only God can forgive, and our knowing we need forgiveness.  But salvation is a faith test, not a forgiveness test.

What I can feel, and what makes me rejoice, is the truth I know through the Holy Spirit: that the life, teaching, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus Christ tells humans we are created to be part of God’s glory. That’s what Jesus came to tell us, and to rectify.

It’s our faith in Jesus, not our having been forgiven, that truly opens the gate into the Kingdom of God.  No, we can’t enter the Kingdom as sinners because of God’s righteousness, and the sacrifice of perfect Jesus covers our sins; it’s His righteousness through which we enter the Kingdom.  I think our goal is entering the Kingdom, not “me being forgiven” so I can feel better about my life.  Life’s not about me; that’s not love.

What I am is thankful, grateful, humble, and utterly awed by the rescue mission Jesus undertook to bring believers back into relationship with God; I feel that love.

I don’t feel the forgiveness; I feel the relationship.  Because of Christ I don’t have to strain and fuzzily look through a glass darkly at a distant, mysterious hope.  In the living truth of Jesus, I live within the reality of God’s purpose: glory.  That truth is clear.

God created us in His own image – “God is love” (1 John 4:8) – to be part of His eternal glory, not so He could come forgive us at some later date by killing His son. 

Our greatest joy in this life, then, should model the life of Jesus by sharing with others God’s love and mercy for us … by forgiving them in obedience to God.

I may not know what God’s forgiveness feels like, but I surely feel the peace of knowing Heaven awaits, God is real, Jesus can be trusted, and the Holy Spirit abides.

Forgiveness, like love, is a divine joy when it is about others.  

Thank you, Jesus, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves Sandy and the entire E91 Logos ABF class.

Friends ... Christians hope the promise of Christmas adds up to year-round joy.  See new column below ... and we’ll be back next year! Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #841

December 27, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Summing Up Christmas

By Bob Walters

“Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” – Jesus, Mathew 6:18

I suppose I put up too many Christmas lights, and my wife Pam possibly bakes too many Christmas cookies … not that we plan to make any changes going forward.

Our neighbors, family, and friends – and co-workers, many of whom have become close friends – notice and appreciate our yearly Christmas holiday behaviors.  We have great fun expressing our joy in the season; it is a joy in Christ and an easy outpouring of our faithful love for Him … and Christian love for others.

I think there is plenty of evidence that our Christmas celebrating is not a matter of Pam and me coming out of a slumbering closet, awakening to our mission with Jesus only at the commercially and culturally “acceptable” Yuletide season.  We are thankful for the life we share, together, in Christ, and it’s a 24/7/365/Eternal fact of our existence.

Stumbles?  Yes (mainly me).  Perfection?  No (again, mainly me).  We don’t keep count, and living our lives in the forgiveness of Christ and forgiving with Christ provide peace, joy, and a divine closeness of relationship other Christians understand.  It’s a joy the secular Christmas crowd glimpses faintly but largely can’t fathom.  Thankfulness is one thing; thankfulness for a life in Christ is an entirely different ballgame, one where you don’t need to keep score and couldn’t quantify or count points if you tried.

The “true meaning of Christmas” is closer to that, i.e., not keeping score or seeing, empirically, “what it all adds up to.”  Giving with joy is its own reward.

Last month on a warmish central Indiana Thanksgiving weekend afternoon (funny how Christmas weekend arrived with sub-zero temperatures, blowing snow, and whoo-boy windchills in the minus 30s), several of us, including our very pleasant new neighbor lady across the street, were outside hanging Christmas lights.  When her husband arrived back from wherever he had been, he surveyed his house and then ours and in a friendly way shouted across the street, “Ah … competition!”

I shouted back, cheerfully, “It’s not competition, it’s Christmas!”  The lady agreed.

When I delivered Pam’s customary, generous cache of assorted, hand-decorated Christmas cookies to my many workmates, a kind lady sensing the enormity of effort Pam put into baking them, asked me, “How much time does she spend on these?”

