Spirituality Column #406
August 26, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters


God gives us a free gift of salvation and all we have to do is accept it.

Why then does the world spend so much intellectual, spiritual, cultural and functional energy trying to ignore, demean, disprove, limit, compartmentalize and ridicule the gift?  Jesus is the only way up and out, and the fallen world refuses the help.

You’d think we’d be smarter partners in this great drama of salvation in Christ.  It’s beyond any “deal” we can barter, and it’s there for the taking.  People instead focus on the temptations of the world tangled in an awful, doomed negotiation against death.

What, after all, even is salvation?  It’s hard to crave something we don’t understand, and to believe something we can’t explain.  Salvation, as I read the Bible, isn’t about me getting what I want; it’s about embracing with living, loving, implacable faith that the world’s greatest truth is giving God what He wants.  And what God wants is for His image in Creation – man – to worship His son Jesus Christ.

What trips us up is insisting salvation is about “me;” insisting I am owed a logical, empirical, un-mystical explanation of God, Jesus, salvation, the Spirit, the church, the Bible, baptism and communion – one I can then explain to others so they won’t laugh at me when I say I am born again in Christ Jesus.  I want salvation that doesn’t involve my actual, direct, sacrificial involvement or pain in carrying the cross of Christ.  I want an explanation that serves my worldly needs and gives me elevated worldly status.

What I want, then, is the same damning false bargain Satan offered to Adam and Eve: the black market, self-centered glory Satan steals from God.

That’s a gift God isn’t offering.

Our salvation is about God’s glory, not our worldly comforts and social status.  If our eyes truly are on the prize, we must understand that the prize truly is God’s glory.  That’s the path to understanding Jesus’ admonition to be humble and to serve others for God’s glory.  Christianity’s authority comes from service, its greatness from self-giving, and its power from God’s love.  Those are the necessary tools for meeting Christ and honoring the glory of God.

There is no shortage of religion in the world, but welcoming Satan into our life – instead of Jesus – very definitely creates a blockage of service, self-giving and love.

Only with Christ can we follow God’s path and get out of our own way.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) looked it up … the Pogo quote originally appeared in a 1970 anti-pollution poster Kelly drew for the first Earth Day.  

Spirituality Column #405
August 19, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

For countless years innumerable scholars with immeasurably more Bible savvy than I possess have made the case for and against Who, exactly, Jesus says He is.

Christian doctrine is that Jesus of Nazareth, the fully-human child conceived in the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, is the Messiah Christ, the fully-divine eternal son of God.  It’s easy to piece that together from the first chapters of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, who go into some detail about the birth, person, and divinity of Jesus.

The Gospels of Mark and John blow right past the birth story.  Mark opens with the adult Jesus beginning His ministry.  John’s Gospel begins by clearly describing the Cosmic, eternal, heaven-stretching, Covenant re-writing magnitude of the human incarnation (worldly birth) of the eternal Word of God – Jesus Christ.

And yet, there are those who will dismiss the Bible as just an old book of stories about a mythic teacher spouting outdated, non-intellectual moral lessons; that the whole Jesus “thing” is just one of many fairy tales clung to by naïve people refusing to face the reality of an impossibly pointless, unfair, fallen world.

Honestly, I’ve always been more optimistic than “pointless and unfair,” but before coming to Christ in 2001 and years of study since, hanging absolute “truth” within the context of Jesus Christ and the Bible made no sense to me.  I’d point to little nuggets of “intellectual” insight about the Bible’s inconsistencies.  One of my favorites is, “Jesus never says He is the Son of God.”  HA!  That proves the Bible is wrong.

No … it proves I wasn’t expending the intellectual energy necessary to investigate what the Bible truly is and what the Bible truly says.

The Bible is, without argument, the most “proven” ancient book in existence.  Folks love to deny its inspiration, malign its authenticity, diminish its authority, ridicule its practicality and creatively misread even its most plainly clear information.  But better not say the Bible lacks an immaculate historical pedigree.

As for what the Bible says, understand it as God’s story, not ours.  When we think it is all about us, we start on the wrong foot, go in the wrong direction, and get lost in the wrong lessons.

True, Jesus never says, “I am the Son of God here to die for your salvation.”  But the Old Testament prophets tell us all we need to know about Him, and Jesus repeatedly agrees with those who ask if He is the Messiah (e.g. Matthew 27:11, Mark 14:62, Luke 23:3, John 18:37).  Most of the time Jesus answers, “I am.” 

And that agrees with the Old Testament.

Exactly.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures Jesus shouldn’t have to tell us Who He is.

Spirituality Column #404
August 12, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Our biggest job as Christians is following Jesus Christ, and our greatest joy is our relationship with Him.

