Spirituality Column #448
June 16, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

I’m reminiscing about my diverse church-going experiences, hoping to describe a couple of missing faith-life links that are worth pointing out.

To quickly review, I was an active Episcopalian kid followed by a three-decades-without-church blank spot.  Since 2001 I’ve attended an independent Christian church as I age toward senior citizenship.

This week I want to discuss the main thing I learned during those middle 30 years: every reason imaginable not to go to church.

Always conservative in my political thinking, I nonetheless lapped up college philosophy at a liberal arts institution, bought into the humanity-glorifying ideas of the Enlightenment’s secular humanism, and somewhere in my mid-twenties believed I’d discovered the ultimate, that’s-all-there-is truth embodied in the non-God, self-directed Objectivism of Ayn Rand.

That world-view fit perfectly with my self-absorbed life as a young sportswriter and subsequent years working in college and professional sports and corporate public relations.  It was a good run until it all pretty much ended in my early 40s.  The upside of my career coming unglued was that I suddenly had time to be an attentive dad to my two young sons, to coach youth baseball, be a Boy Scout leader, and generally just be around.  The downside was a financial downfall that eventually cost us our family home and my marriage.  Hard times.

Regardless, church, through my early 40s, had nothing for me.  I’d endured career and personal upheavals before, had survived cancer in my mid-30s and as a 40^th birthday present to myself and family – especially my sons who I wanted to see grow up – I quit smoking.  I was resilient, strong and sufficient.  I would occasionally pray – the Lord’s Prayer is prominent in the Episcopal liturgy – but didn’t have the foggiest idea who or what was on the other end of the prayer line. 

Whatever early church lessons I’d learned had not stuck.  I remembered the Episcopal litany, but not the Christian lessons.  The beautifully-written Book of Common Prayer was as opaque, obtuse and confusing as the Bible, which, although I owned one, couldn’t find in my own house.  I was fine, and Jesus was just too much trouble.

I’d occasionally watch a random Christian preacher on TV, weigh their salvation message against my imagined superior philosophical station, and wonder if I was missing something.

Nah, still too much trouble.  Eventually things clicked, and only now do I fully appreciate the irony of having had a career in public relations but completely not getting the idea of “relationship” with the Creator of All Things and Judge of All Men.

Which, come to find out, is the whole ball game.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) finally stopped missing the point, but points to what’s missing.  More next week.

Spirituality Column #447
June 9, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

My Christian life, going back to the beginning, has seen two entirely different approaches to doing church.

And it includes a 30-year stretch with essentially no church at all.

As an Episcopal altar boy – an acolyte in ecclesial parlance – my early teen years routinely saw multiple weekly trips to my neighborhood St. Andrew’s Church in Kokomo, Ind., where along with other boys I assisted Father Cooper with various traditional liturgical chores regarding the Anglican Eucharist, an activity Catholics know as Mass and Evangelicals call simply Communion or the Lord’s Supper.

Of the acolytes, I lived closest to the church so it was easy for me to ride my bike or cut through backyards to be there for weekday services – the men’s 6 a.m. communion during Lent, for example.  After logging hundreds of Eucharist celebrations, I had the words and movements down pat.

I was shocked the first time I attended a Catholic Mass, a Christmas Eve one-off in college, because the Catholic service was nearly identical to my old Episcopal service.  It would be another couple of decades before I learned that I shouldn’t have been surprised, because the Anglican Church formed in the 1500s as a direct offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church.  England’s King Henry the VIII, who had written extensively in support of Roman Catholicism and against Luther and Protestantism on the Continent, wanted a divorce and had to form his own church to get one.  The Anglican Church was basically the Catholic Church without Rome.  I used to joke that the Episcopalians were just the Catholics who didn’t have to go to church.

I’m not sure anyone thought that line was funny, but I digress.

In the late 1960s the church’s liturgy changed, I changed (age 14), Father Cooper retired, I didn’t know the new Episcopal service, and I couldn’t sing.  Church didn’t offer much action, high school activities beckoned, and I drifted away.

