THE EIGHTH QUESTIONS: The Future Question
18: Can We Find a Better Way of Viewing the Future?
In this chapter, McLaren takes on the “Left Behind” theories of the eschaton, from its history through dispensationalism invented in the 1830s but publicized world wide through the Scofield Reference Bible since 1909 “and is now considered historic orthodoxy by millions of Christians around the world.”
He remembers being a third grader and returning home after school to find his doors locked, and feeling terrible dread that the rapture had occurred and he was one of the left behind children of saved parents.
He remembers preachers identifying the antichrist as Khrushchev, Henry Kissinger, Saddam Hussein, or now Barack Obama! “..in recent decades, dispensationalism and its eschatological cousins have become significant factors in the foreign policy of the richest, most consumptive, and most well-armed nation in the history of history, and that’s where things get even scarier than a B-grade movie.”
If the world is about to end, why care for the environment? Why worry about global climate change or peak oil? Who gives a rip for endangered species or sustainable economies or global poverty if God is planning to incinerate the whole planet soon anyway? ..Why care about justice for non-Jews in Israel at all—after all, isn’t it their own fault for being on land God predicts will be returned in full to the Jews in the last days? …why waste energy on peace-making, diplomacy, or interreligious dialogue? ..what’s so bad about another war, and maybe even a little torture and genocide now and then? If God sanctions it, why can’t we?
We need a way out of this thinking and a new eschatology, that frees us from the old linear, six-line Greco-Roman narrative. We need a dynamic, spacious biblical narrative, where, “at every moment, creation continues to unfold, liberation continues to unshackle us, and the peaceable kingdom continues to expand with new hope and promise” (3273-81).
McLaren envisions a time-space in three dimensions: [See the diagram on page 194 of the text, which includes these elements: creation-->liberation-->peace-making kingdom].
“At every moment, creation continues to unfold, liberation continues to unshackle us, and the peaceable kingdom continues to expand with new hope and promise.” (3273-3281). This is a result of “a generous, creative and liberating God.” With the above diagram, however, McLaren also acknowledges a direction to history, a flow to creation, “a moral arc to the universe that slowly but surely tends toward justice.” This is not to deny evil actions, which resist this flow and turn toward “the darkness of destruction, oppression, and violence, hatred, and fear.”
Creation keeps branching “out into an ever widening sphere of goodness, justice, and peace.” Living in this universe while still believing in the flat six-line universe, is, McLaren claims, the reason why “many of us find our religion limiting, cramped, and unlivable.” But this new diagram is an alternative to religious determinisms, where we’ll all get sorted in either destruction or salvation. In the new paradigm, McLaren says the future is “undoomed…to eventual healing and joy…to ultimate resurrection, liberation, reconciliation and…salvation, because the living God will never forsake or forget this beloved creation” (3299-3308).
In it, God is not in control and the universe is not out of control. They are in relationship. “God is like a parent guiding a child with a will of her own.” He relates inter-subjectively. We are harmed when we drop out of relationship and we groan to reenter a right relationship “so we can fulfill our God-given calling as creation’s stewards, students, and creative partners—and cease being its abusers, exploiters and plunderers” (3308-18).
And so the future depends on us, to whom God holds out such promise. We get to help create it. And so McLaren next tackles our understandings about the Second Coming, stating that biblical scholars agree that the scripture writers were NOT talking about the end of the world, but about “the beginning of a new spiritual-historical age or era” and so the end of the world as we know it.
The gospel writers focused on: (1) the resurrection; (2) the coming of the Holy Spirit; (3) the survival and rebirth of God’s people through an anticipated catastrophe “which came to fruition in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE). “The second coming of Christ” is NOT a phrase that appears in the Bible. Parousia does. Its opposite is apousia, which means “absence.” Its best translation is “presence.” In political terms, it could refer to the visit of a royal person.
We could, therefore, understand Parousia as the arrival of “the beginning of a new beginning,” in other words the “manifestation of a new age in human history…Christ again present, embodied in a community of people who truly possess and express his Spirit, continuing his work” (3347-57). After using the metaphor of the conception of this new covenant in the life of Jesus, its gestation in the early community, its being born in the great pain of early persecution, its being fully present but not completely present, its further realization when the destruction of the Temple ended the sacrificial system, the priesthood and the old era.
And so we have participatory eschatology, within which we are called to fully and passionately function like a musician playing passionately NOT to get to the end, but to make beautiful music. The kingdom is fully present, but not fully grown and mature. We hope for the renewal of all things as we help in the kingdom’s administration. We have “a passion to do good, whatever the suffering, sacrifice, and delay, because of a confidence that God will win in the end” (3386-95). In McLaren’s view, this eschatology inspires, gives a sense of urgency because we are protagonists in a show whose outcome we can influence; and it inspired humility because “we are aware of our ability to miss the point, lose our way, and play on the wrong side” (ibid).
