Spirituality Column #437
March 31, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Lent, Holy Week and Easter are far less jovial than Christmas because the sacrifice, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ are far more serious.

Attaining the “Christmas Spirit” can be as simple as sharing gifts or offering a charitable good deed.  Easter …oh my, Easter insists we ask ourselves what we actually believe.  Easter shucks the shiny veneer off lighthearted, semi-serious Christianity.

I’ve seen and heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ presented and preached several different ways – with sin, guilt, shame, fear and threats; with works and prosperity.  With legalistic biblical nonsense, suspect prophecy, reckless abandon of biblical truth and reckless abandonment of God’s infinite grace.  I’ve heard shysters conflate the Old Testament with the New, suggesting one continuous covenant.  I’ve heard liars preach that God’s Word must be adjusted to agree with modern society’s appetites.

I gravitate toward preaching that lifts up biblical truth, exposes worldly falsehoods, and focuses on Jesus’s command to love God and others.  I truly believe in - but don’t worship - the Bible, the Cross, the Church, the Communion of Saints, and the reality of heaven.  I don’t worship people or things; I worship Jesus Christ because that glorifies God.  Worshipping anything else is idolatry.

Good preaching plays it straight when it comes to Easter:
     - God’s love is real and His glory enormous. 
     - Jesus’s sacrifice – also real and enormous – forgives sin but more importantly restores humanity’s communion with God’s Kingdom. 
     - The multiple mysteries of the Resurrection, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the glory of everlasting life and God’s love are the most holy things we can contemplate. 
     - Jesus commands “Follow me” not in man’s temporal sense of self-interest but in His own divine grace of self-denial (Mark 8:34). 

That’s our truth.

Jesus Christ divides history, into ““before” and “after; He does not divide God, God’s Kingdom or God’s Creation.  While the cross is the symbol of God’s loving, saving covenant with humanity, Jesus actually is that covenant.

The good movie currently out, “Do You Believe” provides a remarkably poignant, smart, emotional, helpful and I believe correct multi-dimensional experience of the many shades of today’s worldly life and Christian challenges. Do what you want with the preaching text of the movie, but when it comes to God’s hand, our faith, and the world’s mosaic of treachery and truth, danger and beauty, and emptiness and fullness, I bet you’ll recognize yourself somewhere in this story.

‘Tis the season to ask, “Do You Believe?”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) for years has had “Romans 8:28” as his cell phone banner.  Read the verse, see the movie, you’ll understand.  BTW, the actor who once played “Rudy” says, in this movie, “There are no miracles.”  How ironic.

Spirituality Column #436
March 24, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

“Knowing God is not just analogous to knowing what infinity is, since we can have some idea of that. No, the infinite God must be infinitely unknowable.” – from a First Things article by Steven H. Webb, “Is God Really Infinite?”

Perhaps in honor of “Super Pi Day” a couple weeks ago on the math-nerd high holy day of March 14, 2015 (3-14-15, Get it?  No? How about 3.1415? No? OK, I’ll explain in a minute) my beloved theological and cultural journal First Things posted an online article about God, math and infinity.

I admit to being one of the worst math students ever, but I remember from high school geometry that the value of “pi” – 3.14, the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference – is advertised as an infinitely non-repeating number.  Get the exact distance around a circle, divide it by the exact distance across the circle, and the ratio is 3.141592653… non-repeating on out to infinity.  The most intense math nerds memorize “Pi” to hundreds of places, to show off, I guess.  Basic “pi” is a practical calculation despite being what math uber-nerds know to be an irrational number.

And, according to this article, there are numbers even weirder than “pi.” “Graham’s Number” is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “largest number” (something about points and hypercubes; feel free to look it up) and helps humanity understand divine infinity. 

Uh huh.

Anyway, author Webb discusses mathematicians and theologians cross-pollinating the notion of an unknowable God (refer back to the introductory quote above).  That made me laugh, and sparked the entire idea for this column.

Here is something every Christian knows: God absolutely is knowable.  That’s the whole point of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Savior and King who is entirely, perfectly God and entirely, perfectly human; who indwells us with the Holy Spirit making God not an exercise in infinity, unknowability, irrationality or “otherness,” but an exciting exercise in loving, real, infinitely intimate though splendidly mysterious relationship.

If the Bible is true – and I’m here to tell you it is – then the only real point of Christianity is God’s glorious relationship with His Creation, and that which He created in His own image, mankind.  No relationship would be possible with an infinitely unknowable God.  Thankfully, the article ended in a better place:

“It is not quite accurate to say that God is infinite, but it would make some sense to say that our potential knowledge of God most certainly is.”

John 21:25, the last verse of the last Gospel, bears that out.

You can look it up.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reminds all that Palm Sunday and Easter are mere days away.  Consider: How do you know God?

Spirituality Column #435
March 17, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

            - An opinion is what someone believes or thinks.

