Spirituality Column #492
April 19, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

“…Love your neighbor as yourself…” – Mark 12:31, Romans 13:9, Leviticus 19:18

These are the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, of Paul in his letter to the Romans, and of God to Moses regarding moral holiness in Leviticus.  Gospels, Epistles, Old Testament.  Jesus, Paul, God.  Better pay attention; there is some authority here.

Notice the key word in this scripture verse is not “yourself.”  The key word is “neighbor.”

From one end of the Bible to the other, from God to Jesus to the Holy Spirit, from the Law to the Prophets to the Apostles, scripture hammers home this message over and over and over … “It’s not about you.”

What it is about, always, is the Lord.  God’s first commandment is to “Love the Lord.”  His very next, equally important instruction is to love others.  God wants us to love what He loves.

“Others” means family, neighbors, strangers, enemies, sinners, the rich, the powerful, the hungry, sick, poor, weak, whomever.  Our journey in this life is about honoring the Lord and loving our fellow human beings whom God created in His own image.  What life is decidedly not about is “Looking out for No. 1,” “Do your own thing,” “I Gotta Be Me,” or “I Did it My Way.”

These cultural catchphrases and classic song titles are instructive for evaluating modern scriptural bearings when it comes to our individual humility and Biblically ordained priorities.  The path our culture pursues is paved with overwhelming contemporary philosophical focus on being who I want to be, not who God wants me to be.  We live in a charitable age, no doubt.  School children and community groups execute endless charity-driven funding and events.  Yes, we are loving others, but are we just as actively loving God?  Maybe we think we are, but does it honor God if we are afraid to say so?

Public school children and random community groups out of necessity must eschew God’s glory in their charitable activities, because society’s mythology says we must separate church and state.  Everybody seems to think we still glorify God and fulfill a “good works” quota if we help others while ignoring God.  Goodness, what if we do what the Bible actually instructs and love and honor God through visible, proclaiming, tangible, active faith in Jesus Christ as we love, serve and help others?

And say it out loud?

One thing I know today that I didn’t know 20 years ago is that the ultimate way to help “others” is to help them find love, trust and faith in Jesus Christ.

Then the other stuff comes naturally.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) spent most of his life as a non-believer; others helped him come around.

Spirituality Column #491
April 12, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

Ignorance of the law is no excuse; neither is ignorance of the Bible.

Whether growing in one’s faith or defending one’s mind and morals, the Bible is where truth is best told and trusted.  Jesus is where truth ultimately resides.

Faced 24/7/365 with the scripturally misquoting, spiritually disingenuous, that’s-just-your-opinion, sin-enabling world around us, what do we do about that?

We hold fast to the truth, that’s what.  Identify the accurate from the inaccurate.  Know what scripture says and what it doesn’t.  Know the difference between the Law and legalism, and faith and love.  Go to trusted sources for education not only of Bible truths but about origins, contexts and differences of those who follow different gods or pervert God’s truth.  Embolden our hearts, strengthen our minds, and pray in the Spirit.

Above all, let God’s Word wash over us with peace, love, mercy, forgiveness and patience.  In other words, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” (Ephesians 6:10-20).

Jesus and the Apostle Paul are the New Testament’s leading examples of knowing one’s enemies, i.e., the devil’s schemes that play endlessly in humanity’s heart for which Jesus suffered and died to forgive, and Paul labored to expose and explain.  Both were hated by contemporary cultural authorities.

That’s kind of where humanity and Christianity still are.  The Pharisees of our day surround us with virulent, anti- and extra-biblical “truth” that plays to temporal choice, rights and convenience courting every imaginable denial of God, Jesus, the Spirit and everlasting truth.

Case in point: A “hilarious” billboard in Mississippi from a ‘humanitarian” organization protests a recent religious freedom law.  It features a shaking-my-head Jesus image that reads: “Guys, I said I hate figs, and to love your neighbor.”

Insulting, insinuated gay epithets aside, this is biblical ignorance on parade.  Luke 13 and Mark 11 tell of Jesus cursing a barren, unproductive fig tree when Jesus was hungry…for figs.  Lesson B: Jesus likes figs.  Lesson A:  Jesus curses unproductivity.  Lesson A-plus: Enabling sin is not loving one’s neighbor.  Extra Credit: “Humanitarian?”  Jesus is our true humanity.  Oy.

