Defining Life in the Spiritual Lane

Spirituality Column #184
May 18, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Defining Life in the Spiritual Lane
By Bob Walters

Our Wednesday night Bible study weathered a lively exchange recently regarding whether human beings were mortal or immortal before “The Fall” of Adam and Eve.

Most of us in the Western church assume that if not for the sin of Adam and Eve, we would physically live for ever. Death, Genesis 3 seems to say, only entered the world after Adam and Eve’s sin of trying to be like God without God: eating from the tree of “God’s knowledge” at Satan’s tempting against God’s strict orders not to.

It turns out there is more than one school of thought on original immortality, even though most of us have heard only the one above. At issue are a couple of fairly major topics:

- God’s intention of Natural life vs. Spiritual life

- God’s intention of death in Creation.

Our teacher – a former Cambridge lecturer, Bible translator, and expert on Eastern Orthodoxy – cited Patristic (Church Fathers) sources suggesting that God created humans as He did all other life, to live a natural life and die a natural death. What makes humans the “image of God” is our spiritual immortality, not our physical immortality. It’s our Spirit life that sin puts to death, and our Spiritual death that Jesus Christ hung on the Cross to defeat.

This our instructor said to a room full of thoughtful Evangelicals, schooled in “Sin Brought Death,” not “Natural Death Happens Anyway.” It was a split, animated discussion. It was Western St. Augustine vs. Eastern St. Athanasius.

Evangelicals like straight, dependable answers, with straight, dependable definitions for faith’s day-to-day questions: What is sin? What is forgiveness? What is grace? What is life? What is death? What is salvation?

Thing is, anyone can learn “about” God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, church history, other religions, meditation, faith systems, theology. For these pursuits, definitions are helpful and can make religion seem easy, if superficial. Defining a relationship – actually knowing someone, like God, for example – defies labels.

God’s goal is not our mastery of definitions or doctrine. God is hungry for our loving, freely-found relationship with Him through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit; and our love for each other.

God gave us a brain to discover Him, and learn. Let’s not sell God, or ourselves, short with narrow definitions. There is a big history of Christianity that precedes modern religious “definitions.” Learn, and love, all you can.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is going to read “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” by Mark Noll, and will report back.

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?

Life, Lights and Truth

Spirituality Column #110
December 16, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Life, Lights and Truth
By Bob Walters

And the Word became flesh … John 1:14

The flesh and blood arrival of Jesus Christ on earth as a human being – the Incarnation of Christ which we celebrate with Christmas – brought something brand new to the human experience: divine light and divine truth.

And something else: communion with God.

It’s a great example of the Bible’s consistency.

Think back for a moment to Genesis 1. Consider that God, with his Spirit hovering over the darkness of the deep, both created light and separated light from darkness on the first day. He didn’t get around to creating the sun and stars – the sources of physical light – until Day 4.

Now jump forward to John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The “Word” of course is Christ who became flesh, that part of the Holy Trinity which animates Creation, gives us life, breath, and freedom, and enables faith, hope and love.

What Genesis and John are saying is that Christ and the Holy Spirit are, from the beginning, with God. John 1:4-9 goes into some detail about light, and – read it again – is defining Christ as the Light of God we learn about in Genesis.

The light of goodness, the truth of knowing and our very lives are a great start to the infinite and eternal list of things God gives us in Christ.

Regarding our holiday season, I love Christmas lights. I think they are cheerful and poignant and sentimental and a wonderful expression of love. I could do without the fake deer and blow-up Santa’s, but the Christmas lights we put on our trees and houses are a bright reminder of the light and truth Christ brings into the world.

Sure, the date of Christmas is keyed to pagan festivals that celebrated the lengthening of the days after the winter solstice Dec. 21, not to the (likely) October or springtime birth of Christ.

But think … Who created the days? Who gave us life? And Who is the source of light and truth? The date doesn’t matter, because the gift is eternal.

Christ’s arrival showed us that God would come for us and show us a way to be in communion, despite our sins, with a God who is good, righteous and unchanging.

That is a truth that deserves to be put up in lights.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) rolls his eyes when he hears anyone suggest there is a more important symbolism of Light at Christmas than Jesus Christ.

Reproducing a Controversy

Spirituality Column #45
September 18, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Reproducing a Controversy
By Bob Walters

In a recent Sunday morning Bible study on Genesis 1 my friend Tom, a scientist, posed a great creation-vs.-evolution question:

How did sexual reproduction evolve?

That’s a real stumper. Cells (maybe God’s most underrated miracle) can divide to the satisfaction of an evolutionist who’d rather not accept the Creator God’s existence, but sex isn’t just a dividing; it’s a joining then a dividing. How could it evolve? No room there for evolutionary trial and error. Either you reproduce on the first try or you don’t get another generation to, um, evolve.

Like they taught in journalism school, you can’t get a little bit pregnant.

The first chapter of Genesis of course is the story of how God in the beginning over six days created 1. the heavens, the earth and light, 2. land, 3. seeds and vegetation, 4. the stars, sun and moon, 5. birds and fish, and 6. animals and Man (male and female; created Man in His own image).

You have to read Genesis 2 to get details of Adam and Eve, which – I guess – is the detailed version of Day 6. A lot of people stop right there and start arguing about man versus woman or how all that could happen in one day or in one week.

They forget it’s about God, not about them.

I think it’s easier just to believe Genesis and move on to what the story says to us about God in this one life we live.

In the unfallen and perfect world of Genesis 1 and 2 (the “fall,” aka “sin,” happens in Genesis 3), morality wasn’t yet an issue. Since the “fall,” morality – knowing right from wrong – is mankind’s second biggest issue next to our salvation in Christ.

If God created it – sexual reproduction, that is – He must have thought it was pretty important. Maybe we should respect all that He has to say about it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that God created light (Day 1) before creating the stars and the sun (Day 4). So then, what is light? Hint: Jesus Christ.