1st century ponderings

I don't think I know anyone personally who's one-a them 'left behind' Christians. You know the ones I mean. The people who brag to you about how they don't really need to do any work to bring heaven to earth because Jesus is coming back soon, how they don't need to win an argument with you because the rapture is going to happen, how one day (very soon, of course) the anti-Christ will show up and take over the world and bring the world to its knees - everybody except Kirk Cameron and co.

I bring this up, because even though I work at an evil Christian book store, most people who believe these things don't actually brag about it. Its prevalance is far more insidious. To the uneducated and ignorant, I've learned, this is the standard. That if you don't believe Jesus is going to come back in the inexplicably exact opposite way he came the first time, that his goal is to end everything that is wrong with the world by implementing some very similiar shit (like blowing people up with his 'holy' words - according to LaHaye), and that John was writing a letter to us and not to a 1st century community of believers then something is very wrong with you. Where have you been the past 50 years? Obviously the rapture will end all of our problems, you just have to suck it up, bury all those bad feelings with canned joy, and wait it out. Hopefully, your life will end soon enough - but don't trigger the end of your life, by God, just wait until death, because clearly life isn't worth living unless we're going to heaven when we die. That's what Jesus came for, right?

Wrong, idiots. Do you honestly think that "the people in John's church reading his letter for the first time, with Roman soldiers right outside their door, were thinking, 'this is going to be really helpful for people two thousand years from now who don't want to get left behind'," [from Jesus Wants to Save Christians, emphasis added] or were they thinking something a little more relevant to their time? It wasn't more than mere coincidence that the Caesar of the time actually had a mark that all citizens had to put on their hand to be able to buy and sell.

But I suppose this ideology, obsessing over eschatalogical theologies and hoping for death so we can go to heaven, has something to do with how not revolutionary our faith has become. A Messiah comes and says "I have been anointed to preach good news to the poor", and we teach that to the 5% of the world that owns 1/5 of the entire worlds wealth. We live comfortably, with the A/C on at every Starbucks around the corner, with obesity plaguing the McDonalds on the other corner, and consumer materialism effectively blinding all who enter every single Wal-Mart, Best Buy, or department store in the nation.

I know my vocabulary could be considered a little over-dramatic, but seriously consider the message of Jesus. Maybe that's why we can't get people to really engage. Lack of commitment. Who would seriously want to follow all of what Jesus taught; that requires sacrifice. Material sacrifice, time sacrifice, image sacrifice, we would have to give a lot.

But that's the point, isn't it? Less is more? Downward movement? A legitimate sharing possessions? Forsaking the American dream? Can we start being a little more communal with those we don't live with? Strangers? Or will we be stuck learning about these things, intellectually, and then drive our cars to our homes and watch some television after attending our compartmentalized Sunday morning/night faith meeting.

What we've become is not equal to what we need to be.
Psh. Revolutionary my ass.