Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #829 (10-4-22), “What Do I Know?” When we understand that when we know Jesus we know God … we know a lot.  See the column below.  Oh ... and thanks to long-time friend Stan N. who was first to point out my typo last week regarding our mutual friend and mentor George Bebawi … George died February 2021, not 2001 as I had it in the mass email.  I might add … a lot of what I know is thanks to George.  Have a great week!  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #829

October 4, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What Do I Know?

By Bob Walters

“But whom do you yourselves say that I am?” – Jesus to the Disciples, Matthew 16:15

 Modern Christians spend an awful lot of time wondering if they are behaving like Christians. Or, judging if others are behaving like Christians.

Christianity worries about sin.  And salvation.  And “my rewards.”  And, “Am I going to heaven?”  Christians thank Jesus first and foremost for forgiveness, and for His perfect sacrifice on the cross.  “Wow!  You did all that for me? Thank you, Jesus!”

Such is the state of today’s broadband church.  The therapy of knowing one is saved, forgiven, going to heaven, and meeting Jesus is the great sales pitch and palliative of faith and social life with Christ.  The brass ring of the too-often misdirected contemporary church is that “I was bought at a price and now Jesus is my Home Boy.”

Well, Jesus is certainly my friend, and yours whether you accept Him into your life or not.  We are indeed all sinners and Jesus on the cross defeated our death by covering our eternal sins with His perfect blood.  Jesus did it for love, in obedience.

But let me insert here that I bristle a bit at the whole “paid the price” thing because as churchly ubiquitous as that idea is, the Bible doesn’t say it.  And while yes, the body and blood indeed metaphorically look like a “cost,” to whom is the “price” paid? 

To God?  Jesus is God.  No, He doesn’t pay Himself. And Peter doesn’t rob Paul.

Which brings us to today’s point.  Jesus rarely asks about a person’s behavior; He asks what they believe.  When we make “faith” about our behavior and rewards, we miss the actual prize: the comfort, peace, grace, and strength of life in Christ.  Jesus emphasizes obedience to his commands, which are to love God and love others

What we know through Jesus Christ isn’t simply “how to behave.”  What/Who we know through Jesus Christ … is God.  And we know that God is love.  Jesus’s sacrifice wasn’t a “payment,” a “price,” or a “trade”: it was God’s own gift of obedience and love.

Look at the Gospels.  Rather than relentlessly instruct human behaviors, Jesus relentlessly asks, inquires, teaches, shows, and presses the point onto humanity about His own identity.  He does it with words, miracles, knowledge, and authority … by faith.

Without “proof” or business cards or an “I Am God” name tag, Jesus’s mission on earth among humanity was to reveal God as a loving Father who sent His son to repair and restore our relationship as the Creation in God’s own image.  In our aggregate pride and sin, we lost that relationship in the fall of Adam and Eve.  Jesus came to tell us God was willing to give it back … if we trust, believe, and obey His son Jesus … in faith.

And Peter got it right, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Mt. 16:16)

The New Testament is the Holy Spirit’s gift to us – as is the Old Testament as well – to instruct us who Jesus is and how to live in this life with the love of Jesus Christ.

Remember of Jesus: “Who He Is” is the point, not “What we do;” works don’t save us.  We accept the grace and peace of Christ with our love and trust of God, and become beneficiaries of a life in Christ; Jesus already knows what it’s like to know God.

Jesus didn’t bring a new religion, he brought revelation of reality and the gift of us being able to know God.  Our eternal, image-of-God life and relationship are restored.

If that helps one’s behavior – and it should – so much the better.  That I know.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wouldn’t trade life in Jesus for anything; it’s priceless.

 Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #828 (9-27-22), “What Are You Waiting For?” Don’t shrink from the difficult teachings of Paul, nor dismiss his simple statements, either.  We are raised up and seated with God … even now.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #828

September 27, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

What Are You Waiting For?

