The SEMI Summer 14.1

the semi reflects on differences of opinion

summer 2014

a l e t t e r from the editor 2

legal jargon The SEMI is published as a service of the Fuller Theological Seminary community through Student Life & Services. Articles and commentaries do not necessarily reflect the views of FTS or of the SEMI. cover art Jaques-Louis David, Death of Socrates.

Paul’s letters are littered with references to the unity the church is to have in Christ. “One body,” he says, over and over. One body. This concept is such a sticking point for Paul that N.T. Wright suggests that Paul “would be horrified with how [the contemporary church has] cheerfully colluded with various types of disunity” (SEMI, Spring 14.2).

And yet one of Paul’s most famous scenes involves his picking a public fight with another Christian. And not just any Christian: Peter himself.

In the Book of Galatians, Paul tells of when he called out Peter for adhering to traditional Jewish food and holiness laws. Peter wasn’t clearly wrong—many of the laws he was following were in the Torah, held by both Jews and Christians as authoritative. According to Paul, Peter’s motives were wrong, though; he acted out of fear of hardliner Jewish Christians and alienated Gentile Christians as a result. So Paul said no.

Perhaps Peter said, “These laws are in Torah.”

Maybe Paul said, “Yes, but.”

The guy who was so concerned about unity in the church took the risk of disagreeing with another believer in order to encourage healthier motives and behaviors.

Might Paul have fractured the church then and there? Absolutely.

Congregations have split over smaller things. But Paul considered the argument in Galatians as one that needed to be had, not with spite or jealousy or a need to control by either interlocutor, but characterized instead by a genuine concern for the Gentile Christians caught in the middle of it.

This issue of the SEMI is about disagreeing, not over trite matters, but on issues that catch us and others in the machinery.

Disagreeing is important, and disagreeing well is crucial. Paul shows us that the health of the church might even depend on it. May we learn to do this well, and always with the hope of strengthening and correcting the Body of Christ for the sake of the world.

Reed Metcalf, Editor

letters to the editor The SEMI welcomes responses to its articles and commentaries on issues relevant to the FTS comminity. Responses may be e-mailed to semi@fuller.edu. Responses may be edited for length and content. write for us Add your voice to the SEMI. e-mail semi@fuler.edu with ideas for creative, insightful SEMI content.

Disagreeing is important, and disagreeing well is crucial.

Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology, absolutely.

*Billy Graham 3

Don’t you believe in ( )?

by Rachel Paprocki

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In the fall of 2011, I had a telephone conversation with one of my closest lifelong friends about changes that were already beginning to happen to my understanding of Christianity in those first weeks of my degree program at Fuller. Now with an MAT under my belt a few years later I can identify those changes as nuances (that wonderful seminary vocabulary word that covers a multitude of sins) and my feelings about them as growing pains, but at the time my thoughts and words were a confused, emotional jumble. Biblical errancy? Resurrection as metaphor? Redaction in the gospels? People—smart, educated, faithful people—actually believe this stuff and teach it in seminary?! Heaven forbid!

My concerns about my own intelligence, my newborn seminary career, and the Christian faith were myriad.

a brand-new alumna works through some methods for asking tough questions, giving negative responses, and being okay with it

Seeking to calm my fears and remind me of the orthodoxy (whatever that means) to which I had pledged myself in those blissfully ignorant pre-seminary years, my friend asked me a disarmingly simple question in exactly these words: “Yeah, but you still believe in the Bible, right?” I haven’t been able to forget her question, because even at the time, I knew it was a logical, even vital, but incredibly reductive inquiry. Because what does it mean to believe? Whose defintion of the Bible are we working with?

And who am I? I successfully evaded all those internal questions with a response along the lines of, “Uuhhmmm, I mean…well yes, but, and, it’s, you know. My concept of these things will be a lot bigger than it was before.” This was, at the time, the

simplest (most diplomatic?) way I could tell my very faithful, Bible-believing friend (and myself) that I was learning stuff that might lead to me change my mind about a few, or possibly many, things religious and otherwise. There is so much new knowledge here and I might become different, and I didn’t want to say that to her, to myself, or to the God I believed in.

