hemingway, bush, and really bad books

I was up late two nights ago, when to my surprise I started getting IM's. I should explain that it's a given that I don't get IM's; I'm over 30. No one instant messages me — or almost no one. It was a friend of mine from one of those places God Hath Forgot, one who has developed a razor wit and a great deal of artistic skill. For the sake of this transcript, I shall call her by her Indian name, Walks in the Rain

On New Orleans legacy of President Bush
Dave: Natasha's brother Kevin lives in New Orleans. He and his wife were told "Evacuate or have ID with you so we know whose body it is."
WitR: I guess they weren't taking any chances after Katrina
Dave: Can't blame them. That'll be an albatross around Bush's neck about as long as Iraq will be. Twin failures.
WitR: is there room for another albatross around his neck? he's got a flock already
Dave: It depends. How many arrows does he have in that damn crossbow of his anyway?
WitR: secretly Cheney is his living quiver. That's why he always looks so uncomfortable.
Dave: Ah. The old +5 Quiver of Cheney. Guaranteed to hit an albatross at every turn.
WitR: if not quail.
Dave: And I guess that makes the GOP the crew of dead souls manning the ship.
(Clearly Cheney has a cursed -5 shotgun of birding)

On Samuel Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and other great literature
WitR: I have not read the poem since ninth grade and just barely remember that the crew is dead
Dave: For shame. I read the book just a few months ago to my kids.
WitR: well, i tend to forget things that i associate with ernest hemingway and my ex's music collection
Dave: You associate "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" with Hemingway!?
I think I'm going to be sick, just imagining how Hemingway would tell the story.
WitR: no, i associate everything i was forced to read for school with ernest hemingway
Dave: "The ancient mariner had been wounded in the war, and had never been able to have sex since."
It was assigned in freshman lit. I enjoyed it anyway.
"her hair was black, her lips were red, her skin was white as leprosy"
WitR: "There was a man. He shot a bird. Everyone died. The wind was cold."
you realize that i had more than one book assigned by hemingway, and yet we never got around to discussing his BLATANTLY obvious misogynistic issues
Dave: Well, you did go to a Christian high school. Misogyny is a fabrication of feminazis, don't you know.
WitR: no, really! we like women! we just don't think they should do anything that doesn't involve uteruses.
Dave: Unless their husbands or fathers tell them to.

On the coherency of the Inernet and those who write therein:
Dave: OK, I just read so-and-so's post. I can't tell if he's agreeing with you or dismissing your post as the first wave of analyseing (sic) Palin, or fluf. (sic)
His creative spelling doesn't make him easier to understand.
WitR: i can deal with creative spelling because my college roommate had a learning disability. It's the creative syntax and punctuation that throws me off.
Dave: If it were just creative spelling, I could manage. But he's got the syntax and punctuation too -- not to mention unclear and underdeveloped thoughts -- and the total leaves me at a loss.
WitR: I think he may just be a malfunctioning turing program
Dave: On the other hand, his "be-bop" post makes perfect sense.
WitR: maybe the closer he gets to agreeing with me, the better he writes
Dave: Doubtless that's true of us all.
The Buddha himself gained enlightenment, started agreeing with you, and wrote flawlessly.
WitR: i think if i'm the pinnacle of human development, someone is playing a serious prank on humanity
Dave: This is revelation to you?
WitR: merely stating the obvious for the elucidation of humankind
it's Zen
for my next trick i will clap one hand

