Testing One, Two, Three ...

Spirituality Column #251
August 30, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Testing One, Two, Three …
By Bob Walters

Horrible things happen and we ask God, “Why?”

The crazy, awful, accurate answer is: Because it’s a fallen world and everything that we might think is a test of God’s love for us is really a test of our faith in Him.

I know. It’s a typical, maddening, unsatisfying, mysterious and at-first-glance non-definitive Christian answer. It seems appallingly cold, impersonal and unfeeling; a nearly criminal endorsement of accepting God no matter what.

It’s the last thing we want to hear when we suffer. But honestly, it’s the first thing we must understand.

The truth is that there is nothing more intensely personal to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit than our individual faith and suffering. Christ’s suffering work on the cross – dying to defeat death and erase our sin – was 100 percent about the well-being of our eternal relationship with God the Father, in faith. In our own moment-by-moment existence, that doesn’t seem to do me any good. That doesn’t heal me or my loved one, relieve today’s suffering and fear, or establish and enforce temporal justice.

God abides; we fret and condemn.

And while it is perfectly OK to shout at, argue and plead with God – He is listening, after all – God calls for and insists upon our faith, not our agreement. That’s no test; that’s the truth. God in his holy realm can indeed “do whatever He wants.”

But “whatever He wants” is different in the eternity of God’s perfect, immaculate, complete, literal goodness and purpose, as opposed to our “on the clock” perspective in an imperfect, sinful, limited and situationally dynamic world.

We can count on God being faithful to Who He is, and to be Who He says He is to us. Always. Christ on the Cross is our proof of that, and the Bible backs it up. Too often, we want God to conform to who we say we are, and Who we want Him to be. The Bible explains that God’s truth is precisely the opposite; God is God, and we’re not.

It’s better and healthier to test God with our love than with our anger. Death, you see, is part of our fallen world but not part of God’s perfect eternity.

So don’t ask God, “What have You done for me lately?” Pass the true test of faith, and say, “Thank You, God, for what You have done for me eternally.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows from experience that when horrible things happen, it’s even more horrible not to know and trust God.

Literal Truth, Inerrant God

Spirituality Column #250
August 23, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Literal Truth, Inerrant God
By Bob Walters

A popular online news organization recently posted a feature story about why it’s a mistake to read the Bible literally, and folly to think the Bible is inerrant.

Written by a Christian professor, the article cited predictable scholarship and supporting evidence. The Bible itself claims to be “inspired and useful” (2 Timothy 3:16), but not inerrant. Revelation (the Bible’s final book) in parts is impenetrable. Even the brilliant St. Augustine had to allegorize (or, “say it was something else”) the story of Jonah and the whale. The four Gospels don’t agree about what happened on which days of Holy Week when Jesus was betrayed, tried, crucified and resurrected.

Lots and lots of stuff in the Bible doesn’t seem to add up.

Well, it’s a good day for the Devil when he can sow doubt about the Bible, and by extension, about God. The double-entrendre headline, “4 reasons not to read the Bible … literally,” may be harmless, or could imply: The Bible is wrong, so if the Bible is the story of God, then God must be wrong. Hallelujah, we can ignore the Bible and God!

Misinterpreted or not, the headline harkens rehashing.

You see, a Christian faith conversation centered on literalism and inerrancy of the Bible will quickly go out-of-round for the simple reason that the conversation isn’t truly centered. The Bible is something dramatically more important than “literal” and “inerrant.” It is truth, which almost always involves more than simple calculation.

If the issue is, “The Bible doesn’t add up,” then let’s go to math class. Let’s add up a list of numbers, terms and factors; we’ll get a defensibly inerrant answer. But, if the “list” is actually a quadratic equation and calculated with the wrong method, say, addition, we’ll not only get the wrong answer but entirely miss the point of the exercise because we have mistaken its central purpose, which is not addition.

Secularist logicians and sadly more than a few Christians miss the “answer” of the Bible because they refuse or confuse the Bible’s central purpose – revealing God’s truth. Scripture’s message isn’t simple addition, it’s a cosmically complex equation of faith, hope, love, truth, creation, relationship, separation, loss, betrayal, death, redemption, eternal life and perfection. It’s the ultimate story problem.

And what’s the story? Jesus Christ is the literal truth about an inerrant God, and we – each of us personally – is a loved and important part of the equation.

That is the true center of the Bible.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was horrible at high school math but scored higher in math than verbal on the SAT. Go figure.

I'm Glad You Asked ...

Spirituality Column #249
August 16, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

I’m Glad You Asked …
By Bob Walters

… Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have [in Christ] … – 1 Peter 3:15

When G.K. Chesterton was asked, Orthodoxy was his answer.

In his earlier book Heretics, he had described the spiritual inadequacy of the early 20th century’s burgeoning social and academic inclination away from Christianity and toward Darwinism, socialism and science. When publicly challenged for disparaging “modern thought” without clearly describing his own Christian faith, Chesterton responded in 1908 with Orthodoxy.

Rather than presenting an impenetrable apologetic about scripture or the Trinity, Orthodoxy plainly describes how Chesterton arrived at his faith the same way a secularist arrives at his disbelief … through experience and investigating the facts.

Modernist indictments against Christianity are many. Christianity can’t be right, modernists say, because man is too similar to the beasts. Religion is only the darkness of superstition. The church causes more problems than it solves.

Chesterton looks closely and finds differently, composing a withering yet common-sense return of rhetorical fire. He notices that man is entirely dissimilar to beasts, that Christianity was the only light at both ends of the tunnel known as the Dark Ages, and that the Christian church historically has provided an underappreciated yet perpetual spiritual safety net for Western civilization. His argument is reasonable; his conclusions reassuring.

