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

The Rationalism of Sin

Spirituality Column #131
May 12, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

The Rationalism of Sin
By Bob Walters

The first two chapters of Genesis and the last two chapters of Revelation – the front and back of the Bible – tell us that the world was created without sin and will end without sin.

The bad stuff starts in Genesis 3 when Satan appears and tempts Adam and Eve. Satan’s run ends in the lake of fire in Revelation 20. Bracketing the intervening Biblical chaos are Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22, which describe sinless worlds far different than the one in which we currently live.

I love the Creation story, and deeply cherish the promise and hope of Heaven. In the beginning God created an earthly world He repeatedly declared “good.” In the end He describes an eternal heavenly home – The New Jerusalem – that offers perpetual communion and perfection in the company of Jesus Christ. No sin, no death.

But the reasoned reality of right now in the life all around us is the fact of sin and the fear of death.

Concentric to that reality is the world’s postmodernist, sliding-scale morality that assigns disbelieving relativity to good and evil, and mushy equivocation to truth and falsehood.

A Christian should be able confidently to describe good and truth as the light of Jesus Christ, and recognize evil and falsehood as the darkness of Satan. Alas, today’s prevailing intellectual winds paint assuredness in the divine unseen as irrational, and ascribe cultural tolerance and philosophical certainty only to self-truth and situational morality.

A hundred years ago, author G.K. Chesterton recognized the first glimmers of rationalist postmodernism and argued a somewhat brief yet brilliantly entertaining case against it in his classic 1908 book Orthodoxy. In 100 years, the book has never gone out of print.

Chesterton, now proven prophetic, wasn’t so much arguing against postmodernism as he was arguing for the reasonableness of Christian belief.

He paints reason in tones of openness of mind, describes doubt as a sure sign of sanity, and lists imagination and wonder as indispensable tests of mental function.

Some months ago I was enthralled by a centennial review of Orthodoxy written by Baylor professor Ralph C. Wood that appeared in the November 2008 First Things magazine (the article can be accessed for free at FirstThings.com, search Orthodoxy Chesterton).

Reason and rational thought, Chesterton assures us, are never the preemptive domain of those who claim sin and evil are irrational. It’s the believers who are sane.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes: the first and last chapters of the Bible have no sin, and Christ frequently describes himself as “the first and last.” Interesting, huh?