Spirituality Column No. 527
December 20, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Cross, Christmas and Freedom
By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column No. 526
December 13, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters


            A. Shackled to Jesus by your sin?
            B. Spiritually free from your sin through Jesus?
            C. Free to do whatever you want because Jesus loves you anyway?
            D. Expecting a physical, material, monetary or social status reward?

The correct answer here – I hope it’s obvious – is “B.”

Christians go to church for a lot of different reasons.  Some go (A) because of their sin, shame and guilt, which makes church a hospital or jail; something most people want to get out of.  Some (C) take a chunk of scripture about “love” – e.g. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world,” etc., and mistake their own worldly appetites for God’s divine word and build a church full of popular culture but absent biblical responsibility.  The (D) self-directed prosperity Gospel says “Get a blessing” vs. “Be a blessing.”

Most people have some idea that “God exists.”  It takes some prayer, Bible reading, coaching, diligence and discernment to truly understand what God said, what Jesus promised and what the Holy Spirit offers.  It also takes some time, patience and being challenged to discover what it all means.  Freedom is the result of getting it right; bondage is the result of getting it wrong.

When I think back on the times in my adult life when I have cried – I mean really let loose – the only ones I remember were from sadness, fear or relief.  My parents died, my dog was hit by a car.  I lost a job, a career, a home.  My cancer surgery (long before I knew Jesus) was successful.  Nowadays when I pray out loud, especially a prayer of thanks or love, tears easily flow and my voice not infrequently collapses.  All the while I feel the great relief of witnessing God’s work, love and presence.

And I feel entirely free.

Satan is the great deceiver, liar and tempter, and there is no truth in him.  Yet his best trick is convincing humans that their own freedom is in creating a distance from God and in blurring God’s holy word into unholy, prideful blobs of false promises, false hopes, false doctrine and false, temporal “truth,” all adding up to false freedom.

Bondage is believing a truth that God didn’t ordain.

Satan makes real-deal truth hard to find, but Christ’s real-deal freedom is hard to beat.  Satan stands in front of both truth and freedom with camouflage, argument, enticements, accusations and condemnation; fiercely shooting false but deadly arrows of cultural preferences, popular opinion, political dogmas and self-glorifying religion.  The errant, freedom-killing focus, always is “me.”  Freedom’s true focus, always, is God’s love.

Kingdom freedom (B) is God’s glory; hell’s bondage is Satan’s only promise.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that the relief – the freedom – of knowing Jesus is being able to ignore Satan’s lies.

Spirituality Column No. 525
December 6, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters


Christianity properly lived is a divine cycle of gifts, giving, grace, mercy, humility and gratitude that multiply into mankind’s complete freedom and God’s ultimate glory.

When Christianity is improperly lived, humanity enslaves itself in guilt, shame, fear, prejudice and want pridefully dividing Christ into “good” obedience, “bad” habits, “suspect” religion and “earthly” burdens that dilute joy and divert hope into self-centered appetites and theological confusion.  Condemnation is not what Jesus had in mind.

The difference in the scenarios above emanates from man’s intention either to unflinchingly love and fully trust God’s will, or to merely allow for the possibility of God, conditionally tolerate others and subordinate God’s will to one’s own personal, worldly, rooting interest in a given situation.  These various intentions are formed, I think, in the way we understand the debt we have in Jesus, and whether we understand that in Christ “debt” enforces freedom rather than slavery.

It’s just the craziest thing.

Godly freedom, impossibly, is entirely a convoluted gift of giving; a joyous debt.  But then Jesus, impossibly, is a savior no human could have expected.  God Himself showed up – “the Word became flesh,” (John 1:14) – solving a problem mankind didn’t know it had by offering to us the Godly gift we never knew we wanted: eternal life through His own horrendous earthly death.  The problem to which mankind was blind was our inability to match God’s righteousness after the fall of Adam and Eve.  Israel mistakenly thought it could bridge that distance with works and piety within the law, further not understanding that God’s intention all along was to bequeath all humanity with the love and trust of freedom, not the shackles of perpetual debt and obedience.

