Gimme that Old Time Religion, Part 2

Spirituality Column #190
June 29, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Gimme that Old Time Religion, Part 2
By Bob Walters

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
– Preamble, U.S. Constitution

“… Blessings of Liberty …”

Did you catch that?

“Blessings” – capitalized in the original – is a God and faith word, not a secular, non-faith word. It’s a word that assumes a Creator and more importantly assumes a relationship with that Creator.

Yes, one could argue that a blessing can be as secularly simple as doing something nice for someone else, but that’s a good deed. One can also argue that all the nouns except “defence” are capitalized in the Preamble, but that’s grammar.

I would argue that Blessings are God-inspired things, and that words like “Blessings” and “ordained” clue us into the intent of the Constitution’s framers – that for this grand venture of American democracy to succeed, God needed to be not only on our side, but in the very hearts of the republic’s newly empowered and free citizens.

Given that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin were all more deist than conservative Christian, and that secular humanism was the philosophical fashion of the age (and especially of the Founders), let’s not worry for now whether 18th century America was founded as a “Christian Country.”

Let’s instead focus on the immense, frontier-penetrating Christian revival, the Second Great Awakening, that almost immediately followed our nation’s birth.

Revival is when the Holy Spirit works to reveal the Gospel truth of Jesus Christ. And regardless of the “Christian Country” debate, America with its unbridled freedom was surely a nation of unlimited personal opportunity, an unimaginably vast expanse of land, and with no establishment church, previously unknown religious openness.

Americans proved thirsty for the Gospel message. In many ways we were a people without tradition. New directions and snap judgments fueled the ferocious growth of the nation. The population physically grew away from the Protestant religious establishments of the East. The independent pioneers went west, and independent Bible preachers followed.

The Holy Spirit knew the opportunity was ripe to shine the light on Jesus Christ from sea to shining sea. The old rules were left behind, and Bible revival was on.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) can’t think of a worse hindrance to freedom – and brotherly love – than state religion. More next week.

Smart Jesus

Spirituality Column # 27
May 15, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Smart Jesus
By Bob Walters

Jesus is smart.

In a cosmic game of Jeopardy, I’ll take Jesus and you can have the field.

Too often Jesus Christ is seen as an emotional figure, accessible through faith but otherwise popularly consigned to an existence outside the realm of true intellectualism.

Secular philosophers would say that the active pursuit of belief in Jesus Christ, as the fully God, fully man, crucified-dead-risen eternal son of God who is our never-ceasing intercessor in prayer with Almighty God the Father and the way to our own individual eternal salvation … means checking your brains at the church door.

To me it is interesting that until roughly 150 years ago virtually every institution of higher learning in the western world created since the time of Christ was founded based on the pursuit of understanding Christ.

Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, little Franklin College (founded 1834) south of Indianapolis – almost every college everywhere before state and land grant universities – each had its genesis as an educational institution for the training of clergy and Christian or other religious principles.

In those days you had to learn about Christianity before you could critique it.

Sadly today Christ is often dismissed as an emotional apparition and left off the educational palette when in fact Christ represents the sum total of all knowledge man’s brain ever has, does, or will know.

Christ is the Logos Creator (read John 1); the Word of Creation. He was there at the Beginning and is the Word that breathes life into the human spirit and all Creation. We have the freedom to believe or not believe, of course, but the entire point of the Bible is the intellectual exercise of understanding our relationship with God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Cosmos and, very importantly, with each other.

It’s OK to be emotional about our faith – I frequently am – but the reasoning brain is necessary to truly pursue God.

Think about it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, thinks about and feels Christ in very real terms.