Premillennialists Buck the Christian Knowledge Crisis

            When I was editor of The Banner, magazine of the Christian Reformed Church, I sat on a small committee of leaders who guided Faith Alive, the publishing arm of the church. Faith Alive regularly published Bible studies, Sunday School curriculum, and other religious material. Our responsibility was basically two-fold. We had to publish good material, and it had to earn money. We couldn’t run Faith Alive on a deficit—at least not forever, though we tried.

            Achieving these goals was no small task. The basic problem was that with one or two exceptions (Don Postema’s Space for God being a notable one, some hymnals the other), the people buying our material rarely bought enough to make any publication profitable.

            To make matters worse, we were constantly being urged to publish more and more basic theology and doctrine books because of the widespread perception that people in the church just didn’t know as much as they used to. I think the perception was right on. The problem, however, was not—never had been—a shortage of good doctrinal primers. The problem was that most people sitting in the pew wouldn’t ever buy doctrinal books, because they simply didn’t read, or were not interested, or wanted doctrinal fantasy like the Left Behind series of novels, instead. So we’d sit there, with some denominational committee or seminary professor begging us to publish something that would address the lack of knowledge in the pew, knowing full well that if we did, we’d fail financially. It was not a nice position to be in.

            While this probably isn’t true of those reading this blog, it is true of the church at large. We’re suffering through a time of increasing ignorance in the pews. People don’t know the Bible stories like they used to. Kids don’t go to catechism like they used to. Few people read as much as they used to. Even seminary education has become much less rigorous in nearly every denomination. Everyone has something other than study of doctrine to do: skiing, cottages, soccer camps, TV shows to follow (usually a season at a time, in massive binges), and of course, the internet to browse. Bible studies that actually require study, rather than just sharing how you feel about some text, are rare to nonexistent. 

            And yet, isn’t it interesting that one of the more successful branches of contemporary Christianity—the Premillennialist crowd—asks for, and usually gets, a lot of knowledge from its adherents? Premillennialists—of whatever persuasion—can often offer up detailed descriptions of the end of the world—pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, it matters not. They can describe how today’s news events are prophesied in scripture (they think). They can offer up obscure texts in Daniel and Revelation in breathless support of their views about when and where and how Jesus will return. And they seem to be able to do so, ad infinitum, even though none of their predictions has ever come to pass—never.

            What gives? Why is it that in an era generally marked by less and less interest in and energy for study of doctrine that this group of failed prognosticators seems to be bucking the trend?

            I don’t know, for sure. Others have drawn parallels between the Gnostics of the early church and today’s Premillennialists. The parallels are pretty easy to see. Both groups promoted arcane—almost secret—knowledge that served as a key to escaping the toils and troubles of this world. Both saw this world as basically evil. And so on.

            The apocalyptic fervour of these groups, as well as the mental and exegetical gymnastics needed to justify that fervour, speak to a profound sense of unease about contemporary culture. Not only is the world evil, but its getting worse. They feel powerless to do anything to change things, and so they look to a dramatic deus ex machina solution, and find it in their tortured exegesis.

            Among some of these groups doctrinal knowledge is the bar people need to rise to in order to really belong—sort of like speaking in tongues was the bar that some of my Pentecostal friends had to rise to be considered premium members. The more social control a community exerts over its members, the more likely it will require specialist knowledge or experience to be part of the community. Think Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses, for example.

            The mastery of the airwaves that these groups have shown is another reason for their popularity. Christian Radio stations offering a menu of preachers breathlessly predicting one disaster after another, relating all of it to today’s headlines, and promising the thread that will make sense of it all are just, well, fascinating. Like late-night radio shows chronicling all sorts of conspiracy theories, or Discovery Channel shows about aliens who visited the earth in the distant past, or even right-wing political commentators who have their own spin on conspiracy and how things really are—these radio preachers appeal to people who want answers.

            To the degree that knowing about or believing such theories about how God is going to end the world as we know it is the entrance price to a church or denomination, they undermine the message of grace. The author of 1 Timothy—probably thinking of Gnosticism—puts it well: "Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wive's tails. Train yourself in godliness" (4:7). In other words, doing good is better than insisting on speculation. (I wonder if this advice is also good when it comes to speculation about the Trinity, divine substances, election, or Jesus' divine and human natures?) 

           Still, the contrast between the high “knowledge” commitment of many premillenialists and the cries of alarm about how most Christians don’t know much, anymore, is striking. What do we make of it? It may be true that for most of the history of Christianity, most Christians were illiterate, and did well to know a few key stories from the Bible and how to recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. But is that what we want to settle for now? I don’t think so.

            The bottom line is that Christianity is facing some huge cultural obstacles when it comes to inspiring its members to delve deep into the well of scripture, and the wisdom of its traditions. Figuring out what to do about this problem, however--if anything—is an interesting problem.

ADMINISTER. OR. ELSE.