I rightfully had plenty of those tricky things called feelings about the beginnings of this new endeavor, not the least of which was plain awe. The beginning of my time at Fuller had the student in me overjoyed at the thought that I had finally found a place where my two favorite things, Jesus and learning, explicitly came together. That same part of me was surprised and a little 5

bit concerned with my hesitation or inability to consider and incorporate new knowledge. In attempting to find me some bearings in the tumult of seminary’s first quarter, my friend and I each missed out on the profundity of that state of possible flux. What each of us wanted was to quell our fears about change. On the phone that day, comfort came at the cost of curiosity.

And to be honest, I wasn’t actually all that comfortable with my friend’s question in the moment or in the rigorous years to follow. Her implicit suggestion that I might be straying from the path embarrassed me—should it have? I felt shame for even bringing up the concept that my religious beliefs and spiritual practices, those things that were (and “should be,” I felt at the time) the absolute most consistent parts of myself, might not be as firm or palatable as they once were. Who was I to worry my friend or question my past pastors and professors? But even if I had been reassured by my friend’s well-meaning reminder of the Bible’s consistency, would my sense of calm, grounded in unwavering confidence in the ideas I already had, have been worth the sacrifice of further investigation into terrifying new thoughts?

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To make a long (and interesting! Ask me about it later) story short, we should just fast-forward through the two and a half years and existential crises that it took me to finish my MAT and skip to the pleasant summer morning that I’m writing this. On the other end of things, I can identify a few hard-learned principles of thought and behavior that have, with repeated application, made it okay that I didn’t (and don’t) know the answer to my friend’s uncomfortable question. I credit my survival of seminary education to these behaviors. They are, I can see in retrospect, those concepts of faith by which I had wanted to live all along in my life before Fuller; it just took a serious shock to my spiritual system to appreciate how important they actually are to living a god-filled life of openness, of balance among knowing, learning, and growing.

be mindful

Mindfulness is a trigger word for many that comes with associations with self-reliance and New Age spiritualty, but perhaps not surprisingly it was one of the first practices that helped me keep my metaphorical pants on in the stressful first quarters of seminary.

I learned that one deep breath after another, combined with active listening could get me through the most harrowing of lectures and sermons.

Over time my increased self-awareness at school seeped out into the other parts of my life, and I found myself more patient at work, more observant in public, more honest all the time.

It’s tough, but I have to admit that the rude awakening Fuller was for me left me a better human—but I had to work really, really hard for it.

be inquisitive

From the instant that, on my first day of classes at Fuller, I learned that redaction in the Gospels is “a thing,” I became scared to ask questions about the content and meaning of the Bible because I didn’t want to know what the answers might be and how they’d vary from scholar to scholar. I thought that anything different from what I previously “knew” to be true would have to mean that in some way my faith had been founded on inaccuracies, and that every new piece of knowledge would require me to completely reevaluate every nuance of my little life. This perspective was completely contrary to how I’d always approached faith and education, with the confidence that truth has nothing to fear from investigation. If I wasn’t going to investigate anything, like how I felt about my friend’s question about my biblical belief, then I was certain not to find any truth. Eventually curiosity (among other things) won out, and I find myself investigating all the time now. I’m convinced that the good that comes from investigation is the reason that the Divine gave humans intellect.

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be gracious

be active

Proverbs 21:25 reminds me that the desire for something paired with refusal to work for it leads to all kinds of death. Discouragement is a real, dangerous thing, especially in spiritual and emotional matters, and I found myself most discouraged throughout seminary in those moments when I craved for answers to all my existential questions to just appear from thin air, when I was unwilling to test the waters, read the books, go outdoors and experience possibility. Openness to understanding requires active commitment to mental and physical movement of all kinds. Colossians 3:23 advises us to work heartily at whatever we do, as though we were working for God and not humans.

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For years whenever I heard or read about God’s admonition to Paul that God’s grace is sufficient for humans, because God’s power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), I somehow always missed the second half of that sentence. What I took away instead was a chin-up sort of message that said whatever God had already given me in terms of mental or physical resources was more than enough, even if by all objective standards that did not seem to be the case, so I should quit whining and do a better job of being a human. This might not be entirely inaccurate, but it does miss the whole point of God’s reminder that Divine power plays compassionately on human weakness—on human need. Somewhere along the line I became somewhat liberated (I’m not all the way there yet) to be open with myself and my fellows about how truly screwed up and needful my life is. And not easily but definitely simply, this inward grace has allowed me to extend more outward grace.

be human

I miss the mark every day. I am impatient, I judge, I don’t help my roommates take the trashcans out to the curb. I am not always well-behaved.