But our biggest challenge is avoiding the “weeds” of everyday life.

Christianity, first and foremost, is about relationship.  Plenty of people though – both inside and outside the faith – view “following Christ” as primarily about obedience.  When obedience is Christianity’s sum total, Jesus presents a burdensome equation.  Anybody can devise rules, and people usually do.  One of the things God teaches us in the Old Testament is that people crave rules but typically are bad at following them.

Jesus speaks often about obedience, but His most common instruction to mankind is “Follow me.”  This directive paves two concurrent roads: man’s salvation and God’s glory.  Following Jesus, we travel the Kingdom road of righteousness in peace and relationship with God, navigating the perils of this fallen worldly realm.  Our trust and confidence are secure in the truth of the destination: the everlasting loving glory of heavenly adoption as sons and daughters of the one true God.

Our motivation to follow Jesus centers on faith, truth, love, and freedom.  Faith, truth and love are common-enough sermon topics, but freedom is often overlooked.  Why?  Possibly due to overbearing church narratives that focus on “obedience” to keep the flock in step.  Nonetheless, freedom is a necessary condition for love and joy.  We cannot truly and joyously love something because we are instructed to.  Love can’t be forced, joy can’t be codified, and freedom can’t be overlooked.  Loving relationship transcends mere obedience.

In Heaven, everything begins with relationship – the Godhead community of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Our entry, or rather our restoration, into that community is through our faithful relationship with Jesus Christ.  Jesus, in John 14:6, says that’s the only way.

Still, “Following Jesus” is a “want to” not a “have to.”  Jesus teaches a lesson that Old Testament laws could not: that righteousness and glory reside in God’s love, not in man’s obedience.  The Kingdom is un-coerced relationship; following Jesus is a choice. 

And, O Lord, don’t we live in a world of choices.

Cue the weeds.

Jesus promises (Matthew 13:24-30) that at the final harvest weeds will be gathered and burned, and the wheat will be gathered and stored.  Thanks to Satan and his self-glorifying mischief, humanity is dangerously and overwhelmingly attracted to the Jesus-blurring weeds strewn throughout this world.

In this life, we have a job to do, a relationship to tend, and a choice to make.

At the harvest, when the job is done, the choice will be made for us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thanks Pastor Bob Larimer for a thought-provoking sermon on “Weeds” this summer at northern Michigan’s Blaine Christian Church.

Spirituality Column #403
August 5, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Among the Bible’s more familiar parables of Jesus is the Parable of the Sower, shared in the Gospels of Matthew (13:1-23), Mark (4:1-20), and Luke (8:1-15).

You probably know it.  Jesus tells of the farmer (or sower) planting seeds on paths, among rocks, among thorns and in good soil.

‘Couple things.  One, the parable is not instruction about farming.  And two, it is the rare parable that Jesus actually explains.  To wit, the truth of Jesus – the word of God – is spread into the world like seed, but in some hearts this “seed” is destroyed upon arrival (strewn on paths), in others it may bloom briefly but quickly dies (rocks), and in some it grows but cannot bear fruit due to the chaos of its environment (thorns).  In the “good soil,” in the rare receptive human heart, the seed of the Gospel truth blossoms to serve mankind, glorify God, and is passed on to others.

Jesus routinely spoke in parables.  We are told He explained them to his disciples, but not to the public, and certainly not to the Pharisees.  Only those with “ears to hear,” i.e., receptive hearts, could discern Jesus’ true meaning.  Typically, it was a message people didn’t want to hear: that Jesus was the Messiah Christ, Son of God, come to fulfil the covenant of God to restore fallen mankind into His own Kingdom.

The humble Jesus was entirely not who anyone was expecting.  His message of love, faith, and servanthood flew in the face not only of worldly culture but, specifically and virulently, of Jewish law.  The parables are not cultural advice; they explain how the New Covenant of God in Jesus Christ fulfils God’s plan, changes human hearts, promotes faith and love in Christ over Hebraic laws and obedience, and glorifies God.

For man, it was a really, really radical concept: tough to hear and hard to believe.

But then, Jesus isn’t a concept.  He is God, the Truth, and a Person.  He is the entirety of divine creation and action in the Cosmos.  Christ presents a reality too big to leave room for anything else, crowding out self-interest.  No wonder so few Law-oriented ears wanted to hear His message.

And it’s in the “anything else” where Satan operates to subvert the bigness of God’s majesty and love with the smallness of self-centered humanity’s worldly desires.  Satan started by spoiling the soil of the human heart in the Garden, was there at the arrival of Jesus, and persists in his Jesus-subverting mischief yet today.

God never stops sowing seeds, and Satan – for now – never stops tampering with the soil.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has a wife with a green thumb and (thank God) a kind heart.