True enough, but that’s it: Facts and Opinions.  I’d think a line or two about truth, loyalty, freedom – oh, and how about God? – would be entirely appropriate social and educational talking points, especially in America.  Facts and opinions are a tiny little corner of God’s great cosmos of thought and discovery, but God’s great cosmos is expelled from today’s educational menu.  The higher academy – where reside the really, really smart people – has arrived at the notional terminus instructing society that Truth is unknowable, loyalty is relative, freedom is “if it feels good, do it,” and religion – “God,” if you must – is just plain silly.

The insinuation here, the subtle and nefarious instructional arch-purpose, is to restrict the earliest intellectual options of young brains to facts (presented as having their own on-board authority) and opinions (which don’t).  It is the great philosophical conundrum of our time: opinions require authority, but opinions have no authority.

Translation: “Don’t Bother Me with Your Opinion (unless of course it agrees with academia’s non-God worldview)”, or corresponds with academically favored, politically correct but entirely non-biblical “social justice,” which is the zenith of authority without authority: it’s how I make my opinion normative and make your opinion hate speech.

(Non-biblical?  That’s right.  “Social” justice isn’t in there.  “Justice is mine sayeth the Lord” … often – Deuteronomy 32:35, Isaiah 61:8, Romans 12:19, Hebrews 10:30).

Dismissing God’s truth, the wisdom of Jesus Christ, the assurance of the Holy Spirit and the Bible’s overarching tutorial of man’s relationship with God and each other, education has devolved into an amoral, dangerous morass of facts and opinions.

Consider: truth and justice are hollow without God; God’s now largely gone from schools; there is a shallow but broad educational preeminence of “fact” and “opinion,” and truth is a renegade concept.  One might discern a pattern.

Post-modern mankind champions the negation of God, elevation of man, and dissolution of common sense as it sallies blindly forth into spirit-killing self-absorption.  What’s missing?  Objective, eternal, Godly authority, the kind that only faith in Christ can properly discern and only God’s love can properly dispense.

So it is the job of school to teach truth?  Didn’t it used to be?  Truth is the gift of Jesus and the job of parents, families, and churches.

Of these, schools are the only things modern society admits are necessary.

And that’s too bad.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has many opinions and is annoyingly armed with countless facts.  For truth, he seeks Jesus.

SPECIAL ... Since it is St. Patrick's Day, here is a link to a column from 2010
Bars Closed on St. Patrick's Day  which appears in my book, available at

Spirituality Column #434
March 10, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

What an encouragement it was to open a recent Friday Wall Street Journal and find its diverse “Houses of Worship” column dedicated to Richard John Neuhaus and the 25^th anniversary of First Things magazine.

I’m a longtime First Things subscriber.  My Christian mentor and dearest of friends Russ Blowers, who died in 2007, first put me on to the conservative theological and cultural journal when I was new in my walk with Christ.  We shared its articles often.

The name First Things comes from the Christian faith imperative of “keeping first things first” – keeping the glory and love of God, the primacy of Jesus, and the presence of the Holy Spirit at the forefront of all human endeavor.  Sure, we should – we must – love God, love others, find comfort in the Holy Spirit, seek peace in the truth of Jesus, recognize the glory of God, pray, go to church and read, study and know the Bible.

But to help thoughtful Christians understand this crazy world, nothing beats First Things.

Neuhaus was a Catholic priest who converted from Lutheranism in 1990, the year he started First Things.  His 1984 book The Naked Public Square came during that year’s presidential campaign and took aim not at the secular, progressive left but at the fundamentalist Christian right which he saw as dangerously defining Christianity away from America’s traditional and unique democratic society and into a potentially theocratic morass of separatist, freedom-squelching Christian contradictions.

It’s a little counter-intuitive, but I see his point.  The one thing I never, ever want the government to ask me or anyone else is “What kind of Christian are you?”  Not if government has the power to tell me, “You’re the wrong kind of Christian.”  That doctrinal / political dynamic is why Sunni and Shiite Muslims are murdering each other – along with countless Christians and other non-Muslims – around the world.

Lest Evangelicals doubt Neuhaus’s bona fides, in 1994 he joined Chuck Colson and several religious scholars to pen the treatise “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission of the Third Millenium.”  A brilliant work.

Neuhaus died in 2009.  He was an unapologetic proponent of the idea that “the strongest argument for individual human rights is the Judeo-Christian tradition’s foundational conviction – that we are made in the image of God.”

Those are the words of Neuhaus biographer Randy Boyagoda, who penned the WSJ column.  First Things is not a light read, and I guarantee you’ll not agree with everything in its pages.  I don’t.  Even its wonderful editor Rusty Reno doesn’t.

But for sure, it will make you think.  And that’s a blessing.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) also likes the Friday WSJ’s terrific crossword puzzle.  For more on today’s topic, see FirstThings.com.

Spirituality Column #433
March 3, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

A person passingly familiar with the Bible could mistakenly think Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament contains scripture’s most dismal, depressing and hopeless message.