I am not always compassionate. I am not perfect. But despite how terrible I am, I’m doing alright, and thanks to grace I’m able to say when I’m definitely not alright and need help. It’s okay to not be okay, and change for the better—even if that means changing your mind—is a gift and maybe is the definition of a redeemed life.

I’m still close friends with the person I had that phone conversation with, though I’m still not sure how I’d answer her question. Does that make me a bad seminarian? Well, the good news is that I’m not in seminary anymore, so whether I’m good at being in seminary is a moot point. But the better news is that I gained (earned and mostly was gifted) some important wisdom in the past three years that has allowed me to hold onto the people and ideas I love, while always remaining open to the possibility of new ones.

Rachel Paprocki survived being raised in Murrieta, CA by knitting and reading voraciously. She holds a bachelor’s in English literature and a master’s (MAT, ‘14) from Fuller. She earns her keep making coffee in the greater Los Angeles area, which she traverses by bicycle.

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“No cards?” I stared at the two Russian women from across the table.

“No cards.” Maria said firmly. “Have you played with UNO cards lately?”

“I haven’t played with UNO cards since I was five.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “Even touching UNO cards is like playing with real cards. And real cards are linked with gambling, so you can’t play with them because it’s sinful.”

“I see.” I looked to the side and saw that the other woman was smiling at me. I called her Babushka in my mind, because she was old and had a scarf tied around her head. “And what else must I not do?”

“Do you drink alcohol?”

“Well, I usually taste wine at the most because of my father. But no, I don’t like drinking alcohol. If you gave me a choice between a Diet Coke and a beer, I’d go for the Coke.”

The two of them looked at me as though I was a little insane, or an incompetent liar. I had not realized at the time that they were living in a cultural pocket where the drinking rates among Russian men were disproportionately high.

After a while, Maria just shrugged. “It’s bad even if you just taste wine. So no alcohol.”

The list went on. No fortune-telling. No videogames, and no films. Even if some of the films were good, it would be better if I did not watch them at all in the first 10

once upon an evening a true story of some mis-steps around important things

by Oswald Tsang

place. No Harry Potter, as reading about magic was the work of the devil. Writing about fantasy and magic was also an act that summoned the devil, which I suppose meant that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were now burning in the pits of hell – if the women even knew who they were in the first place. As I sat there and observed my favorite pastimes being destroyed one by one, I wondered how my older cousin could have married into such a culture.

It is my firm belief that when people react against something, they usually end up on the opposite extremity. My cousin had been a wild child in his youth and early adult years, which meant that he now viewed the performance-driven, rule keeping culture of his current church as a stringent corrective to his earlier years. “If I maintain a certain standard of following the rules and avoid doing bad stuff, at least I can be sure that I’ll pass and get into heaven,” he told me at one point. In hindsight, I would have been tempted to ask why God would favor the rules of an isolated church on the outskirts of Sacramento, but as Thanksgiving 2013 had just ended it probably would have gone badly. Besides, I did not know what his church was like at the time, since I had been invited to stay the night at his house for the first time.

It turned out that it really wasn’t his house as such, but more like a hangout for Maria’s – his wife – female Russian relatives. Dinner had been overwhelming in terms of portion size and hospitality, loaded with fat, meat, cream and sauces.

It wasn’t until after the meal that the conversation turned to religion, which then 11

turned into proselytization when I expressed my interest in what they believed. They claimed to be Pentecostals and seemed to express a great knowledge of the Holy Spirit, so I had voluntarily assented to their approach to see if God could work through them and provide me with a spiritual experience.

Now Babushka, having temporarily exhausted her probing, spoke to me in her broken English. “You need forgive from Pastor.”

“I’m not sure I understand.” It had been a long day of travelling, and the meticulous way they investigated my sins had begun to chaff against my nerves.

The two women spoke together in low tones, before Maria turned to me. “We asked you to talk about your sins before, right? Little sins can be forgiven on your own. But big sins need the pastor to carry up to the Lord.”

I was puzzled. “Why do I need the pastor when I have Jesus? Doesn’t Jesus lift our sins to the Father?”

Maria relayed this to Babushka, and Babushka tried her best to explain again with hand motions. “No. Pastor…lift the sins. Sins are too heavy to take by yourself.”

Maria added, “The pastor is the angel of the congregation. He’s special, so that’s why he has the power to carry your sins to God. Even if you don’t have big sins, it will be good for you to see him, to talk with him.”

“Wait a moment. But I don’t know him at all.”

