Rationality vs. "Rapture"

Rationality vs. "Rapture"

Douglas Olds, April 18, 2013

[link:] 'Rapture Politics' Harnesses Rightwing to Doomsday Horsemen

Christians who desire peace and wholeness need to name the doctrine of "rapture" (where the parousia of Christ precedes the end time tribulation for the non-faithful) for what it seems to me: a misinterpretation  of scripture that has been co-opted by dualist reporting. As the media and the establishment ridicule followers of Jesus' message of love of neighbor, they simultaneously enlist Christians into support for nuclear hawks in the Middle East and elsewhere.  

"Rapture" is a speculative doctrine of certain "dispensationalists" novelists that Christians will in the final battle be "caught up" in the clouds to meet Jesus, a moment that escapes the tribulation of the End Times and its violence and temptations.  "Rapture" is both escapist and utopian: it allows Christians to escape responsibility for being peacemakers and for protecting life on earth because they bear no consequence for how and when the world takes a turn toward catastrophe. It's as if the so-called righteous act out their irresponsibility for "the total depravity of everybody else."

Yet even (especially) Christians have the responsibility to be intelligent, to love God with all our mind[i], to test the "doctrines"of leaders (1 Jn 4) for their fruit of peacefulness, patience, compassion, and gentleness (Gal 5.22-3; Col 3.12-3).  A doctrine that tempts Armageddon does not fulfill this test.

We Mainstream Christians who think should demand that establishment reporters stop this calumny against Christianity--that so called "rapturist politics" is either mainstream or that the mainstream supports a message that hastens, bluffs, or tempts death.

The media and the whole of rational Christianity needs to reject this kind of magical thinking for the sake of life and the planet. 

 "Rapture" is not a Biblical word nor is it a promise to Christians that they will escape the tribulations of death or the end times. In fact, Jesus in the Gospels (Lu 21; Mk 13; Mt 24) repeatedly makes plain that Christians may suffer most.  "Rapture" as a doctrine that suggests that Christians are trying to bring on THE END is a scandal to those whom we must evangelize with the message that Jesus has overcome death for all of his followers.  Not in this life, but in the resurrected life. In this life, we are to work for PEACE and LIFE.  1 Thess 4 does not absolve us from that work and that commitment.

As I wrote in an earlier blog post:

Jesus Christ, the Word of God, did not see himself as equal with God and thus was objectively humble... Jesus denied knowledge of objective truth in matters of "times and places" (Acts 1.7, Mt. 24.36), yet that does not stop some of His Armageddon-anticipating followers from claiming (or responding to) this as predictive knowledge.  Are the repeated frustrations of expected dates of Armageddon in fundamentalist circles enough to demonstrate the limitations of  "objective truth" claims in religion?  It is in my and many others' estimation.  These predictions are a scandal to outsiders to whom we must announce the message of God's plan of overcoming death.  Jesus warns us against these! Why is it still going on?  Why do we try to hasten the end by promoting forces seeming to bring on Armageddon?  That is not my meaning when I say, Come Lord Jesus.

  

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[i] Mk 12.30: ὅλης τῆς διανοίας  all discriminating reason.  Jesus adds loving God with all our dianoia to the Shema of Deuteronomy 6.4, to love God with all your heart, soul, and might.  This is a condition of the New Testament Age: to be rational and discriminating in the Love of God, because there is the human temptation of the flesh to follow all kinds of leaders that promise to think for us, to be self-satisfied and irrational.