Hubble, Humility, and Man

Spirituality Column #246
July 26, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers

Hubble, Humility, and Man
By Bob Walters

Dramatic deep-space images from the Hubble satellite telescope have inspired worldwide awe the past couple of decades.

On TV, in magazines, and clogging our inbound email, we’ve seen the luminous light of exploding quasars and collapsing galaxies, thanks to Hubble’s above-earthly vantage point and mindboggling technology. The pictures are phenomenal: scientists marvel, artists are humbled, and poets are left speechless. Atheists proclaim man’s insignificance. Believers see God’s magnificence.

Some people just sit back and say, “Wow!”

A recent network evening newscast noting the end of NASA’s space shuttle program aired a sidebar on the oft-repaired Hubble’s history, trials and triumphs. The reporter’s parting words grabbed my attention. Voicing over surreal intergalactic photography, he intoned (approximately), “Hubble’s images have made mankind think differently about how he views himself.”

I just sat back and said, “Wow.” For here was a brilliantly crafted, politically correct, non-committal statement carefully and perfectly framing a truth with no conclusion, casting light with no heat, making a brick with no straw, and balancing a platitude squarely on a secular fence.

The reporter left the sharp arrow in the quiver, the logical follow-up question: “Different … how?” That ponderance was left dangling with the audience. One could muse, simply, “Look what man found!” For sure, many said, “Behold, the face of God!”

Because the interview leading into that final statement was a scientist marveling at our “13-billion-year-old universe” – which I interpreted as an enthusiastic and institutional bon mot for Evolution and a purpose-pitch at the chin of Creationism – it seemed the reporter intended us viewers to gain further appreciation for our personal smallness against the big, meaningless, postmodern emptiness of everything else. In other words, “Those Hubble images sure put mankind in his rightful, small place.”

I think not. In the Hubble images I see unequivocal, gigantic proof of a great God, and the shimmering, show-stopping, unimpeachable truth that God not only exists but that He builds utterly amazing stuff. I see overwhelming evidence of a God Whose glory I cannot adequately express.

“What is mankind that you are mindful of him?” David asks God in Psalm 8:4.

The Hubble images are no adequate picture of God, because God is bigger than that. But in those images we see something the creation of which God considered worthwhile for His glory. And to think, He created us, too.

All I can say, humbly, is “Wow!”

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) notes that the Bible gives us a more instructive view of God than any telescope. Psalm 8. Yeah.

God, America and Nonfiction

Spirituality Column #243
July 5, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

God, America and Nonfiction
By Bob Walters

I finally got around to reading David McCullough’s nonfiction book 1776, and realized something striking.

To be clear, this isn’t the musical 1776 about signing the Declaration of Independence. This is the exhaustively researched and meticulously footnoted 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning No. 1 bestseller that chronicles the ups and downs of George Washington’s fledgling Continental Army in 1776.

McCullough enlisted his own armies of researchers on both sides of the Atlantic to comb libraries, collections and historical societies for authentic personal letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, maps, newspapers, speeches and official correspondence that detail “what it was really like” in that place at that time.

The book ably collates countless sources into a fascinating story, liberally citing and directly quoting the American and English officers and soldiers, Patriots, Loyalists, politicians, onlookers and bystanders in their own words.

And here’s what was striking: the most elegant prose, the most common expositions and the weightiest communiqués were replete with sincere, faithful, earnest and reverent appeals to God. McCullough does not write to prove America a God-fearing country. The story itself reveals how thoroughly God was assumed to be attached to everyone’s lives and the momentous events of the day.

In 1776 America, the average conversation of the people reflected their absolute conviction that the Hand of the Almighty was intricately woven into the affairs of all.

It’s different today. The sad reality of our politically correct, postmodern, public “God” conversation in America was well represented recently by, appropriately enough, Susan Jacoby, the “Atheist Columnist” for The Washington Post. (An aside: If you have a Religion page, you have to have an “Atheist” column, right? SMH.)

Anyway, last week in this space we discussed the charming little book, Heaven is for Real. A 4-year-old boy nearly dies, really, and later tells his minister father how he visited heaven. The No. 1 bestseller is a heart-touching, simple, affirming story about Jesus, God and Heaven. It’s popular inside and outside of faith communities; scandalous among more than a few Bible-centric theologians … which is about normal.

