A Time to Laugh

versus

Which is it? Which best pictures the Kingdom of God?

I’ve talked about eschatology qua eschatology in an earlier post, so there’s no need to re-hash that here. As much as dispensationalists — or especially those dispie-lite sorts who call themselves “progressive” or “historic premill” –  insist that the view of The End doesn’t influence the rest of their theological system, that’s bogus. Of course it does.

In fact, it’s a dispie habit to slice-n-dice the Scripture: “this is for that; that’s not for this.” So that the “new dispies” sentimentally and politically (try to) slice off their view of The Future from their view of The Present isn’t a surprise.

Just look at these two representative anecdotes from the last month. Kevin Bauder, a prominent voice in my previous life, limits the goodness of the Good News. Bob Lupton, writing in my current denomination’s magazine, imagines how big It could blossom. The irony of this initial comparison is enough to make me spit coffee on my Eee PC. Pre-mills usually (though not always) reject that most frustrating petal on the Calvinist TULIP — Limited Atonement — as too . . . well, limiting. But uh . . . look who’s doing the limiting and who’s doing the expanding here. The one assumes its his job to draw lines around God’s Good News; the other just trusts God and gets going.

Bauder doubts the validity of an “enlarged gospel.” Lupton doesn’t waste time doubting because he’s too busy building. Bauder says:

The mechanism through which this heavenly arrival is supposed to occur is the Kingdom of God. According to the theory, the Kingdom is already present in the world, particularly among the people of God. Therefore, the main business of God’s people is to put the Kingdom on display by modeling emotional wholeness, social justice, and environmental concern.To be clear, those who incorporate social elements into the gospel do not necessarily deny that personal sin has condemned individuals. Nor do they necessarily deny that the gospel includes the element of personal redemption through the propitiatory death of Jesus. What they do, however, is to place their emphasis upon the psychological, social, or ecological dimensions of the gospel. The effect of this shift is to diminish the importance of personal sin and personal redemption. Some of the more extreme advocates of the both/and gospel display a profound reluctance to engage in personal evangelism, substituting social engagement for direct proclamation.

And Lupton:

The people of the kingdom have a unique mandate to care for the needs of the vulnerable and the voiceless. Our scriptures are quite clear about this. It has been from antiquity both our birthright and our responsibility. We cannot rightly take joy in the rebirth of the city if no provision is being made to include the poor as co-participants. It will not be enough to offer food baskets at Christmas to migrating masses of needy people who are being driven by market forces away from the vital services of the city. Nor will our well-intentioned programs and ministries suffice for those being scattered to unwelcoming edge cities. We must be more intelligent than this. More strategic.

While we remain committed to fulfilling the Great Commission, there is a prior command the followers of Christ are called to – the Great Command. Loving God and its inseparable companion – loving neighbor – form the bedrock of our faith. All the Law and Prophets are built upon this foundation. The prophet Micah captured its essence: “He has told you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you, that you do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Bauder hyper-focuses on I Cor 15 as the single real Gospel Text, but Lupton sees the Gospel in the Old Testament and New, in Christ’s words and Paul’s. Bauder is talking about “them,” while Lupton is talking about “us.” Bauder thinks he’s convincing his opponents to join him, but Lupton is inspiring us all to get to work.

What’s weird is that after reading Bauder’s article, I feel tired and sad. After reading Lupton’s, I feel like I’ve caught a glimpse of Jesus. And He’s not (just) a cool dude with a soul patch, playing a mandolin in a coffee house with the urban gentry. Nor is He (necessarily) carrying a large study Bible while wearing a navy suit and red power tie at a denominational convention. No, I see Jesus as actually in my little lower-middle-class McSuburb with its growing ethnically diverse population, wearing cargo shorts and mock Crocs while pushing a kindergartner on his training-wheeled bike. I see Him here.

