Finding Christ in Christmas, Part 3

Spirituality Column #214
December 14, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Finding Christ in Christmas, Part 3
By Bob Walters

I once visited a local church to hear an internationally known Christian minister and author preach at an evening worship service.

Shockingly, this visiting purveyor of the loving Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Holy Word of the Bible stopped speaking midway in his sermon and in mid-sentence demanded that a young mother – at whom he actually stretched out his arm and pointed – remove both herself and her somewhat-crying baby from the room.

The child was distracting him, he said. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s my fault,” he said. “I couldn’t concentrate.”

Nothing else the famous preacher said was as memorable as that. Most likely the humiliated young mother hasn’t forgotten the rebuke, either. As she retreated from the room holding her baby, my momentary relief at the silence turned to shame at my own impatience. My sympathies grew toward the mother, and away from the famous preacher’s broken concentration.

I thought of another young mother, a couple thousand years ago, who also had to hide a real, live human baby – Jesus – from earthly authority and social convention. Mary, with God’s grace, was patient with her circumstances.

I have narcissistic tendencies which make me not naturally patient. When we love ourselves too much, one finds, we have difficulty loving the world amid the world’s inconveniences. This would include lacking patience with crying babies, waiting in check-out lines, inconvenient stoplights, traffic, whatever.

Christmas too often is an exercise in impatience. One might rightly notice that the first victim of impatience is joy. Perhaps “Joy to the World” ought to be understood to mean, “Be patient with the world.”

God is. Christ is. The Holy Spirit is. Patient, I mean. Sinful man usually is not.

Try this as an antidote. Next time you’re inconvenienced, pray for the person that is inconveniencing you. That would include each person in line ahead of you. Or the relative whose Christmas plans conflict with yours. Or the baby crying in church.

As our Pastor Derek Duncan once advised, let a crying baby remind you of the one in the manger whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.

Christ came to reconnect mankind’s loving relationship with God, and to build our human communion with the Holy Trinity and with each other. Crowds at Christmas are an awesome time to do that, but to find Christ amid the chaos, you have to be patient.

Concentrate.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) doesn’t mind a baby’s cry in church as much as … alas … he minds its parents’ deafness.

The Importance of Patience

Spirituality Column #200
September 7, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

The Importance of Patience
By Bob Walters

“The passion of our Lord is a lesson in patience.”

St. Augustine wrote that in the fifth century, echoing the even-earlier Christian writer Tertullian of Carthage from approximately AD 200. It is God’s nature to be patient, said Tertullian, and impatience is the primal sin of Satan.

In religious and philosophical writings, there is no shortage of lists when it comes to virtues, those earthly constructs we pursue to try to find God.

We have the Four Cardinal Virtues from antiquity – prudence, justice, courage and temperance. We have the Gospel’s three theological virtues – faith, hope and charity. We have the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:16 - “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Better not leave off mercy, forgiveness, humility, modesty, wisdom, religious devotion and fear of the Lord.

It’s easy to come up with a long list, but patience is a specific attribute of Jesus Christ that teaches us much about God’s love for mankind.

Patience, you see, wasn’t considered much of a virtue by the ancients. Sure, it’s in the Bible, but to the Greeks and Romans “perseverance in adversity” was admired, not Godly patience. What the King James Version calls “long suffering” and “slow to anger” while “forgiving iniquity and transgression” (Numbers 14:18) was the novel lesson of Christ on the Cross.

Patience. When you can be patient, you are being Crucified with Christ. Tertullian taught that patience is not endurance or fortitude, but hope … hope in the Resurrection. And it is a sign of longing for the good things to come; things that are promised nowhere but heaven.

“On Patience” was among Tertullian’s master works, though history tells us he was not an especially patient man. Yet he wrote, “When God’s Spirit descends, patience is always at his side.” Patience, Tertullian redefined, is what it means to be “like God.”

