So, I’m sitting around here trying to prepare to begin co-teaching a class on the Revelation to John – something I haven’t taught since teaching a junior high class in Springfield, Missouri almost ten years ago – and I’m suddenly wondering:

“Where does the phrase ‘end of time’ come from?”

Because it sure ain’t in the Bible.

“End of the age” or “world,” yes. “End of all things,” yes. “There shall be no delay any longer,” sure – in heaven as announced by an angel swearing all over the universe to the truth of it.

But no “end of time.”

There’s no “end-time” in there, either.

No single “tribulation,” although there’s one singled out as “great.”

And “rapture” is only hinted at – once, I believe. To mean “caught up,” or “snatched up.”

We sit in our churches and gladly sing “… and time shall be no more,” but shall it?

Won’t there just be a lot more of it in eternity? Won’t it just be a lot different from this age or this world?

I know I’m pickin’ nits here, and mite-y tiny ones at that, but …

What if there really ain’t no “end of time”?

What if death comes to all, except for those whom Jesus and his angels snatch up here and there, now and then; followers who have gone His way, collected by the score and the hundreds and the thousands every minute of every day?

What if we can’t know the day and the hour because it isn’t a single day or a single hour – except for each one of us, individually?

What if God chooses to perpetuate this troubled old globe for another few million years? Will the power of the gospel of Christ diminish to valuelessness over than span? Will technology and democracy and freedom and man’s inherently decent nature finally perfect ol’ planet Earth? Will sin cease to exist? Will people ever create some other way to live forever?

What if God chooses to prove His eternal righteousness to the angels who fell by demonstrating that the good news of Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection never loses its capability to draw people close to His heart, even after entropy has increased and the sun has burnt out and mankind has fled to distant worlds orbiting far-flung stars?

What if God maintains for his collected family a new Jerusalem on the new earth within the new heavens on a whole ‘nother playing field of time … where entropy doesn’t increase and bodies are incorruptible and moths don’t consume white robes of righteousness and rust doesn’t ruin heavenly treasure and thieves don’t break in to steal it because they’re changed completely from the heart and besides there’s more than enough to go around for everyone?

Is all of that not a biblical concept, either?

Or is it some kind of revelation?

A recent study suggests that people who are deeply committed to a political party philosophy have no difficulty ignoring facts and substituting pure emotion for reasoning in defense of their views.

People who are deeply committed to a political party philosophy are generally the ones who rise to political party leadership and become elected officials, one would naturally conclude.

So, as function of probability, a generous number of our elected officials have no difficulty ignoring facts and substituting pure emotion for reasoning in defense of their views.

(Repeat this post’s headline here for emphasis.)

Well, I might as well get into it. I got started thinking about it in my last post. I wondered how seriously we take the idea that God is in us.

Because it’s obvious to me that His Spirit is intimately involved in preservation of unity.

When Paul wrote to Colossae, Christ was in the saints – though it was a mystery.

His Spirit was in the prophets before He was born among men, when they sought the details of that incarnation to serve those who would follow them.

His Spirit was in David, who begged that the Spirit not be taken away from him when he sinned against God.

It was His prayer to be in us.

If His Spirit isn’t in us, we aren’t His.

His Spirit is how He seals us as His own, and guarantees what He has promised later.

His Spirit is how He strengthens us from within.

His Spirit is how God pours out His love into our hearts.

Our bodies are His temple.

So it’s a question more important than whether the Spirit works apart from the Word or how He works or whether He still works today. Because if He dwells in followers of the Word throughout Christians’ lives, it’s inconceivable that He could be a freeloading parasite, sponging off of the prophets of His book. It’s a question more important than how can we know He is in us, because He said He would be and when God says He’ll do something, it’s as good as done. It’s more important than any question raised by the advertisers of GatorAde because it has to do with the water of life, the Spirit of God, the hope of glory:

Is He in you?

