Dispensing with the Pleasantries

Spirituality Column #255
September 27, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Dispensing with the Pleasantries
By Bob Walters

“It’s unusual to meet a pleasant Christian.”

Ouchhhh … that one hurt. And it’s a statement, I hate to admit, that I found personally very convicting.

It was made on opening night of our Wednesday Bible study by our teacher George, who this fall is walking us through “Citizenship in Heaven: Philippians and Colossians.” George was introducing the early Christian church at Philippi, and noted how easy it was in that multi-cultural first century town of Jews, pagans and other religions to figure out who the Christians were.

Christians were the ones who were happy and non-judgmental. Christians brightened everybody’s day. Christians lived a loving life with the light of the Holy Spirit and the truth of Jesus Christ shining forth from every corner of their being. Christians supported each other, and cheerfully shared the Lord’s servant-attitude with all.

Even with the coming decades and centuries of purges as the Romans and others tried to stamp out Christianity, there was a larger-than-this-life spiritual positivism that spilled naturally from one Christian to another. Christianity survived the toughest of times because of the unusually complete humanity of its adherents, organized around history’s only perfect human, Jesus Christ. How do we know? The Bible tells us, and Church history backs it up.

These Christians didn’t try to trick or bully others into “accepting the Lord or else” because they had so much knowledge about Jesus. These early Christians simply loved others, cared for them, helped them, fed them and nurtured them, knowing that every human person has been created in the image of God the Father. These Christians were an example of God’s love for mankind both inside and outside the faith.

Our teacher George is one of the most cheerful, pleasant and learned Christians one could hope to encounter. He was making an important point about knowledge-based present-day Christianity, and what it is that makes Christians “Christians.”

A loving, servant heart is the core of who we are supposed to be as followers of Jesus, just as a loving, servant heart is the core of the human Jesus, incarnate among us, as the perfect example of divine love.

Whether in old Philippi or in these modern times, the example of Christ is an example of love. The measure of our Christian walk is not in strutting our knowledge, which tends to divide the world, but by exercising a Christ-like, selfless love, which always builds a more pleasant world.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that George’s class at E91 is free and open to the public. This fall (2014) he is leading a class on the Gospel of Luke.  Email Bob for more information.

How the Rest Was One

Spirituality Column #254
September 20, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

How the Rest Was One
By Bob Walters

One of the great big things largely missing from contemporary Christianity is a coherent understanding of church history.

And by church history, I don’t mean Vatican II, the Billy Graham Crusades, or the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment. I mean the years and decades immediately following Jesus Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection, followed by centuries of doctrinal and church development.

Why, or rather, how, did Christianity thrive in those early years when no modern understanding of popular faith can explain its survival? Jesus wasn’t especially well known. Christians were killed, oftentimes in horrible ways, for the crime of simply being Christian. Jewish scripture was not widely known outside of Judaism. There were no Bibles, and the New Testament was unwritten.

And yet, here were these spirit-filled Christians.

Pagan idols were manmade. The mythic gods provided stories but no consequential teaching. Roman law dictated worship of Caesar. Academics of the day relied on the Greek understanding of evidence and logical proof. Yet here were these Christians, worshipping the living Son of the Creator God incarnate among mankind, revealing the truth of God’s love for His creation, and dying to erase mankind’s sin. How do you explain that?

The thing is … you can’t explain it. What happened in those earliest years of Christianity was that eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus shared what they saw and heard, and in faith followed Christ as their Lord. There was evidence and proof in the hearts of the eyewitnesses, and by the power of the Holy Spirit those hearts continued in faith through the generations of mankind. The Spirit remains with us even now.

It’s not enough for today’s Christian to read the Bible’s Book of Acts (written by the Apostle Luke), memorize verse 2:42, and say, “OK, let’s sing some breezy modern worship songs, feel good about Jesus, and come back to church next week.”

The story of Christianity is magnificent, because Jesus Christ is magnificent.

Those early Christians understood the human heart’s hunger for something infinite, experienced man’s thirst for things that last (immortality), shared the human desire for life beyond death, and found the fulfillment of those truths in their joyous community of Christ, the early church, that’s now stretched forward 2,000 years.

Jesus, our rest, is eternal and infinite … but hard to explain. Knowing where the faith has been can build our hope in where our faith, as one body of believers, is going.

Walters, who knows Christianity is more about where we’re going than where we’ve been, nonetheless recommend’s Alister McGrath’s “Christian Theology” and Robert Wilken’s “The Spirit of Early Christian Thought.” Don’t just “look up” … look it up!

