This Book Sure Seems 'for Real'

Spirituality Column #242
June 28, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

This Book Sure Seems ‘for Real’
By Bob Walters

My Christian friend Nancy put a book in my hands just recently, wondering if I had read it.

“No,” I said.

“I guess a lot of people have,” she said.

Yeah, I guess so.

Heaven is for Real has been atop various New York Times bestseller lists since March. Published in November 2010 in paperback only, by mid-June with upwards of four million copies in print “for Real” remained the No. 1 title on the Times’ “Combined Print and E-Book Nonfiction,” “Combined Hardcover and Paperback Nonfiction” and “Paperback Nonfiction” lists.

I’ll not spoil the book’s story, except to say that a four-year old boy in small-town Nebraska has surgery and later begins telling his father, a Wesleyan minister, about visiting heaven and, among other things, meeting Jesus.

It’s a short, praiseworthy read; a couple hours of a simple yet magnificent – and dare I say, highly believable – exposition of one of this life’s greatest mysteries: “Is Heaven real?” Little Colton Burpo tells us it is.

There is no shortage of books on the “Heaven” experience. I’ve read some and not read others. I tend not to dwell much on either Creation or Heaven, because I trust God has them both all figured out. I can’t add much to His plan.

No, my routine reading and prayer focuses on my and mankind’s relationship with Christ, understanding the Bible, religion’s place in our culture, and learning and sharing all I can about the real existence of God, and the truth, goodness, knowledge and morality provided to humanity by the eternal Logos Word of God, Jesus Christ.

So, I’m examining our relationship with Christ? Here is a kid who – pretty convincingly – says he met Jesus.

It got my attention in ways other books haven’t.

The Shack was a mature man’s recollection of a dream, or an experience, or fiction, or something. It was charming and made people think; but it shouldn’t make anyone believe. Randy Alcorn’s Heaven was, to me, very unsatisfying (sorry) in its over-literalized attempts to define Heaven. I put it down after a few pages. Ninety Minutes in Heaven was compelling, but the storyteller was a Bible-savvy adult preacher.

Heaven is for Real is a child’s perspective. It smacks of the truth, to me, because it doesn’t smack of fiction. It is Biblically on point and simple enough to be real. I’m obviously not the only one who has noticed.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) notes that Jesus says a lot about children in the Bible. Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14. For real.

Where Pride Properly Resides

Spirituality Column #241
June 21, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Where Pride Properly Resides
By Bob Walters

Years ago I had a colleague who would compliment my work by saying, “I’m proud of you.”

It annoyed me. I took pride in my own work and it was both unsatisfying and a little creepy, frankly, to have my work evaluated from the standpoint of someone else’s overreaching pride. I, um, had plenty of pride of my own.

A decade later I began attending church, discovered my life in Christ, was well-mentored by some amazingly intelligent Christians, read the Bible, and over time began to look really, really hard at the pride in my own life vs. the humility of Jesus Christ. No way have I “cured” my own pride, but I now understand pride from a biblical perspective.

And that perspective is this: Pride is the Lord’s alone. The Lord is humble, yet only in Him may pride properly reside. Simple, huh?

I know … it’s a seeming three-way collision of intellect, logic and faith, the kind that keeps “smart” people out of church. But once we understand pride as a “God” thing, humility as a “Jesus” thing, and faith as a human thing, it starts to make sense.

The Bible talks about pride a lot. In the Old Testament, where we learn so much about God, God is constantly telling people that their human, worldly pride will be their undoing, that it is willful, arrogant, foolish, sinful and in several ways destructive to them and offensive to God. The problem boils down to this, God tells man in Ezekial 28:2,

“In the pride of your heart, you say ‘I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god’ … but you are a mere mortal and not a god, though you think you are as wise as a god.”

The modern dictionary isn’t much help here, because it defines “pride,” generally, as “justifiable satisfaction.” What God says throughout the Bible is that the “pride” He detests is mankind’s misplaced, unjustified, self-satisfying and self-directed glory, which I interpret to be the biblical opposite of “justifiable satisfaction.”

Glory is God’s, not ours. Pride belongs to God’s wisdom, not man’s.

Jesus sets our standard and example: He was humble before God and Man. Therefore rather than harboring pride in our human selves and worldly situations, our pride must reside in our faith that Christ is our sovereign Lord.

God knows, it’s no sin to be proud of that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is thankful for God’s blessings rather than proud of the shiny spots in his life.