Maria said, “Don’t worry. If you confess your sins to a pastor or an elder, and the elder speaks about it behind your back, your sins will also fall upon him.”

At this point, I realized that I have never heard of any Pentecostal, let alone mainstream Protestant theology professing such claims. The first was essentially a bastardized version of the Persona Christi as held within the Catholic priesthood.

But the karmic consequences of gossip? While it was certainly a useful way to get people to shut up, it was more Hindu than anything else. I finally agreed to go as I thought it was a good opportunity to explore their worshipping environment.

Long story short, I was bundled into the car and driven to their church, where they discovered that it was ‘Men’s Meeting Night’ and that the pastor was unavailable. Babushka was again careful to press about my sins along the way until we got out of the car. The one thing that I took away from this was the exclusiveness of it all, from the layout of the church compound to the Russian-only language to the signs that may have well said, “No English”. Bald Russian men who looked more like thugs hung around the main entrance, so I hurried back into the car. I was driven back to meet Maria’s father, who was an elder and minister at their church.

Maria’s father, or Baba as she called him, greeted me with a handshake and an embrace. I learnt soon after that he apparently had the gift of prophecy. We went upstairs to the master bedroom, and they closed the door. Maria asked me, “Do you want to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit?”

“Well…yes.”

“Okay. The first thing that you have to do, is to plead with God. You’re like a child asking for candy, like this: Givegivegivegivegivegivegivegive.”

“What?” I blinked. “Why?” “You start saying it, and you will speak in tongues afterwards. God will give you what you ask for.”

“I…” I hesitated. While their theology was different, was there still the possibility 12

that I could encounter God in this way? It was one thing talking about systematic theology, but talking about experience was a very subjective matter. “Okay. I’ll try.

Givegivegivegivegive…”

Three pairs of eyes watched me, waiting for the moment that I would burst into the nonsensical gibberish that would indicate the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Minutes later, I felt a bead of sweat slide down my forehead, and noticed that Babushka had laid down a pile of tissues on the bed in anticipation of my emotional breakdown.

“I’m sorry.” I felt an iron coil squeezing at my heart. “It’s not working.”

“Okay. We’ll first pray with you, and then let you do it on your own.” Maria nodded at me. “You ready?” “…Yeah.” I wasn’t.

The whole process repeated itself again, this time with the addition of three very loud voices, until Babushka stopped us and said something to Maria. Maria then said, “Oswald, we can’t hear you. You have to pray louder.”

Torn between my status as a guest, a family member, and the duty to be polite, I forced a wave of frustration back down my esophagus. “Maria. You must understand that people at my church pray quietly and more slowly. Not everyone prays like you do. Do you understand?”

Babushka laughed and said, “Okay, okay. It’s okay.” This time round, they did indeed pray a little more quietly, but then stopped as soon as I began to show any sign of speaking gibberish. It was as though they specifically wanted to hear my gibberish noises, and every time they stopped I felt their eyes watching me ever more closely.

In the enclosed room, time seemed to stretch on forever. Whatever came out of my mouth then did not come from a heart full of peace and joy, but one that was full of confusion and reluctance.

After several more attempts, it was clear to all by then that there would be no ecstatic manifestation of the Spirit. Conveniently, Baba then said, “I don’t know why, but I have a vision of a crystal ball.”

The women looked at me, and I knew that I was about to go through another bout of interrogation for my sins. On the other hand, they thought they had found the source of my prayer problems.

“Did you ever go to the fortune teller?” Maria asked.

“No! I’ve told you before, haven’t I?” Maria looked concerned. “Sometimes, maybe you’ve forgotten about it. Maybe you did something in video games or watched a film that had fortune-telling in it.”

After more praying, Baba later said again, “Now I have a vision of the statue of Mary.”

“What do you think of Mary?” Babushka asked me through Maria’s translating.

“I think that Mary can be a very good role model for women, but that’s about it.”

“Do you give praise, or worship her?” Babushka asked again.

“I told you before, I’m not Catholic. So no –” “Oswald, I don’t know why, but for some reason the words ‘Harry Potter’ keep on coming back in my mind.” Maria interrupted as though she had just seen a dead rat. “Do you want to tell us something?”

By this time, I had already spent more than two hours in the bedroom. What happened afterwards was that Maria and Babushka left, and I had a further one-on-one 13

confession session with Baba – a man that I had only just met. I don’t know why I had allowed it. Perhaps my sense of clarity had begun to fracture under the strain of such an environment. Perhaps I still clung to the notion that they were somehow family, and that I could be safe with them. There is nothing here to be said except that it was one of the most awkward, vulnerable, and constrictive experiences that I’ve ever had.

