Why and How: The Limits of Love

Spirituality Column #260
November 1, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Why and How: The Limits of Love
By Bob Walters

We look at God and ask “Why?”

We struggle with faith and ask “How?”

Why should I believe? How can I know?

The Bible says much about why (For God so loved the world …) but not much about how. God could, so he did. Why? To be glorified and because He loves us. But, how did He do it? Why does it matter? Why did He bother?

Conversely, church is full of “how” but not much “why.” Do this, do that. Pray, read the Bible, repent and be baptized, obey, go to communion, make disciples, tithe, serve, show up. Repeat. That’s how. Amen. God said so.

But why? Why so many churches? There’s only one Father-Son-Holy Spirit. Why so many doctrines? John 14:6 plainly quotes Jesus Christ: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

But how? “Tell me why, Lord,” we beg, “and I’ll believe. But first, tell me how I’ll know!”

We’re desperate for faith and plead for answers. But we overlook the obvious. The Bible gives us a perfectly clear picture of who God is and what God does.

Our God is a God of action and stories and creativity; a God of life and love and courage and good. He’s a God of communion and relationship and freedom and doing for others. He is forgiving, fearsome, freeing and just. He is a God of accountability and generosity, of judgment and peace, of authority and purpose, of mercy and grace.

God is with us, about us, for us and in us. He created us. Jesus Christ His son is the author of all knowledge, the truth of all things, and the servant of all creation. He’s both “out there” and “in here.” The Holy Spirit is God’s light in our reverent lives and comfort in our human challenges. God is eternal and unrelenting. He pursues us.

What do we do? We get stuck at “why” and “how.” Rather than worshipping a great God of Love and Hope in faith, we worship the diminished idols of Why and How in knowledge. We focus on us, blur Jesus Christ, and Satan is all for it.

When we demand finite answers to God-sized questions, we limit faith. We also limit truth, stray from grace and lose focus on the awesome splendor, grandeur, bigness and everything-ness of God.

Love God, and love others … and limitations go away.

Not that anyone besides Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is counting, but this marks five years – 260 straight weeks dating back to November 7, 2006 – of filing this Christian column for Current newspapers. Thanks to all. A book is on the way. - Buy Book at Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Boo! Angels and Where They Find Us

Spirituality Column #259
October 25, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Boo! Angels and Where They Find Us
By Bob Walters

“You’re going to love this story!” a Christian co-worker recently exclaimed.

I knew immediately this was a Kingdom faith story. A non-Christian would have said, “You’re not going to believe this, but …”

Anyway, my co-worker’s brother Mike (also a believer), slipped and fell – hard – the day before outside a busy gas/convenience store in a small northeastern Indiana town. Mike was numb from the neck down, tingly all over, and unable to move. A friend comforted Mike, told him to lie still, and dialed 9-1-1. A crowd gathered.

Amid the confusion, seemingly out of nowhere, a woman appeared. Telling Mike’s friend she was a nurse, she knelt down, stroked Mike’s hand and quietly, clearly assured him, “You’ll be all right.” Then she walked away.

Everyone’s attention was focused on Mike. The “nurse” came and went without being recognized. Immediately after she left, Mike’s feelings began to return. When the paramedics arrived, Mike was fine.

Certainly, it’s possible the injury was less severe than initially thought. And having been around sports injuries and charitable paralysis foundations, I know “stingers” can come and go quickly.

Or not. A small town and nobody recognized the nurse? She left before the ambulance arrived? (Most nurses would stay.) Mike’s paralysis disappeared just like she did? Gotta’ be a God thing; an angel moment.

My wife and I had a similar “close encounter” this summer when our right-rear tire exploded on northbound I-465 nearing the I-69 high-speed connecting ramp in heavy traffic at 10:30 on a Saturday night. Driving in the middle “thru” lane with no sane way to get to either shoulder, we were forced into the most dangerous place imaginable – that striped, “V” shaped no-man’s land in front of the ramp-split crash/runoff zone.

