Evidences of God

Spirituality Column #133
May 26, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Evidences of God
By Bob Walters

My elder son Eric is taking a Religious Studies minor in college and is always an interesting conversational partner during our car trips to and from school.

Eric, heading into his senior year at Purdue, is a baptized believer in Christ and walks his faith in a number of tangible ways – missions, campus ministries, Bible study leadership, youth group mentoring, worship musician, avid volunteer for assorted Kingdom activities, regular church-goer, chaplain of his fraternity, and (OK, I’m a bit biased) all around good-guy.

Plus, he’s a sinner like the rest of us. It’s ironic that we Christians, so often assailed by secularists for either being hypocrites or goody-two-shoes, are also the first to admit we are sinners.

That’s because being a sinner is the one and only thing that qualifies us for the grace of Christ. But I digress …

It’s easy to get through college thinking there is no God, being confused about God, just plain not thinking about God, or ridiculing God and those who believe in Him.

Eric’s faith, thankfully, is surviving both the college experience and what he’s learning about philosophy and theology.

On our most recent ride back down I-65, Eric mentioned a philosophy class this semester which discussed that there are just two kinds of arguments – evidential and logical.

An evidential argument, for example, would suggest that it is more likely God and evil in some way coexist. We see God, we see evil; both exist. A logical argument, differently, would note that a good God would not allow evil to exist, there is evil in the world, therefore God does not exist.

Conversation ensued … evidence obviates assumptions, while logic is wholly dependent on assumptions. Logic is harder to prove than evidence. “My concept of good outweighs God’s likelihood of existence” is a big, awful assumption, not evidence.

But here’s my point. Secularists – who in my experience are particularly queasy about being called “sinners” – immodestly fight against the idea of God’s existence, eternal salvation by Jesus Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit because they see no evidence … and call their position logical.

Look at a changed human life, look at a church full of believers, look at the Bible, look at beauty, look at love, experience an answered prayer, look at the sacrifice of Christ … evidence of God is everywhere, unless you assume it isn’t.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was passively confused about God for roughly three decades, including college. Eric, by the way, is majoring in Aviation Management.

Surfing the Bible

Spirituality Column #132
May 19, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Surfing the Bible
By Bob Walters

An end-of-the-millennium magazine article in late 1999 listed the printing press as the most important invention of the past 1,000 years.

I wonder where, another thousand years hence, they will rate the invention of the Internet, and whether the Internet will have as large an impact on Christianity.

It’s doubtful any mass-printed piece has had as much influence on mankind as the Bible. English theologian John Wycliffe in 1382 provided the first translation of the Vulgate (Latin Bible) into common English, and then German Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the printing press around 1450. By 1517, Martin Luther was nailing his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany, and the Protestant Reformation was on.

Throw in the 1611 publication of the further-refined King James Version of the Bible – with paragraphs, indented poetic verses and translator’s notes – and scripture became both widely available and understandable to the masses. Continued technology, missionary work and evangelism have spread God’s word to every corner of the globe in virtually every language by Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox alike.

The point here is not the winding course of church history, but that the printed Bible has been and still is a powerful influencer of worldwide culture. Whether today one prefers a Thompson Chain Reference Edition, a multi-version Parallel Bible with side-by-side translations, a Study Bible with many reference notes or a simple Zondervan NIV with minimal reference notes, printing press technology delivers the Word in many forms.

How much moreso the Internet. What the printing press did for Bibles, the Internet can do for Bible study. In-depth, free, online resources abound.

My favorite Bible Internet site is ScriptureText.com, with its word-by-word Greek translations. To try it, Google this: “John 1:14 in Greek.” You see each word in original Greek, Greek in English letters, English words, exact grammatical tenses, and multiple meanings along with multiple languages and translation versions.

While I often flip to the back of my little NIV for index entries, a broader reference is BibleGateway.com. One can instantly search Bible words, phrases or specific verses in virtually any version or any language. Other helpful sites BlueLetterBible.com, BibleandReference.com and NewAdventBible.com (Catholic). Countless Bible studies, concordances, commentaries, blogs, FAQs and tutorials are within a couple of clicks.

Also, visit ThompsonBible.net or Zondervan.com to see how Bibles are made.

We have the tools, we need to use them.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) remembers that the millennium article listed eyeglasses (Italy, 1200s) as the second most important invention; they keep human beings sighted and productive past the age of 40.

