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.