Centers in the Hands of an Edgy God

17 Thoughts that Helped Me Disassemble Americanized-christian-Exceptionalism and it's View of Prophecy (i.e., Left Behind Series)

In Today’s Post:

‣ Check it Out: OTN Video, Upcoming Live Videos on Substack, and this Sunday in KC

‣ Centers in the Hands of An Edgy God

👉🏼 Jump straight to the 17 Thoughts

‣ Healthy Resources for The Book of Revelation and Biblical Prophecy

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‣ Check it Out:

New opentable.network video with Jill Elizabeth and Thomas Jay Oord for everyone, particularly pastors, chaplains, and counselors. We talk about forgiveness, identity, racism, nature, and the real world realitites of navigating our current religious and political climate.

Coming up in April/May: Join me and my pal,

Tori E. Owens

as we do some live Q/A Videos on Substack with

Bradley Jersak

on 4/4,

Thomas Jay Oord

on 4/11, and

Jon Paul Sydnor

on 4/25 at 1pm. (Other theologians TBA later.)

If you’re in KC area this Sunday (16th), you are invited to hang out with me and my friend, Fred Heron, at Living Water Church.

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‣ Centers in the Hands of An Edgy God

The gospel is fiction when judged by empires. But empires are fiction when judged by the gospel.—Walter Brueggemann

Whenever we approach any biblical topic … atonement, hell, or sexuality, we bring presuppositional baggage. Sometimes, what we carry serves to free us up, and sometimes, it serves to weigh us down, but there is no escaping that the baggage exists.

Nowhere is this more true than with Americanized-christianity’s ideas around eschatology, understood colloquially as the “end times.” Upfront, please know that if you are loaded down with dispensationalist baggage or an American exceptionalism that I think is fair to say exists in both Reformed and Arminian camps, then this will be challenging to read. I do not apologize, though I am sympathetic. Rethinking one's indoctrination is no small thing, and whether you find alignment with what I write or not, it takes courage to read, think, and figure out what is and isn't healthy.

"Ideology," for René Girard, "is a closed system of desire" and, as such, is a bubbled-space that does not cultivate growth, imagination, or the wisdom of outside voices. This is true of what I tend to call Americanized-christianity.

The bubble informs everything from what you wear to who you date to what you drink and, yes, all thoughts about “end times.” I don't mean any disrespect to its adherents, but the bubble needs to be lanced. Or cracked. Or, where abuse has been perpetrated and perpetuated, the system needs to be smashed altogether. 🔨

The System that's Wielded So Much Influence Upon America

The center of Americanized biblical prophecy, centered as it is upon a dispensationalist-flavored us vs. them reading of the Book of Revelation—most notably popularized by The Left Behind series—is, in a word, lifeless.

It's a reading that glorifies violence, promotes escapism, engenders fear, and, because of its unfortunate commitment to literalism, employs terrible math to make wildly absurd predictions.

If that wasn't enough, it’s ideologues miss the irony that by highlighting the possibility of persecution over and over, they are, in fact, persecuting others. For example, consider the Americanized-christians who are banning books, imposing the ten commandments, denigrating religious plurality, and ignoring climate science that might interfere with their interpretation of the bible, not to mention their interpretation of economics.

I hope to destabilize the center of Americanized-christian exceptionalism and move folks to the edges. The edge is an appropriate metaphor with this subject matter, given the way it defines eschaton, which is that period of time some like to reference as the "end times."

The edge is a better translation than end times, for one reason because he's the guitarist for U2 and for another, well, technically, we've been living in the "end times" since the ascension. When christians talk of the end times, they need to remember that it's been happening for 2,000 years! The moment you are reading these words just happens to be the "endest" of the end times; the edge.

The edge, in this sense, is time-oriented. It is this very moment, the present. Whatever else is going on with healthy theology, it's something that keeps us located in the present, embodied, and contextualized with real people and real systems happening in real-time. This present-oriented mindset keeps us in the fray, so to speak, now, working on issues of justice now rather than absoloving ourselves of responsibility and waiting for God to whisk us away and fix everything in some unknown future. Something Jame's Cone might refer to as a future-eschatology vs. a realized-eschatology. (Btw, for some nice writing on Cone, see

Lyle Enright

’s page.)

