Spirituality Column #275
February 14, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Love, Endurance, and Prayer
By Bob Walters

My friends John and Joyce (Estes) Samples have been married 61 years.

Not bad, but this is amazing: Joyce and her six still-living Estes siblings - two brothers and four sisters – have all been married for more than 50 years.

That’s right, seven brothers and sisters from the same family have each celebrated Golden Wedding Anniversaries. Youngest sister Sue’s 50th in February 2008 was the seventh and inspired national news coverage.

The Estes siblings and current years of marriage are Agnes 65, Doug 64, Charles 61, Joyce 61, Eula 58, Sue 53, and Gladys 52. They were born in Kentucky but grew up near Richmond, Ind. Joyce and husband John, a minister, live in Fishers.

Thirteen of the 14 Golden celebrants are still “alive and kicking” today (Gladys’ husband died in 1999). Another brother, Joe, died in 1992 after 48 years of marriage to Ruth, a marriage delayed three years by World War II. So that’s another 50-year-plus commitment. A ninth sibling sister died when she was less than two years old.

As you might expect, their parents C.M. and Minnie Estes marked a long marriage – 59 years before C.M. passed in1975. Minnie died in 1997 at age 99.

Add it all up and that’s 521 years of marriage for these Christian, church-going, prayerful kinfolk who provide a Valentine’s Day reminder that love can indeed endure.

But rather than making this about Christian marriage or a secular holiday (the “Feast of St. Valentine” has been dropped from the official Roman Catholic calendar), let’s talk about love, endurance, and prayer in broader terms.

Most of us, when we pray, pray for deliverance. We pray for God to fix this problem, heal that sickness, smooth life’s rough spots, or calm troubled waters. “Deliver us from evil” we pray, because we think “evil” must be this thing making me crazy either in life or at this particular moment. But what are we doing for God?

Jesus prayed for deliverance, sure, “Take this cup from me …” (Matthew 26:39), but then expressed his faithfulness to God (26:42), “May your will be done.” And when Jesus prayed for Himself, the disciples, and all believers (John 17) in the Garden before His Crucifixion, He prayed for endurance for the sake of God’s glory.

Try praying “for endurance for the sake of God’s glory,” and see what happens.

The proof of love is in our endurance – just ask Jesus. Or an Estes sibling.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) learned that Jay Leno invited the Estes siblings and spouses to fly to Los Angeles and appear on The Tonight Show, but some of the Estes siblings don’t fly – never have, never will. Endurance, evidently, has its limits. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Spirituality Column #274
February 7, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

He’s Got the Whole World …
By Bob Walters

Is there anything anywhere that is not – somehow – attached to God?

For believers, the answer is easy: “No.” Everything was created by God, is attached to God, is finally answerable to God, and ultimately (if only in eternity) glorifies God. God is in and around everything, whether we understand it or not.

Believers’ identifying quote: “Praise God!”

For modernists, the answer is complex. Modernists – the philosopher modernists, we mean; the existentialists (“thought begins with man”) and secular humanists (rights of man) – generally allow for the existence of God but draw subjective lines of opinion and confinement around what is and is not in God’s purview.

Modernism presumes mankind and creation are capable of generating thought and things independently from God, making mankind responsible for truth, justice, and judging right and wrong. Modernists – the Enlightenment crowd, Darwinists, Evolutionists, etc. – cast a wary, often intellectually pitying eye on those poor dumb annoying believers. For man to be big, modernism insists God be made small.

Identifying quote: “God is a matter of opinion.”

For postmodernists, the answer is irrelevant because the question is invalid: God is merely an indefinable myth for the weak minded. Everyone worships something, and postmodernists seem to worship experiential, demonstrable, situational expedience filtered through power and money yielding an unprovable version of operable truth and reality in the here and now. There is no “good” or “right or wrong” or even “proof,” there is only “what is” and “whatever.” That’s it. Absent a more appropriate subspecies identifier, most of these folks typically are identified – hailed, really – as “intellectuals.”

Identifying quote: “Don’t tell me what to think.”