Looking back decades later, I realized that the true issue was that while I knew the basics of the Jesus story, could recite the liturgy and loved Father Cooper, I didn’t know Christ.  I just didn’t get that part of it, the cosmic hugeness and significance of the concentric mega-mysteries of Creation, God’s love and glory, the Trinity, the totality of Truth residing in Jesus, the bright light of the Holy Spirit, the inspiration of scripture, the fellowship of all believers, relationship with the Father, and the assuredness and finality of the Kingdom of God.

Today when I look at my old Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, I am ashamed I missed all that, because it most assuredly is in there.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) eventually figured out what was missing.  More next week.

Spirituality Column #446
June 2, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

“The gospel was not good advice but good news.” – William R. Inge

An  archive article from my favorite publication “First Things”  explains that a preacher’s primary task is not to tell us the rules how we should behave, which at heart most of us already know, but the good news of who we actually are – children of God – which many folks can’t believe.

The difference to the hearer is whether one leaves church feeling berated and hopeless because of one’s sins, or feels empowered and hopeful because the God who created humanity in His image loves us and provides a way “home” – back into His glorious kingdom – through the work of and our faith in His son Jesus Christ.

It’s the difference in the imperative mood casting condemnation – “Do this or else!” – and the indicative mood casting information – the grace of divine light, eternal salvation, absolute truth and identity in Christ.

The first tears down, the other builds up.  The one sends us home “on flat tires,” the other buoys our spirits to soar on eagles’ wings.  One creates fear and attention to self – “Am I following the rules?”  The other creates freedom, liberty, courage, and love of self, others and God – “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

Inge’s colleague V.A. Demant, in his book Christian Polity, writes:

“Tell people only what they must do, and you will numb them into despair, you will turn the gospel into a shabby replica of the world’s irreligious and nagging moralism, with its oceanfuls of good advice.

“But tell them what they are, of their dignity as made in the image of God, and that their sins are wicked perversions of their nature … tell them that the world with all its horrors is still God’s world, though its true order is upside down; tell them that they can do all things through Christ, because of him all the powers of their nature are directed to fruition … and you will help to revive hope in this dispirited generation.”

The article’s author John Jay Hughes, a Catholic priest from St. Louis, notes: “It is a paradox … that preaching morality will never motivate people to be good.  It will discourage them.  It will inevitably bore them.  It may even drive them into a state of despair [that] if they are not good God will not love and bless them.

“Proclamation of the Gospel – what God has done, is doing and will continue to do … will motivate people to love God and neighbor like nothing else.’

Amen.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) accepted the Lord not because Walters himself (admittedly) is so bad but because Jesus Christ is so good.

Spirituality Column #445
May 26, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

Life and Death and … Life
By Bob Walters

"I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the father except through me.” – Jesus, John 14:6

Life – human life, that is – can be large or small.  Joyful or joyless.  Purposeful or purposeless.  Faithful or faithless.

Typically it’s some combination of all that, laden with hopes, fears, aspirations, successes, failures, wonders and surprises.   God’s love is life’s greatest component, Satan’s hateful trickery its worst.  Our great challenge as humans is sorting out the things of God that lead to life, and the things of Satan that lead to death.

It’s not always an easy call.  We are taught in today’s world to nurture and revere our inward-directed passions amid a culture that increasingly equates freedom with irresponsibility and irreverence, and assigns God a station of irrationality and irrelevance.  The ironic, life-diminishing, misdirecting, incomplete, self-centered, message is everywhere: “Life is what we make it.”

In our busyness to “make it” in life, we are systematically directed to replace the source of love and life, God, with the foundation of sin and death, Satan.  It usually doesn’t feel like that’s the choice we’re making because Satan is the purveyor of earthly comforts; he’s a fan of man and an enabler of our appetites – power, money, sex, whatever.  It just so happens that his goal is to leave us with Godless, eternal death.

