Spirituality Column #350
July 30, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #349
July 23, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

“… no mind has conceived … what God has prepared.”
                                                – 1 Corinthians 2:9, Isaiah 64:4

There are all kinds of things about Heaven I don’t understand.

But still, I don’t think popular or embellished church teaching about the recognizable tangibility of heaven is all that helpful in explaining what it actually is.  Our love, trust and faith in God makes Heaven a worthy, rational goal. Heaven’s adventure is in what we don’t know about it.

Neither do I think Heaven is transactional, i.e., “If you behave in this life, then you will go to heaven.”  When carefully examined this “quid pro quo,” i.e., “something for something,” winds up being all about “me and what I do.”  Eternity, suddenly, centers on my frantic efforts – Did I do enough? – rather than on God’s abiding grace.  Our shortcomings, real and perceived, result in guilt that displaces God’s love and grievously suggests a wanting faith.  I become the point instead of God’s glory being the point.  Heaven never should be dangled like a carrot on a stick; it’s about God, not me.

We can’t earn Heaven and, to me anyway, there is little point in trying to define it.  Jesus on the cross and our faith in Him is the only thing that makes us worthy of Heaven because that’s what the Bible says.

You can look it up – John 14:6.

Heaven is what it is, and God has it handled.  Whatever He does with it is better than anything we can imagine.

So, I’m a big fan of Heaven, just not a big fan of trying to explain what it is.  If we love God, praise Jesus, trust the Holy Spirit, know the Bible is true and love others, that provides sufficient context for anticipating eternal joy.

Nonetheless I am curious what others think about Heaven.  Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, described a fascinating go-round with death and heaven chronicled in his New York Times bestseller book, Proof of Heaven.

What I really like about the book is that it, better than anything else I can remember reading, puts science in what I believe to be its proper context regarding ultimate reality.  The Heavenly, God side of things, not science, is the real reality, Alexander writes, and it’s truly not something we can imagine.

Secular scientists, of course, blast Alexander’s book for its God-centeredness while many Christians blast the book’s biblical off-centeredness.  It is definitely not a treatise on John 14:6.

But regarding Alexander’s report that Heaven is more than we imagine, different from this life, and beyond our understanding?

To God’s glory, we can take all that to the bank.
    
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) observes what a surprise Jesus was.  Maybe Heaven tops that.

Spirituality Column #348
July 16, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

"No mere mortal could have dreamed up the dimensions of a baseball field.  No man could have been that perfect.” - Gideon Clarke in The Iowa Baseball Conspiracy by W.P. Kinsella

If one’s love of baseball spills into the spiritual realms of sensing the ineffable (inexpressible truth) and conjuring manifestations of hierophany (revealed sacredness) – or if one is just plain fascinated by the game’s rich characters and lore centered in the fabric of American culture – John Sexton’s Baseball as a Road to God is a book to read this summer.

Sexton is president of New York University.  He was formerly dean of the NYU law school, chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, a theology professor, earned an honors law degree from Harvard, and was clerk to Chief Justice of the United States Warren Burger.  He is a rare American college president who teaches a full schedule, including periodic seminars on religion and law.

For the last decade he has taught a popular NYU class titled “Baseball as a Road to God,” blending erudite literature and theology with America’s Game.

Sexton lived most of his life with a chipped front tooth sustained at age 13 in his Brooklyn basement when his friend Dougie exultantly fumbled the Crucifix to which they were praying when the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Yankees 2-0 in Game Seven of the 1955 World Series.  Physics drove the head of Jesus into Sexton’s mouth.

Sexton then weathered the soul-ripping departure of the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1958.  Years later, discerning it was “the right thing to do” in New York, he raised his son to be a Yankees fan.  Baseball gives us generational constancy with institutional memory.  It is hope and despair and hope again.  It is fathers and sons and daughters and moms.

Baseball is an American story.

The joy of this readable book is its melding of the realism and humanity of baseball suffused with the deepest mysteries of life.  It is a book that succinctly teaches the relevant history of the game, fascinates with salient trivia, and entertainingly investigates the spiritual complexities of human faith and doubt, of blessings and accursedness.

I had a field day with the theological aspects of the book, marking notes furiously in frequent disagreement with its focus on “religion” and random human belief rather than on Jesus Christ.  I would never connect Christian evangelical believer C.S. Lewis – ever – with modern liberal humanist theologian Paul Tillich, which Sexton does.

But baseball resides deeply in our American psyche and souls, and this book makes a lifetime of baseball memories flow like living water.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notices that the All Star game is tonight.

Spirituality Column #347
July 9, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

You can make a deal with the devil, but can you make a deal with God?

We like to think so, but really we can’t.  When we pray to God for help in our efforts to glorify Him, He hears and he cares.  But He’s also already given us Christ.  And that deal, the most important God-glorifying deal of all time, is signed, sealed and delivered, un-bargained for by humans.

Front to back in the Bible we see that God is all about His glory.  Satan, conversely, is all about robbing God’s glory.  To that end, Satan is happy to hear our pleas for personal primacy.  He’s always there hoping to intercept the call when we proposition God to bring us worldly success, ease life’s problems, or heal our human pains.  He wants our focus anywhere but on God.

Satan, we notice, bargains successfully with Eve in the Garden but unsuccessfully with Jesus in the wilderness.  Adam abdicated his duties to God either by not properly educating Eve about God’s instructions or by standing idly by – or not being there at all – when Eve was tempted.  Either way, humanity compromised God’s glory and the result was a fallen world.  How different it was that Jesus responded to Satan’s temptations with scripture and faith.  God’s glory was restored; the world would be saved.