Removing scriptural truth from contemporary intellectual endeavor and societal normalcy deserves far more than a traffic ticket – “Sorry officer, I didn’t seen the sign …” Let’s not be part of that problem of scriptural illiteracy and cultural evil.  We can diligently, bravely and boldly, with discipline and love, stay in the Word for truth, in church for fellowship and on mission for Christ.

Jesus didn’t always explain things, and we don’t have to either.

But He did know and live the truth.  So can we.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has missed lots of signs and gotten lots of tickets.

Spirituality Column #490
April 5, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

Jesus never said “Go your own way” or “Find your true self.”  He also never spoke much about the “religion” that would carry His name.

Christianity grew out of the reality of Christ’s resurrection, God’s eternal love, and mankind having been created by God in God’s own image.  Throughout the Old Testament we learn about God, man, the law, and man’s raucous inability to obey God’s Law, much less glorify God by his own effort.  The New Testament was a game changer because God reached directly into humanity as Christ resetting man’s relationship with God.  The Law was fulfilled in the faith, truth and love of Jesus Christ.

Jesus wasn’t and isn’t an idea, a concept or a philosophy.  He’s a real person with a real mission with a real Father in Heaven.

You want to talk about God?  No other way to talk to Him except through Jesus.

So when the modern secular world claims pagan “rights” exalting the imagined god-hood of personal preferences and lifestyle choices, and backs it up with the vapid authority that Jesus would never deny someone their “true desires” or “identities” or “choices,” the reasoning falls apart.  You cannot invoke Jesus here and deny God’s authority there; it reveals one’s profound misunderstanding of what Jesus taught and a simply vacant mental library of what Jesus actually did.

You can read about it in the Bible, but so many people haven’t.  Our crippling weakness as a society today is our willful ignorance of Jesus.

Jesus was one tough customer because He truly didn’t and doesn’t care about anything but God’s glory and expressing it with love – His love, our love, divine love.  Christ’s love wasn’t and isn’t a let-it-all-hang-out, do-your-own-thing, hippie child-of-the-’60s absence of accountability, the “Me Decade” revels of the 1970s or a Millennialist “everybody’s-a-winner” faux reality.  The sole mission of Christ’s love is to glorify God by reconnecting the “created” – i.e., “us” – freely with the Creator, who is God.

Jesus absolutely was in the “denial” business.  The first and most frequent person He denied was Himself.  Jesus had no sin, yet died for ours.  Yes, He saved the sinful woman, but didn’t say, “Go and have a good time; find yourself.”  Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.”  Jesus helped the weak, the sick, and the outcasts, made friends with tax collectors and sinners of every stripe, freed evil spirits and even shrewdly dismantled the Jewish law in the parables he told.

But Jesus never said, “Go your own way.”  He said, “Follow me.”

So don’t ask, “Who do I want to be?”  Ask, “Who does God want me to be?”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is saying: One’s true self is found only in Jesus.

Spirituality Column #489
March 29, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

I read the Bible and believe it.

I’ve developed a relationship with Christ and know it.

Truth exists and I tell it.

Most folks I run into Sundays at church, and thankfully many more through the week – sinners, all of us – would cop the same plea: we get it, we know it, we tell it.  And we pray to be better at spreading the word, telling the story, forgiving our enemies, loving our neighbors, changing the world, honoring Christ and glorifying God.

These are the simple truths of a life with Jesus.

Lots and lots of folks dispute, dismiss or detest the Christian life basics of scriptural belief, divine relationship and exclusive, objective, Godly truth.  Modern secular inquiry sounds less like civil curiosity, “Why do you believe it?” and more like, “You must be an idiot to believe it!”  Not, “How do you know it?” but, “You can’t prove it!”  Not, “What is truth?” but a growling, hysterical, “That’s just your opinion!”

