Judgment Day?

This has been bugging me for quite a while.

Why would Jesus and the New Testament authors warn their 1st century audiences about impending judgment (the day has come, it is the last hour, these last days, etc.) and then... nothing happens?  Am I missing something?

Here we sit almost 2000 year later, and... still nothing.

St. Paul says that Jesus was "born of a woman, born under law to redeem those under law" when "the fullness of time had come".  God sent his Son at just the right time.  Wouldn't the right time to send Jesus to warn of impending judgment be the time of the people who would actually experience this day of judgment? If Judgment Day is to come in our lifetime (or later), doesn't it make sense that God would send his Son in OUR lifetime (or later)??  Shouldn't God send his Son to the people on whom the final judgment would fall in order to warn them?  How long does "the fullness of time" last?

And here we sit.  Still waiting.

I know, I know-- "no one knows the day or the hour" and "with the Lord a thousand years are as a day" yada yada.  But certainly God wouldn't warn certain people at a certain time in history only to do... nothing! It makes no sense to me.

"Well, we do have the written Word of God to warn us," you might say.  But it employs images and metaphors that are not used today and are, quite frankly, foreign to us and audience specific.

"We have to translate and interpret it," you might further say.  But with an event as big as the destruction of our universe and billions upon billions of people being thrown into hell (if that's what it really is) why is it left to us to translate and interpret?  Why is it left to anyone to translate and interpret? Shouldn't the message be painfully clear without the mental gymnastics??  I'll bet it was to the original audiences!! Show me where it says, "Translate and interpret this book into English so that people in the United States in the 21st century can understand it."

It seems foolish to send a bunch of people on the other side of the planet 2000 years ago to their graves all riled up about the return of the Son of Man only to disappoint them.

As our churches continue to empty out and we are sitting around wondering why, we might want to pause and give people some credit.  Perhaps they already know what theologians (such as myself) are just starting to realize-- that there is a LARGE disconnect between the world of the Bible and the world of today. People are weary of people like me constantly trying to navigate and bridge that disconnect, looking silly in the process.  People are nice and won't say anything.  They just won't show up anymore.

Honestly, I'm also getting weary of people like me.

In Defense of Judas

We are approaching the time of year when Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, gets a bad rap.

"Bad, wicked, naughty Judas for handing Jesus over to be killed."

I think Judas understood the script that Jesus was preaching over and over-- "The Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinners.  They will kill him, but he will arise on the third day."

Judas willingly became the one to hand Jesus over.  His listened to his Rabbi and did what Jesus said.  It's as simple as that.

If anything, we should be looking askance at the Eleven.

"When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve.  And as they were eating, he said, "Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me."  And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after the other, "Is it I, Lord?"-- Matthew 26:20-22

Sorrowful?  They should have been climbing over one another to volunteer for the job!  I think they didn't believe Jesus, especially that "rising on the third day" bit.  To them the death of Jesus would be the end of Jesus.

I can understand, perhaps even sympathize a bit.  I don't want anyone to die.  I would also have a hard time believing that a person who was killed by my hand would rise from the dead.

I think it took faith and massive courage for Judas to do what he did.  The story would have turned out much differently if he didn't.  In fact, using the word "betray" shows the anti-Judas bias of our English Bible translations.  We don't like betrayers, so using the word almost guarantees that we will see Judas as the bad guy who did the dastardly deed.

Try reading the Passion Narratives without an anti-Judas bias and see if that's a more satisfying way of understanding the texts.

I'm on Team Judas!

Let's Talk About Genesis 1

The biblical book of Genesis has become a battleground, specifically the first chapter.  Duking it out are Young Earth Creationists (Literal interpretation, 6 days of Creation, 24 hours/day, ~6000 year old universe), Old Earth Creationists/Theistic Evolutionists (1 Day=Eons, simple to complex, 14 Billion year old universe), and Atheists/Agnostics (Genesis is all bullshit).  There might be others, but I think those are the top three.

All of them work on one basic assumption-- The Genesis 1 account is about material origins.

Question: What if the Genesis 1 account is not about material origins?

I think that question is worth exploring.  It might produce a gold mine of insights.  Or it might lead to more questions.  But first let me pose a couple of questions that might move the discussion along a bit.

Q1) How would our reading of Genesis 1 change if we defined the words "create" and "make" as bringing order out of chaos?

Q2) How would that interpretation of Genesis 1 fit within the overall narrative of Scripture?

Here's my two cents.

If I understand things correctly the order/chaos dichotomy was a powerful dynamic in Ancient Near Eastern religion.  Ancient temples gave concrete pictorial representation to this dynamic.  Temples represented order, where the god(s) came to rest; the outside world represented chaos.  The function of temple priesthoods was to take the order of the temple and bring it to the outside world.

In Genesis 1, the material universe is the temple after God brings it to order and rests within it.  Something must represent God upon the earth as priest of this temple and to bring order to the chaotic world.  People loved stone buildings in which to carry out this duty.  God didn't seem to be all that crazy about stone buildings.  God fills heaven and earth.  God does not live in houses made by human hands.  Perhaps God's temple representation on earth was the people themselves!  A kingdom of priests and a holy nation (ala Genesis 19).  It was unprecedented thinking.  Genesis 1 is truly unique in that aspect.

As Christians we understand that Jesus is portrayed by the New Testament as God's temple.  Flesh and blood, bone and sinew, order to chaos.  Death to life!  Those who are in Christ are living stones, members of Christ's body.  We are living embodiments, along with Jesus, of the order that God gives to creation.

That's my thinking in a nutshell.  What are some of your thoughts?