Atheist Jacoby, reviewing Heaven is for Real with extreme snideness and confidently labeling contemporary American minds “immature,” wrote, “Only in America could a book like this be classified as nonfiction.”

Did you catch that? Jacoby says God should be classified as “fiction.”

I think … we are a better nation when we say God is real.

Happy Fourth of July.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) read 1776 because it was on sale at Costco. Also, “SMH” is Twitter for “shakin’ my head.”

Drive-By Disbelief in God, Lent Part 3

Spirituality Column #228
March 22, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Lenten Series 2011: Just Not that into God, Part 3
Drive-By Disbelief in God
By Bob Walters

The “Center for Inquiry,” a group plainly just not that into God, recently installed billboards around Indianapolis, Washington DC and Houston, Tex., exclaiming:

You don’t need God – to hope, to care, to love, to live. Livingwithoutreligion.com.

What a great discussion starter. It’s even better when transposed into a question: Do you need God? In a hundred different ways Jesus asks the same thing throughout the Gospel. The billboards are fascinating.

First, note that they contain no direct mention of Jesus Christ. The billboards merely and clearly target the Creator God. If they meant someone else, it would be small-g god. I wonder whether it was politeness or perspicacity (shrewd awareness) – it likely wasn’t faith – that led them to capitalize “God.” And if their main pitch is that God is insignificant or doesn’t exist, then they capitalize to patronize.

I mean, who would both admit capital-G God exists and claim He is unimportant?

Second, and however, these particular billboards obviously and especially target Christ because they appeared the first week of Lent, the purely Christian season preceding purely Christian Easter. Citing “hope” and “love” – two of the big three divine gifts (faith, hope, love) of 1 Corinthians 13:13 – it is a dead giveaway, so to speak, that denigrating Christ, the giver of all life, is central to cfi’s anti-religion pitch.

The group says, soberly, that the Lent timing is “just coincidence.” Whatever.

Third, the group’s logo is an inscribed circle surrounding lowercase initials “cfi.” A flame dots the “i.” A flame … symbolizing human intelligence? The eternal hope of the Holy Spirit? The eternal flame of Hell (capital H)? None of the above?

Fourth, the billboard logo says “Center for Inquiry.” The real cfi logo includes the unpunctuated motto: “Reason Science Freedom of Inquiry.”

Reason? They nullify the author of all reason, Jesus Christ.

Science? Ultimately science doesn’t replace God, it reveals God.

Freedom of Inquiry? Except … don’t freely inquire about God.

Jesus was big on free inquiry. He asked, “Who do they say I am?” “Who will cast the first stone?” “Do you love me?” When people asked Jesus questions, He typically answered in thoughtful and thought-provoking stories. He wanted us – then and now – to constantly inquire with our entire minds, hearts, souls and faith, “Who is He?” and “Do we need Him?”

These are questions we should never fear, tire of asking, or stop answering.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) believes it’s more of a “God thing” than a cfi “coincidence” that the billboards popped up now. PS - Following publication of this column, cfi responded that the flame in its logo "symbolizes the light of knowledge that science shines on the (dark) world." That, evidently, is what they believe.

I'm Just Not That into God, Lent Part 1

Spirituality Column #226
March 8, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Lenten Series 2011
I’m Just Not That into God, Part 1
By Bob Walters

We are conditioned by our culture to believe that God – especially the person of Jesus Christ – is merely one of life’s extracurricular activities, not the full-time source and center of our humanity and life itself.

There is doubt. God is OK but organized religion is a pain. Yeah I suppose there is a God but until He proves to me he or she exists I’m looking out for No. 1. When I sincerely tried to pray, I got no answer. What’s God ever done for me?

There is reason. Survival depends on my ability to reason, to choose and to judge right and wrong. I’m supposed to deny my powers of reason and “believe” in a God I can’t see? Who allowed his own son to be killed? Who needs a father like that?

There is precedent. I’m free, aren’t I? Don’t Bible-thump me with that Jesus nonsense. Arose from the dead? Loves sinners? Forgives even the stuff I’ve done? C’mon. I’m too smart for that. I know things. And don’t mix faith with public schooling. It’s my God-given right to have church and state separated!

“God-given?” Alas.

Truth is, people generally accept the existence of God. Survey after survey pegs “atheist” as identifying only four percent or so of the US population. Not that God tracks his ratings, He’s there whether we believe in Him or not. But our culture of media and personal esteem makes it far too appealing and easy for us to seek reality elsewhere.

