Left Behind? - Dr. John Lyden
December 2, 2004
Matthew 24:36-44
Dr. John Lyden
Left Behind?
Ask any of my students in History of Christianity this term, and they will tell you, I love heresy. Let me clarify that: I don’t mean that I love heresies themselves, but I love to talk about heresy. And heaven help the student that doesn’t know the difference between Ebionitism and Arianism or Monophysitism and Docetism, come test time. I suppose it’s that I think it’s important to know what views the church rejected, in order to know what Christian doctrine really teaches. Certainly, one could argue that its not very politically correct to be labeling views as heresies today, in that we are to be non-judgmental and tolerant and accepting of all views, whatever they may be…but I would argue that we still need standards for the truth, and there will always be a relevance in the notion of heresy, in the necessity to judge certain things as in contradiction with Christian faith, due to their incoherence with the essential Christian message as rendered in the Bible and as interpreted in Church tradition. Certainly, we can argue about what is heretical, and I don’t promote persecuting heretics, but we can’t entirely dismiss the concept as an antique from the past.
With this in mind, I would like to attack a new heresy that is gaining many converts these days, and you might be surprised that this can be viewed as a heresy: it’s the belief in the rapture, a belief at the very center of the Left Behind books, which have sold millions of copies and which have greatly influenced the views of Christians and non-Christians alike, about the nature of the last judgment and the events leading up to it. In this view, which might seem to be supported by passages such as the Gospel reading for this week, God will remove the faithful from the horrible events that precede the second coming by “rapturing” them out of the world, and they will simply disappear, as the bumper sticker puts it: “in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.” (or unwomaned, presumably, in some cases.) In the Left Behind books, all the events narrated take place after this rapture, so that those left behind need to decide whose side they are on, Christ’s, or the Anti-Christ. This culminates in the most recent book in a final battle in which Christ himself appears and destroys the wicked who oppose him in particularly spectacular ways.
So what’s so heretical about that? Well, Barbara Rossing, a biblical scholar and professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, has asserted in her recent book “The Rapture Exposed: the Message of Hope and the Book of Revelation” that the whole idea of the rapture is a distortion of the Gospel and the biblical witness to it. The idea of the rapture itself, first of all, is based on a particular reading of very few biblical passages, and first appeared as a theological conception fairly recently, in the works of John Darby, who in the 19th century developed a notion of seven dispensations throughout history, leading to a series of events that will occur before the final judgment at the end of time. The first of these final events is the rapture. This dispensationalist view, as it is called, had very few followers for quite some time, being on the fringe even of conservative evangelicalism, and rejected by most churches. It is especially questionable in its assumption that there are stages to the second coming, so that people are judged at different times; inviting the idea that some get to bail out early and they abandon the rest to struggle on their own. A good Christian view? Most did not think so, when it appeared. Now, however, it seems happily accepted by many Christians, even by members of churches who previously would have rejected this view as a heresy. Why? It may simply be due to marketing. The Left Behind books have sold so well that they have proven to be the most effective way of spreading a questionable theological idea beyond the fringes of its originally limited audience to many people who would never have considered it otherwise.
This invites certain questions. Should Christians accept this view? Is it, in fact, the view of the Bible? Rossing writes about it: “In place of healing, the rapture proclaims escape. In place of Jesus’ blessing of peacemakers, the rapture voyeuristically glorifies violence and war. In place of Revelation’s vision of the Lamb’s vulnerable self-giving love, the rapture celebrates the lion-like wrath of the Lamb. This theology is not biblical.” There is less interest in saving the world than in getting the heck out of this God-forsaken place, abandoning those left behind to their own devices, and ultimate wrathful destruction by a God who could not care less. Is this the God who dies on the cross for us? Is this the one who said, love your enemies, and turn the other cheek? Or is it a construction of a Christian imagination gone wild with what Friedrich Nietzsche called ressentiment, a desire to strike back at others out of a bitter sense of resentment and hatred for the non-Christian, the non-westerner, even the non-American? If you are not with us, you are against us? Maybe this is the real appeal of this view, a mean-spirited desire to exclude, reject, destroy, and leave behind those not deemed worthy of Christian consideration.
