Halloween and Christian Kindness

Spirituality Column #51
October 30, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Halloween and Christian Kindness
By Bob Walters

I’m not writing this to be the Grinch Who Stole Halloween, because Halloween in our culture today is mostly an exercise in harmless fantasy and positive community building, not so much a dark Satanic acting-out.

Costumes trigger creativity no matter your age, and creativity is good – a gift of our Godly free will. Fantasy and playacting are keys to developing young, bright minds. But of course, I’m thinking Disney World, not Dungeons and Dragons.

Some of the best social nights in our neighborhood (Forest Dale area) were on Halloween, when parents and kids and grandparents and friends and wagons and jack-o-lanterns and candy … piles of candy … added up to treasured family and neighborly memories. But I’m thinking loving and sharing, not destructive pranks, burglary and demon worship.

Halloween is a real conundrum. It’s fun and freeing and harmless. It’s also dark and unloving and dangerous.

Halloween’s origin was in BC Ireland as a pagan Celtic end-of-harvest festival and occult blurring-of-the-lines between the quick and the dead, making it easier for the Druid priests to predict the future and the weather. It was called “Samhain.”

In the seventh century as Christianity spread to the Celtic lands, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 as All-Saints (All-Hallows) Day, honoring saints and martyrs, as a church sanctioned replacement to the pagan holiday. October 31 became Hallows-Eve, or Hallowe’en.

Ironically, it was when the church sanctioned the holiday that the real spooky stuff began. If you want a real fright this Halloween, just Google “Halloween history.”

Famed British psychotherapist and pastoral counselor Frank Lake (1914-1982) taught that Halloween was a way that Westerners dealt with their fear of death. A fine local pastor named Dave Faust preached that Christians should stay away from the occult not because there was nothing to it, but because there absolutely was something to it.

Giving strangers food at your door is very Christian, the mystery of death and resurrection is at the very heart of the Christian faith, and co-opting pagan holidays for Christian purposes (Christmas, Easter, All Saints, et al) is basic church history.

Just … watch it out there. Halloween is what we make it; be kind and use it for good.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests that in your Halloween travels you ask Christ to be with you. Remember, you can ask Him anything.

Welcoming the Dalai Lama

Spirituality Column #50
October 23, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Welcoming the Dalai Lama
By Bob Walters

I write as a Christian but the big religious news in Indiana this week is a visit by the Dalai Lama, head of the Buddhist faith.

He is speaking at both Indiana and Purdue Universities, celebrating the payoff of $1.5 million in debt on the Tibetan Cultural Center in Bloomington (announced by Elaine Mellencamp), and visiting his brother, Thubten Norbu, an IU professor emeritus. The Dalai Lama’s trip to the U.S. included visiting privately with President Bush and receiving the Congressional Gold Medal.

America has an affection for the Dalai Lama that I find logical. He is truly and deeply a man of peace (Nobel Peace Prize 1989), has mesmerizing star power, and is censured by the Chinese government. We like all that stuff. America always roots for Tibet (and Taiwan, et al) against the freedom-stifling muscle of the Chinese government.

Plus, don’t we all as Hoosiers get a kick out of the fact the Dalai Lama’s brother lives in Bloomington?

Still, my hunch is that most Americans (and Hoosiers) know precious little about Buddhism, which has both some interesting teachings and some huge theological holes. I have a parallel hunch that many Christians would stammer horribly if presented with the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama (means “Ocean of Wisdom") personally and explain their faith in Christ.

Even if we don’t meet the Dalai Lama, there’s a good chance we’ll talk to a secular friend who will challenge us on why our Christianity works better for us than the peace-loving ways of Buddhism.

First of all, let’s not confuse Christians and our fallen world with Christ, the ultimate man of peace; God incarnate who died for our sins so we would have eternal life in the presence of the living, loving Creator God.

Christians get grace for eternity. A Buddhist is shooting for “consciousness.”

The most important aesthetic of Buddhism is “Emptiness” (that’s true). A Christian on the other hand seeks “fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). Empty, or full? You decide.

Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path and 10 Precepts might remind one of the 10 Commandments and various Bible verses on, for example, suffering and wisdom. But Buddhism’s tenets are all self-directed, and mention nothing of love, community, family or God – the core of Christian theology.

As a Christian we can’t argue the Bible against a Buddhist (or even your secular neighbor) any more than a Buddhist can argue his Precepts against us. For one thing, a Buddhist is a lot less likely to argue. For another, it’s a fool’s errand to argue scripture with someone who doesn’t understand scripture.

Reveal instead the enormous gifts of life, love and grace we have in Christ. That’s the story to tell, and remember Jesus is the ultimate example of peace.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) encourages Christians to learn to step outside the Bible to defend their faith, which resides in one’s heart, not in a book.

Clearing Up a Couple of Things

Spirituality Column #49
October 16, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Clearing Up a Couple of Things
By Bob Walters

A couple of thoughtful op-ed emails arrived recently from readers who kindly digest this column despite their fundamental disagreement with religion.

I deeply enjoy the comment and exchange; I always write back.