One of the things that amazes me most, thinking back to my first few years as a pastor, was that most Sundays I preached twice a week. It made for a busy life, as each new sermon usually took two days to write. But between being allowed to exchange pulpits once a month or so, and having a few Sundays a year off, I managed the two-sermons-per-week routine without too many problems.

I could never manage that sort of preaching load anymore. Why not? In a word (or two), church administration.

In my first congregation, things pretty much ran themselves—and if they didn’t, a layperson was there to make it run. So, when a new church needed to be built (around the bones of an old fire station), every detail was handled by church members—from building support for the project, to fund-raising, to getting zoning approvals, to final construction. Many members contributed free labor, as well. I didn’t have to do a thing, other than take a few turns behind the paintbrush and serve as a cheerleader.

Worship was the same every week—only the songs and sermons changed. On Tuesday mornings I’d pick the songs we were going to sing the following Sunday, write a few announcements about upcoming events, and pass them along to the secretary. Members of the congregation looked after almost everything else—nursery and coffee schedules and volunteers, committee meetings for education, building and grounds, as well council meetings. The clerk received all church mail and responded to it all.

It isn’t that I didn’t have a few projects of my own that I promoted and planned for. But the bottom line was that the church was owned and run by the membership. Volunteers were never in short supply. And the church template—what churches did on Sundays, in particular—was far simpler than today’s.

These days, things are different. It isn’t that there isn’t any more lay participation. In my current congregation, there certainly is—from the flower guild to the council, from greeting to coffee preparation, many volunteers participate in the life of the church. Still, volunteers, especially for longer-term responsibilities, have become harder and harder to find over the past thirty years. And when things are not going smoothly church members look to the pastor and his or her staff to fix it.

What has changed?

1. Most people have less time. Especially in large urban centers like Toronto, where most people now live, people are feeling more and more pressed for time. Traffic is a mess, especially in the hours leading up to traditional church-meeting times like breakfast and just after supper. What is more, with unemployment hovering between 7 and 8 percent, people have to give extra time and effort to their jobs. Many feel vulnerable. Again, time for other activities suffers. On the plus side, some people have less time because community—and even foreign—NGOs are also dipping into the traditional church volunteer pool.

2. A related factor, and probably the single largest factor in this list, is that many more women—once the heart and soul of church volunteerism—are now working professionally. They (as was almost always the case with their husbands) are coming to church exhausted. They want to participate in worship, but resist teaching for and planning Sunday School, babysitting during the service, organizing social and community events, and serving on council. More and more equality in the workplace means more and more tired, stressed out church members.

3. Our culture has encouraged greater expectations for parental involvement compared to the seventies or eighties. Parents want to cheer kids on, drive them to and from practices, and spend quality time at home or on vacation with their kids. Overall, this is a great development, as many of us boomers can remember when parents were just too busy or distracted to spend much time with us. But a byproduct of this is that both parents and kids are too busy to help out at church.

4. Still, expectations for the quality and variety of church programing have only increased. No surprises here. In the era of TV preachers, megachurches, and a consumer-satisfaction oriented culture, churches that don’t shine don’t attract new members. They lose old members and fail to excite current members. People—whether consciously or not, rightly or wrongly—treat churches as franchises they have to choose between. Franchise outlets that don’t sport the best menu, the latest innovations, the best music, the latest technology all fall behind. Churches run as mom and pop operations don’t keep up with the times and fail. Ironically, just as members have less time for church involvement, expectations for what churches must deliver have increased.

5. Technology can save time, but it has also increased expectations on pastors and staff for fast response times about ever more and more matters. More insidiously, the very ease of sending off an email means that lots of them are sent! Even when parishioners are not deeply involved in offering time for church matters, they are making suggestions and asking for answers. Email represents a great opportunity to stay in touch—and to touch—church members. But it comes at a cost in time and energy.

6. Technology two. The Internet and other contemporary technology is great for getting your church noticed—if you are good at it. But that means someone on Facebook and Google Plus, and updating your webpage on a weekly or more frequent basis, providing great content for blogs, and regular tweets. As the franchise competition heats up, more and more resources have to be dedicated to marketing. Someone on staff has to be on top of this.

7. Bigger staffs themselves require more administration. Although my first congregation and my current congregation are about the same size, many of the factors mentioned above mean I work with a much larger staff than ever before—from 1.2 FTE to 4+ FTE. But working with a large staff, maintaining morale, helping them grow in their skills and keeping everyone on target takes a lot of administration too.

8. Laws have become more and more complex—often for good reason. But the burden on churches is also real. From the annual audit to voluntary sector criminal reports, to writing policies covering matters as diverse as sexual harassment to what foods can and cannot be served during coffee time, churches are being held to a higher standard. And the staff is expected to stay on top of the constantly changing demands.

9. Worship is better. More musicians playing more genres of music practicing with each other and looking for direction from staff, more thoughtful use of movie clips and other media, more drama and lay participation, more responsive reading, more consideration for historic liturgical practices—worship has changed a lot from the days I used to give the part-time secretary a list of six songs to put into the church bulletin’s never changing worship template. All of this requires a lot of planning and administrative work behind the scenes.

