Of Disasters and Salvation

Spirituality Column #181
April 27, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Of Disasters and Salvation
By Bob Walters

“What we know about Jesus Christ tells us everything we need to know about God.”

That was a pretty good comment in a recent sermon by our co-preacher Daron. He was making excellent points about how we try to assign common social roles to God (sheriff, judge, Santa Claus, dad), separating God from Christ.

I got to thinking, “Man … how true is that?” We figure God will give us stuff and spare us pain if He likes us, which only happens if we do good things. “Watch out for God!” we think. “It’s Jesus who loves us unconditionally, while God is that horrible, wrathful guy from the Old Testament.”

No. Don’t ever separate God and Jesus. Here’s why.

Consider a few “must know” things about the person of Jesus. One is that He was fully man and fully God. Another is that He was blameless.

See? Fully God, and blameless. Was, is, and always will be.

That means just as Jesus loves us, God loves us. And just as Jesus is blameless, so God is blameless. Hebrews 1:3 says “the son (Jesus) is the … exact representation of his (God’s) being.”

But don’t we just love to blame God when bad things happen? 1 Peter 4:11 is crystal clear, “… that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.” We’re supposed to praise God, not blame him.

So who do we blame?

Looking closely, it is the fallen world that is to blame. Examine Adam and Eve and the Fall (Genesis 3). The perfect, good, ordered world God created has been groaning ever since. Disasters are evidence of that.

Remember that the Lord of this “world” – Lord of the Bad Stuff – is Satan. When we peg our miseries on God, we are missing the peace and joy that a right relationship with God brings.

And we are cutting Satan slack he doesn’t deserve.

Disasters, cruelty, disease, assorted miseries … nobody ever blames those worldly things on Jesus, yet we are quick to blame them on God. Even our insurance policies call them “acts of God.”

They aren’t. They are acts of a Fallen World. God is “the Good.”

Don’t worry about whether God loves you; Jesus proves that He does. Worry about whether you love Him back. That’s our Salvation, and our only shelter from the disasters we encounter in this world.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thanks Daron Earlewine at E91 Church for the wise words. (Update: Daron now preaches at various churches around Carmel and continues his "Pub Theology" ministry.)

God: A Burden or a Blessing?

Spirituality Column #180
April 20, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

God: A Burden or a Blessing?
By Bob Walters

As though co-habitation of Traditional and Contemporary worship styles in one church isn’t challenge enough, our young-ish, spiky-haired co-preacher Daron recently invited congregants to text-in live sermon questions by cell phone.

During the Traditional service. On Sunday morning.

iWorship has arrived.

Plenty of churches have split merely over what kind of music is played. Can we survive interactive sermon texting?

We already know Christians fight about many silly things, too often turning the Holy Spirit’s great gift of faith in the Body of Christ – which should be a sanctuary for Christ’s mercy and grace – into a theater of wrathful, schismatic combat.

Why question music or technology (or spiky hair) when perhaps the only question should be: What is the true nature of this God we are worshipping?

First of all, we ask about God because He hardwired it into our mortal souls to seek Him; to wonder who we are, who He is, how we were made, who created everything, and what is the truth about right and wrong, good and evil. God either provides – or is – the answer to all those questions.

Granted, the God of the Old Testament often looks mean, wrathful, and scary; quite different from the merciful, forgiving visage of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

Truth is, human beings fouled up Truth in the Old Testament. And even since the enormous event of the Cross, people still foul up the Truth of the New Testament.

Do we think God brings the burden of “Do what I say”? That His purpose is to curse our lives promising punishment, wrath, judgment and guilt?

Or, do we correctly learn that God is saying, emphatically, “Love what I love”? That when we know and understand Jesus, we can rest easy and trust that God’s nature is a blessing, promising love, grace, peace and joy?

I pick No. 2, thank you.

That should be one’s conclusion when one finishes reading the Bible. The Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and God are all God, all have the same goal, and they’re all on the same page. Scriptural evidence is heavily on that side.

John 3:16 says “God so loved the world.”

1 John 4:8 and 4:16 say “God is love.”

Matthew 11:30 quotes Jesus, “… my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

And know this: God is easier to understand than church.

Believe it. Trust it. Text it to someone you love.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notices that both OT God and NT Jesus are VERY particular about how believers represent their faith and God’s Truth to others.