Subtitled: The ‘Only One Way’ Syndrome

This is a part two that’s a long time coming, so I’m going to quote part one from many months ago below:

Who would read Paul saying that “I beat my body” and conclude that beating one’s own body must be the one and only way acceptable before God to keep from “disqualifying for the prize”?

Who would read Jesus saying “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out” and conclude that blinding one’s self in one eye would be the one and only way acceptable before God to “enter the kingdom of God”?

Who would read Paul saying that “… women will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” and conclude that this is the one and only way that any woman can be saved?

Who would read Jesus saying that “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” and conclude that asceticism and carrying (or just wearing) a wooden cross is the one and only acceptable way to follow Him?

Who would read Peter saying that “… this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also ….” (1 Peter 3:21) and ignore the word “also” and – apart from any other scripture about belief, confession, repentance, grace, His sacrifice – conclude that baptism alone is the one and only acceptable way to be saved?

We can take things too literally. We can take them out of context. We can skip what we don’t like, don’t comprehend, and/or don’t want to deal with.

We can even take the absence of any mention of furniture in New Testament churches and conclude that the one and only acceptable piece of furniture in the Lord’s house is a table – and that must be all right because the gospels mention it at the Last Supper.

However, we do so at our own peril. And that peril is not from physically beating ourselves, physically half-blinding ourselves, or physically failing to reproduce …

… but spiritually.

The part of this diatribe I didn’t write then was about the “only one way” syndrome. It’s the feeling, belief, or foundational world-view that there is only one right way to “do” or “view” any given item – and, of course, that the Bible reveals it clearly and fully in every instance.

I grew up seeing those “Jesus People” T-shirts with the one-way street sign featuring an upward-pointing arrow. Maybe that’s where the idea came from. But I think it pre-dates the 1970s.

Certainly there is only one Way, one Truth, and one Life. There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all who is over all and through all and in all. (Whether we really believe those last two words is a whole blog entry itself – perhaps a book. But it’s not my immediate focus here.)

Absolutely there are some things which are to be done or viewed in a narrow way, because Jesus is a narrow Gate and a narrow Road.

Yet there must be others which must be observed broadly, with liberty, with acceptance of others’ views and preferences – because these items simply aren’t directly dealt with in scripture, nor is there any precedent in the words or behavior or perhaps even the spirit shown by those whom scripture describes.

Is there only one right way to view scripture itself? (And my question is heavily prompted by a series of brilliant posts recently explored by Believing Thomas.)

Is scripture law? It contains law. Is it story? It contains story. And poetry, song, history, prophecy, romance, and pretty much every general form of literature.

How could it be realistic to view it as only one of those?

The problem, of course, is in interpretation; sorting it all out. That becomes so much harder when we have a predisposition that any given scripture can only be one of those forms of communication.

And so limiting of God’s creativity.

I challenge you to read Acts 15. Several times. Read it as history. Read it as story. Read it as legislative process. Read it as love literature. Read it as a textbook case of mediation.

See if you can come away with a conviction that it can only be one of those things.

What struck me on a recent multiple read-through is that the leaders of the church were clearly winging it. I suspect that they had prayed, many of them fervently, for a Spirit-revealed resolution to the question of the Gentiles that had been thrust upon them … and the Spirit’s response was: “You need to work this out.”

So their response is “It seemed good to the Spirit and to us ….”

Are there dilemmas in Christianity right now that could be treated in a similar way, with the blessing of exactly the same Spirit?

Jesus’ revelation to Peter that what he “bound on earth would be bound in heaven” was also generally applied to his closest followers a couple of chapters later (Matthew 18:18) and it is sandwiched right between His instruction on how to handle a conflict with a brother and the guarantee that what two or three agree on in prayer will be granted by the Father, and that Jesus himself is among them when they gather in His name.

Can we simply lift verse 18 out of a context that Christians have long felt applied to them throughout time – and say that verse 18 refers only to those closest to Christ right then and there?