10. Denominational and local church structures are more intrusive than ever before. They always claim that every new initiative is going to save you time and help your church thrive, but the truth is denominational leaders have only rarely figured out how to offer real and timely help rather than more obligations. Denominations undoubtedly struggle with many of the same trends that local churches do. Denominational agencies and affiliated organizations are vying with each other for time and support in an era it doesn’t come to them automatically anymore. As a result, there is more and more stuff from denominations, more and more new initiatives, and more and more insecurity. A lot of pastors try to ignore the whole scene, but that won’t make for improvements, either—or eventually deliver real help.

We live in an era heavily influenced by post-modern suspicion of institutions. People think institutions are rule-bound, hidebound, and acronym-obsessed. They don’t like the rules, regulations, master plans, and perceived coerciveness of institutions. They want church experiences that are of a gee whiz sort rather than church responsibilities that require time, attention, and dedication.

But ironically, as their other obligations make church involvement more and more difficult, and as they download their old volunteer jobs onto church staffs, and as they raise their expectations, churches themselves become more and more the staff-driving institutions that the same members are suspicious of.

What’s the solution? Well, it isn’t going back to how things were, because it just isn’t going to happen. Jobs will not become less demanding. Children won’t need less nurture. Technology is not going to simplify our lives. Commutes will only rarely take less time. And so on.

No, the solution, though counterintuitive, has to be better administration. As church administrators, our work has to become more effective from Monday through Saturday, so that our work becomes mostly invisible on Sundays. That creates the atmosphere—along with great worship and community that staff has done much to arrange—where congregants may become inspired to figure out how they can give more too.

What do you think?

Jesus' Racial Slur and the Bible

I’ve changed my mind about scripture.

I became aware of this slowly. My change of mind began as a kind of unease with certain passages—an unease that I filed away, in some back-room drawer of my brain, for a long time. But eventually, there were too many passages filed away to escape notice. They troubled me.

For example, I recently reread a sermon I preached years ago about the Canaanite woman who came to Jesus looking for a miracle exorcism for her daughter. It is found in Matthew 15:21-28. Early on in the sermon I noted that when the woman asked Jesus for healing, he didn’t answer her a word. At that point, I stopped preaching, and silently looked over the congregation for a whole minute. This got across, to the audience, something of the woman’s tragic situation. However, the silence also underlined, I think, the enormity of Jesus’ refusal. The disciples then urge Jesus to send the woman away. And so he does. Jesus says to her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

This passage is obviously nothing like the one where the disciples turn away the children. In that case Jesus breaks with cultural convention and responds, “Let the children come, for the kingdom of God belong to such as these.” In the Canaanite woman’s case, however, Jesus tells the foreigner to get lost. No kingdom for her. She doesn’t belong.

But she won’t leave. So this time Jesus says, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus responds to a suffering mother’s plea for her daughter’s life with a demeaning and racist refusal to help. Jesus thinks Canaanites are dogs.

In my sermon I acknowledge that this is a hard saying. I try to soften it. I suggest that maybe Jesus was reminding this woman that it just happened to be God's strategy for Jews to hear his message first, only then, through the Jews, for the gentiles to hear the word—a standard exegetical twist to justify an otherwise horrible slur. Not that she, as a non-Jew, would have understood this theological twist.

There are other ways preachers and exegetes have tried to excuse Jesus’ behavior. Perhaps Jesus used this hard language because he knew ahead of time the eventual outcome of situation, and so let it play out. That would kind of be like making a baby blind so that Jesus could heal her later and so prove his Messiahship.

Or, perhaps Jesus was just expressing a widely shared cultural prejudice that he really can’t be blamed for. Or, maybe Jesus didn’t really mean what he said because of his obvious regard for foreigners that shows up in other Biblical stories. But doesn’t that make his behavior all the worse, here? Maybe this text reflects Matthew’s prejudice, rather than Jesus’. But that doesn’t make much sense either, since Matthew, in fact, from the magi at the beginning of the story, to the command to teach and baptize to the ends of the earth at the end of the story, seems to have had a deep concern for non-Jews.

We can dream up all sorts of “just-so” explanations. At its most obvious, literal level, however, this story includes Jesus using a racial slur. To call anyone a dog—no matter when and where—is to dehumanize that person, to dismiss his or her essential value before others and God. It is sin.

But on that Sunday I didn’t go into any of this. I trod lightly. This slur was a side of Jesus better passed over quickly and filed in that drawer I mentioned above. Rather than talk about the slur itself on the lips of Jesus, I immediately noted that the woman acknowledged that she was a dog. I quoted Martin Luther, who said that by saying “Yes Lord,” the woman “caught Jesus in his own words.” By saying “yes, Lord” she reminded Jesus of all his sermons about love for the hungry, the thirsty, the mourning, and the poor in spirit. Her "yes Lord" reminded Jesus that he had once said he would not despise a contrite heart. As if Jesus should have needed reminding.