On the latest attempts at the Great End-Times novel:
WitR: http://www.arrivaloftheprince.com <-- egads="" horrible.="" looks="" p="" this="">Dave: Wow. How on earth do you find these things?
WitR: facebook sidebar ad, actually. god only knows why it showed up for me, usually i get olivia cruises and photography classes
Dave: You realize I have to buy you a copy of the book for Christmas now. Along with "The Eye of Argon."
WitR: do it, and i'll send your daughters a starter beading kit
Davw: We'll add the beading kit to all the other beading kits they have. You'll have to do better than that to threaten me.
WitR: curses. foiled again. st. bernard puppy?
Dave: Evangeline's allergic to dogs. Sorry. "it was inconceivable, but it was becoming clear that the earth's rotation was inexplicably slowing down" It's that whole lost day with Joshua all over again! Thank God NASA already has it figured out. "What happens if it keeps slowing down?" asked the President.
WitR: i like how the Senate chaplain is now in high-level security briefings
Dave: Good to know that Bush is still at the helm when Armageddon comes. "Doctor Wang removed a pipe from his coat pocket and began to fumble with it. He could not conceal the fact that his hands were shaking" Oh, thank God, it;s just his hands shaking. For a moment I thought he was going to get footloose.
WitR: oh man. read the page on lucifer's DNA it involves Nephilim, naturally
Dave: Of course. I hadn't realized it, but that whole tradition has roots in the book of Enoch. Pullman drew on a lot of that for "His Dark Materials."
WitR: carey builds on a lot of angelology for the kushiel series, actually more of an alternate-universe setup there
Dave: Where's the page on Lucifer's DNA?
WitR: http://www.arrivaloftheprince.com/luciferDNA.htm
Dave: I have to say, so far it looks better than "Left Behind."
WitR: that's about like saying that Wendy's is better than McDonalds
Dave: I didn't say it was high praise.
WitR: honestly, reading the setup, it COULD be interesting, in THEORY, but sadly, the fact that the author is a Christian totally blows its chances of doing so
Dave: His explanation of the book and Uizhun-Tabriz actually is pretty interesting. Too bad he didn't write the book that well. I hate to agree, but you're right.
WitR: http://www.arrivaloftheprince.com/StoneTablets.htm
Dave: The only good writers in the Christian market are all dead.
WitR: that's because no living author with a sense of decency would be caught dead in the Christian market if they're any good at all they have a major market presence anyway
Dave: "The deciphered message of this tablet is: 14q43 215860406 215882973" My life has been transformed.
WitR: yes! now you know God's mastercard number.
Dave: Alas, they won't accept the cattle on a thousand hills down at the supermarket.
WitR: yeah, but think of the amazon bill you could run up with it
Dave: Adds a whole new meaning to "Forgive us our debts," doesn't it?
WitR: indeed, though you have to wonder what God's credit score would be satan's is obviously 666 so given numerology, that would make jesus' a respectable 777
Dave: In this economy, it's probably dropped. Although Satan probably qualifies for a Bush tax cut. Jesus, being working class, it SOOL, being as he's a shameless grifter and leech on the welfare state. I bet his credit rating is in tatters.
WitR: well, i'd imagine rather that he has little to no credit history, never having the wherewithal to apply for any
Dave: Where have you been the last twelve months? That's no impediment to getting financing.
WitR: yeah, but whenever he applies for a mortgage he keeps getting denied when he uses a house in Heaven as collateral >>#That Lucifer was a mortal—and therefore had DNA. This fact is also in the Bible.<< Of course! I totally learned about Lucifer's DNA in sunday school.
Dave: Sure. It's right before the passage that talks about the collapse of the vapor canopy sending all the animals into the first-ever hibernative state.
Surely you remember that.
WitR: unfortunately there actually was a vapor canopy entry in the world history / bible class i took in high school
Dave: Well of course there was. You didn't think I was writing that by accident, did you?

Send letters to the damned with the post-Rapture post

A friend of mine recently referred me to the Post-Rapture Post, a service that offers to deliver a message to your unsaved relatives when the Rapture comes and you are no longer available to point them toward Christ.

For those who take the Rapture seriously, the site has everything one could want. It offers a wide range of messages, from personalized notes to simple premade cards that say "I told you so." It also offers various Cafe Press sort of merchandise, and even a guide on how to navigate the difficulties of life now that the Great Tribulation has begun (an authentic Bible).

The site is absolutely stunning in the respectful way it goes about its business so quietly tongue-in-cheek. There are appropriate Scripture verses on every page, and down-to-earth explanations of basic Christian doctrine pertaining to salvation.

From the Post-Rapture Post's promotional material:

Just write your letter and it will be hand-delivered immediately following the exodus of the pure from the Earth. But you must be thinking to yourself, "How can the letters be delivered after the Rapture?" The answer is simple. The creators of this site are Atheists. That's right, we don't believe in God. How else would we be able to deliver your correspondence after the Rapture?

I don't believe in the Rapture myself, so I suppose if I were to use the Rapture Post, my message might say something like, "Well, it looks my eschatology was wrong, but at least my theology was better than yours. Neener neener."

Praying for peace, not for victory

I'm not praying for our troops.

