Sin, Knowledge, and Faith

Spirituality Column #203
September 28, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Sin, Knowledge, and Faith
By Bob Walters

Why does one believe in Jesus Christ?

Is it to:
a) Escape one’s sin,
b) Increase one’s knowledge, or
c) Because our faith tells us to?

Defining and justifying one’s belief in Christ can be a lonely, confusing enterprise.

Our increasingly schizophrenic, postmodern society systemically tries to both acknowledge truth and deny the existence of God, self-righteously insists on goodness but scoffs at morality, and smugly claims heaven as its own while rolling its clouded eyes cynically at the person of Jesus Christ.

But clear-eyed to Christ some of us are drawn. All are invited in grace, but the world tugs hard against the heart that hears the heavenly hearkening of Jesus.

Sin generates pleasure and fear, and fear pulls some toward the Cross. The pursuit of pleasure, of course, pulls the other direction.

If Jesus is presented merely as a “get out of jail” pass, some will misinterpret that as a divine call rather than the selfish, empty escape that it often is; for guilt always focuses on us, not the Lord.

Knowledge is the exclusive province of Christ. He is the Word of God from the beginning of the world (John 1:1), and knowing Christ – which is the New Covenant brought by Jesus – is the only way to know any part of God.

But alas … who pursues Christ in order to obtain knowledge? Secular science has replaced the throne of God as the public seat of knowledge. Where in science does one find grace, or mercy? Facts, please. Let us discover the facts.

“The postmoderns,” to quote Joe Bottum, “say there is neither Good, nor right and wrong.” Justice becomes an opinion or an open-variable equation. Do the math; there is no God.

Faith is an agonizingly simple enterprise. The intuitive examine their heart. The aware learn from experience. The intellectual study the evidence. God is near. Be still, and know it (Ps. 46:10).

Proving faith is agonizingly difficult. I can prove faith only as I can prove love … by my actions, by my joy, by the depth and fullness of my life. Yet the proof is in my heart and, like all eternal things, unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Believers may arrive at Christ’s hem quaking in guilty fear, or possibly seeking ultimate wisdom. How real and wonderful it is when the indefinable quality of faith animates the undeniable fact of God in our soul.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) weeps for those whose walk with the Lord is a guilt trip. The best answer is C.

Creation, Facts, and Purpose

Spirituality Column #202
September 21, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Creation, Facts, and Purpose
By Bob Walters

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth …
(Genesis 1:1)

Considering that Creation is among the hottest of contemporary, fightin’-words, flash-point topics in church, theological, political, scientific, cosmological, educational, philosophical and biblical circles, this could be a dangerous discussion.

However the intention here is to simply present a few non-combative thoughts on the how and why of Creation, not challenge anyone’s Christianity or second-guess God.

Neither is this an attempt to prove the “six day” teaching nor to bash evolution, but we will put the Bible in its rightful and true spot as God’s voice.

The truths we’re working with are that God exists, God is eternal and uncreated, God is the creator of all things, God had a reason for creating all things, God is omniscient (knows all) and omnipotent (can do all), and the Bible is what it says it is.

Let’s also clearly state that the world is real, we are real, we are alive, we are aware, and what we do matters. Plus, it is reliably entrenched in our human brains to ask how and why Creation happened, and how and why we are here.

Science and Philosophy (God created them, too) ask how and why all the time.

Science asks: How do things happen? What are the predictable and repeatable results? What are the facts?

Philosophy asks: Why am I here? Why are we here? What is truth? What is our purpose?

The scientific “How” leads to facts: we find out how God made things, leading to knowledge. And then, philosophically asking “Why” God made things leads to discovery of God’s purpose, leading to relationship and faith.

The Bible reveals little of “how” God created us, but is overwhelmingly packed with “why.” From Adam and Eve to Abraham to Moses to the Prophets to Jesus Christ to Paul, God describes His relationship with mankind, and the relationship He wants us to have with each other.

God’s purpose for Creation becomes clear as our faith grows, and that purpose boils down to one word: Love. God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and his Son Jesus Christ entered this world to defeat death, remove our sin, and save us for eternal communion amid God’s love.

I appreciate science exploring how God does things, but am thankful beyond expression that faith is all we need to know why.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) thinks science is God’s way of having us look for Him in Creation. Too often we think we see ourselves instead.

