Okay...so what is with people's fascination with the book of Revelation as some secret key to the end times? What's up with the "Left Behind" craze? (The prequel is coming out next, I can hardly contain my excitement. Yawn.) Why do people believe what they believe about Revelation? Are we really ready to form our theology based on some novels? (I know of small groups that "study" the series...not the book of Revelation, but the Left Behind novels.)
Does anyone find it somewhat perplexing that, in Christian circles, the top selling books have been a series "based" on Revelation (VERY loosely based, in my opinion) and a book written about a prayer in scripture that no one had ever noticed before the book was published? (My newest T-Shirt reads: "I read the Prayer of Jabez and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.")
What is it about us that seems to want "Christianity lite?" We want our theology from novels, our future mapped out on nice, neat time lines, the end times clearly explained and spelled out... and our prayer lives neatly summed up in a short little book that can be read while we wait for the next fad.
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I wish that I knew. It would give me something to rally against. It makes me think that we want to be asleep, that we want to drink milk our whole lives, that we do not understand the magnitude and the simplicity of the God we love and serve or the faith we've been given. "Jabez" makes more sense as Americans, because it taps into and legitimizes our desire for material prosperity. If I similarly theorize about "Left Behind," we crave it because it legitimizes a misguided representation of faithfulness as solely piety and personal purity (individualism?), separate from acts of charity, service, and selfless giving (community?). I've never read any of the books mentioned.
It could also be Satan's best effort to corrupt a holy text by confusing and/or interlacing fact with fiction. Left Behind helps us focus on the "later" so we don't focus as much on the "now." Jabez helps us focus on the "now now" so we don't focus as much on the "eternal now." Does that make any sense?
"It makes me sick but we are lapping it up as fast as people can write it."
If it makes you sick does that mean you are out of God's will? :O)
Why DO we get so obsessed with end-times predictions? I know a guy who isn't even walking with God who is fascinated by end-time interpretations of the Revelation (not the book itself, mind you--just the interpretations). He relishes the effort to crack the "code" as if it were a hobby and sees no essential difference between Revelations and the predictions of Nostradomus.
What's the point of trying to figure out a date that we've already been told we won't know? Sometimes I get the impression that people are trying to identify end-time signs like the Antichrist and the mark of the Beast so they can somehow foil the plot. Assuming those signs are foretelling the future (rather than things that already happened), why would we try to stop them? To short-circuit the end times and keep Jesus from coming back? (Heck, shouldn't we be looking instead for ways to bring it on faster? lol) Is it an effort to avoid those images of end-time persecution, which would really mess with our prosperity theology?
Or is it so we can determine when we need to "start looking busy"? Heaven forbid we start now, "just in case."
I think people like the idea of thinking they know what's coming...what's going to happen. Future telling, if you will. It's one of the "sexy" parts of Christianity. Plus, it makes people feel better about all of the bad stuff that happens....the Tsunami seems less horrible somehow if it's part of the actual end times.
Chris says:
Hi. I think we like to analyze revelation because it's such a fantasy, like "ooh, cool, dragons and horned beasts and a pale horse." Because it brings so many images to our heads. But it's also very surreal. John is pretty comfortable during the process so we don't get a very personal account of the destruction of the earth, which makes it easy to romanticize.
There are Christians who look for the endtimes because they want to hurry Jesus up. Some support Israeli persecution of Palestinians so that the Israelites can retake their promised land and rebuild the temple, fulfilling one of the conditions.
Also, I think we look for "Christianity Lite" because being a Christian is hands down the hardest thing on Earth. And hard isn't fun. It's a lot easier to focus on "left behind", "jabez" and even "the purpose driven life" than focusing on the "slave to righteousness" Holy Bible. It's easier to put your two cents in the offering plate when you have 2,000 than when you only have two.
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