I’m comfortable that all intelligence, wisdom, truth, morality, judgment, the good, the bad, the ugly – all of it – goes back to God. This is not to knock human intelligence or intellectuals, but to recognize and celebrate God’s uniquely prospering and challenging gift to man – the brain in our head.

An old theological joke recounts how God, playing hide and seek with man, hid in the human heart figuring it would be the last place man would look. People the world over yearn to worship something, but use their “wisdom” to keep the real God at bay.

Jesus says we are to seek God (Matthew 6:33, “But first seek His Kingdom”), and that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). We may first feel God - sense Him - in our hearts, but it takes an engaged mind to appreciate that God is attached to every part of our lives.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com ) knows lots of smart people but doesn’t pray for their wisdom, he prays for God’s … with mixed results.

Spirituality Column #273
January 31, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

No Contest for Real God
By Bob Walters

How ironic it is that while much of our culture is quick to deify athletes, large swaths of our culture  want nothing to do with God.

Not really.

Not the actual REAL God, the one who created things for His own glory, who created us in His own image (Genesis 1:26-27), who reconciles all things back to His Holy name through the saving grace of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18). The God whose love, mercy, judgment and eternity are all promised in the Bible.

Let’s not confuse worshipping THAT God with the much more comfortable folk-hero worship of athletic deeds, heroic honors, won-loss records (heavy on the “won”), and glowing championships through which we experience immense but untoward and vicarious pride. That’s the god we want; we can control that god. We can buy a jersey or a game ticket. We can cheer or jeer. That athlete god has no hold on us; we are free to go worship elsewhere whenever we get bored or find a better god.

Sports are fun, no doubt. Athletic contests – when we participate in them – reveal great truths to us about our physical skills, mental perseverance, and endurance. I worked in and around college and pro sports for a large portion of my career – with enormous enjoyment and satisfaction – as a sportswriter and sports publicist. Been there, done that, had an all-access pass.

But here’s another holy irony. While there are exceptions, most athletes I’ve been around are quick to point out they are not God, or even gods. Athletes work hard, respect their abilities and those of their opponents. Athletes know that a locker room, a basketball court, a football field, a race track, a whatever, constitute an eventually equalizing and humbling human arena that, win or lose, enforces the earthly limitations – the non-Godly impermanence – of one’s physical, mental, and athletic capabilities.

That’s the inside truth of sports – limitations. When we deify an athlete, we are accepting limits because we are able to define what we expect that god to be. When we are disappointed, it’s real easy to swap gods.

When we accept the inside truth of God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth and all things seen and unseen, then we have a God we can’t control. We have a God so big He gives us the freedom to find Him in faith and to worship Him with endurance and assurance.

Don’t worship a limited god we make; worship the unlimited God that made us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) figures more folks would love Tim Tebow unconditionally if all they knew about him was his humanity. His Christian faith is truly annoying (frightening?) because it’s about God, not the fans.

Spirituality Column #272
January 24, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Goal That Never Changes
By Bob Walters

My friend and former pastor Dave Faust wrote the foreword for my recent book, Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary.

Dave, now president of Cincinnati Christian University, baptized me November 18, 2001. In his foreword Dave mentions that on each baptismal anniversary I mail a letter to him thanking him for his ministry and updating my faith journey. The following testimony, not in the book, is from my 10th letter to Dave a couple months ago:

“It’s a magnificent blessing to believe, to depend, to share with confidence what I know about the reality of Jesus Christ. While I doubt myself plenty, it never occurs to me to doubt Christ. Satan is the enemy, Christ is always for us … and it doesn’t get any simpler than that.

“It is as impossible for me to fathom the mystery of the spiritual distance I’ve traveled these last 10 years as it is to empirically explain any of the countless mysteries presented in the Trinity, Creation, scripture, faith, eternity, life … an entire Cosmos that is still smaller than God. And while I can’t fathom the distance traveled, I know the journey is rich.

