Freeing Up a Choked Debate

Spirituality Column #77
April 29, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Freeing Up a Choked Debate
By Bob Walters

I saw the movie Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed and thought it was pretty good.

What has surprised me is that the reviews and comment I’ve seen are predictably, iconoclastically “Conservative – Intelligent Design” or “Liberal – Darwinism” and have consistently missed Stein’s central point of the movie – Freedom.

Evolutionists, Atheists and anti-Creationists certainly saw – to their way of thinking, I’m sure – an unfair attack on their beloved and holy Darwinism. Believers like me were likely struck by Stein’s images, boldness and surely snickered at some of his forensic mischief and filmmaker’s license.

And I must say that the sound track was fabulous. To Yoko and her “Imagine” complaint, all I can say is “Let It Be.”

But whether I think the movie’s message is right on or someone else thinks the message is right off the loony farm, Stein began and ended the movie talking about Freedom.

Freedom. Galatians 5:1. As a Christian believer, and an American, I want to stop right there and drink in the elegance of focusing on Freedom in a debate about science. And religion.

Religion is a quest for Truth. Science is a quest for Truth. Both require freedom of honest inquiry to establish Truth, or you wind up with idolatry and demagoguery, not religion and science. You have Political Correctness, not Truth.

What is Truth? That’s easy. It’s in the Bible. John 14:6. Jesus Christ is the Truth.

And how Darwin got to be more politically correct than Christ I do not know.

Stein addressed science, but mainly he was talking about Freedom; Freedom which I interpret as being of ultimate importance to our relationship with God and its utter necessity in our search for Him.

Trotting out the Bible as the ultimate science book is not satisfying, because our God-given thirst for discovery requires us to investigate beyond the relationship Truths of Genesis-to-Revelation. Yet the church cannot define science without stifling human creativity (look at the Dark Ages). When science stifles the church, you have, well … today.

Our creativity is an absolutely essential part of our humanity Christ came to redeem. How else can we discover Him?

We all want Freedom for our own point of view. If we battle to preserve Freedom on all fronts, religion and science will take care of themselves.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures our purpose in life is our quest for God, and our pursuit of Truth. We find both in Christ.

Caesar Oprah!

Spirituality Column #76
April 22, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Caesar Oprah!
By Bob Walters

Has it ever really sunk in how completely un-famous Jesus Christ was when He was alive on earth?

He was the Son of God, yet very few knew Him. His resurrection didn’t make the public records, only private letters.

His job wasn’t to tell us He was God. Jesus’ job was to tell us we have eternal life with God if we believe in Him as the Christ. Jesus did not have to bluntly say, “I am God.” There is no doubt that He was, and is.

He knew we’d figure it out … and believe. We have.

Subsequently, Jesus has been very, very famous for a long time.

During Jesus’ life on earth, the Caesars were immensely famous and powerful; people thought they were gods. They are all dead now. Jesus died and now lives – so we can live – and scripture breathes that truth.

This brings me to the errant theology of Oprah Winfrey.

Bright-eyed and savvy, Oprah, like the Caesars, is immensely famous and powerful.

There are plenty of preachers around who think they are entertainers. Oprah has become an entertainer who thinks she is a preacher.

Have you been following her Christ-stifling foray into spiritual enlightenment?

Oprah says there are a million ways to salvation. Her guru imagines there is nothing after death. She has completely botched the concept of God’s jealousy for us (God's jealousy is a good thing, folks; not bad). She is preaching about feelings and breathing. She infers that belief is a sucker’s gambit: to wit, God just “is,” therefore we should not believe. Huh?

I wonder what the meaning of “is” is, here.

Oprah is telling us that Jesus was mistaken when He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” That’s John 14:6. It’s fairly famous. Jesus is famous because lines like that have endured for nearly 2,000 years in a famous place, the Bible.

If you want to see a list of Oprah’s scriptural incursions and misinformation, go to www.seriousfaith.com (Brent Riggs’ blog) and search “Pastor Oprah.”

My point is this: scriptural canon has survived intact for 1,600 years. I have a hunch it is going to survive Oprah.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures Oprah will fool very few Christians, but her New Age nonsense is sure to screw up some very sincere seekers. It’s a shame. Pray for her return to Christ.

Intelligent Movie - Expelled

Spirituality Column # 75
April 15, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Intelligent Movie
By Bob Walters

Everybody knows Ben Stein. Everybody loves Ben Stein.

That may be about to change.

He reveals himself this week as a very dangerous first class thinker.

Stein’s new docu-movie, Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed (www.expelledthemovie.com), is in theaters Friday, April 18. If it lives up to its billing, the Darwinist crowd is going to start sleeping not so well.

And will blame Stein for their pain.

Stein is Jewish (note: Genesis is Jewish). He was an author, philosopher and presidential speechwriter before playing quirky characters in movies (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), commercials (FedEx) and as host of the TV game show “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”

This week Stein swings a big, smart hammer on the topic of Intelligent Design, or ID. Expelled supports the very wise, very elite, courageous and very much growing crowd of scientists and thinkers who have concluded, completely opposite the politically correct Darwinists, that there is no way the Cosmos, Earth and Humanity just “happened” as a big, pointless, amoral cosmic freak of nature.