The Rationalism of Sin

Spirituality Column #131
May 12, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

The Rationalism of Sin
By Bob Walters

The first two chapters of Genesis and the last two chapters of Revelation – the front and back of the Bible – tell us that the world was created without sin and will end without sin.

The bad stuff starts in Genesis 3 when Satan appears and tempts Adam and Eve. Satan’s run ends in the lake of fire in Revelation 20. Bracketing the intervening Biblical chaos are Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22, which describe sinless worlds far different than the one in which we currently live.

I love the Creation story, and deeply cherish the promise and hope of Heaven. In the beginning God created an earthly world He repeatedly declared “good.” In the end He describes an eternal heavenly home – The New Jerusalem – that offers perpetual communion and perfection in the company of Jesus Christ. No sin, no death.

But the reasoned reality of right now in the life all around us is the fact of sin and the fear of death.

Concentric to that reality is the world’s postmodernist, sliding-scale morality that assigns disbelieving relativity to good and evil, and mushy equivocation to truth and falsehood.

A Christian should be able confidently to describe good and truth as the light of Jesus Christ, and recognize evil and falsehood as the darkness of Satan. Alas, today’s prevailing intellectual winds paint assuredness in the divine unseen as irrational, and ascribe cultural tolerance and philosophical certainty only to self-truth and situational morality.

A hundred years ago, author G.K. Chesterton recognized the first glimmers of rationalist postmodernism and argued a somewhat brief yet brilliantly entertaining case against it in his classic 1908 book Orthodoxy. In 100 years, the book has never gone out of print.

Chesterton, now proven prophetic, wasn’t so much arguing against postmodernism as he was arguing for the reasonableness of Christian belief.

He paints reason in tones of openness of mind, describes doubt as a sure sign of sanity, and lists imagination and wonder as indispensable tests of mental function.

Some months ago I was enthralled by a centennial review of Orthodoxy written by Baylor professor Ralph C. Wood that appeared in the November 2008 First Things magazine (the article can be accessed for free at FirstThings.com, search Orthodoxy Chesterton).

Reason and rational thought, Chesterton assures us, are never the preemptive domain of those who claim sin and evil are irrational. It’s the believers who are sane.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes: the first and last chapters of the Bible have no sin, and Christ frequently describes himself as “the first and last.” Interesting, huh?

Has Evil Gone Out of Style?

Spirituality Column #130
May 5, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Has Evil Gone Out of Style?
By Bob Walters

Nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts recently took great pains in print to beg the forgiveness of his readers that, despite what a backward idea he knows it is to those whom he evidently considers his intellectual peers, 10 years later he still can find no explanation for the Columbine massacre except to call it an act of evil.

Evil. I’m not sure I can come up with a more easy to understand concept than evil. Love takes work. Forgiveness takes discipline. Faith takes perseverance. Kindness takes sacrifice.

But evil. Evil’s easy. Evil is 100 percent about “me,” to the exclusion of God or others. Our society, our culture, our cult of self-esteem, is ever loosening its grip on the reality of evil.

Pitts’ problem with evil seems to be that it’s a sign of intellectual resignation to actually believe evil exists.

And for way too many people, evil is a small mind’s opinion, not a controlling cosmic fact.

To go back to the basics, God is good and Satan is evil. God exists and Satan exists. There is absolute good and perfection in the divine person of Jesus Christ. Satan is a miserable fact of our existence whose sole aim is to separate us from God and good by means of death and sin.

Why did God allow there to be evil when Genesis 1 and 2 tell us He created a perfect world without sin or – more importantly – death?

Now there is a great question. Maybe it’s because that without evil, there would be no challenge, choice or freedom about loving God, and therefore no true love, no faith, no triumph, nothing to prove and nothing to overcome.

Pitts cowered to mention evil as an acceptable explanation of life’s unexplainable horrors, but I was entertained a few paragraphs later in the same column to find his assertion that “(evil) flies in the face of our innate belief in the perfectibility of human beings.”

Huh? If history, humanity, Christianity, politics, celebrity culture and maybe even our most recent family reunion have taught us anything, wouldn’t we all universally agree that human beings are not perfectible?

Certainly not in this life.

We humans are a magnificent mess and hardly perfectible by our own effort. Evil is our life’s combat. But we have hope of eternal perfection, and the name of that hope – and perfection – is Jesus Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reads liberal and conservative columnists; liberals make him laugh, and conservatives make him cry.