Image by Newbirth35 via Flickr
This is the fifth in the series about ecumenical formation.
Lots of people responded to Harold Camping's prediction of the rapture back in May. Quite why he got so much attention is beyond me. He has his own radio station but that doesn't mean we all need to hear what he's saying. If you need a reminder, this blog post is as good as any. If you don't, just read the extract below from one of Camping's followers:
The middle-aged Oakland resident said he’d been listening to Camping since 1993, when he said the world would end in 1994.
That was strike one, the man said. And this is strike two. Even so, he said, that doesn’t mean the message is wrong.
“I just know he’s biblically sound,” the man said. “I’ve never been one of these guys who think everything he says is true.
This caught my eye. 'I just know he's biblically sound'. He knows because Camping has predicted the date he will be personally raptured and been wrong twice? These people are wrong on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin.
The ways in which Christians read the Bible is core to any Christian formation. We can take the view that only my interpretation is sound or that all interpretations are permissible (because we can always go back to the original text).
The first is based on ignorance. The second is better but not much better because it assumes we cannot say anything about the Bible and all readings are neutral.
The rapture is not a neutral idea. It is a natural ideology for consumers. It is individualistic, focusing only on the salvation of those with access to the truth, who will leave the world behind for the rest of us to suffer in. Why is the world in such a mess? Because of the behaviour of these very consumers who seek to save themselves.
It is a nasty mix of self-righteousness and greed. It is also profoundly atheistic. These people do not trust God, they build their hopes upon their own fantasies of God. They are taken in by their own illusions. If religion has any value at all it is in losing these illusions and learning to live for others.
One way of doing this is through encounter with those who read the text differently. If we cannot accept that our view is one interpretation amongst many, then we will be disappointed as we struggle to stay true to what is false in our thinking.
This 'one interpretation only' philosophy is relatively recent and I hope to show in future posts how profoundly important the encounter between interpretations is.
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