A Response on Christian Irresponsibility
A response to an article by Chris Rhodes at subversivechurch about Christian attitudes surrounding the coming rapture.
Its the future hopes of rapture and the return of Jesus that gives an excuse for the majority of Christians to be selfish and terrible stewards. if Jesus is returning soon (and many Christians believe without a doubt that he is, just like every generation before them) then there’s no reason to take care of things now. in accounting (why do I know this?) its the opposite of the idea of “Ongoing Concern”- You make financial and management decisions based on the idea that you will still be in business the next day, week, month, year. Rapture-minded Christians find no reason to do this.
There are plenty of arguments saying that whatever the rapture may be, when it happens, it won’t be what we think. How are we to know that Christians will all be whisked off this earth up to heaven where they will float around on clouds and drink lattes while chillin with the angels? Its awefully presumptuous to think we know anything with such certainty in “God’s realm”, as I would put it, that will happen in the future. How arrogant of me to think that I think I know what God will do and how he will do it. Especially when I spell it out according to “my interpretation” and then try to shove it down the throats of “non-believers” as well as use it for myself as a self-righteous excuse for irresponsibility.
Its this world-view held by most Christians that soon we’re not going to have to deal with this world anymore that makes it so attractive. If the world is shit, I’m more inclined to believe in a God who’s gonna come rescue us and take me somewhere else away from all those sinners who made it shit, so I don’t have to deal with it. This attitude is particularly ridiculous because contributes a great deal to the ongoing shit of this world.
In addition, its quite possible that God’s plan is to leave us on this earth anyway. Chalk it up to religious tradition and expounding, mysticism and pagan influences that gave us plenty of extra-biblical ideas about spirituality, the afterlife, and God himself. Most people fail to realize the difference between the truly Biblical theological ideas and those ideas that are and were built by a culture and expanded upon by that continuing culture. If you don’t believe me, read your Bible all over again and try to read every word from an objective, “what if I didn’t grow up in the church or have other Christians always telling me what this means” perspective.
I chalk this entire issue up to selfishness (the root of all vice) and its resulting irresponsibility. Irresponsibility both to the world in which we live and the trueness with which we should be treating (loving) other humans (not just other Christians) while we wait for that expected trumpet in the sky.
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I like this line, ‘“what if I didn’t grow up in the church or have other Christians always telling me what this means” perspective.’
That is the first thing I think of every time I talk to people about my beliefs.
Just because I’m talking about God doesn’t mean I should blurt out every thing I’m thinking of in a fatal attempt to convert someone.
not sure if this fits with your post, but it got me thinking about stuff. good one
the bible never ACTUALLY says there will even be a rapture. it does say that some will fall away…so that indicates to me that we will face the trials of the end times, the tempations in the climax of the end….
but someone i once knew said, “live every day as if it were your last and plan for next 30 years of your life.” i think this is wise…give my all every day, but don’t stop dreaming b/c there are plenty more years for me to learn and offer the world around me.
@ash – That’s not entirely true. 1 Thessalonians shows Paul very much believed not only that Christians would be “caught up” into the clouds, but it seems from his use of “we”, he too believed it would be his generation that was raptured. The term “caught up” in Greek is, IIRC, where we got the term “rapture”. However, the popular, modern evangelical view of the rapture as seen in books like “Left Behind” is definitely NOT in the Bible. So if that’s what you meant, you’re right.
@amos – I had a religion professor talk a lot about what he thought of the rapture and the neo-apocalypticism movement in the evangelical church. He said a lot of things that stuck with me, but the one thing that I think hit me the most was when he said that if the rapture is an event that takes all the Christians up into heaven while leaving mass chaos and suffering down on earth, that he would rather stay down on earth to help those suffering rather than party up in heaven and ignore them.
I have to say, I agree.
@Jon – just as you said, I think what Ash is particularly stating and one of my overall points is that the ideas that people have about rapture and heaven and etc have been so heavily influenced by many different cultures over the last 2000 years (and more) that I especially think the modern evangelical idea is perhaps not wrong, (because noone truly knows) but unfounded and in no way provable. The problem is that most modern e’s look at it as though they were told as directly as possible by God as if they were Moses himself receiving the word of the Lord. Even as Christians if we have a particular resolute feeling about our own beliefs it is still quite arrogant to go so far as stating absolutes. Whatever it is that Paul was referring to is definitely not without extreme embelisment to get to where the Left Behind series took the idea.
Also, I have a lot of appreciation for what your religion professor said. If you ask me, thats more like Christ than the vast majority of Christians.
Thanks very much for the input!
Actually, 1. Paul (if it is Paul writing, most scholars don’t believe so) is writing in an apocryphal tradition that came not from Jesus but from a long Jewish tradition of Apocryphal writings meant to evoke hope and wonderful thoughts of God’s wrath against our enemies. These traditions weren’t even inherently Jewish, they were most likely adopted from similar traditions seen in Zoroastrianism during the Babylonian captivity around 600BCE (the year could be wrong sorry).
2. The idea of rapture was not a part of Christianity (or even mentioned, whether or not it was “kicked around” is unkown) until it was either created or popularized by John Darby in the 1830s (-ish). Some claim people knew or saw visions prior to this but this is the beginning of the theological doctrine of the rapture and “dispensationalism” which leads the church to this crazy well-planned end of the world scenario.
Sorry, I should mention this is Chris… don’t get mad at Mike for disputing sacred Christian doctrine.
@chris — i have little reservation in questioning the supposed end times prophecy that is quite engrained in the average judeo-christian world view. I have little reservation in erring on the safe side of assuming that the book of Revelations was not about some distant armageddon but rather the then modern plight of Christians in a Roman world.
I guess this requires you and I to accept ourselves as heretics in yet another modern Christian doctrine.