On our way out of fundamentalism, a dear friend was (patiently) listening to my blatherings. I said, “But so-n-so said that just because you’re dispensationalist in your eschatology doesn’t mean you have to be dispensationalist in your soteriology.” She, an M.Div. from Westminster, responded with, “Of course it does! It’s all the same hermeneutic. And it’s all the same Story. The way God saves you is the way God saves the world!”

Huh. I had never heard it that way before. But now every time I pick up the Bible and read anything — even the Old Testament prophets who are often so dismissed in fundamentalism (or reserved for those elite few who can count to 2.5 x 365.25) — I see that same single Story. I see Jesus.

Where has He been?

During a series on Christ’s parables, we hit eschatology twice. You know eschatology — that big bugaboo that really defines conservative Evangelicalism in the 20th century.

I was born and bred a dispensationalist. Those charts lined the Sunday School classrooms. We had all the  MacArthur and Chafer books at home. Ryrie was a regular author among my college texts. We BJU grads joke that former executive VP Bob Wood’s usual (but still fictional) 3-point outline was:

1. Turn or Burn
2. Singe or Cringe
3. Shake or Bake

Prophecy sermons were a sometimes-favorite (depending on which current event was worrisome). Van Impe lived up the road from us. At age six, I laid awake all night panicking that the USSR was going to attack the US because our Whirly-Bird teacher claimed it would happen any day. A Thief in the Night terrorized my dear brother too.

I threw away my dispensationalism, however, in a truck stop trash can somewhere between here and Missouri two years ago. We had been reading LaHaye’s Left Behind series in the car. This is our cheap version of audio books — I read books out loud to Grant while he drives.

The Left Behind books were some of our favorites. Not because we thought of them as terrific literature (I always joked that they are about in the same intellectual strata as The Munsters), but because I did a goooood Antichrist impression. My Carpathia voice was da bomb!

Really. The books are dumb. Really, really dumb. The female characters are all two-dimensional, all the “good guy” conservative Evangelicals are rich and tech-savvy Hummer-owners (puhleeeze!), and every ethnic stereotype gets exploited. Yawn!

But the end infuriated me. Christ has returned. He’s standing right there fellowshipping with the Tribulation Saints. He’s right there in front of them. And what does LaHaye have the characters do? They whisper to each other and say, “I wonder what he’s going to do next?” and they scurry off to their commentaries to find out.

I. am. not. kidding.

It was a light-bulb moment for me. The Word Himself is completely present in the flesh, and the protagonists want to know his next move? They run off to the 10th generation copy (a commentary) to find out?! What?

It all hit me. Dispensationalism is more about knowing the future before anyone else does. The rune-casting within the hyper-literal hermeneutic makes the few who can figure out the mystery significant. No preacher gets voted off in Dispensationalist Survivor! Knowing-it-all is the highest virtue. That’s why LaHaye’s fictional ending makes sense within the dispie ethic: Sure, sure — we’re relieved the battle is over, Jesus. Thanks bunches! But we just want to have a leg-up on these Sign-of-the-Beast-wearing bullies you used to pounce on us. Give us a minute here while we look up your return in Walvoord’s index. Let’s see, let’s see . . .  page 34. I wonder what 7 + 3.5 + 365 + 10.5 + pi equals? . . . Rayford, get the Strong’s, would ya? . . .  Where’d I put my Scofield?”

Finally seeing it as more about knowing than loving, more for the few than the many, more about the being right than being kind, more about the charts than the Sermon on the Mount, more about men than Jesus, I literally chucked the last novel in the can along with Gavin’s stinky diaper. I was done.

But I still get a sick lump in the pit of my gut when the usual dispie Texts come up in a sermon series. I feel the threat coming — the one that kept me up all night after Whirly-Birds. That I’m not ready, that I’m not good enough, that I’m going to be Left Behind. “I wish we’d all been ready. . . .”

