Monday, August 13, 2018

613 - The Purpose of Asking, Part 1

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #613
August 14, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Purpose of Asking, Part 1
By Bob Walters

An old friend from back in my life when I spent no time thinking about Jesus sent a YouTube video to me recently via Facebook Messenger.

This friend knows I now spend a whole lot of time thinking about Jesus and thought I’d find the sincerely stated and believable video “interesting.”  The 10-minute YouTube piece (shot in 2005) was testimony by a then-72-year-old man who six years earlier during incredibly major and low-survivability heart surgery had a “near-death-and-met-God” experience.  Or maybe he met Jesus.  Or maybe both.

But, he survived the surgery and the point I want to make isn’t who he met, or the theology of it, or the specifics of the surgery, or his life before, or how the experience changed his life for the better … dramatically better, or if the fellow is still alive, or, you may ask, why am I wasting my time on Facebook and YouTube?

No, what grabbed me immediately was the YouTube title: “This man died during surgery, met God & asked Him, ‘What’s the meaning of Life?’”  And wouldn’t we all like to know the answer to that one?  From God Himself?  “What is the meaning of life?”  And to know God’s final answer, for real.  Well, I just sighed and thought immediately, “That’s the wrong question to ask.”  And I’ll tell you why.

In this life we are overly focused on the “Me” in “Meaning.”  When I insist on knowing “meaning,” I’m hedging my bet.  I’m questioning the authority, trustworthiness, and intrinsic truth of whatever and wherever that “meaning” originates.  I want to know meaning for my sake, to validate my “faith” or “truth,” and to know what’s in it for me.

The entire secular world grasps for ultimate “meaning” it simply will not find outside of God and Jesus.  And the fellow in the video, as he described himself before the surgery, reminded me of me 20 years ago: more or less believing in God and Jesus but never imagining “being religious.”  And by “religious” I don’t mean “denominational” or “churchified;” I mean “living my life as an ongoing action of faith in Christ.”

“I believe but I’m not religious” is a sentiment that an awful lot of the secular world errantly considers a theological worldview rather than the heretical dodge that it actually is.  Twenty years ago life’s grand “meaning” to me meant only “How do I put myself at the center of everything?”   Still, I would have thought, “What’s the meaning of life?” to be a brilliant question to ask God, not the naïve and self-serving puffery it is.

Nonetheless, I was certainly interested to hear how God answered the question, which the man in the video related thus: “God laughed and said, ‘The meaning of life is love; all love.’”  Of course God laughed; it’s an easy question.  The man also cried because of the love he felt during the conversation.  That’s why I think the “arms he felt” hugging him were those of Jesus, whom God sent to express His unimaginable love.

But … the secular world gets the “love” thing selfishly wrong all the time, too, i.e., it’s not about me.  And we’ll discuss that – and a better question to ask – next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is leery of near-death testimonies, but felt-Godly-love is felt Godly love, Amen.  Here’s the video link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UAnySx2lHC8.  
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Monday, August 6, 2018

612 - Feeding Trough

5:38 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #612
August 7, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Feeding Trough
By Bob Walters

“Feed my sheep.” Jesus to disciple Peter, John 21:17.

I just noticed something in this command.  Jesus isn’t telling His disciple Peter to be one of His sheep; He is telling Peter to feed His sheep.

Which suggests something perhaps overlooked: disciples of Jesus aren’t tasked merely to be sheep; disciples of Jesus are supposed to feed the sheep.  And who are the sheep? I surmise the answer Jesus might like best is not that Christians are the sheep, but that Christians are the disciples who go out, seek, find, and feed lost sheep. Our first steps as Christians are to become believers, then followers, and then disciples of Jesus. The “sheep” are everybody else.  That’s who needs to be “fed” and it’s the disciples who need to do the feeding.  It’s why there are “discipleship” pastors.

Modern day Christians – and I mean even serious nose-in-the-Bible, butt-in-the-pews, dynamic-prayer-life, Jesus-in-my-heart believers – often calibrate their church happy meter by whether or not they feel they are “being fed.” Outsiders note: “fed” doesn’t mean free donuts in the coffee lounge; “fed” means sermons, worship, study, fellowship, outreach programs, mission opportunities, counseling … a hundred things.