I did not sleep that night, indignant at myself for being subjected to such an experience. Baba’s later “vision” of a globe of light approaching a fence did not help either, when he proclaimed that it was a sign from God that He had forgiven me. I was mentally and physically exhausted by that point, and did not care about anything else. I had genuinely wanted to learn and experience from a different spiritual ‘tradition’. My mistake was that I had suspended my critical thinking in favor of the untempered pursuit of experience, even if it was for that one night. As a result, my hosts’ obsession with performance and sin nearly killed me inside within the space of five hours, and killed others too as I later found out – Two of Maria’s brothers had left their church and had gone on to live a life of drugs and imprisonment. To this day, she has never spoken of them.

Any moral or ethical system that fails to provide a certain allowance for failure or grace is doomed to collapse, because its participants are only human. I still worry to this day for my older cousin, his family, and his children. While it may be easy to point at and dismiss Maria’s church, I see her church instead as the caricature that can embody the faults our ‘biblical’, ‘mainstream’ churches are all too capable of. The most important and tragic thing is noting that such abuses may come from good intentions – Maria, Baba, and Babushka were trying to help my faith in the only way they knew how, despite having warped and broken concepts of God and His demands.

Those in contemporary Christian ministries are capable of committing the same mistakes too. For example, it is one thing to point out someone else’s sin, but another if such an attempt becomes a baton which is then used to beat someone over the head. A pastor may have a well-intentioned desire to get members of his flock struggling with various sins back on track, but it is possible for him to attempt to ‘fix’ them without care and destroy them in the process instead. In short, it is all too easy to blindly focus on what is ‘right’ at the expense of other people without reflecting on whether ‘right’ is really ‘right’. May we all instead embrace a Christian ethic which focuses on the development of a person’s character, which loves and accepts a person’s flaws during his or her walk in life and time, and encourages the growth of that person no matter how many times he or she falls in weakness.

A few days later, I was back in Los Angeles and was grocery shopping when I received a phone call. I answered it and heard the voice of my older cousin.

“Hey, Oswald! Maria wants to talk to you.” He sounded breathless, as though it was a matter of great urgency.

I bit my lip as I heard rustling on the other side of the phone, and then a woman’s voice. “Hello?”

“Hey, Maria. How are you?”

“Oswald, we finally figured it out! We now know why Baba had the vision of Mary!”

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“Uh-huh. And what would that be?”

“You told us once that you took Communion without being baptized. That’s what Catholics do!”

I stopped for a moment, and then suppressed the urge to laugh. My responses to Baba’s “visions” had clearly thrown them off guard, so much so that they had actually bothered to wrestle for a few days with what “sin” might fit the bill. On second thought, it was also a little creepy. “Are you sure that’s what Catholics believe?”

“Yes, that’s what Catholics believe.” It was ironic as Catholics actually believed the opposite – Baptism was a fundamental requirement before one could take Mass.

“Look, Maria. You’re in Sacramento, and I’m back here in Los Angeles. What do you want me to do about it?”

“You need to repent, and ask God for forgiveness about that.” Oh, the utter irony of that statement.

“Hey, Maria. Thanks for your advice, but I’m out here doing grocery shopping.

The signal isn’t really good here, so can we talk later?”

“But you still need to ask for repentance.”

“Okay, yes. Thank you for letting me know, but as I said I’m currently outside at the moment. The mobile signal isn’t good here, so I just want to say thank you for letting me stay at your house once again. Thank you for everything, so goodbye and God bless!”

With that, I pocketed my phone, sighed, and browsed the selection of chocolate bars and marshmallows in front of me.

a note from the semi While the preceding narrative does report true events and conveys the perceptions, reactions, and feelings of the author to the author’s best capacity, this piece is not intended to represent the views of The SEMI or of Fuller Theological Seminary on any or all of the subjects discussed therein, including issues of ecumenism; conversational translation/mistranslation; cultural interpretation/misinterpretation; biblical hermeneutics; Christian morality; pastoral authority; charismata; family dynamics; and the like.

The SEMI does hold, however, that honest accounts of interpersonal and inter-denominational conflict, like this piece, are important for the church to consider. Personal narratives offer the benefit of showing how the church deals with conflict in real life. These stories can be compared with our best intentions and highest aspirations for our own behavior as we strive to reflect and embody God’s perfect love. We can learn from our own examples, and that requires sharing stories.