Needing not to stay there, we crept a hundred yards down the I-69 ramp (not the way home), still situated horribly: on the narrow left shoulder with a disintegrated right-rear tire exposed to whizzing traffic scant feet away. We had a flashlight and a spare tire, but no jack, tire iron or lug wrench (long story).

Suddenly, the way I like to tell it, “Jesus showed up.” A slight, scruff-bearded man in dirty work clothes stopped his old, rusted compact car, backed up the ramp’s left shoulder, dug through his cluttered trunk for loose tools and scattered sockets, grabbed his jack, and changed our tire crouching perilous inches from the speeding ramp traffic. ‘Said he usually drove a tow truck – in Noblesville. With my profuse, astonished thanks and $30 he didn’t ask for (all I had on me), he drove off.

I just love that story.

Walters (email rlwcom@aol.com) encourages people to tell angel stories this Halloween instead of ghost stories.

Fate is a Fickle Fashion

Spirituality Column #258
October 18, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Fate is a Fickle Fashion
By Bob Walters

Fate, which rationally explains nothing, is often the secular world’s crutch for explaining everything.

It’s a great way to blame God without, you know, actually believing in God.

The ancient Greek, Roman and other cultural mythologies typically cast the Fates as three goddesses of 1) things that were, 2) things that are, and 3) things that are to be. Intricate stories and great epics were written around past, present and future favors, curses and justice visited on various characters by the Fates.

Mankind has always wanted explanations and answers, and the less culpability any one person has for his or her specific actions, the more comfortable the theology. Fate today is the land of “stuff happens,” “it is what it is” and “it’s not my fault.” That’s not exactly a theology but it certainly is a highway to blissful unaccountability, tort-happy lawsuits, and maybe even spiteful, generational victimhood.

“Don’t blame me” is fate’s bumper sticker; “I’m going to blame something else” is its implicit message. “Don’t talk to me about God” is fate’s no-fly safety zone.

Faith – specifically Christian faith – puts God in our midst with the incarnate humanity of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Bible, the church, and the immutable faith in my heart are exhibits A, B and C for the enormity of the Godhead against the smallness of fate.

A living God really complicates and messes up the blissful ignorance of fate-focused living, for faith in God requires much that fate does not. Faith in the Trinity takes commitment, study, action, creativity, wisdom, willful intent, patience, perseverance, humility and total personal involvement.

Fate requires none of that. It asks only resignation, diminishing life by destroying hope and limiting dreams. Whether life seems good or bad at any particular moment or over any stretch of time, ugh, it’s stifling to think, with fate, “this is all there is.”

For all of its demands, faith’s greatest gift is joy – the long-term condition of hope, peace and trust in the goodness of the Creator God no matter how crazy life gets.

It’s puzzling to me how the non-believing world can so comfortably and fashionably believe in fate which can only hurt them, yet refuses to believe in the grace of Jesus Christ, which can only help them. “Fate” is accepting the work of the lord of this world, and that lord, my friends, is Satan.

Satan wants us to worry about explaining everything; knowing our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the peace not to.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) sees belief in God as both rational and reasonable, albeit indefinable. Some conundrum, huh?

Kicking Around Notions of Belief

Spirituality Column #257
October 11, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Kicking Around Notions of Belief
By Bob Walters

Here’s a recent newspaper quote from an athlete who came off the bench and made a humongous play to win a humongous game:

“I believed in myself. I said a little prayer … and it went in.”

Kudos to the athlete’s success. What an admirably innocent and humble comment. I’d never criticize an athlete who is that sincerely succinct.

Yet, a question leapt into my mind because that particular sentiment – “believed in myself” – is omnipresent in our culture, and prayer is omnipresent in our souls. So I wonder: If one truly believes in oneself, to whom does one pray?

Let’s consider the magnitude of our cultural and educational bluster about the sovereignty of rational thought, self esteem, and the removal of God from public sight. We are cheered on by our secular institutions to irrationally “believe in me,” but under no circumstances is it tolerable in a public institution to pray to God … and mean it.

