Spirituality Column #289
May 29, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Honoring those who died in the cause of freedom animates our American tradition of Memorial Day.  Its history and meaning are profound.

After the Civil War, both the South and the North – independently of each other and with efforts driven primarily by women’s groups – decorated the graves of fallen soldiers.  States of the Confederacy and the Union began informally setting aside various “Decoration Day” and “Memorial Day” holidays to remember their war dead.  Events were generally in the spring, mostly in May, and largely local.   

Union General John Logan is credited with declaring the first “Memorial Day” and on May 30, 1868, Union and Confederate graves at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington D.C. were decorated with flowers.  The date stuck.  Scattered observances became an annual, cohesive, and inclusive American memorial to the cost of freedom.

Since 1911 Indianapolis has been host to the Mother of All Memorial Day Celebrations, the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race.  Dubbed “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” in the 1950s by “Voice of the 500” radio announcer Sid Collins, the “500” was on Memorial Day only because in 1910 Indianapolis organizers had run day-long, multi-race events on the three summer holidays, and Memorial Day had the largest crowd.

So in 1911, promoters decided to have just one race date, Memorial Day, with just one spectacular race.  Wanting an all-day event for the picnicking spectators, and knowing that cars of the era raced 75-80 miles per hour, organizers rounded the math (7 hours at 75 to 80 miles per hour) and inaugurated a 500-mile race called “The International Sweepstakes.”  Over time it became known as The Indianapolis 500.

But I digress.  And that’s my point.

Too often, easily, and quickly, we identify with the fun, secular trappings of holidays: Easter eggs, Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas trees, the “500”, etc.  We focus on the party.  And personally, I love the “500.”  But deeper truths about humanity and our relationship with God undergird the significance of this particular holiday.

Memorial Day isn’t just the fact of honoring American war dead at a public event.  It’s the reverent act of remembering why they died.  And “why they died” is freedom.

War reveals more about human nature than about God’s eternal plan.  In our fallen earthly existence human freedom is something for which we have to fight and sometimes die.  Jesus Christ on the Cross fulfilled God’s loving plan to defeat death (John 3:16) and restore eternal freedom (Galatians 5:1).  As Americans on Memorial Day, let’s remember that eternal freedom is what motivated America’s founders.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), who goes to the 500 instead of church on race day, wishes the Archbishop would pray in the name of Jesus at the race.  Just sayin’.

Spirituality Column #288
May 22, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

The Truth of the Coming Election
By Bob Walters

Who created truth – God or Man?

How one answers that question reveals much about one’s intellectual point of view in spiritual, political, and moral matters but very little about the reality of God.

I bring this up because I have a hunch that man’s truth is going to take a real beating over the next several months as America enters into the throes of a debilitating rather than glorifying presidential election.  Thankfully, God’s truth won’t change.

Please know that I am not here to write about candidates or politics; I’m here to write about Jesus Christ and truth.  And please know I am generally optimistic about America and Americans.  But I am pessimistic – at this moment – about our overall cultural inclination, and indeed even our ability, to deal with truth as a “God thing.”  The loudest academic and cultural voices out there want us to think truth is a “Man thing.”

And that makes dealing with each other exceptionally difficult.  Rancor is nothing new in politics, nor, for that matter, within Christendom.  But our technical ability to quickly and massively communicate ideas – right or wrong, truth or lie, helpful or hurtful, pious or impious – make the flares of insincerity and mistrust burn all the hotter.

I will be among my many Christian brothers and sisters close to hyperventilation at various points in the coming months as common-sense social conventions (family, marriage, life, faith, et al) are assaulted with intellectually, spiritually, and socially specious – but politically expedient – “truth.”  We will be bombarded, as G.K. Chesterton once wrote, with “truisms that are simply not true.”

Satan’s most devastating temptation is to suggest that man should be God’s equal when it comes to the knowledge of good and evil, i.e., truth.  Starting in Genesis 3 and for the rest of the Bible up to Revelation 20 when Satan is finally defeated, we are taught that man’s idea of his own superior truth is a “truism that isn’t true.”

What I do know is what God says: “I, the Lord, speak the truth” (Isaiah 45:19).  And I know what Jesus said: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6).  And I know that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8) and that “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

And I know that that glory is God’s.  And that’s the truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), who each Friday publishes one of his old “Classic” columns free at www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com, has to work overtime to convince himself that his political opinions don’t really matter.  Bob's book, Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary, is available at (click) Amazon.com and Lulu.com.

Spirituality Column #287
May 15, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Sin and God’s Savings Plan
By Bob Walters



I’d wonder, “Well, if that guy really died for me, why am I still condemned?  And hey, who are you calling a sinner?”

It is the Christian who is supposed to understand that the first and worst sinner he or she sees every day is the one staring back at him or her from the mirror.  And as a believing, studying Christian, I know that Christ’s work on the cross was a whole lot more involved, and important, than just forgiving and covering my many sins.

Christ on the Cross restored and reconciled the fallen world with the Creator God Almighty.   At the cross – in grace not transaction – the eternal destiny of all mankind was set upright.  At the cross, everything changed.   At the cross Christ …

... restored our our relationship with God, defined our proper fellowship with each other, defeated death, adopted us as children into the Kingdom of Heaven, revealed the truth and the true God, hastened the arrival of the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and defined our human lives in terms of sacrifice, service, and most importantly, love.