By Bob Walters

“And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus …” – Paul in Ephesians 2:6-9

My Bible mentor George Bebawi used to joke that as much as he looked forward to meeting Jesus in heaven, he feared his first reaction to meeting the Apostle Paul might be to “catch (grab) him by his throat” and demand, “Why did you write such difficult things?”

I sat under George’s teaching for 14 years on Wednesday evenings at East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis, organizing class and formatting notes. This after George retired from the Divinity faculty at Cambridge University, England, in May 2004. 

Born Jewish in Eastern Europe – though he grew up in Cairo, Egypt and converted to a life in Christ in his late teens – George to me personified what I thought Paul might have been like: a brilliant, feisty, thoroughly educated Jew who later brilliantly – with force and authority – shared his faith in and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

I imagined George probably looked, and possibly even acted, like Paul.

George taught Paul’s letters – and many other things – with depth, clarity, and thematic discernment.  Paul’s Book of Ephesians, George maintained, was the first place a believing Christian should go to for a proper refresher course in Christianity 101.

That said, today’s specific passage in Ephesians 2 points to something crystal clear but obliquely overlooked by many believing, serving, loving, sincere Christians about salvation, forgiveness, and the “heavenly realms”: we already possess them.

We await the day of the Lord, our day of Judgement, and our entry into eternity as future events.  And they are.  But examine Ephesians 2, verse 6 – “God raised us up” with Christ “and seated us” with him in the heavenly realms.  It’s already real.

This “salvation” so many Christians anticipate in “the next life” is the salvation we already have – now – by being “born again” in Jesus Christ.  Paul says in Romans 6:10, “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive in Christ.”  Never overlook that … or wait for it.

Believers in Christ can live our lives now in the joy of Jesus.  Not by “betting on the come” of rewards and glory far off in another mysterious life and sphere, but in the vibrant, visible, eyes-wide-open reality of today, with thankfulness and full knowledge of instruction Jesus preached: to love God, love others, and to trust Him, Jesus, as Lord

Why? Because Paul says so in verse 6, and then says this in verse 7: “…in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus Christ.”  These coming ages are going to be quite a show.

But we know a piece of it now: these “heavenly realms.”  They are real, a part of our current existence, and because of Jesus’s resurrection, we know it for sure. Yet we doubt our worthiness: What about my sins and the icky parts of my life behaviors? 

Paul goes on (verse 8), “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God –”.  Do you wonder if you have earned this gift?  Don’t wonder … you haven’t.  See verse 9: “…not by works, so that no one can boast.”  Accept the gift, live the life, read Ephesians, and note the grammar.

The Bible covers past, present, and future, and Jesus covers our sin.  Already.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes: Non-believers are missing a large part of life. And ... George passed away in February 2021.  I'm curious how the meeting went with Paul.

 Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #827 (9-20-22), “Literally Challenged.” How do we explain to skeptics which parts of the Bible are literal and which are not?  Whew … great question.  See the column below.

Tip of the Week: We saw the “Running the Bases” movie, starring Gary Varvel’s son Brett.  Outstanding Christian fare.  Don would love it.  Larry needs to see it, but would not … love it, I think (see column).

Spirituality Column #827

September 20, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Literally Challenged

By Bob Walters

Last week we discussed my good neighbor Larry who is not a believer.  This week’s mental spark came from my close Christian friend Don (real name), who is.

Inviting a conversation regarding Larry, Don emailed, “[How do] you help a skeptic understand which parts of the Bible we take literally and which parts we don’t since it is clearly not all or none. Looking forward to a chat!”

I thought I’d go ahead and serve first since Don lives out of state and these types of conversations are clearly superior in person with the spirit, so to speak, than over phones, emails, or texts.  It’ll give both of us a launching pad next time we’re together.

First understand that Don is a longtime church elder including several terms as chairman.  He’s not really looking for advice, just sharing a common concern and question many believers – including me – ponder as we endeavor to explain our faith to non-believers.  Generally, that could be anybody, most especially to people we love.