Society, academia, news media, the entertainment industry, political entities, unbelieving friends and relatives all may afford occasional lip service to Jesus, scripture, the church, and Christian faith.  Yet society-wide acceptance of unchanging truth before God is absent.  Instead we hear, “I don’t need church, or the Bible, or these myths about Jesus.  I’ll do it my own way, thank you.  I’m a good person and I’ll be just fine without messing it up with ‘religion.’  Don’t judge me.  Don’t tell me what to do.  Don’t think there is only one truth.”

I think that covers roughly half of what I see regularly on Facebook.

Actual “Christian life” truth requires a generally unwelcome and potentially destabilizing break with today’s post-modern intellectual status quo.   And I’m continually struck by how many Christian antagonists nonetheless expect Christian things – the perks – like blessings now and heaven later.

Christian heaven is certainly attractive; nothing else is remotely like it.  Read about it in the Bible and you will likely understand it less but believe it more.  Honestly, I’ve no concrete idea what heaven will be, but I do know it will be about God’s glory, not mine.  I also know that everyone has a shot at heaven – “…whoever believes in him shall not perish… (John 3:16)  – and that there is only one way in – “…no one comes to the Father except through me…” (John 14:6).  “Him” and “me,” by the way, are Jesus.

Folks challenge every bit of the Bible, and I believe every bit of it.

“Even the part about Jesus dying and coming back to life?” they mock.

“Especially that part,” I assert.

Why else would the rest of it matter?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) worries less about specifics and more about truth.

Spirituality Column #488
March 22, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

If Jesus wasn’t “really” dead on the cross, didn’t arise from a real grave, and isn’t alive and real today, then there’s no point going to church this Sunday.

Never mind what the Bible says, the church says, your pastor/priest/minister says, your family says, the media says, or popular culture says.  Either Easter is exactly what it is purported to be – a celebration of the resurrected Jesus Christ, God’s own son revealing the truth of salvation not only and importantly for mankind but for the entire created cosmos – or it’s a big waste of time and the world’s greatest lie to boot.

Thing is … I don’t know exactly who’s time it would be that we are wasting.  Without a loving God, a redeeming Savior and a Holy Spirit informing and animating our hearts, minds and strength, it doesn’t matter much what we do with our time, intellect, industry or efforts.  It’d be simply every man, woman and child uselessly for themselves.

The guy who titled the rock ‘n roll album, “Nothin’ Matters and What if it Did?” would actually be entirely right instead of entirely wrong.

It takes Godly – and God-inspired – courage to trust without reservation the truth that life matters only because God matters.  That’s the only reason why our time in this life is precious.  Get any of that wrong – God, time, truth, life, precious – and existence is diminished quickly, dreadfully, toward self-serving survivalism and hopelessness.   Years, minutes and seconds are reduced to irreconcilable dead-ends; our enthusiasms stripped of purpose.  Joy is vaporous and thin; life is restricted, short and just ends.

Include God in the equation – not because we’ve made Him up out of desperation but because He’s already there and it’s our job not to ignore Him – time becomes something that suddenly and ironically both stretches into eternity and makes this particular moment something not to waste.  God has given us much more than a story; He has bestowed upon us an aggregate, eternal gift in Jesus Christ – life, truth, hope, forgiveness, time, purpose and love.

That’s why it doesn’t matter so much what any one person or any one thing says about Easter; what matters is who Jesus really is, what His death and resurrection really accomplished, and how this unprecedented and unique act of God’s faithfulness to mankind really changed everything about humanity, history and hope.

Every Easter, and every day, my prayer is that the faint, flickering faith of hopeful doubters who have heard the Easter story would grow from wishful, wondering wistfulness into confident, compassionate Christian witness.

Easter, God, Jesus, resurrection, salvation, faith, hope, love … all true.

Seriously?  Really.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) appreciates John Mellencamp’s music if not his album titles.

Spirituality Column #487
March 15, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

“I feared the anger and wrath of the Lord …” – Deuteronomy 9:19

Moses fasted and laid prostrate before the Lord for 40 days and nights – twice – just trying to get God’s Ten Commandments down the mountain once and into the hearts and minds of the nation of Israel.

Both times this divine delivery was met by a stiff-necked, sinning, idol-forging nation.  The first time, Moses himself hurled and broke the tablets of God’s covenant in disgust with Israel’s sin.  The second time, Moses begged God’s mercy not to destroy His chosen yet rebellious people.

