Spirituality Column #305
September 18, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

When I was 5 or so, I wanted to be an ambulance driver.  It wasn’t a better or worse answer than fireman or soldier or brain surgeon or fry cook.  I just wanted to be an ambulance driver.

It’s always cute to ask little kids “what they want to be.”  And more than a few of us quinquagenarians have worked through a career or two and still joke about “what we want to be when we grow up.”  At that level, it’s sort of a personal commentary or maybe a reflection of life choices.  But whether it’s asked of a 5 year old or a 50 year old, “What do you want to be?” is a docile question driven more by cuteness or wryness than expectation of commitment to a vocation.

How much different it is to ask “What were you created to be?”  Answering that question requires some semblance of mature self-awareness.  Raised to the next level, let’s ask “What were you Created to be?” with a capital “C” on “Creator.”  Now it’s not just about us.  To answer that question one must stare straight back at God.

What did God Create us to be?

The only example in history of what God Himself Created any of us to truly be is the example of Jesus Christ.  God is perfect, created mankind perfectly, and wants us to be perfect.  But the one thing we all know is that we are not perfect.  And why is that?  Because God was wrong?  God is weak?  God lied?  God doesn’t care?

No. God’s perfect plan for mankind – which was to create us in His image, to have us freely worship Him, and to have us share in His eternal divine love – took a big-time Fall in the Garden of Eden when Satan used man’s free will to question and mock God’s authority.  Satan tricks us into thinking we were created for our own benefit.  It’s the world’s oldest trick and mankind, imperfectly, keeps falling for it.

What we have in Jesus is the ultimate human role model.  Jesus would not, could not, be suckered into Satan’s temptations (Matthew 4:1-11).  Yes, Jesus is fully and perfectly God, but He is also fully and perfectly human.  Jesus’ humanity could resist Satan because He had been baptized into the Spirit and answered Satan with scripture. That’s something we can emulate; that’s the humanity we should pursue.

Satan wants us to look at the world and worship what we want to be.  God wants us to look at Jesus Christ and see who we were created to be.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) never actually drove an ambulance.  Maybe someday…

Spirituality Column #304
September 11, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Spirituality Column #303
September 4, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Not everyone organizes his or her life around the basic assumption that a relational God who really exists created all things.

But a lot of us do.

Even folks who back away from church because it seems intrusive or unsatisfying, dismiss Christians because too many of us seem like hypocrites, idolize sports teams and pop culture figures rather than Jesus Christ, and prioritize money, family, good vibrations and the good life ahead of repentant faith – even them; many of them – will still reflexively, instinctively, call on capital-G God for blessings and help.

They may invoke God, blame God, question God, praise God, make requests of God and maybe on occasion even pray to God.  They have a gut assumption that He’s there even though they don’t understand or buy into the religion and church thing.  As an example, how many people (and I used to be one of them) have you heard say some variation of, “I believe in God, I just don’t believe in religion”?  Our witness needs work.

I think most folks “get” God’s existence and honestly hope God is really there (wherever “there” is).  It is the work of evangelism to share, explain, and strengthen mankind’s confidence that God really is there, that divine love in the person of Jesus Christ really is the central doctrine of the entire Christian faith, and that Christ came for all mankind to put us right with God (John 3:16).  Amen.

Of course, God is there.

But for those who at a basic level “connect” to the fact that God is there and loves us, it is another step up to say “I love God” and another step after that to say “I need God.”  But to truly trust God, it is logical to ask:  What does God need me for?

Surprisingly and simply enough, the answer is: To praise Him and love Him.

Here is how it works.  And it’s not a transaction; it’s grace.

The purpose of all God’s creation is to glorify Him.  Because we are created in God’s own image (Genesis 1:26-27), we are created to be in relationship with God, to love Him, to praise Him, and in that love and praise, to reflect His glory.  Jesus Christ is the bearer (“radiance”) of God’s glory (Hebrews 1:3), and the Holy Spirit teaches us to recognize God’s glory (1 Corinthians 2:6-16).

As sinful mankind in a fallen world, coached and cheered on by Satan, we are inclined to glorify ourselves, love ourselves, praise ourselves, and try to be all we need unto ourselves.  Just understand one thing:

God doesn’t need that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) first attended church as an adult 11 years ago this weekend, on Sept. 2, 2001.  It just so happened it was the 50^th anniversary of Russ Blowers’ ministry at East 91^st Street Christian Church.  Bob’s book, “Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary” is dedicated to Russ.