The faithful reality of Christ in a thinking, human life is so simple – once you have it – that explaining it to someone else should be a walkover, i.e., something that is easy and presents no difficulties.  Here is what that might look like:

The Creator of everything sacrificially loves His Creation and gave His favorite creation, humanity, freedom to find its own love.  That love should be God, but instead humanity wanted to be equal with God and came to love itself on its own terms instead of God on God’s terms.  Humanity’s rejection of God’s supremacy created – and still creates – in humanity miserable sins, chaos, despair, vacant purpose … and death.

In other words, humanity, the problem, says the world is awful and there appears to be no reason to be here, or an escape.  That’s doubling down on hopelessness.

So God, the solution, to reveal and prove His love rather than merely punish humanity’s sin and denial – or destroy it – sent His creative, righteous, authoritative Word, His Son Jesus, into humanity to teach, to sacrifice, to die, and then defeat death.

So far so good, right?  I get it!  1 Peter 3:15 tells believers to live “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you.”  There it is.  God is love and Jesus proves it.  What’s the problem?  Just, behave.

Except … notice two things, one obvious, the other, not so much.  One, this is “believer language” from the Bible so it is authoritative and cites “reason” as God’s true north of human understanding.  Of course there is a God … etc. Just go with it.

But … not so fast.  “Reason” is the great, worldly (i.e., non-divine), academic, Satan-co-opted enemy of what, to a believer, is actually a very rational faith in God. 

“Rational faith,” a Christian intellectual reality, is a secular conundrum.

As for sorting out the Bible’s “literal” from “not literal”? The most importantly literal thing – the real, physical, death and resurrection of Jesus – is the truest and most important – yet most attacked – “literal” event in the Bible.  It’s why we worship Jesus.

But “proving it”?  A fool’s errand, I fear, and perhaps beside the point.  The point isn’t “literal,” the point is truth.  Trust the Holy Spirit to sort that out for the human mind willing to believe it.   The thing that saves us is faith, not facts.  Final answer.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows the Bible is true.  And that’s OK.

Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #826 (9-13-22), “Naturally at Odds.” Not everyone is a candidate for the Christian hard-sell, but sticking up for the truth is basic to Christian faith.  See the column below.  Blessings!  Bob

(P.S. – RE: Paragraph 4, I am now aware that the Colts tied at Houston, 20-20 in OT, and Will Power won the Indy Car title on Sunday at Laguna Seca. Cheers.)

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Spirituality Column #826

September 13, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Naturally at Odds

By Bob Walters

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist.  But at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.” – Werner Heisenberg, 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, theory of quantum mechanics.

I often run into my engaging and friendly neighbor Jeff on my evening walks with our little dog Kramer. Jeff is a sports fan, knows a lot about auto racing, has two kids in budding journalism careers, and was a college lecturer in philosophy and writing.

Jeff’s obvious life interests closely mirror my previous (and I might add, long ago) career in sports writing and sports / auto racing media relations, so our conversations are lively.  I’ve worked with a lot of people he’s read about.

Truth be told, while I stay in touch with a handful of good friends from my sports days, for the most part I truly no longer “follow” sports.  For example, as I write this on Saturday, I know it is the opening weekend of the NFL but have no idea who the Colts are playing, or where.  I couldn’t tell you who is leading (or won?) the Indy Car points.

As I mentioned last week, in retirement I now drive a school bus.  I still write a lot, and virtually all of my writing is about faith life in Jesus Christ: this weekly column, our weekly Mustard Seed Bible study packets, a monthly sermon / service at a senior living center, an occasional church communion homily, and various correspondence.

Plus, I’m reading all the time – virtually all of it “religious stuff” or cultural / political commentary.  Like Dolly Parton once said, “I have opinions about everything and everybody,” but here, to preserve the focus, we stick to the central topic of life in Christ.

Which brings us back around to my evening walks with Kramer.

Jeff is a wise, erudite, chatty, and world-worn guy … with no use for God.

