The End

Eschatology is a fancy word for what one thinks concerning the way the world will end. It's typically a subject of doctrinal, literalisitic nit-picking. People try and make very modern explanations of apocalyptic Scriptures, taking things literally or figuratively where it suits them and their ideas best. My denomination has solved this problem by basically treating the apocalyptic Scriptures as though they don't exist. I hear Revelation used in a sermon very sparsely. Honestly, I prefer this to the average church where people 'unofficially' use the Left Behind series as a Bible commentary, but I don't find it to really be the best answer.

First, allow me to point out one thing: if people can get you to fear things that don't matter then they have thus successfully blinded you to things that do. I am understanding more and more of our world to be this way. So, consider, if a congregation spends a good portion of its time fretting over the way life will be wiped off the planet, it is very easy to assume that they might well do nothing about the way life is currently wasting away in the 'dark corners' of our world. So many American Christians live their lives 'preparing themselves' for the rapture, and have thus missed the Kingdom that is already here! More on that in a bit.

Second, I'll just spit out one of my biases. I believe that the majority of the Bible is written in the language of dramatic narrative. This means that its first purpose is to tell a story with power and persuading conviction. This also means that it often abandons historicity for the sake of the message it hopes to convey. Furthermore, where it desires the Bible conveys legendary/mythological materials as truth, and truth should never be reduced or confined to mere facts. This is the way I read the beginning of the Bible, and the way I read the end of it. If that offends you, I wish it didn't, but believe me, I have reflected on this deeply and I'm not saying it uncritically. God is real, and he is much greater than the book that we use to understand him. In fact I find that God is so utterly real that it is thoroughly impossible to know him by sequences of facts strung together in the pages of Scripture. If the Bible were pure historical report, we would never know God. Scripture itself admits that even the greatest of miracles don't suffice to turn our hearts to God (Exodus). It takes art, drama, and deep expression to win people. This is what Scripture is to me: the Theatre of God.

And we need this more than we often acknowledge. Walter Brueggemann speaks of our modern situation as one where we have absolutized the present, forgetting the past and the future. If we allow it, the Bible offers us much more than a history lesson. It gives us a way to understand where we come from. The Bible provides us with a Drama that gives us different eyes to interpret human experience. In this way the Bible is not set up against secular versions of history, only secular interpretations thereof. It is the way that we interpret what we know that the Bible challenges, it shows little concern in comparing the historicity of texts and archeological evidence. Beyond that Scripture frees us from the tyranny of the present moment by showing us the future. Again, not in sense that their is literally seven scrolls and seven lamp stands in heaven waiting for some spiritual/historical events to unfold. Revelation is a myth, make no mistake. But, it is a myth that is true. . . .

Eschatology is the dramatic representation of the future. It is God letting us live outside the present and experience what will be. When I hear most people talk of the End, I find that Brueggemann is much too right. We see the future in Revelation and try to force our modern world into that mold. We impose new names, as though Iran, Syria, China, and the United States have anything to do with what the Bible is getting at. We reduce the future to be a mere extension of our present world. I see countless greedy and evil structures in our world relying on such a belief to subdue the faith of Jesus Christ into some consumer ideology to justify war in the Middle East and the Arab states. It is a lie.

In the Bible it is quite the opposite stance. The future is the primary realm of existence for the believer. We live far more in the future than we do even in the present moment. This is what it means to be the people of God's promise. The future is much more than what the present will become. This is not what often becomes a form of idle waiting for the End, but instead is a radical view that the End has arrived and is still coming in fullness. It encourages us to relentless action in the present world, because in such action we see tangibly what it is that we hope for. The good we do is graffiti to Satan's kingdom, telling people of the ultimate outcome. We know the end and thus live boldly subversive lives to the structures of evil we encounter every day. We don't assume to win the battle for God, but instead erect signs of the triumphant God we serve. We rest on the promise of the future which gives new life in the present.

"Human life and human history have an end. But the message of Jesus tells us that, at this end, there is not nothing, there is God."

Jesus' faith is one that sees God as the ultimate end. In a very real sense the future is God's place of existence. We do not arrive at God by the simple procession of historical events. We do not make God come to our reality. We determine the future only insofar as we confine it to the present moment. (That's as strong a blow as modernism could ever receive)

In this sense the Kingdom of God too remains a future reality. It is not fully represented in our present existence. So, in a way the present remains cut off from the future of God. Except, (here comes the gospel) that in Jesus we find the Kingdom and the future with it, invading the present. It isn't fully here, but it is represented. Jesus is the representative of the Kingdom who tells us it is invading soon. This means that those who follow him have placed the allegience in the future, not the present. Our faith is in things to come, not in the things that are. These things to come, do not come about because Iran is making nuclear arms. They do not come about by Israel persecuting the Palestinians. Nuclear war does not equal Jesus' return. That would be the present invading the future.

Instead the future and God's Kingdom with it come by the will of God. So, in this we find the book of Revelation giving us theater to understand this future. It is not a book of historical predictions, least of all for events that would take place 2000 years after its original readers passed away! Some good that would do Roman Christians under Domitian's persecution, to say that in the year 2007 Jesus would come again. Revelation, instead, allows us to imaginitively live out God's future invading the present. In it we can see what the outcome is. Life's meaning is assured, because the future is known. In this drama we see the End that liberates us and implores us to tell the present world what's coming.