What Aquinas is saying, I think, is that our only “debt” is not to wish to be free from God’s love or to abandon the joy-giving gratitude of sharing it.  Our “debt” is to love and give, and it’s in loving and giving that we express our freedom.  That’s how we tell God, “Thank you.”  It’s not possible to pay Him back, and silly to imagine we could.

Freedom’s proper expression is loving God and others. Hence, we err grievously when we think human freedom is about, “I can do what I want.”  That’s pride, and pride is the flip side of a giving and gracious spirit which actually is our freedom in Christ.

Like Paul said: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” (Galatians 5:13).

God indebted us with the gift of freedom so we could freely give it to others.

Isn’t that wild?

Spirituality Column No. 524
November 29, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters


Alexis de Tocqueville, that great, perceptive French social observer of mid-1800s America, noticed and admired America’s citizen-by-citizen freedom of association.

Citizens in America, de Tocqueville marveled, were free to form affiliations in pursuit of common goals.  This freedom from royal government rules, power, edicts, ownership and interference – a novel fundamental of the U.S. Constitution – fueled the engine of young America’s exploding-in-all-directions prosperity, power, discovery, manufacturing, technology and Christian faith.

These U.S. citizens were not serfs or colonists or mere inhabitant caretakers unattached to their land but for whatever meager sustenance it provided; they were unshackled owners who freely and fiercely defended property and provenance.   America was resource-rich, providentially indulged and intellectually unleashed.

That’s how de Tocqueville saw America’s 1830s present.  Here is how he assessed her future:

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers – and it was not there … in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there … in her rich mines and her vast world commerce – and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution – and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” – Democracy in America

Those “pulpits aflame with righteousness” were the rolling thunder of the early nineteenth century’s Second Great Awakening, the miracle of Christian revivalism and biblical blanketing of the expanding American frontier.  We were not then a nation of theologians nor are we now, but Jesus Christ was the unrivaled moral compass of the age and culture.  The civil and political freedoms de Tocqueville so eloquently lauded could only be preserved, he forewarned, by the moral resolve of a faithful citizenry.

Freedom is a specifically divine gift when first we insist that freedom be of benefit and comfort to others.  It is your insistence on my freedom, and vice versa, that describes and assigns a free community’s love for each other and exemplifies our trust in God’s goodness.  It requires the humility, resolve and strength exemplified by Jesus.

Exceptions abound in our national morality play – we are an imperfect nation of imperfect people.  We are at our best when we use our freedom to come together and attach our liberty to Christ.  Goodness grounded in righteousness never goes wrong.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) cites de Tocqueville’s observation that the “secret weapon” of America’s greatness lay in the superiority of her women.

Spirituality Column No. 523
November 22, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

In a season of loud opinions measured against this annual week of humble thanksgiving, I am thankful for truth.

Real truth.  Objective truth.  Divine truth.  The truth of Jesus Christ.

Identifying truth in the world is always done at a human handicap – people in all times, places and cultures have little more than opinions to work with from whence they unapologetically extrapolate intractable but regularly flawed moral judgments.  At this American moment in history, identifying truth is all the more confusing, perhaps impossible, amid a boisterous, rancorous, apparently endless and thoroughly polarized political season.  Do I have hope for our nation?  Yes I do.  Is “hope” a “truth?”  No, in this context it’s merely a contentious point of view.

So in this chattering national conversational climate of crossed purposes and obstinate opinions, why does truth seem so elusive?

Because, I would suggest, we are looking for truth in all the wrong places.

The real deal capital-T truth only exists where the majority of people don’t want to look: in the person of Jesus Christ.  Legal truth, political truth, academic truth, social truth and virtually any other human-generated worldly truth may lead us to pleasant or unpleasant situational and physical realities, but the worst place to look for capital T truth is in a human heart and maybe, especially our own. Let me explain.