By Bob Walters

"Economy” is the word theologians use for the actions and relationships within the Holy Trinity – the Father, Son and Spirit – and to describe the Trinity’s interaction with the fallen world.

This economy – stemming from the Greek word oikos, “generous handling” – is a mystery of God’s love and heavenly glory.  The result is humanity’s salvation.

Man’s economy or “economics” – often called “the dismal science” – is about tangible transactions and temporal value.  The result is often opposite “oikos,” and instead is a self-inflicted deterioration of our relationship with the Holy Trinity.

Why?  Man wants worldly assets; God demands glorifying faith.

It’s easy to blame science, culture, government and education for diminishing our appreciation of God’s economy.  Science belittles belief in the unseen; modern culture destroys the faithful home environment; governments continually infringe on heavenly citizenship; and education has expelled prayer, Bible belief, and God from schools.

In our fallen world, people reflexively understand economics as empirical exchanges: we give something, we get something, we haggle over the cost.

So how does God in His grace, His economy, provide the free gift of salvation through the sacrifice and death of His son Jesus?  That’s confusing.  We are attuned to trade-offs, not grace.  We want to see a price tag.

Curiously, secular doubters frequently rely on this God in whom they don’t really believe.  They assume God will be compassionate in judgment in the hereafter.  That indicates tacit belief in God, morality, judgment and heaven.  Nonetheless these folks stubbornly refrain from expressing the “economic” key and divine absolute to receiving God’s gift: confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

In John 14:6, Jesus tells Thomas (later the famous “doubter” of the resurrected Christ in John 20:24-30), “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”  You want God?  Proclaim Jesus as Lord.  Simple.

Way too often modern churches, evangelists and TV preachers, though they undoubtedly know better, mimic the world’s economy by marketing religion to man’s selfish appetites.  That may help gather a crowd (and donations), but becomes dismal when a church leverages fears, shame and guilt to keep the seats (and coffers) full.  That obfuscates the mystery of God’s love, obscures the community of the Trinity, and overrides the simplicity of God’s gift in Christ.  It does not glorify God.

When a church’s “economy” promotes legalisms and worldly self-interest, “religion” becomes a roadblock rather than a highway to the Kingdom of faith.

Economists – reliably unreliable – get the world’s economy wrong all the time.

God’s economy – with the grace of Christ – is a truth that will never fail.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that in Greek, the opposite of “oikos,” generous handling, is “akribia,” legalism.

Spirituality Column #401
July 22, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #400
July 15, 2014
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Change is a desired and celebrated component of Christian life.

“Things that don’t change are dead,” the saying goes.  A rich, consequential Christian life necessarily will be filled with change – new challenges, new opportunities, new understandings, new missions, new people and often new places.  Some changes are desperately hard, challenging our faith and shaking our trust.  Some are so easy they undercut our faith by overwriting and obscuring our “need” for God.

A life of dull sameness, empty yearnings, or even recurring nightmares – but absent change – signals a hollow spot in the spirit.  Conversely, there is a sense of newness, mystery and adventure that accompanies one’s daily life trusting in Christ and growing in faith.  Change is hard to avoid; perseverance fills in the hollow spots.

Every time a believer goes to the Bible – the same old, unchanging Bible – he or she expects to see something new: a perspective previously not entertained, a phrase that comes alive, a connection formerly not noticed.  That’s growth, that’s change, that’s good … and that’s dependable.

“Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds, because … testing of your faith develops perseverance,” says James 1:2-4.  Perseverance develops maturity, and in maturity, James adds, we know the joy of the Lord “not lacking anything.”

Change can be soothing or unnerving … often the latter.  Regardless, faith will help us find joy in the change, though joy is different from comfort and happiness.  “Not lacking anything” doesn’t mean “I get everything I want.”  We are to know and define joy in the completeness of our ability to focus on Christ and in our yearning to reflect and magnify the glory of God.

And that’s the point of the whole exercise: the unchanging glory, immensity, truth, love and completeness of God Almighty.  From the beginning, the actions of God’s Kingdom were assigned to God’s Light and Word, Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit’s job is to shine the light of God’s glory on Jesus Christ.  Our job as humans – if we allow ourselves to invite and listen to the Holy Spirit – is to change our fallen-world attitudes and worldly wicked hearts into divine-light homing beacons.  We also have a bigger job than that: understanding that it is our faith in Jesus Christ that glorifies God.

Fine and dandy that we are loved, saved, adopted, forgiven, welcomed into the Kingdom, seated on the throne, and will live forever amid the majesty of the One God Creator Almighty.  Amen!  But what we get, finally, isn’t the point.

God’s glory is the point.

And that does not change.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows “change” is a popular sermon subject.  Once you understand God’s glory is supreme … don’t change that.