Why Christ Had To Die

Spirituality Column #29
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper
May 29, 2007

Why Christ Had To Die
By Bob Walters

Why did Christ have to die?

Anyone who is familiar with the Christian religion will tell you that Christ died to forgive our sins.

OK. But why did he have to die? Why couldn’t God Almighty just say, “OK, you are all forgiven of your sins,” and be done with it? What was it about God’s plan for our salvation that required Jesus to die?

The answer is: Christ had to die to conquer death itself. There was even more at stake on the Cross than our awful sins and the fallen nature of the entire creation. Our eternal lives were at stake.

Christ had to die to beat death itself.

When we read the Gospel accounts of Christ’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t God’s punishment of Adam and Eve that made them sinners, Satan made them sinners (Genesis 3).

They were not created to die, but when they sinned God banished them (and all of us) from the Garden of Eden, and that banishment brought death into the world. (Genesis 3:3, 4, 19).

“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). That’s a hard one because, remember, it is not God who makes us sin. It is, however … um … God who makes us die. No matter how sinless or good (or horrid or bad) any one of us may be, we are going to die because, no thanks to Adam and Eve’s sin, we are banished from the Garden.

Christ comes into the picture – and this is why they call the Gospels “Good News” – to do more than forgive our sin. He died a horrible death that totaled the depravity of the sins of the world and in that gave us renewed life and fellowship with God.

With Christ’s death, He defeated death.

We need to remember to thank Him, and praise Him, for that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, expects many of his Christian friends to argue with him over the finer points of sin, death, forgiveness, salvation and eternal life.

Can you relate?

Spirituality Column #28
May 22, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Can you relate?By Bob Walters

To those who view the Bible as a guide book for our relationship with God, the Cosmos and other people, it is a liberating book of immeasurable depth.

If you try to make the Bible the full literal story of all history and the complete rules of life, you will be trapped by its smallness. There is no freedom in specific orders; there most definitely is freedom in Christ.

The Ten Commandments? Great rules. But do you mind if I work in my yard on Sunday?  For commandments that work all the time, I like “Love God” and “Love others.”

Genesis and Creation? Brilliant people on both sides of the Creationist (God created the world in six 24-hour days) and Evolutionist (we are mutated fish that crawled out of the primordial ooze over several billion years) debate will not give an inch on their respective views of Genesis 1.

Inasmuch as God, Christ and the Holy Spirit pretty much are Creation (done deal), there doesn’t seem – to me – to be a whole lot at stake arguing the topic of Creation / Evolution. It has already happened just as God planned it. Christ is all about faith, hope, love … and looking ahead.

As a believing (if personally flawed) Christian I will tell you that the main point, the sum-total of the entire Bible, is that we are to build a faith and relationship in Jesus Christ.

Can you believe in Christ without believing in Creation? I say, of course, because Creation isn’t the main thing in our relationship with God; Christ is the main thing. The Bible is crystal clear in saying Christ is the only way to have a relationship with God. The Holy Spirit will help your heart and mind sort out the details.

Instead of asking “How did I get here?” I’d ask, “How is my relationship with Christ?”

Now there is a deep question.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is a Carmel resident who believes we are here for a reason … and it isn’t to prove that mutated fish can build hospitals and highways.

Smart Jesus

Spirituality Column # 27
May 15, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Smart Jesus
By Bob Walters

Jesus is smart.

In a cosmic game of Jeopardy, I’ll take Jesus and you can have the field.

Too often Jesus Christ is seen as an emotional figure, accessible through faith but otherwise popularly consigned to an existence outside the realm of true intellectualism.

Secular philosophers would say that the active pursuit of belief in Jesus Christ, as the fully God, fully man, crucified-dead-risen eternal son of God who is our never-ceasing intercessor in prayer with Almighty God the Father and the way to our own individual eternal salvation … means checking your brains at the church door.

To me it is interesting that until roughly 150 years ago virtually every institution of higher learning in the western world created since the time of Christ was founded based on the pursuit of understanding Christ.

Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, little Franklin College (founded 1834) south of Indianapolis – almost every college everywhere before state and land grant universities – each had its genesis as an educational institution for the training of clergy and Christian or other religious principles.

In those days you had to learn about Christianity before you could critique it.