Repeatedly the book’s narrator, seemingly an aging, bitter King Solomon – but maybe not – instructs: “Everything is meaningless.”  Every skill, trial, pleasure, success, labor, achievement and ambition – “everything under the sun” – is meaningless.  Humanity is consigned to exist “dust to dust” (Eccl 3:20), we are only “chasing the wind” (Eccl 4:6), and live with “hearts full of evil (Eccl 9:3).

Ugh.

A person more familiar with ‘60s pop culture than biblical truth may very likely know that the lyrics to the Byrds’ 1965 No. 1 song “Turn, Turn, Turn (to Everything There is a Season)” are a direct lift from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. But the tune wasn’t written as a hymn; it was a 1950s peace anthem written by American folk musician, anti-war activist and 1940s Communist Pete Seeger.  Lifted out of context, the lyrics intone a secular mission for mankind, not a call of praise and acquiescence to the will of God.

Good song, but “meaningless under the sun”; definitely not religious.

A true student of the Bible understands that Ecclesiastes is a brief but powerful statement of all creation’s ultimate truth: that only God’s glory is truly important.  This is the narrator’s wisdom, not curmudgeonly bitterness.  Only our actions that honor and reflect God’s will, glory and love make any lasting, eternal difference.

That’s a hard truth because I, we, all of us so desperately want to be important, make a difference, control destiny and work our own plan.  Ecclesiastes tells us to forget it; God has the only plan.

And hallelujah!  There are wonderful hints of God’s great plan for the salvation of mankind right there in Ecclesiastes, an Old Covenant text that stealthily foreshadows the coming New Covenant’s healing work of Jesus Christ that we learn about in the Gospels and New Testament.

For all that Ecclesiastes tells us “doesn’t matter,” and for all the earthly iniquities of both the righteous and the wicked – bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people (Eccl 8:14) – it also tells us that when we accept God’s authority, our ultimate gift of acceptance by Him is ours (Eccl. 9:7).  What we learn later in the New Covenant is that Jesus Christ is that gift, and in Him we are accepted – fallen as we are – in His unending righteousness.

It’s shortsighted to dedicate our lives to “everything under the sun” when we can attain greater fullness of God’s Kingdom in Jesus Christ.

I swear it’s not too late.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is aware that “acceptions” is not a real word; it just seemed to work here.

Spirituality Column #432
February 24, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

Spirituality Column #431
February 17, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

On a spring Sunday centuries ago, the impromptu crowd cheered wildly as the peaceful, miracle-working young priest humbly rode into town on a donkey.

Palms and cloaks were laid in the man’s path.  Triumphant voices of common people raised glorious hosannas and hallelujahs.  On this next day after the Saturday Sabbath, the much-talked-about but mysterious Jesus arrived in Jerusalem.  “This is the son of God,” many believed.  “This is our savior; the Christ, the Messiah promised by God and the prophets.”  They knew of His startling teaching many had heard, and His miracles many had seen.

He healed the sick, raised the dead, talked of living water, life everlasting, love, freedom and the Kingdom of God.  Crowds followed Him.  Jesus fed them, loved them, taught them, challenged them, and comforted them.  He routinely, amazingly, outwitted and out-argued the Jewish leaders.  He suffered no fools.  He cried for the weak.

Jesus, sent of and by God, was the end of oppression, the beginning of true life, the fulfillment of freedom and the deliverance of God’s promised salvation.  The cheering people sensed things were about to change.

If only the people themselves hadn’t stayed the same … as before.

Within days the welcoming crowd was a jeering mob clamoring for Jesus’s death.  Unwilling to accept on faith the truth of His divine identity and purpose, people saw only their own fallen, fearful and self-centered desires.  Jesus had not matched their worldly expectations.  How could this miracle-performing Son of God now bleed as a beaten prisoner of both the fearsome religious leaders and the hated Romans?

The crowd possessing such great joy and hope on Sunday had lost its faith by Friday.  Consumed in their abiding self-interest, people did not understand the message Jesus was preparing to die to deliver.  When presented the choice to save Jesus or save Barabbas – the terrorist, traitor and murderer – the people chose Barabbas, the devil they knew instead of the savior they didn’t (Mark 15).

Barabbas – ironically in Hebrew, “bar abbas” means “son of the father” – represents our worldly appetites, sin and fear, personifies mankind’s flair for self-destruction, and is a caricature of our common human inability to discern the true good.  Familiarity beats faith; evil trumps virtue.  We ignore the true Son, Jesus.  We get mad at the true Father, God.  Faith wanes, and we embrace the familiar Barabbas who cannot, will not – and has no desire – to save us.  We obey man’s anger; we shun God’s love.

Tomorrow begins Lent, the season of contemplation and sacrifice leading to Easter and the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, who is so alive among us.

So what?  So is Barabbas.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows Barabbas by many names.