Speaking of whisking away, in many ways, escapism might be the fundamental word for how Americanized-christian exceptionalism has conditioned people to read The Book of Revelation (indeed, the whole bible).

Hmm, what's tricky here is that there is an element of truth in that, yes, the Spirit is interested in freedom, and freedom does involve escape. But it's not an escape from our problems as much as an escape through our problems.

👉🏼 The depth of freedom is not found in the running away from pain (though to be sure, running away is sometimes involved); the depth of freedom is found in facing pain, learning, letting go of old ways of thinking, picking up new ways, transcending and including the pain.

Escapism is a stagnant pool. God help us to stir the waters.

Not just to stir up trouble, but becuase life needs antagonism in order to evolve. Life happens in the interaction of stablity and instability Too much of the former, and things flatline. Too much of the latter, and things spin out of control. This is true biologically, relationally, and yes, even theologically. Though to be sure, my sense of theology includes the biological and relational. (Btw, I like what

Bo McGuffee

is writing about regarding life, change, and death here.)

👉🏼 The edge is where both predictability and uncertainty meet, the byproduct of creation, novelty, and becoming.

Backstory of Becoming

It is biblical, to speak of becoming and creation at the edges. The Hebrew words tehom and tohu wa bohu with all their primal, watery, self-organizing complexity, seep in at the edges of what constitutes a beginning no later than the opening passage of the bible (Gen 1:2). Taking these famous first few verses seriously, leads to the startling idea that in the beginning, things were already happening.

This "beginning-as-already-happening" is an implication-laden approach that comes to us from a variety of sources, including the scholar E.A. Speiser, who is influenced by Rashi. Rashi is the rockstar Jewish Bible commentator from the Middle Ages, which is probably self-evident given that he goes by only one name.

Rashi argued "that the first verse of the bible is not a sentence but a dependent clause. The first three verses thus comprise a single compound sentence."

Upon closer examination, Speiser decided that the second verse is a "'parenthetic clause,' whose independent clause comes only as verse 3. … So, the schematic structure of the three-verse sentence would parse roughly as follows:

1. When Elohim began to create heaven and earth

2. –at which time the earth was tohu vabohu, darkness was on the face of the deep and the ruach was moving upon the face of the waters–

3. then God said, "Let there be light …"

I hope you are seeing that this is a less definitive, start and stop, bounded and ordered creation than many of us were led to believe. It's bounded and ordered, but it also includes boundless disordering, the very movement of which invites the cosmos further out into the edges and into its becoming. Genesis is a mashup of stability and instability.

"The beginning," as Jack Caputo points out, "had always already begun."

Which Sets Us Up to Talk About New Stories

Not to be outdone by Hebrew beginnings, the etymology of the famous (infamous?) Greek words apocalypse and eschatology hint at the edges of what constitutes endings in the Book of Revelation.

Contrary to the beliefs held deep within dispensationalist bunkers of Western-Christianity, the biblical writers who engaged in the stylistic writing known as Jewish apocalyptic literature were not necessarily indicating that the world was preordained to end in a singular, violent manner.

Instead, they were unveiling specific patterns that lead to violent endings, while giving us a new pattern that just might lead to hope.

"Apocalyptic literature," as Michael Gorman writes, "both expresses and creates hope by offering scathing critique of the oppressors, passionate exhortations to defiance … and unfailing confidence in God's ultimate defeat of the present evil. Usually articulated in symbolic, even cryptic language, this hope means that apocalyptic is also the language and literature of resistance. Richard Horsley contends that 'far from looking for the end of the world, they [Jewish apocalyptic writers] were looking for the end of empire. And far from living under the shadow of an anticipated cosmic dissolution, they looked for the renewal of the earth on which a humane societal life could be renewed.'"

In other words, it is neither👏🏼biblical nor hopeful👏🏼 to suggest that the world is predestined for destruction.