I replied, with a broad smile, “It’s not time; it’s love.”  What a satisfying answer.

As we move past this “most wonderful time of the year” into our 2023 trip around the sun, I want to remember this and every Christmas not in terms of “how much time” or “how much money” or who gets the neighborhood Griswold Award for excessive Christmas lights.  Let’s store away our Christmas gear, not the Christmas in our hearts.

Jesus Christ – God coming to live among humanity to restore our relationship with the good, loving, unsurprisable, and unerringly righteous God of Creation – is truth for all time and love beyond all measurement.  As an expression of God’s love, Jesus is our sure hope.  He isn’t here to “beat Satan,” He’s here to show us how to love God and each other. Christmas isn’t the sum of an equation, it’s a divine mystery of God’s love.

Whatever we do at Christmas, it should be an unbridled expression of our love and God’s love, not judgement of human effort or measurement of worldly transaction.

Believe it when I say we are well aware – as are you – of the prideful, non-faith world that cynically takes great commercial advantage of the Christmas season.

My goal – our goal – is to take loving advantage of Jesus Christ all year long.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests focusing on God’s love, not God’s rewards.

Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #821 (8-9-22), “Command Performance.” We Christians focus so much on being commanded by God to behave … but He is commanding us to love.  See the column below.

Have a great week!  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #821

August 9, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Command Performance

By Bob Walters

“This is my command: Love each other.” – Jesus to his disciples, John 15:17

Perhaps Satan’s greatest ally in staunching human acceptance, adoration, and obedience regarding God, Jesus, the church, and Christianity is how people understand the specific and very-often used Bible word: “command.”

Cite the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5-6) to lay out a behavioral template, and the Bible is a “Rule Book.” 

Rehearse Jesus’s words, “A new command I give to you, love God and love others” (John 13:34), and a romantic novel is birthed.

If one asserts the various “commands” of Christ and directives of Paul as a punishable threat against human sin, a horror story of trapped souls, fearful missteps, dreaded judgment, and joyless lives flourishes.

Whatever happened to, “So your joy may be complete”? (John 15:7)

The Bible reads far better when the commands of God and Christ – and the general teaching of the New Testament writers – are understood to tell us the way things will go best for us, rather than as threats from an angry, wrathful, cranky God with a prison list of forbidden activities.  God’s not out “to get us.”  At least, not like that.

The Ten Commandments present the template for successful society and thriving human aspiration and creativity. The first four commands tell us to know and honor God; the last six commands to respect and honor each other.  The beneficiary of these commands is not God; it is us.  Our relationship with God brings joy; our relationship with each other brings peace. Then, things can go well with us (Eph 6:3, Deut 12:28).

It’s an easy equation: God is love, and He’s here to help; Jesus proves it.  But God is also maddeningly and unchangeably righteous.  We have freedom, yes; and in Christ we have freedom from the Law of Israel. But we have profound responsibility to God’s favorite creation – humanity – to share His love and teach about Jesus Christ.

Everyone knows that Jesus’s “two new commandments” mirror the ten given to Israel: “Love God” comprises the first four; “Love each other” comprises the last six.  Two sounds simpler than ten, but the profound responsibility of our obedience can be a real head-spinner because of the profound mystery of divine love. God has the final say.

A concrete list of “Do’s and Don’ts” – such as the Law – muddies the possibility and joy of sacrificial love because we fear mistakes more than we cherish love.

Christianity can’t be like that; God’s commands expand our lives…if we let them.

The Sunday church experience cheers up dramatically when the words of Christ’s hope and joy are preached as real and attainable goals through love and generosity rather than as draconian condemnations against human missteps and sin.

Like the Good Book says, our good works will not get us into heaven (Eph 2:8) because divine love is not performance art; it’s divine art of the heart, soul, and intellect.

Satan is going to continue his only quest, which is to hinder God’s glory by convincing humans to judge our performance rather than pouring out God’s love.

God’s commands are grounded in His purpose to restore and assure our joy. That is God’s art of how things go best with us, and His command performance of love.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) appreciates good coaching.  Jesus is the best.

