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?

Kicking Around Notions of Belief

Spirituality Column #257
October 11, 2011
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Kicking Around Notions of Belief
By Bob Walters

Here’s a recent newspaper quote from an athlete who came off the bench and made a humongous play to win a humongous game:

“I believed in myself. I said a little prayer … and it went in.”

Kudos to the athlete’s success. What an admirably innocent and humble comment. I’d never criticize an athlete who is that sincerely succinct.

Yet, a question leapt into my mind because that particular sentiment – “believed in myself” – is omnipresent in our culture, and prayer is omnipresent in our souls. So I wonder: If one truly believes in oneself, to whom does one pray?

Let’s consider the magnitude of our cultural and educational bluster about the sovereignty of rational thought, self esteem, and the removal of God from public sight. We are cheered on by our secular institutions to irrationally “believe in me,” but under no circumstances is it tolerable in a public institution to pray to God … and mean it.

Pity, because God is where the real action is.

Secular irony brooks no boundaries. For all of modern culture’s self-glorifying bravado – “I believe in me,” “I am special,” etc. – our secular institutions just as vigorously attack the notion that any one of us actually is special. That’s because truly special requires God, and God is generally outlawed if not outright ridiculed.

Look at public school and university science classes, desperately teaching the reasonableness of a universe that – they swear – happened for no reason. “Life is totally an accident, but you’re special.” Huh? Really? Schools teach facts and things, but shy away from truth. To wit, “God? Oh, that’s just your opinion.”

Imagine a public schoolroom where the self-esteem poster says: “The eternal Creator God took an intentional, special, eternal moment to specifically form you in your mother’s womb so He could love you, prosper you, and make it possible for your life to glorify His holy existence. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to save you and His Holy Spirit to comfort you. Trust this: You ARE special. God says so. Believe Him.” Powerful.

The modernists – the intellectuals running our academic institutions under the premise that man’s knowledge supersedes God’s knowledge – would panic, weakly wheezing “You are special” but lacking God’s authority, ability and passion to prove it. (Postmodern intellectuals would dismiss all knowledge and specialness, period, but that’s another column.)

What is revealing and reassuring about the athlete’s quote above is that regardless how much we “believe in me,” most of us down deep crave the peace of even a little – but honest – prayer to the God who made us.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) longs for a day when “I pray to God” means more than “I believe in me.”