Pity, because God is where the real action is.

Secular irony brooks no boundaries. For all of modern culture’s self-glorifying bravado – “I believe in me,” “I am special,” etc. – our secular institutions just as vigorously attack the notion that any one of us actually is special. That’s because truly special requires God, and God is generally outlawed if not outright ridiculed.

Look at public school and university science classes, desperately teaching the reasonableness of a universe that – they swear – happened for no reason. “Life is totally an accident, but you’re special.” Huh? Really? Schools teach facts and things, but shy away from truth. To wit, “God? Oh, that’s just your opinion.”

Imagine a public schoolroom where the self-esteem poster says: “The eternal Creator God took an intentional, special, eternal moment to specifically form you in your mother’s womb so He could love you, prosper you, and make it possible for your life to glorify His holy existence. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to save you and His Holy Spirit to comfort you. Trust this: You ARE special. God says so. Believe Him.” Powerful.

The modernists – the intellectuals running our academic institutions under the premise that man’s knowledge supersedes God’s knowledge – would panic, weakly wheezing “You are special” but lacking God’s authority, ability and passion to prove it. (Postmodern intellectuals would dismiss all knowledge and specialness, period, but that’s another column.)

What is revealing and reassuring about the athlete’s quote above is that regardless how much we “believe in me,” most of us down deep crave the peace of even a little – but honest – prayer to the God who made us.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) longs for a day when “I pray to God” means more than “I believe in me.”

My Way or the High Way

Spirituality Column #256
October 4, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

My Way or the High Way
By Bob Walters

- “Regrets, I’ve had a few … but, I did it my way.” – Frank Sinatra (actually, Paul Anka)
- “What’s past is prologue.” – Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1
- “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.” – Leroy “Satchel” Paige
- “Go in peace.” – Jesus Christ, Luke 7:50

Regret, fate and fear rob us of the blessed peace we should experience in Christ.

Sinatra’s trademark ballad "My Way" – actually a 1960s French tune with American lyrics written later (presumably “his way”) by Paul Anka – is a beautiful song with the worst possible message; the perfect anthem for the postmodern, Christ-free world of “I’ve Gotta Be Me.” Why? Because there is no salvation in doing things “my way,” only in doing them God’s way that is taught in the Bible, with faith in Christ.

“My way” is the fallen human way, and that is not good.

Even though I’m married to an English teacher whose college minor was Shakespeare, I always thought Marx or Nietzsche or Kant – not the Bard – authored this familiar “past is prologue” quote. Oops. Turns out this statement rationalizes an upcoming evil act (murder) and insinuates our human helplessness against the fates.

It’s tragic how much more readily we accept a shortsighted statement of human fate than an eternal statement of divine faith. “Fate,” apparently, absolves us of our human responsibility (whew!), while Christian faith ties us directly to our responsibility (bummer!). But there’s a huge problem: fate eliminates freedom, choice and hope, making us powerless slaves. Faith in the saving work of Christ on the Cross, however, sets us free from our sinful past, our hurting present, and promises us, one day, of a sinless eternity. Christ is the true engine of ultimate human freedom, and that is good.

Modern psychology generally insists we understand our past, face our fears, and stare back directly at what Satchel Paige suggests “might be gaining” on us. Christianity urges us to gaze forward with hope, but the lesson of the Bible is also that repentance comes before baptism. Observe Zacchaeus, the tax collector in Luke 19:1-8. It helps very, very much to have Christ in our hearts when we look in the rearview mirror of our lives. Only in Christ can our fear turn to compassion and peace.

Throughout the Bible the penitent are blessed, like the sinful woman in Luke 7 who with her own tears washes Jesus’ feet, is forgiven, and saved.

“With Christ” is the best way, the high way, and the only way, to go in peace.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures fate is a function of the lord of the world, Satan, who would rather we ignore judgment, doubt grace, and ridicule Christ. That’s his way.