Spirituality Column #771

August 24, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

My Favorite Place to Be

By Bob Walters

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.” – Ephesians 2:4-5

“God is in control” and “God has a plan” – we hear it all the time – but God also gives us in this life freedom to challenge His control and the autonomy to disrupt His plans. Why would He do that?

What God wants – as He searches for us – is for us to freely find Him.  If love were not so precious, God could coerce us to find Him, gather to Him, and obey Him. But this God of love knows that only love based in our free will that leads us to choose to love others more than ourselves is the true divine love; that’s His love.

We are to give selflessly for God’s glory, rather than take selfishly in our greed.

That’s the part of our human existence we call life.  Need an example?  How about, Jesus came for everyone, but not everyone comes to Jesus?  Whatever God’s control or plans or provision for our well-being, our ignoring them, in the end, only hurts us. God’s righteousness will be true no matter what we do.  Ours depends on His.

God gives us freedom and autonomy, I believe, to seek and find Him, our Creator, in His loving, perfect, glory and life, not to “find ourselves” in our earthbound morass of pride, passions, fear, and death.  We properly fear God in His judgment only when we don’t completely trust the presence of His mercy.  When we do trust God – and I don’t mean a little bit and on our own terms of “God, do something for me,” but on the grand and eternal scale of “I am the Lord thy God” – what we discover is the comfort of His love and mercy, and the trust to let go of our fear of His wrath and judgment.

God abounds in mercy, and His mercy is why we can know peace.

As Paul so accurately frames God’s mercy in the Ephesians verse above, sinful man can often only perceive God’s mercy as an antidote or a “pass” for our behavioral, human transgressions.  A perfect life would be our ability to do exactly as God says, all the time.  It’s like following the directions on a cake mix … follow the directions, and you have a cake.  Follow your feelings … and you’ll have a mess.  Then, if you’re at the mercy of man … good luck.  God’s mercy won’t bake the cake; but it provides one with the good reason and confidence to follow directions, i.e., God’s truth.

A good Christian friend reminded me over that weekend that God “brings some low, and exalts others” (Psalm 75:7), and that we are “at God’s mercy.” And I thought, “Praise God for that!”  Most Bible verses about “mercy” refer to our transgressions in the behavioral realm, not the low moments and seasons of health distress, injustice, abuse, or other calamity traceable to human fallenness but not to our own sin.

Hebrews 4:16 instructs, “Let us then with confidence draw near the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.”  In any case or in any season, if I am at God’s mercy and am blessed to know that God is full of mercy, then “at God’s mercy” is exactly where I want to be.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) trusts God’s love and is thankful for God’s mercy.

 Spirituality Column #769

August 10, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Vine of Truth

By Bob Walters

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” – Jesus, John 15:1

I am hard-pressed to think of anything Jesus says in the Bible that is not in some way an attempt to explain to a mostly unbelieving Israel who He was … and still is.

Mary and Joseph understood (Matthew 1:20-24, Luke 1:31-32, 46-49).  John the Baptist understood (Matthew 3:11).  The disciples, eventually, understood (Matthew 16:16).  The Angels of God understood (Luke 2:9-12).  Even Satan, “the devil,” “the tempter,” understood (Matthew 4:1-3).

The Pharisees and other Jewish leaders?  They mostly hated Jesus for the threat he posed to their positions of power.  If they knew so much scripture and prophecy, how could they not understand?  If they were truly close to God, how could they not love Jesus?  Yet for all but a few, the scales never fell from their eyes.  They had bent covenant Law to their own purposes, and had grown as a rogue, unproductive vine outside the Father’s will.

People in general were fascinated by Jesus’s miracles and healings, the authority of His teaching, and the power of His interactions.  But the Jews were looking for a Messiah who would kill the Romans, not to love sinners and prove the fruitfulness of God’s vine.  By the time of His crucifixion, Jesus was no longer the savior they were seeking: “Crucify Him!”

