Elton John's Yellow Brick Breakdown

Spirituality column #3
Nov. 21 (written Nov. 14)
Current in Carmel

Yellow Brick Breakdown
By Bob Walters

Maybe the greatest pathway to sin is “convenience.”

So much of our religious life, or lack thereof, is a referendum on our personal “convenience” (a word, incidentally, that does not appear in the Bible, not even The Message). Whether we are very churched, very unchurched or somewhere in between, convenience too often plays a gate keeping role in our faith and religious practice.

This notion popped into my head when I was reading Elton John’s comments last week that he would “ban religion completely” because “it doesn’t work” and “religion turns us into hateful lemmings.”

Sir Elton is certainly free to declare religion disappointing. Religion, when it reflects human passions instead of God’s glory, can be a real mess. We are flawed humans and we get religion wrong all the time (OK, maybe you don’t). Anyway, Elton might have a point.

On the other hand …

Elton went on to compare himself to the Queen Mother (re: his place in British culture), says people treat him reverently, and that he and spouse Dave are the acceptable face of gayness.

Religion, declares Sir Elton, is generally hateful and lacks compassion. In the next sentence, he calls on religious leaders solve the world’s problems. He’ll fight for gay rights and “can’t sit back and blindly ignore it.”

C’mon Elton. Sing your songs and shut up already.

This is a huge, teachable moment; not about gayness or inflated self concept or crippled logic, but about bad personal worldview editing. The common tragedy of celebrity is that one occupies a center that should properly be occupied by God.

When you are Elton John, filled with so much talent and capable of expressing so much love, I suspect religion is especially befuddling because in its best form its divine peace is so desirable, its human failings so disappointing, and especially-times-two, its humility and discipline so utterly inconvenient.

We should examine our “Sir Elton” moments when our faith is a function of convenience; or worse, when our “religious” actions validate Sir Elton’s assessment.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, wonders if the Queen Mother ever thinks she is Elton John.

Free Spirit

Spirituality Column #2
November 14, 2006
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Free Spirit
By Bob Walters

Freedom is a wonderful thing.

Americans are so thoroughly washed in it we are mostly free from even thinking of it. Freedom defines who and what we are all the way into our hearts, where there is that reputed “spiritual hole the exact size and shape of God” we yearn to fill.

We proudly trace freedom – a fairly new invention in the total history of mankind – to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and principled actions of patriots throughout the years. But it’s older than that.

As a God-given, universal constant for mankind, Freedom comes from the Bible, specifically out of the New Testament, and exactly in the person of Jesus Christ. The spiritual freedom we internalize as Americans is mentioned in no other religious book except the New Testament. Read Galatians 5 and see if you can relate.

Why is our freedom important to God? So we can “freely” love God … if we want to. Get it? Freedom, not obedience, is the most important ingredient in true love, and God knows it.

Love, then, is why God gave us freedom. It wasn’t to enable us to run wild, unencumbered by responsibility (1 Corinthians 12:23). Freedom is a divine mechanism to glorify God, yet our relentlessly self-affirming American culture mistakenly connects divine “freedom” to “inalienable rights,” a humanistic mechanism to glorify – uh oh – ourselves, not God.

The founding documents of the United States reflect the 18th century’s deep religious roots and cultural understanding of Christian principles like freedom, and also the same period’s consuming passion for individual rights emanating from the Enlightenment and its Humanist philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, et al) who championed the primacy of man over God.

Bummer … “Freedom” is in the Bible. “Rights” isn’t.

Divine freedom is a gift from God. Human rights we gave to ourselves.

I think those human, individual rights are the reason that the hardest part of freedom sometimes is to remember that God gave it to everyone.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that responsible freedom is harder than blind obedience.

The Two Commandments

Current! In Carmel - #1 – Two Commandments
Spirituality column – Nov. 7, 2006 (written Oct. 24)

The Two Commandments
By Bob Walters

Lost in the seemingly perpetual civic conversation about whether public display of the Ten Commandments imperils the republic and subverts free will, is the Christian fact that the New Testament has just two commandments.

Love God, and love others as you love yourself (Matthew 22:37-39).

Two, not 10.

Not necessarily simpler, but fewer.

The Bible is our handbook for our relationship with God. It is also full of great advice for our dealings with other human beings. When God presented Moses with the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai on stone tablets (etched in stone, get it?), God was answering Moses’ plea for help in explaining to the wandering Jewish Nation what God wanted of them (Exodus 20:2-17).

Remember the Commandments? The first four are about how to love God: No other Gods, no idols, no misuse of God’s name, and keep the Sabbath holy. The last six are about loving other people: honor your parents, don’t murder, commit adultery, lie, steal or covet. Eight are “Do Not’s.” Two are “Do’s.”

Note that the Two Great Commandments – Love God and Love Others – circumscribe the entire Ten Commandments.

The funny thing is that when Moses came back down the mountain to share God’s revelation, he found his Nation actively fashioning and worshiping an “idol,” the infamous Golden Calf. Point taken – but these rules weren’t made to be broken.

Also interesting is the Biblical fact that the first set of stone tablets were dropped and “broken,” requiring a second set of tablets. That’s a great metaphor for the human condition of Christianity … we are all "broken," but we get a “second chance” to win the eternal company of God.

Not a bad deal when you think about it.

The Old Testament is a book of Laws, while the New Testament is a book of Faith. We are a nation of Laws, but we still need more help than we are willing to ask God for.

The Commandments – all 10 or just two – are a good reminder to ask.

Walters, a Carmel resident, squandered his youth as a sportswriter and now goes to church regularly. Contact him at rlwcom@aol.com.