That's not exactly true. I am praying for our troops, just as I'm praying for Iraq, and for the members of the insurgency there. I'm not praying for coalition troops to visit a crushing defeat on the heads of their enemies, and I'm not praying that President Bush will bring our troops home tomorrow, nor that he'll announce a timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq.

And I'm certainly not praying that the quagmire we've turned Iraq into will continue as it has been, sucking in more lives every day as neighbor turns upon neighbor and the holiest, most sacred and most mundane duties become life-endangering.

What am I praying for then? If you rule out a decisive victory, a sudden or gradual withdrawal, and the perpetuation of the mess we've made of Iraq, what is there left to pray for?

I've realized something over the last few days: War is outside the nature of Christ. Completely outside. Not just this abominable mess where people are raping young women and destroying families to cover it up, where suicide bombers are blowing up religious services, where one person cuts off another one's head and calls it a righteous act, but war itself -- where one member of the family of Man fires a weapon at another member in hopes of ending his life -- is a horrible abrogation of what God intended his creation to be. It is outside the nature of Christ. It is not what God desires for his creation.

The prophets, looking ahead to the Kingdom of God, saw a time when the nations would lay down their swords and shields, when we would beat our weapons into plowshares and study war no more. They saw it coming from far off, and they rejoiced to see it, if only at a distance. I realized today that I've been doing the same thing, waiting for a pie-in-the-sky time when the poor would receive the Kingdom of Heaven, when the meek would inherit the earth, and when peace would come.

There's no need to wait. The Kingdom is here. It's now. It's arrived.

Speaking to the stunned congregants of his hometown, Jesus declared, "'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

"Today this scripture is fulfilled in your presence."

If we believe that the Kingdom of God is incarnated in the person of Jesus, and if we also believe that Christ is in us and we are become the Body of Christ, then there is no need for there to be war, poverty, hunger, or other such afflictions among us. They are there because we allow them to be, because we accept that they are a part of life, and because we have failed to engage the world around us and address the root causes of these problems.

Peace — note that I did not say appeasement — is not easy. It is far harder to maintain the peace than it is to go to war. Peace requires understanding your foe, meeting his needs and making sacrifices yourself, something we are woefully unprepared or unwilling to do.

Peace, not war, is God's dream for the Middle East, just as it is his dream for every tribe, nation and language.

I'm not praying for victory in Iraq. I'm praying for peace.




Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

the antichrist

Let me pose this question: Must there in fact be an Antichrist? Many Bible scholars believe the term refers simply to anyone who raises himself to the level of a god, and that the beast mentioned in Revelation is simply Nero himself, that John was prophesying the fall of Nero and the end of the Neronian persecution.

That depends at least in part on the date Revelation was written. If it was written prior to A.D. 70, that interpretation is a possibility. Written after A.D. 90, as it traditionally is held, it can't be referring to Nero unless it's a "reverse prophecy"; i.e., the Johannine author made up the prophecy after the fact.

The European Union is the current bogeyman because the book of Revelation appears to be describing Rome, and the Roman Empire hasn't been a player in over a thousand years. Ever since the Protestant Reformation under Luther and others, the Roman Catholic Church has been a popular contender for the role now being assigned by lay scholars to the European Union. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was "prophesied" to usher the Antichrist in to power, remember? That was one of the reasons Gorbachev was seen as the Antichrist, because he was offering real peace between the Soviet bloc and the West for the first time in decades.

The Antichrist is also interesting because he's changed over the years too. Luther and other reformers were called the Antichrist because they were breaking the Church; before them, I'm sure Mohammed was called the Antichrist since many early Muslims had been Catholics. The papacy has been the leading contender for Antichrist under many generations of fundamentalism, although I've heard some groups insist the Antichrist will be Jewish. These days, with East and West seemingly headed toward collision, I'm sure there are groups claiming the Antichrist will be an Arab. (I've also heard some say that the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9-11 was the fall of Babylon talked about in Revelation, since New York is the cultural capital of America's global empire.)

We usually make the Antichrist whoever our demon of the moment is, whether it makes sense or no. It's a shame, really, since that also means that we blind ourselves to what the Bible really says about the ultimate fate of those who aggrandize themselves and defy the will of the Almighty, and miss how we can apply those Scriptures to our present lives and situations.

rapture

I've gone from believing in a pre-Trib Rapture to not believing in a Rapture at all. The entire doctrine is relatively recent -- it stems from "revelations" and visions a woman in Scotland had in the 19th century, and connects verses that have very little bearing on one another.