It is especially fascinating to me that in His final few hours with the disciples – at the last supper and then on the way to Gethsemane where He would be arrested – Jesus focused His final words to them not on sin and salvation, but on His identity as the Son of God, His mission of obedience and love, the disciples’ mission of love and perseverance, and the persecutions they would face ahead.  Faith would be their only way forward.

Most of us tend to seek God on our own terms.  We want Him to be and do what we want Him to be and do … for us.  We don’t immediately understand how surely that separates us from His fruitful vine and impedes the relationship Jesus brought to humanity as a saving, divine gift.  As Jesus expressed His faith in and obedience to God, He was also sharing his love and identity with these very frightened friends: God’s vine, on God’s terms.

“I am the true vine” is Jesus telling the disciples that He himself, not the covenant of Israel, is God’s one, true, fruit-bearing vine.  Throughout its existence Israel kept the vine as its national symbol.  Jesus was saying that God’s true fruit in humanity is shown by the fruit of Him in the Spirit, elegantly listed in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control. 

Pause and think how Israel over time soured that fruit (Isaiah 5:1-7).  Pause also and imagine what the Pharisees thought every time Jesus intoned that God – their God – was His Father.  “Father-Son” had never been a part of Israel’s relationship with God.  And now the disciples learn that the “Son and Father” are “vine and gardener.”

Grapevines grow quickly, deep, and have branches that produce fruit and branches that don’t.  Fruit-bearing branches are pruned heavily to increase the fruit, and since the “wood” of a vine is useless, non-fruit-bearing branches are cut, gathered, and burned.

For all Jesus said about His identity, there is no biblical signal that anyone deeply understood His mission, gift, or truth until His resurrection. The branches were yet to grow.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) hopes the fruit-prunings, i.e., our sins, are burned too.  Still today, some folks catch on and some don’t.

Spirituality Column #754

April 27, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What the World Needs Now

By Bob Walters

My friend Jim was depressed.

Not “can’t get out of bed depressed” – we were after all having lunch at a favorite local spot – just “don’t see any good answers going forward depressed” about America.

Jim’s an older retired guy like me who stays busy, loves his wife, is proud of his kids and his country, has many interests, enjoys reasonably good health despite the years and mileage, and has a solid relationship with the Lord.  He forged career success in the U.S. military, education, and public service, and has many stories, friends, talents, and an outgoing personality that make him a fun guy to be around.

Except currently, he’s watching way too much news.

I’m no psychologist yet when I greeted Jim at lunch with a familiar “How are you doing?” I immediately knew the answer wasn’t going to be a cheerful, “Just great!”  Still, I was surprised when it was an almost dour, “Not great.”  But I understood.

We’re both concerned about all the same stuff, most of it political and cultural.

The hardest part of these days for me is the entire lack of trust I feel toward the media, followed closely by the revulsion I harbor toward politicians and bureaucrats of nearly every stripe.  I know, “politicians gonna’ politic,” I get that; but the U.S. government has become an especially dark enterprise against God and freedom.

I trust God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and several family, friends, and Christian brothers and sisters … it’s about the only “truth” I see these days.  Praise God for that.

Then here comes the news: daily, proudly bereft of truth, objectivity, and context.  I squandered a perfectly good 1970s journalism degree on a very fun sports writing and sports media relations career.  But the news business was changing back then as the media’s job of “discomforting the powerful” became “lying in bed with the powerful.”

“Truth in media” has become agenda-driven narrative presenting an even blacker darkness than politics.  These watchdogs of liberty are now the lapdogs of deceit.

Throw in domestic corporate globalists who are anti-American-citizen, a profane entertainment culture, an America-vilifying major sports establishment, a morally bankrupt public academia, a mysterious and heinously politicized pandemic, and a media-championed, culture-shredding, variously woke mob grabbing power with nonsense.

What do we have?  Sour, civilization-threatening, anti-truth media Molotov cocktails landing at our feet.  

Where’s the love sweet love?