We encounter folks often, don’t we, who are not candidates for the Christian hard-sell?  Jeff is one of those guys.  He knows of my Christian writing, but I think the only thing of mine he’s ever read is a Dale Earnhart obituary I wrote in 2001.  Jeff knows I believe in Christ and for now that’s enough.  We intellectually spar and laugh.   

In a recent evening chat Jeff mused, “You should talk to my brother,” who I was surprised to learn is a Christian minister … though in a denomination not noted for its, um, biblical precision.  My knee jerk question to Jeff was, “Does your brother believe the Bible?”  And Jeff’s (not his real name) knee jerk answer was, “Yes … but not literally.”

“Good Lord,” I responded.  “You’re not supposed to believe it literally.  Does your brother believe the Bible is true?”   “I suppose he does,” was Jeff’s smiling response.

Sigh.  That’s about par for philosophers; they think it is their job to be the definers and purveyors of truth, when that job belongs to Jesus Christ.  The Bible is stories, poetry, parables, metaphors, symbolism, allegory, history, God’s word … and the truth. 

But, “Jesus lived, died, was buried, and resurrected?” That’s one “literal” part folks reject, but the fact of the resurrection – its literal occurrence – is the cornerstone of faith, forgiveness, and salvation. If that’s not literal and true, there is no Bible or Church.

It’s an unfortunate development of the past 150 years, as theology has tried to compete academically with science, that “proving the Bible literally” has become a thing.

Faith is lived, not proven. It’s what philosophers would call a “category mistake.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) invited Jeff to church; Jeff still prefers CBS News.

Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #825 (9-6-22), “21 Years Ago.”  I hate getting up early but I love being up, and here is a tale of my life’s greatest wake-up call.  BTW, happy 35^th birthday (Sept. 5) to my elder son Eric in Utah.  Back in 8^th grade Eric asked, “Why don’t we go to church?”  And that’s why I was sitting in church that day 21 years ago (search the blog note at the end).

And now, the wake-up call.  God bless!  Bob

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Spirituality Column #825

September 6, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

21 Years Ago

By Bob Walters

“Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.” – Ephesians 5:14

In my retirement I drive a school bus out here in Fishers, Indiana USA.  On school days I’m up at a 6 a.m. alarm.

“School days,” when one has worked a normal civilian schedule for 30-plus years, are a happy blast from the past.  Weekends off, holidays off, school vacations off, summers off, and mini-celebrations on lucky snow days.  I never tire of snow days.

At the 6 a.m. alarm, sleep’s fog means I don’t always immediately know what day it is; I just know to get up, get going, and I’ll figure out the day soon enough.  I know my K-4 kids and their parents are looking for the bus at 7:13 a.m., and in my 10 years of answering that early alarm, I’ve yet to oversleep and miss an early route.

I have few fears in life, but oversleeping on a school day is one of them.

In my working vocation and career, I traveled a lot.  I was a sportswriter, then was in sports media relations, corporate communications, and various public relations enterprises in various places in Indiana, nationally, and abroad.  In those days, even when I had kids, it rarely registered when “school days” were.  My early morning challenge then was not just figuring the day of the week, but where in the world I was.

It’s easier now.  I wake up at home.  And while I really have never liked “getting up,” I treasure the accomplishment of “being up.”  On school days I get to see whatever sunrise God blesses Fishers with from the driver’s seat of a big yellow school bus.

Seeing the new light of day, the fresh but sleepy faces of wonderful school kids, and the relieved faces of parents as the bus loads and pulls away, is a mission.  An hour or so later I gather a squadron of slightly-more-awake and wonderful 5^th-8^th grade students. In the afternoon I take them all home.  Rinse and repeat; do it again tomorrow.

Our Fishers schools have already been in session for four and a half weeks, and Labor Day is our first “day off.”  I mention this because of all the days of awakening in my life (all of them so far – ha ha – and thankful for each one), the Sunday of Labor Day weekend annually is when I commemorate “waking up” to the reality of Jesus Christ.

It wasn’t like waking up for a work day, or a school bus.  It was waking up from an unknown slumber of absent purpose and undiscovered faith.  I was sitting in church looking for nothing, but suddenly, there it was: faith.  Despite the disorientation of not perceiving the new things I was seeing; confident light shined on truth I’d never known.

Sunday, September 2, 2001.  That’s my “Awake date” in Christ.  I knew almost nothing, as though waking up in a strange place.  It took days and months and years to learn about and understand this new life.  Jesus was real, the Spirit abided, and God loomed not as a threatening enforcer of things that were wrong about me, but as the coherent light of hope, goodness, and creativity that give life meaning, and forgiveness.

The Bible, previously an opaque mystery, became miraculously intelligible.  My faith family at East 91^st Street Christian Church formed and nurtured my Christian baby steps.  I was baptized November 18, 2001, marching onward to mature life with Christ.

I was lost, but now am found.  I was asleep, but now am awake.  I am alive.

Life is vibrant with the light of Jesus shining in it. Twenty-one years and counting.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) … search “awake” at his blog, CommonChristianity.

Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #824 (8-30-22), “Heart of the Matter.”  When we confine the heart of Jesus to “forgiving my sin,” we miss the heart of truly knowing God.  Be assured; Jesus provides both. See the column below, or at our blog CommonChristianity, or on social media.

Have a great week, and God bless … Bob

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Labels: Creator, forgiveness, John 13, knowing God, relationship, religion, sin, trinity

Spirituality Column #824

August 30, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Heart of the Matter

By Bob Walters

Is Christianity, at its Jesus heart, first and foremost about knowing God?

Or is it about God forgiving our sin and me being saved?

God’s gifts are many and magnificent, and perhaps it is impolite to rank God’s multiple purposes and lessons that Jesus presented to humanity.  We already know that God, in toto, is a whole and complete package / being / life / entity Who cannot be divided by my human caprices and preferences.  Just because I want God to be something I can define or stratify has no bearing on what God actually is.

But it’s fair to wonder: Who is God and What does He want … most?

God is the main event.  He is the first and only cause, and the uncreated Creator.  He is love in the eternal trinity relationship that includes Christ and Spirit. God is not the schoolhouse principal; He is not “daddy with a switch.”  He is Father-Son-Spirit-love.

He is God who put into our hearts and minds the questions, “Where did I come from?” and “Why am I here?”  Turns out “God” is the answer to both.  1) God created us in His image as a sentient, free expression of His love and His eternal life (see Genesis 1-2; or the entire Bible, really), and 2) our purpose is to know and share God’s glory.

I don’t think God’s main goal with Creating us was so He could forgive us later.

I think first and foremost God wanted us to know Who He is; He already knows us.  Then I think He wants us to love Him and love each other, the sum of Jesus’s two great commandments (John 13).  God is relationship, and relationship is what He invites us to join … with Him.  Sinners needed help with that, and that’s what Jesus did/does.

On its own, humanity seems to be a Creation unable to leave well enough alone. Exhibit A would be The Garden of Eden.  But that wasn’t a Godly flaw.  It was and is a feature of the free and creative creature God created.  As we ask questions and sort out answers, having a mechanism for mental sequence is helpful.  Hence, my inexact list.

Somewhere down near the bottom of what I’ve learned about Christ, I’d pencil in, “forgiveness of sin,” and below that, “start a new religion.”  Without forgiveness of our sin, our relationship with God cannot happen because of His perfect righteousness. None of us is perfect, but we tend to over-prioritize “fixing myself” and “what I get.”

Jesus came to give us life with God in the body of Christ, which we call the church.  And that Godly human life begins with humans knowing who God is.  Jesus came to show us God is real, and that God’s love, truth, goodness, and righteousness are divinely trustworthy.  God means business, and He means for us to know it.

With the help of Satan, humans figured out early on how to stray from God, to sin (see Genesis 3), and break the relationship God intended. Ever since, humans have shown neither reluctance nor inability to create religions, gods, philosophies, systems, myths, stories, and governments to explain or imagine control over their environment, or of forcing control over other humans.  Jesus did not come to control us with a religion or browbeat us about sin; He came to free us with surety of God’s love and eternal life.

The forgiveness thing had to happen … like putting tires on a car.  But the point of the car is the freedom and purpose of the journey and destination, not the tires.

Jesus proves to me that God is true and good.  Salvation is the wind in my hair.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is forgiven (like you), but his joy is knowing Jesus.

 Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #823 (8-23-22), “Brain Scan.”  We talk so much about behavior in Christianity; today let’s talk about God’s intellect and our thinking.  See the column below.  Have a great week!  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #823

August 23, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Brain Scan

By Bob Walters

“But we have the mind of Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 2:16

I was surprised to learn that the word “brain” does not appear in the Bible.  “Mind,” “soul”, and “spirit” show up a lot.  “Heart” is mentioned more than 800 times. 

But “brain”?  Evidently not a Bible thing.  Let’s talk about that.

This is one of those scriptural tidbits I stumbled upon while looking for something else.  I was searching commentary on Paul’s powerful “mind of Christ” verse.  My mission was to refute the behavioral overkill that is the focus of the modern church and explore the too-light treatment of the intellect of God as it manifests in humanity; i.e., the church of “feeling” vs. the church of “thinking.”  And … “brain” isn’t in the Bible?  Huh.

To me, brain power is the real power of God with which mankind is gifted through faith in Jesus Christ: an intellectual synergy with the Creator of the universe.  I truly do believe that faith in Jesus initiates as a matter of the heart (more in a minute), but the massive payoff for our creative intellectual existence – gifted by Christ – can be stated simply as this: knowledge that God truly exists, Jesus truly lives, the Spirit animates our multi-pronged connection with the divine, the Bible can be trusted, and we are loved.

For all the endless Christian therapeutic chatter about “doubt,” once the human heart lands on Jesus and opens the corresponding human brain to God’s intellect, human existence grows into the great heavenly realm of thinking with Christ.  

Mankind, as a matter of worldly pride and a false sense of self-sufficiency, too often – maybe overwhelmingly often – imagines a self-inflicted intellectual “depth,” assessing of knowledge: “I’ve got this; No God Needed.”    

It’s as if to say: “On my own … in my brain … I am sufficient.  I neither can nor desire to prove God exists, but am assured a god cannot broaden my mental acuity.  I’m already smart enough.  I can do clever things.  Give me a few minutes and I’ll invent a gadget, or work up a philosophy that explains to my satisfaction who God is supposed to be.  Give me a few more minutes and I’ll fashion a treatise on the truth of good, evil, right, wrong, and an overarching thesis on the way things ought to be.  God?  No need.”

That is too-common, worldly, human philosophy – spanning the ages, we might add – that ditches Godly relation and is ultimately – shall we say eternally – useless.

If there is one “worldly thing” (1 John 2:15-17) that God’s wisdom would indicate and recommend not attaching to our minds, it would be “wisdom” that does not include Jesus Christ. That empty wisdom goes nowhere beyond the finite dimensions of this material existence and its inescapable death.  And it steers nowhere near the heavenly realms: that ineffable but unmistakable experience of divine presence and truth in the here and now – for fleeting, precious, profound moments – when we touch God.

Our brains will not – cannot – be right with God until our hearts are right with Jesus. We have “the mind of Christ” when our hearts, in the conscience of Christ, are able to resist worldly, impermanent, and intemperate temptations, and to think anew.

“Repent,” at its Greek basic, means “to change ones thinking.” Paul’s mission at Corinth is to secure their hearts truly for Jesus so they may grasp the wisdom of God.

Heart change speaks to behavior and joy; Godly wisdom hastens the Kingdom.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures “Godly smart” is the best kind of smart.