Doesn’t it foreshadow the circumstances of Romans 14, in which some acts would be sin to those who commit them against their God-given conscience – while the same acts done by another would not?

Or am I taking things too literally, myself?

If you wield scripture as a sword, you can use it to prove just about any belief you wish to prove.

For example ….

If you’re inclined to believe that women shouldn’t ever speak in church, quote I Corinthians and I Timothy. Throw in a little “where two or three are gathered” and extrapolate that Jesus means church, and you can keep women quiet whenever there are two or three Christians huddled. There doesn’t even have to be a man in the group; it’s an assembly, and the women should shut up, right?

You don’t have to deal with dozens of other scriptures where women are actively engaged (how many times does Paul describe a woman as “hard-working”) in the work of the church, are called “servants” or “deaconesses” and are even speaking in assemblies – though perhaps veiled while doing so – because your favorite citations take precedence.

And it’s only fair for your pet quotes to be enshrined if, contrarily, you’re inclined to believe that women must speak in the assemblies of the saints.

How can we insist that both of these seemingly polar-opposite opinions must be contradictory when we don’t have a whole picture of the first century or its church? When the scriptures issue forth from the same Spirit? When the truth is in them all?

Could it be that there are times when a woman should speak and times when she should not? And, conversely, that there are times when a man should speak and times when he should keep quiet? Is it not time to keep quiet when one is itching to speak divisive, closed-minded, hurtful, uninspired words?

Is the primary purpose of scripture to provide proof that we’re expected to do everything right, or proof that the Righteous One came because we could not do everything right?

Why is that we do archaeological digs into the etymology of Greek words when we deal with such questions, rather than seeking out the heart of God through His Christ through His Spirit? That Spirit isn’t going to say anything that contradicts His own Word.

Could it be that we get no answer to our questions because we fail to ask?

When I ponder the questions posed by the example above, I admit that I just get more questions – some of which I shared at Clarke Comments earlier this evening, and which may show up there after there’s been time for moderation:

Did Lydia do nothing but “listen” when the brothers(!) gathered at her house, presumably to pray for the release of Paul and Silas from prison (Acts 16)? Was she forbidden to pray aloud in her own house while they waited?

How about Nympha and the church that met at her house (Colossians 4:15)? Priscilla at her house (and Aquila’s – I Corinthians 16)?

Did the four unmarried daughters of Philip the evangelist (and one of the Seven) have to remain silent and not prophesy when the church assembled (Acts 21:8-9)?

Is Paul’s reference to women keeping quiet “as the Law says” in I Corinthians because the predominantly Jewish Christian church in Corinth was back to meeting in a synagogue; or because they were still meeting at a former synagogue leader’s house which had become their synagogue (Acts 18)?

If God’s intent is for women to keep silence, why did Jesus make His resurrection known to his closest disciples through the witness of women? Should they have kept quiet, too?

If you wield scripture as a plowshare, you can use it to plant a seed of faith just about anywhere you care to sow.

Is that a joy and privilege that God has reserved only for male Christians?

Well, I’ve watched an episode of The Book of Daniel now. I probably shouldn’t judge, just from one episode – or maybe not at all, lest I be judged! – but the episode I saw committed the most heinous sin you can commit on television.

That sin wasn’t blasphemy, or giving the moral green light to homosexuality, or cramming as many instances of illicit sex into 45 minutes as possible. No, the sin of which I speak was far worse than that.

The show was mediocre.

Its humor was juvenile. Its issues were treadworn. Its responses to them were bland. And if Daniel’s speech at the groundbreaking for the new school at St. Barnabas’ caught the favor of everyone present (minus randy son Adam), then it’s been too long since they’ve heard a good preacher, or even a decent motivational speaker (like Chris Farley’s thrice-divorced Matt Foley).

I’d rather have heard the donut story, whatever it was.