The media will continue to chortle about “justice being served” as truth burns.  Politicians will continue to add debt, subtract freedom, and equivocate a vacant virtue.

But maybe it’s OK.  God may be teaching us a lesson we’d all learn in church on Sundays if more of us would go; we might more easily see what is missing.  And what’s missing, besides truth, is redemption and forgiveness.  We angrily talk past each other, without love.

The folks in power, when you look at it, are the only ones who benefit when we stay out of church, shun the truth of Jesus, and worship at the altar of “my happiness” rather than at the demanding foot of the cross.  God’s glory isn’t in dispute; we are.

I watch little news because I know that widespread public distrust and confusion floats the collective boat of the Godless powerful, and we are the suckers in the water.

Well, I’m not.  Hopefully you’re not.  And I hope Jim cheers up.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) doesn’t rail at Satan; he calls to Jesus.  Try it.

Spirituality Column #744

February 17, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Evil 'I', Part 1

By Bob Walters

“The devil made me do it!” – Flip Wilson as Geraldine, 1960s comedy routine

“We have met the enemy, and he is us!” – Pogo, 1970 comic strip by Walt Kelly

That’s The Evil “I”, as in, “I” am part of the problem.”  It helps answer a question that arose recently in Sunday school: "If God created everything, why did He create evil?"

I offered a knee-jerk, defense-of-God response about human free will and its necessity to discover love.  Unless we love out of our own volition given to us by God (i.e., voluntarily), we can know only coercion, slavery, or convenience, not love.

Evil, I was trying to say, was more of a free-will, collateral damage thing, not a punishing, intentional God thing.  I’ve been thinking about that question all week, and while that’s not a terrible answer, it’s terribly incomplete.  It occurs to me that if we examine the Bible and then examine ourselves in a mirror, evil may not be so much a created, outside affliction as it is an internal, unnatural, and humanity-wide condition.

Does the devil create evil and make us do evil things?  Or do humans just habitually make miserably bad choices due to pride, fear, greed, jealousy, power, lusts – all egregious misuses of our free will.  Satan is a creation of God, yes: an angel expelled from heaven for denying God’s will and himself wanting to be God. 

But God didn’t originally create Satan to be evil, at least I don’t think so; the Bible is silent on that one.  However it happened, Satan freely grew into it.  Nor did God create humanity to be evil: Adam and Eve were pure in paradise.  Fallen Satan tempted them with two of the worst lies on record: 1. God’s word and will are not firm; and 2. obedience to God’s commands is optional.  Adam and Eve bought it, God cursed them, all humanity, and Satan; evil has been the world’s greatest problem ever since.

Why did God do that?  First, let’s look at who God is; i.e., how we typically describe Him.  God is good, just, loving, creative, trustworthy, faithful, in control, merciful, and oh yeah, don’t forget this one: God is righteous.  Oh boy, is He righteous.

Some folks would put “wrathful” on that list, but I think “wrath” is God’s reaction, not God’s nature.  Just like Satan wasn’t evil before he disobeyed, God wasn’t wrathful before His righteousness was challenged.  Throughout the Old Testament, while we see God’s wrath on full display, we also see God’s will and righteousness on full display. Sometimes it’s truly hard to imagine how humans could possibly tell the difference.

Think of all the people God protected.  Think of all the others – foe and friend alike – He destroyed.  Think of how He hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus) against freeing Israel from bondage so God could unleash His glory on full display – which to the Egyptians would have looked a whole lot like evil: signs, plagues, Pharaoh’s army drowning in the sea, and, not to mention the loss of much of the nation’s labor force.

This is not about “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”  God’s righteousness is not a matter of debate or perspective; at least, it shouldn’t be – not among humans, especially faithful humans.  God is righteous all the time; that is truth.

We blame Satan for evil in the world, but on closer inspection it is humanity’s misuse of free will and its woeful decisions to listen to Satan’s lies that reveal evil.  It is a faithless dodge to say, “The devil made me do it.”  No, we do it to ourselves.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) continues next week: God’s stunning consistency.