Discernment

How Being Rapture-Minded Made the American Church No Earthly Good

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The Rapture--Comic book styleI started to write a clever post today on eschatology, with a setup piece of fiction about a U-Boat sinking a merchant marine ship in WWII and the merchant marine ship’s  first mate running around deck yelling, “I’m going to be rescued now, I’ll get a new ship, and I’ll be made captain!” but I just ran out of steam. Perhaps I’m weary from the mentality a good chunk of the modern American Church displays on the End Times. (A decent PDF chart of the major eschatological views.)

The prevailing view of The End among most Christians in the United States is dispensationalism. If you’re familiar with the Left Behind series of books, movies, and licensed products, you know dispensationalism. You may also have heard of it through the book The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, which popularized the view. (And let me add, that if you have read LGPE, you’re probably a geezer, just like yours truly.)

The key pieces of dispensationalism: two distinct histories for the Church and Israel, including post-Second Advent of Christ; a removal of the Church from the earth (the Rapture—see 1 Thessalonians 4) before seven years of horrific tribulation; the Second Advent and 1,000-year Reign of Christ; the Revolt of the Nations; and the Final Judgment.

I wrote a paper in college debunking dispensationalism, but of all the things that bothered me about that view, two stick out: its youth and its presumption.

Dispensationalism as a formal Christian eschatology had no real traction until the 19th century, and it was then popularized by one man. A Christian theology that doesn’t appear until the 19th century pretty much insist that everyone who lived before that era was a moron when it came to understanding The End. This includes the folks who built the early Church, because they didn’t hold to a dispensationalist view. Nor did the great Protestant Reformers.

And as I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, when an idea starts with one man and no one else, it’s worth scrutinizing, since individuals have a strong penchant to get things wrong. And if we’re going to rejigger how the entire Church views The End, getting it wrong isn’t an option.

Part of that presumption that sticks most in my craw is the idea that the Church will be removed from the earth before the real craziness starts. Most eschatological views support the idea that the Church will be “caught up” to meet Jesus. When is the big distinction between theories, with How being secondary.

When I read the Bible, it seems clear to me that in all of human history, God never removed those who believe in Him from pain, persecution, and the fallout of a fallen world. Lot endured Sodom. Joseph lived through the famine. Joshua wandered the desert with his people. The righteous Jews went into captivity in Babylon. The faithful disciples and apostles were martyred. Time and again, the faithful went through the mess everyone else did.

Where they differed from the rest was in how they dealt with it. Faithfully. And with longsuffering.

And yet one of the hallmarks of dispensationalism is the idea that all the Christians will be removed from the planet before the real End Times suffering comes. That seems out of character with everything the Bible shows us about patient endurance in hard times.

Some Christians who follow a preterist eschatology will argue the genuine nastiness envisioned in the Bible happened in AD 70 already, and all this talk of future tribulation is a waste of time.

Maybe.

Regardless, dispensationalism is the predominant eschatology in today’s American Church, and it drives much of how we live.

We base our Christian theology on it.

We base our American politics on it.

We base our American foreign policy on it.

We base our American economy on it.

We base our American environmental policy on it.

We base our American lifestyles on it.

We base our Christian practice on it.

And the major mentality we espouse when we hold to a dispensational view of The End is…

It’s all going to burn,

And I’m out of here anyway.

When I look around at today’s Church in America, I see that mindset. There’s a sense that there’s no need to try to fix the Church and its problems because, hey, “It’s all going to burn, and I’m out of here anyway.”

Doesn’t matter what the issue is. Why steward the earth if God’s going to burn it up anyway? Why prepare our churches to help meet the needs of those caught up in persecution and tribulation if Christians won’t be here to do it? Why do anything that requires bold effort and genuine sacrifice if you’re just floating along before Jesus comes by with His Gospel Ship and you sail away together?

There’s a nihilism there. Can you see it? When we resign ourselves to checking out before the actual checkout, we miss whatever it is that happens before then. We forgo the opportunity to be useful.

As long as Christians have mentally checked out of the world as it is today, I think the Church will be ineffective with whatever time we have left. And it may be that instead of the 10 years some may think we have, we’re due for another 1,000 yet. How long doesn’t matter. A Church that has its Rapture bags already packed is just waiting around, killing time.

I don’t see how any of that is Biblical or even remotely Christian, though.

Bait & Switch, Or How People Go to Church for Jesus But Get Something Else

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I read about these churches with satellite campuses, where people watch a pastor by closed-circuit TV. I hear about these churches where the worship teams operate from iPads. I know of these churches where people fret over the brand of stage lights used or the sound systems.

And yet the cry of the human heart remains: “Show me Jesus.”

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
—John 17:3 ESV

All that we do in a church must go back to one reality: Knowing God and His Son. That’s it.

Authenticity has become a buzzword in Christian circles, and it’s almost humorous to witness the highly manipulative means we use to achieve authenticity. Yet the fact remains: We want a deep, abiding intimacy with God free of dross.

Our problem is that we keep erecting barriers to authenticity for the sake of creating that intimacy. I think this is because we no longer know what it takes to become intimate with God.

I’m convinced that many church leaders are out of touch, if what we see of a Sunday meeting is typical. The church meeting revolves around the mistaken assumption that people are self-feeding. I don’t believe that should be assumed. I think a lot of people come to church hoping to achieve intimacy, but church leaders assume they already have it, leaders don’t help usher people into it, and then folks go back home having not found what they came for. Then they are expected to build off a foundation they do not have.