One of Satan’s great tricks is to encourage us to replace God the Father with “god the other.”  Worship the earth, worship power, worship money, worship your family or worship a political stance, a choice, a sports team or an academic cause celebre.  “God the other” provides no eternal promises, no salvation from sin, no participation in divine glory, no relationship with God the Father, and no rest in the Kingdom of God.  “God the other” offers a single end-game, one goal, and one outcome – death.

Not that the temporal overcoming of human discomfort with technology is a bad thing; who doesn’t like fast travel, modern healthcare, instantaneous communication and air conditioning?  How easy it is to mistakenly pursue comforts as an end in themselves – which makes comfort a god – rather than understanding that the God of all comforts is the exclusive purveyor of life everlasting.

Why is life everlasting important?  Because God’s glory is important, which makes the life God gives us important, which makes all the choices we tender regarding this life important.  Life is so much bigger than what we see; and death is so much worse than we can imagine.  Christ is the way to join God in His life.

The choice is ours, but Jesus is telling the truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thinks life is overlooked as a gift from God.

Spirituality Column #444
May 19, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

It remains quite impolite in America to kill someone over their religion.

Other world regions see awful and violent religious persecution.  Here in Indiana, in the good ol’ USA, I feel fairly safe going to church.  For now.

What is a pity, however, is how few Americans these days have a handle on how religions differ, how our American republic so heavily relies on the mysteriously transcendent yet demonstrably objective and unique virtues of Christian love and service, and how historically unique but temporally fragile is our American way of life.

It hasn’t always been impolite to kill over religion in this country.  Prior to the United States’ formal founding, the New World saw great religious persecution by certain Christians against other Christians.  After the Puritan pilgrims (later the Congregational Church) left the oppression of Anglican England, think of the Salem, Massachusetts, Witch Trials in the 1600s and the persecution of Baptists in the 1700s.

As “Freedom of Religion” was written into the Bill of Rights and America expanded west, Biblical evangelicalism boomed.  Offshoot religions sprouted up.  In the 1800s, the Mormons took quite a hit for their practices, doctrines and beliefs which vary greatly from standard-issue Trinitarian Christianity.  In some states it was not a crime to murder a Mormon male.  Roman Catholicism, hardly an “offshoot religion,” was largely unwelcome.  Not until 1960 did John Kennedy take the oath of office – almost scandalously – as the first Roman Catholic U.S. President.

America fought elsewhere combatting religious insurgencies.  Thomas Jefferson sent U.S. Marines to the African coast of the Mediterranean Sea – the shores of Tripoli – in 1803 to quell the Barbary pirates who in the name of Islam were capturing and enslaving U.S. merchant sailors.  General Pershing subdued Muslim unrest in the Philippines in the early 1900s, and that wasn’t pretty.

Today we’ve arrived at a humanitarian place in America not to kill people for their religion.  Only outsiders do that to us.  Yet politically, culturally and academically, it seems that America is working awfully hard as a nation to kill religion itself, especially Christianity.  It may not be the mass murders we see elsewhere, but still potentially lethal to our American way of life.   A republic requires public, objective truth and private, faithful virtue.  Tyranny is history’s unavoidable alternative.

America truly needs these usually-well-meaning folks who worship Jesus, attend church, vote with scripture in mind, and engage in charities great and small following the simplest command of Jesus from the Gospel of John, verse 15:12:

"… Love each other as I have loved you.”

If America successfully kills Christianity, what comes next will be far less polite.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) understands persecution is part of the Christian “deal.” See John 15:18-20.

Spirituality Column #443
May 12, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Let’s take a hard look at where the New Testament says Jesus on the Cross is:
- a “price” for our souls,
- a “payment” for our transgressions,
- a “punishment” for our sins,
- a “penalty” for our fallenness.

Go ahead, look.  I’ll wait.

OK, you found 1 Corinthians 6 and 7, with Paul telling the broken Corinthian church to come together in the truth of Jesus because they were “bought at a price.”  Fair enough.  That was Paul telling a fractured first century fellowship of Jews, Gentiles, mystics and miscreants – in terms of worldly transaction they could understand – about the divine sacrifice of Christ, a sacrifice that was made on their behalf, a sacrifice that accomplished a work impossible for humans: i.e., restoration to God’s Kingdom.  “Price” here is a metaphor, a device to aid understanding of a gift too large to comprehend.