I did that for about 30 years.

I never thought God didn’t exist. Nor did I think Jesus, the Bible and the church were all that important. Just a bunch of old characters, old stories, old thinking. Jesus was a good man, the Bible has lots of good advice … but, the center of all life?

I just wasn’t that into God.

Thing is, I realize now, I wanted to BE God. As I grew to understand that the job was already taken, Jesus – our human-divine connection with God – suddenly became very important.

Lent, the church season of Christ’s passion and sacrifice, begins tomorrow and ends at Easter. Traditionally, many Christians give up something for Lent.

To take the critical step of putting Christ in the center of our lives and recalibrating / downsizing popular culture, let’s give up trying to be God.

That job’s taken, and it’s a full-time gig.

Walters (email rlwcom@aol.com) will look at non-believers through Lent, urging believers not to give up on them.

Atheist, or Just God-Challenged?

Spirituality Column #74
April 8, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Atheist, or Just God-Challenged?
By Bob Walters
Author of  Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

It is one thing to say, “I don’t believe in God.”

It is another to say, “God doesn’t exist.”

Statistics always show only a tiny portion of the population – typically less than 5 percent – actually denies the existence of God. The rest of us – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, agnostics, seekers, curmudgeons, contrarians, philosophers, you name it – have some level of spiritual life that includes acceptance that a deity/spirit exists.

Our individual awareness or expectation that God exists – our faith – provides working material for the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to as much truth as we are willing to comprehend. In some of us that opens our minds; in others, it closes our minds.

What we do with our faith – be it a spark or a flicker or brilliant beam of light – is completely and uniquely between the individual and God.

This is on my mind because I was in a high school classroom setting recently where atheist, objectivist philosopher/author Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” was being taught. It is a 1984-ish book where individual free identity is erased in favor of collectivist (read – Communist, Socialist) central planning.

I have read Rand’s seminal novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged more than once, and am familiar with her personal biography. In her novels she gets the free will of the human spirit just right, and absolutely nails the evils of socialism. Yet in her interviews she very openly, personally and bitterly denies the existence of God.

I am a person who believes all truth comes from God, that Christ presents (and is) all truth, and that the Holy Spirit opens our hearts and minds to understand it. Truth is a God thing; lies are a Satan thing.

I see in Rand someone of brilliance who was bitterly disappointed in God, yet nonetheless presented a truth we must carefully abide: society and individuals become the worst versions of themselves when society systematically denies personal individuality and creativity.

God loves each of us intensely and gives each of us a lot of room to work out our faith. Don’t be too quick to judge … or to deny that God exists. He can use any of us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reminds all that “agnostic” from Greek quickly becomes “ignoramus” from Latin.  Just sayin' ...

For Bob's latest posts, go back to www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com.

Not That Many Atheists

Sprituality Column #47
October 2, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Not That Many Atheists
By Bob Walters

Any professing, active Christian – or Jew, Muslim, Jehovah’s Witness, Buddhist, Hindu, Scientologist – knows that faith takes a lot of work. Lazy faith creates a stew of doubt and guilt; active, working faith creates wonder and a true life’s purpose.

For that reason – and if God doesn’t exist it’s hard to figure where reason comes from – it must be miserable work being an atheist. Imagine if everything you did for faith, you did only to prove there is no point to any of it.

Maybe it’s too hard of work. Population polls consistently reveal just half of one percent of the population reports itself to be “atheist” – sure God doesn’t exist. I was surprised the number was so low.

Chuck Colson wrote recently that current atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris aren’t just atheists, they are anti-theists who want God off the map because religion is counter to humanity’s needs.

God is counter to humanity? C’mon guys … without God, there wouldn’t be humanity (or anything else).

C.S. Lewis astutely observed that atheists cannot explain religious impulses in human beings, make sense of religious experience, explain the existence of reason and free will, account for our ability to think and choose, or explain the existence and order of the universe.

Religious truth may frequently be in conflict with our felt needs or our own sense of order (i.e. – what I think is good for me), but God gives us the ability to think those thoughts, contemplate those doubts, and create our own stories.

To me the Triune God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) is reality, while atheism is one of the stories we tell ourselves to ignore God’s enormous truths.

Evel Knievel, whose amazing conversion experience in Christ I wrote about last week, explained it this way: “A Christian wants to believe … everything about God and Jesus. An atheist does not believe in God because he doesn’t want to.”

That’s so simple and complete and profound – it really does come down to what we want.

The trick is to want God most, and work at it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) spent many years as an agnostic, a Greek-based word for “without knowledge” that when run through Latin and then re-Anglicized becomes the word “ignoramus.” Ouch.

Unfunny Circus of Postmodernism

Spirituality Column #13
February 6, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Truth Be Told, This Circus Isn’t Funny
By Bob Walters

The postmodern circus of man-made truth and intelligence has quite a ringmaster in Princeton professor Peter Singer.

The New Yorker magazine hails the Australian-born atheist as the “most influential” philosopher alive. Believers of any God-based faith owe this guy an incomparable debt of gratitude for his commitment to moral shock therapy and trans-species equality.

If Singer can’t inspire intellectual return-fire from the God-inspired trenches, then truth and morality are already dead. Study up, my friends; this fellow is giving us a run for our spiritual money.

Singer, among other things the intellectual father of the animal rights movement, presents accidental philosophical comedy of the first order; grand theater of the absurd. Morality is no more than a test of consciousness; an alert dog has greater moral standing than a healthy infant human.

Blue-state liberals eat that nonsense up because Singer effectively removes truth from intelligence and responsibility. The sliding scale of an eloquent opinion replaces truth, regardless of what 2,000 years of Christian thought has taught us about the divinity of truth and morality.

A Christian believer lives with the beating truth of Christ in our heart. The resurrected Christ is our specific and personal link with the Creator God. Absolute Truth exists in Christ and – you can look it up – nowhere else. Christ is the only recorded incidence of God become man.

Examine all the belief systems you can find. Truth is discussed in just about all of them, but Christ makes the only claim on record of actually being the Truth.

Singer’s brain just isn’t a fair match against God’s intellect, Christ’s truth, and our freedom in the Holy Spirit. Let’s not let absolute truth get sucked away by the moral vacuum of postmodernism.

Truth in Christ? Truth in philosophers?

Live Savior? Dead philosophers?

Choose wisely. Study up.

Walters, a Carmel resident, likes his steak medium rare. Contact him at rlwcom@aol.com

Judgment Day? That's a matter of opinion

Spirituality Column #10
January 16, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Judgment Day? That’s a matter of opinion
By Bob Walters
Author of Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The most crippling “doctrine” visited upon Christianity is the one that suspends individual judgment. Atheists and postmodernists love it.

You know the line … “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” and its several iterations in the Gospels of Mathew (7:1), Luke (6:37) and John (7:24).

This truly great advice, directly from Christ, is one of the most dangerously misapplied verses in all scripture. Non-Christians and misguided Christians wield that line against believers, and against the absoluteness of God’s truth.

Judge not. I mean, you wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, would you? All that God stuff doesn’t give you the right to judge me!

Well, judge this. Suppose I’m a drug dealer. You had better have the right to judge me; not for my sake, but for yours. “Judge not” doesn’t mean you can get away with being blind.

Here’s a news flash: without judgment, you die. Without judgment’s first-cousin discernment, you can’t know God. Without God, there is no right and wrong.

Judgment, really, is how we survive. Discernment is how we know God. That’s why God gave each of us a brain, for judgment and discernment.

Even an atheist who shouts down Christian judgment will ignorantly “judge” the “wrongness” of a Christian holding the “opinion” that God exists, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the Holy Spirit abides with us. That same atheist won’t see his own wrongness of heart, emptiness of head … nor the plank in his own eye.

You are the one with mush for brains, you silly Christian believer! An atheist’s highest belief in the universe is the sovereignty of his own intellect.

If that were the case (thankfully it’s not), I’d wonder about the universe.

Postmodernism is a big word but easily defined. It means this: absolute truth does not exist and your own opinion is sovereign. Right and wrong are in the eye of the beholder. I don’t remember ever meeting anyone who actually said he/she was a postmodernist, presumably because the position is so morally vapid, intellectually unsound and, in general, just plain silly. But they are out there. Everywhere.

Judgment is inconvenient and un-postmodernist, but very Christ-like. Think Christ wasn’t judgmental? Better read the New Testament again and this time, pay attention. He IS the Judge, and the Truth, and the Light, and a lot of other stuff.

Atheists can’t fathom God, and postmodernists can’t fathom truth. God the empty promise, and truth the matter of opinion, are what you get when judgment is absent.

Love God and love others, but for heaven’s sake, show some judgment.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is not a drug dealer.