“Many times I feel as though I’m still in the same spot in life, even in the exact same boat, shall we say. But now, over time, the entire ocean around me has broadened and deepened; become clearer but more endless, safer but with more at stake, easier to understand but impossible to predict. Faith in Christ is an unexpected equation of joy on an ocean of faith, hope and love under the endless, open, brilliant sky of God the Father Almighty.

"Christians always talk about change. But, am I different than I was? No, I am still a sinner. Am I the same? No, I am closer to Christ. Do I, can I, must I trust God? I can’t imagine trusting anyone or anything else. Am I sufficient? No. Christ is sufficient. I am made in the image of God, but insufficient without Christ. In Christ, with Christ and for Christ, it turns out, I am – each of us is – sufficient.

“Ironically, we beg and plead and pray for divine forgiveness that has already been won. We yearn for life that has already been restored and for a divine relationship with God that God Himself relentlessly pursues with the unparalleled pluck, power and preeminence of the serving, saving grace of Jesus Christ. Change can be the thrill or the motion sickness of the journey, but change alone is not – cannot be – a destination.

“Faith in Christ is the goal, the prize, the joy, the first cause … and that never changes.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) just wanted to share.

Spirituality Column #271
January 17, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Education without the Bible
By Bob Walters

The 11th-grade public high school English class was struggling to understand The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the autobiography of the brilliant 19th century orator, abolitionist, and former slave.

Eleventh-grade English in Indiana focuses on American Literature while 11th -grade social studies, synergistically, explores U.S. history. Douglass (1818-1895) is a key figure in our nation’s literary as well as civil rights history.

Douglass, born a slave, learned to read – illegally – first as a young boy by learning the alphabet from his owner’s wife, and then by reading the New Testament. Douglass later taught other slaves – illegally - to read the New Testament. While American public high schools basically did not exist until after the Civil War, most early education involved reading the Bible. Often it was the only book available.

The famous part of this particular Douglass story is slave-owner Hugh Auld’s rebuke to his wife. Auld said, basically, that “if you teach slaves to read they’ll become dissatisfied with their condition and insist on freedom … and we can’t have that.”

Now let’s return to the high school English class that was flummoxed by Douglass’s erudite and theologically-infused writing. I wasn’t surprised the students didn’t immediately appreciate the book’s reference to the semi-obscure “curse of Ham.” But I was flabbergasted some students thought it was a reference to food, specifically, to not eating pork. And I was floored that an adjacent phrase containing the word “scriptural” was impenetrable because the students didn’t know what “scriptural” meant.

This is how far removed many modern high school students are from the intelligence of Jesus Christ, of the Bible, and of centuries of theological thought and discourse. This isn’t about prayer in school. This is about students not being able to understand major parts of our nation’s history and, really, the majority of classical Western literature. Our culture is intellectually crippled by anti-Bible, no-Bible, non-God, Jesus-is-a-myth, “don’t judge me” obeisance to modernity and political correctness.

“Ham,” of course, was the youngest son of Noah. Read Genesis 9:18-27 to understand why Douglass would talk about Ham in relation to slavery. “Scriptural” means “from the Bible” (or other holy book if one practices another faith). I thought the students were going to faint when I pulled out a Bible to explain the curse of Ham.

“You can’t have a Bible in school!” one exclaimed. That’s how far we’ve slid.

Thankfully many public schools do study the Bible, if only in a literary or historical context. But to read the Bible – in public – for what it really and truly means?

Why, that’s illegal. Just ask Frederick Douglass.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) substitute teaches and understands – deeply – why so many public school teachers pray.

Spirituality Column #270
January 10, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Love and Hate, Christians and Bigots
By Bob Walters

I have unchurched friends who, I sense, keep a close eye on me for signs of Christian bigotry.

Mostly I think they are watching for an unloving slip, a judgmental harangue, a hint of meanness, a splatter of impatience, or other overt cracks in my Christian armor. The irony is that my Christian friends, I sense, have just gotten used to them. It’s not like they have to wait very long for a slip, a hint, a splatter, or a crack.