Or worse. The church gives a foundation, but it’s all built on a show, a performance. People came looking for Jesus, but they got Ringling Brothers instead.

Church as entertainmentA life experience:

I know a pastor who is a solid man of God. He genuinely loves people and loves Jesus. One Sunday, he got up and said, “People keep asking me when we’re going to go deeper, but this is as deep as it gets!” And he said it with a broad smile on his face.

A year later, that pastor and his staff were convening a whole-church meeting to repent for the dog and pony show the church had become.

You see, the people in the seats were starving to death. The leadership assumed people were feeding themselves properly, and they weren’t. The people didn’t know where to find spiritual food, and the leaders of the church weren’t giving them any. Those people in the seats knew it too. They knew they were dying. They came to church looking for Jesus and instead got a pale imitation.

While this doesn’t excuse the people in the seats for not being more self-sufficient in their own feeding, the problem remains. Every Sunday in America, people are going to church hoping to encounter Jesus, but they get something else instead.

We Christians like to reserve the following verse for our foes:

Claiming to be wise, they became fools…
—Romans 1:22 ESV

Do we ever consider that in thinking we are wise about human nature and what people need we have instead become fools and substituted a genuine intimacy with the Lord for something else? Something that doesn’t satisfy and never can?

There is nothing so sad as a church that keeps piling on the show while people sit in the seats and wonder why it is they leave after an hour and still feel empty. Five minutes outside the church door, the entertainment’s buzz has worn off, and again the reality of life has rushed in to fill the perpetual void.

Authenticity may be a buzzword, but people are dying for it nonetheless.

What if we stripped everything we do as a church down to its core? What if we pitched the amped worship band? The PowerPoint presentation? The CCTV? The theater-like church building? The one-hour show?

What if we went back to prayer? What if we opened our services for people to stand up and share their needs? What if we ate a real communion meal together and took our time doing so? What if the people in the seats were given free reign to use their gifts to minister to others in the body during our services?

What if we talked about Jesus and not just about ourselves? What if we held Him up in such a way that awe came back to the people because of who He is and not because of the new light bar we got for the stage?

What if?

It’s not just the young believers who are dying for real food. These are tough times. Some of the people hit hardest are those who have been walking with Jesus for the longest time. Satan hates those people, and he will do everything he can to discourage them, because if he takes them down, the young in Christ will go down too.

I can think of nothing sadder than a person who comes to church desiring Jesus but who instead receives trifles.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Time to purge everything that hinders.

The One Reason Kids Leave Church (A Response to Jim Daly’s “Ten Reasons Kids Leave the Church”)

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Over at Focus on the Family, someone is thinking. That usually spells trouble.

Ha! I jest.

Jim Daly wrote a piece about why young people abandon the Faith (“Ten Reasons Kids Leave the Church“). It’s not a bad postmortem. Many of those reasons are decent secondary excuses. They play well.

What doesn’t play well is the real reason why youth leave the Church:

Kids today look at their parents’ Christian faith and see that it changes nothing.

That one’s not in Daly’s list. And probably for a reason. Because it asks those of us of parenting age to change the way we live because of what we say we believe.

Kids are not stupid. Because we live in a therapeutic culture where everyone is aware of the world’s, the nation’s, the state’s, and their own individual problems and the need to address them, kids are constantly aware of talk vs. walk. Constantly.

Every Sunday, kids go to church, hear about the way we’re supposed to live as a Church, and then they go home and witness not one iota of that message being lived. Nada.

Sure, mom and dad may pray and read the Bible, but what part of their life is actually changed by doing so? In what ways are their Christian lives at odds with the World at all? In what ways does anything they believe change their community for the better?

Kids are highly aware of B.S. This generation can spot hypocrisy like no other generation. We live in a cynical culture that is always taking a look at reality versus talk and applying a hammer to it all. Anything that survives a bashing is worthy of a further look. Anything that doesn’t, well…

Sadly, Christianity is not holding up. The reason? Kids don’t see that the beliefs of the generation that came before them make a lick of difference.

Leaving, walking out of churchThey HEAR an ideological distinction espoused, but they don’t see it lived.

They HEAR about the Church as a countercultural community, but they don’t experience it personally.

They HEAR about a mission, but their parents don’t center their lives around that mission.

They HEAR about a relationship with Jesus, but they don’t see what that relationship changes, because it certainly hasn’t changed their parents’ way of life.

So what do kids do? They toss it all. Because it’s irrelevant. Better to join the Sierra Club. At least it ACTS on what it says it believes.

There is no greater disconnect in a church than the wildly committed youth group that does mission projects, helps the poor, evangelizes, and on and on, but then those committed kids see their parents doing none of those things.

The message sent to those young people by their parents: That “Jesus stuff” doesn’t really matter in the end. It’s something you do before you do the REAL work of being an adult. And that REAL work of being an adult is to keep your nose clean, bolster the status quo, and settle into a traditional American Dream lifestyle.

Now, I’m going to throw one more log, a big one, on this fire.

This generation of children has seen no genuine Holy Spirit revival. For the most part, the real gifts of the Spirit are not practiced before them.

Sure, in Pentecostal and charismatic churches they’ve heard a ton of prophetic words that didn’t come to pass, and words of knowledge that were off, and on and on, but the REAL gifts are outside their experience. They haven’t been shaken to the core by a genuine move of God either.

And in those churches that don’t believe that “stuff,” the kids learn that Christianity is just something you think. It’s all in your head.

Parents who don’t live the faith and a powerless church.

I want to leave too. Don’t you?