God's Strength & Grace

Spirituality Column #42
August 28, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

God’s Strength and Grace
By Bob Walters

“God will never give you more than you can handle.”

I beg to differ.

My dear friend Tim, who recently traveled the impossible road of watching his young wife – mother of their two young children – die of cancer, offered this startling observation:

“Of course God gives you more than you can handle,” Tim said. “Otherwise how would you ever learn what to give over to God?”

Tim is a solid, spiritual Christian – a Catholic – with a remarkable command of scripture. He heard that old saying so many times that he went to his Bible to find where it says God won’t give us more than we can bear. Tim discovered the Bible doesn’t say that.

First Corinthians 10:13 tells us God will never tempt us beyond what we can bear. Close, but temptation isn’t sickness or turmoil or even a problem until you give in to it – remember that Jesus fasted for 40 days and was tempted by Satan (Matthew 4) but remained holy.

In 2 Corinthians 12 the Apostle Paul describes his own torment of the “thorn in my flesh” (v 4) and then (v 9) assures us the Lord’s grace is sufficient to bear whatever we may encounter.

Remember that part about grace; we are naked without it. But haven’t we all, at one time or another, encountered the seemingly unbearable?

Second Corinthians 4:10 is where the road gets really rough, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” And then in verse 12, “Death is at work in us.”

Death, I would say, is more than we can bear. Our own strength cannot combat death and the countless miseries of a fallen world, but God’s grace gives us life eternal.

God can handle what we can’t, just don’t forget He is there.

Knowing and trusting He is there is called “Grace.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) isn’t so sure that just because a door closes, a window opens. However, he is sure God is with you regardless.

How Many Gods Are There?

Spirituality Column #41
August 21, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

How Many Gods Are There?
By Bob Walters

How many Gods are there?

The correct answer is “One,” of course, but there sure is a lot of lively and also deadly discussion and disagreement throughout history and even today about the number of God. The Number is One.

The Holy Trinity of the Christian faith is one God. God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three manifestations, three persons, of the same one single God. That’s Christian doctrine.

It is very easy to understand how this three-in-one, one-in-three nature of God is difficult to understand for one of God’s children who is outside the Christian faith. The math doesn’t work: three equals one. The grammar doesn’t work: the Trinity is? The Trinity are?

I guess most people accept that God exists, and I would point out that the multiple pagan gods of antiquity (Thor, Zeus, Apollo, et al) have not stood the test of time that the God of the Bible has withstood.

I realize it’s kind of a conundrum to even say that “God” our eternal Father has withstood a “test of time.” After all, He is eternal and He is very different from us. Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us His thoughts and ways are higher than our ways, and 2 Peter 3:8 tells us God’s time is different from ours (a day is like a thousand years and vice versa).

So it’s a mistake to put God into earthly constraints of time, math or grammar, and probably silly to argue about “One True God,” isn’t it? How can there be more than one? And it’s nonsensical to say "my God" or "your God." God is the one who put all of us here. Whatever name you call God, only One God can be the Creator God Almighty.

I’ll go ahead and worship the one God who created me and loves me, and not some random god I created because I love myself. Those gods are called idols, and there are lots of them.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is admittedly non-patronizing toward atheists but believes that if there is no God nothing is important; and if there is a God, nothing else is more important.

Drugs or Scripture?

Spirituality Column #40
August 14, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Drugs or Scripture?
By Bob Walters

When I was 18 I fell flat on my tailbone – hard – while playing driveway basketball. I remained healthy and active but lived with lower back problems including occasional crippling, couldn’t-get-out-of-bed pain for the next 25 years.

I tried to get rid of the pain. Doctors would assess the pain and prescribe pain killers and muscle relaxers. I hated the way the pain killers clouded my mind. The muscle relaxers (there’s no easy way to put this) relaxed the wrong muscles, causing diarrhea.

I’d sneeze or step wrong and my back would “go out.” Surgery was suggested, so was ice, heat, more exercise, less exercise, aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, Naproxen (Aleve). I dealt with the pain mostly by toughing it out.

It is important here to notice what was not being addressed: the cause of the pain. A very bright Carmel chiropractor revealed the truth to me about some misaligned lumbar vertebrae and muscle spasms, fixed the problem and the pain went away.

In our souls where we suffer life’s emotional hard-contact spills of fear, anxiety, disappointment, depression, addiction, loneliness, guilt, marital and family strife, career trouble, misunderstandings … and let’s not forget sin and maybe even the awful feeling of separation from God … it is easy to reach for emotional pain relief in a pill.

It’s even easier – and smarter – to reach for a Bible and address the actual problem.

We must not miss what God promises by the Holy Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control (Galatians 5:22-23). Wouldn’t you want that as your mental profile, instead of the hash of misery listed above?

The Holy Spirit is already breathed into each one of us. It’s there waiting for us to tap into its power by believing in Christ. Much mental stress comes from our heart attitude, and a heart full of Christ is always a better way to cure the root of emotional pain than a bottle full of pills.

Many churches offer Biblical and Christian counseling, and you can look up CCEF.org or NANC.org to learn more.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows one psychology joke: neurosis is when you know 2+2=4 and it bothers you terribly; psychosis is when you know 2+2=5 and it doesn’t bother you at all.

Pope Views Not News

Spirituality Column #39
August 7, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Pope Views Not News
By Bob Walters

That the Roman Catholic Church sees itself to be “the one true church” is very old theological news.

The general eruption of media and talk radio indignation since the Pope seemingly reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s doctrine of exclusive salvation – “We are the only ones who are saved” – seems to be more a case of bad journalism than bad church public relations.

All grumbling to the contrary, the Pope said no such thing. The Vatican’s doctrinal theologians (the current Pope used to head that division) drafted a clarifying document stating that the church actually believes what it says it believes, and the Pope accepted that document as being also what he believes.

Somehow, this was international news.

Any “History of Christian Theology 101” class includes the facts that 1) the Catholic Church views itself as the one true church; 2) sees itself as mediator between congregants and Christ; and 3) that Catholic authority and practice emanate from its traditions as much or moreso than from the Bible.

Classic Protestant denominations – Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, etc. – also provided a degree of Holy mediation and “liturgical” (institutionalized, pre-written) worship, but encouraged scripture reading to such a degree that America at its founding through about 100 years ago was a very Biblically literate culture.

Since then the Bible-totin’ Baptist, independent Christian and other Evangelical churches – a religious out-cropping of recent centuries – have taken to heart what it says in 1 Timothy 2:15 about Christ as the only mediator with God, and Biblically inferred that man needs a church (an “ecclesial community” in Vatican parlance … whatever), a Bible and a personal relationship with Christ, Amen.

Catholic or Protestant or Evangelical, what I know for sure is that Christ doesn’t change, God doesn’t change, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t change.

Maybe if we all tried to be more like them – Christ, God and the Holy Spirit – we’d find similarities among ourselves instead of differences. It would make God smile.

And hey, don’t yell at the Pope; appreciate a guy who understands his job.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) would point out that, unlike the Trinity, each of us must change … and it’s hard.