People often change churches saying they “aren’t being fed;” their church isn’t helping them grow in their faith and relationship with Christ.  Change can be good, but take note: a mature Christian isn’t looking to be fed; he or she is looking to feed others.

A key element we see in John 21 as Jesus talks to Peter is that Peter is at both a low ebb and jubilant crescendo in his relationship with Jesus. His Lord is alive and he joyously knows all Jesus said was true. But Peter is also devastatingly ashamed, having thrice denied knowing Jesus (John 18:17, 25, 27).  There are 18 Gospel passages noting the appearances of the resurrected Jesus to the disciples and others, but this morning meeting evidently is the first conversation the two have had since that night.

Interestingly, Jesus here does not call him “Peter” but by his former name. This is Jesus doing a gracious reset; the redemption of Peter from his grievous sin: Jesus is starting over at “Simon.”  It’s also interesting that Peter, in his denial, did not in his heart stop believing in Jesus; but he cowardly denied Jesus to the outside world.  That’s something Christians should notice: Peter’s faith held firm; his courage didn’t.

And still, as Jesus fed him breakfast, He wanted “Simon” to “feed my sheep.”

I comprehend and “get” the “flock” and “follow” sheep metaphor used throughout the Bible, church, and Christianity.  But our Christian life is horribly thin if our faith goal is to remain a sheep at the feeding trough.  When we recognize hunger and weakness in ourselves or other Christians, we must tend to each other in love, feed each other as we can, trust Jesus to restore our strength, and know that our mission to nourish others bodily and in faith remains.  This is the redemptive power of Christ in the here and now.

Our humanity that is closest to Jesus is revealed when we feed the sheep.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) misses the free donuts in the coffee lounge.
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Monday, July 30, 2018

611 - Faith, Fear, and Freedom

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #611
July 31, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Faith, Fear, and Freedom
By Bob Walters

“…The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” – Galatians 5:6

 Will we behave and feel better – morally, civilly, intellectually, spiritually – because we love and respect something, or because we are afraid of and dread something?

 I wonder about this because while the answer seems to be obvious – love is better than fear; relationship is better than abandonment – the great Christian argument about faith vs. works winds up on both sides of the same coin.  Our thoughts and hearts vs. our actions and intentions define the world’s joys and miseries.  It is nearly impossible for most people to rest in their faith alone, or to think works and behaviors don’t matter.  Whither salvation and the Kingdom of God?

 The Bible’s argument – the example of Jesus and the truth of the New Testament – resides in faith that Jesus is the resurrected son of God and in love that is spiritually animated in us by Christ’s creation, humanity, and authority (John 3:16, 5:24, etc.).

 Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, cited above, is an entire book explaining the superiority of faith over works; specifically, faith in Christ over obedience to the Law.  Or more specifically, really, Galatians is Paul’s bombshell lobbed at the Jews who continued to insist that Jesus was under the authority of the Law rather than the other way around; Jesus fulfilled the law, His person was the law, and Christ Himself held and holds “all authority in Heaven and on Earth” (Matthew 28:18).  His followers were freed by God from the legalistic shackles of coerced, works-dependent religious slavery.

 Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.”  Americans stumble and read this as civics, but Paul is talking about freedom in Christ and slaves to the Hebrew Law, not the U.S. Constitution and the past slavery of the American south.

 We bring up civics here both because of the religious freedom aspects of our U.S. government and the often negative effect of religion on civil liberty.  It is an endless political topic: what to do with faith and works in the public square? In anything short of heaven on the one hand, or an iron-fisted monarchy / dictatorship on the other, the “God-shaped hole” in the human heart leads the single-soul toward freedom, and leads humanity’s fallen nature toward fearful self- survival.  In other words, I’m comfortable with “my” truth but “your” truth scares me. If I have so much as an ounce of freedom or, conversely, a sliver of fear or doubt, my faith – as it crosses hopes, promises, and swords with yours – causes civic havoc.  Early America saw a lot of that.