This survey of Christian patience came thanks to the church historian Robert Louis Wilken, who recently put together a terrific work called The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. It landed in my mailbox not long after I renewed by subscription last year to “First Things” magazine.

Wilken has done us an enormous favor by forming this wonderful and clearly written study on the formations of the Christian story.

Otherwise, I’d never have the patience to read these ancient works.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) needs to read everything he can get his hands on about patience. FYI, this is column No. 200.

Job: With Friends Like These

Spirituality Column #82
June 3, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Job: With Friends Like These
By Bob Walters

What does Job teach us about faith and trust?

Job is the oldest book in the Bible. The story predates by several hundred years God’s anointing of Abraham. There is no name for Job’s religion; he simply feared God and shunned evil (Job 1:1).

Conversely, God trusted Job. God tells Satan in Job 1:8, “There is no one on earth like him (Job); he is blameless and upright.”

Satan tells God that Job’s faith can be shaken (Job 1:11), and God says, in effect, OK, it’s a bet. Satan suggests God strike everything Job has, but God simply puts Job’s possessions into Satan’s hands.

Job’s children, servants, herds, oxen, donkeys, camels were all wiped out. Job’s reaction was to fall to the ground and worship God (Job 1:20).

God said to Satan, See? “Job maintains his integrity” (Job 2:3). Satan replied, let’s hurt Job himself, and afflicted him with “painful sores from … his feet … to his head.” Job’s wife tells Job to curse God. Job tells her she is a fool (Job 2:10).

Then Job’s three friends show up (Job 2:11), and for the next 35 chapters try to tell Job, basically, that bad things only happen to bad people, so what has he, Job, done to God?

Job’s celebrated “patience” with God is pretty much over by verse 3:26, “I have no rest; only turmoil,” and with his friends by verse 6:15, “… my brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams.” Job and his friends bicker, mourn and lament until God decides to have His say, “The Lord Speaks,” in Chapter 38. God was displeased that Job questioned His intentions.

Notice: Job’s faith wasn’t shaken by what had happened; it was shaken by those closest to him, seeking to divide him from God by saying he was guilty of something.

Key Point 1: No one stopped to think Satan was behind the turmoil.

Key Point 2: Good counsel increases faith and creates focus on God; bad counsel decreases faith and creates focus on ourselves.

Job, who was restored much as we are restored eternally by Jesus Christ, had it right to start with: keeping faith and trusting God always works.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has learned faith and patience the hard way, and is almost positive there is not an easy way.

Perseverance is Greek To Me

Spirituality Column #61
January 8, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Perseverance is Greek To Me
By Bob Walters

The word “perseverance” doesn’t appear at all in the Old Testament, and appears only once in most versions of the New Testament (King James, English Standard, Revised Standard, Message, etc), in Ephesians 6:18.

(Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Eph. 6:18 KJV)

The New International Version lists “perseverance” 12 times in the New Testament, but oddly not in Ephesians 6:18.

“Perseverance” in the NIV replaces the words “patience” or “patient” which appear in most other versions.

I’m not writing though about versions of the Bible or specific verses. I’m writing about perseverance. Persevering in faith, in prayer and in Christ are all huge New Testament callings.

Turns out, courtesy of my friend George Bebawi (a world renowned religious scholar and Bible translator who happens to live in Carmel), that the New Testament says “perseverance” because it was written mostly in Greek, and the common Hebrew word from the Old Testament for the same concept was “faithfulness” which was not a common word in Greek literature.

On the modern American scene, in any translation, “perseverance” can be understood as “hang in there.”

Faithfulness is understood in the Old Testament not to be “our” faithfulness (the faithfulness of sinful man); but the faithfulness of God. This idea of God’s faithfulness, George points out, forms the heart of the Old Testament and especially the Psalms.

In plain English what the Bible is saying is: Man cannot truly be faithful … only God can be faithful. And since we often don’t understand God’s faithfulness – although sometimes we do – we must persevere in our faith to trust God no matter what.

