May 26

Written by: Kyle
5/26/2011 10:44 AM 

Apparently we didn’t miss the end of the world; it was just postponed for a couple of months. In an interview on Family Radio, Harold Camping stated that the May 21st date was merely the awakening of a spiritual judgment upon the world, and not one of physical destruction. The physical end of the world, including the rapture of the righteous, will still occur in October.

Gee. Lucky us. The first instinct for many of us is just to ignore all this nonsense. After all, Camping will be proved wrong in October, just as he was proven wrong in May . . . just as he was proven wrong in 1994. The world will forget him, the hysteria will end, and we get to go back to our normal lives. But is this the best witness? Could it be that our silence actually allows the world to be damaged by faulty and hurtful depictions of Christian faith?

You see, that is the real danger of these types of predictions. It lies not in the fact that the prediction will be proven wrong. Let’s be honest here; it’s going to be wrong! No one has ever been right in their vein attempts to predict the end. The danger of these predictions lies in the Christian witness as it is seen through the eyes of the watching world. The fact is that for many within the world Christian faith these last few months has been presented as a fear-based, judgment-ridden religion. God is to be avoided at all costs. Jesus is removed from the workings of present-day life, and the only time he will step into time and space is precisely when all hell breaks lose. The Gospel message is ‘join us or die.’ Christian faith, as it is understood in light of Camping and his followers, is something to be mocked, ignored, or laughed at. Thus, there are a multitude of sites which advocate the ludicrousness and intellectual-feebleness of the Christian faith. In the height of May 21st, a plethora of negative and vitriolic statements were made of Christianity and the church. One person posted this on Twitter: “Why God would want to surround himself with a bunch of obsequious sycophants speaks volumes to the morons who created him.” Well that stings just a bit – but can I really say I blame him?

Or let’s take the often too-easily caricatured response of the red-faced fundamentalist calling followers of camping to repentance. There are hosts of these video’s on Youtube, each having thousands upon thousands of hits. With the eyes of the world watching, we see ‘Christians’ approach one of the followers of camping, with the desire to ‘dialogue’ with them, but in reality, it devolves very quickly into a 4 minute rant in which the Christian insults, berates, and ridicules the individual, calling them to renounce the ‘false prophet’ and ‘ repent’ of their sin.

For many, these are the options for what Christian faith stands for. Christian faith is either a harbinger of judgment and fear, or a faith of screaming red-faced people belligerently interacting with those from a different belief set. And we wonder why people don’t come flocking into church anymore.

It seems to me that the world desperately needs another witness of what the Christian Gospel is about. The world needs the witness of people who are secure enough in the truth of Jesus that they are not swept within obvious false teachings; but also seeped in grace to the point of being able to offer that grace to others. The world needs a Christian witness that will point to the reality that God is not far off waiting for the time of judgment and wrath, but is, in fact, incredibly near, working for healing, restoration and forgiveness. The world needs a Christian witness to live out the reality that the presence of Jesus in our lives brings life not death, healing not destruction, love not hatred. The world need to the church to stand up and say that there is another way to be a faithful person in this world.

Be that witness. Be that witness for the transformation of the world, the building up of the church, and the praise of his glorious name. Amen.

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