Keeping your head about Obama. Cool the anti-Christ talk.

I am going to talk about religion today. More precisely, theology. I trust that this will still be interesting.

I was originally going to write about being thankful on this day. I am thankful. My dissertation has been accepted by the graduate school of the University of Louisville, and I am now just waiting for graduation. I am also pondering my next move in my career.

But it was far more interesting to write about Obama and religion. My sister-in-law and my brother were talking at Thanksgiving today about how Obama could be the anti-Christ. My wife discussed with me today on the way home about what other women are saying at our church about Obama. They feel that we are now in the last days or end times. One woman in particular is being very dogmatic about how she feels that we are in the end times (that woman is a borderline who is nothing but emotion).

For those of you who have had a little bit of Sunday School, the academic word for the end times is Eschatology. It comes from the Greek for end Eschatos + logy. It means the study of end things. There are people in our churches that throw around the word as if they know something.

Yes, they probably know something. What they do know is enough to be dangerous and irresponsible.

In my experience, the ones who have thrown around their knowledge about Eschatology have had an inflated sense of self-importance. When I have talked to some of them to flush out their views, they were pretty guarded. There many ways I could go with Eschatology. There are many aspects of it (death, Heaven, judgment). It is also supposed to be a source of comfort—that God knows how things are going to end. However, the parts of Eschatology that most people are interested in has to do with sensational topics of the rapture, the great tribulation and the anti-Christ.

My history or emotional baggage

I grew up in Des Moines in the 1970's. I swear that city was the center of rapture talk. Des Moines was where the movie A Thief in the Night was shot. People I knew or had met were in the movie as supporting actors such as Clarence Balmer (his son Randall is a scholar worth reading).

David Breese, (who had a show on TV before he died, and has a Wikopedia entry) came to my church several times in the 1970's before he became famous. I think mom even had him at the house once.

My pastor at the church preached almost every Sunday night about the end times. At the church I grew up at, the worship choruses included Larry Norman's I'd wish we'd all been ready and Signs of the Times

I was made to listen to Oliver B. Greene, a radio evangelist at bedtime. Greene was from Greenville, South Carolina. Greene only talked about the rapture and the anti-Christ. I had many dreams about the rapture as a child.

I would say that I was immersed if not submerged in it. As an anxious child, I was overwhelmed by it. I had wondered a number of times if I had been left behind?

On top of all that, I have a mother that continues to obsess about the rapture and the anti-Christ. Mom would say frequently that some world figure was the anti-Christ. She watches Jack Van Impe and his wife Rexella.

My Quest

One of my quests when I went to seminary was to decide what I believed in terms of Eschatology. I made it some of my pet projects during breaks to read Eschatology. I chose to make it my optional project in systematic theology. I was out to understand the essence of how people arrived at their views. I sought to understand the difference between pre-tribulation, post-tribulation, pre-millennial, post-millennial and amillennial (no millenium).

I also engaged in conversations with people from other countries around the world. The focus on the anti-christ turned out to be a North American distinctive. People from South America, Europe, India, and Africa were awmillenial.

I tried sitting with an open Bible watching Jack Van Impe and got dizzy. He went too blooming fast and lost me. However, much centered around how he interprets one particular chapter in Ezekiel.

My conclusions

I discovered that for those who were fundamentalists in the north, Dispensational Eschatology was the standard for inerrancy (versus orthodoxy). I moved to the South and found in the 1990's that Southern Baptists focused more on denying women in ministry as the standard for orthodoxy.

I decided that there are many people who hold very similar beliefs on Salvation, Sin, God, Jesus, the Church, but differ very much on how things are going to end. They all believed in the need for a personal faith. They believed in original sin and the need for holiness. They all believed that Jesus was coming back again.

I asked the question: Is it essential to have a particular belief in how the world is going to end? No, it is not. Your view of the rapture is not going to get you into Heaven. I believe that confessing your sins and believing in Jesus as your personal savior is going to get you into Heaven.

Dogmatism about the end times has been more divisive than unifying. I saw too many people obsessing about the end times and it was not productive. They made themselves worry warts.

I also saw that the obsession about the rapture was a North American trait. A fellow student in seminary from India pointed that people around the world have been suffering while people in North America have had it very easy for the better part of 150 years. North America did not have two world wars tear up the landscape like Europe did.

Am I an expert? Hardly. I have decided what I believed. For the record, I am a post-tribulationist. I question whether the 1000 years or millennium will be a literal thousand years or a figurative amount of time.

How did I arrive at my view: it was about the interpretation method. What is the context of the scripture? As a result, I do not let the newspapers interpret the Bible for me.

Did my mother like my own opinion? No. She questioned whether I was even saved?

Some lay people even tried to convince me otherwise in 1990. When I did a student chaplaincy in 1990, I stayed with a retired pastor and his wife. The second question that came out of the pastor's wife was about my view of the end times. They had some friends who wanted to argue with me. They had no insight into how they were reading things into the scripture.

People who tend to focus if not obsess about end times things tend to be overtly emotional. They are black and white in their thinking. When their little worlds get shaken, they jump to conclusions which includes labeling people as being the anti-Christ.