 Our founding fathers discerned, rightly, that civics and religion need to be protected from each other.  They knew that only a moral, loving heart allows civic freedom; and religion best promoting love of others and trust in God rises on its own.

 We needn’t fear each other’s faith, but simply trust our own.  Human freedom depends on understanding that freedom is originally a gracious gift-of-God thing, not a legal gift-of-government (or man) thing.  If we’d all just behave like it, we’d all feel better.

 That’s what Jesus was trying to tell the World.

 Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) trusts Jesus, loves others, and always votes.
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Monday, July 23, 2018

610 - Founding Faith

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #610
July 24, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Founding Faith
By Bob Walters

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith provides perseverance." - James 1:2-3

Last week I wrote of my profound skepticism that Christianity in America is in as bad a shape as the media and academia would have us believe.

I believe America remains blessed, fortunate … downright lucky.  Christians here complain about assorted secular social lunacies.  Non-believers chortle at what they perceive to be hypocrisies and foolishness of Christian faith.  And nobody dies at trial.

The Persecuted Church is alive and suffering in many corners of the world – the Middle East, central Africa, south Asia, and China to name just a few.  Christianity is arguably healthier in those areas than it is in sophisticated Europe where it is nearly dead of pompous neglect.  The civil challenges to faith American Christians meet here at home give us a necessary taste of perseverance-producing intellectual trials without the savagery and abandonment of physical brutality and total agnostic arrogance.

The Bible promises that faith in the love of Christ will give us joy and persecution. When I consider the modern robustness of American churches – seriously, look at the churches, not the media – and the general calmness and civility of domestic religious dialog – even non-church goers say “Thank God!” when something goes their way – it brings to mind a foundational question: Why is America so different?

I think I found the answer in the 2008 book Founding Faith by Steven Waldman.

This deeply researched, thoroughly footnoted, painstakingly cited, and elegantly succinct work focuses on the development of American religious freedom from the Jamestown settlement in 1607 onward through the early years of the republic.  There is Reformation, British, and Enlightenment church history. There is also the “theology” and pragmatism of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Ben Franklin, James Madison and other founding fathers that I was thoroughly unprepared to read.

Waldman’s book is different because it does not try to bludgeon a “Christian” or “Non-Christian” creation of America.  Instead it reveals the reality of the true awfulness of inter-Christian persecution and colonial sectarian separatism and how that conflict developed into a union perpetuating and insisting on liberty – a miracle, if you ask me.

Anglicans, Puritans, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics, Evangelicals, Methodists, Baptists, Reformed, and others arrived on North American shores and promptly, vigorously, and legally discriminated against each other.  Colonies were settled by sect.  Puritans harassed Baptists; Quakers were distrusted; Catholics were shunned; priests were often suspect.  Few folks actually attended church yet most had a moral connection to Jesus while harboring suspicions of and violent aversion to competing Christian doctrines.  Militarily, the Revolutionary War required Christian religious pluralism to fight robustly against the tyranny of the Crown’s Anglican Church.

Refreshingly, Waldman’s treatment is not exclusively Enlightenment agnosticism, Sunday school sanitation, patriotic jingoism, or anti-colonial screed.  It is a thoughtful, illuminating, and surprising look at the American union of civil and religious freedom.

The founders’ faith and perseverance made it look easy.  It was far from it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) more fully appreciates how good we have it … now.

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Monday, July 16, 2018

609 - I Don't Believe It

5:34 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #609
July 17, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

I Don’t Believe It
By Bob Walters

Religion is in decline.  The “None’s” (no religious affiliation) are ascendant. Religion in America is faltering just like it is in every other developed Western country.

Jesus just isn’t that important! OMG!

I’m telling you, I do not believe it.  Not for one second.  “Figures never lie but liars always figure” is a great way to interpret the wiles of the Great Deceiver.  Opinion polls will never affect the truth of Jesus Christ, but academics and the media are regularly complicit in the scare tactics of hopelessness.  If it bleeds, it leads.

