Left Behind

I got my Dad’s church newsletter in the mail this week. I don’t know why I keep receiving it, but there it was. So I read it.

“The Pastor’s Corner” article made me cringe. Following are two excerpts.

“I believe the next big spiritual event that is coming to the world is the rapture. By rapture I mean the instant removal of all TRUE Christians to Heaven by the Lord. . .”

“For many years I have believed that the Rapture would happen on an EASTER SUNDAY. Jesus body rose from the grave on Easter Sunday. . .what better day for the Lord to raise the bodies of dead followers of Jesus? To me there is no better day! And as those bodies are rising from the grave, we living followers of Jesus will be caught up together with them (Raptured) to meet our Lord in the air. . .Oh Happy Day! Friends, it could happen this Easter Sunday, March 23rd, and I am praying that it will. Question: Are YOU going with US?”

This prevailing theology of the End Times comes primarily from this passage from I Thessalonians 4 “13But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. 15For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. 16For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

What my father wrote in his article struck me as flawed on so many levels. Besides the immediate arrogance (“Are YOU going with US?”) there is a sense of fear and doom brought on by this idea about God and the end of the world that has been mainstreamed by the Left Behind series of books.

What irritates me so much about this theology is that the apocalyptic texts in the Bible were originally written to encourage those who had been marginalized to meet their stress and fear with confidence – not with panic. The writings were meant to bring about a sense of confidence that God was working things out with peace, joy and justice. Instead, what the fundamentalist churches are doing is using every human being’s fear of being excluded to bring about the change THEY want to see.

Whenever I am confronted by this kind of warped theological argument I take it right to the standard of the work that the Holy Spirit does within each believer. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) When a way of talking and teaching about God doesn’t engender these characteristics, I’m very, very careful.

These theologies espoused by my father and so many fundamentalist churches just don’t reflect the God I’ve come to know.