“Be true to your heart” can be good or bad or terrible advice.  Although Jesus may well be alive in your heart, never forget Satan is too.  Pride, fear, power, reprisal, greed, faction and many other sins are all heart temptations that make “my truth” vs. “your opinion” an incendiary, love-throttling cocktail.  Arrogance, you see, is unaffiliated with truth because arrogance lacks love.  Jesus, one notices, was pretty humble.

Don’t panic or be offended that Satan is hanging near; he sidled up to Jesus, too.  Just know that truth isn’t the invasive bodily and spiritual temptations of Satan; truth is the person of Jesus Christ: His mercy, compassion, patience, love and glory.

We fumble the ball when we mistake our own opinion for the will of God, and I hate when I do that.  God may reveal His will to us, but we must be aware he reveals it to others as well.  That’s why the holy person of Jesus factors heavily in the truth equation because He is the only truth.  In His own words: “I am the way and the truth and the life…” (John 14:6), and He meant it.  Most likely you know the rest.

Our discernment of truth does not rely on our clever and energetic arguments but on our faith, trust and love of Jesus.

When one possesses all that, thankfully, opinions don’t matter.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays that only the grateful, charitable love and truth of Jesus converge at your Thanksgiving table.  (I know… good luck with that.)

Spirituality Column No. 522
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) today, Nov. 15, marks the nine-year anniversary of the funeral of dear friend and preacher of the Gospel Russ Blowers, loved by many. 

Spirituality Column No. 521
November 8, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters


With these resources, with this truth – our lives of faith should be easy and joyous.  Instead we opt for contention and confusion both inside and outside the faith.

Christians will ball up a fist and hit you repeatedly in the face reminding you of your sin and shame.  Then they’ll ball up the other first and hit you repeatedly with guilt because of Jesus having to “pay a price” for your salvation with a hideous death on the cross.  They’ll then insist this is evidence of God’s tender love and represents a solid foundation on which to enter into a divine, loving, eternal relationship with Jesus to the glory of God.  The themes may be biblically defensible, but the “pitch” is relationally warped.  Love – true love – never comes from accusation or transaction.  It comes from freedom, compassion, mercy and grace; the things that make life easier.

Meanwhile, Jesus-mocking Western-world secularists accuse Christians of arrogance and hypocrisy on one hand and taunt them for a lack of reason, intelligence and sophistication on the other.  Secularists are humans who might give God and Christ a chance if only someone could “prove it” to them.  Two things in the Bible they believe: they’ll go to heaven, and “Don’t judge.”

Though these secular (non-religious) folks are deaf to the Holy Spirit’s call for Christ and the infinite, eternal love or God, they still are able to love others and do good works; and they’ll defend to the death what they love. Privately they may wonder if God exists, but publicly know it’s easier to go along to get along within the ever-diminishing piety of political, social, academic, scientific and cultural norms not having to explain Jesus in their lives.  Odd though how they believe they belong in heaven, the eternal Kingdom home of Jesus in whom they neither believe nor place their trust and love.

Atheists, whom I perceive in actuality to be few in number, militantly reject any notion of a supreme being, though I sense that many public displays of atheism are more fashion than substance.  We are all wired to believe something, and believing in no God is still a belief.  Atheists will argue no, they don’t believe in anything, and some Christians will argue back, yes, they do.  But one divinely important thing I notice is that atheists are perfectly and demonstrably capable of loving others and doing good deeds.

Satan, interestingly enough, is not an atheist.  Satan absolutely knows God exists and what God is all about.  Satan simply does not love and does no good deeds.

So remember, as a Christian, that anywhere you see selfless, self-sacrificing love, you are seeing God.  God is always where the love is.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reminds all that 1) God loves and judges on His terms, not ours; and 2) Showing love works better than arguing faith.