I have to agree with Rossing in her judgment on this, and by the way, if you think this is just something those liberal ELCA Lutherans think, I’ll point out that the considerably more conservative Missouri Synod Lutherans have made the same judgment on this theology of rapture, that it is unbiblical, and not in line with the biblical notion of a forgiving God of grace. Roman Catholics like David Currie and Paul Thigpen have also written books denouncing it as unbiblical. In today’s Gospel reading, the point is to be ready for the coming of Jesus, whether the second coming or the first that we will celebrate in a few short weeks. Consider how we should live if Jesus were to come back tomorrow. Are we to wish that we were raptured away, to avoid responsibility for others, for poverty, war, oppression, crime, hunger, the environment? Or are we to go more willingly into that world to save it? What does God do? We already know that story. For God so loved the world that He sent Hs only Son into it, to die for it. In the theology of Left Behind, as Rossing paraphrases it, this has been amended to, for God so loved the world, he gave it World War III. Not so, my friends. God does not like war. God does not like vengeance. God always forgives. And when the Bible seems to suggest otherwise in the passages about judgment and the need to decide for Jesus, look more closely at the context and you will see what that decision for Jesus means-it means to act like a Christian, to love unconditionally, to never use violence, and to never abandon the rest of the sinners or “leave them behind.” It certainly does not mean to run around shooting the supposed servants of the evil one, as characters in the Left Behind novels do, supposedly as good Christians. This is a theology of violence and revenge, and it is not Christian. It is, instead, a Christian heresy.
You may of course disagree with me. And I will not burn you at the stake, as I do not believe in burning heretics. But we need to be able to suggest that there are criteria for Christian doctrine, as conservatives usually do, but liberals (like myself) often feel they are put in a position where we must “accept” everything. Well, you can’t accept everything, and you shouldn’t. You need to consider what best represents the faith of the tradition and the faith you have, a faith that is faithful to Jesus and his message, and that does not serve a narrow and oppressive political agenda. If Jesus is coming soon, I am sure he would expect us to do that. Come to think of it, he is coming soon. Merry Christmas, a few weeks early.
Matthew 24:36-44
Dr. John Lyden
Left Behind?
Ask any of my students in History of Christianity this term, and they will tell you, I love heresy. Let me clarify that: I don’t mean that I love heresies themselves, but I love to talk about heresy. And heaven help the student that doesn’t know the difference between Ebionitism and Arianism or Monophysitism and Docetism, come test time. I suppose it’s that I think it’s important to know what views the church rejected, in order to know what Christian doctrine really teaches. Certainly, one could argue that its not very politically correct to be labeling views as heresies today, in that we are to be non-judgmental and tolerant and accepting of all views, whatever they may be…but I would argue that we still need standards for the truth, and there will always be a relevance in the notion of heresy, in the necessity to judge certain things as in contradiction with Christian faith, due to their incoherence with the essential Christian message as rendered in the Bible and as interpreted in Church tradition. Certainly, we can argue about what is heretical, and I don’t promote persecuting heretics, but we can’t entirely dismiss the concept as an antique from the past.
With this in mind, I would like to attack a new heresy that is gaining many converts these days, and you might be surprised that this can be viewed as a heresy: it’s the belief in the rapture, a belief at the very center of the Left Behind books, which have sold millions of copies and which have greatly influenced the views of Christians and non-Christians alike, about the nature of the last judgment and the events leading up to it. In this view, which might seem to be supported by passages such as the Gospel reading for this week, God will remove the faithful from the horrible events that precede the second coming by “rapturing” them out of the world, and they will simply disappear, as the bumper sticker puts it: “in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.” (or unwomaned, presumably, in some cases.) In the Left Behind books, all the events narrated take place after this rapture, so that those left behind need to decide whose side they are on, Christ’s, or the Anti-Christ. This culminates in the most recent book in a final battle in which Christ himself appears and destroys the wicked who oppose him in particularly spectacular ways.
