The End Of The World As We Know It...!

Well, as you probably all know by now, the rapture is apparently scheduled to happen tomorrow, followed by the end of the world on October 21st!

Harold Camping has apparently worked out the dates through some kind of numerical analysis of Biblical history which, frankly, I can't be bothered to properly delve into! It seems to be based on:

1. Assigning precise dates to ancient Biblical events - which is frankly impossible as the Bible records nothing like enough information to come to such conclusions.
2. Some extremely dodgy mis-interpretation of certain Bible passages to come up with some other numbers that can then be applied according to Camping's unique logic to come up with tomorrow as the day of the rapture!

First of all, in defence of evangelical Christians everywhere, I'd like to start by saying that I'm pretty certain that only an extremely small percentage of us actually believe Camping's predictions (I don't personally know of anyone who does).  It's certainly attracting a lot of publicity though!

The standard position among evangelicals is that it is and always will be impossible to predict such dates.  When talking about His predicted return, Jesus himself famously said (as recorded in Matthew's gospel),  "about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father".  There are also various other passages in the New Testament which talk about Jesus coming back when we don't expect it, so we should always be watchful, etc.

As can partly be seen from this though, it is part of standard Christian doctrine that the world as we know it will end at some point, Jesus will return and somehow set everything to rights and there will be some kind of final judgement.  Much of the Biblical language used to describe these things seems very figurative and I personally find it very hard to imagine how any of it might really happen.  I find it less hard to believe that it will happen somehow though - because I've already been convinced of the miracle of Jesus' coming the first time around and my whole life has been a series of encounters (along with countless other believers) with Him and the amazing God who sent Him.

On the subject of the rapture specifically - i.e. the idea that on some specific date all Christians will be mysteriously transported from the earth - this is a belief that does have widespread support among evangelicals - particularly in America - but seems to me to also be based on some rather dodgy interpretations of the Bible.  One of the 2 passages usually cited in support of it reads like this:

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.  For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. (Matthew 24 - see the last few verses)

The popular assumption seems to be that the "one taken" will be the Christian, and the poor unbeliever will be left behind to meet their miserable fate.  But the passage above makes a clear comparison with the story of Noah, in which it was the unbelievers who got taken away (but unfortunately not to anywhere nice!).  So whatever else Jesus was getting at with this story, it doesn't seem to have been about Christians getting whisked off to heaven!

The other passage normally quoted is this one:

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thessalonians 4)

This one does look a bit more like the standard vision of the rapture, although frankly it's pretty minimalist.  It's main purpose is not to provide a comprehensive theology of the end times, but to encourage the believers in Thessalonica that their dead Christian friends are going to be alright (see the preceding few verses).  Even if it is intended completely literally though, which is disputed, it says nothing about who gets left behind, whether there's even anyone else there at this point, or what might happen to them if they do.  Neither does it say what happens to those who get "caught up", except that they are destined to be "with the Lord forever".

Accomplished theologian N.T. Wright has recently pointed out that the image of believers being caught up to meet the Lord in the air fits better with the idea of the citizens of a colony going out to meet and escort an emperor who was coming to visit them - the early Christians always believed that Jesus was going to come back to put the world right, not that they were going to be transported off for ever to some other-worldly dimension.

So Biblical evidence for the rapture - in my opinion - is pretty thin. But the New Testament part of the Bible does say that Jesus will come back and that the world as we know it will come to an end and be renewed and/or replaced with something better. What all that might mean exactly though, is not completely clear to me, and is probably a subject for another post...

Pubs, church and music

I suspect it's a little known fact among non-believers, but there are some churches in this country - and have been probably for the last 30 years or so - who don't have their own buildings and instead hold their meetings in pubs.

I suspect this sounds like a strange idea to many non-religious and also perhaps to many over-religious people, but to me it sounds like the perfect combination. Pubs are where people go to hang out and a good pub takes advantage of and helps to foster a sense of community. For many people in today's much less religious society, I think the pub has perhaps replaced the church as the community focal point - but I see no reason why the two can't work together.

Many people seem to feel however, that alcohol and church shouldn't really mix - as if the one is somehow disrespectful to the other (or perhaps vice versa!). While alcohol is certainly frowned on by some more conservative Christian groups, this is usually because such movements have their historical roots in periods of social excess, often involving widespread alcoholism. The Christian faith itself is not intrinsically anti-alcohol - there is even a Psalm in the Bible praising God for "wine that gladdens human hearts"! (Psalm 104:16) - although the Bible is quite strongly against drunkenness (e.g. Proverbs 23:29-35, Ephesians 5:18). Personally, I'm a lover of good beer, but I do try to drink in moderation.  At a recent beer festival, I met a guy wearing a T-shirt which said, "Love God, Love people, Love beer", which I thought was a pretty good summary! (although perhaps open to some misinterpretation!)

Last night I went to a gig at the Brudenell Social Club, just around the corner from where I live. Not strictly a pub perhaps, but certainly very similar. It has a bar in any case, and the atmosphere was very similar to other pub gigs I've been to - although the venue was perhaps a little larger.