No, Stein insists: an intelligent designer, a creator, a moral force, ahem … God … is the only rational way to explain how and why we are all here.

Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, call your office. Better yet, call your doctor; this movie is going to make you sick.

Mimicking the genre of Michael Moore’s silly attack pieces on common sense (Fahrenheit 911, Sicko) only without Moore’s disingenuous editing tricks, Expelled pushes back at the 150-year-old Darwinian trend of eliminating God – the “Intelligent Designer” – from serious scientific and philosophical discussion.

Routinely teachers are fired, professors are denied tenure, science magazine editors are ridiculed and scientists are denied funding – all Expelled – because they examine, for example, a human cell and authoritatively conclude, “that couldn’t have just happened.”

Expelled also scrutinizes Darwinism’s devastating moral effect on humanity. Survival of the fittest? Look up “Nazism.”

Christians will champion this movie because it effectively and cogently discusses ID without it being portrayed as the grist of close-minded, monosyllabic country bumpkins. The Jews should like it because Darwinists are messing with Genesis 1-2-3, the beginning of the Torah.

The atheists and Darwinists aren’t going to fare so well.

Go see this one. It will, hopefully, begin to change the way true intelligence, and truth, are viewed … for the good.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recommends that you read Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator.

Atheist, or Just God-Challenged?

Spirituality Column #74
April 8, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Atheist, or Just God-Challenged?
By Bob Walters
Author of  Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

It is one thing to say, “I don’t believe in God.”

It is another to say, “God doesn’t exist.”

Statistics always show only a tiny portion of the population – typically less than 5 percent – actually denies the existence of God. The rest of us – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, agnostics, seekers, curmudgeons, contrarians, philosophers, you name it – have some level of spiritual life that includes acceptance that a deity/spirit exists.

Our individual awareness or expectation that God exists – our faith – provides working material for the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to as much truth as we are willing to comprehend. In some of us that opens our minds; in others, it closes our minds.

What we do with our faith – be it a spark or a flicker or brilliant beam of light – is completely and uniquely between the individual and God.

This is on my mind because I was in a high school classroom setting recently where atheist, objectivist philosopher/author Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” was being taught. It is a 1984-ish book where individual free identity is erased in favor of collectivist (read – Communist, Socialist) central planning.

I have read Rand’s seminal novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged more than once, and am familiar with her personal biography. In her novels she gets the free will of the human spirit just right, and absolutely nails the evils of socialism. Yet in her interviews she very openly, personally and bitterly denies the existence of God.

I am a person who believes all truth comes from God, that Christ presents (and is) all truth, and that the Holy Spirit opens our hearts and minds to understand it. Truth is a God thing; lies are a Satan thing.

I see in Rand someone of brilliance who was bitterly disappointed in God, yet nonetheless presented a truth we must carefully abide: society and individuals become the worst versions of themselves when society systematically denies personal individuality and creativity.

God loves each of us intensely and gives each of us a lot of room to work out our faith. Don’t be too quick to judge … or to deny that God exists. He can use any of us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reminds all that “agnostic” from Greek quickly becomes “ignoramus” from Latin.  Just sayin' ...

For Bob's latest posts, go back to www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com.

Beside the Point

Spirituality Column No. 73
April 1, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Beside the Point
By Bob Walters

Since today is April 1, naturally I Googled “April Fool’s Day” to find out whether it has some traditional, hidden or even spurious religious etymology.

It doesn’t, really, unless you want to count the fact that in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII declared in force the new Gregorian Calendar which, throughout the Holy Roman Empire, standardized January 1 as the start of the new year instead of at the end of March. This replaced the old Julian Calendar and the big joke was to fool people into thinking April 1 was still the start of the New Year. A tradition was born.

Ha ha. But seriously, much of the Western world already had January 1 as New Year’s.

Still, maybe today is a good day to contemplate the foolish things we do in our faith; the things we do that make us take our focus off our relationship with Christ.

Non-foolishness is to understand one thing: it’s all about Him, Jesus Christ. When we focus on anything but Him, we very quickly start counting deeds, and when we count deeds, our human nature insists we keep score, and when we keep score … well, it gets foolish.

I don’t know how one can possibly keep score against God.

Christians in the same pews of the same churches will wrestle mightily over definitions of Bible words, over which version of the Bible is best, over how the Spirit comes and goes and resides, over which songs to sing and how to sing them, over communion practice, over worshipping with dance, over table decorations at the ladies’ retreat, over the inextricability of salvation (can you lose it?), who is called to be saved, who is going to Heaven, who is going to Hell, whether Genesis 1-2-3 can possibly be accurate …

The list is not necessarily foolish, but beside the point. The point is, fighting about this stuff is foolish.

Christ loves each of us in our uniqueness, so anything that prevents us from loving other believers in their uniqueness seems, well, foolish.

Shall we endeavor to discern the truth? Of course; lies are Satan’s weapon.

But keep it about Jesus, not about keeping score.

That’s the wise thing to do.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thinks judgment is one of the great gifts God gives any of us. We just need to not try to do God’s job for Him.





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