Sadly today Christ is often dismissed as an emotional apparition and left off the educational palette when in fact Christ represents the sum total of all knowledge man’s brain ever has, does, or will know.

Christ is the Logos Creator (read John 1); the Word of Creation. He was there at the Beginning and is the Word that breathes life into the human spirit and all Creation. We have the freedom to believe or not believe, of course, but the entire point of the Bible is the intellectual exercise of understanding our relationship with God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Cosmos and, very importantly, with each other.

It’s OK to be emotional about our faith – I frequently am – but the reasoning brain is necessary to truly pursue God.

Think about it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, thinks about and feels Christ in very real terms.

The Good Shepherd

Spirituality Column #26
May 8, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) Newspaper

The Good ShepherdBy Bob Walters

Should Jesus have fired the Apostles?

The 12 Apostles of the four Gospels were a motley crew … regular just-like-us guys of their time. They were hand-picked by Jesus and had constant front-row exposure to Christ’s teaching and miracles.

Look how they reacted to Jesus: God Incarnate, The Good Shepherd.

As a group the Apostles variously wavered in their faith, were confused by His teaching, second-guessed His intentions, questioned His divine nature, betrayed Him to the Pharisees, went to sleep on Him in the Garden, denied knowing Him at His trial, ran from Him at the crucifixion (everyone but John), and when He appeared in a locked room with them days later … doubted Christ’s resurrection.

With friends like that, who needs a Pharisee?

The point is, should there be a Christian anywhere who is surprised when another Christian goes astray? Or should any of us be surprised when we doubt our faith or question God’s motives?

It is instructive to see how Jesus reacted.

Jesus mildly rebuked the Apostles who slept as He prayed for His life at Gethsemane, basically shrugged off Judas’ betrayal, and struck up an engaging conversation with Pontius Pilate, who soon gave Him over to execution.

Above all, He was kind and compassionate with the downtrodden; and brilliantly shrewd with the proud. He did not un-define sin for the comfort of others, but urged all to “follow me” (20 times in the Gospels) and to “go and sin no more.”

Jesus brought grace, yet warned about end times, hypocrisy, unbelief and the eternal consequences. He was plenty tough, but grace does not mean there was no room for sternness and admonishments in His teachings.

When we sin – and keep sinning – we miss the exquisite experience of Christ as the Good Shepherd.

That’s an experience you want.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has great reason to be glad God does not remember our sins.

Evil Is as Evil Does - The VT Murderer

Spirituality Column #25
May 1, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Evil Is as Evil Does
By Bob Walters

I’m thinking of the Virginia Tech murderer.

We are each of us, every human being, made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). We are inherently good.

We are also each of us, thanks to Adam and Eve, possessed of a heart that is “desperately wicked” (Genesis 6:5, Jeremiah 17:9). We are inherently evil.

Modern psychology describes complex social and behavioral patterns, externalizing our individual behavior and removing blame from our actions. Secular psychology endeavors to locate blame either in the past, outside of the self, or both; the media searches for blame where psychology leads it.

The Bible describes good and evil in absolute personal terms, locates Good in God and Evil in our hearts, and makes us personally accountable to God and to each other for our social and behavioral manifestations.

Pull God out of the equation and psychological description melts into a stew of non-absolutes. Psychology doesn’t like the E-word. Neither does the mass media.

Evil is a hard word to say. It makes Satan real. It makes God real. It gives voice to the truth of the Bible and the truth of our hearts. It makes that church stuff nearly everyone used to learn – Christ, crucifixion, resurrection – real.

It makes the inadequacy of our secular-dominated society real.

It’s sad to think that our individual destiny is determined by our capacity for evil, or that our thriving for goodness can be defeated so easily by the evil of a gunman bursting into a busy classroom.

Current national statistics indicate 90 percent of American teenagers are “unchurched.” That is frightening because they are missing exposure to immensely important concepts like, “do unto others as you would have them to unto you,” “love your neighbor” and – critically, a Bible exclusive – “love your enemies.”

Mankind’s great capacity for goodness is revealed when we use our freedom to seek God. Our wickedness and evil is when we use our freedom to define ourselves as God (Genesis 3:5).

Seek God, or Be God? Which do you think was in Cho Seung-hui’s black heart that day?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, grieves for the unspeakable loss of young lives at Virginia Tech, and cries for their parents.