From the Luther quote I moved quickly to a conclusion about how faith can move mountains—that is, how faith like the Canaanite woman’s can even endure God’s silence. It seemed like the right homiletical move, even if it made faith into a kind of works righteousness.

But the slur rankled, somewhere, deep inside. Now, years later, I have an African American grandson and an Afghani foster-daughter. I have an African daughter-in-law who was stopped at two a.m. in East Grand Rapids, not because she was speeding, but because she was out of place. I’ve experienced how hard it is to get good Christians to make room in their churches for people who don’t belong to their tribe. I read the news. I’ve taken courses that explain how structural racism—starting with slavery and Jim Crow laws and moving onto red-lining in real-estate and subpar schooling for poor inner city neighbourhoods—has all helped keep (most) African Americans and Canadians in their place.

Now I can no longer excuse Jesus’ response. It was deeply prejudiced and wrong. It infuriates me. How is it that a Messiah doesn’t know better?

As a result, I’ve changed my idea of scripture. Of course, as noted above, it isn’t just this passage. There are a whole host of scriptural issues that we tend not to take at face value but make excuses for, instead. From the Holy War of the Old Testament Jews against the Canaanites (them again) to the immanent expectation of Jesus’ return; from the obvious artifice of Old Testament books like Isaiah to mixed notions about who Jesus actually was that are found throughout the New Testament; from the condemnation of gay and divorced people to the requirement that women keep silence and are saved by childbearing many, many Biblical narratives are deeply disturbing and inconsistent with the highest ideals of other parts of scripture.

I find myself at a place where I’ve come to a corner, downtown, and am set to turn, unable to see what is ahead. I’m committed to the journey, but I’m not sure what I’ll see or meet round the corner. I’m not sure how to make peace with all this stuff. The paradigm I learned in seminary, with arguments about such passages full of eccentric and retrograde orbits to make the overall geocentric galaxy work, doesn’t work for me anymore.

Where then does one find God? Maybe God comes upon us, reveals himself or herself, in the reading. Maybe God chooses us whether we like it or not. What about scripture? Maybe scripture is witness to a long, bumpy tradition of people with a vague sense of the numinous, that I can learn from. Maybe scripture is partly right and partly wrong and I need to use its central themes to correct the outliers. We’ll see, round the corner.

What I do know, however, is that as uncomfortable as the uncertainty is I also love the freedom I now have to share both the best of scripture and my struggles with it in my present congregation. This community helps me feel as if I don’t need to turn that corner alone.

How I've Changed (Not Necessarily for the Better)

            Thanks to the kindness of a friend, I spent the better part of the past week at a cottage, by myself. The cottage didn’t have a radio, television, or Internet. My dog Jex kept me company.

            So I spent several hours, each day, sitting by the window watching the Muskoka River flow by. It was the perfect setting to give my introverted self over to reflection. And what I found myself thinking about is how much things have changed over my career as a pastor. I thought I’d write an occasional series on that theme. So, for starters, some of the biggest changes are in me.

            1. The first change is easy. I often feel very tired. At first I thought this must be because I’m getting older. But it isn’t just that. After all, I go to the gym and exercise more regularly than I used to, years ago. I am healthy.

            No, I actually think one reason I often feel tired is that I’m working harder, but on fewer things, than I used to. When I had kids I was very focused on boundaries. And they and their activities were the variety that gave my life spice. Now the kids are gone and  my wife works many evening hours, so I too easily drift into the “nothing but church-work” mode. And that steady diet of “just one thing, always,” can tire me out. I need more hobbies! I need to work on defining better boundaries. (Of course, this is also written in the busiest season, just before Christmas, while we’re closing out one budget and designing a new one. Things will look different in January!)

            2. I am more distracted by media than I’ve ever been before. By media, I mean the Internet. This is an ironic, because my wife and I have never owned a television. We sort of fell into that at the beginning of our marriage—we didn’t have the money for a new set. Then we decided not to get a TV until both the boys were reading. And from there it became a matter of principle.

           

            But now the Internet always beckons. I’m a news-junky, I guess. People don’t phone much anymore, but my email box is always overflowing. I follow the Blue Jays. There are blogs to keep up with, tweets to send out, and Facebook friends to keep track of.

            I’m experimenting with checking email and the Internet only twice a day. It’s hard when my writing computer is also my Internet computer. But research shows that Internet surfing can erode one’s ability and desire to engage in linear, rational, and deep reading.

            3. I’m amazed at how much confidence I had in my early years when it came to offering counselling and guidance about personal matters to parishioners. Unfortunately, it was too often confidence based on complete naiveté about just how complex and layered people’s lives, hopes, dreams, and needs are. It was also naiveté based on not having had any education as a therapist. I saw the world in black and white even though it had a lot of colour.

            As an older pastor, I’m more realistic about how many answers I have for pastoral situations. Usually, the best I can do is listen, assure people of God’s love and refer.