I don’t watch much network TV, beyond the news. I never watch the WB affiliate, which picked up The Book of Daniel after the local NBC affiliate abandoned it, due to pressure from letter-writers. The experience of watching the show interspersed with locally-produced bottom-scraping, pond-scum commercials for heavy-metal radio shows and confessions-live TV shows and lingerie shops was interesting, but not interesting enough to repeat. So it’s back to HGTV for me.

The Book of Daniel‘s hallucinatory? illusory? expendable? “Jesus” character muttered vague and vapid comments with no particular moral content. No platitudes. No criticism. No particular help at all. He wasn’t the brooding prophet of Jesus Christ Superstar nor the joyous wandering minstrel of Godspell. He was just a dude with long brown hair and a beard, dressed in off-white robes. A poor man’s Qui-Gon Jinn without the light-sabre of the spirit. He’s just there. And the show’s conceit is that only Daniel, apparently, can see and hear him. When Daniel throws him a questioning look about why certain visitor is there, he shrugs in response. When Daniel’s sons are caught in their separate peccadilloes, he comments, “Kids, huh?”

Why have the greatest story-teller of all time there if he contributes nothing to the crisis-upon-crisis storyline?

Is that the series creators’ point? That Jesus is irrelevant? If not …

What is the point?

‘We,’ being the assuredly virtuous Christians of Little Rock, Arkansas, that is. ‘We’ got ‘our’ way! ‘We’ didn’t want any possibly-blasphemous trash to appear on ‘our’ network-affiliated television stations, so ‘we’ mounted a massive letter-writing campaign and got the maybe-vile television series The Book of Daniel removed from one! ‘We’ didn’t like the looks of the promo TV spots, so ‘we’ were convinced that this almost-certainly God-bashing series had to be stopped! ‘We’ were so righteous and powerful that ‘we’ were one of only two cities in the United States whose campaigns succeeded (the other one being the hometown of my late dad, Terre Haute, Indiana).

‘We’ were absolutely certain that the horror described by the prophetic Ray Bradbury in his classic tome Fahrenheit 451 had indeed come to pass in the form of this satanic series; that Jesus had indeed become simply a character in the simpering soap-opera ‘family’ of interactive television:

“Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshiper absolutely needs.”

‘We’ had no intention of seeing if the assertions made by the holy American Family Association were true by seeing even just the pilot episode for ourselves; no! ‘We’ might have been seduced by the evil of it; tainted and corrupted and forever damned! The mere possibility of such an abomination had to be nipped in the bud if not hewn down at the roots, so ‘we’ concentrated our letters locally and ‘we’ got our way!

Never mind that the local WB station picked up the series as soon as the local network affiliate dropped it like hot rocks! ‘We’ won a great moral victory! ‘We’ stood in the gap! ‘We’ sought the old paths, and cemented ‘our’ feet to them! ‘We’ stood ‘our’ ground against the moral depravity and empty self-censorship of Hollywood!

‘We’ had to!

‘We’ were absolutely led by God to!

Because there is a gay character in the series, and he is related to a man of the cloth!

Though, admittedly, it never occurred to ‘us’ to mount such a campaign against the truly vile filth that infests the airwaves with jiggling orbs of flesh; gross expressions of profanity, vulgarity and obscenity; tasteless and derogatory humor; glorification of greed and selfishness; no! Those are the items that Hollywood should have the good sense to remove from its own productions – and besides, if they did, there would be nothing left for ‘us’ to watch and shake our heads and say “Tch, tch, tch … what a shame.”!

‘We’ have done our part.

‘We’ have exercised our God-given right as Americans to protest and threaten and boycott and push and shove and economically influence and censor to His glory! ‘We’ have trounced Hollywood! ‘We’ have beaten Satan at his own wicked game!

‘We’ have removed the possibility of discussing this series over the water cooler with our working associates. ‘We’ have slammed shut the door to anyone who might have been willing to discuss the Son of God on Hollywood’s terms in some sort of jaded, invented, so-called ‘real-world’ situation that could never possibly happen (like a priest having a gay son)! ‘We’ have negated the opportunity to say to non-Christian viewers of this series, “Yeah, I watched it … and, frankly, I don’t think Jesus would have said that or acted that way, and here’s why ….”