Christ gave us the peace of repentance, freedom from guilt and fear, and blessed us with the joy of hope and fullness to replace the despair of regret and emptiness.  And, oh yeah, our sins were forgiven, too.

Don’t sell Christ short thinking His death was solely about sin.  God’s savings plan is about a world full of sinners who need to be – and ought to be – loved.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) shakes his head at how many Christians condemn others rather than love others.  Buy Bob's book, Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary at Amazon.com or Lulu.com .

Spirituality Column #285
May 1, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

In the spirit of spring cleaning let’s discuss a pair of not entirely inaccurate but eminently debatable declarations made recently in this space.

First, in the April 3 column Truth, Holy Week, and the Big Picture, I wrote that Luke was “the only Gospel writer who was neither in Jerusalem for the crucifixion nor an acquaintance of Jesus.”  A small point, really, but I should remember what I write in my own column, like specifically on March 24, 2009 (“Luke: Jesus Came for All”)

It is true that the Bible does not name or position Luke as being with Jesus as unambiguously as it describes the presence with Jesus of the other three Gospel writers: disciples Matthew and John, and Mark who ran naked from the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested.

But – and I wrote this three years ago – Christian tradition says that Luke was one of “the seventy-two” harvest workers Jesus sent out like “lambs among wolves” to spread his teaching (Luke 10:1-23).  Also – and again Luke wasn’t named – it was very likely Luke, according to early scholars, who was walking with Cleopas to the village of Emmaus (Luke 24:13ff) when Jesus appeared to them after the resurrection.

Even though the Bible doesn’t say either way, it stands to reason Luke met and knew Jesus, so, oops.  The “big picture” is that Luke knew the truth resides in Jesus.

Second, from April 10, The Wine, the Cup, and Communion described how the four Biblical accounts of the Last Supper and Communion (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts), never actually mention “wine.”  They don’t, but the point wasn’t wine; it was that Jesus described the contents of the cup as the “blood of the new covenant.”

Alertly, my good church buddy Don and savvy Current reader Michal were among those who sent emails citing Matthew 26:29, where Jesus, offering the cup, refers to drinking “this fruit of the vine” again in His “Father’s kingdom.”

“What could be in the cup except wine?” they wondered.  Fair question, and it stands to reason the cup contained wine.  Yet there are enough biblical metaphors surrounding “fruit” (e.g. Galatians 5:22-23, Matthew 7:16), “vine” (e.g. John 15), and “Kingdom” for an interesting conversation as to what Jesus meant beyond just wine.

But still, oops.  More precise writing would have maintained focus on the central point, which is that the “blood of the new covenant” is our shared life of faith in Christ.

I should have tinkered with those columns a little longer.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) and his friend Brent Riggs have been tinkering with Bob’s blogspot site, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com. Have a look.  Bob's book, Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary, is available at Amazon.com and Lulu.com.

Spirituality Column #284
April 24, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
Indianapolis North Metro Home Newspapers

By Bob Walters



And the truth rings clear in Acts 20:35: the blessing is in the giving.

Spirituality Column #283
April 17, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
(North Indianapolis Metro home newspapers)

The Saltiness of a Dogged Christian
By Bob Walters



I always thought that expression meant “common” in a good sort of way; that it was a compliment to one’s overall usefulness and humility to be called a “salt of the earth” type of person.

Turns out, it is a compliment, but not in the secular (non-God) way I had imagined.  Like so many Biblical words and phrases, “salt” has more than one meaning, more than one image, and is a scriptural co-terminus of both life and death.

In this verse of the Sermon on the Mount - chapters 5, 6, and 7 in the Bible’s Gospel of Matthew – Jesus tells his disciples that, just as salt is an indispensable necessity of life, they too are indispensable to the real life – the eternal life – of humanity’s New Covenant with God.

What salt does for food, the disciples were enjoined to do for the Kingdom of God.  “Salt” is a preservative that prevents spoilage – it “saves” food.  As a seasoning, salt enlivens the taste of food.  It would be the disciples’ role going forward to share their life in Jesus with the whole world; to be the salt of Jesus’s ministry.

Jesus isn’t the salt; Jesus is the life.  It’s we Christians who are to be the indispensable salt for the Kingdom of God; to preserve and enliven the truth of Christ for the world around us.  Salt also covers over the taste of tainted food – think “my sinful life.”  And, salt is a cleaning component – think “the cleansing power of Jesus’s blood.”

I truly never understood the importance of salt in world history until an article showed up in my email a couple of years ago noting that most early wars were fought and wealth was won over salt.  Whether it was access, ownership, or trade routes, salt drove commerce because it was both a multi-purpose substance and the only way anyone had of preserving food.

As for discipleship salt, I recently finished reading “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy”, Eric Metaxas’ superb 2011 biography of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed late in World War II by a defeated and bitter Hitler.  Now I’m reading Bonhoeffer’s 1937 theological classic, “The Cost of Discipleship,” which goes into some detail regarding the Sermon on the Mount, salt, and much else.

Bonhoeffer, who lived a full, determined, and exemplary – if shortened – Christian life to the very end was the very salt Jesus Christ called his disciples to be.

If you are curious what that looks like, these books are for you.

Walters (www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com, rlwcom@aol.com) quotes Bonhoeffer, “… disciples are salt … whether they like it or not.”