But that’s not what he said. That sermon about usual end-times Parable of the Ten Virgins ended this way:

What keeps this from being a Turn-or-Burn message? Because that’s the way this would normally be preached. . . . I am not saying, “Because Jesus is coming back, go get right.” You know, it’s not a threat. That’s how it’s usually preached. “Jesus is coming back, and so you’d better get right. Jesus is coming back, and so you’d better shape up.  Jesus is coming back, so you’d better. . . .” It’s not a threat. Jesus’s return is not a threat. It’s a blessing! It’s something that we should take and say, “Oh God, hasten the day! Hasten the day!! When our faith should be made sight and our prayers should be made praise. Lord, hasten that day!” It’s not a Turn-or-Burn message because I’m not saying, “Go get cleaned up.” I’m not saying, “Go buy oil.” I’m saying, “Go find Christ. Go find Christ! Go find the Groom. Go find a relationship with the Groom.” So that whenever He returns, you can say, “I was waiting. I was waiting for you!”

What? The Ending doesn’t make me want to crawl under a rock? You’re not going to try to guilt me into a particular culturally safe kind of behavior?

Fundamentalism (i.e. dispensationalism. I still don’t see much difference) really gets it all backwards. They make love a duty instead of a joy. They make a blessing into a threat. They make Christ’s finest sermon irrelevant for the Church Age. They turn a relationship into a religion.

A blessing and a comfort! Wow!! It really is the Good News!

Let him begin by treating patriotism . . . as part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the “cause,” in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce. . . . Once you have made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.

Screwtape on How to Ruin a Believer’s Faith in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters

I just finished David Kuo’s book Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. In essence, he writes to remind himself and fellow Christians that Faith can never be a means to a political ends. He wants to foil Screwtape’s plan.

Several things struck me. I did notice his keswidispicostalistic soteriology here and there, but that’s not really a big surprise. His story of identifying with an ideology, being dazzled by its powerful sparkle, ignoring obvious ethical dilemmas in favor of power, enduring his own surprising and life-changing personal crisis, and chucking it all (when termination was inevitable anyway) was so familiar. I saw myself in his words.

He worked for the Christian Right in the 1990s-2000s — for Bill Bennett, Ralph Reed, and John Ashcroft. He wrote speeches and created talking points. Eventually, he became a big part of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.”

As a speech writer for the Christian Right and the Republicans, he admits that he propagated flat-out lies about Bill and Hillary Clinton, and he determined to apologize to them personally for that slander. He really didn’t want to, but he knew he should. Then God dropped the opportunity into his lap. It was awkward, halting, and impromptu. Completely uncomfortable. Read:

His apology didn’t make huge, long-lasting political waves. It was just a brief, forgettable sound bite the next day. There were no law suits afterward. But that’s not why Kuo did it. He apologized because it was right, because he was being true to his Faith, and because it was a reminder to him and to those around him about who God is and how much we need Him.

It’s also a way to infuriate Screwtape.

Kuo brings up Bob Jones University several times. My heart sinks every time he does. He describes it as the “ultrafundamentalist” place where “compassionate conservatism” died — where George W. Bush’s catering to the microcultural elements of the Christian Right was more klutzy than “stealthy.” Kuo explains W.’s election strategy: convince Evangelicals that making him President was the only way to advance their social conservatism. “He was born again. He loved Jesus. He hated abortion and loved the family.” But the only way to actually get him into office is by downplaying that religious conservatism.

In other words, W. said to the theo-cons, “Hey, I’m just like you, but I have to play the ‘moderate’ game so that I can get you what you want when I’m in office.” And, according to Kuo, the nation saw that strategy naked and bald at Bob Jones University in February 2000.

It’s chilling to see that event through the eyes of a fellow believer but a BJU-outsider.

The effort at Please-Reconcile.org is coming upon its first milestone. This Wednesday they are sending the letter to the BJU Board and Administration with 400+ signatures of BJU alumni and friends and neighbors imploring the current administration to reconcile their past racist policies. Read the list of signees and their comments. These people are earnest, careful, and prayerful. None of us would be signing if we didn’t care deeply about Bob Jones University’s ministry and its people.