            I’ve also learned that one of the worst things that can happen to a pastor who ought to be majoring in preaching and basic pastoral visitation (getting to know the sheep and assuring them of God’s love) is to think that he or she is a therapist. I’m not a therapist. My wife is. She went to school years to get degrees and learn how. She’s done many, many further training courses and supervision. Me? I have two pastoral care courses from seminary. I don’t begin to have the understanding required to be a therapist.

            I’ve also noticed, over the years, that many pastors busy with “counselling,” really ought to be working a lot harder to craft compelling sermons. Worse, amateur counselling often seems to be their excuse for not doing so. They’re missing out on the first calling of a pastor--preaching--in order to do something they are educationally and absolutely unqualified to do.

            4. More on confidence. I’ve never lacked it. But looking back, I see that I should have tempered my confidence a bit. Looking back, I see that not only did I make pastoral errors, but I also made mistakes in council, mistakes that had to do with defining goals, and mistakes about what I preached. Nothing horrible (I hope). But I think that if I had listened to others a bit more, been a bit more realistic about how much experience I had, it wouldn’t have hurt.

            In a way I’m reflecting on leadership. In the beginning I thought I could jump in with both feet and know which way to go. Now I’ve realized that perhaps the most important part of leadership is inspiring the congregation define its own goals, and helping them to get there.

            Another way of putting this, perhaps, is that when I started in ministry, I believed in the authority of the pastor. After living the role for nearly thirty years, I’ve come to believe that authority doesn’t come with the office so much as it is earned in the trenches.

            5. On matters of what is right or wrong, I’ve generally softened my approach. I remember getting members of my first church to sign petitions against opening stores on Sunday, and for toughening abortion laws. I once refused to do a wedding for a member of the church because the groom was a nominal Roman Catholic.

            But now it seems less important to me to try to get everyone—in my church or in society at large—to do as I say than it is important for me to try to do as I hope. I don’t have much fight left in me for trying to bend society to my view of what is right or wrong. It is enough to try to try to inspire people by how I live. It is by our love for each other (and the poor, marginalized, least and last) that people will eventually figure out that God loves them too.

            6. While I have not changed my belief that great preaching is critical for both pastoral excellence and the success of a congregation, I’ve become much more humble about my power as a preacher—even as I continue to strive to be a better preacher.

            I’ve come to grips with the fact that very few people remember sermons, remember the doctrine that you put in sermons (people learn that from what they sing!), or even remember key themes that I return to again and again.

            Sermons are like the meals my mother fed me for years before I left home. I don’t remember any one in particular. But without a regular diet of them I wouldn’t have thrived.

            7. I have a marital partner that I don’t think I’ve ever taken for granted. But what has changed is that I’ve come to realize how deeply implicated she is in most of the positive changes in my life and ministry. Going on an adventure, hand-in-hand, is also a lot more fun than walking around the same block that everyone else is!

            8. I’ve become a lot more interested in the whole wide world rather than just the “theology,” silo. My graduate studies in communication theory, my fascination with evolution, my wife and kid’s sharing with me about their schooling has all enriched my reading and broadened my perspective. Theology is great—but without a great deal of worldly context, it smacks of religion rather than spirituality, and that just doesn’t work in our world.

            9. Most important, perhaps, is my faith. I started the ministry with the faith I learned as a child and was taught in seminary. It looks like I’ll be finishing in ministry with a very different faith. I’d never suggest that everyone ought to follow the exact path I did. But coming to a place where I own my own faith as something I’ve struggled for, rather than as something just handed down, has turned out to be a very precious journey.

When Is Jesus Coming Again?

About one hundred years after Jesus rose from the grave, a Christian prophet named Montanus preached that Jesus would soon return. He said the Holy Spirit told him so. Montanus and his fellow prophets were probably the first Pentecostal-like groups in the early church. One of Montanus's fellow prophets, Maximilla, even said, "after me there will be no more prophecy, but the end." She was wrong. Jesus didn't return after her death.

            About four hundred years after Jesus rose from the grave, a barbarian chieftain named Alaric sacked Rome. Christians were sure that the prophecy of Daniel 2, the prophecy about how a fourth empire of iron and clay would fall, had now been fulfilled. One preacher wrote, "Behold, from Adam all the years have passed and now comes the Day of Judgment." Well, even though Rome was sacked in 410, and fell forever in 472, Jesus did not, as it happens, return on those dates.

            About one thousand years after Jesus rose from the grave, kings and commoners both feared that the millennium of Revelation was finally done. They went on pilgrimages and to confession to prepare for Jesus' return. He didn't. Others argued that the millennium began when the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, meaning Jesus would return in 1326. He didn't.

            About 1200 years after Jesus was born, Joachim of Fiore, a Roman Catholic priest, told the English crusader King Richard the Lion Hearted that the sixth head of the dragon mentioned in Revelation 20 was Saladin, the Turkish ruler of Jerusalem--an early example of mistaking the mystical and symbolic texts of the book of Revelation for today's headlines. Joachim of Fiore also told King Richard that Innocent III would be the last pope and Jesus was coming back soon. But Jesus did not return.

About 1600 years after Jesus' resurrection, the great Scottish Mathematician John Napier was born. He was the mathematician who first worked out the concept of logarithms, which most of us studied in high school or college. Based on his study of Revelation, and after running his own numbers, Napier insisted that his current pope was the antichrist. He wrote an immensely popular book that predicted that Jesus would return in 1688 or 1700. But Jesus did not return.

About 1650 years after Jesus rose from the grave, Czar Alexander tried to reform the Russian Orthodox Church to be like the Greek Orthodox Church, which mostly involved changes in the liturgy. Many people thought this made the Czar the Antichrist of Revelation. Worship wars are an ancient Christian tradition, I guess. Anyway, these opponents to Alexander's changes predicted that Jesus would return in 1666--666 being the number of the beast. Rather than obey Alexander, who sent his armies to force people to worship his way, tens of thousands of the people committed suicide by burning their churches, barns and homes down around themselves and their families rather than submit. Jesus, however, did not return. 

About 1700 years after Jesus' resurrection, Sir Isaac Newton, the first person to describe the theory of gravity as we now know it, and perhaps one of the greatest geniuses of all time--Sir Isaac Newton predicted that the end of the world would come in 1944. Jesus did not return at that time, however.

            About 1750 years after Jesus was born, the Puritan Reformed scholar Jonathan Edwards, predicted that the papacy would fall in 1866 and that Jesus would return in the year 2000. Now, even though Jonathan Edwards was perhaps the greatest revival preacher ever, and even though he is still thought of by many people as the greatest philosopher and theologian in the tradition of John Calvin ever—Jonathan Edwards was wrong about Jesus coming back in Y2K.

            And so it goes. Charles Wesley, who founded the Methodist church (one of founding United Church denominations) believed that Jesus would return in 1794. Jesus did not. William Miller predicted that Jesus would return in 1843. Millions of Americans believed him. Jesus did not return. Miller's follower, Ellen White, founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, made a career out of predicting the end of the world. Jesus did not return on any of the days that she promised he would. Jacob Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, promised us that Jesus would return in 1891. To this day, in spite of Jesus' failure to return in 1891, the head of the Mormon Church is still titled the "Prophet, Seer, and Revelator." Jehovah's Witnesses predicted that Jesus would return in 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, and 1994. Jesus did not.

            About 1950 years after Jesus' birth, Hal Lindsay promised us that Jesus would return no later than 1980. Jesus did not return, so Hal Lindsay revised is arithmetic and interpretations and said that he was sure now, Jesus would return no later than the year 2000. Jesus did not return. He's still writing and doing TV though, and now promises that Jesus will return sometime around 2048. I'm betting he's wrong.

            Faith Healer and TV evangelist Benny Hinn said Jesus would return in in the 1990s. He's still on TV. The famous founder of the Charismatic Calvary Chapel chain of California mega-churches, recently deceased Chuck Smith, promised us that Jesus would return in 1981. He didn’t. Jack Van Impe said that Jesus would return in 1975 and 1976 and 1999 and 2000. Like Hal Lindsay and Benny Hinn, you can still find Jack Van Impe on TV hawking his latest prediction. He doesn't seem to be hurting, financially, for all his prediction failures.

            Since the founding of the church, Christians have been predicting the date of Jesus’  return. All of such predictions were, and continue to be, wrong. For all their Bible studies and adding and subtracting of millenniums and 666s; for all their book, TV and Christian radio exposure, for all their Bible thumping and endless diagrams and fear mongering and condemnations of those who disagree with them, for all their novels like Left Behind and Scofield Study Bibles--they have all been wrong. For all of their insistence over the past 2000 years that their earthquakes and wars and famines and antichrists are the ones mentioned in the book of Revelation--none of them has ever been right, for since the day Jesus left we have always had wars and famines and bad leaders and the poor with us. The truth is, everyone who has ever turned to Daniel or Revelation in order to tell us that Jesus is returning on some specified date, or soon, or that some empire is the one mentioned in Daniel, or some person we're reading about in the papers is the antichrist—all have been wrong. Jesus has not returned and none of their supposed insights into Daniel or Revelation has come to pass.

Of course, these end time predictions excite our curiosity, unbridle our imaginations, and arouse our appetite for mystery and a good story. But finally, all this excitement obscures what should be for us the central truth that really needs to be revealed and wondered over and celebrated and shouted from the rooftops. Something happened at Easter that changes how all of us will choose to live the future. We will follow him rather than wait for him to catch us up.

But of dates and times? Forget it. Forget trying to predict when (and if) Jesus will come back, because as scripture says in several ways and in several places, "no one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." What could be plainer and simpler than that?

How Did Christianity Begin?

            How do new religions begin? Sometimes by inches, over long periods of time; sometimes by subterfuge; sometimes on account of a blinding, perhaps revelatory, insight.