I was struck on this occasion - as I often have been on similar occasions in the past - by how spiritual music is and how intensely spiritual an experience a good gig can sometimes be. For me, on a spiritual level, it's the only thing that comes close to a good session spent worshipping God with other believers! As I sometimes have been in the past however, I felt a little flummoxed by this. These people aren't worshipping anything and yet somehow the music is capturing and giving expression to something of their humanity - something of their spirituality - which is enabling those present to be caught up in the shared experience. I wasn't sure where this experience was going but it felt like a corporate reaching out to something - someone? - as yet perhaps unknown or poorly understood by those present. This is another aspect of modern culture - the gig (pub or otherwise) - which seems to me to have replaced the church in many people's lives.

This gig wasn't quite like my normal experience of worship though. In worship there is a similar sense of reaching out, but also - usually, for me at least - a very real sense of connection with the one we're reaching out to. The gig felt more like a very poignant sense of connection with one another, and a deep expression of our shared experience, but for me there was also what felt like a deep sense of melancholy that there was ultimately nowhere else for it to go.

Oh - How He loves us!

OK, I realise I did pick the URL, "thescepticalbeliever" for this blog, but there are some things I just can't afford too much scepticism over! :-)

I just love this song - not so much for the music as for the lyrics and the passion that lie behind them. This song sums up for me, passionately and beautifully, what the God I worship is all about:

He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane
I am a tree
Bending beneath
The weight of his wind and mercy
When all of a sudden
I am unaware of these
Afflictions eclipsed by glory
And I realize how beautiful you are
And how great your affections are for me

Oh how he loves us so
Oh how he loves us
How he loves us so

Yea He loves us
Oh how

We are his portion
And he is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes
If grace is an ocean we're all sinking
So heaven meats earth like a sloppy wet kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way
He loves us

Oh how he loves us so
Oh how he loves us
How he loves us so

Yea He loves us
Oh how

One more dead terrorist

I know I'm a few days late with this, but I'm afraid I've only just got around to putting my thoughts on this into type.

As just about everyone in the world knows by now, Osama Bin Laden - Western public enemy number one - was shot and killed by US special forces on Sunday night just gone. But what is an appropriate Christian response to this series of events? The killing of another human being is never a good or pleasant thing, but are there ever circumstances under which it can and should be justified?

I have to say that, had I been in Barack Obama's position, I probably would have given the same order that he did, even had I known (as I assume he probably did) that the death of Bin Laden was the most likely outcome. I'm not sure I can fully justify this morally, but on the basis of my limited knowledge and understanding, it just feels like - however much I might normally object to such an action - that under these circumstances it really was (unfortunately) the only right thing to be done. To what extent the West and America in particular were responsible for creating these circumstances in the first place however, is of course another issue...

Of course, this event doesn't mark the death of Bin Laden's ideology and others will do their best to take up and continue this cause, but hopefully it will significantly weaken his organisation and have a demoralising effect on his more committed supporters. This won't be helped though, by those in the West who have been publicly and jubilantly celebrating his demise, however understandable this reaction might be.

Those involved in the strike on his compound, and in tracking him down in the first place, do of course have good reason to be proud of their success and they have performed an unpleasant - but I think necessary - service to the rest of us. The death of another human being though - made in the image of God - is always a reason for lament, however corrupt and dangerous to others that life may have become.

Glory!

A few days ago, I stayed in Glenridding in the Lake District with my wife for a couple of days and while we were there we climbed Helvellyn, via Striding Edge (shown in the picture below).

The weather was amazing, as it has been over most of the Easter / May Day period and the views - as you can see - were stunning!

As anyone who's ever tried to photograph a landscape like this will know, no photo can ever come close to the total-immersion experience of actually being there. This view in particular just took my breath away. It actually brought me close to tears! So much awesome beauty - just there, for me or anyone to experience. A picture - but not just a picture, an experience - of God's awesome power, love, beauty, abundance and generosity, all rolled into one! And yet just the minutest taste of all that there is out there to behold in this incredible universe - just a tiny fraction of the amazing glory of God!

Resurrection

The Easter story, as most people know, centers around the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth - also known as the Messiah or "Christ".

This story is absolutely central to the Christian faith - to the extent that the apostle Paul famously wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:14 that, "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith"!  Every now and again, another liberal-minded theologian seems to come out of the woodwork to suggest that Jesus' resurrection was not a literal, bodily resurrection, or was meant to be some kind of metaphor, but this is very clearly not what the early disciples and writers of scripture had in mind.

The resurrection - if true - is a mind-boggling event.  Everyone knows that people don't rise from the dead. We know it now, in the 21st century, but everyone knew it just as well back then.  When people die, they stay dead - especially if they've been crucified for several hours, skewered and then sealed up in a tomb!  What they don't do is get up, break the seal, roll the stone away and go for a walk.  It doesn't happen.  It doesn't require modern science or an enlightened 21st century mindset to work this out!  But nevertheless, according to the early disciples, this is exactly what Jesus did do and this remains the foundation stone of what has gone on to be the world's largest religion.  So either it was or has become an extremely convincing fraud, or it is - probably - the most monumentally groundbreaking event the world has ever known!