Aren’t ‘we’ clever?

I said something this morning that I now regret.

It was at a staff meeting. My involvement minister asked us if we had any further thoughts about and/or could support before our elders a proposal made by an interning minister (not present).

I confessed complete ignorance and asked what the proposal was, since I had evidently missed the staff meeting where it was discussed.

My involvement minister explained that it was a proposal to begin an alternative worship time, after our 5:00 Sunday evening worship time – nothing way out of the ordinary, but different. He explained it better than I can relate it, and received a couple of compliments on his summary.

Otherwise, there was silence. The uncomfortable kind. Never one to let an opportunity pass to speak my mind and reveal the full extent of my ignorance, I said, “I am unequivocally ambivalent about it. I don’t want anything that further separates us … having first and second services out of seating necessity isn’t even my preference. On the other hand, I would love to be a part of such a worship. I think my kids would love it, and get a lot out of it. So that’s where I sit.”

From scattered responses that followed, I could tell that no one was particularly happy with that as an answer. Some obviously felt disappointed that there was neither outright support nor outright opposition to it – and the reason for the disappointment between those two options pretty much divided by age.

(In the end, the wise decision was made to table the proposal, since our ministry intern will soon graduate and possibly leave us for full-time employment … and we hope to soon hire a singles minister, possibly with some great worship leadership skills. So it wouldn’t be good to either strand a group that was very happy with their alternative worship time or to saddle a new minister with their expectations.)

Still, I really regret what I said. Not that it wasn’t true, or that I didn’t really mean it, or that I don’t stand by it as the way I feel.

But that I missed the opportunity to say what I should have said.

Worship isn’t about us.

It isn’t about what we like or dislike. It isn’t about what will draw more people into our building, or make us comfortable.

It should be both an individual and a corporate expression of our praise to the Almighty in His Spirit and through His Son.

It should make us uncomfortable with our relationship with Him, yearning for more and stronger and closer.

It should be an opportunity to yield our preferences and serve the preferences of others … and be blessed by their willingness to yield to ours when it happens.

It should be a time of community, of sharing, of communion.

It should be a time when everything we express to God comes from the heart, undiminished by concerns for self.

Its fine points and details should be of absolutely no concern to us, as long as we are doing our best to please God. So whether we meet as one group or two or two dozen LIFE Groups; whether we sing certain kinds of songs; whether we close on time or go a little long; whether we stand, sit, kneel, or roll over – not one of those things should matter to us if they don’t matter to God.

If you’ve read my blog for very long, you know exactly what I believe and therefore what I should have said.

I didn’t say it.

And I am ashamed.

It wasn’t in the media. It didn’t shake the earth. You don’t know about it because you don’t know my 80-year-old mom.

But for me, one of 2005’s best moments was during a visit with her last year when, in a quiet voice, she privately confessed to me in the car,

“I don’t believe that God will keep people out of heaven who worship with musical instruments. I just can’t believe that anymore.” That was all she said.

I couldn’t say anything.

I just drove on and let the tears run down my grinning cheeks.

What helps you prepare for worship?

That’s the first question. Sometimes I write a “HeartWorship” item for my church bulletin and order-of-worship sheet that attempts to encourage preparation for the worship to come and is usually tied to the theme of the Sunday morning message, songs, scriptures and table thoughts. (I reproduce them on this blog, though many of you don’t really get the benefit of the connection to our worship at at my home church!)

Some folks say it helps. I know it helps me, writing them. It helps me reading others’ submissions to the “HeartWorship” series.

Are there things that you do, read, listen to, watch, meditate upon, or otherwise encounter/participate in that heighten your sensitivity/anticipation of the worship hour to come?

And the second question is like unto it … but I’m going to hold it for a later blog entry.

(Don’t be shy about adding later thoughts to the preceding entry’s questions! They’re important!)