Dispensing with the Pleasantries

Spirituality Column #255
September 27, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Dispensing with the Pleasantries
By Bob Walters

“It’s unusual to meet a pleasant Christian.”

Ouchhhh … that one hurt. And it’s a statement, I hate to admit, that I found personally very convicting.

It was made on opening night of our Wednesday Bible study by our teacher George, who this fall is walking us through “Citizenship in Heaven: Philippians and Colossians.” George was introducing the early Christian church at Philippi, and noted how easy it was in that multi-cultural first century town of Jews, pagans and other religions to figure out who the Christians were.

Christians were the ones who were happy and non-judgmental. Christians brightened everybody’s day. Christians lived a loving life with the light of the Holy Spirit and the truth of Jesus Christ shining forth from every corner of their being. Christians supported each other, and cheerfully shared the Lord’s servant-attitude with all.

Even with the coming decades and centuries of purges as the Romans and others tried to stamp out Christianity, there was a larger-than-this-life spiritual positivism that spilled naturally from one Christian to another. Christianity survived the toughest of times because of the unusually complete humanity of its adherents, organized around history’s only perfect human, Jesus Christ. How do we know? The Bible tells us, and Church history backs it up.

These Christians didn’t try to trick or bully others into “accepting the Lord or else” because they had so much knowledge about Jesus. These early Christians simply loved others, cared for them, helped them, fed them and nurtured them, knowing that every human person has been created in the image of God the Father. These Christians were an example of God’s love for mankind both inside and outside the faith.

Our teacher George is one of the most cheerful, pleasant and learned Christians one could hope to encounter. He was making an important point about knowledge-based present-day Christianity, and what it is that makes Christians “Christians.”

A loving, servant heart is the core of who we are supposed to be as followers of Jesus, just as a loving, servant heart is the core of the human Jesus, incarnate among us, as the perfect example of divine love.

Whether in old Philippi or in these modern times, the example of Christ is an example of love. The measure of our Christian walk is not in strutting our knowledge, which tends to divide the world, but by exercising a Christ-like, selfless love, which always builds a more pleasant world.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that George’s class at E91 is free and open to the public. This fall (2014) he is leading a class on the Gospel of Luke.  Email Bob for more information.

The Upside of Great Despair

Spirituality Column #236
May 17, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Upside of Great Despair
By Bob Walters

It’s a darn shame but a fact of life that often we have to bottom out before we can be lifted up by Christ.

Non-believers find the logic of that truth impossible to understand. That’s partly right – it is impossible – because at its core Christ’s truth is about faith, not logic.

We generally, rationally, think we have the best shot at saving ourselves from whatever malady might befall our human existence. “My brain and my logic are all I need,” we reason. “If I’m strong enough, I can fix this.” “I believe in me.”

Religion, many people think, is a cop out. I have had real conversations with smart people – some of them dear friends – whose view of someone “finding Jesus” was accompanied by a long, low whistle and a dipping motion of the hand.

“People turn to Jesus when it’s as bad as it can get …”; then comes the long low whistle and hand dip, implying, “They’re a mess. It’s so bad, they found Jesus!” The perceived awfulness isn’t so much a concern for the despair, suffering or hardship a person faces – that would take Godly compassion – the awfulness is turning to Jesus.

Oh no! Not Jesus! You’re a goner!

Our pride and egos are horrid things, and the power of Jesus Christ is opposite everything the world thinks it knows about power. In the world, power is the imposition of will. It’s living one more day. In Christ, power is love and freedom, and eternal life at the throne of God.

“Our egos are prisons that keep us from the love and freedom of Christ,” notes my teacher George. What a great statement. Our egos want power because we think with power, we can forestall death; maybe just for today or tomorrow – and we admit we’re all going to die someday – but power is about my strength.

We cannot tap into God’s inexhaustible supply of strength when we try to compete against it with our own. Christ is like an experienced lifeguard, George analogizes. He knows when to approach a drowning person. After letting us fight and tire awhile in the deep, swirling water of our sin and pride, when we realize we can swim no more, Christ comes and gets us.

The power of God is to forgive and to love, and His ultimate strength is His compassion. That’s the gift He gave us all in Jesus Christ.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) found Christ when things were going fairly well; God somehow overwrote his sizable ego.