The eschatology produces “an ethic of anticipation.” “..a better future comes as we join Jesus first in dying (metaphorically by dying to our pride, our agendas, our schedules, our terms, or literally through martyrdom as witnesses for God’s kingdom and justice), and then in rising, through the mysterious but real power of god” (3395-3404). And we can refuse to participate. Our stupidity is not stronger than God’s grace, but can cause real human pain and sadness.
McLaren offers the story of Jonah as illustration of this participatory eschatology, a story he calls “the most subversive document in the biblical library.” McLaren tells the story and then comments after Jonah asks God to kill him (“as if to say, ‘I’d rather be dead than have to live in a world where you love both our enemies and us’—a remarkably common sentiment among religious people still today..” (3422-31). In the story, McLaren says, “you keep bumping into a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love.” And so we are left with great hope. Our resistances and refusals are never the end of the story.
Finally McLaren takes on the concept of “final judgment” which seems pervasive in scripture. In God’s presence all is revealed. But McLaren says we have to stop defining judgment as condemnation. God’s judgment “involves ‘putting wrong things right.’” It involves reconciling, healing, transforming and revaluing (not just evaluating).
Second, we must realize that final judgment will not be merciless or graceless, as many assume, because in God what we may think of as opposites—grace and truth, justice and mercy, kindness and strength—are beautifully and fully integrated.
And third, we must see the life and way of Jesus—not a list of laws, rules, or beliefs—to be the high and gracious standard by which history’s events and our own lives will be valued and evaluated (3450-60).
Therefore, it will be the humble and poor in spirit, those who mourned injustice, and the makers of peace that “will be seen as bearing Gods family resemblance… (3460-69). McLaren puts it crudely that God will not be checking for circumcision or scanning our brains for beliefs, but “for a cup of cold water or a plate of hot food given to one in need…etc.” And then he quotes from Martin Luther King (3478-88). He concludes with a wonderful quote from Lutheran theologian Jürgen Moltmann about a Jesus who died first for the victims and then also for the executioners.
NINTH QUESTION: The Pluralism Question
19: How Should Followers of Jesus Relate to People of Other Religions?
This may be the most important question because so many people are killing or planning to kill each other in the name of pleasing and honoring God. McLaren says Christians number 33% of the world’s population, Muslims 24% and Jews less than .25 percent. So these three Abrahamic traditions make up over 50% of the population and are therefore responsible for putting everyone in safety or danger.
McLaren is most often asked about religious pluralism. He is caught between the us/them, winner/loser mentality of old, and the “whatever you believe is okay as long as you’re sincere,” which undermines commitment and identity among ‘us’ (3515-3524).
This is not only a religious, but a political, military, and humanitarian question, with millions of lives in the balance. Preachers need to remember that their work, “if taken seriously, literally becomes a matter of life and death’ (3524-3533). Christians have a long history of intolerance and violence towards others, even those of different ‘brands’ of Christianity. Mclaren gives examples, from expansion through native territories in many countries to the inquisitions and crusades, segregation and apartheid and the current animosity between Christians and Muslims.
McLaren cites scripture from Jesus to Paul (Romans) to illustrate what tolerance looks like. In Romans 5:12-21 and 2 Corinthians 5:14-19, Paul comes to understand that Jesus died for ALL—“God is not holding the sins of humanity against them” (3542-52). The Hebrew scriptures celebrate the “righteous outsider,” like Melchizedek, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah, etc. Solomon, he says, wanted the Temple “to welcome, not disenfranchise, people of other backgrounds and be for them a bridge, not a barrier, to knowing God (2 Chron. 6:32-33)” (3552-61). He finds other instances in the prophets (e.g., Isaiah 55:5-9), where God is depicted as above showing favoritism. He quotes from Paul’s speech in Athens as recorded in Acts 17:24-28: ‘In him we live and move and have our being…we too are his offspring” (3570-79).
People of every language, culture, and religion are given a place in God’s world, and no nation is given permission to crush, annihilate, dominate, or assimilate others (ibid.).
He makes the point that God chooses some for the benefit, not the exclusion of, others. He cites the example of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, the centurion, the Greeks; the story of the magi. He asks Christians how they would like to be treated by people of other faiths.
But soon someone will quote John 14:6 as if it tops all the other scriptures. It is so often quoted in supported of the Greco-Roman thinking. One, you feel on top and so vulnerable. You have to worry about what you eat, drink and wear. You strive for more wealth, power, influence to consolidate your position and feel safer. Two, you become paranoid. Your neighbors are a threat, competitors, rebels, obstacles. Three, you can only imagine a positive future where the “others” are gone or: converted, colonized and dominated, ignored and excluded, persecuted and kept off balance, or cleansed and exterminated. Four, life is an “unending, all-out war” and any means are justified to win it because ‘they’ are evil.