I’ve read the documents at Please-Reconcile.org, and I am stunned and grieved. I’ve said it before — I really had no clue, but that is exactly the problem. Again, I’m sorry.

So if you’ve graduated from, worked for, attended, or been taught by anything Bob Jones University, if you know someone from BJU or if you’ve purchased a book from their Press, if you have ever read about, written about, or heard about that place, if you’ve ever choked on institutional racism, if you’ve ever had to clarify misconceptions about Christ because of BJU’s interracial dating ban, please prayerfully consider signing the letter.

Many theo-cons are working to foreground racial reconciliation as a conservative value in order to heal a very broken GOP. As tempting as it is to emphasize this pragmatic and political reason for reconciling the sin of racism, I can’t forget David Kuo and C. S. Lewis’s admonition. It’s not about the politics. It’s about reminding ourselves that we are each full of sin and that God is faithful in spite of us.

We confess. God takes care of the rest.

If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.

I John 1:8-10

So the draft dodger and the runaway met up in Detroit. Because Wladyslava was still married to that old man in Poland, she couldn’t officially marry Konstanty. So they had a common-law marriage. Today we’d call it “shacking up.”

Their first child was Henry Leonard born in 1913. Now my grandparents were only nominal Catholics at the time. Being Polish meant by definition that you were Roman Catholic. And they weren’t even legally married, of course, and certainly not married in the Church’s eyes. So my Uncle Hank was not baptized either.

And when my Uncle Hank was only five, he died in the Flu Epidemic of 1918. I know my grandparents were devastated. Their son, their hope for a good life in the New World, was gone. And I have to imagine that they blamed themselves for the tragedy. My heart still aches when I think about all that — especially how my Grandma must have felt.

They needed hope. They needed to know that they’d see my Uncle Hank again. So they left the Roman Catholic Church officially and became “Bible Students” of Charles Taze Russell because that sect offered hope of the resurrection that the Roman Catholic Church didn’t.

Russell’s ideas eventually developed into what Joseph “Judge” Rutherford, his successor, would call “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Russell is not orthodox. At all. He didn’t believe in Hell, the Trinity, or Christ’s deity. His ideas came out of Adventism and Christadelphianism. He thought World War I was the beginning of Armageddon. He was one of the first “Christian Zionists.” He supposedly predicted global warming.

If you google “Bible Students” and Russell, you find a significant proportion of his followers still in Eastern Europe most likely due to the Layman’s Home Missionary Movement. My dad remembers singing out of a Polish Russellite hymnal, probably “Songs to Jehovah’s Praise.”

Studying Russell’s ideas have been humbling to me. So much of it sounds . . . familiar. Look at his chart concerning the “times” of human history:

::ahem:: Boy — does that look familiar? I’ve grown up on a chart like that. R. Laurence Moore describes JWs’ evangelism as not so much trying to be effective but to be self-gratifying. They go door-to-door not to win souls but to tick off enough people proving to themselves how right they are. They are separatists through and through. They read the Bible poorly but avidly. They refuse to pledge allegiance, celebrate birthdays or Christmas, take blood transfusions, or join the military.

And like dispensationalists, Russellites were trying to control history. In the anxiety of World War I, they felt like history was spinning out of their reach. Knowing the future (via a set of cryptic charts and obscure metaphors) and that they ended up the “winners” was comforting.

When Mom had her valve replacement and triple bypass last Spring and Dad stayed with us during her recovery, he and I talked about all this. How familiar it all sounded. Dad said flat-out, however, despite Russell’s ideas, that his mom, “confessed the Lord Jesus as her Savior.”

I hope I see her in Heaven. If God alone saves, then I believe it’s possible. But it’s striking to me how much bad religion can get in the way of someone seeing Christ. God can still use us, I know. He can still speak and move in spite of us.