One reader thought I had called non-believers “lazy.” Not what I meant. I said (Oct. 2) that “Lazy faith creates … doubt and guilt.” It often takes as much work to not believe as it does to believe. Plenty of hard workers do not believe in God, and plenty of folks in church don’t do much else for God but attend church. Salvation is by faith, but the riches are in the work, whether earthly or divine.

This reader also challenged me to step out of my church and learn what non-religious people have to say. I already understand non-religious people because I was one for a long time. I went to church growing up (it seemed everyone went to church in the 50s and 60s) but then stepped away for nearly 30 years of my adult life – working to disprove Christ, religion, church – before I came to understand and accept Christ. What I found out was this: the big deal is Christ, not just church or religion.

Another reader said he has led a happy, fulfilled life without religion. I know lots of happy, hardworking people who want nothing to do with church. I can also quote Matthew 19:24 – “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Read that again if you think rich equals happy.

Funny thing about “happy.” Nowhere in the Bible does it say that “happy” is a fulfillment of anything. It’s a reaction to God’s gifts. Being happy within yourself is not unusual, but nothing in scripture leads me to think happiness is God’s or our purpose in life. You are free to be happy because of God, but happiness, in and of itself, is an emotion, not a virtue or a purpose.

Our purpose in life, simply, is to glorify God. Happy or miserable, that’s our purpose. Religious or not, that’s our purpose.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) understands that you can’t really “argue” faith into someone because you either “get it” or you don’t. But love is constant, and we’re supposed to talk about it.

Reflecting on the Truth

Spirituality Column #48
October 9, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Reflecting on the TruthBy Bob Walters

‘Heard a good sermon at church recently about how all truth starts with God. I started thinking about how truth is treated in modern American culture.

For example, how much truth did you hear in the remarks of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University in New York a couple weeks ago?

I didn’t hear much that sounded like truth, but the truth is, he got a forum at Columbia. Would God’s truth get a forum at Columbia? At any Ivy League college? At any college?

If there is anything not being taught in America’s mainline universities today, it’s that all truth comes from God. That might be the greatest single abundance of ignorance in contemporary culture – not knowing that truth comes from God.

Perhaps the problem is not so much a true anti-God sentiment, but that God’s truth in Christ – which was so integral to the founding of this nation and the basis upon which our educational institutions were built – is still facing a challenge God has always had: mankind’s pride in his own intellect.

When we look to our own intellect for truth … well, look out. Have you listened to a political argument lately?

There is nothing as glorious as reverently experiencing God’s truth, and nothing as miserable as when we stray and are then reminded of God’s truth. Adam and Eve knew instinctively to be ashamed of their sin before God, because they knew God’s truth.

It is a problem that America culture doesn’t learn enough or teach enough about God’s truth to enable us to recognize sin, be ashamed of sin, and then do something about sin, like … change, and stop sinning. We’d be far happier. Try it sometime.

Another truth is that God judged all he made as “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Creation then fell in Adam and Eve’s sin, but in Christ we have a chance to be made good again. So take heart – we may be fallen, but it’s not hopeless. Down, but not out. In Christ, we still have a shot.

The truth is, God made us to reflect God’s glory.

What do you reflect?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes the Bible is entirely true and that truth emanates from all God’s creation, but not everything in creation is truth (see: Satan). It’s important to learn the difference. Prayer is a good place to start.

Not That Many Atheists

Sprituality Column #47
October 2, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Not That Many Atheists
By Bob Walters

Any professing, active Christian – or Jew, Muslim, Jehovah’s Witness, Buddhist, Hindu, Scientologist – knows that faith takes a lot of work. Lazy faith creates a stew of doubt and guilt; active, working faith creates wonder and a true life’s purpose.

For that reason – and if God doesn’t exist it’s hard to figure where reason comes from – it must be miserable work being an atheist. Imagine if everything you did for faith, you did only to prove there is no point to any of it.

Maybe it’s too hard of work. Population polls consistently reveal just half of one percent of the population reports itself to be “atheist” – sure God doesn’t exist. I was surprised the number was so low.

Chuck Colson wrote recently that current atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris aren’t just atheists, they are anti-theists who want God off the map because religion is counter to humanity’s needs.

God is counter to humanity? C’mon guys … without God, there wouldn’t be humanity (or anything else).

C.S. Lewis astutely observed that atheists cannot explain religious impulses in human beings, make sense of religious experience, explain the existence of reason and free will, account for our ability to think and choose, or explain the existence and order of the universe.

Religious truth may frequently be in conflict with our felt needs or our own sense of order (i.e. – what I think is good for me), but God gives us the ability to think those thoughts, contemplate those doubts, and create our own stories.

To me the Triune God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) is reality, while atheism is one of the stories we tell ourselves to ignore God’s enormous truths.

Evel Knievel, whose amazing conversion experience in Christ I wrote about last week, explained it this way: “A Christian wants to believe … everything about God and Jesus. An atheist does not believe in God because he doesn’t want to.”

That’s so simple and complete and profound – it really does come down to what we want.

The trick is to want God most, and work at it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) spent many years as an agnostic, a Greek-based word for “without knowledge” that when run through Latin and then re-Anglicized becomes the word “ignoramus.” Ouch.