So what’s so heretical about that? Well, Barbara Rossing, a biblical scholar and professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, has asserted in her recent book “The Rapture Exposed: the Message of Hope and the Book of Revelation” that the whole idea of the rapture is a distortion of the Gospel and the biblical witness to it. The idea of the rapture itself, first of all, is based on a particular reading of very few biblical passages, and first appeared as a theological conception fairly recently, in the works of John Darby, who in the 19th century developed a notion of seven dispensations throughout history, leading to a series of events that will occur before the final judgment at the end of time. The first of these final events is the rapture. This dispensationalist view, as it is called, had very few followers for quite some time, being on the fringe even of conservative evangelicalism, and rejected by most churches. It is especially questionable in its assumption that there are stages to the second coming, so that people are judged at different times; inviting the idea that some get to bail out early and they abandon the rest to struggle on their own. A good Christian view? Most did not think so, when it appeared. Now, however, it seems happily accepted by many Christians, even by members of churches who previously would have rejected this view as a heresy. Why? It may simply be due to marketing. The Left Behind books have sold so well that they have proven to be the most effective way of spreading a questionable theological idea beyond the fringes of its originally limited audience to many people who would never have considered it otherwise.
This invites certain questions. Should Christians accept this view? Is it, in fact, the view of the Bible? Rossing writes about it: “In place of healing, the rapture proclaims escape. In place of Jesus’ blessing of peacemakers, the rapture voyeuristically glorifies violence and war. In place of Revelation’s vision of the Lamb’s vulnerable self-giving love, the rapture celebrates the lion-like wrath of the Lamb. This theology is not biblical.” There is less interest in saving the world than in getting the heck out of this God-forsaken place, abandoning those left behind to their own devices, and ultimate wrathful destruction by a God who could not care less. Is this the God who dies on the cross for us? Is this the one who said, love your enemies, and turn the other cheek? Or is it a construction of a Christian imagination gone wild with what Friedrich Nietzsche called ressentiment, a desire to strike back at others out of a bitter sense of resentment and hatred for the non-Christian, the non-westerner, even the non-American? If you are not with us, you are against us? Maybe this is the real appeal of this view, a mean-spirited desire to exclude, reject, destroy, and leave behind those not deemed worthy of Christian consideration.
I have to agree with Rossing in her judgment on this, and by the way, if you think this is just something those liberal ELCA Lutherans think, I’ll point out that the considerably more conservative Missouri Synod Lutherans have made the same judgment on this theology of rapture, that it is unbiblical, and not in line with the biblical notion of a forgiving God of grace. Roman Catholics like David Currie and Paul Thigpen have also written books denouncing it as unbiblical. In today’s Gospel reading, the point is to be ready for the coming of Jesus, whether the second coming or the first that we will celebrate in a few short weeks. Consider how we should live if Jesus were to come back tomorrow. Are we to wish that we were raptured away, to avoid responsibility for others, for poverty, war, oppression, crime, hunger, the environment? Or are we to go more willingly into that world to save it? What does God do? We already know that story. For God so loved the world that He sent Hs only Son into it, to die for it. In the theology of Left Behind, as Rossing paraphrases it, this has been amended to, for God so loved the world, he gave it World War III. Not so, my friends. God does not like war. God does not like vengeance. God always forgives. And when the Bible seems to suggest otherwise in the passages about judgment and the need to decide for Jesus, look more closely at the context and you will see what that decision for Jesus means-it means to act like a Christian, to love unconditionally, to never use violence, and to never abandon the rest of the sinners or “leave them behind.” It certainly does not mean to run around shooting the supposed servants of the evil one, as characters in the Left Behind novels do, supposedly as good Christians. This is a theology of violence and revenge, and it is not Christian. It is, instead, a Christian heresy.
You may of course disagree with me. And I will not burn you at the stake, as I do not believe in burning heretics. But we need to be able to suggest that there are criteria for Christian doctrine, as conservatives usually do, but liberals (like myself) often feel they are put in a position where we must “accept” everything. Well, you can’t accept everything, and you shouldn’t. You need to consider what best represents the faith of the tradition and the faith you have, a faith that is faithful to Jesus and his message, and that does not serve a narrow and oppressive political agenda. If Jesus is coming soon, I am sure he would expect us to do that. Come to think of it, he is coming soon. Merry Christmas, a few weeks early.