Words Fail Us at the Cross, Lent Part 7

Spirituality Column #232
April 19, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Lenten Series 2011: Just Not That into God, Part 7
Words Fail Us at the Cross
By Bob Walters

Some people are just not that into God because they have difficulty putting their faith into words.

So remember that faith is first about our relationship with God, not the words we use to describe faith. Like my mentor and friend George says, “Develop your relationship with God. The words will come later.”

Besides, the word “Word” among theologians is a confusing powder keg. Most regular folks are merely trying to communicate ideas or concepts with spoken or written words. But “Word” in the Bible – the Word of God – has many meanings with theologically intricate nuances such as Christ, message, spirit and prophecy.

This Easter week – Holy Week – we encounter the Cross of Jesus Christ. Words easily fail us if we rely on them to describe our deepest love, faith and hope we have in the redemptive relationship we receive in Jesus.

The Bible is full of words, yet is a book about relationships. Why the Triune Godhead (Father-Son-Holy Spirit)? Because God is community, relationship and love. Why the Covenant with Israel? To reveal a relational God. Why was Jesus born? To present eternal God as a humble servant capable of entering our history of human relationships. Why was Jesus crucified? To defeat death, erase our sins and restore relationship with God. And why the resurrection? To teach us the truth of salvation: that in faith our relationship with God extends infinitely past death.

Relationship, relationship, relationship. Not words. Christians throughout the centuries have fought over words: “nature,” “will,” and “worship” are common tinder for church debate. But Jesus wasn’t primarily about words. He was about living an example, dying for others, and living again in relationship with us. Jesus returned sinful mankind to communion – relationship – with the eternal Creator God.

The great danger of putting words before relationship is in evidence throughout the Christian landscape. We fight over words, even the ones in the Bible. Countless books, teachings, seminars, sermons and doctrines are full of words expressing countless ideas, concepts and gadget ways of doing this or that. Some are good, some are bad, some are heresies.

Jesus Christ is not an idea or a concept. He is a real, living person, the “Logos” Word of God with, in and through whom we are promised and invited into eternal, divine relationship with God in Heaven.

Know God first, then trust Him for the right words when you need them.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) wishes all a prayerful Holy Week and a blessed Easter. The Lord is Risen Indeed.

Dig Deeper for Church Foundation

Spirituality Column #205
October 12, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Dig Deeper for Church Foundation
By Bob Walters

My friend, mentor, and our Hamilton County neighbor George – I’ve written about him before – is a renowned scholar on the Eastern Church, on general church history including the Fathers (“Patristics”), and is a multi-lingual Bible translator.

He has worked at the Vatican, been a missionary in sub-Saharan Africa, served as a medic with the International Red Cross, was mentored at the ancient monastery of St. Macarius in northern Egypt, and for a time was a Coptic cleric in his native Cairo.

George retired from the divinity faculty at Cambridge University, England, in 2004 and since then has been living, writing, and teaching here in central Indiana. We have his lovely wife May, with her American career in computer systems management, to thank for that.

Though “retired” George teaches seminars throughout America and England, has taught select classes at several area churches and colleges, and recently began his seventh year teaching Wednesday nights at Castleton’s East 91st St. Christian Church.

George can write maddeningly meticulous class notes dissecting linguistic and spiritual subtleties of Hebrew, Greek and Latin Biblical pronouns (of Christ, in the Spirit, unto the Lord, etc.). But he can also simplify obvious but stupefying theological questions into three or four understandable points.

His current E91 series is “Bible Themes.” During the “Temples” class, George noted that Jews built temples where God appeared (theophany) or commanded. God dwelled, or tabernacled, in these Holy Places.

Later in that lesson, George asked, “Why do Christians go to church?” The public class draws a diverse, church-savvy crowd, but the room fell silent. After all, Jesus said nothing about “keeping the Sabbath,” only loving God and each other. Plus, “Christ dwells in your hearts through faith” (Ephesians 3:17), not in temples.

So … why church? Typical George, “Three points …

“One, Jesus promised that when ‘two or three’ believers gather, He will be there.

“Two, to share the Lord’s Supper, the gift of the body and blood of Christ; that many may become one. This is highly symbolic, and also very, very real.

“Three, we are the ‘called,’ – the ecclesia. We are called to community, to worship Christ so He may give us strength and we will experience the love and commitment of our faith.”

Good answer. If you’re there for the music or so you can feel good about yourself … George would suggest you dig deeper and feel good about Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), at George’s request, left out his last name. But the class is fascinating.

