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?

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.

Praying Without Ceasing

Spirituality Column #135
June 9, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Praying Without Ceasing
By Bob Walters

The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” Our Lord wept over Lazarus, whom He soon raised from the dead.

The only other two-word verse in my New International Version (NIV) Bible is 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “pray continually.”

Traditional Bible versions like the King James say, “pray without ceasing.” The woefully obtuse but politically correct and idiomatically familiar “The Message” paraphrase says, “Pray all the time.”

In context, St. Paul is telling the still-tenuous Christian church at Thessalonica – in Macedonia around A.D. 51 where Paul had earlier begun his ministry but abruptly left – “(v16) Be joyful always, (v17) pray continually; (v18) give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Jesus Christ.”

Notice Paul doesn’t say “Be joyful when you are happy.” Or “Pray when it’s convenient.” Or “Give thanks when God gives you what you want.”

Our personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit is a fulltime affair. Joy is not a function of happy circumstance. Prayer is not reserved for a set-aside time. Thanksgiving isn’t just a Thursday in November.

We must have perpetual joy that Jesus is Lord. And say it.

We must pray continually to be with God continually. And know it.

We must be thankful for Christ’s sacrifice restoring us to communion with God. And live it.

Joy and thankfulness are attitudes we mentally and emotionally command. By living those attitudes, people around us interpret them as an expression of Godliness … as long as the glory for those Godly attitudes is given to God, not taken pridefully for ourselves.

Prayer, though, isn’t so much an attitude. It’s an action requiring discipline and willful engagement. Our closeness to God depends on it. When we aren’t praying, we’re drifting away from God and instead drifting headlong toward ourselves, the world, and Satan. Our faith waivers.

We pray to connect with God. To know He is there. To glorify Jesus. To praise Him. To thank Him. To confess to Him. And, of course, to ask Him.

As for “asking,” try this: Ask God for “stuff” last. First ask God how to be closer to Him, how to glorify Him, and how to help others know Him. Mean it. Ask God for deeper faith. As Morgan Freeman said to Jim Carey in the movie Bruce Almighty: “Now that’s a prayer.”

Walters knows that no matter how much or what we pray, we can’t surprise God.

Next week: Praying Continually (click here for link)

Freedom, Truth, Joy ... in Spite Of It All

Spirituality Column #86
July 1, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current! In Westfield (IN) newspaper

Freedom, Truth, Joy … in Spite of It All
Jesus brightens our path forward
By Bob Walters

"Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose … ", from the song Me and Bobby McGee, by Kris Kristofferson; sung by Janis Joplin, 1971

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free … ”, Galatians 5:1

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17

God’s gift of freedom, in the person of Jesus Christ, is in our redemption from past sins and in our hope for the future. Freedom is about opening the door before us; not about the door behind us, whether it is open or shut.

Freedom is about not being shackled to our past.

This July 4 we will celebrate 232 years of American self determination and independence. Not every American has had the same fair shake over that time, but the greatness of America has never been in our past.

The greatness of America has always been in our promise and opportunity for the future. The greatness of America is that anyone can become an American.

I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on whether or not “America is a Christian country.” Is the Creator, i.e., God, mentioned in the Declaration of Independence? Yes. Was every jot and tittle of the Declaration an expression of Christian philosophy? No, not even close.

In a reference from Christ’s Sermon on The Mount (“salt and light,” see Matthew 5:18), is it fair to call America a shining “city on a hill,” as did John Winthrop’s Puritan sermon of 1630? I think that’s a great description of America, but nothing about the Puritan way of life had anything to do with freedom as we would call it today. It was about the strictest of religious legalism and obedience.

American freedom and Christian freedom may not be exactly the same thing, but the freedom we celebrate July 4 is a gift from God any way we slice it.

Freedom provides the opportunity for the truth to be known … hence truth and freedom are interdependent on each other. Inasmuch as Christ very plainly tells us He is the truth (“I am the way, and the truth,” etc., in John 14:6), we should be able to add freedom and truth together and get joy.

Consider this: Joy is not about what we have to lose; it’s about the Holy Spirit within us and the hope we have in Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) understands that declaring joy is easier said than done. Joy is the first casualty when freedom and truth are compromised.