McLaren wonders if we have fallen victim to the syndrome in which the persecuted identify with their persecutors and have not yet recovered. Many of us feel like Peter who abandoned Jesus. And because of him, we know we will be invited back. But we must repent of the negative aspects of this imperial approach because we control most of the world’s wealth and weapons.
We could refrain from demonizing other religions and their founders. We would “no longer consider ourselves as normative and others as ‘other.’ We would stop seeing the line that separates good and evil running between our religion and all others…We would learn to discover God in the other and...discover a bigger ‘us’ in which people of all faiths can be included” (3645-54). We would see Jesus as a gift to the whole world. “We would envision a day when members of all religions, including our own, learned to be reconciled with God, one another, and all creation.”
We would stop, McLaren hopes, needing to preach fire and brimstone sermons threatening eternal conscious torment. We would simply proclaim the good news as Jesus did “in word and deed, through art and teaching, in sign and wonder, with clarity and intrigue, with warning and hope” (3654-63). We would, he says, “plot goodness and save the world from human evil, both personal and systemic.”
Continuing this positive note, McLaren envisions people being called to a way of life in the peaceable kingdom “that transcends and includes all religions.” These communities might be called Christian churches or something else, but they would be “interested in breaking out of the cocoons of Christianity that were spun within the Greco-Roman narrative, governed by a constitutional reading of Scripture, oriented around violent and tribal views of God, and so on” (3663-72).
And so McLaren has to return to those scriptural verses that are used to justify the separatist and combative attitude of many Christians, starting with John 14:6. He points out that 14:6 “has nothing—absolutely nothing—to say to the questions it is commonly quoted to answer.” McLaren maintains that the question Jesus in answering is the mundane question: “Jesus, where are you going?” He has said he is going where the disciples cannot follow, and they ARE his followers. He, of course, is going through suffering and death to return to his Father and be glorified.
Jesus tells his disciples what they MUST do: have love for one another (13:34-35). He calls this his last word, his new commandment. But Peter keeps after the issue of where Jesus is going. Peter says he will follow everywhere. Jesus tells him he will deny him, but then reassures Peter and the others that they shouldn’t let their hearts be troubled because there are many dwelling places in his Father’s house. McLaren says we shouldn’t be quick to assume the ‘Father’s house’ means “heaven,” which then means the rest of the speech is how to get to heaven.
To explain ‘heaven,’ McLaren refers to the cleansing of the Temple speech: “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (Jn. 2:15-17). So the Father’s house means the Temple in this passage, but then Jesus goes on to say that “if you destroy this temple, I will raise it up…” and John says he is referring to his body.
So McLaren feels it is logical to conclude that in John 14, he is also referring to the temple, not heaven, and to his body, which is about to be destroyed and then be resurrected—not only in himself, but resurrected in the community of believers, the body of Christ, the “living stones of the new temple.”
Jesus, therefore, is telling them that “there will be a place for them in the new people-of-God-as temple” (3731-41). There are parallels with this house and “my Father’s house” and “kingdom of God.” “All of these phrases suggest the same reality: life lived in loving relationship with God and others, so that God’s will is joyfully done on earth as it is in heaven, and so that God’s presence spreads throughout the world in Spirit-inhabited human lives” (ibid.). McLaren develops a new paraphrase for Jn. 14:1-4.
When Thomas asks his famous question: “How can WE know the way?” he is asking for himself, not for members of other religions or no religions. So that is the context for Jesus’s reply: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, etc.” (14:6-7). He is not talking “about the fate of unbelievers at the final judgment, he is telling his disciples…how they will get from HERE (with Jesus visibly present)—through a LITTLE WHILE (while his body is in the grave)—to there (with Jesus present in a new way).” Jesus is giving them (again) reassurance (3751-61). McLaren paraphrases what he has just said as Jesus’s reply to Thomas (see highlight in ibid.). Thomas, “the way and the truth and the life aren’t things separate from me. I am these things, so you’ll find them in me! Whether or not you know what I’ve been talking abou, if you know me, you know the Father, you know the way, you know the truth, you know the life” (3761-71).
“No one comes to the Father except through me”? “No one” refers to Jesus’s own disciples who “want some plan or instructions so they can get to God or the kingdom of God on their own” (ibid.). The apostles still don’t get it and Philip asks to see the Father. This is where Jesus makes the point that McLaren says we negate by our interpretation of verse 6. In other words, Jesus says that to see him IS to see the Father. And what have we seen? Has it been elitism, exclusion, rejection, condemnation? Just the opposite. So how can we claim that “God will reject everyone except people who share [our ] doctrinal viewpoints…”? (3780-90).
McLaren admits that we have a long way to go in living in a multifaith world. “But I hope this much is clear: there is a way to be a committed follower of Christ that doesn’t require you to be flatly and implacably against other religions and their adherents.” In fact, we can treat them with love, not suspicion (see my audiotape title). “May it be so,” he warns, “before it is too late, because even now some people are loading their weapons and enriching their uranium in the name of God” (3798-3806).
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