No more post-rapture schadenfreude, thanks

Reading the innumerable posts and tweets about the non-rapture leaves me feeling despondent.  Maybe it's been a long day, but I feel sorry for anyone who really believed it was going to happen, I feel sad at the circus it has become, and very much regret playing my part in that, and I feel thoroughly dissatisfied with the ongoing failure of some Christians to understand some of the simplest principles of bible reading.

The circus, I think, is regrettable. I can understand why some Christians wanted to join in the general fun and jollity, poking fun at this nonsense. I did too, but in the end there was just too much web-based Christian mickey-taking for anyone to enjoy. And those who were claiming some kind of noble motive for it need to pipe down.  It's like having an embarrassing little brother who you join in with bullying, because you think that will make it less embarrassing.  It doesn't. He's still your brother, and everyone knows it. If we really wanted to discredit this prediction, the best thing we could have done was to ignore it, rather than join in the abuse heaped on it by people who think that all Christians are just as wacky as Harold Camping.

And I'm equally grumpy with Harold and his mates too.  Why is it so hard for people who spend so much time with their bibles to understand some first principles?  One: understand genre - the bible is rich in metaphor, look it up if you don't know what it means. Two: the words of Jesus have primacy - "no-one knows the day or the hour", anyone?  Three:  the bible belongs to the whole people of God. If everyone else is telling you you're barking up the wrong tree, you really ought to listen to them. 

At least the rapture failed to happen on a Saturday.  We can get up tomorrow and celebrate the resurrection, and the dawn of a new day to live with Christ here on earth.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'm over here from OCICBW and I like this post.
I will reserve my grumpiness with Harold Camping until we discover whether he has genuinely made a mistake and will now repay the people who have given up everything to prepare for rapture, or whether he will keep the riches his church is said to have amassed during this episode.

Erika
May 25, 2011 at 9:10 AM
Anonymous said…
Do you think all the joking is because we (the Christians) are mortally embarrassed at being part of the same Holy Catholic & Apostolic Family as Harold Camping?

"Are you a Christian?"
"Yeah."
"Like, one of those bonkers American Christians who believe all that ridiculous stuff about the end of the world?"
"Oh no - we're not like them at all. We're NORMAL. None of that fantastical end-of-the-world nonsense. No. We just believe in perfectly feasible stuff like the Virgin Birth and one God also being three and that the most significant facts in history are empirically untestable ..."

etc.etc.
May 29, 2011 at 8:49 AM
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