It turns out that for all the hue and cry over the decades-old growth of the non-religious “Nones” component in American society, not even the usually religion-friendly Pew Research folks seem to get what’s going on.  That the mainline protestants are drifting away from churches in disinterest, and public schools are in a general state of denial over the whole “God” thing thereby raising a current generation of highly uninformed young adults, ecclesiologically speaking, is true enough.  But the faith number that remains steady is the 30-35 percent of our population that takes religion seriously enough to attend church, pray, and crack open a Bible once in a while.  Maybe everyone doesn’t have the Jesus thing figured out, but we’re trying.  America is an anomaly in the Christian world, and God shed His grace on … us.

A report published late last year by Harvard and Indiana University, “The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion” (link) lays out the evidence that the cling-lightly-and-let-go non-religious citizen cohort has risen from around 10 percent to around 20 percent tracking trends from 1989 through 2016.

But I knew I was right in not taking all the “religion is dying” negatives too seriously.  It’s this milquetoast group that’s becoming less interested because … their religion is so much less interesting.  I may have been a late-to-the-party believer, finally “getting it” and being baptized at age 47, but there is a lot of action in the Bible, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, with Church, and with life all around.  God has a multi-ring circus of truth, love, grace, history, drama, suspense, and salvation going on.  In the “developed” world, surveys show, Americans seem to be the only ones who get it.

As with politics, religion is a source of great polarization, and these religion numbers bear that out.  But … so what?  Jesus has always been polarizing – the Bible says He will be polarizing, Jesus says he will be polarizing.  Why?  It is His nature to be polarizing as a force for supreme good in a world that is grievously fallen.  He came for all, but folks have to pick – He gives us that freedom to accept His grace or not.

This particular Harvard-IU study on “religion,” tellingly enough, can’t quite say “Christian,” even though it keeps talking about the Bible and church.  It reveals an important national direction that even though folks are dropping off one end – and we must continue to witness – the Jesus train is roaring along the tracks just fine.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows that fear is a great seller of goods, but love is the best seller of ultimate good. And if you mean Jesus, say “Jesus,” not “religion.”
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Monday, July 9, 2018

608 - Cage Match

5:00 PM | Posted by Common Christianity | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #608
July 10, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Cage Match
By Bob Walters

Critical thinking took a religious, political, and media holiday last week when an Indianapolis church put caged figures of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus in its front yard.

Most of the world sees Holy Family figurines like these only in Christmas displays. But when an opportunistic, tone-deaf, cynical liberal political point arises – such as, “Let’s blame our government for the spectacle of foreign children separated from irresponsible, criminal, or nefarious alien adults who have put them at risk” – then those who typically ignore or repress Jesus are suddenly thrilled to play the “Jesus-in-a-cage” card; biblically, historically, and contemporarily incorrect …and slanted as can be.

My prayer would be that these “Jesus as a political news prop” folks had as much enthusiasm to read their Bibles and understand and know Jesus, and maybe show up for true worship and Christian fellowship once in a while.  Perhaps then they’d understand the deep folly of this particularly mismatched protest.  What’s so wrong?

Oh my.  Where to start? Luke 2? Taxes? Bethlehem? Wise men? Herod? Egypt?  Never mind modern politics; the Christmas baby Jesus was not a refugee.

The short course is to simply read Luke 2:1-7, the first stanza of the Bible’s  famed “no room in the inn” Christmas story that ends in v14 with “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men” (er, “persons,” but not the point).

Anyone who truly understands the first two chapters of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke – the story of the birth of Jesus – knows that Joseph and his family, from the line of David, were called on official business (census and taxes) from their home in Nazareth to the City of David (Bethlehem) where, with their Davidic lineage, they would have been received as honored family members.  And Mary being near-term pregnant?  The women of the village would have gathered to midwife and assist with the birth in any way they could.  It’s the Semitic way.  Mary and baby very likely were well cared for.

The faux Christmas Crèche “Holy Family as refugees” narrative emanates not just from modern liberals and progressive globalists but from a very, very old and mostly non-factual, extra-biblical legend developed in the late second century that comprises most of what modern culture thinks it knows about the nativity of Jesus.