I was thinking about New Year’s resolutions, persevering in them (if you’re still abiding in them heading into Week 2 of 2008, congratulations … that’s perseverance), and being faithful.

Jesus Christ gives us a reason to persevere, because in Him we can connect directly to the faithfulness of God, even if we ourselves can’t exactly pull it off.

So what I’m wondering is, are you “hanging in there?”

There is good reason to.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) agrees with his friend George that the most important thing in which to persevere in the New Year is our love for each other. Now that’s huge.

Patience and Tribulation

Spirituality Column #35
July 10, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Patience and Tribulation
By Bob Walters

I was a young sportswriter covering a Notre Dame home football game in South Bend (v. Purdue, 1976) and at dinner the night before I sat next to legendary Irish athletic director Edward W. “Moose” Krause.

Highly-rated Notre Dame (11th pre-season) lost its season opener at home to Pitt the previous week and was knocked out of the AP Top 20 rankings.  Dan Divine coached the team to a 9-3 record that season (1976) and the national championship in 1977, but I have never forgotten a funny comment Krause made at dinner that night.

He mentioned that just prior to dinner he had been with the football team in chapel and I asked him what he prayed for. Krause, considering the team’s record, said deliberately, “I pray for patience.”

Great line.

Several years later I was chatting with my friend Jonathan Byrd who owned race cars in the Indianapolis 500. After his team had struggled early in May I mentioned Krause’s comment about praying for patience.

Jonathan, an incredibly bright man of Baptist persuasion and exceptionally well-versed in the Bible, chuckled but made the point, “You have to be careful when you pray for patience.” “Why’s that?” I asked. “Because,” Jonathan said, “God teaches patience through tribulation.”

Yikes.

I was a Christian without the walk in those days, but I understood what Jonathan meant. You’d have to be mighty brave to pray for patience, because you can’t control how God may deem best to provide it to you.

Romans 5:3 in the King James version says “… tribulation worketh patience.” In my NIV Bible this is the lyrical chain where Paul says “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

Nothing is as important in our walk with Christ as our faithful perseverance, and there’s no better word for that than patience … and no greater fruit of patience than hope, which as the verse continues, “does not disappoint.”

You just have to be brave enough, trust God enough, and have the character to pray for patience.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) spends more time praying for patience than actually being patient.

Pride, Patience & Humility

Spirituality Column #33
June 26, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Pride, Patience and Humilty
By Bob Walters

I hate to admit it, but I know more about pride than patience or humility.

That's exactly the reverse of what Christ tells us about living a Godly life.

As our perfect example, Christ is without pride, has unlimited patience and lived on this earth in total humility.

The Bible gives us many standards for a faith-based, Godly life:

Abide in Christ. Be humble. Serve the Lord. Have faith. Love one another.

Pride means we are trusting our self instead of God, and therefore very likely bearing a burden or anxiety – unnecessarily – that Christ’s death has already removed.

Patience means we are trusting the Lord; and truly trusting in the Lord means you’ll never have a problem with pride or fear or doubt because you know that God, not you, is in control and you trust Him totally. (That’s a really tough one.)

Humility means you don’t worry about yourself; you worry only about God’s will.

This is gibberish to a non-believer, I realize. Christians – because Christ the perfect God / perfect man is eternally interceding with God – believe God is in control of their individual lives. “God is in control” is an especially tough truth when you or a loved one is hurting. Or even if you’re just impatient.

Pride is the king of sins because we strongly pursue our self interest instead of God’s commands. That’s what happened in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3) when Adam and Eve were tempted to doubt God’s goodness.

Impatience is my personal specialty, because when I see something I want …

Uh, good time to bring up humility – what “I want” isn’t important. How can I figure out what God wants?

Reading the Bible, asking God in prayer, and then listening for His voice, is a great place to start.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, reads Philippians 4:4-7 every day. Also, see Galatians 5:22-23.