Spirituality Column #324
January 29, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #323
January 22, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Understanding Christians and Christ
By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

May I recommend some holiday reading?

Martin Luther King’s Birthday:  If you’ve never read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” here it is the weekend of MLK’s birthday observance along with the upcoming 50^th anniversary of this famous treatise (April 16, 1963).  It’s a perfect time to read King’s sincere and instructive presentation of biblical principles to other Christian ministers.  This is not merely a faith-based political polemic; it is a doctrinal letter Christians should read and believers will understand.

King, we all know, was a flawed man.  But too many flawed Christians write off flawed men.  King’s theological argument for his civil disobedience is well stated in this biblically-based human rights manifesto for the ages.  The letter also teaches salient   historical nuggets, such as the reason 1963 was so active in civil rights: it had been 100 years since President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, and King perceived that very little real civil rights progress had been made.

America’s thinking Christians owe it to themselves to understand King’s biblical motivation and perspective of man’s formation and freedom in the image of God.  Google “MLK Birmingham.”

Presidential Inauguration:  And speaking of mankind’s freedom being formed in the image of God, I’ve recently read Marcelo Pera’s Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies.  As America inaugurates a president and tries to find its way as a nation through the seemingly infinite polarization between liberals and conservatives, this Italian philosopher and statesman utterly nails both the philosophy and reality of freedom.  Pera describes the absolute historical necessity of Christianity as a precondition for true political freedom to exist.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote the book’s foreword.  Pera’s highly readable and thoroughly footnoted 161-page work ably explains modern liberal thought, which is almost entirely secular, and how it bears almost no relation to classic liberal thought, which is almost entirely Christian.  This is a great group discussion book.

After Christmas: Have you ever wondered why Jesus was born in a barn?   My elder son Eric gave me (by request) for Christmas Ken Bailey’s 2008 book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes.  The book clears up many cultural misunderstandings about Jesus.  For example, our Western understanding of the Nativity (Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2) largely misses the reality of what happened in and around Bethlehem.  Bailey taught New Testament studies for 40 years in the Middle East and provides a clear and faith-assuring overview of the biblical Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) got the tip about the Bailey book from his pastor Rick Grover at E91, who had gotten the tip from Walters’ Wednesday night Bible study teacher George Bebawi.  Funny how life is a circle.

Spirituality Column #322
January 15, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

A lamentable yet inescapable fact of modern life is that non-believers and non-sharers of faith forthrightly reject meaningful public prayer.

Just read the relentless, frequent, and predominantly faith-rejecting mainstream media commentary – I saw two anti-Christian-prayer editorials during New Year’s week alone.  It’s not truth if you have no proof, seemingly sings the secular chorus.  Take your prayer life into a closet and stop annoying the rest of us while you’re making a fool of yourself praying to an invisible god, we are scolded.  After all, it is piously (and ironically) claimed, Jesus said so.

Congregants in the prayer-bridling “commentariat” cite Jesus’s words in Matthew 6:6: “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”  Elsewhere Jesus instructs those He has healed or who have witnessed His miracles to “tell no one.”  In His beautiful prayers at Gethsemane (John 17) prior to His arrest, trial and crucifixion, Jesus withdraws from somnolent disciples Peter, James and John (Mark 14:32-35) to pray privately to His Father.

Hence, Go pray in private.  Let’s examine that.

First, in Matthew 6:6 Jesus is adamantly telling the crowd not to pray as the hypocrites in the temples, who pridefully prayed loudly for their own glory, not reverently for God’s.  Immediately next, in Matthew 6:11, Jesus teaches the humble Lord’s Prayer, which begins with “Our Father” – note the plural, not singular, “Our” address of this most famous of prayers.  We pray to be in relationship with God the Father through Christ our Lord in the Holy Spirit … and with each other.  The entire Kingdom is involved.  Even “private” prayer is a community thing.

Second, Jesus’s mission on earth was to reveal and seal mankind’s salvation, not to trumpet that He was the Son of God.  Jesus knew that His miracles could overshadow His mission: restoration of mankind’s divine fellowship, not temporal tricks and comfort.  So He often said, “Don’t tell.”  Jesus’s actions, example, teaching, life, death, resurrection – now joined with scripture, prayers and faith – are the only, and in my mind entirely sufficient, “proof” we have.

Third, yes, Jesus regularly prayed by Himself.  But His primary instruction after His resurrection is in Matthew 28:19: “… go and make disciples of all nations.”  That is anything but an entreaty for exclusively private faith and prayer.  Two thousand years of Christian thought, scholarship, history and truth assure us that prayer and faith in Christ are always and simultaneously held in our own hearts and shared with our community.

Even the smallest faith and prayer can grow into eternity.  Why would anyone argue to keep that truth private?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) republishes old columns – “Classics” – for free on Fridays at www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com from his book Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary.
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Spirituality Column #321
January 8, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Spirituality Column #320
January 1, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Spirituality Column #319

Shopping for Innocence
By Bob Walters

Two carefree, local elementary school students happily hopped off a Friday afternoon school bus recently and their tearful mother fairly rushed the curb, hugging the bewildered children tightly and kissing them furiously.

Viewing the scene through my windshield and having been listening to the radio, I knew something the startled children didn’t: that their mother’s heart had melted-down with that day’s news of the Sandy Hook K-4 elementary school shootings in Newtown, Conn.

The bus’s red flashing stop arms held the moment: the mother’s children were safe; their world is not.  Not even at Christmas.

I caught the mother’s eye, nodded and touched my hand to my heart, a knowing, sincere salute to her fierce love and to the beautiful innocence of her children.  Emotion and tears came easily.  Is there any time of year when a child’s innocence is more valued and celebrated?

If we are selfish and frivolous, we will dwell on the inconvenience of this tragedy so close to “our” Christmas.  If we are circumspect and serious, we will add God’s message of Jesus Christ to our calculus of assessing both this tragedy and the holiday’s true significance.

We want Christmas to be gentle, but for God to be powerful and tough.  We want God to stop the bad guys.  We want him to protect us along with the people and things we love.  If Jesus was sent as God’s servant, then we want Him to serve us … now.

Ironically, our macro-culture is too modern and educated to believe all that religious nonsense, yet privately we are too desperate and confused to entirely discount God.  We shop for God “on sale” – on better terms for us with less at stake.  We eject God from our public midst but blame God for our troubles.  We opine, “God wouldn’t let this happen.”  Then we demand, “Well God, I’m waiting.  Fix this mess.”

We don’t know who is surrendering to Whom.

This Christmas my thoughts go to King Herod (Matthew 2).  He tried to kill Jesus but instead killed every other baby boy in Bethlehem.  Baby Jesus born in that Bethlehem manger is the innocence and righteousness that God truly desires for mankind, once the perfect image of His Creation but now fallen in sin.

Sadly, the innocent and the righteous are not protected from the fallen world’s viciousness and violence; look at what happened to Jesus on the Cross.  We are shocked at Newtown, but evil is nothing new.

It’s no wonder that we hug our innocent children tightly.

Oh, for a world where we hug Jesus even tighter than that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com) prays along with so many others for peace, mercy, comfort … and truth.  Have a merry and gentle Chistmas.

Spirituality Column #318
December 18, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

Shopping, Rebellion, and Surprise
By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary