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Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
By Bob Walters
Published November 28, 2011, a five-year compilation
of these weekly columns (260 columns, 2006 - 2011)
with a foreword by Dr. David Faust, president of
Cincinnati Christian University.
Contact Bob directly at rlwcom@aol.com

Praying for Grandma's Gravy

Spirituality Column #263
November 22, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Praying for Grandma’s Gravy
By Bob Walters

Thanksgiving dinner can be one of the spiritually richest and most comforting gatherings of the year – God’s bounty on our plates, loving family and dear friends at our reverently bent elbows.

Or, it can be a prickly, uneasy theatre of differing and generally incompatible intra-family opinions on relationships, culture, government, and God … simmering like grandma’s gravy that everyone hopes doesn’t get scorched by excessive heat or fractured by inattentive stirring.

Scenario One will likely have a rich pre-meal prayer of thanks for overflowing goodness and fellowship and abundance. It may or may not be a specifically religious prayer because not everyone’s spirit is connected, in an aware way, to a specific faith system. But don’t most of us just know, deep inside, that saying “Thanks” on Thanksgiving isn’t just an expression of appreciation? It’s an affirmation of the existence of God … whatever we understand that God to be. We look around the table, with love, and know that truth exists. God must be here somewhere. We are thankful.

Scenario Two can lead to the guests primarily being thankful when the meal is over and the ride home has begun. Even if family squabbles and political dissonance can be laid aside, the issue of whether God has a proper place at the table is a significant bellwether of enjoyable fellowship. This much I know from my own experience as a non-believer – it feels real weird to pray to a God you truly do not know.

During the 30 years of my life I didn’t go to church, I wasn’t mad at God; I simply didn’t know him and didn’t really care. I know many people today who gave up their faith “for cause.” It might have been a church scandal, the personal sleight or transgression of an insensitive Christian, or the feeling of abandonment by God. To some people, the whole “God” thing just seems stupid. Often, non-believers are simply ambivalent.

I would urge my Christian brothers and sisters to gird up for Scenario Two by praying deeply for understanding, wisdom, courage and patience. We can never argue our faith into another soul; we can only be an example another soul could choose to emulate. And remember … most people don’t have a problem with Jesus; they have a problem with Christians, the church, or “religion.” You’re an ambassador for all four.

Keep “grace” – the pre-meal prayer – simple, but pray clearly with the conviction that thanks is something truly worthy to give to God. It’s the sincerity and the love that you show to God and to others that will rub off on the souls of lost loved ones.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) advises praying for people by name. It works.

WWJD? - No Ifs, Ands or Buts

Spirituality Column #262
November 15, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

WWJD? – No Ifs, Ands or Buts
By Bob Walters

Christians ask “What Would Jesus Do?”

A better question is “What DOES Jesus Do?” An even better question is “What does Jesus do that is a model for my life?” And an even better question than that is “What IS Jesus doing in my life right now?”

Asking what Jesus “would” do splits a couple of linguistically problematic hairs.

A common critique of “WWJD” is that it comes dangerously close to putting “me” in the place of Jesus. Becoming “like” Christ (Philippians 3:10), and actually being Christ, are two vastly, massively and dramatically different things. Jesus commands us to love God, not to be God (thanks to Satan, Adam and Eve learned that one the hard way). Jesus said, “Remember me,” not “Be me.” Be careful.

Also, the word “would” signifies what grammar class calls a subjunctive mood or “conditional” phrase; it implies “if” and introduces doubt. Jesus is not an “if,” He is eternally God and human. Sectarians debate the “nature” and personhood of Jesus after the resurrection but the Bible says He is eternally fully God and fully man.

That’s the final answer, mystery and all. “Jesus is,” not “Jesus if.”

Certainly our earthly, human lives are full of subjunctives, contradictions, ifs, ands, buts and maybes. I project my worldly pride and fight for my “rights” yet often realize later, I’m not in the right. Other people see my failings, which robs my integrity, and I hate when that happens.

Jesus had perfect integrity and never wavered in his responsibility. Not one thing about Jesus was “proud” but everything about Jesus had integrity. Jesus came as a servant (in Greek, dulos, “slave”) without pride or rights, only responsibility to God. He was steadfast in that integrity, and the prideful Pharisees and many others hated Him for it.

If we are shooting for “like Christ,” the starting line is to emulate the integrity of Christ’s commitment to God.

On the up-side, “WWJD” very importantly puts Jesus in our lives today, as in … “What Would Jesus Do … right now?” We don’t “carry that old rugged Cross” because of what happened, like the hymn says, “On a hill far away.” We carry our cross today because Christ is alive today, and because what Jesus did “once for all” with grace and passion on the Cross perpetually restores our eternal human relationship with God the Father … a relationship that perpetually renews with our ongoing faith in Christ.

Jesus is never past tense, and is never woulda’, shoulda’, coulda’.

Jesus is “I am.” Right now, and forever.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) observes that pride and rights are almost always about “me,” and that integrity and responsibility are almost always about God.

© 2011 North Faith Publishing

Dividing Politics and Religion

Spirituality Column #261
November 8, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Dividing Politics and Religion
By Bob Walters

On this off-year Election Day, let’s take an off-beat tour of America’s mix of church and state. The Bible gets first “ups.”

Jesus separated church and state long before the eighteenth century secular humanists identified and attached the inalienable rights of man to modernity. Rights, by the way, are not in the Bible; responsibilities are.

One can consider the entirety of the New Testament and understand the unique moral and creative wholeness of Christian freedom in Jesus Christ.

Or, one can take the common Gospel verse “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:12:17, Luke 20:25), and see that Caesar (specifically here “Caesar’s money” or euphemistically “Rome’s man-made government”) and God play on different teams.

The apostle Paul declares the primacy of our “citizenship in Heaven” (Philippians 3:17, 20), but also invokes his own Roman citizenship in order to be heard (Acts 21:39) and then not to be executed (Acts 22:22ff). In Romans 13 Paul says government is ordained by God and that if we “owe taxes, [then] pay taxes” (verse 7).

While Paul seems to indicate the scary proposition that “Government is God,” he doesn’t, and it’s not. Jesus Christ is God, and Jesus plainly says that while both He (Jesus) and we (Christians) are “in the world,” neither He nor we are “of the world” (John 15:19, 17:14, 16). Christ commands that God is first, and that we are to love God and our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 19:19), and even to love our enemies (5:44).

What the United State Constitution and all it amendments describe is a political context within which the creative freedom of man and the God-ordained morality of “love others as we love ourselves” can prosper and thrive. Over 224 years they have mostly – though not always – thrived, but it is only in the Christian moral context that this kind of document is possible.

Democracy demands moral responsibility, which is different from the “fair” (read “blind”) application of “religious freedom” the secular modern world mistakenly equates and jingoistically describes as “all religions are the same.” They, um, aren’t.

Moral discernment is the first casualty of secularism, which replaces God’s moral truth – Jesus Christ – with man’s moral relativism.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “Under God” we enjoy freedom and defend a “government of, by, and for the People.” It certainly can and will “perish from the earth” lest we understand, and understand soon, the indivisible equation of our citizenship both in Heaven and as Americans.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recently read about and laments Europe’s cultural disestablishment of Christianity. He is sure we’ll either learn from Europe’s example, or die the same spiritual death.

Why and How: The Limits of Love

Spirituality Column #260
November 1, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Why and How: The Limits of Love
By Bob Walters

We look at God and ask “Why?”

We struggle with faith and ask “How?”

Why should I believe? How can I know?

The Bible says much about why (For God so loved the world …) but not much about how. God could, so he did. Why? To be glorified and because He loves us. But, how did He do it? Why does it matter? Why did He bother?

Conversely, church is full of “how” but not much “why.” Do this, do that. Pray, read the Bible, repent and be baptized, obey, go to communion, make disciples, tithe, serve, show up. Repeat. That’s how. Amen. God said so.

But why? Why so many churches? There’s only one Father-Son-Holy Spirit. Why so many doctrines? John 14:6 plainly quotes Jesus Christ: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

But how? “Tell me why, Lord,” we beg, “and I’ll believe. But first, tell me how I’ll know!”

We’re desperate for faith and plead for answers. But we overlook the obvious. The Bible gives us a perfectly clear picture of who God is and what God does.

Our God is a God of action and stories and creativity; a God of life and love and courage and good. He’s a God of communion and relationship and freedom and doing for others. He is forgiving, fearsome, freeing and just. He is a God of accountability and generosity, of judgment and peace, of authority and purpose, of mercy and grace.

God is with us, about us, for us and in us. He created us. Jesus Christ His son is the author of all knowledge, the truth of all things, and the servant of all creation. He’s both “out there” and “in here.” The Holy Spirit is God’s light in our reverent lives and comfort in our human challenges. God is eternal and unrelenting. He pursues us.

What do we do? We get stuck at “why” and “how.” Rather than worshipping a great God of Love and Hope in faith, we worship the diminished idols of Why and How in knowledge. We focus on us, blur Jesus Christ, and Satan is all for it.

When we demand finite answers to God-sized questions, we limit faith. We also limit truth, stray from grace and lose focus on the awesome splendor, grandeur, bigness and everything-ness of God.

Love God, and love others … and limitations go away.

Not that anyone besides Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is counting, but this marks five years – 260 straight weeks dating back to November 7, 2006 – of filing this Christian column for Current newspapers. Thanks to all. A book is on the way. - Buy Book at Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Boo! Angels and Where They Find Us

Spirituality Column #259
October 25, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Boo! Angels and Where They Find Us
By Bob Walters

“You’re going to love this story!” a Christian co-worker recently exclaimed.

I knew immediately this was a Kingdom faith story. A non-Christian would have said, “You’re not going to believe this, but …”

Anyway, my co-worker’s brother Mike (also a believer), slipped and fell – hard – the day before outside a busy gas/convenience store in a small northeastern Indiana town. Mike was numb from the neck down, tingly all over, and unable to move. A friend comforted Mike, told him to lie still, and dialed 9-1-1. A crowd gathered.

Amid the confusion, seemingly out of nowhere, a woman appeared. Telling Mike’s friend she was a nurse, she knelt down, stroked Mike’s hand and quietly, clearly assured him, “You’ll be all right.” Then she walked away.

Everyone’s attention was focused on Mike. The “nurse” came and went without being recognized. Immediately after she left, Mike’s feelings began to return. When the paramedics arrived, Mike was fine.

Certainly, it’s possible the injury was less severe than initially thought. And having been around sports injuries and charitable paralysis foundations, I know “stingers” can come and go quickly.

Or not. A small town and nobody recognized the nurse? She left before the ambulance arrived? (Most nurses would stay.) Mike’s paralysis disappeared just like she did? Gotta’ be a God thing; an angel moment.

My wife and I had a similar “close encounter” this summer when our right-rear tire exploded on northbound I-465 nearing the I-69 high-speed connecting ramp in heavy traffic at 10:30 on a Saturday night. Driving in the middle “thru” lane with no sane way to get to either shoulder, we were forced into the most dangerous place imaginable – that striped, “V” shaped no-man’s land in front of the ramp-split crash/runoff zone.

Needing not to stay there, we crept a hundred yards down the I-69 ramp (not the way home), still situated horribly: on the narrow left shoulder with a disintegrated right-rear tire exposed to whizzing traffic scant feet away. We had a flashlight and a spare tire, but no jack, tire iron or lug wrench (long story).

Suddenly, the way I like to tell it, “Jesus showed up.” A slight, scruff-bearded man in dirty work clothes stopped his old, rusted compact car, backed up the ramp’s left shoulder, dug through his cluttered trunk for loose tools and scattered sockets, grabbed his jack, and changed our tire crouching perilous inches from the speeding ramp traffic. ‘Said he usually drove a tow truck – in Noblesville. With my profuse, astonished thanks and $30 he didn’t ask for (all I had on me), he drove off.

I just love that story.

Walters (email rlwcom@aol.com) encourages people to tell angel stories this Halloween instead of ghost stories.

Fate is a Fickle Fashion

Spirituality Column #258
October 18, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Fate is a Fickle Fashion
By Bob Walters

Fate, which rationally explains nothing, is often the secular world’s crutch for explaining everything.

It’s a great way to blame God without, you know, actually believing in God.

The ancient Greek, Roman and other cultural mythologies typically cast the Fates as three goddesses of 1) things that were, 2) things that are, and 3) things that are to be. Intricate stories and great epics were written around past, present and future favors, curses and justice visited on various characters by the Fates.

Mankind has always wanted explanations and answers, and the less culpability any one person has for his or her specific actions, the more comfortable the theology. Fate today is the land of “stuff happens,” “it is what it is” and “it’s not my fault.” That’s not exactly a theology but it certainly is a highway to blissful unaccountability, tort-happy lawsuits, and maybe even spiteful, generational victimhood.

“Don’t blame me” is fate’s bumper sticker; “I’m going to blame something else” is its implicit message. “Don’t talk to me about God” is fate’s no-fly safety zone.

Faith – specifically Christian faith – puts God in our midst with the incarnate humanity of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Bible, the church, and the immutable faith in my heart are exhibits A, B and C for the enormity of the Godhead against the smallness of fate.

A living God really complicates and messes up the blissful ignorance of fate-focused living, for faith in God requires much that fate does not. Faith in the Trinity takes commitment, study, action, creativity, wisdom, willful intent, patience, perseverance, humility and total personal involvement.

Fate requires none of that. It asks only resignation, diminishing life by destroying hope and limiting dreams. Whether life seems good or bad at any particular moment or over any stretch of time, ugh, it’s stifling to think, with fate, “this is all there is.”

For all of its demands, faith’s greatest gift is joy – the long-term condition of hope, peace and trust in the goodness of the Creator God no matter how crazy life gets.

It’s puzzling to me how the non-believing world can so comfortably and fashionably believe in fate which can only hurt them, yet refuses to believe in the grace of Jesus Christ, which can only help them. “Fate” is accepting the work of the lord of this world, and that lord, my friends, is Satan.

Satan wants us to worry about explaining everything; knowing our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the peace not to.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) sees belief in God as both rational and reasonable, albeit indefinable. Some conundrum, huh?

Kicking Around Notions of Belief

Spirituality Column #257
October 11, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Kicking Around Notions of Belief
By Bob Walters

Here’s a recent newspaper quote from an athlete who came off the bench and made a humongous play to win a humongous game:

“I believed in myself. I said a little prayer … and it went in.”

Kudos to the athlete’s success. What an admirably innocent and humble comment. I’d never criticize an athlete who is that sincerely succinct.

Yet, a question leapt into my mind because that particular sentiment – “believed in myself” – is omnipresent in our culture, and prayer is omnipresent in our souls. So I wonder: If one truly believes in oneself, to whom does one pray?

Let’s consider the magnitude of our cultural and educational bluster about the sovereignty of rational thought, self esteem, and the removal of God from public sight. We are cheered on by our secular institutions to irrationally “believe in me,” but under no circumstances is it tolerable in a public institution to pray to God … and mean it.

Pity, because God is where the real action is.

Secular irony brooks no boundaries. For all of modern culture’s self-glorifying bravado – “I believe in me,” “I am special,” etc. – our secular institutions just as vigorously attack the notion that any one of us actually is special. That’s because truly special requires God, and God is generally outlawed if not outright ridiculed.

Look at public school and university science classes, desperately teaching the reasonableness of a universe that – they swear – happened for no reason. “Life is totally an accident, but you’re special.” Huh? Really? Schools teach facts and things, but shy away from truth. To wit, “God? Oh, that’s just your opinion.”

Imagine a public schoolroom where the self-esteem poster says: “The eternal Creator God took an intentional, special, eternal moment to specifically form you in your mother’s womb so He could love you, prosper you, and make it possible for your life to glorify His holy existence. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to save you and His Holy Spirit to comfort you. Trust this: You ARE special. God says so. Believe Him.” Powerful.

The modernists – the intellectuals running our academic institutions under the premise that man’s knowledge supersedes God’s knowledge – would panic, weakly wheezing “You are special” but lacking God’s authority, ability and passion to prove it. (Postmodern intellectuals would dismiss all knowledge and specialness, period, but that’s another column.)

What is revealing and reassuring about the athlete’s quote above is that regardless how much we “believe in me,” most of us down deep crave the peace of even a little – but honest – prayer to the God who made us.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) longs for a day when “I pray to God” means more than “I believe in me.”

My Way or the High Way

Spirituality Column #256
October 4, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

My Way or the High Way
By Bob Walters

- “Regrets, I’ve had a few … but, I did it my way.” – Frank Sinatra (actually, Paul Anka)
- “What’s past is prologue.” – Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1
- “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.” – Leroy “Satchel” Paige
- “Go in peace.” – Jesus Christ, Luke 7:50

Regret, fate and fear rob us of the blessed peace we should experience in Christ.

Sinatra’s trademark ballad "My Way" – actually a 1960s French tune with American lyrics written later (presumably “his way”) by Paul Anka – is a beautiful song with the worst possible message; the perfect anthem for the postmodern, Christ-free world of “I’ve Gotta Be Me.” Why? Because there is no salvation in doing things “my way,” only in doing them God’s way that is taught in the Bible, with faith in Christ.

“My way” is the fallen human way, and that is not good.

Even though I’m married to an English teacher whose college minor was Shakespeare, I always thought Marx or Nietzsche or Kant – not the Bard – authored this familiar “past is prologue” quote. Oops. Turns out this statement rationalizes an upcoming evil act (murder) and insinuates our human helplessness against the fates.

It’s tragic how much more readily we accept a shortsighted statement of human fate than an eternal statement of divine faith. “Fate,” apparently, absolves us of our human responsibility (whew!), while Christian faith ties us directly to our responsibility (bummer!). But there’s a huge problem: fate eliminates freedom, choice and hope, making us powerless slaves. Faith in the saving work of Christ on the Cross, however, sets us free from our sinful past, our hurting present, and promises us, one day, of a sinless eternity. Christ is the true engine of ultimate human freedom, and that is good.

Modern psychology generally insists we understand our past, face our fears, and stare back directly at what Satchel Paige suggests “might be gaining” on us. Christianity urges us to gaze forward with hope, but the lesson of the Bible is also that repentance comes before baptism. Observe Zacchaeus, the tax collector in Luke 19:1-8. It helps very, very much to have Christ in our hearts when we look in the rearview mirror of our lives. Only in Christ can our fear turn to compassion and peace.

Throughout the Bible the penitent are blessed, like the sinful woman in Luke 7 who with her own tears washes Jesus’ feet, is forgiven, and saved.

“With Christ” is the best way, the high way, and the only way, to go in peace.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures fate is a function of the lord of the world, Satan, who would rather we ignore judgment, doubt grace, and ridicule Christ. That’s his way.

Dispensing with the Pleasantries

Spirituality Column #255
September 27, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Dispensing with the Pleasantries
By Bob Walters

“It’s unusual to meet a pleasant Christian.”

Ouchhhh … that one hurt. And it’s a statement, I hate to admit, that I found personally very convicting.

It was made on opening night of our Wednesday Bible study by our teacher George, who this fall is walking us through “Citizenship in Heaven: Philippians and Colossians.” George was introducing the early Christian church at Philippi, and noted how easy it was in that multi-cultural first century town of Jews, pagans and other religions to figure out who the Christians were.

Christians were the ones who were happy and non-judgmental. Christians brightened everybody’s day. Christians lived a loving life with the light of the Holy Spirit and the truth of Jesus Christ shining forth from every corner of their being. Christians supported each other, and cheerfully shared the Lord’s servant-attitude with all.

Even with the coming decades and centuries of purges as the Romans and others tried to stamp out Christianity, there was a larger-than-this-life spiritual positivism that spilled naturally from one Christian to another. Christianity survived the toughest of times because of the unusually complete humanity of its adherents, organized around history’s only perfect human, Jesus Christ. How do we know? The Bible tells us, and Church history backs it up.

These Christians didn’t try to trick or bully others into “accepting the Lord or else” because they had so much knowledge about Jesus. These early Christians simply loved others, cared for them, helped them, fed them and nurtured them, knowing that every human person has been created in the image of God the Father. These Christians were an example of God’s love for mankind both inside and outside the faith.

Our teacher George is one of the most cheerful, pleasant and learned Christians one could hope to encounter. He was making an important point about knowledge-based present-day Christianity, and what it is that makes Christians “Christians.”

A loving, servant heart is the core of who we are supposed to be as followers of Jesus, just as a loving, servant heart is the core of the human Jesus, incarnate among us, as the perfect example of divine love.

Whether in old Philippi or in these modern times, the example of Christ is an example of love. The measure of our Christian walk is not in strutting our knowledge, which tends to divide the world, but by exercising a Christ-like, selfless love, which always builds a more pleasant world.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that George’s class at E91 is free and open to the public. This fall (2014) he is leading a class on the Gospel of Luke.  Email Bob for more information.

How the Rest Was One

Spirituality Column #254
September 20, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

How the Rest Was One
By Bob Walters

One of the great big things largely missing from contemporary Christianity is a coherent understanding of church history.

And by church history, I don’t mean Vatican II, the Billy Graham Crusades, or the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment. I mean the years and decades immediately following Jesus Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection, followed by centuries of doctrinal and church development.

Why, or rather, how, did Christianity thrive in those early years when no modern understanding of popular faith can explain its survival? Jesus wasn’t especially well known. Christians were killed, oftentimes in horrible ways, for the crime of simply being Christian. Jewish scripture was not widely known outside of Judaism. There were no Bibles, and the New Testament was unwritten.

And yet, here were these spirit-filled Christians.

Pagan idols were manmade. The mythic gods provided stories but no consequential teaching. Roman law dictated worship of Caesar. Academics of the day relied on the Greek understanding of evidence and logical proof. Yet here were these Christians, worshipping the living Son of the Creator God incarnate among mankind, revealing the truth of God’s love for His creation, and dying to erase mankind’s sin. How do you explain that?

The thing is … you can’t explain it. What happened in those earliest years of Christianity was that eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus shared what they saw and heard, and in faith followed Christ as their Lord. There was evidence and proof in the hearts of the eyewitnesses, and by the power of the Holy Spirit those hearts continued in faith through the generations of mankind. The Spirit remains with us even now.

It’s not enough for today’s Christian to read the Bible’s Book of Acts (written by the Apostle Luke), memorize verse 2:42, and say, “OK, let’s sing some breezy modern worship songs, feel good about Jesus, and come back to church next week.”

The story of Christianity is magnificent, because Jesus Christ is magnificent.

Those early Christians understood the human heart’s hunger for something infinite, experienced man’s thirst for things that last (immortality), shared the human desire for life beyond death, and found the fulfillment of those truths in their joyous community of Christ, the early church, that’s now stretched forward 2,000 years.

Jesus, our rest, is eternal and infinite … but hard to explain. Knowing where the faith has been can build our hope in where our faith, as one body of believers, is going.

Walters, who knows Christianity is more about where we’re going than where we’ve been, nonetheless recommend’s Alister McGrath’s “Christian Theology” and Robert Wilken’s “The Spirit of Early Christian Thought.” Don’t just “look up” … look it up!

So Then What Happened?

Spirituality Column #253
September 13, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

So Then What Happened?
By Bob Walters

When I share my “Awake Date” with people – Sept. 2, 2001, the day I accepted Christ, sitting in church for the first time as an adult – it usually hastens an assumption.

And that assumption is that the ensuing pain and magnitude of 9/11 nine days later drew me further into the church; that my deepening faith was a palliative reaction to seek comfort after the awful events which rocked our nation.

Traumatized, in other words, I found Jesus.

That’s so not true.

What happened was that the Sunday after 9/11 I went to a church “Welcome” class instead of the worship service, and then ran into a work acquaintance in the lobby (“narthex” in church language). As we talked, retired pastor Russ Blowers came up to chat with him, and I was introduced to Russ as a newcomer. I ran into Russ again a few minutes later in another hallway and he said, “Hey Bob, we ought to have lunch.”

He came up to me, already remembering my name.

A few days later we had lunch at Sahm’s Restaurant in Fishers. Russ offered to say grace before the meal and my reaction while he prayed was to be embarrassed sitting there praying in public. I’ve since grown out of that.

We talked that day about many things – Russ was the epitome of a pastor, had multiple interests and he loved people. Discussing the 9/11 attacks, we decided to read Bernard Lewis’s “What Went Wrong” book about Islam. After several weeks of reading the book “together” and emailing back-and-forth, we were friends.

In October 2001 I took a four-week “Walking with Christ” class taught by our senior minister David Faust, discovering – surprisingly – that suddenly I could read and understand scripture. Following the last class I asked to be baptized … at 9 o’clock on a Sunday evening. In 2002 I read the entire Bible.

In May 2002, I met Cambridge theologian George Bebawi, new to this country, at a social gathering here in Indy. After helping to get his weekly class started at my church in 2004, I’ve been studying with George for seven years.

My walk with the Lord has been a run, really, of meeting fascinating people who I am convinced God sent my way. Because that’s what God does; He sends for us. And even though we think we seek God, what Christianity is really all about is that God sent His son Jesus Christ, in divine grace, to seek us.

It’s when humanity runs away from the grace of Christ that we have trouble.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thinks America’s institutionalized long-term reaction to 9/11 has been just backwards: religion shouldn’t be minimized, Christ should be maximized.

The Hour I First Believed

Spirituality Column #252
September 6, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Hour I First Believed
By Bob Walters

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.
– 2nd stanza, “Amazing Grace”

“The hour I first believed” was 10 years ago this Labor Day weekend.

Specifically it was Sept. 2, 2001, sitting in a Sunday church service for basically the first time in 30 years. Dave Faust, who later baptized me, and Russ Blowers, who taught me until his death in late 2007, were sharing the East 91st Street Christian Church pulpit that day, with Russ talking gently about Jesus, faith, hope and love.

It was Russ’s 50th anniversary with his beloved congregation. Dave, a gifted preacher, moved on within a year to be a college president, where he continues to raise ensuing generations of Christian ministers at Cincinnati Christian University.

I sat in the back row with mystifying tears rolling down my cheeks; tears that made no earthly sense, but tears that welled up from deep in my heart with the full cooperation of my mind. Before that, I didn’t know what I believed. Today “belief” doesn’t adequately cover the spiritual and intellectual enormity of a life in Christ.

It – Christian life – is not what I expected. It’s not the limiting, rules-following, holier-than-thou, faith-groveling, meek, mind-numbing existence centered on a guilt fetish that I had imagined. The Christian life is an inexplicable hybrid of empowerment and humility; of intellect and emotion; of binding love, and freedom to choose what binds us; of fear, and freedom from it. It is comfort in hard times, courage in harder times, and the excitement of knowing that every day is new when our steps point to Jesus Christ.

I can’t explain my conversion. Jesus didn’t zap me where I sat. Nobody hit me over the head with a Bible. The Holy Spirit didn’t send me into convulsions and God didn’t rend a single curtain. I just knew that whatever awakened within deserved and required my full attention. That it was right. That it was important. That it was true.

And that it was good. Not just any good, but God’s Good. The real deal.

Humanity is bigger, life is better and eternity abounds when they are boldly defined in Christ. I am thankful beyond words for God’s faithfulness, the Holy Spirit’s presence, and the amazing grace of Jesus Christ.

I truly needed it – we all do – and am happy to share it. Jesus is Lord. Amen.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was in church that day because his then-13-year-old son Eric had randomly wondered a couple weeks earlier at a family dinner, “How come we don’t go to church?” So they went. True story.

Testing One, Two, Three ...

Spirituality Column #251
August 30, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Testing One, Two, Three …
By Bob Walters

Horrible things happen and we ask God, “Why?”

The crazy, awful, accurate answer is: Because it’s a fallen world and everything that we might think is a test of God’s love for us is really a test of our faith in Him.

I know. It’s a typical, maddening, unsatisfying, mysterious and at-first-glance non-definitive Christian answer. It seems appallingly cold, impersonal and unfeeling; a nearly criminal endorsement of accepting God no matter what.

It’s the last thing we want to hear when we suffer. But honestly, it’s the first thing we must understand.

The truth is that there is nothing more intensely personal to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit than our individual faith and suffering. Christ’s suffering work on the cross – dying to defeat death and erase our sin – was 100 percent about the well-being of our eternal relationship with God the Father, in faith. In our own moment-by-moment existence, that doesn’t seem to do me any good. That doesn’t heal me or my loved one, relieve today’s suffering and fear, or establish and enforce temporal justice.

God abides; we fret and condemn.

And while it is perfectly OK to shout at, argue and plead with God – He is listening, after all – God calls for and insists upon our faith, not our agreement. That’s no test; that’s the truth. God in his holy realm can indeed “do whatever He wants.”

But “whatever He wants” is different in the eternity of God’s perfect, immaculate, complete, literal goodness and purpose, as opposed to our “on the clock” perspective in an imperfect, sinful, limited and situationally dynamic world.

We can count on God being faithful to Who He is, and to be Who He says He is to us. Always. Christ on the Cross is our proof of that, and the Bible backs it up. Too often, we want God to conform to who we say we are, and Who we want Him to be. The Bible explains that God’s truth is precisely the opposite; God is God, and we’re not.

It’s better and healthier to test God with our love than with our anger. Death, you see, is part of our fallen world but not part of God’s perfect eternity.

So don’t ask God, “What have You done for me lately?” Pass the true test of faith, and say, “Thank You, God, for what You have done for me eternally.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows from experience that when horrible things happen, it’s even more horrible not to know and trust God.

Literal Truth, Inerrant God

Spirituality Column #250
August 23, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Literal Truth, Inerrant God
By Bob Walters

A popular online news organization recently posted a feature story about why it’s a mistake to read the Bible literally, and folly to think the Bible is inerrant.

Written by a Christian professor, the article cited predictable scholarship and supporting evidence. The Bible itself claims to be “inspired and useful” (2 Timothy 3:16), but not inerrant. Revelation (the Bible’s final book) in parts is impenetrable. Even the brilliant St. Augustine had to allegorize (or, “say it was something else”) the story of Jonah and the whale. The four Gospels don’t agree about what happened on which days of Holy Week when Jesus was betrayed, tried, crucified and resurrected.

Lots and lots of stuff in the Bible doesn’t seem to add up.

Well, it’s a good day for the Devil when he can sow doubt about the Bible, and by extension, about God. The double-entrendre headline, “4 reasons not to read the Bible … literally,” may be harmless, or could imply: The Bible is wrong, so if the Bible is the story of God, then God must be wrong. Hallelujah, we can ignore the Bible and God!

Misinterpreted or not, the headline harkens rehashing.

You see, a Christian faith conversation centered on literalism and inerrancy of the Bible will quickly go out-of-round for the simple reason that the conversation isn’t truly centered. The Bible is something dramatically more important than “literal” and “inerrant.” It is truth, which almost always involves more than simple calculation.

If the issue is, “The Bible doesn’t add up,” then let’s go to math class. Let’s add up a list of numbers, terms and factors; we’ll get a defensibly inerrant answer. But, if the “list” is actually a quadratic equation and calculated with the wrong method, say, addition, we’ll not only get the wrong answer but entirely miss the point of the exercise because we have mistaken its central purpose, which is not addition.

Secularist logicians and sadly more than a few Christians miss the “answer” of the Bible because they refuse or confuse the Bible’s central purpose – revealing God’s truth. Scripture’s message isn’t simple addition, it’s a cosmically complex equation of faith, hope, love, truth, creation, relationship, separation, loss, betrayal, death, redemption, eternal life and perfection. It’s the ultimate story problem.

And what’s the story? Jesus Christ is the literal truth about an inerrant God, and we – each of us personally – is a loved and important part of the equation.

That is the true center of the Bible.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was horrible at high school math but scored higher in math than verbal on the SAT. Go figure.

I'm Glad You Asked ...

Spirituality Column #249
August 16, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

I’m Glad You Asked …
By Bob Walters

… Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have [in Christ] … – 1 Peter 3:15

When G.K. Chesterton was asked, Orthodoxy was his answer.

In his earlier book Heretics, he had described the spiritual inadequacy of the early 20th century’s burgeoning social and academic inclination away from Christianity and toward Darwinism, socialism and science. When publicly challenged for disparaging “modern thought” without clearly describing his own Christian faith, Chesterton responded in 1908 with Orthodoxy.

Rather than presenting an impenetrable apologetic about scripture or the Trinity, Orthodoxy plainly describes how Chesterton arrived at his faith the same way a secularist arrives at his disbelief … through experience and investigating the facts.

Modernist indictments against Christianity are many. Christianity can’t be right, modernists say, because man is too similar to the beasts. Religion is only the darkness of superstition. The church causes more problems than it solves.

Chesterton looks closely and finds differently, composing a withering yet common-sense return of rhetorical fire. He notices that man is entirely dissimilar to beasts, that Christianity was the only light at both ends of the tunnel known as the Dark Ages, and that the Christian church historically has provided an underappreciated yet perpetual spiritual safety net for Western civilization. His argument is reasonable; his conclusions reassuring.

Chesterton notices that modern philosophy plays fast and loose with spiritual “facts.” Setting God aside, modernism voices contradictory opinions focused on the ultimate sovereignty or non-sovereignty of man.

Chesterton found his faith at the intersection of that contradiction; at the center and the heart of the Cross of Christ.

God may well be eternal and separate from man, but God as Jesus Christ entered time, space and humanity to prove that God – to be truly God – needed to be something even beyond omnipotent; He needed to be courageous, proven in the real courage of the real trial on the Cross. On the honed edges of Christ’s sundering sword we learn that love is an exercise in recognizing differences, not similarities. Astonishingly, we learn that divine power, ultimately, is an exercise of servanthood.

The Cross has a “collision” at its core and “can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape.” As modern society seeks empirical predictability for all phenomena, Chesterton insists that it is Christianity’s wonder, awe and faith that divinely feed all human morality, creativity and hope.

As for Chesterton’s beliefs, I’m glad someone asked.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) writes from the perspective that faith is an intellectual strength, not a weakness.

Christianity Begs to Differ

Spirituality Column #248
August 9, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Christianity Begs to Differ
By Bob Walters

“The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those quite opposite to the fact; it is actually our truisms that are untrue.”
– G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

In the spheres of modern religion, morality, politics, education, science – quick, name some more spheres – I can’t think of a more frighteningly accurate assessment or warning about mass-marketed “truth” than this nugget Christian essayist Gilbert K. Chesterton wrote in 1908.

And by “modern” we mean in the philosophical, intellectual sense which – over the past 500 years or so – has come to mean “intelligence invented by man” (e.g. secular humanism, faith in man) as opposed to “intelligence that emanates from the Creator” (e.g. religion, faith in God).

This is relevant in today’s Christian conversation because “modern” culture has overtaken most of civilization’s greatest institutions thereby narrowing the influence of Christian truth. The modern culture of education, the media, “intellectual elites,” most governments (including ours), and even distressingly many churches – all insist that man not only is on at least an even plane with God, but that to be politically correct man must be “one” with everything around him, such as the universe, the planet, animals, the trees, the weather, each other … whatever.

The fact is we are not one. Even God is not One but a society, the Trinity. Our love, creativity, rebellion, decisions, industry, loyalties, talents and freedom all prove that it’s the differences in the universe that animate God’s plan, not the similarities.

Where modern thought identifies patterns and sameness, it frequently and mistakenly imputes “truth” where none exists. Here’s an example: “The religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach.”

Observes Chesterton, “It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do differ greatly in what they teach … they are alike in everything except the fact that they don’t say the same thing.”

Chesterton uses the massive differences of Christianity and Buddhism – the external, creative “otherness” of the Christian God vs. the inward, quiet “oneness” of the Buddha – to make his case. His larger point though is that it is easier and more “modern” simply to say “they are the same” than to deeply consider why they are not.

“Go along to get along” was not the teaching of Christ.

Orthodoxy clearly explains why Christ makes a difference, not just to Chesterton, but to all Creation. God’s truth – Jesus Christ – is a truism we can trust.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) celebrates our differences while marveling at God’s cohesiveness. Next: Chesterton explains his faith.

Chewing on Chesterton

Spirituality Column #247
August 2, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Chewing on Chesterton
By Bob Walters

My wife’s parents live on a quiet lake in northern Michigan where our annual summer visit provides a wonderful setting – and the time – for thoughtful reading.

This year’s reading included G.K. Chesterton’s 1908 classic Orthodoxy, mainly because in late June our little dog Kramer randomly pulled my copy off the bottom bookshelf at home and chewed the book’s binding. Assured this was a lake-reading sign from God, I set the book out to take. Two days before we headed north Kramer pulled it off my reading stack and destroyed the back half of the 150-page paperback.

Scrambling to find a replacement copy, I was stunned that two nearby Christian book stores I called acted as though they’d never heard of the book, didn’t have it on hand, and one told me it appeared to be “going out of print.”

Sad. I can’t imagine a Christian bookstore not recognizing Chesterton’s masterpiece that for a century has never gone out of print and, according to Amazon.com, currently has a dozen or so versions in print. Orthodoxy is an incredibly helpful, thoughtful, deep, relevant, relatable and ahead-of-its-time exposition of personal Christian faith in a world overwhelmingly trending toward agnosticism, progressivism, atheism, Darwinism, socialism, and all those self-glorifying, self-centered all-about-me “isms” that “… [fall] short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). Chesterton presents a compelling, elegant and entertaining case for Christianity.

Anyway, I called a nearby big-box bookstore and they simply asked whether I wanted the hardcover or paperback version they had in stock. Paperback, please. I buried the new book in my sealed travel bag (so Kramer couldn’t get to it), and then at the lake read it twice, compulsively underlining and annotating as I went. A comfortable chair on a shaded wooden deck overlooking a beautiful lake, to me, is an unparalleled environment for considering God’s grandeur and truth.

Orthodoxy doesn’t disappoint. Chesterton describes Christianity as the ultimate and complete adventure, romance, answer, explanation and purpose for the human experience. Christianity’s gift is the gift that keeps on giving because every day, every tomorrow, is filled with the enormous anticipation and boundless wonder of new intellectual and spiritual revelation. God is that big. Christianity doesn’t just reveal truth. Christianity builds, creates and is the foundation of the multifaceted, chaotic, seemingly conflicting but always ultimately perfect and complete truths of God’s universe.

Orthodoxy is a book with teeth.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com), who perceives in Chesterton’s writing a nice mix of later writers C.S. Lewis and Will Rogers, re-reads the really helpful books because he too often forgets the best arguments

Hubble, Humility, and Man

Spirituality Column #246
July 26, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers

Hubble, Humility, and Man
By Bob Walters

Dramatic deep-space images from the Hubble satellite telescope have inspired worldwide awe the past couple of decades.

On TV, in magazines, and clogging our inbound email, we’ve seen the luminous light of exploding quasars and collapsing galaxies, thanks to Hubble’s above-earthly vantage point and mindboggling technology. The pictures are phenomenal: scientists marvel, artists are humbled, and poets are left speechless. Atheists proclaim man’s insignificance. Believers see God’s magnificence.

Some people just sit back and say, “Wow!”

A recent network evening newscast noting the end of NASA’s space shuttle program aired a sidebar on the oft-repaired Hubble’s history, trials and triumphs. The reporter’s parting words grabbed my attention. Voicing over surreal intergalactic photography, he intoned (approximately), “Hubble’s images have made mankind think differently about how he views himself.”

I just sat back and said, “Wow.” For here was a brilliantly crafted, politically correct, non-committal statement carefully and perfectly framing a truth with no conclusion, casting light with no heat, making a brick with no straw, and balancing a platitude squarely on a secular fence.

The reporter left the sharp arrow in the quiver, the logical follow-up question: “Different … how?” That ponderance was left dangling with the audience. One could muse, simply, “Look what man found!” For sure, many said, “Behold, the face of God!”

Because the interview leading into that final statement was a scientist marveling at our “13-billion-year-old universe” – which I interpreted as an enthusiastic and institutional bon mot for Evolution and a purpose-pitch at the chin of Creationism – it seemed the reporter intended us viewers to gain further appreciation for our personal smallness against the big, meaningless, postmodern emptiness of everything else. In other words, “Those Hubble images sure put mankind in his rightful, small place.”

I think not. In the Hubble images I see unequivocal, gigantic proof of a great God, and the shimmering, show-stopping, unimpeachable truth that God not only exists but that He builds utterly amazing stuff. I see overwhelming evidence of a God Whose glory I cannot adequately express.

“What is mankind that you are mindful of him?” David asks God in Psalm 8:4.

The Hubble images are no adequate picture of God, because God is bigger than that. But in those images we see something the creation of which God considered worthwhile for His glory. And to think, He created us, too.

All I can say, humbly, is “Wow!”

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) notes that the Bible gives us a more instructive view of God than any telescope. Psalm 8. Yeah.

IMHO, Christ is the Truth

Spirituality Column #245
July 19, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

IMHO, Christ is the Truth
By Bob Walters

A talented writer friend who occasionally reads this article said to me recently, “You must get tons of scathing criticism. That topic (religion) is so totally an opinion.”

And it immediately struck me and I said out loud, reflexively but gently and kindly (I think), “Yeah, you’d think that might be the case, but I get very little negative criticism. And what’s even crazier is that I’ve never thought of it as an opinion column. I think of it, and write it, as a truth column.”

The truth of Jesus Christ is the core of the Christian faith. And – when I allow the Father, Son, Spirit Godhead it’s proper place in my life – Christ’s truth answers my questions large and small about life, purpose, reason, hope, love, family, the future, relationships, grace, conflict … everything.

The hard part for me (this is the truth) is the “when I allow” part, because I lack the natural patience, humility and surrender to look at every circumstance and think, “Just let the Lord handle that.” No, I want to get in there and fix things, argue points, make a difference and control my little corner of the Kingdom.

I think most believing, serious, praying Christians would agree that’s not a great way to go about one’s walk with the Lord, but (this is an opinion) many can relate to the shortcomings and fears we all experience dwelling in a fallen world.

Religious opinions and doctrines over the years have split Christian believers time after time, despite the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, Who we must trust as our Lord and Savior. Amen. That brief creed is fairly universal, but for Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Baptist, Evangelical and other strains of Christianity, the person of Jesus Christ may be the only thing they agree on.

We fight viciously over our religious opinions which, I know from experience, too often supersede our trust in the thing we know is truth, Jesus Christ.

Christ’s truth is the lone and absolute antidote to these human shortcomings and fears and, in this sin-riven fallen world, provides grace, hope and the ultimate repair. That’s the truth, the capital-T Truth, and immune to man’s opinion.

My question is, why does man try to make himself immune to God’s truth?

IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), Christ is no opinion. And that’s the truth.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suffers from extreme opinionation (a word he just made up and loves), but revels in God’s truth.

NFL, NBA - Rumors of Wars

Spirituality Column #244
July 12, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

NFL, NBA – Rumors of Wars
By Bob Walters

“It’s the end of the world as we know it …” - Rock band R.E.M., 1987

“Small group” is a familiar church fellowship phrase that has, ostensibly, nothing to do with sports or rock and roll.

These are small groups of Christians – friends, couples, families – who “do life together.” Especially in large congregations where it is difficult to feel human “closeness” (except when you’re crammed into the pews), it’s typical for 10 to 20 believers to join together for Bible study, prayer, Christian accountability, social and family activities, and even vacations. They just generally share together, as Christians, in the joys, ups, downs, burdens and sorrows of everyday life.

As a side note, our church used to call them “K-Groups” after the Greek word koinonia (coin-o-NEE-ah) meaning “communion of intimate participation.” Only we old folks still say “K-Group.” The “K” has been lost, I think, because modern church management wants to avoid scaring seekers with elegant, traditional and accurate Greek words. There are 2,000 years of Christian faith and thought that too many churches, sadly, choose to ignore. But the Christian story is too big for just Sunday, and small groups help us do life with Christ and with other Christians every day.

So … my K-Group, most Sundays in fall and winter, gathers at someone’s home to watch the Colts play. And when the Pacers are behaving and winning (remember those days?), or Butler is in the NCAA tournament, we watch hoops. There are couples and kids and lots of food and fellowship.

On this score, we are sunshine patriots. Winning teams foster community; so we watch. Losing teams don’t, so we don’t. Presently, the awful spectacles of the NFL and NBA locking out players, cannibalizing themselves in the midst of great success, and claiming the righteousness of their “cause” make the sane among us avert our eyes.

We can’t watch. Scripture helps us cope:

Matthew 23:33 (“Seven Woes”) – “You snakes! You brood of vipers!”

Matthew 24:6 (“Signs of the end of the age”) – “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. But see to it that you are not alarmed.”

1 Timothy 6:10 (“Love of money”) – “… the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

The lockouts are a shame but not the end of the world. I believe that’s coming one day (the “end”), but I doubt it will be about sports.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) wonders if anyone at the negotiations has suggested beginning with prayer. You can bet all the vendors and sports infrastructure people are praying. Read all of Matthew 23.

God, America and Nonfiction

Spirituality Column #243
July 5, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

God, America and Nonfiction
By Bob Walters

I finally got around to reading David McCullough’s nonfiction book 1776, and realized something striking.

To be clear, this isn’t the musical 1776 about signing the Declaration of Independence. This is the exhaustively researched and meticulously footnoted 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning No. 1 bestseller that chronicles the ups and downs of George Washington’s fledgling Continental Army in 1776.

McCullough enlisted his own armies of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic to comb libraries, collections and historical societies for authentic personal letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, maps, newspapers, speeches and official correspondence that detail “what it was really like” in that place at that time.

The book ably collates countless sources into a fascinating story, liberally citing and directly quoting the American and English officers and soldiers, Patriots, Loyalists, politicians, onlookers and bystanders in their own words.

And here’s what was striking: the most elegant prose, the most common expositions and the weightiest communiqués were replete with sincere, faithful, earnest and reverent appeals to God. McCullough does not write to prove America a God-fearing country. The story itself reveals how thoroughly God was assumed to be attached to everyone’s lives and the momentous events of the day.

In 1776 America, the average conversation of the people reflected their absolute conviction that the Hand of the Almighty was intricately woven into the affairs of all.

It’s different today. The sad reality of our politically correct, postmodern, public “God” conversation in America was well represented recently by, appropriately enough, Susan Jacoby, the “Atheist Columnist” for The Washington Post. (An aside: If you have a Religion page, you have to have an “Atheist” column, right? SMH.)

Anyway, last week in this space we discussed the charming little book, Heaven is for Real. A 4-year-old boy nearly dies, really, and later tells his minister father how he visited heaven. The No. 1 bestseller is a heart-touching, simple, affirming story about Jesus, God and Heaven. It’s popular inside and outside of faith communities; scandalous among more than a few Bible-centric theologians … which is about normal.

Atheist Jacoby, reviewing Heaven is for Real with extreme snideness and confidently labeling contemporary American minds “immature,” wrote, “Only in America could a book like this be classified as nonfiction.”

Did you catch that? Jacoby says God should be classified as “fiction.”

I think … we are a better nation when we say God is real.

Happy Fourth of July.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) read 1776 because it was on sale at Costco. Also, “SMH” is Twitter for “shakin’ my head.”

This Book Sure Seems 'for Real'

Spirituality Column #242
June 28, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

This Book Sure Seems ‘for Real’
By Bob Walters

My Christian friend Nancy put a book in my hands just recently, wondering if I had read it.

“No,” I said.

“I guess a lot of people have,” she said.

Yeah, I guess so.

Heaven is for Real has been atop various New York Times bestseller lists since March. Published in November 2010 in paperback only, by mid-June with upwards of four million copies in print “for Real” remained the No. 1 title on the Times’ “Combined Print and E-Book Nonfiction,” “Combined Hardcover and Paperback Nonfiction” and “Paperback Nonfiction” lists.

I’ll not spoil the book’s story, except to say that a four-year old boy in small-town Nebraska has surgery and later begins telling his father, a Wesleyan minister, about visiting heaven and, among other things, meeting Jesus.

It’s a short, praiseworthy read; a couple hours of a simple yet magnificent – and dare I say, highly believable – exposition of one of this life’s greatest mysteries: “Is Heaven real?” Little Colton Burpo tells us it is.

There is no shortage of books on the “Heaven” experience. I’ve read some and not read others. I tend not to dwell much on either Creation or Heaven, because I trust God has them both all figured out. I can’t add much to His plan.

No, my routine reading and prayer focuses on my and mankind’s relationship with Christ, understanding the Bible, religion’s place in our culture, and learning and sharing all I can about the real existence of God, and the truth, goodness, knowledge and morality provided to humanity by the eternal Logos Word of God, Jesus Christ.

So, I’m examining our relationship with Christ? Here is a kid who – pretty convincingly – says he met Jesus.

It got my attention in ways other books haven’t.

The Shack was a mature man’s recollection of a dream, or an experience, or fiction, or something. It was charming and made people think; but it shouldn’t make anyone believe. Randy Alcorn’s Heaven was, to me, very unsatisfying (sorry) in its over-literalized attempts to define Heaven. I put it down after a few pages. Ninety Minutes in Heaven was compelling, but the storyteller was a Bible-savvy adult preacher.

Heaven is for Real is a child’s perspective. It smacks of the truth, to me, because it doesn’t smack of fiction. It is Biblically on point and simple enough to be real. I’m obviously not the only one who has noticed.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) notes that Jesus says a lot about children in the Bible. Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14. For real.

Where Pride Properly Resides

Spirituality Column #241
June 21, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Where Pride Properly Resides
By Bob Walters

Years ago I had a colleague who would compliment my work by saying, “I’m proud of you.”

It annoyed me. I took pride in my own work and it was both unsatisfying and a little creepy, frankly, to have my work evaluated from the standpoint of someone else’s overreaching pride. I, um, had plenty of pride of my own.

A decade later I began attending church, discovered my life in Christ, was well-mentored by some amazingly intelligent Christians, read the Bible, and over time began to look really, really hard at the pride in my own life vs. the humility of Jesus Christ. No way have I “cured” my own pride, but I now understand pride from a biblical perspective.

And that perspective is this: Pride is the Lord’s alone. The Lord is humble, yet only in Him may pride properly reside. Simple, huh?

I know … it’s a seeming three-way collision of intellect, logic and faith, the kind that keeps “smart” people out of church. But once we understand pride as a “God” thing, humility as a “Jesus” thing, and faith as a human thing, it starts to make sense.

The Bible talks about pride a lot. In the Old Testament, where we learn so much about God, God is constantly telling people that their human, worldly pride will be their undoing, that it is willful, arrogant, foolish, sinful and in several ways destructive to them and offensive to God. The problem boils down to this, God tells man in Ezekial 28:2,

“In the pride of your heart, you say ‘I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god’ … but you are a mere mortal and not a god, though you think you are as wise as a god.”

The modern dictionary isn’t much help here, because it defines “pride,” generally, as “justifiable satisfaction.” What God says throughout the Bible is that the “pride” He detests is mankind’s misplaced, unjustified, self-satisfying and self-directed glory, which I interpret to be the biblical opposite of “justifiable satisfaction.”

Glory is God’s, not ours. Pride belongs to God’s wisdom, not man’s.

Jesus sets our standard and example: He was humble before God and Man. Therefore rather than harboring pride in our human selves and worldly situations, our pride must reside in our faith that Christ is our sovereign Lord.

God knows, it’s no sin to be proud of that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is thankful for God’s blessings rather than proud of the shiny spots in his life.

The Thing with Suffering

Spirituality Column #240
June 14, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Thing with Suffering
By Bob Walters

It was a brief conversation with my dear friend Mike about our mutually dear friend Bill. Mike and I were alone outside Bill’s house after a visit, each of us fighting back tears.

Bill has brain cancer, the really, really hard kind. He and his wife, both deep and mature believers in Christ, are bravely battling the disease. Their grace is wonderful to behold; the effects of the disease are horrifying.

Mike, not a church-goer but deeply imbued with sincere human compassion, said, “I just don’t want to see anyone suffer.”

“Suffering is part of the deal,” I told Mike, quietly, referring to a life in Christ. I added, approximately, “It’s as clear as anything the Bible says. Our faith in Christ and belief in God are tested and purified in our suffering. It doesn’t glorify God to ‘believe’ when times are good. As crazy as it sounds, suffering – and keeping our faith as we suffer – is the greatest earthly way to glorify God.”

Mike and I blinked back tears one more time, and left. I pray my words sank in.

Bill and his wife are glorifying God in their suffering by keeping their faith. We who despair with them must also glorify God by trusting His ultimate mercy.

“Suffering Glorifies God!” is a slogan seldom seen on church signboards. No, marketing the Christian faith today focuses largely on “me.” God loves and forgives me. Or we scrutinize my sin and guilt, or God solving my problems, or having Jesus see things my way. “Please Lord,” we pray, “give me what I want.” We want God to ease our suffering, not be glorified by it.

Jesus prayed, “Father … not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Jesus told His disciples repeatedly that to follow Him they must value God above everything else, including their families, their circumstances, their very lives. Jesus told them they would suffer and be persecuted for their faith, yet they would glorify God.

Suffering is among the Bible’s hardest teachings, one of its most obvious truths, and one of the last things the modern church “sells.” Suffering matters because it is the central lesson of Jesus on the cross, “that your son may glorify you” (John 17:1).

God’s purpose isn’t to make us suffer, but that we persevere in our faith when we suffer. Pray with Jesus that God’s will, not ours, be done.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) resists thinking of faith as a “coping” mechanism. Faith in Christ is a “truth and peace” mechanism. UPDATE: Bill passed peacefully, at home, on Dec. 28, 2011.

The Rapture that Wasn't

Spirituality Column #239
June 7, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Rapture that Wasn’t
By Bob Walters

The difference between Harold Camping’s evidently errant May 21 rapture forecast and almost everyone else’s reaction to it was smugness.

Not Camping’s … almost everyone else’s.

In Camping’s declarations I didn’t hear smugness; I heard faith. I thought he was biblically wrong – glaringly so – on several points, and I saw but didn’t really understand his eschaton (ESS-kah-tahn, i.e. last things) arithmetic. But I never heard from him a belittling smugness. The California Christian fundamentalist is obviously a true believer who I think is befallen by confused signals, not demon possession. It happens.

So let’s look at the bad news and good news.

On the one hand, Camping didn’t do the Kingdom any favors by being that wrong about something that even uber-secular Doonesbury got exactly right. To wit, Zonker in the May 20 comic strip very un-smugly (opposite most public commentary) cites Matthew 24:36. There Jesus says, “But concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” Jesus is “the Son” and even He doesn’t know what Camping claimed to know.

On the other hand, Camping got everyone talking – even Doonesbury – about Jesus Christ. False prophet or misguided sop, Camping created a multi-national buzz that forced many people to stop (or at least downshift) and consider whether they personally were or were not a candidate for rapture. Motivating the many to mull that mystery, however momentarily, is quite a feat.

What’s really wrong with Camping’s prediction, which I think is the same egregious error of the “Left Behind” end-times novels, is this: The relationship focus that properly should be on Jesus Christ is at best obfuscated and at worst entirely lost.

“How is my relationship with Christ?” is the correct question, not, “What’s all this rapture business?”

Anything that lessens rather than sharpens a person’s focus on a relationship with Jesus Christ plays into Satan’s hands. That includes rapture, creation, prophecy, prosperity, faith healing, the Bible, the church, a preacher … anything.

Camping’s focus, for example, was always “The Bible says …” He used the Bible, in toto, to supersede Christ. Bad mistake, in my view.

So … we don’t know, we have to trust.

And I say “evidently errant” in the first paragraph because what if God threw a rapture and nobody made the cut? The last thing I want to be before God is cocky.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) holds the same opinion of Camping’s next date, Oct. 21. Focus on John 3, not Matthew 24; relationship, not rapture.

Memorial Day in War and Peace

Spirituality Column #238
May 31, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Memorial Day in War and Peace
By Bob Walters

’Some thoughts for Memorial Day, when America remembers her war heroes who died that we might be free, fought that we might know peace, and served us that we might serve others.

-Memorial Day easily captures the context of Christian faith, as we offer to God prayers of thanks and remembrance for the sacrifice of others.

-Jesus Christ, it is supremely worth noting, died for our freedom. He invented the concept, really. It is something that never occurred to or in humanity until Christ died on the Cross, defeating death and erasing our sin: we were free. It was a gift we didn’t request, solved a problem we didn’t know we had and, with faith, provided a victory impossible to imagine: eternal loving relationship with the Creator God in heaven. That's what God wants for us.

-The Bible exhorts, “God is love.” Christ’s example teaches that love requires freedom. That must be God’s toughest task – loving us enough to provide our freedom, with which we choose whether to love God or not. God knows love resides only in the presence of freedom and the absence of coercion, for coercion robs freedom, drains the soul, stifles hope and strangles faith. Love dies. That’s not what God wants for us.

-The Bible does not mandate systems or festivals commemorating Christ, because Jesus appeared once for all, took on our sins once for all, was cleansed once for all, died once for all, and we were entrusted with His faith once for all. It’s why Jesus says of taking the bread and cup, His body and blood, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

- “Once for all” means the eternal God appeared in mortal time as Jesus Christ and entirely changed the game for humanity’s relationship with God. God no longer mandated a place or a time or a behavior – like a temple or a festival or a commandment – to access divine relationship. Christ, by His work once for all, is to be alive in our hearts always and everywhere … in faith.

-The greatest war is our war with Satan … we fight it every moment of our lives.

-The greatest memorial is our communion with Christ.

-The greatest peace is in Christ.

-The greatest victory abides not with the swift or strong, but belongs reliably to the humble and faithful.

-Victory is not a remembrance of yesterday, but a hope for tomorrow.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is named after his mother’s brother Bob, a naval aviator who died in WWII.

Shrugging Off Selfishness

Spirituality Column #237
May 24, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Shrugging Off Selfishness
By Bob Walters

Hang with me for a minute … this is a book / movie review, sort of.

I’m old enough to remember the economic malaise of the late 1970s and no, the Disco era was not an adequate off-setting cultural pick-me-up.

I was just out of college making $10,000 a year as a sportswriter. Gas was a dollar a gallon, unemployment was high, American automobile quality was low, inflation hovered near 9 percent, home mortgage rates chased 20 percent, gold prices were astonishingly north of $800 an ounce, President Jimmy Carter was cheerless, and the nightly news – still with Walter Cronkite – offered “the Misery Index” (unemployment rate plus inflation rate) instead of hope.

With institutions failing us, we maturing baby boomers constructed a self-absorbed culture that appropriately became known as “The Me Decade.” Certainly in my mind, the world revolved around Me; I was unmarried, unchurched, unbelieving and unconcerned with salvation, damnation, justification, sanctification or glorification. I didn’t own a Bible, and even my old Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (a gift from my dad when I was confirmed in 1965) was out of sight somewhere in a dusty box.

Please understand, I was “a perfectly good person,” I just didn’t need all that Jesus jazz. I had friends and an interesting job … what else was there? I knew the church “story,” but it wasn’t worth getting out of bed for on Sunday; there wasn’t anything at church about “Me.”

In the late 1970s I read a book that unveiled for Me many comforting mysteries of the Me life: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand, first published the year I was born, 1954.

Rand (1905-1982) was an atheist, ardent anti-communist, “objectivist” (her word) and, if her TV interviews are an indication of the woman, a very, very bitter human being. Our highest moral duty, Rand taught, is to care for ourselves. Service to others is a self-immolating charade. God is an empty promise wrapped in ultimate disappointment. Jesus Christ, Rand wrote, presents an unsolvable contradiction; subordinating one’s ego and soul to the needs of others is impossible.

I bring this up because Atlas Shrugged, recently released as a widely-panned movie, often carries near-scriptural authority for unchurched political conservatives.

Play some defense. Understand. The May 2011 issue of “First Things” magazine offers a brilliant Christian review of both the book and the movie (free access at www.firstthings.com).

Don’t ever shrug off Jesus.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) wrote about Rand and atheism April 8, 2008, column #74 at this blogspot archive site.

The Upside of Great Despair

Spirituality Column #236
May 17, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Upside of Great Despair
By Bob Walters

It’s a darn shame but a fact of life that often we have to bottom out before we can be lifted up by Christ.

Non-believers find the logic of that truth impossible to understand. That’s partly right – it is impossible – because at its core Christ’s truth is about faith, not logic.

We generally, rationally, think we have the best shot at saving ourselves from whatever malady might befall our human existence. “My brain and my logic are all I need,” we reason. “If I’m strong enough, I can fix this.” “I believe in me.”

Religion, many people think, is a cop out. I have had real conversations with smart people – some of them dear friends – whose view of someone “finding Jesus” was accompanied by a long, low whistle and a dipping motion of the hand.

“People turn to Jesus when it’s as bad as it can get …”; then comes the long low whistle and hand dip, implying, “They’re a mess. It’s so bad, they found Jesus!” The perceived awfulness isn’t so much a concern for the despair, suffering or hardship a person faces – that would take Godly compassion – the awfulness is turning to Jesus.

Oh no! Not Jesus! You’re a goner!

Our pride and egos are horrid things, and the power of Jesus Christ is opposite everything the world thinks it knows about power. In the world, power is the imposition of will. It’s living one more day. In Christ, power is love and freedom, and eternal life at the throne of God.

“Our egos are prisons that keep us from the love and freedom of Christ,” notes my teacher George. What a great statement. Our egos want power because we think with power, we can forestall death; maybe just for today or tomorrow – and we admit we’re all going to die someday – but power is about my strength.

We cannot tap into God’s inexhaustible supply of strength when we try to compete against it with our own. Christ is like an experienced lifeguard, George analogizes. He knows when to approach a drowning person. After letting us fight and tire awhile in the deep, swirling water of our sin and pride, when we realize we can swim no more, Christ comes and gets us.

The power of God is to forgive and to love, and His ultimate strength is His compassion. That’s the gift He gave us all in Jesus Christ.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) found Christ when things were going fairly well; God somehow overwrote his sizable ego.

If You Meet Jesus ... Then What?

Spirituality Column #235
May 10, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

If You Meet Jesus … Then What?
By Bob Walters

Whether we know it or not, we all meet Jesus in an infinite number of personal and spiritual ways throughout our lives.

Working mysteriously through us and through others all around us in ways we cannot fathom or often even recognize, we encounter Jesus. We might forget that He’s there, not believe that He is near or deny that He even exists. But as the Son of God, the Word of God, the Light of the World, and the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus is close all the time.

And as if the Gospel isn’t “good news” enough, even more good news is that Jesus keeps coming back to us despite our persistent, disbelieving rebuffs.

Here is a Guy trying to give us the nicest vehicle imaginable yet most people treat Jesus like an annoying car salesman, underestimating the glorious ride He has in store. It’s an uncomplicated choice: turn the key, or turn our back.

But suppose we actually came physically face to face with Jesus. He’s standing in front of me / us. We’re awake, alive, breathing, thinking and, with everything we know and have heard about the Son of God – believing in Him or not – we know Who He is. What do we do?

When Jesus approached Peter on the fishing boat, or Matthew in the tax booth, or Thomas after the resurrection, they had neither a New Testament nor nearly two thousand years of scholarship, reflection and tradition to help them understand Christ’s mission. It was all new. Now most of us, believers or not, know the story.

So, Jesus is standing in front of me, today. What do I do?

It’s an intriguing question that I love to ponder. Would I have the presence of mind to just shut up and listen? Would I shout with joy? Be awestruck and confused? Give Him a hug? Put my face on the ground in shame?

Would I be doubtful like Thomas, or blinded like Paul? Would I utter, “Yes, Lord?” Or, knowing what the Bible says about the next time we see Jesus, simply say, “Uh oh.”

We may not be sure how we’d respond, but in examining our reverent, joyful, fearful, dumbfounded or selfish reactions, we discover a great deal about our relationship with Christ and the state of our faith.

That’s important; because we’re in front of Jesus all the time.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) points out that no matter how many times we tell Jesus “No” in this life, He continually tries to help us find a way to say “Yes.”

Only Sinners Need Grace of Christ

Spirituality Column #234
May 3, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Only Sinners Need Grace of Christ
By Bob Walters

There is no better way to explain the presence of Jesus Christ on this Earth than to say God has a special love for sinners.

And while the fallen world strives to condemn sinners, Jesus Christ came to save us from the fallenness of sin, not to condemn us for it. Jesus obeyed unto death, sharing His perfection so that we might not be condemned for our imperfections.

Don’t get me wrong … we can still be condemned, but it is us, we, ourselves, who do the condemning with our worldly disobedience. God loves us, wants us saved from our sins, sent his Son Jesus to seal the deal, and yet gives us the freedom to screw it up if we so choose.

John 3:16-18 and 14:6 pretty much make the entire case. God loved the world … Jesus came to save not to condemn … whoever does not believe is condemned already … no one goes to the Father except through Christ.

That’s it in a nutshell, paraphrasing Jesus’ own words. Where it gets sloppy, our stumbling block, is in discerning what “obedience” means in God’s divine context of love rather than in the fallen world’s context of power. Christ’s message isn’t “Obey Me or else!” It is “Follow me” (Matthew 4:19, plus 20 more times). It’s “repent and be baptized” (Peter in Acts 2:38).

Too often Christian doctrine – the kind even preached inside some churches – is mistakenly cast as an opportunity to condemn sinners, when the truth is just the opposite. Christ is our only chance for forgiveness, and it’s a forgiveness residing in God’s love, not our restitution.

And while condemnation avoidance should never be faith’s main point, what’s even worse is the false doctrine of “no condemnation.” From front to back, the Bible plainly reveals that there is indeed condemnation, Hell and a great opportunity to fail God. Only a false prophet would say otherwise, and the worst things about false prophets are their sweet sounding lies that hasten eternal condemnation.

“Be warned,” the Bible continually says.

Romans 8:1 provides a succinct, reassuring reminder about the truth: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus …”

Read those words carefully, “in Christ Jesus.”

The name of God’s special love for sinners is “grace,” and it is ours for the asking through Christ, freely and in faith. Only sinners need apply.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) quotes his Christian friend May, “Praise God that I am a sinner; it is my only qualification for receiving the grace of Christ.”

Of Denials, Thorns and Truth

Spirituality Column #233
April 26, 2011
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville – Current in Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Of Denials, Thorns and Truth
By Bob Walters

Peter famously denies Christ three times (Matthew 26:69-75) in the pre-dawn hours of Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified.

Paul suffers a “thorn” in his flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7), described as a “messenger of Satan” to prevent Paul’s conceit in possessing the great revelations of Christ with which he is entrusted.

Whether by denials or thorns, don’t we all encounter temptations to fashion our own truths about God and ourselves despite the Bible’s plain instruction, revelation and truth of the primacy of Jesus Christ in our overall world and individual lives?

Every day we witness modern culture’s continuing academic, legal, social, and scientific broadsides on all things God, yet often it is from within the Christian community that the most disturbing and direct assaults on Jesus Christ emanate.

Here’s a huge church that doesn’t mention Christ. There’s a preacher who won’t preach against sin. Over on the best seller list is a book saying Hell won’t happen. Denials and thorns; Satan loves to see man worship at the altar of self-importance.

The danger in all this is not to God the Father, Christ the Son, or the Holy Spirit. The danger is to us, to people, to anyone led astray from the truth of Jesus Christ by the fuzzy theology of don’t-worry-be-happy pop-culture doctrines.

To be clear, I don’t think Hell is a doctrine. The Bible tells me Hell is a real place, no matter how many feel-good contemporary “Christian” preachers, writers and churches deny it. In these denials is Satan’s effort to whitewash the blood of Christ away from us. Whether we are planted in good spiritual soil or not, we all suffer the thorns of life’s challenges and worldly temptations with every breath we take.

I love God, trust Jesus, and pray with the Holy Spirit not because I fear Hell but because of the autonomy of love – God’s gift of freedom and truth embodied in Jesus Christ. Even amid my own self-interested denials and worldly thorns, that’s what my head, heart, trusted Christian mentors and Bible all lead me to do.

If we are led by any church, any book, any one or any thing that denies Hell, minimizes sin, does not challenge the wretchedness of our sin and tells us Christ isn’t Who the Bible says He is, well, then we had better be warned and take a hard look at who is holding the leash.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) just finished reading Pope Benedict XVI’s excellent book “Jesus of Nazareth, Part 2” and saw nothing citing Jesus Christ as an optional aspect of Church, or Hell as a mistranslation.

Words Fail Us at the Cross, Lent Part 7

Spirituality Column #232
April 19, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Lenten Series 2011: Just Not That into God, Part 7
Words Fail Us at the Cross
By Bob Walters

Some people are just not that into God because they have difficulty putting their faith into words.

So remember that faith is first about our relationship with God, not the words we use to describe faith. Like my mentor and friend George says, “Develop your relationship with God. The words will come later.”

Besides, the word “Word” among theologians is a confusing powder keg. Most regular folks are merely trying to communicate ideas or concepts with spoken or written words. But “Word” in the Bible – the Word of God – has many meanings with theologically intricate nuances such as Christ, message, spirit and prophecy.

This Easter week – Holy Week – we encounter the Cross of Jesus Christ. Words easily fail us if we rely on them to describe our deepest love, faith and hope we have in the redemptive relationship we receive in Jesus.

The Bible is full of words, yet is a book about relationships. Why the Triune Godhead (Father-Son-Holy Spirit)? Because God is community, relationship and love. Why the Covenant with Israel? To reveal a relational God. Why was Jesus born? To present eternal God as a humble servant capable of entering our history of human relationships. Why was Jesus crucified? To defeat death, erase our sins and restore relationship with God. And why the resurrection? To teach us the truth of salvation: that in faith our relationship with God extends infinitely past death.

Relationship, relationship, relationship. Not words. Christians throughout the centuries have fought over words: “nature,” “will,” and “worship” are common tinder for church debate. But Jesus wasn’t primarily about words. He was about living an example, dying for others, and living again in relationship with us. Jesus returned sinful mankind to communion – relationship – with the eternal Creator God.

The great danger of putting words before relationship is in evidence throughout the Christian landscape. We fight over words, even the ones in the Bible. Countless books, teachings, seminars, sermons and doctrines are full of words expressing countless ideas, concepts and gadget ways of doing this or that. Some are good, some are bad, some are heresies.

Jesus Christ is not an idea or a concept. He is a real, living person, the “Logos” Word of God with, in and through whom we are promised and invited into eternal, divine relationship with God in Heaven.

Know God first, then trust Him for the right words when you need them.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) wishes all a prayerful Holy Week and a blessed Easter. The Lord is Risen Indeed.

Perfect God is No Contradiction, Lent Part 6

Spirituality Column #231
April 12, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Lenten Series 2011: Just Not That into God, Part 6
Perfect God is No Contradiction
By Bob Walters

Some people are just not that into God because God seems to harbor so many contradictions.

Is He the Old Testament’s good and mighty God of Creation? The exasperated God of the Great Flood? The unfair God Who delivered Israel out of Egypt, made the Jews wander 40 years in the desert and ultimately denied His servant Moses entry into the Promised Land? The warlike God Who vanquished Israel’s unsuspecting foes from Canaan, but then banished disobedient Israel to Babylon? The abiding God of Psalms 51 and 91 Who delivers us from all trouble? Or the absent God of Psalm 88, Who leaves us despairing in the pit?

In the New Testament, utterly humble baby Jesus grows into a friendly, gentle man Who works miracles, picks fishermen and tax collectors for Apostles, ransacks the Temple, heals the lame, preaches never-before-heard truths, and leaves cryptic but indisputable proof that He is Christ, the Son of God; the fully human and fully divine Second Person of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit Trinity.

This glorious, eternal, innocent King of Kings is brutally murdered on the Cross – dead – then resurrected to life.

These evident contradictions lead some people to reject God, the Bible, or religion, or to diminish Jesus’ mission with theologically suicidal rules of engagement, e.g., “Don’t worry about Jesus or Hell. God saves all. Everyone goes to Heaven.”

Theologians through the ages have worked exhaustively on that idea, known by the Greek term “apocatastasis.” It means “everyone is restored” suggesting, bottom line, Christ’s work on the Cross was unnecessary because death and sin didn’t really need to be defeated. Now there’s a contradiction.

God does nothing unnecessarily, and underestimating Jesus’ sacrifice is a human death sentence.

So here’s the real deal. There is one unwavering, patient, faithful, good, loving and eternal God. He is Perfect, and God’s idea of “Perfect” is the Bible’s point. Our fallen, self-interested, worldly, human idea of “Perfect” is not.

We pine for our “Perfect.” Scripture reveals time and again, God insists on His.

The Bible’s overarching proposition is this – Which is better: God giving sinful man the Law to attain righteousness, or God giving sinful man Jesus Christ whose righteousness removes our sins?

The Bible, you see, reveals a New Covenant, not contradictions.
It takes work to understand the Bible, faith to understand Jesus, and belief to go to Heaven. The contradictions reside in us, not God.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com), a sinner, is humbly thankful for God’s love and securely trusts the Bible’s truth. Amen.