It is neither 👏🏼biblical nor peaceful👏🏼 to live under the shadow of a capricious deity, one who will soon (and very soon) run out of patience.

It is neither 👏🏼biblical nor gracious👏🏼to raise our children to believe our version of the end justifies our version of the means.

Because "the end" for Christian eschatology is not necessarily an ending at all, as much as it is a never-ending process of endings that flow into new beginnings that flow into new endings again and again … it's a movement, less a quantitative stopping point where everything gets fixed, and more a qualitative energy that innovates and complexifies, yes, again at the edges.

Less static, more dynamic.
Less closed, more open.
Less cul-de-sac and more onramp.

Onramp to what?

Well, in one sense, no one knows. That's kind of the point. The future, by definition, is an unknown quantity. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to call it the future.

There is a multiplicity of interacting reasons as to why any one thing emerges, and no one entity, including God, controls the outcome. Control is antithetical to love, which means there's a way to see all of this as God risking right alongside the rest of us in this moment and the next, right into the future that is always becoming.

So, wherever this onramp is going, love is with us, inviting us and helping us (as we help it) not to escape all our problems but to evolve, grow, and be transformed by the renewing of our mind to the degree that we can create new and gracious constructs of love, grace, and mercy.

It’s true, there's a real chance our world might fall apart (nuclear war, global warming, etc.), but it doesn't have to, and in fact, if we can see ourselves as empowered and co-creating agents of love, we might just avoid such calamities.

17 Thoughts that Helped Me Disassemble Americanized-christian-Exceptionalism and it's View of Prophecy (i.e., Left Behind Series)

I began disassembling when I realized …

1-That the word rapture is not in the Book of Revelation or anywhere in the bible. See NT Wright Although, I suspect there are a lot of non-Christians who would be thrilled if there really were such a thing as a rapture, for most of their problems would clear up overnight!

2-That the point of Revelation was not to prepare 1st-century believers or any other century believers to leave this world but to reveal the patterns empire takes in its moves of totalization.

3-That Revelation is not about the end of the world; it's about the end of empire.

Babylon, in Revelation, is code for Rome. Rome is code for empire. Empire is the collusion of military, political, economic, and religious powers that colonize and homogenize entire people groups by means of a rapacious and ever-expanding economy that results in slave trade, genocide, mimetic violence, and even ecological devastation.

The goal of empire is totalization, yes by sudden and obvious force, but more often by slow, almost imperceptible moves of force. In the bible, Babylon represents Babylon, Egypt, and Rome. But, read the definition of empire again… which current world nation best fits the mold of empire? 😳

4-That Americanized-christianity has been heavily influenced by Platonic notions of power, which inform all our biblical translations. For example, Despite El Shaddai, "God of the Mountain," literally meaning "the Breasted One," it became translated as The Almighty. For more, one should read

Thomas Jay Oord

’s Death of Omnipotence.

Concepts of power play no small role when it comes to deciphering Revelation. For instance, at one point, John hears about a lion, but when he turns to look, he realizes what he thought was a lion is actually a lamb. The lamb is connected to the crucified Lord over 20 times in Revelation and the lion once. The appropriate imagery is not a lion. It's a lamb. Even more, a crucified lamb.

5-That Revelation might be telling us the way of the crucified lamb is the only way of peace. Any other way of peace isn't peace. It's not as if the depth of the Revelationa is saying, “Hey, he was the prince of peace the first time around, but you had your chance … he’s coming back in military fatigues next time!”

6-That the popular interpretations of Revelation, like Left Behind and Late Great Planet Earth, have caused untold psychic and spiritual damage. Their overall message glorifies a God of violence, promotes the notion that true believers will be militant, is anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, mindlessly pro-Israel, and are notorious for placing Americanized-christianity outside of critique, the very thing that is currently blinding so many Americanized-christians to the possibility that their nation is more like empire than anything resembling a city on a hill.

7-That whatever is going on with Revelation, it was first written to the churches and people of the first century who had just experienced massive persecution. This has helped many scholars agree that the infamous 666 number refers to Nero, the maniacal emperor responsible for so much violence toward the believers in the first century. In other words, you don't have to waste your time determining if the number points to Hitler or Obama, Clinton, the head of the United Nations, Russell Brand, or anyone else. Just save yourself the headache and go with Nero. It makes sense.