Revelation 22:17:  “… let the one who is thirsty … take the water of life without price.”  Get that?  No price; not on the head of Jesus.  And while we’re at it, “ransom,” used three times regarding Jesus’s sacrifice, refers to a way out of bondage – our way out of bondage - not a price-driven transaction among the Holy Trinity.  C’mon.

Payment?  Not really in there, is it?  Not about Jesus.  But there is this in Revelation 21:6: “To the thirsty I will give … the water of life without payment.”  Again, “without payment.”

How about a verse claiming Jesus was punished for our sins?  Checking the English Standard Version Bible, punishment appears eight times, each pointing to some combination of eternity,  the unrighteous, and fire; in other words, Hell.  Nothing about Jesus.  Consider 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love … fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”  In Jesus, there was no fear of punishment as retribution; in His perfect love He endured one infinitely tough – infinitely punishing – day on the cross.  But “punishment”?  Not in scripture.

And … penalty.  Paul uses this in Acts 28:18 about himself facing a Roman court; in Romans 1:27 regarding homosexuality; and in Galatians 5:10 regarding Jews who hinder the Christian faithful.  Nothing about the cross.

Christians, please, heed all scripture says about grace, mercy, joy and peace, the overwhelming message of salvation.  The overwhelming message of Old Testament futility is price, payment, punishment and penalty.

Yes I’m a sinner, thankful to Jesus for His love, resolution, steadfastness, and for His faithfulness to His Father’s glory.

Let’s none of us insult Him by asking what He paid for it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) hates to see Jesus marketed via shame, guilt, fear, sin … or moral transaction.  Where’s the love?

Spirituality Column #442
May 5, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

My purpose in getting up early Sunday mornings and attending church is to worship God and share in the fellowship of the Christian faith.

It’s not because I have religious doubts and need reassurance that Jesus is still Lord, God is still good, the Spirit still dwells among the faithful, the Bible is still true and the church is still there.  All those doubts are long gone.  What I have is truth.

So … I get up and go to church.  I love church.  I love Jesus more, but I love church and my fellow fallen Christians and all that it means to gather in faith and communion in the truth of creation, salvation, and the lordship of Jesus Christ.

But these days it seems something beyond impolite to assert truth – as in, the absence of doubt – in public.  It’s arrogant.  It’s unbecoming.  It’s disrespectful.

“You must have doubts!?”  “How can you be sure?”  “That’s crazy!”

Well, in a fallen world where Satan busily works to replace the plain truth of God with the muddled veracity of human opinion, it’s easy to see the daily difficulties attendant to the witness of truth, especially when the apologetics of doubt are the intellectual coin of our modern world.

Is Christian truth really …

Arrogant?  No, just the opposite.  Christian truth is humble.  The truth of the power of God is actually the humility of Jesus Christ.  People who want power want to be God.  Nobody really wants to be the saving, servant Christ on the Cross.  Is faith the key to the eternal Kingdom of God?  Yes, but does my possession of that faith, by God’s grace, make me less of a sinner?  Not in this life it doesn’t.  It just gives me a story I desperately want to tell.

Unbecoming?  I’ve seen no greater beauty than the raw splendor of God’s creation, and believe there is no greater beauty than the image of God installed in our humanity which we see perfected in Jesus Christ.  We work awfully hard to ugly-up that beauty with our worldly desires.

Disrespectful?  The world insists we respect ungodly things; you know, “One man’s terrorist is just another man’s freedom fighter”? Right?  Uh … no.  When I respect God’s truth because God is truth, then I guess I’m disrespecting the world’s opinion.  My aim is to respect God, which means respecting Jesus Christ, because I don’t see any better option for humanity – mine or anyone else’s.

Doubts?  Long gone.  Questions?  Sure.  I don’t understand everything so I pray, study, trust God’s Word, beg His wisdom and peace, and follow a simple rule:

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) sees the sinner in the mirror.