Did God Just Lose the Argument?

Spirituality Column #201
September 14, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Did God Just Lose the Argument?
By Bob Walters

Some years ago I picked up Prof. Stephen Hawking’s popular 1988 physics book, A Brief History of Time.

About halfway through, I realized I was mentally overmatched. I generally enjoy complex reading, but Hawking is one smart dude and the physics of time is one mammoth mental challenge. Time, so to speak, wasn’t on my side. I put it down.

It’s not the only book I couldn’t finish the first time I picked it up. The Bible was like that. I grew up Christian and understood I was supposed to believe the Bible, but on several attempts, I couldn’t understand the Bible. Even in English, it seemed like a foreign language.

That changed about 10 years ago when, in my mid-forties, the eyes of my heart opened to the meaning of the Bible. I read it, I got it, I still read it, and I still learn new things every time I open it.

Hawking – who closed Time stating that when man achieved a complete understanding of science, it would “reveal the mind of God” – has published a new book this month, The Grand Design. In it he reverses field and announces that God is unnecessary to the universe and irrelevant to Creation.

“Because there is a law such as gravity,” Hawking writes, “the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

So God, it is widely reported, has been declared not only irrelevant but nonexistent. Stephen Hawking said so.

Let’s not panic and think that settles it.

Hawking, recently retired, held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University, England, a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton. Suffering life-long ill health and confined, paralyzed, in a wheel chair, Hawking is the most celebrated scientist on the planet since Albert Einstein.

It is beyond odd that a guy that smart would claim that physical “law” and “gravity” had to exist for “spontaneous creation” (on its own) to happen. It’s borderline hopeful that academics and secularists, despite their initial “God is gone” glee, could not overlook that statement’s inherent oxymoron: that gravity had to exist before the universe could independently, exclusively, and spontaneously create itself.

Even secular CNN quickly asked: Who created gravity?

Good question. I, for one, don’t think Prof. Hawking’s mathematical mastery has sufficient gravity to unseat God as Creator.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is pretty sure Hawking has underestimated God.

The Importance of Patience

Spirituality Column #200
September 7, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Importance of Patience
By Bob Walters

“The passion of our Lord is a lesson in patience.”

St. Augustine wrote that in the fifth century, echoing the even-earlier Christian writer Tertullian of Carthage from approximately AD 200. It is God’s nature to be patient, said Tertullian, and impatience is the primal sin of Satan.

In religious and philosophical writings, there is no shortage of lists when it comes to virtues, those earthly constructs we pursue to try to find God.

We have the Four Cardinal Virtues from antiquity – prudence, justice, courage and temperance. We have the Gospel’s three theological virtues – faith, hope and charity. We have the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:16 - “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Better not leave off mercy, forgiveness, humility, modesty, wisdom, religious devotion and fear of the Lord.

It’s easy to come up with a long list, but patience is a specific attribute of Jesus Christ that teaches us much about God’s love for mankind.

Patience, you see, wasn’t considered much of a virtue by the ancients. Sure, it’s in the Bible, but to the Greeks and Romans “perseverance in adversity” was admired, not Godly patience. What the King James Version calls “long suffering” and “slow to anger” while “forgiving iniquity and transgression” (Numbers 14:18) was the novel lesson of Christ on the Cross.

Patience. When you can be patient, you are being Crucified with Christ. Tertullian taught that patience is not endurance or fortitude, but hope … hope in the Resurrection. And it is a sign of longing for the good things to come; things that are promised nowhere but heaven.

“On Patience” was among Tertullian’s master works, though history tells us he was not an especially patient man. Yet he wrote, “When God’s Spirit descends, patience is always at his side.” Patience, Tertullian redefined, is what it means to be “like God.”

This survey of Christian patience came thanks to the church historian Robert Louis Wilken, who recently put together a terrific work called The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. It landed in my mailbox not long after I renewed by subscription last year to “First Things” magazine.

Wilken has done us an enormous favor by forming this wonderful and clearly written study on the formations of the Christian story.

Otherwise, I’d never have the patience to read these ancient works.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) needs to read everything he can get his hands on about patience. FYI, this is column No. 200.