8-That the actual definition of apocalypse is not a violent, world-ending war. It literally means an unveiling. What is the unveiling? The patterns that typically lead to the end-of-the-world scenarios, namely propaganda, controlling power, and violence—all things that love, by way of the crucified Lamb, is uninterested in. And all the things that we're seeing play out in today's geopolitical world. (For more on foxangelicalism and propaganda, see Catherine Keller's No Matter What.)

9-That the idea of prophecy in Revelation (and all Scripture) has often been misunderstood and misappropriated. Biblical prophecy is not for making predictions about specific future dates, events, or geopolitical moves. Whenever you see anyone pulling out calendars, charts, or decoder rings ... run.

Biblical prophecy is about predicting the future only in so much as it's trying to say, "Look, if we don't change our mind and act differently, stuff is going to go bad in the future."

Granted, some of the prophecies name unhealthy patterns incredibly well; so well, it'd be tempting to think someone had specific foreknowledge of dates and times. But, here's a healthier conclusion: That those prophesying were inspired to see how the patterns entrenched in their time could very well play out in a future time. For example, while there is no way John the Revelator could have known about global warming, he gives prophecies about one-third of the earth's forests burning and one-third of sea life dying.

10-That a religion centered around the idea that their God (a God of love, no less) has been planning to let the world blow up, but only after whisking away his true adherents is a religion that needs to be questioned. I advocate for a more sustainable religion, one that orients itself around the message of Jesus, which was: Change the way you think and find yourself within the Kingdom (kin-dom) of Heaven that is present and available, here and now.

11-That the mark of the beast doesn’t have to be about people literally lining up to get a mark on their hands or foreheads; no, it’s more than reasonable to realize that the mark of the beast has to do with the way we're all "marked" by toxic empirical emissions. We are all breathing the air of empire, being influenced by greed and consumerism, technology and capitalism that funnel the elite to the top, leverage our imitative desires, and promote scapegoating, all while damaging our souls and destroying the very earth we call home.

The bad news is we've all been marked by this beast because we're all living in empire. However, the good news is that the mark of the lamb might run deeper. 👈🏼

12-That none of this means that Jesus-followers will avoid persecution. Reading Richard Bauckham's line put much of this in perspective for me: "It is not simply because Rome persecutes Christians that Christians must oppose Rome. Rather, it is because Christians must disassociate themselves from the evil of the Roman system that they are likely to suffer persecution."

13-That for all the press the antichrist gets; the depth of Revelation is about the living Christ.

Speaking of the antichrist. It's a bit hard to pinpoint what the name means. It only appears a few times and mainly in the letters of John, but one thing that seems to be clear is that John is doing his best to combat a type of thinking known as Gnosticism, which denied that Jesus was God-in-the-flesh and rejected bodily resurrection.

In short: Spirit good-flesh bad.

When this is kept in mind, and one reads 2 John 7 … "some deny Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh … any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist," one could see how the concept needs to be broadened. What John could have been saying is, "Stay away from people who want to make this whole thing about getting some postmortem reward in a spiritual realm that comes later rather than helping real live people in the here and now."

14-That the bulk of Americanized-christianity forces people (again, a closed system) to be mindlessly pro-Israel. Of course, one should never forget the kind of persecution that Israel has suffered and much of it at the hands of Christians, but it would be a colossal mistake to be blind to the way Israel has operated, at times, over the years.

Many American-christians have been taught that in order to stay biblical they need to ignore the humanitarian atrocities taking place in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Look, we are not called to be pro-Israel as much as we are called to imitate the Messiah who came out of Israel. 👈🏼

15-That Christians are compelled to see, that when John lampoons empire’s global-economic-project, he's reminding readers how important it is to resist the seduction of power that always heads in the direction of conflict, propaganda, scapegoating, war, and the end of certain ages. Is this not the very direction we’re currently?