The Bible mentions no Bethlehem innkeeper.  The Wise Men didn’t show up for another year or so.  Jesus was not born in a lonely stable or cave but in someone’s home, with the “inn” (Greek word katalymati, which means lodging place, not hotel) being the home’s main area and the “stable” being a barn-type room on one end of the house where animals were kept inside for protection from thieves and the warmth of the family. A manger, or feeding trough, would have been in there; warm and well-attended.

Yes, the Holy Family members were refugees in Egypt, briefly, a year or two later when Herod tried to kill Jesus (read Matthew 2), but Jesus then was no infant in a manger.  As an adult, the wandering Jesus was a missionary, not a refugee.

A fascinating book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes” by Kenneth E. Bailey wonderfully describes the cultural details of Jesus’s birth.  No, that birth didn’t make international headlines, but back then the faithful weren’t trying to make political hay.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures modern liberals expressing political “outrage” at caging baby Jesus would have defended Mary’s right to abort Him.
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Monday, July 2, 2018

607 - Arrested Development

6:59 PM | Posted by Bob Walters | | Edit Post
Spirituality Column #607
July 3, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Arrested Development
By Bob Walters

The kind and generous engineer – an electrical-with-a-Master’s-degree type, not the railroad type – was part of our luncheon group at a large marina recently.

It is a nice marina in northern Lake Michigan, and the discussion mentioned a particularly large yacht up there last summer owned by the DeVos family of Grand Rapids, Mich., the family that co-founded Am-Way and also that of Bible-believing U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The boat is a stunning 165-footer, a Westport …

But … this is about believing in Jesus and the Bible, not pleasure boating.  And what the engineer added to the lunch at that moment was food for thought.  He said:

“Betsy DeVos. She’s that woman who doesn’t believe in evolution.  Some people are so foolish.”

I was actually away from the table briefly when the comment was made, so I didn’t have the chance to glare at the speaker or say something quick and potentially unkind.  Some of you are endowed with perfect, irenic pitch when responding to such theological throw-downs.  My batting average in those situations is not exactly perfect.

Soon, in the private, non-confrontational sanctuary of my own thoughts as we rode our bicycles along the shore away from lunch (Yes, bikes. You assumed a yacht? A nice boat?  Uh, no.), the engineer’s statement spawned much reflection.  Such as …

- “… believe in evolution …” The worst thing you can say to an evolutionist is that evolution is a matter of belief, but that’s what they always say: “I believe in evolution.”  It’s a theory, evolution is, a very practical one that gave the end-of-the-Enlightenment humanists and start-of-the-technical-age scientists – in the latter half of the 1800s – a method of fending off religious guidelines on human and community morality.  They’d say it was foolish to believe in a God they “couldn’t see” and ran with the philosophy that it was up to mankind to assign God a proper place, which is just backwards.

- Education. The “foolish” remark was directed at all of us crazies who think the Bible is the first arbiter among all human endeavor.  That is Ms. DeVos’s sin in the eyes of the evolutionists; “that’s not education.” When I read the Creation story in the Bible I see that God made everything, he made everything “good,” and he made mankind “very good” in the image of Himself.  There’s more to that story, as you no doubt are aware, but somehow 150 years ago culture got its feet tangled up trying to “prove” the Bible the way science “proves” a physical theory.  The academy has not been the same since.

- Which evolution?  When someone suggests they “believe in evolution,” the first question to ask – if you dare – is, “Which part?” Are they talking about the beginning of the Cosmos? The foundation of the world/Earth?  The creation of life?  The origin of species?  History?  The absence of divine purpose, objective truth, and morals?

A Supreme Being with Glory, Authority and a Loving Plan – Jesus – is surely better news for humanity than meaningless, inexplicable, evolutionary happenstance.

My point isn’t to settle the debate, just to ask the evolution crowd to think more deeply about what they imagine they are ridiculing when they ridicule those who believe human life contains biblical truth and purpose.  The scandal is, Evolution does not.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) enjoys those thinking, shoreline bike rides.
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