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truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it,

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nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.

*Maimonides 17

tomorrow matters t o d a y what is a seminarian to do with different ideas about last things ...right now?

by Reed Metcalf

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I remember being a slightly skittish high-schooler watching the History Channel in the early 2000s. A convergence of the horrific events of September 11, growing hype over the Mayan Apocalypse just around the corner in 2012, and the popularity of the Left Behind series had me thinking that the world would end soon. The History Channel was capitalizing on this general end-times furor by bringing on “biblical experts” and “prophets” to discuss how Armageddon would come about, and we could see codes written in biblical texts and September 11 had been prophesied, and Nostradamus had said and and and and. And I actually lost sleep over it.

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Well, as I grew up and realized that, In the evangelical church, eschatology as catastrophic as September 11 was, the has been something that is either off wars and unrest and famine that were limits or highly disputed. Many Christoted as sure signs that the end was nigh tians don’t go near it. I remember having were nothing unusual. Yes, they were one of my best friends from my church horrible, but this sort of thing has been back home come visit me at Fuller. I consistently happening as far back as we had a stack of books from the library can see in recorded history. The end was and bookstore piled in a corner of the not really around the corner—at least apartment. I pointed them out—all were not for the reasons the “experts” said it about the Revelation of John, on which was—and it turned out that the History I was doing two papers and a sermon.

Channel is pretty bad at doing history.

My friend shook his head. “Have fun,” But these queshe said. “You can Some passages are tions did stick with keep it. All that too frightening to handle. stuff is too weird me a bit. Right before I entered So many people don’t. At all. and freaky for me.” seminary, I ran into Passages in Daniel, an old pastor of mine and we somehow Revelation, and the various prophets— fell onto the Mayan Apocalypse topic. whether rightly applied to the end times Though I had long since dismissed the or not—are simply too cryptic, bizarre, Left Behind books and didn’t worry and frightening for many to handle. So anymore about the sun swallowing the they don’t. At all. earth, I asked him his thoughts on stuff Others are a little too into distinclike that. His answer? tions. They think it crucial to discover “Reed, people have always been which world dictator is the Beast in trying to figure out when the world will Revelation, or whether the Mark of the end. In doing so, they miss the fact that Beast refers to Social Security numbers the world is ending for millions of peoor credit card systems. Things as trivial ple every day. Shouldn’t we be focused as whether or not the locust in Reveon dealing with the problems that are lation 9 were troop helicopters during here now instead of worrying about the Vietnam War or as overarching as what will happen tomorrow?”

Amillenialism, Premillenialism, and PostThat thought resounded in my head millienialism have turned into hills upon for quite a while. It primed me for what which people are willing to die and kill.

I encountered at Fuller—a deep concern Part of me for the longest time for the spiritual and physical well-being wanted to avoid the talk of the end of of people. I began to live differently the world. I had escaped a fundamentalbecause my eschatology shifted. ist reading of Revelation and all of the My view of last things affected how I shoddy pop-fiction that went with it. I did first things. didn’t want to go back there, because

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I knew I used to be one of those who thought it important to scan the newspaper for a rising politician in the region of the Carpathian Mountains who might be the Anti-Christ. At Fuller, I saw that I had been approaching the text with unhealthy assumptions that led to a rather warped reading. I was so ashamed of what I had previously done with eschatological and prophetic texts that I didn’t want to go near them. Leave the job to someone else.

I realized that there were a couple of things wrong with this hands-off approach, though. First, I wasn’t hands off. I wasn’t thinking about it, but I was defaulting to one or two options; either the fundamentalist the-end-is-nigh-andwe-are-all-in-serious-trouble approach I had learned via Left Behind and the likes, or this new way of viewing the end—the world is ending for people today, and I can do something about it.

I defaulted more and more to the latter, and slowly that picture was filled in by professors and readings. But ultimately, Christianity has hope coursing through its veins, and hope involves some future point or goal. To try to exist in Christianity without ever considering what lays ahead is impossible.

The other problem with a handsoff approach was that I could remove myself from the conversation (even if I couldn’t keep from using an eschatology), but that did not bring an end to the eschatology debate and discourse in the wider Christian and public spheres. I was uncomfortable talking about the Book of Revelation, but the “experts” kept

showing up on the History Channel, Left Behind kept selling, and Harold Camping kept predicting global catastrophic disaster. By choosing to not engage the texts that point to what lies ahead, I was not providing any counter to the unhealthy and wrong theology that was circulating in the Christian circles around me.