If this really were the "blessed hope of the Church," as Assembly of God doctrine holds, I think Jesus or one of the New Testament writers would have talked about it at more length. The closest we get is Paul's "We shall not all die" passage in 1 Thessalonians, but that seems to me like a Second Coming passage, not a "Last train out of here" passage.

Saying you don't buy into the escapism of the Rapture and consider it a phony-baloney doctrine is like professing to be a liberal in an evangelical church. It's enough to get you run out of many churches and to get people praying for your eternal soul.

You should have been there when I told my students several years ago that Jesus probably had zits when he was their age. And when I said he probably hit himself on the thumb with his hammer from time to time, even as an adult ... woo-HOO! Not knowing Aramaic, I have no idea what he would have said. I don't doubt the equivalent of a few four-letter words could have been in there. (One only wonders what they would have thought if I had said that Jesus probably was a social drinker.)

I've watched the fascination and cultic devotion the "Left Behind" books have sparked with a morbid fascination. I've read a few End Times novels before -- Dave Hunt's "The Archon Conspiracy" and Michael Yousseff's "Earth King" are two that spring to mind, although my all-time favorite has to be Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens" -- and I mostly see them as harmless, if badly written.

Note I said "mostly." The books do feed a tendency at least among American evangelicals to escapism and to a bit of self-righteousness. Readers who take the Rapture seriously get a kick of seeing all that they won't have to go through from the books, which isn't healthy.

Beyond that, I don't think the books' eschatology is sound, I think the writing is fairly atrocious, what I've read of it, and I think it also reflects a conservative Protestant American view of things rather than necessarily a biblical one. Notice the Antichrist is going to be Russian; if the books were influenced by a more contemporary theologian/scholar type, the Antichrist probably would be an Arab. Fifty years ago, the books probably would have made him Catholic.

Then there's the sects of Christianity are taken up. The pope is included, but mostly as a token Catholic, meant to widen the book's appeal. The pope in the books is a fairly Protestant pope. This is more just the writers' biases, I think, than actual eschatology resulting from Bible study. (Yeah, I know I'm treading on thin ice there, since Jenkins is a scholar of sorts, though probably not much more credible than Hal Lindsay when you get down to it.)

I also don't get the fascination with the Second Coming in Christian writing. The Bible says the Day of the Lord will not be a day of rejoicing, but one of terror; and while it's a day we're told to pray for, we're also told to keep our feet firmly planted in the now, sharing the gospel with those around us and ministering to those in need.

For some reason, though, the Second Coming ranks what I would consider disproportionately high on what we like to read about. There are far more books on prophecy and the End Times at the Evil Christian Bookstore than about feeding the hungry or missions.

Anyway, I've probably shot my mouth off enough now. I'd recommend looking at the book of Revelation in a different way if it helps you get past the poison. Mike Card once described the book as a series of hymns in praise of Jesus Christ; that is, it's a revelation not of the end but of Christ in all his glory. That's a good approach; another is to say "Never mind the prophecy, what lessons can I draw that apply to the here and now?" I've always found that one makes sense.

Then there's the preterist view of Revelation, but I don't really hold with that either; it's a fairly recent doctrine too, growing out of the notions of the Great Century 100 years ago, and doesn't really square with what I understand the views of the early church were. It holds that the events of Revelation all have been fulfilled.

Interesting tangent: Apokalipsis is a Greek word that means "unveiling." We usually think of Apocalyptic literature as being about tremendous calamity or disaster -- Apocalypse is synonymous with Doomsday in the common parlance -- but the whole idea behind the word is that it's making plain something otherwise considered mysterious.

Our problem is that we lack the cultural clues to properly understand the writing, so we often get rattled by stuff like the thirty-headed beast of Jehoboazarrihim and the seventh moon of Timbuk Two, but a lot of the clues to understand it all are found in the Tanakh and the imagery it uses.

book of revelation

In a discussion about the Rapture, a friend of mine argued that the book of Revelation is a book of prophecy concerning the events that lead up to the Second Coming. This is an interpretation I'm familiar with; it essentially holds that the letters to the seven churches each refer to a different period in the church age, Laodicea being the church of the Last Days. After that letter, there is no more mention of the church, just one judgment or act of God after another. So clearly, the church is Raptured or removed from the world, and everyone else is left to face the wrath of God.