Deuteronomy 9 is a concise, instructive snapshot of God’s righteousness, generosity, faithfulness, anger, wrath and mercy, not to mention Israel’s utter rebellion, Moses’s unfailing faithfulness to God and Israel, and Old Testament intercessory prayer at its finest.

Moses talked God into a mulligan.  Deuteronomy 10 opens with another set of tablets, another chance for Israel, and continues in copious repetition (from Exodus and Numbers) of God’s laws and stern reminders to fear God’s wrath and anger.  Telling Israel once was not enough; “Deuteronomy,” after all, means “repetition of the law.”  Even the Ten Commandments took two tries to be delivered.

Deuteronomy is great instruction about a great God, great faith and a greatly sinful humanity.  But as Christians we must always be vigilant of what’s missing in these Mosaic stories, and that’s the New Covenant of Jesus Christ.  It’s a spirit-rending mistake of the first order when Christians seek out the wrathful God of the Old Testament without taking along our relational, sin-covering Jesus to understand the unsolvable, condemnational problems humanity had prior to the coming of Christ.

The Old Testament tells us about an unchanging yet somehow relational God, His Creation, our humanity, and the problems that arise from God’s love having righteously provided man with virtually unlimited freedom.  God’s plan is for humanity to use its freedom to discover God’s love and glory so that it may freely love Him back. Satan urges us to use that freedom to shame and humiliate God by venerating, loving, and promoting our self-interests.  Satan smiles when human anger is directed at God.

The lesson God has shown to mankind through Jesus is divine love that sacrifices for others, finds peace in humility, pride in God’s glory, strength in God’s truth and courage in everlasting salvation.

Anger and fear, ever-present in our fallen, worldly existence, are central themes of the Old Testament.  Love and peace – the love of God and others, and the peace of Christ – are eternal truths of the New Testament.

Learn from the Old, yes, but please, live in the New.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that people don’t change without Christ, and God doesn’t change, period.

Spirituality Column #486
March 8, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” – 1 John 4:18

Everybody preaches it, but nobody believes it.

Or if they do believe it – that John is right when he says “God is love” and that Jesus is speaking truth when He says, “for God so loved the world …” – they’ll still sit perfectly still and listen to a Sunday sermon blasting forth on the wrath of God, the guilt and punishment of sinners, the shame of the unrighteous, the condemnation of all mankind and the fear of God that must be the foundation of one’s Christian life.

Because the Bible says we must “Fear God,” right?

Whew.  That is some kind of screwed up marketing plan.

It is scripture’s seemingly perfect contradiction – God’s love vs. God’s wrath – and the most common stumbling block and joy-stealing paradox in Christianity.  How can both be true?  God loves you – “be humble;” but God is furiously angry with you – “beware.”  Where in that spiritual eddy is there room for our joy becoming complete in Christ?  Where is there opportunity for anything but relational wrong-footedness, behavioral confusion and doctrinal misunderstanding?

Mankind has built the bride of Christ, the church, into an institution quite often focused more on man’s sins than on God’s love.  Sermons preach the “straight and narrow” – and oh, brothers and sisters, the road is straight and the gate is narrow – but we complicate the GPS (God’s Pro-active Salvation) coordinates with the chains of our earthbound journey.  Applications and challenges abound promoting works and legalism rather than the grace of God’s love, Christ’s work, and the Spirit’s presence.  The glorious, true freedom of a loving God and a saving Christ is muddled amid fear-mongering, transactional pulpit language of payment, punishment and purchase.

It’s mystifying to outsiders:

“This is a free gift but it comes at a cost!  Any questions?”

“Um, yeah:  Which is it?”

The answer appears in the opening verses of each of Paul’s 13 letters in the New Testament.  “Grace and peace” is his signatory greeting, not “payment and fear.”

God has created each of us in His own image, endowed us with spiritual freedom, instilled in us a will to live, and implanted in our hearts and minds a basic knowledge of right and wrong, of good and evil.  Jesus is God’s proof that He loves us, because Jesus cleans up the mess our imperfect fears create.

Our joy is complete when our worldly fear turns to trust in God’s perfect love.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) considers “Fear not” to be the most valuable yet underutilized advice in the Bible.