Chesterton notices that modern philosophy plays fast and loose with spiritual “facts.” Setting God aside, modernism voices contradictory opinions focused on the ultimate sovereignty or non-sovereignty of man.

Chesterton found his faith at the intersection of that contradiction; at the center and the heart of the Cross of Christ.

God may well be eternal and separate from man, but God as Jesus Christ entered time, space and humanity to prove that God – to be truly God – needed to be something even beyond omnipotent; He needed to be courageous, proven in the real courage of the real trial on the Cross. On the honed edges of Christ’s sundering sword we learn that love is an exercise in recognizing differences, not similarities. Astonishingly, we learn that divine power, ultimately, is an exercise of servanthood.

The Cross has a “collision” at its core and “can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape.” As modern society seeks empirical predictability for all phenomena, Chesterton insists that it is Christianity’s wonder, awe and faith that divinely feed all human morality, creativity and hope.

As for Chesterton’s beliefs, I’m glad someone asked.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) writes from the perspective that faith is an intellectual strength, not a weakness.

Christianity Begs to Differ

Spirituality Column #248
August 9, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Christianity Begs to Differ
By Bob Walters

“The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those quite opposite to the fact; it is actually our truisms that are untrue.”
– G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

In the spheres of modern religion, morality, politics, education, science – quick, name some more spheres – I can’t think of a more frighteningly accurate assessment or warning about mass-marketed “truth” than this nugget Christian essayist Gilbert K. Chesterton wrote in 1908.

And by “modern” we mean in the philosophical, intellectual sense which – over the past 500 years or so – has come to mean “intelligence invented by man” (e.g. secular humanism, faith in man) as opposed to “intelligence that emanates from the Creator” (e.g. religion, faith in God).

This is relevant in today’s Christian conversation because “modern” culture has overtaken most of civilization’s greatest institutions thereby narrowing the influence of Christian truth. The modern culture of education, the media, “intellectual elites,” most governments (including ours), and even distressingly many churches – all insist that man not only is on at least an even plane with God, but that to be politically correct man must be “one” with everything around him, such as the universe, the planet, animals, the trees, the weather, each other … whatever.

The fact is we are not one. Even God is not One but a society, the Trinity. Our love, creativity, rebellion, decisions, industry, loyalties, talents and freedom all prove that it’s the differences in the universe that animate God’s plan, not the similarities.

Where modern thought identifies patterns and sameness, it frequently and mistakenly imputes “truth” where none exists. Here’s an example: “The religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach.”

Observes Chesterton, “It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do differ greatly in what they teach … they are alike in everything except the fact that they don’t say the same thing.”

Chesterton uses the massive differences of Christianity and Buddhism – the external, creative “otherness” of the Christian God vs. the inward, quiet “oneness” of the Buddha – to make his case. His larger point though is that it is easier and more “modern” simply to say “they are the same” than to deeply consider why they are not.

“Go along to get along” was not the teaching of Christ.

Orthodoxy clearly explains why Christ makes a difference, not just to Chesterton, but to all Creation. God’s truth – Jesus Christ – is a truism we can trust.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) celebrates our differences while marveling at God’s cohesiveness. Next: Chesterton explains his faith.

Chewing on Chesterton

Spirituality Column #247
August 2, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Chewing on Chesterton
By Bob Walters

My wife’s parents live on a quiet lake in northern Michigan where our annual summer visit provides a wonderful setting – and the time – for thoughtful reading.

This year’s reading included G.K. Chesterton’s 1908 classic Orthodoxy, mainly because in late June our little dog Kramer randomly pulled my copy off the bottom bookshelf at home and chewed the book’s binding. Assured this was a lake-reading sign from God, I set the book out to take. Two days before we headed north Kramer pulled it off my reading stack and destroyed the back half of the 150-page paperback.

Scrambling to find a replacement copy, I was stunned that two nearby Christian book stores I called acted as though they’d never heard of the book, didn’t have it on hand, and one told me it appeared to be “going out of print.”

Sad. I can’t imagine a Christian bookstore not recognizing Chesterton’s masterpiece that for a century has never gone out of print and, according to Amazon.com, currently has a dozen or so versions in print. Orthodoxy is an incredibly helpful, thoughtful, deep, relevant, relatable and ahead-of-its-time exposition of personal Christian faith in a world overwhelmingly trending toward agnosticism, progressivism, atheism, Darwinism, socialism, and all those self-glorifying, self-centered all-about-me “isms” that “… [fall] short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). Chesterton presents a compelling, elegant and entertaining case for Christianity.

Anyway, I called a nearby big-box bookstore and they simply asked whether I wanted the hardcover or paperback version they had in stock. Paperback, please. I buried the new book in my sealed travel bag (so Kramer couldn’t get to it), and then at the lake read it twice, compulsively underlining and annotating as I went. A comfortable chair on a shaded wooden deck overlooking a beautiful lake, to me, is an unparalleled environment for considering God’s grandeur and truth.

Orthodoxy doesn’t disappoint. Chesterton describes Christianity as the ultimate and complete adventure, romance, answer, explanation and purpose for the human experience. Christianity’s gift is the gift that keeps on giving because every day, every tomorrow, is filled with the enormous anticipation and boundless wonder of new intellectual and spiritual revelation. God is that big. Christianity doesn’t just reveal truth. Christianity builds, creates and is the foundation of the multifaceted, chaotic, seemingly conflicting but always ultimately perfect and complete truths of God’s universe.

Orthodoxy is a book with teeth.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com), who perceives in Chesterton’s writing a nice mix of later writers C.S. Lewis and Will Rogers, re-reads the really helpful books because he too often forgets the best arguments