16-That most Americanized-christians are woefully unaware of the multiple ways that apocalyptic writing can be interpreted, including the possibility that many of the prophetic statments Jesus made, all took place in 70AD. Or that some reasonably intelligent people have determined that another way to interpret this whole thing is to see the church as the return of Christ, which, means it’s already happened. 🤔

17-Whatever our view is, living in fear is not beneficial for anyone. Michael Beckworth once said about the news that it was the lowest common denominator of humanity. I’m going to borrow his phrase and say that the rapture is the lowest common denominator of theology. It’s built upon fear.

Fear might serve a purpose. It might even be the beginning of wisdom. But it’s not the end of wisdom. Love is more intelligent and the more we follow love’s invitation the less hold fear has over us.

Americanized-christian-exceptionalism needs to repent of it’s fear-inducing, evolution-stunting, self-biased, ecologically-destructive ways. The next generations deserve that we make this choice, for truly, as Wendell Berry wrote: “We didn't inherit the earth from our ancestors; we are borrowing it from our grandchildren." 👈🏼

In Closing

I readily admit that despite the veracity of love and the trajectory of this post, it is impossible to “sanitize” all the fear out of biblical prophecy and/or Revelation. Sheesh, sometimes, I think the best thing to say is, “You know what? Revelation is gory, misogynistic, and for centuries has encouraged people groups to justify the extermination of their enemies. And whatever else is going on, that’s simply wrong. Period. I couldn’t care less if it’s in Scripture or not; if it’s pushing us toward violence, it’s wrong.” Ha, maybe that should’ve been the whole post. 👀

Ironically, for lots of christians, it's the words of the bible itself that become the most significant barrier to living a life oriented around love. We must see that words are important, even inspired, but their meanings are sometimes at the mercy of context and culture.

Meanwhile, for believers, the Everlasting Word is the Christ who says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." How should we understand such a potent phrase? I think the way Catherine Keller does: "The I AM eliminates the linear distance between alpha and omega. It evokes the new beginning we can each and all together make now, always again now, in our own lives and loves, in face of—whatever endings we face."

In other words, there's a way to read Scripture and see that the beginning of Genesis and the end of Revelation are not two opposite ends of a linear timeline. The I Am is here now, neither to control nor to fix, but to partner with us. This partnership could lead to a fantastic evolution of humanity, indeed the whole earth, but it won't happen if we bury ourselves behind walls of tradition and fear. It will only occur where new life happens … at the edge.

You and I are being invited to the edge.

Epilogue

I had a friend who texted me recently after reading the entire Left Behind series. Here's a portion of what he sent me …

“I read of all those who had lived and died without accepting Jesus on Earth. The millions, BILLIONS that were judged then cast into the Lake Of Fire with the enemies of God!

I paused for a moment, then I closed my eyes and Prayed. 'Father God how beautiful it would be for You to forgive and welcome all these unfortunate souls into your Heavenly Kingdom … I included amongst them.'

That, I think, would have been a better ending."

And I agree, that would be a better ending. May it be so.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear from you. Questions? Comments? Which of these ideas were helpful on your journey? Or, given that this was not an exhaustive take on these matters, maybe there was some other idea that I didn’t even mention that you found helpful. 👍🏼

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‣ Some Healthy Resources for The Book of Revelation and Biblical Prophecy

No Matter What (Keller), Reading Revelation Responsibly (Goreman), The Uncontrolling Love of God (Oord), Reversed Thunder (Peterson), That All Shall be Saved

David Bentley Hart

, The Suffering of God (Freithem), Facing Apocalypse (Keller), Is Eternal Life Real?

Jim Palmer

, A More Christ Like God (Jersak), Postcards from Babylon

Brian Zahnd

, Surprised by Hope (Wright), God After Deconstruction

Tripp Fuller

&

Thomas Jay Oord

, Revelation and the End of All Things (Koester), Her Gates Will Never Be Shut (Jersak), Eschatology and Process Theology - A Conversation with Dr. Thomas Oord and Bonnie Rambob,

Rev. Benjamin R. Cremer

’s End Times Obsession the Cost of Indifference