For many, Barack Obama is a powerful symbol of change. He is a (really bi-racial) black American who by his very ethnicity is a change. He is the second change of magnitude in the past eight years with the 9-11 attacks. Again, many people's world views are shaken—they are accustomed to a white man in the White House.

I frankly think that Obama at best will be a doctrinaire democrat. I expect that he will do many of the mainstream things that other presidents do. He will have a low popularity rate in year 3, and maybe years 6 and 7 (should he be re-elected).

I expect my taxes to go up with his policies. However, my freedoms as a United States citizen will be unchanged. I will still have the right to pursue happiness.

Obama may have some connections to some Arabs. Yeah, but he will be subject to the same laws and restrictions that all presidents have been subject to. He will not be a dictator. The United States is still a republic with a representative democracy.

My Admonitions

So, Republicans, let's lay off the anti-Christ talk. You have choices, go campaign for your candidates with passion in 2010 and 2012.

Otherwise, live your life and take care of your day to day business. It does no good to obsess about who is the anti-Christ. Work for justice, show mercy to others and walk humbly with God.

I also would recommend that you avoid the Left Behind books, the Left Behind movie and the Jack Van Impe TV show. The Left Behind books are not the Bible. Furthermore, I find the Van Impe show to be of little practical value for someone who really wants to learn about the end times.

I am not trying to take food from any one's mouth, but if you must read Hal Lindsey or John Walvoord, also read something from George Ladd or Millard Erickson (good book on the options) to balance your picture of Eschatology. If you are looking for these books, Amazon or any of the online book sellers can hook you up with these authors.

Well, if you have questions, feel free to post them.

Now that the dissertation is completed, I can start worrying about feeling small.

Well, the dissertation is completed. I defended it on Wednesday, November 12, 2008. They signed it but assigned a large number of minor revisions. I finished all the of the revisions today and I am ready to turn it in again tomorrow for the final approvals. As I look at my life, I can tell how the dissertation just took over.

It is good and it is bad. The good news is that after seven years, I have completed my doctorate. The bad news is that I have to find other meaningful things to occupy myself with. The panic and angst of the current world situation is just waiting to take over.

November has set in with its shorter days and colder temperatures. The green leaves of the warm days have turned their colors and have fallen from the branches that once held them and they are on their way to landfills. The early dusk gives the depressing signal to burrow in and hibernate and have few expectations for the winter. Some people develop the mood disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) as a result of the shorter days.

The depressing feelings have intensified with the global changes, national changes, city changes, and the changes close to me.

Barack Obama campaigned on change. He is about change. He will change things. He is already signaling what he is going to change. He is planning on closing Camp Gitmo allowing all of those one-track terrorists onto American soil for their trials. He is planning on issuing executive orders reversing much of what “W” did in terms of moral issues such as stem-cell research. He is going to push his agenda early and fast. Some of the democrat types around me did not expect this kind of stuff when they voted for him, and I sense some worry on their part.

Of course the global economy is regressing. People are losing their jobs all over the world both near and far.

The oligopoly of the American “big three” auto makers are wanting to get a piece of the federal bailout. It feels close to me given that I have a friend who works at one of the Ford plants here in Louisville. He will only work two weeks between now and February 2009 and receive unemployment the rest of the time.

My job site been very chaotic over the past two weeks while I was finishing the ton of dissertation revisions. The interim vice president has been making so many changes and my program director has been overwhelmed, and she has let the other supervisor make inappropriate decisions. There has been retrenchment where programs have been closing down. One of my departments is moving into a smaller space. It has felt even more scary.

I am still trying to decide how to feel about the fact that the job I had interviewed for is empty again. Even though I was told I did not make the semi-final cut, it is two months later, and the job listing is open again and nothing else has been said to me. What happened?

Graduating next month only makes me wonder whether I have a future at my current organization? It makes me wonder if I am going to have job-lock for the duration of the recession? I will be a Ph.D. Working on the line making less than other Ph.D's. Job-lock was a term used about 10 years ago referring to those people who hated their jobs but could not leave the jobs because of the pay, their debts, and the benefits they were getting at the time.

Now that I have spelled out all this depressing doom and gloom, the challenge is to cope.

I think that it is first okay to say that it is too much pressure to believe that you should feel fantastic. None of the cognitive behavioral techniques are magic. Nor do they always make you feel great. They are about rational thinking and not letting your imagination carry you into the self-made abyss where you are torturing yourself with the worst-case scenarios.

The worst

Those who constantly prepare for the worst, continue to live in the worst. They make themselves live in a guarded state that only creates physical and emotional stress.

Preparing for the worst reminds one of how much control you do not have. Preparing for the worst usually leads to a feeling of being overwhelmed because of all the possibilities for failure. One is just too vulnerable and ironically, preparing for the worst only reminds you of your vulnerabilities.

Regardless, one normally feels vulnerable in times like these, and yes one feels small. I felt very small and puny in the recession of 1991. However, no one really knew it because I did not tell others about it. No one knows what the other feels unless someone asks or tells. (If it would help you . . . You can tell me if you feel small—just make a comment on this entry.)