            Judaism’s birth is lost in the mists of time. Canaanite religion contributed something to its genesis, and perhaps Egyptian faiths as well. Judaism had an insight, however, that was utterly different, namely that God was One. Over the course of hundreds or perhaps thousands of years, Judaism worked out the consequences of that insight—or revelation. Still, whatever Judaism was in Saul’s time is not what it was in Amos’ time. And from Amos to Second Temple to Pharisaic Judaism, it continued to evolve into the many sects we know today.

            Christianity, in turn, was birthed as yet another take on Judaism and inch-by-inch became the variety of different sects it is today. Christianity and Judaism, in turn—as well as local faiths known to the prophet and his contemporaries—birthed Islam. And the process doesn’t stop there. Consider Baha’i and Mormonism. And if Charles Taylor is right, even modern secularism was birthed in the womb of Christianity.

            And always, individual people—prophets, fishermen, marketing geniuses, mystics—played a critical and often surprising role. Whether it was Abraham or Moses, Peter and James (or perhaps Mary and Salome and Mary), the Prophet Muhammad or Joseph Smith, there is no shortage of people with some new idea or insight or manuscript, whether sensible or outrageous, who managed to find over time millions of followers.

            I began thinking about how new religions begin as I read Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue.

            Wright and Crossan discuss the connection between Jesus’ resurrection and the birth of Christianity. Both Crossan and Wright agree that the founding of Christianity requires a precise historical explanation. And their dialog is about what that precise historical explanation might be. N. T. Wright argues, that at a minimum, the founding of Christianity resulted from the actual discovery of an empty tomb and the historical experiences of Jesus’ bodily presence. Crossan demurs. While not wanting to argue the empty tomb (it doesn’t figure in, for him) he does agree that resurrection experiences were key—though he might differ with Wright as to their nature. But Crossan adds that Christianity’s birth also depended upon what Jesus taught before he died, namely the kingdom as already present but not yet consummated. That teaching was the key frame that allowed the disciples to move from resurrection appearances to establishing the early church.

            For the record, Crossan believes that while Wright’s two historical events could get you to an exalted Jesus as described in Philippians 2:5ff, it could not get you to the resurrection faith—an eschatological faith where God is now already cleaning up creation, a job that God expects Christians to get excited about and participate in. Of course, the cases that Crossan and Wright and the others in this book make for their perspectives covers a lot more ground and detail than I can go into here. But the point is, these two scholars, looking back to the time of Jesus’ death both believe that they can determine the “necessary and sufficient” (terms frequently used) conditions that led to the birth of the early Christian church.

            But given the history of religions, and the incredible diversity of founding stories people have believed and even been willing to die for through the ages, it strikes me as odd that when it comes to Christianity these two scholars, or any scholars, imagine that there are both necessary and sufficient reasons why any of today’s world’s great religions would became what they are.

            I’m reminded of what Malcolm Muggeridge once said. "One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity.It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God, they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse; they believe in anything." Perhaps, but it is worth asking why Muggeridge thinks that only people who stop believing in God will believe anything. Is it not actually the case that just about anyone, anytime, deist or not, will believe anything? And isn’t the variety of world religions with their competing truth claims proof of this?

            In the case of Christianity, for example and for fun, imagine that Salome or Mary was so heart-broken at the notion that her beautiful new community of friends might fall apart after Jesus’ death that one of them concocted a resurrection story to keep her friends together? And what if after that a few others in that community (not surprisingly) had dreams about Jesus, or even visions of Jesus, a widely attested phenomenon in many different religions? Would such a beginning for Christianity be stranger than Joseph Smith or the Prophet Mohammad showing up with a manuscript and saying, “Thus saith the Lord?” In fact, we know from Rodney Stark’s work on the sociology of religion that people generally ask, “what do you believe and why,” only after they have joined communities, because it is the life of the community that draws them in, not theology. A few rumors within an existing and tight community like that of Jesus’ disciples might lead to big things.

            No, rather than insisting that their “natural theologies” based on “scientific” historical reconstructions (different though they be) provide the “necessary and sufficient” basis for Christianity’s birth, I think we are actually unable to historically reconstruct whatever miraculous things might have happened in those first few days, months and years after Jesus’ death. Something happened, of course, as is always the case with new religions, to start a snowball rolling down a hill. Both Wright and Crossan offer plausible scenarios. I can think of others more likely than the one I just made up, above. But none of them provide both the “necessary and sufficient,” conditions for the birth of Christianity. That’s claiming far too much.

            Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not arguing that the resurrection did or didn’t happen, but only that you can’t reconstruct what happened on the basis of its purported effect, the birth of a believing community.

            I’m also not arguing against research into the Historical Jesus or early Christianity or theological discussions about whether it was a resurrection or visions or dreams that people saw. We don’t know everything, and it may always be possible to dig a bit deeper and get a bit closer to the facts such as they were.

             I would argue, however, that whatever happened on Easter morning—and the years before and after—is something less than a matter of “necessary and sufficient” than it is of revelation and mystery. And if you are bound and determined not to merely go with the flow of what everyone else in your community believes but to make up your own mind, the only thing you can really do is go as far as the evidence will take you and then make a leap of faith.

Why Did Jesus Have to Die? Some Post-evangelical Musings.

