Don't Know Much About History

Last Saturday night, Lina and I went to the COWIHN "Church of What Is Happening Now." Reader alert...this is a longer post. I have a lot to say. Bail now if you can't stomach it. I use the word stomach quite intentionally which will be clear why in the end.

First, as musical intro, watch the Sam Cooke's song vid. It will get you in the spirit of things. Ignorance as bliss type of deal, as long as you are in love.

COWIHN is my euphemistic name for "the" Church in Lancaster County where the sheep herd who are looking for greener pastures go to graze en masse. Over the years, the "IT" church has changed and many of the same people who were there are now here.

Lina and I too are searching for a better church fit. She is a 21st cosmopolitan corporate woman of Asian descent who is still quite traditional. Yet she does not connect with the mommy set whose perspective of the world is defined as a frame by their family. It is good in many ways that moms are internally-minded but it can leave other women who don't fit that parameter feeling isolated and alone. Rather than working outsiders in, the working woman, the message--often unspoken--is "buzz-off."

Add to that some good old fashioned clueless patriarchy "when men were men" 1960's vibe, and that combination here in Lancaster County can leave those who are not of the ultra-traditional roles feel like social lepers.

Conservative Churches are bringing up the rear so to speak culturally in a trillion ways, and not all of the resistive reaction is healthy and good. Instead, it is maintaining a traditional status quo that cannot be defended biblically. Such digging in is more indicative that we want our world to be neat, clean, and all sweet. I think Lina was hoping that the "IT" church would be more in sync with her modern woman wavelength.

And in some ways it is....the building and space looks like a megaplex movie theater, with the lights, camera, action deal. The folksy and friendly pastor is dressed somewhat grunge-like with the hipster skinny blue jeans and long sleeve shirt not tucked in. The music rivals quality-wise "secular" bands...the ensemble started out with REM's "It's The End of the World As We Know It" and they nailed it. I know the lead musician and he is a good guy and a fantastically talented artist.

Yet, once we get beyond the style of the service, this church is not much different than 99% of the evangelical subculture...it just does it better than almost anyone else and hits all the right buttons on cue. The current series is along the lines of trying to make sense of God's mission in a broken world. A very relevant topic.

The pastor essentially started out with some thoughts about the state of the world then went back to the Book of Revelation and tried to connect the two eons. I say eons because many in the evangelical movement pretty much rubber-stamp the prevailing interpretation that the Book of Revelation is primarily and exclusively about the future. The pastor did so too. Even without looking, I deduced that he must have gone to school at Dallas Theological Seminary, the leading purveyor of what is called in eschatology "Premilennial Dispensationalism." His Texan folksy accent was a clue but once he started to speak, I tracked the thinking to the strain almost immediately.

This "theology of end times" came to the forefront in the early 1970's and has maintained first mover advantage because it has given the impression quite convincingly that Revelation is relevant today in the sense that it speaks almost entirely of things to come. However, most Christians are quite blithely unaware that the interpretation of Revelation hardly fits so neatly into a box. There are four orthodox views of the Book of Revelation and they all have varying degrees of strengths and weaknesses. It is intellectually dishonest for any fair minded-pastor who is supposedly educated theologically to speak as if there is only one and ignore the other three.

I am an educated layman with some theological acumen. Basically, I buy books and read. I do have some research skills yet I don't rest on my Ph.D. to defend my positions. That is an appeal to authority which is logically suspect. I just read the Bible and the Commentaries from the viewpoint based on the logic of Occam's Razor. Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor)^[1] often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae, translating to law of parsimony, law of economy or law of succinctness, is a principle that generally recommends, when faced with competing hypotheses that are equal in other respects, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions (Wikipedia).

Futurist interpretations of the Bible typically avoid the fairly straightforward conclusion that the Book of Revelation, the teachings of Jesus about things that "must happen in this generation"--including the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the destruction of the city by the Roman Army in A.D. 70, were the literal fulfillment of much of the prophesy in Revelation and the other predictive teachings of Jesus and the apostles. That needs to be understood as a given first before we launch into fantastic speculations about what is to come ahead. Or, at least a critic of this view needs to assent that it is plausible.

There very well could be historical parallels to the Book of Revelation that may exist as a paradigm scheme for the future, yet we had better be mighty cautious about such conclusions without solid empirical evidence. Harold Camping is not the only man in Christendom who has done much harm by his unwise pronouncements about the future. He is just an extreme version of what happens when a person takes leave of his wits and begins to postulate in the air, wrenching Scripture from its context, and creating a supposed juggernaut of infallibility.

So, why is this relevant in the context of this post? Here is why. The Church has abandoned both its prophetic role of Truth-speakers and graceful mercy givers in a broken world because we have no faith that any earthly and subsequently eternal good will come from it. The best that we can hope for is to get those who are shipwrecked by sin into a lifeboat and shiver wet and cold until Jesus bails us out in a Rapture Copter. As far as the healing of the nations, the restoration of institutions such as in education, politics, financial systems, and so on, the mantra is "Don't Bother." Just love Jesus, be willfully uninformed, and be a useful idiot for the Republican Party and its benefactors. I know that this may sound harsh, but I really have to say it straight in order to at least state what is at stake. The role of 21st century women in the Church? Not an issue! Racism...Who Cares! Corporate malfeasance? What's that? Potluck Dinner Saturday Night! I am there! And, I will bring my fave cookies with sprinkles!

Christians cry a lot that we are not invited to the table of civil society where our views are not allowed to be expressed without some Leftist attorney from the ACLU taking our meal ticket and tearing it in half at the door and barring our entrance to the dinner. But we have to be honest, we have also dis-invited ourselves from the meal because we would rather be catered to and served rehashed leftovers at a separate spiritual retreat center (just think about what the word retreat conveys as an approach to culture-making) because we are too damn lazy too cook, serve the meal, do the dishes, and clean up the kitchen, in the service of a hungry world. To be servants rather than those served, feeders rather than those fed, givers rather than takers.