It’s interesting that nobody in the Bible really bargains with God except Satan, who is trying to rob God of His glory.  The story of Job is a great example. But consider Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, the Prophets, Joseph, Mary – none of them approached God with a “deal.”  God used each of them for His own glory, on His own terms.  The teachable point is that their faith, trust, and obedience glorified God.

Jesus doesn’t bargain either.  The disciples were recruited, not interviewed.  Zacchaeus offers reparations to acknowledge God’s glory, not to bargain for Jesus’ favor.  When curious but proud Nicodemus flatters Jesus, Jesus responds not with flattery-in-return but with the truth of God’s glory.  The good thief glorifies God by identifying Christ on the cross.  Paul doesn’t bargain with Christ; He recognizes God’s glory and obeys.

The deal is, we follow Christ and He leads.  God is in control, grace is His gift, and our faith seals His covenant.  It’s not a negotiated bargain.

We can talk to God in the faithful language of God’s glory, or deal with the devil for our own worldly gain.  But we must understand the value of one and the cost of the other.

Either way, we’ll get more than we bargained for.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests Satan’s biggest lie is in encouraging us to believe we are in control, not God.

Spirituality Column #346
July 2, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

I feel fine, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about death.

The June/July issue of my favorite magazine First Things carried an article titled “Tragic Worship.” It’s about how modern Christian worship services often gloss over the doctrinal importance of death and judgment while favoring the up-beat, shined-up, feel-good, skim-the-surface culturally synchronous rhythms of “Jesus Loves Me” entertainment.

Hip, happy and hopeful may put people in the pews, but a faithful grasp of our human mortality and God’s righteousness is critical to Christian life.  Facing our Maker – i.e., God – is about our death, and God is the most important thing any of us face.  Death is a tragedy, sure, but tragedy is every bit as classically entertaining and often more instructive and real than comedy, drama or a concert.  We must realize there can be no resurrection without death; no truth without righteousness.  Good article.

Then, coincidentally, my pastor Rick Grover at East 91^st Street Christian Church (Indianapolis, Ind.) centered a thought-provoking Sunday sermon on Mark 6:14-26: the beheading of John the Baptist.  The crux of the message was that while we all pray for healing of sickness and deliverance from life’s problems, and sometimes miracles happen, even John the Baptist – prophet of God, cousin of Jesus Christ and with the disciples certainly praying for him – was not spared the executioner’s sword.

The lesson?  As we pray for healing and deliverance, we also had better be fully and faithfully prepared to trust God’s will, whatever it may be.

Then I learned that Mike Bolinger, a childhood neighbor and long-time attorney in my hometown of Kokomo, Ind., had died after a four-year bout with cancer.  That occasioned watching a YouTube video of Mike’s magnificent post-diagnosis testimony delivered to his Oakbrook Church in Kokomo about living life and facing death.  Mike’s message is stunning in its straightforwardness, insight, clarity, faith, composure and truth.  This is a video to watch and discuss with others.

I hadn’t seen Mike in 30 years but the video pictures him exactly as I remember him – smart, faithful, witty and matter-of-fact. It’s no surprise that such a gifted attorney would make a truly great witness.

Death is the worst part of church, no doubt.  But with the love of God, the truth of Christ, the comfort of the Holy Spirit and the fellowship of believers, church is also the only place that death can honestly, hopefully and properly be dealt with.

If death is going to find us anyway – and it will – let it find us at church.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) cites 1 Corinthians 2:9 regarding Heaven: God has it handled; we don’t need to try to define it.
Links: Tragic Worship article, Rick Grover sermon 6-16-13, Mike Bolinger testimony

Spirituality Column #345
June 25, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
 
The Bible’s Grasp of Touchy Subjects
By Bob Walters

Spirituality Column #344
June 18, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters
 
Perspicacity means “discernment; clarity of vision or intellect which provides a deep understanding and insight.”

Relevant to the topic at hand, it refers to “praying smart.”  Perspicacity is a good thing to have when approaching the Lord in prayer or petition.

Too often we pray solely because we want stuff.  Or we pray because we want stuff for other people.  And it may be good, legitimate stuff: healing for the sick, food for the hungry, peace for the distraught, success for the discouraged, a job for the unemployed, or God’s wisdom and comfort in dealing with a no-easy-out challenge.    Or even better than any of these, perhaps in our prayer we are asking Jesus to shine His light into a life and help us or others to accept Him as Lord and Savior.

Strictly by the book, these requests are more petition than prayer.  And petition is a fine thing, ordained by Jesus himself in John 14:14: “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”  Paul reassures us of this often, as in Philippians 4:6: “by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”  I can’t think of a more important petition than to ask for Jesus to come into our lives.

Understand, if John 3:16 is right and you can be assured it is, Jesus is already with us whether or not we ask for it, recognize it, or even believe it.  Praying to accept the gift of God’s grace and salvation in and through Jesus Christ is something better done today than tomorrow, without worrying about definitions of prayers or petitions.  When the spiritual lights come on and faith begins to illuminate our life, definitions become less important than quickening the hope and love of Christ we already possess.

As believers it is worth the time to examine our prayer life and discern whether it is mostly about asking God for stuff, i.e. petition, or mostly about recognizing God’s glory, sovereignty and goodness: that’s prayer, that’s praise, and that’s worship.

In “The Believer’s Prayer” (Acts 4:23-31) the disciples and believers pray to “speak the Lord’s word with great boldness.”  They are praying to God to be enabled to tell others about the majesty, truth and glory of Jesus Christ.  That’s a discerning prayer.

With perspicacity, we learn that prayer should be less about telling God what I need (He already knows) or how great I am (we aren’t), but recognizing what Jesus has done, how great God is, and praying that we can effectively pass the Word.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) apologizes, but “perspicacity” was the most precise and alliterative “P” word he could think of that fit this train of thought.