            The Heidelberg Catechism asks, “Why did Jesus have to die?”

            It is an odd question. Of course Jesus had to die, because he was human. All humans and all creatures that have the breath of life in them must die. Only a Docetist—someone who says Jesus only seemed to be human but really wasn’t—would argue that Jesus didn’t have to die. But if he was a man, the die was cast. On Christmas Day only the when and how of Jesus’ death was still a mystery.

            So the question isn’t really “why did Jesus have to die?” Rather, the question—assuming that Jesus was (and is) God—the question is, “why the incarnation?” And from this follow several more questions, including the one that people seem to be asking most often when they pose, “Why did Jesus have to die?” namely, “why did Jesus have to die on a cross?”

            And of course, scripture contains the seeds of many answers that were developed for this question over the next few centuries. One suggested that Jesus’ birth and death were together a positive moral influence. Another said that his death atoned for sins—made up for our sins, somehow. For the former, a favorite text is the Carmen Christi, Philippians 2:5-11. The idea there is that we should do as Jesus did—have his mind. And what Jesus did, of course—though he was “in his very nature . . . God” (2:6) was an act of surpassing humility, even death on a cross.

            Other passages suggest that his death was an atoning sacrifice, or a rousing victory against evil powers, or an act of surpassing empathy. Over time, various versions of Anselm’s theory of the atonement, in particular, won pride of place, at least in the West. You can hear echoes of that tradition in the statements of faith of the United Church, for example. According to the Basis of Union (1925), “For our redemption, He fulfilled all righteousness, offered Himself a perfect sacrifice on the Cross, satisfied Divine justice and made propitiation for the sins of the whole world.” The United Church’s most recent statement, A Song of Faith (2006) broadens the scope of Jesus’ work to his life, but finishes with a familiar, if somewhat more ambivalent statement, that echoes the older statements of faith. “In Jesus’ crucifixion, God bears the sin, grief, and suffering of the world.” The Heidelberg Catechism specifies the cross was necessary for Jesus to shoulder “the curse which lay on me, since death by crucifixion was cursed by God,” and only later gets into a substitutionary atonement description of the crucifixion’s benefits.

         All of these answers presuppose that crucifixion was necessary, in particular, because it was something God demanded of Jesus to set things right. Many will go so far as to say that crucifixion was not just a divine demand but also a cosmic requirement because only that sort of death could satisfy the honor or justice of God, which because of the very nature of things, or God, had to be satisfied. In other words, the how of redemption was really not up to God—God needed a crucifixion to make it happen.

            Really? Is God so bound by circumstances and legal theories and human ideas about what is fair? Can God not graciously, in his or her freedom and omnipotence and compassion choose to forgive those he chooses to forgive? Or does the “necessary” in Jesus’ words to some disciples on the way to Emmaus, as in “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24;26) speak to some sort of cosmic necessity that even God is subject to before humans could be forgiven?

         I doubt it. In the Old Testament, Jews were mostly of the opinion that they would be forgiven if they simply (but really) repented, and turned again to the Lord. Though there might be punishments for sinning against God—exile perhaps or losing some battle to the Philistines—yet repentance usually led to forgiveness and new beginnings. So the prophet Joel says, “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart . . . Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and relents from punishing” (Joel 2:12-14).

         And as long as Anselm can use an analogy based on human experience, perhaps I can too. I often forgave my children, when they were little, when they were repentant. That is, they might break a vase or lamp by recklessly riding a trike through the house, even when warned not to. But usually the crash led to tears and repentance and how could I ever ask them to buy a new vase to make things right again? That would be ridiculous. I might even forgive people who did me great wrong in the past, but who have died without repenting, just so that the anger of it doesn’t eat me up. The point is, why wouldn’t God forgive people who made a good faith effort to follow Jesus’ example? Who, in the words of Joel, rend their hearts and not just their clothing? We forgive people who try and fail all the time.

         So why the crucifixion? Well, it was how some people in power—Pharisees and Romans—wanted Jesus to die. It was likely given Jesus’ counter cultural message and radical lifestyle and challenge to the powers that were. His courage in the face of possible crucifixion—he seemed to know that he would be crucified, one day—was the courage of a revolutionary who wanted to change the world (not to mention the cosmos). But I doubt that there was some constraint in the nature of God or the cosmos such that some sort of “an eye for an eye,” justice had to be inflicted on the perfect lamb to cover for the actual (never mind original) sins of people who were not perfect, even if they wanted to be.

         At least, that is what I’m musing about right now.

         I have sitting on my desk J.N.D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines and Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition (all four volumes) as well as several systematic theologies. I’m going to make a bit of a project of rereading these works with a view to reminding myself what others have said about these sorts of questions. But as long as I’m musing, I think the greatest temptation we face when it comes to atonement theories is probably to make God too small; to impose upon God some finite necessity that we’re tied up in knots about but which also prevents us from focusing on the bigger picture: God’s infinite love, grace, and other perfect attributes, and especially God’s penchant for forgiveness.