So … I specialize, it seems, in imperfection. But recently I thought I handled a challenge especially well and wanted to share the meat of it. Names and situations are veiled, but I hope the sentiment is clear.

The challenge was from a business friend I see periodically. He has tried the religious, Bible Christian route and, as of now, it truly doesn’t work for him. He figures he’s spiritual enough on his own, all religions are basically the same, why would you want to associate with all those Christian hypocrites, and what right do you have to tell other people how to live?

I’m guessing my Christian brothers and sisters can relate.

Anyhow, we were discussing our upcoming holiday and Christmas schedules and I mentioned one gathering I was especially looking forward to that would include a surprisingly eclectic congregation of ages, family, friends, ex-spouses, believers, non-believers, some divorced, some married, some gay … but mainly how we all enjoyed Christmas together in each others’ company.

Naturally, my friend laser-focused in on the “gay” reference. I could see his face twist as he immediately adjudged – as he often does – my evangelical, conservative, Bible-focused, Christ-centered Christianity, and cross examined. “So …” he very deliberately, almost menacingly, inquired, “does being around gay people take away your Christmas joy because you hate them?”

I can’t say I was surprised by the question because he is a good man but highly predictable in his assumptions. And yet my answer even caught me off guard, because I’d never thought of this response in this way before.

I said …

“Hate who? Gays? Because I’m a Christian? Being a Christian isn’t about who I hate, it’s knowing who I am called to love, and that’s everybody. That’s the message of God in Christ; loving, not hating.”

“Oh, OK,” was his reaction. Rarely in our conversations are religious bigotry insinuations and questions settled with one punch. I was happy that one was.

I don’t love everything everybody does, including that guy I see in the mirror every morning, but hate is almost always a lousy witness for Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) has learned that recognizing one’s imperfections intensifies one’s appreciation for grace.

Spirituality Column #269
January 3, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Daily Renewal Beats Seasonal Storage
By Bob Walters

As most of us have put away our Christmas lights, decorations, knick-knacks and Mannheim-Steamroller CDs until next year, let’s not go through 2012 with Baby Jesus in a box in storage.

It is far better to remember, appreciate and reverence the idea that our everyday and eternal life in Christ is far different from – and better than – the practical, decorated, and empirical application of the limited season of Christmas.

Here is something to think about:

Christmas is largely a holiday of tradition, while Jesus Christ is entirely a messenger of hope. Tradition implies the past, and hope implies the future.

So … if Christ is about the future, why is Christmas about the past?

This simple juxtaposition of timeline I think helps explain the western world’s very fun but generally out-of-whack cultural experience of tradition-laden and commerce-fueled Christmas celebrations which fly straight-up in the face of why God sent the Christ as the divine/human baby Jesus.

I am no Grinch, but I suppose I am a bit of a hypocrite. Anyone who knows me well knows I get very attached to things and traditions. I not only enjoy but annually cling to lifelong Christmas traditions. Christmas becomes “real” to me when the home decorations go up, when I hear Christ-honoring Christmas carols (“Hark the Herald” not “Santa Baby”), read Luke 2:1-14 at Christmas Eve dinner (although I forgot this year), and listen to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

Our system-wide culture of Christmas celebrations tends to mark emotions of the past more than hope in the future. And as a further bit of irony, it’s New Year’s that actually gets the message of hope right: “Everybody gets a second chance” is the succinct New Year’s Eve lesson from that movie of venerable wisdom, “Forrest Gump.”

But that isn’t the message of New Year’s Eve; that’s the message of Christ. “Everybody gets a second chance” – and a third, fourth and fifth and as many as we need – to get to the place where we accept in faith and understand in our hearts and minds that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that we can and must trust him as our Lord and Savior.

As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “inwardly we are renewed day by day.” Accepting that daily gift from Christ is better than clinging to our seasonal traditions.

Don’t store Jesus in a box. Christ is about the daily renewal of divine hope. Nothing can make a New Year any happier than that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) posts these weekly columns at www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com. Feel free to forward them to someone who cares … or more importantly, someone who doesn’t.