The Thing with Suffering

Spirituality Column #240
June 14, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Thing with Suffering
By Bob Walters

It was a brief conversation with my dear friend Mike about our mutually dear friend Bill. Mike and I were alone outside Bill’s house after a visit, each of us fighting back tears.

Bill has brain cancer, the really, really hard kind. He and his wife, both deep and mature believers in Christ, are bravely battling the disease. Their grace is wonderful to behold; the effects of the disease are horrifying.

Mike, not a church-goer but deeply imbued with sincere human compassion, said, “I just don’t want to see anyone suffer.”

“Suffering is part of the deal,” I told Mike, quietly, referring to a life in Christ. I added, approximately, “It’s as clear as anything the Bible says. Our faith in Christ and belief in God are tested and purified in our suffering. It doesn’t glorify God to ‘believe’ when times are good. As crazy as it sounds, suffering – and keeping our faith as we suffer – is the greatest earthly way to glorify God.”

Mike and I blinked back tears one more time, and left. I pray my words sank in.

Bill and his wife are glorifying God in their suffering by keeping their faith. We who despair with them must also glorify God by trusting His ultimate mercy.

“Suffering Glorifies God!” is a slogan seldom seen on church signboards. No, marketing the Christian faith today focuses largely on “me.” God loves and forgives me. Or we scrutinize my sin and guilt, or God solving my problems, or having Jesus see things my way. “Please Lord,” we pray, “give me what I want.” We want God to ease our suffering, not be glorified by it.

Jesus prayed, “Father … not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Jesus told His disciples repeatedly that to follow Him they must value God above everything else, including their families, their circumstances, their very lives. Jesus told them they would suffer and be persecuted for their faith, yet they would glorify God.

Suffering is among the Bible’s hardest teachings, one of its most obvious truths, and one of the last things the modern church “sells.” Suffering matters because it is the central lesson of Jesus on the cross, “that your son may glorify you” (John 17:1).

God’s purpose isn’t to make us suffer, but that we persevere in our faith when we suffer. Pray with Jesus that God’s will, not ours, be done.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) resists thinking of faith as a “coping” mechanism. Faith in Christ is a “truth and peace” mechanism. UPDATE: Bill passed peacefully, at home, on Dec. 28, 2011.

The Rapture that Wasn't

Spirituality Column #239
June 7, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Rapture that Wasn’t
By Bob Walters

The difference between Harold Camping’s evidently errant May 21 rapture forecast and almost everyone else’s reaction to it was smugness.

Not Camping’s … almost everyone else’s.

In Camping’s declarations I didn’t hear smugness; I heard faith. I thought he was biblically wrong – glaringly so – on several points, and I saw but didn’t really understand his eschaton (ESS-kah-tahn, i.e. last things) arithmetic. But I never heard from him a belittling smugness. The California Christian fundamentalist is obviously a true believer who I think is befallen by confused signals, not demon possession. It happens.

So let’s look at the bad news and good news.

On the one hand, Camping didn’t do the Kingdom any favors by being that wrong about something that even uber-secular Doonesbury got exactly right. To wit, Zonker in the May 20 comic strip very un-smugly (opposite most public commentary) cites Matthew 24:36. There Jesus says, “But concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” Jesus is “the Son” and even He doesn’t know what Camping claimed to know.

On the other hand, Camping got everyone talking – even Doonesbury – about Jesus Christ. False prophet or misguided sop, Camping created a multi-national buzz that forced many people to stop (or at least downshift) and consider whether they personally were or were not a candidate for rapture. Motivating the many to mull that mystery, however momentarily, is quite a feat.

What’s really wrong with Camping’s prediction, which I think is the same egregious error of the “Left Behind” end-times novels, is this: The relationship focus that properly should be on Jesus Christ is at best obfuscated and at worst entirely lost.

“How is my relationship with Christ?” is the correct question, not, “What’s all this rapture business?”

Anything that lessens rather than sharpens a person’s focus on a relationship with Jesus Christ plays into Satan’s hands. That includes rapture, creation, prophecy, prosperity, faith healing, the Bible, the church, a preacher … anything.

Camping’s focus, for example, was always “The Bible says …” He used the Bible, in toto, to supersede Christ. Bad mistake, in my view.

So … we don’t know, we have to trust.

And I say “evidently errant” in the first paragraph because what if God threw a rapture and nobody made the cut? The last thing I want to be before God is cocky.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) holds the same opinion of Camping’s next date, Oct. 21. Focus on John 3, not Matthew 24; relationship, not rapture.