There have been many arguments - understandably - for and against the resurrection, and I'm not going to try and get into them all now (as if I knew them all anyway!), but to me the most convincing objective evidence seems to be the disciples themselves:

The 12 apostles all lived and travelled with Jesus for a period of more or less 3 years.  They had come to believe that he was the Messiah - the one who had come to save and deliver God's people from oppression.  What they thought this meant at this point is not exactly clear.  To begin with they presumably expected Jesus to lead the Jews to victory against the Romans but as time went on and they listened to Jesus' teaching it should have slowly become clear to them that his Kingdom was not going to work like that.  Whatever they expected though, all their hopes and dreams were invested in this man - who then went and got himself crucified!  They should have been devastated - indeed, according to the gospel accounts they were, at least to begin with - but then things changed rather dramatically.  Instead of just going back to their old lives, finding another saviour to follow, or perhaps even just trying to preserve his legacy - the disciples started preaching that Jesus had been raised from the dead!

Unless they truly believed it, this was a barefaced lie of enormous proportions!  Who was going to believe such nonsense - and what drove them to preach about it so powerfully?  Not only did they preach it though, with vigour and conviction, they were also able to convince thousands of others that it was true.  The New Testament book of Acts explains this unlikely set of events with reference to the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of God himself who empowered the early disciples to preach this message with such power that many seemed to find it irresistible, and to confirm its truth with all kinds of miraculous signs and wonders.  This is not an unreasonable explanation given how explosively the message seemed to spread in the face of all the odds and massive persecution and resistance.

Not only did the disciples devote their lives to preaching this message however, they were also willing to give up their lives for it - and many of them did so, dying gruesome and/or painful deaths as a result of anti-Christian persecution.

Could all of this really have happened off the back of a deluded fantasy, imagined or invented by a bunch of disillusioned followers of a dead Messiah?  Or is it just possible that what they say happened really did happen - that Jesus really was something special, and that he really did rise from the dead?  If it's true, then the rest of what they said is certainly worth listening to, and the rest of the world may turn out to be a very different place as a result!

Do we need religion?

To many non-believers, faith/religion can seem a bit of a crutch - a fantasy to make people feel good or a story that helps the mentally or emotionally weak to cope better with their lives.  Of course it has other benefits - there is the social/communal side of religion and the moral structures which often contribute positively to the fabric of a society.

Do we really need religion though, to provide us with these things, or have we outgrown it now?  Surely we can appreciate the positive legacy that religion has left us (as well as some of the not so positive things!), learn from this and move on?  We don't need these superstitions any more do we?  We've become enlightened - why continue to live in the dark ages?

Well, as a "religious" person myself, I'm obviously not going to see it this way!  I've put that word in quotes though, because to me it's where a lot of the misunderstandings seem to start.

To many "non-religious" people, a "religion" is a system of beliefs and behaviours which its adherents have either found beneficial for some reason, or else have been scared or brainwashed into going along with.  An inclusive secular society tolerates religion - whilst also perhaps regarding it with a certain amount of suspicion - primarily in the interests of personal freedom, but perhaps also because of the personal and social benefits it often provides.

My own experience as a "religious" person though, has been quite different from this.  There is certainly a "systematic" side to the Christian faith.  Beliefs are passed down through sacred texts, discussed and debated by scholars, taught in churches and ideally, lived out in community with each other and in our daily lives.  Much personal and social energy is devoted to the propagation and application of these beliefs and an outsider could be forgiven for thinking the whole thing was some kind of corporate brain-washing exercise, or perhaps some sort of semi-delusional (or even completely delusional) self-help therapy on a grand scale!

All of this misses out on one vital element though, which can only really be seen clearly from the inside, and that is that  religion is all about God.  If there is no God, then the above paragraph pretty much sums up religion in its entirety, but once you encounter God for yourself, the whole picture changes.  Yes the systems and beliefs are there and contain much that is of benefit - developed as they often have been by others who have had similar encounters - but they are not the main point.  The main point is God: the one around whom these belief systems and practices have grown up, sometimes to the extent, unfortunately, that God actually becomes obscured by, rather than revealed through them.

So the real question then is not, "do we need religion?", but, "do we need God?"

Yes, "religion" can have many positive benefits and can also be a major source of oppression and conflict (which is a side of "religion" we could certainly do without) but the real issue is the deeper reality to which it points.

If God is there, and he made our world, then ultimately, life makes no sense without him.  We can enjoy his creation, benefit from everything he has made and even display many Godly qualities (although sadly we often don't) in our lives, characters and our treatment of one another, but if we're emotionally and spiritually disconnected from the one who is at the heart of it all then something fundamental is missing and our lives and societies will always be the poorer for it.