I couldn’t avoid thinking with an eschatology, and I was doing nothing to stop others from propagating bad ones.

And there are plenty of bad ones to go around.

Perhaps the worst is the Hell-in-ahand-basket approach. The Rapture and Tribulation will happen, and then the world will be burned up. Creation as we know it will be no more. Good people in Heaven with halos and wings and disembodied existence, bad people in Hell with punishment and Satan and eternal conscious torture. Dualism and Platonism aside—I see no warrant for those in Scripture—I struggle with the impact of this eschatology on discipleship and ministry. It leads to a numbers game for Christians, a game that has as its end goal to baptize as many folks as possible before the Rapture. It places little to no importance on the bodies of people or the soil of earth; neither

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adam nor adamah matter here, regardThis is what is possible with a poor less of the massive weight given to both eschatology: fearful living, coercive serthroughout the Bible, because they will vice, and terrorist evangelism. be burned up and no longer necessary.

Now, a caveat; not everyone who “Saving” people is making sure they subscribes to this view of the end is so have a stamp to get into some ethereal, focused on terror of judgment, nor do far-off cloud wonderland, instead of they live out that theology in abusive being, like Jesus in the Gospels, an agent ways. But I have seen many that do. The of justice that cares for broken bodies judgment trumps the salvation, because and about discipleship. Get people into a potentially imminent destruction is heaven; don’t worry frightening. Ask It is impossible to exist in about fixing any14-year-old me. thing here, because A year into my Christianity without ever it doesn’t matter MDiv, I realized considering what lays ahead. anyways. that I had unIn retrospect, I found that my care dergone an utter shift in mindset. I for the poor or the other when I subfound its roots in various places—most scribed to this eschatology was not fucertainly and obviously in the words eled by love, but by a fear that I wouldn’t of my pastor from long ago—but also make the cut when the Rapture rolled in various lectures, readings, sermons, around and I would have to suffer the and—most importantly—a less fearful Tribulation. engagement with Daniel and Revelation.

I mean… yikes. That isn’t even menWhen someone asked what the end of tioning the folks who try to scare others the world would be like, there was no into conversion. talk of Rapture or plague or global nuclear holocaust. Instead, all I could think of was this: I heard a loud voice from the throne say, “Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look! I’m making all things new.” (Revelation 21:3-5)

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The end is not some horrible, terrifying future point. We say that we have Good News for the world, and here it is: that one day God will make everything right. Life will be the order of the day, not death or pain; everything will be new, not destroyed, and we will dwell in the presence of God. He will no longer be invisible to us, but God himself will wipe the tears from our eyes.

No more cancer or fear or decay or hate or injustice or death. This is the completion of all things.

And the completion of all things changes how I view things now.

God is in the process of making everything new and asks us to join with and assent to that reality. Will we be a part of the transformation of all things, or let them rot? Will we work for the undoing of evil, or let it run rampant? Will we look to comfort humankind, or let them suffer while we baptize as many as we can?

As I have wrestled with this passage— and likewise Isaiah 60, Revelation 7, and Revelation 12—I have noticed that I live differently. Not with a fear that I might not make the cut, but with a hope that everything wrong in this world will be made right. People are no longer stats to save, but people to love as God loves them and wants to care for them. The earth is no longer an inconsequential chunk of rock, but God’s good creation that He loves and will make whole once again. With a different end in sight, I am a different person. We are a different church. The world will be a different place. The end times affect this time. Eschatology matters.

Reed Metcalf (MDiv ’14) is the Editor of The SEMI and the co-founder of Fuller’s Faith and Science student group (@FullerFatihSci). A writing addict, he spends his free time composing fiction, sermons, and essays when not studying theology, astronomy, linguistics, or literature. He makes dad jokes on the Twitter machine as @ReedMetcalf.

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fuller faith& science

p r e s e n t s

lectures on

faith & wisdom in science Tuesday, August 12

7 pm

Payton 101

Professor Tom McLeish of the University of Durham will lecture on sections of his new book, Faith and Wisdom in Science, a study of the intersection of faith and science in the Book of Job. A professor of physics and a lay reader in the Anglican Church, Professor McLeish is noted as an crucial voice in the 24

field of theology and science.