So Then What Happened?

Spirituality Column #253
September 13, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

So Then What Happened?
By Bob Walters

When I share my “Awake Date” with people – Sept. 2, 2001, the day I accepted Christ, sitting in church for the first time as an adult – it usually hastens an assumption.

And that assumption is that the ensuing pain and magnitude of 9/11 nine days later drew me further into the church; that my deepening faith was a palliative reaction to seek comfort after the awful events which rocked our nation.

Traumatized, in other words, I found Jesus.

That’s so not true.

What happened was that the Sunday after 9/11 I went to a church “Welcome” class instead of the worship service, and then ran into a work acquaintance in the lobby (“narthex” in church language). As we talked, retired pastor Russ Blowers came up to chat with him, and I was introduced to Russ as a newcomer. I ran into Russ again a few minutes later in another hallway and he said, “Hey Bob, we ought to have lunch.”

He came up to me, already remembering my name.

A few days later we had lunch at Sahm’s Restaurant in Fishers. Russ offered to say grace before the meal and my reaction while he prayed was to be embarrassed sitting there praying in public. I’ve since grown out of that.

We talked that day about many things – Russ was the epitome of a pastor, had multiple interests and he loved people. Discussing the 9/11 attacks, we decided to read Bernard Lewis’s “What Went Wrong” book about Islam. After several weeks of reading the book “together” and emailing back-and-forth, we were friends.

In October 2001 I took a four-week “Walking with Christ” class taught by our senior minister David Faust, discovering – surprisingly – that suddenly I could read and understand scripture. Following the last class I asked to be baptized … at 9 o’clock on a Sunday evening. In 2002 I read the entire Bible.

In May 2002, I met Cambridge theologian George Bebawi, new to this country, at a social gathering here in Indy. After helping to get his weekly class started at my church in 2004, I’ve been studying with George for seven years.

My walk with the Lord has been a run, really, of meeting fascinating people who I am convinced God sent my way. Because that’s what God does; He sends for us. And even though we think we seek God, what Christianity is really all about is that God sent His son Jesus Christ, in divine grace, to seek us.

It’s when humanity runs away from the grace of Christ that we have trouble.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thinks America’s institutionalized long-term reaction to 9/11 has been just backwards: religion shouldn’t be minimized, Christ should be maximized.

The Hour I First Believed

Spirituality Column #252
September 6, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Hour I First Believed
By Bob Walters

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.
– 2nd stanza, “Amazing Grace”

“The hour I first believed” was 10 years ago this Labor Day weekend.

Specifically it was Sept. 2, 2001, sitting in a Sunday church service for basically the first time in 30 years. Dave Faust, who later baptized me, and Russ Blowers, who taught me until his death in late 2007, were sharing the East 91st Street Christian Church pulpit that day, with Russ talking gently about Jesus, faith, hope and love.

It was Russ’s 50th anniversary with his beloved congregation. Dave, a gifted preacher, moved on within a year to be a college president, where he continues to raise ensuing generations of Christian ministers at Cincinnati Christian University.

I sat in the back row with mystifying tears rolling down my cheeks; tears that made no earthly sense, but tears that welled up from deep in my heart with the full cooperation of my mind. Before that, I didn’t know what I believed. Today “belief” doesn’t adequately cover the spiritual and intellectual enormity of a life in Christ.

It – Christian life – is not what I expected. It’s not the limiting, rules-following, holier-than-thou, faith-groveling, meek, mind-numbing existence centered on a guilt fetish that I had imagined. The Christian life is an inexplicable hybrid of empowerment and humility; of intellect and emotion; of binding love, and freedom to choose what binds us; of fear, and freedom from it. It is comfort in hard times, courage in harder times, and the excitement of knowing that every day is new when our steps point to Jesus Christ.

I can’t explain my conversion. Jesus didn’t zap me where I sat. Nobody hit me over the head with a Bible. The Holy Spirit didn’t send me into convulsions and God didn’t rend a single curtain. I just knew that whatever awakened within deserved and required my full attention. That it was right. That it was important. That it was true.

And that it was good. Not just any good, but God’s Good. The real deal.

Humanity is bigger, life is better and eternity abounds when they are boldly defined in Christ. I am thankful beyond words for God’s faithfulness, the Holy Spirit’s presence, and the amazing grace of Jesus Christ.

I truly needed it – we all do – and am happy to share it. Jesus is Lord. Amen.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was in church that day because his then-13-year-old son Eric had randomly wondered a couple weeks earlier at a family dinner, “How come we don’t go to church?” So they went. True story.