Fate is a Fickle Fashion

Spirituality Column #258
October 18, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Fate is a Fickle Fashion
By Bob Walters

Fate, which rationally explains nothing, is often the secular world’s crutch for explaining everything.

It’s a great way to blame God without, you know, actually believing in God.

The ancient Greek, Roman and other cultural mythologies typically cast the Fates as three goddesses of 1) things that were, 2) things that are, and 3) things that are to be. Intricate stories and great epics were written around past, present and future favors, curses and justice visited on various characters by the Fates.

Mankind has always wanted explanations and answers, and the less culpability any one person has for his or her specific actions, the more comfortable the theology. Fate today is the land of “stuff happens,” “it is what it is” and “it’s not my fault.” That’s not exactly a theology but it certainly is a highway to blissful unaccountability, tort-happy lawsuits, and maybe even spiteful, generational victimhood.

“Don’t blame me” is fate’s bumper sticker; “I’m going to blame something else” is its implicit message. “Don’t talk to me about God” is fate’s no-fly safety zone.

Faith – specifically Christian faith – puts God in our midst with the incarnate humanity of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Bible, the church, and the immutable faith in my heart are exhibits A, B and C for the enormity of the Godhead against the smallness of fate.

A living God really complicates and messes up the blissful ignorance of fate-focused living, for faith in God requires much that fate does not. Faith in the Trinity takes commitment, study, action, creativity, wisdom, willful intent, patience, perseverance, humility and total personal involvement.

Fate requires none of that. It asks only resignation, diminishing life by destroying hope and limiting dreams. Whether life seems good or bad at any particular moment or over any stretch of time, ugh, it’s stifling to think, with fate, “this is all there is.”

For all of its demands, faith’s greatest gift is joy – the long-term condition of hope, peace and trust in the goodness of the Creator God no matter how crazy life gets.

It’s puzzling to me how the non-believing world can so comfortably and fashionably believe in fate which can only hurt them, yet refuses to believe in the grace of Jesus Christ, which can only help them. “Fate” is accepting the work of the lord of this world, and that lord, my friends, is Satan.

Satan wants us to worry about explaining everything; knowing our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the peace not to.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) sees belief in God as both rational and reasonable, albeit indefinable. Some conundrum, huh?

God and Man: Who's Seeking Whom?

Spirituality Column #220
January 25, 2011
Current in Carmel, Westfield, Noblesville, Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

God and Man: Who’s Seeking Whom?
By Bob Walters

Do we seek God, or is God seeking us?

Often lost in “seeker-sensitive” worship is the truth of what Jesus Christ’s earthly mission actually was. He was sent by God to seek us and bring us back to His flock like the shepherd who looks for the lost sheep in the New Testament parable.

Too often it’s marketed in churches that Jesus is entirely about “paying for” our sin and that our guilt should make us love Jesus. I can’t think of a worse way to describe God’s love, the work of Jesus Christ, or the reason for the Holy Spirit.

Folks, we’re sinners and we have to understand that. But fear and guilt will never help us find God; they only create focus on ourselves. Read the Bible and know that God already dealt with our sin by loving us and courageously giving His son.

When we immerse our “faith” in guilt and shame, we reject God’s love and free gift of salvation. We make God’s divine love a transaction or a payment plan instead of letting him just give it to us on His terms … on faith.

What does John 3:16 say? "For God was so mad at the world that He killed His only begotten Son so believers would be guilt-ridden forever?" No. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Then comes the clincher in John 3:17: Jesus was sent into the world “not to condemn the world” but so “the world through Him might be saved.”

It’s easy to become so focused on “seeking” or “finding” God that we forget that the greatest revelation of God’s grace and love was the fact that He already sent His Son humbly – without sin, into a fallen world, to seek us – to restore us to the perfect communion with the Godhead in the Kingdom of God, “not to condemn us.”

So don’t obsess over seeking God; He’s already seeking us. The biggest part of trusting God is trusting that He is looking for – and looking out for – each of his sheep.

Take some terrific Old Testament advice from Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Over and over Jesus says that with faith in Him, we’ll be saved.

He’s telling us the truth.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com), noting that Jesus Christ came to find the sinners not the righteous, is thankful to have been found.

There's a Name for That

Spirituality Column #185
May 25, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

There’s a Name for That
By Bob Walters

Public schools have pesky problems navigating the narrow straits of political correctness at graduation time.

Of course, we celebrate the accomplishment of education. But even though modern society is convulsed by crediting anything other than individual, human achievement, most of us feel a need deep in our souls to be thankful and hopeful in a community, spiritual, meaningful kind of a way.

That leaves us with the problem …

How do we thank the author of all knowledge for our … knowledge?

“Who is that author?” you ask. Well, here it is. And please duck …
The author of all knowledge is Jesus Christ.

Christ is the Way and the Truth and the Life. He is Knowledge. He gave us the Breath of Life. He gave us our Creativity. Genesis, John and a whole bunch of other places in the Bible make that very plain.

Inasmuch as God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit constitute the Godhead, it’s a “technicality” to complain about the absence of the name of Jesus Christ from our public celebrations of knowledge. “God” covers it. But, c’mon. We achieve what it takes to graduate and are still dumb enough to think that we can fool God? Please.

It is plenty tough most places to slip in a nod to “God” in a generic quasi-prayer at a public commencement. In PC-run-amuck settings, a clever student body might sneeze in unison and have the valedictory speaker say, “God bless you!”

In more forgiving settings, like a baccalaureate, we might hear The Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father” and “Lord” are code words for God and Jesus Christ, and “Kingdom” can refer to all kinds of things without cluttering up the ceremony by praying specifically and out loud for “the reign of God.” The Lord’s Prayer is from Jesus (Matthew 6:9-13) but, whew! … you don’t actually have to say “Jesus.”

Or, just sing Christ’s praises in Latin. It’s pretty, and nobody knows.

Fact is there is true, divine, Godly power in the name of Jesus Christ. And the name of Jesus Christ causes trouble and persecution. The world hates Him, and I think that’s because Christ has true power many of us think our knowledge alone provides.

Our graduations teach: “Don’t pray; but if you do, don’t you dare mean it.”

That’s what it means when we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. We mean it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes it is natural to thank God. Praying “Thank God school’s over” isn’t really thanking God.