The problem is that this assumes that many of the events in Revelation are not already fulfilled, as at least one school of thought claims. (Mr. 666 would be Nero Caesar, using a form of letters-for-numbers familiar to Jews of the day; Babylon was a codeword for Rome, as supported textually in one of Peter's epistles, and so on.) In this reading, it was a book written primarily to Christians experiencing persecution in the first century.

Another view is that Revelation is a recap of God's actions throughout biblical history when his people were persecuted, hence the parallels with writings by other prophets, major and minor, and various other O.T. Scriptures.

In either case, the verses of Revelation stand to support a belief in the supremacy of Christ and the triumph of his kingdom over adversity and affliction, no matter the source. So as I think we're all agreeing, the actual foretelling significance of the book is less important to our daily living than its revelation of Christ through apocalyptic imagery.

(It's rather ironic, isn't it, that "apokalypsis" means "unveiling," but many Christians view the book's meaning as veiled?)

I think the "apocalypse" of the book's title is the unveiling of our hope in Christ, within that book; i.e., the book's main themes are quite plain and evident.

Nearly everyone concedes that some of the events described in the book of Revelation have not yet been fulfilled, although I'm aware of one school of thought -- which I do not subscribe to, incidentally -- that holds that Revelation 19 refers to the triumph of Christianity over the paganism of Rome, with chapters 20-22 being the only unfulfilled prophecy. And those, of course, are waiting for the church to accomplish its purpose.

the rapture

Can't speak for the others, but I make wisecracks about the Rapture precisely because it's been used to justify all sorts of self-indulgent behavior, because it fuels people's escapist interpretations of Christianity, and because the more I understand Scripture and the history of eschatology, the less I believe in a Rapture occurring at any point in church history.

The principal verses for the doctrine of the Rapture are in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, where the dead and the living meet Christ in the clouds; and in Matthew 24:36-41, where Jesus speaks about some being taken and others left. Of course, Jesus never says that believers are taken and unbelievers are left behind, nor does Paul give any timeframe in reference to the rest of his eschatology when the Parousia was to occur.

Historically, the doctrine of the Rapture is fairly recent, coming out of a revival in Scotland in the 19th century, making it just a decade or so older than the "We will usher in a reign of peace, and then Christ will come" teaching. The relative newness of such teachings, while by no means disproving them, does make them a *little* suspect, I think.

In any event, it's a pretty silly doctrine to base (or wreck) one's whole life on. As you say, Christ is more concerned with what we do with the times we are given.

tragic antichrist

Of course, the Antichrist could be a tragic figure, not wanting to rule the earth, trample God's people beneath his feet, and drink the blood of infants, but the situation could force his hand. The entire role could be thrust upon him.

Walking away from the Rapture

The Rapture is one of those things I find myself less inclined to believe in than I once did.

The Rapture is what some call the blessed hope of the church. A popular teaching among evangelical and fundamentalist believers, it's an event in which Christians worldwide are removed from the earth in an instant and transported to heaven. This either takes place pre-Tribulation, before the rise of the Antichrist; mid-Tribulation, halfway trough his seven-year reign; or post-Tribulation, immediately prior to the Second Coming and Day of Judgment.

A former Pentecostal, I've been very indoctrinated to believe in the notion of a pre-Trib Rapture followed by the seven years of Tribulation and the millennial reign of Christ. A few years ago, the thought of the third Temple being built would have heralded to me a sure sign of the End being upon us. I admit I do wonder.

But all that aside, I've found that as I've grown further along in my faith, I find myself less inclined to believe in the Rapture, though not in the Tribulation. The Wittenburg Door  had had a pretty interesting piece in its last issue about the origins of the doctrines of the Rapture, and interviewed a fellow who traces it to 19th-century Scotland in the midst of massive revival preaching, including sermons by a woman who claimed to have had a vision that Cyrus Scofield later legitimized in his study Bible.

Those who favor a post-Millennial return of Christ -- i.e., one where the church ushers in a thousand-year reign of peace, and then Christ returns -- have never made much sense to me from a biblical doctrine of man's sin and the space the Bible gives to a coming time of wrath. Historically, that movement can be traced to the late 19th century here in America and the sense of the Great Century and America's "manifest destiny."

Overall, though, I find that I don't think about eschatology much any more and try not to worry about it too much. It's more important to focus on the people around us and what we can do to reach them with Christ's love, by volunteering at the food kitchen or giving a cup of water to someone who is thirsty.