As part of feeling small, it is very difficult not to live in the worst, given that most of the news media, and talk radio continue to talk about all that is bad. The easy answer is to stop listening to the news, but this is really not practical.

Now, I think that I would get into a fight of rhetoric with some columnist or editor or other pundit about whether or not the media is really doing a service to the general public to continue to repeat all the bad stuff. The news media with its intensification effect asks its questions on a day to day basis what is news worthy? We just are not going to get away from bad news.

I go back to the premise that is is going to have to be normal and acceptable to feel bad. That is what people do in this time. We feel bad. We are going to feel bad. We are going to feel bad for sometime until we start to hear that companies are hiring again and the economy is recovering.

The good news is that the economy will get better again—recessions surprisingly last for relatively short periods of time. Yes, some people will still lose jobs and houses and will probably have to file bankruptcy, but it will be a small portion of the nation.

Where I live, they are expecting 8 percent unemployment next year. What that means is that 92 percent will retain their jobs and most will be working as normal. Will I be one of the 92 percent? I hope so, but nothing is guaranteed.

My basic game plan

While nothing is guaranteed, I am forming a basic plan of coping to feel not so small. This coping plan is one that seeks balance, fulfillment and satisfaction.

The heart of this plan is to make a new list of personal goals. These goals have nothing to do with the economy and paying off my debts (although I will have a second list for financial purposes).

These goals are going to be things that I want to achieve. For example, I am going to remove the old tile from the work room in my garage. I am also going to scan all my papers from my doctoral program and store them on CD ROM and shred the papers. I am going to reduce all my other papers to CD ROM. My overall goal is to de-clutter my life. My list is not complete, but I think it will help me not think too much about the news.

I also plan to have family game nights now that I am available. We had a most interesting game of Dominoes Friday night. Now that the doctoral program is practically over I want to keep doing the family game nights.

Overall, I figure that the more one commits to a game plan that occupies them in a very intense and involved way, the less worse one will feel.

Everyone will have to figure out what to do for themselves. Times like these have possibilities. They do not only have to be about fretting and dwelling and obsessing.

Coping with Fears at Work

Hello again.

I get to defend my dissertation this coming week, and I have some time to pontificate. I have some positives going in my life, but as usual there are the negatives.

A lot has appeared to have changed in this world since I last wrote in October. Barak Obama has been elected president--that is a lot in terms of history. I would have thought that many of my staunch democratic co-workers would have been happy and dancing.

Mind you, I am not trying to be partisan here, but many of the more histrionic types at work have been self-righteously angry about how Republicans were evil and anyone who did not vote for Obama were stupid. Okay, now he is elected, and there was only a bit of happiness. Why were they not dancing? I think that they can never be happy.

One particular self-proclaimed "Massacheutts liberal" was still depressed the day after election day. I told him that I thought he would be more ebullient?

These histrionic, self-righteous types have moved onto another fear: that of the economy. We are having some changes at the hospital in the way people will be moved around. The histrionic are afraid all the more. They are talking recession and depression Why?

I have decided that some of the most histrionic and pessimistic types are idealists that cannot see gray areas. I think that this is really true of the staunchest Republicans and the staunchest Democrats. I have some family members who are Republicans and I have co-workers who are Democrats who fit in this category. My coworkers have moved onto the next potential catastrophe.

Well the next catastrophe could be work. There is going to be reorganization. Some programs are going to be closed. Some people are going to be moved around. There is retrenchment on the way at work. There are fears.

I have not heard anything official yet. I was told by equal in the department that he was part of the meeting late yesterday afternoon. He heard the decision.

I had some decisions to make myself at that time. I decided to start telling people about the upcoming changes in a vague, general way.

It turned out to be a good deal, because right after I had started telling people, my equal came over to one of my departments and opened his big mouth and gave far more information than I did. He has poor boundaries.

I had to be the voice of calm and reason. I had to be the one to reassure people. It was not easy damage control.

I think that it is not easy to be calm and think with reason period when others are afraid at work.

We continue to be saturated with bad news. The media continues to intensify the bad news with the MMII (media magnified informational intensification) effect. There is almost a brain-washing effect.

While admitting I do not know what the future holds, I am willing to bet that it will not be as bad as people fear. Yes, the economy is in a downturn, but for 92-94 percent of us, we will keep our jobs. We will have what we need. We will keep busy. We will still be able to afford to go out to eat.

How do we maintain our sanity in times of change and retrenchment when there are fears at work? Here are 10 suggestions:

1. We commit to a simple philosophy of calmness--we do not have to join others in their hysteria.
2. We work hard at our jobs.

3. We turn off the TV and Radio at times.

4. We back away from the people who are obsessing about the recession and talking about it all the time. We eat lunch somewhere else.

5. We do things that we enjoy.

6. When we are not working we do things that matter for the people that matter in our lives.

7. We go to our houses of worship and we practice our faith.

8. We learn new things to better ourselves as people.

9. We choose our attitude each day.

10. We take care of ourselves by proper nutrition, and proper sleep.

These ideas are not going to eradicate the fears at work, but they will help us stay calm. Staying calm takes work and ongoing self-care.