Spirituality Column #302
August 28, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #301
August 21, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

God’s Gift Is Really a Present
By Bob Walters

I’ve been a writer my entire career – newspapers, sports, public relations, corporate communications, magazine articles, speeches, published a book, etc. – and my wife just retired from 34 years of teaching English.

She’s an expert at English mechanics, while I “just do it” (write) without knowing the finer points of grammatical rules I should probably know.  So it’s not the least bit unusual – though weird, maybe – for us to discuss grammar: verb tenses, punctuation for possessive pronouns (e.g. its vs. one’s), subject-predicate contractions (you’re), dependent clauses, compound sentences, and (yawn) on and on.  Bet you wish you could have dinner at our place …

Anyway, a handful of things recently colluded in my mind regarding past, present and future verb tenses to shed light on the uniqueness and distinction of God’s eternity.  To wit:

This summer I reread C.S. Lewis’ 1942 classic The Screwtape Letters, wherein senior devil administrator Screwtape coaches a junior devil trainee on how to entrap a human being into Hell.  Chapter 15 discusses the importance of keeping humans focused on the past (sin, guilt, shame, pride) or the future (fear), but steering them clear of the present.  That’s because God is in eternity and, Screwtape writes, “the present is the point at which time touches eternity.”  Because there is neither past nor future in eternity, it’s always the present for God.  That’s where mankind finds God, in the present.

Our congregation (E91) recently commissioned a new pastor (Dr. Rick Grover) whose opening sermon series “Legacy” focuses on the past, present, and future of our church and individual Christian walks.  My aforementioned wife was to present an early August worship service communion meditation, but due to voice troubles traded for my October date.  My “aha!” moment came while preparing the August meditation and learned that the communion intro hymn was “There Is a Redeemer.”

See? “There IS a Redeemer.”  Present tense.  When Moses asks God’s name (Exodus 3:14), what is God’s answer?  “I AM who I AM!”  Not “I was” (past), not “I will be” (future).  I AM.  Present tense.

When Jesus is questioned about His identity by the famous doubting disciple Thomas in John 14, how does Jesus reply?  “I am the way and the truth and the life.”  Present tense.

There are no wasted words in the Bible, and the specificity of complex verb tenses in Greek – far beyond those in English – assure us that the present tense as it is recorded throughout the Bible is grammatical truth, not coincidence or accident.

When we feel God’s presence, that’s a divine piece of eternity.  How could any present be more of a gift than that?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that one of life’s most exhausting endeavors is dragging along our past.

Spirituality Column #300
August 14, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Spirituality Column #299
August 7, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

To create Day 1 of Creation, God said “Let there be light.”

And there was light.  That’s Genesis 1, verse 2.

But it’s not until verse 14, on Day 4, that God creates the sun and the stars, the things that make light.  So, what gives?  How was there light before there was light?

It’s an easy one really.  The “light” first created in Genesis is God’s light; the light of the world that divided the darkness.  And that light is Jesus Christ, the son of the father.  The sun and the stars are evidence of God’s glory; Jesus Christ is God’s glory.

It’s not unusual for people with only a casual knowledge of the Bible to think that Jesus Christ was a new idea; God’s Plan B for New Testament salvation after the wrath, sin, mayhem, and failure of the Old Testament.  No, Christ is an old, eternal hand.

The Christian confession of Christ, best encapsulated (I think) in John 1:1-14, lyrically tells us that Christ – also called the Logos or Word of God – was not only there in the beginning; the Logos made everything.

These are Christian basics.  Secular skeptics and more than a few “Christian” preachers and congregations conveniently skip over this very important truth that Jesus is the Word of God, the light of the World (John 8:12), and the way, and the truth, and the life for all who seek relationship with God.

I bring up “light” and the primacy of Christ because it’s a fairly common thing for outsiders and non-believers to accuse Christians of wearing “religious blinders” when answering questions about their faith.  Those who either don’t understand or are hostile to the idea of God, Christ, salvation, truth, scripture, right, wrong, evil, etc., often can’t understand an honest answer because they don’t understand their own question.  “Blinders” suggests a lack of light for Christians, which I think is the opposite of the truth.

For example, “Who gets into heaven? Does Gandhi? Does a murderer?”

The answer is not binary, and I’m not wearing blinders to say 1) I trust God with all that; 2) it’s truly not for me to say; 3) Christianity isn’t centered on heaven, it’s centered on the glory of Jesus Christ; and 4) if you don’t believe in heaven to start with – or Jesus or the Bible – why would you care who goes there?

Christianity is illuminated by the entire light of the entire world.  Those who try to find truth without that light have a room without much of a view.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) cites G.K. Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” or C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” as pitch perfect books on Christianity written by former atheists.