Feelings, Faith and God

Spirituality Column #142
July 28, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Feelings, Faith and God
By Bob Walters

“What’s the difference between feelings and faith?”

George, my scholar friend and neighbor, posed this seemingly simple question recently to an advanced Biblical studies group that included pastors, orthodox priests, teachers, a psychologist, a Biblical counselor (therapist), a couple of physicians and some other high-functioning lay people.

No one had a ready, sure answer. Nor did I, upon hearing the question later.

I’ve written about George before. He is a Bible translator, a renowned church historian with a PhD from Cambridge, an expert in classical languages and world religions, very nearly became a monk, is a former priest and longtime university lecturer, worked as a paramedic with the Red Cross during the Mideast civil wars of the 1970s, is a trained psychotherapist, and today lives a gentle, quiet life with his wife and their many friends in the northern suburbs of Indianapolis.

I recap George’s qualifications to underscore his credibility, and as an antecedent to presenting his elegantly simple parsing of “feelings” and “faith”.

Feelings begin in our ego and return to our ego.

Faith starts in our ego but finishes up somewhere outside ourselves.

“Ego” is one of those words that seems antithetical to Christianity. The ego is about “me,” the “self,” and aren’t I supposed to “die to self” to become an obedient Christian? Isn’t the ego the root of evil since it is the root of our innate, earthly, sinful self? How can the ego be the root of faith, when I want to “kill” my ego in order to be a better Christian? Hasn’t my ego caused the sin and shame of my past life?

Surveying the Cross, the Apostle Paul instructs (Romans 6:6) that our “old self” was crucified, not killed; freed from sin, not enslaved. “In this Christian sense, ‘to crucify’ is an act of love, while killing is an act of hate,” George explains. “The ego isn’t to be destroyed; it must be redeemed and made alive.”

What about killing our ego? “That’s more a Buddhist belief of emptiness, not a Christian belief of creativity,” George notes. “Christ created us, and The Holy Spirit gives the ego life so that we can discover our abilities and creativity. If we kill the ego, we can’t do that; we can’t be human.”

So, be careful what you try to kill. Without our self, we can’t reach out to God.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), for simplicity’s sake, will leave the Freudian id-ego-superego troika alone.

Richness in Short Bursts

Spirituality Column #139
July 7, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Richness in Short Bursts
By Bob Walters

We worry when we don’t pray enough.

My pastor friend Dave told me of a life-long, vigorous churchgoer – steeped in his Christian walk – who came to him in a panic because he, the churchgoer, didn’t think he was praying enough.

Knowing the man’s deep and active faith, Dave advised him to write down – with the time – every thought he had about God. Dave got a call the next day. The man’s panic had been allayed within hours when he realized he was thinking about and talking with God all the time.

When we are serious about our faith, we discover God is rarely far from our thoughts, even if we aren’t on our knees.

There is no substitute, of course, for a block of uninterrupted quiet time in prayer, meditation, Scripture study or contemplation. Contemplation is the deep “prayer without words” where we focus on the glory of God, the sacrifice of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This is when it is easiest for us to hear the Creator God – the Holy Trinity – talking to us.

My scholar friend George was mentored by a monk named Philemon at a monastery in the Egyptian desert. Philemon would sit in his cell for days or weeks in isolation, listening for his Lord’s voice to bring light to the most deep, difficult or confusing elements of Scripture, the Cosmos, human life, relationships, even God’s Existence and Being.

George’s faith and teaching are unusually rich in the fruits of his encounters with Philemon’s dedication to and depth of prayer life.

It’s important – critically important – to note that Christian prayer is directed outwardly, to the Creator of the Universe, to the Godhead. That’s the source and place of the Trinity in the Christian faith. Even as the Holy Spirit dwells within us, Christian prayer reaches out to the community of the Holy Trinity.

Be aware that a “Mantra,” popular in some faith systems, is not an outward, God-directed prayer; it points inward, only to our consciousness.

And don’t just talk endlessly … Matthew 6:7 makes that very clear.

It is the relationship each of us has with God the Father through Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit – and the relationship that exists within the Trinity – that is unique to the Christian faith.

Only our prayer life – even in short bursts – can capture the richness, peace and joy of that relationship.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was reminded that Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication (ACTS) is a terrific prayer mnemonic.