Spirituality Column #278
March 13, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Glorious Gift of Doubt
By Bob Walters

Ponder this one for a moment:

Why is the Bible, a book of God’s truth, full of characters who doubt God?

Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, Job, David, Jeremiah, Zechariah, John the Baptist, Joseph, Mary, Thomas – and many, many others – second-guess, mistrust, question, laugh at, rail against or just plain doubt some aspect of God, His glory, His faithfulness, His plan, or His love.

This is an important perspective to have when doubts creep into our own faith.

All of these Bible characters survived their doubts and eventually – granted, some later than sooner – came to understand the trustworthiness of God and the glory that is rightly His. Their doubts tested God, and the Bible shows us that God always proves faithful to His own truth.

This is a key point, that our faith in God must be based on acceptance that it is God’s truth that counts, not on the human fact of our own desires and comforts. God created mankind in His image, but we are not God. Christ Jesus, God’s son, came to restore our relationship with God, not to make us God. The Holy Spirit reveals God’s truth, irrespective of our own preferences.

So, just to be clear: There is a God, and He is not us.

As Christians we should give ourselves a break and not sweat a little doubt now and then. Doubt does not equal sin; doubt is part of the reasonable, faith-building equation of questions and dialogue, of investigation and learning, of familiarity and relationship. James 1:6 says “believe and do not doubt,” but this is in the context of our doubts, trials, and temptations leading us to God for answers, and that’s a good thing.

Sins are things that separate us from God and things that denigrate God’s will. Faith, rest, and peace in God mean that when our doubts do arise, we have faith – we trust – that God wants to help us understand His glory.

Any father loves to have his children trust him and ask him questions. Our Father in heaven is no different, and He is strong enough and wise enough to handle the tough ones.

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith if it makes us engage, learn and understand. That kind of doubt is a gift, maybe because God craves a relationship with us and it gives us a reason to communicate. And for reasons – God’s reasons – I still don’t understand, God’s eternal Glory is somehow tied to our faith in Him.

I don’t doubt that is the truth, even when I can’t imagine why.

Walters (www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) notes that faith with some doubt is still faith; while doubt without faith is just ... doubt.

Spirituality Column #277
March 6, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Problem with Explaining Christ
By Bob Walters

It seems much easier to believe in Jesus Christ than to explain Jesus Christ.

Or perhaps that’s backwards … it’s easier to explain what Jesus is than to believe what Christ came to do.

Or perhaps both are missing the point.

The truth is, neither explaining about nor will believing in Jesus Christ sufficiently attach our lives to the eternal Glory of God. Nor will our explaining and believing persuade a skeptical outside world of Christ’s mission, goodness, grace, and truth. The world insists on proof, generally distrusts faith, and – saying “Thanks anyway, I have my own” – mostly shuns the existence of God’s perfect, ultimate, glorifying truth.

As much as we Christians are called – and ache, really – to explain, to share and to persuade others of the importance of a life in Christ, explaining and believing won’t get the job done. My favorite professor in college taught philosophy and could explain seemingly anything but made it abundantly clear that he didn’t actually believe in anything. And we all know that simply “to believe” in Jesus is not a final answer: Satan has more belief in and understanding of who Jesus is than any of us possibly could (Matthew 4:1-11). Even atheists can explain, and even Satan believes.

What, then, sets a Christian apart as an effective witness for Christ? Let’s consider the example of Jesus’ witness for Himself.

Jesus spent very little of his time on earth trying to explain who He was. Many asked, including the demon-possessed man (Matthew 12:23), Pharisees (Matthew 16:1), Sanhedrin priests (Matthew 26:63), Pontius Pilate (Matthew 27:11), even His own disciples (Mark 8:27). Jesus mostly answered either with shrewd parables, questions, or some elusive form of “It is as you say.”

Jesus knew who He was, and made every effort to show others – by His actions, answers, and miracles – that He was “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6) of God Almighty. Jesus referred to God as “My Father,” but to Himself as the “Son of Man.” Jesus kept his earthly focus on glorifying God with His actions, not on explaining himself with His words.

That’s how one properly witnesses to a faith relationship; by glorifying God with one’s actions, not by dazzling mankind with one’s explanations.

Certainly, we are “to be prepared to … give a reason for the hope that you have,” (1 Peter 3:15), but a Christian’s joy, trust, faith, hope, love, peace, patience, kindness, perseverance … and belief … can all be explained in two words: Jesus Christ.

What’s easier, and simpler, and truer, than that?

Walters (www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) observes that much of the world shuns Jesus who saves, and accommodates Satan who destroys. Talk about “backwards.”

Spirituality Column #276
February 28, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

God Is All Over the News
By Bob Walters

For better or worse, good or bad, fun or serious, small or big – God seems to be all over the news in recent months. Some clips …

- We have a new gerund: “Tebowing” is an identifiable Christian “thing.”

- Indianapolis Super Bowl CEO Allison Melangton regularly listened to K-Love Christian radio in her office as her crew rocked America’s biggest party.

- The Roman Catholic Church, which mounted a nationwide advertising campaign over the holidays (CatholicsComeHome.org), has modified its liturgy. Now, “Passing the Peace” at Mass includes saying “And also with your spirit,” an appropriate nod to the Holy Spirit, the all-too-often-underappreciated essence of the Trinity.

- As for the Mayan Calendar “End of the World” thing next Dec. 21 … who’s running the show, anyway? God, or the Mayans?

- I think it’s creepy when any government official – left, right or center – compares his social/economic agenda to the will of Jesus Christ by proof-texting the Bible like President Obama did Feb. 2 (Luke 12:48, much given, much demanded, etc. to raise taxes)at the national prayer breakfast. That’s a red flag, and unprecedented even at that event.

- Also, the President’s yes-we-will, no-we-won’t federal health insurance contraception contradictions involving Catholic charities tangles public policy and Church doctrine. Pope Paul VI’s 1968 “Humanae Vitae” is revealing, and history shows the Pope had it right (see page 100, column #93, Aug. 18, 2008, in my book Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary).

- The Susan G. Komen Foundation exists to protect humanity from breast cancer, but willingly bows to pressure from Planned Parenthood not to protect humanity in the womb … oops, I mean, “not to infringe on a women’s freedom of choice and right to reproductive health.” See Psalm 139:13. I believe God is serious about his knitting.

- Creationism was going to be, but now will not be, taught as science in Indiana high schools. Fine. Why not just accept science as a fascinating part of the search for God, and thereby allow God in the classroom without trying to dissect Him on a lab table? If anything is a Creationism lab experiment, it’s us, not God.

- A Sept. 14, 2011 “errant” internal memo suggested that Walter Reed Army Hospital ban Bibles and other faith items. Oops! The ban was rescinded as soon as it became public.

- The political, sectarian, tribal, genocidal and budding nuclear hornet’s nest of the Middle East and Africa grows uglier daily. Will God be more glorified if He fixes it, or if we trust God and pray for the strength, courage, and wisdom to endure what comes?

Sadly, the news isn’t always good; but thankfully, God is always the truth.

Walters (www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) is an Evangelical but heard the new Catholic liturgy Jan. 1 at beautiful St. Ann’s Church in Harbor Springs, MI.

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.