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Waiting for Armageddon

“We just don’t know.” – Dr. John Hayes, professor of Old Testament, Emory University

The problem with politics and religion is that they are not self correcting. What I mean is that most people’s minds are already made up before you ever talk to them and facts be damned. When either subject is broached, instead of a rational discussion, it becomes like talking to a stone wall. Often peaceful and loving people act like anything but. It takes getting hit upside the head for most people to change their opinion (i.e. your child is gay, George W. Bush, etc.). It is like a game of Clue, where, after examining all the clues you are pretty sure that Mr. Green did it in the kitchen with the rope and your opponent is adamant that Col. Mustard did it in the library with the candlestick because they had a dream the night before that told them such. The problem, if they are not going to listen to the facts, is there are no cards to prove you’re right. It is the difference between a posteriori and a priori thought. (A posteriori and a priori are big $10 words that people who want to seem smart to others use but a posteriori basically means a truth that can only come through observation and a priori is a truth known independent of observation.) I recently praised a science book on my Facebook page (I need friends. Please be my friend.) that detailed how we know that evolution occurred. You would have thought I had stormed an abbey and declared I was making a porno. Now I thought a rational discussion, where facts are presented and critiqued, was the order of the day. It devolved to the point where I might be the only person in Facebook history to have his brother drop him as a friend. The problem was most people involved already had their minds made up, their beliefs were in a closed system and no fact was going to change what they believed.

In 1517, a monk named Martin Luther shook the western world by challenging the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Among his main beliefs was that the Bible was the only source of divinely revealed knowledge and the believer did not need priests and bishops to be intermediaries. Rather, the divine truth of God’s word spoke to the believer’s heart when confronted with God’s word. In a sense, Luther democratized the Bible. What he did not understand, is what a pain in his backside it would be the rest of his life. The problem was all sorts of people interpreting Holy Scripture much differently than he did. A number of peasants challenged the injustice of the feudal system and pointed to the Bible to support their cause. Luther’s reaction? Kill them, kill them all. Anabaptists, other sects, and heresies sprung up. All claiming divine inspiration from Scripture. You see, the Bible is complicated and really hard to understand in places. Most of the time churchgoers are guided through this holy book by Bible studies, lectionary texts, and ministers. But when you read it on your own there are passages never referred to in most churches, stories that do not make sense in our current moral framework, verses that stand in contradiction to each other and things that will leave you puzzled. How do you make sense out of a loving God ordering baby’s heads to be dashed against rocks? Two creation stories? It’s support of slavery, genocide and beating of women and children? There are places were Jesus is anything but the kind and loving individual we like to think of him as. How do you reconcile the very human Jesus in Matthew with the God-like Jesus in John who in control of everything? Thousands of such questions arise if you journey through scripture alone, without a guide.

This is the reason I roll my eyes anytime someone says, “Well, the Bible says…” The Old and New Testament say a lot of things, some of which we ignore. Maybe you have heard someone say, “The Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman.” Yes, but the Bible also says wives are the property of their husbands and when she is acting foolish he has the right to bounce her off a few walls, but ignore this little fly in the ointment. Or a person says, “Evolution did not happen because the Bible says…” Hum, sorry to be the skunk at the garden party but the Bible also says in at least two different places that the sun goes around the earth, but forgive me. One woman recently yelled at me, “The word of God does not change,” but the questions and lens we wear when we look at it has. In turn, because of history and sinfulness, people should be humble because they often make huge mistakes. White bishops in South Africa used scripture to justify apartheid. Ministers have blessed Jews being killed, beaten and hounded throughout the history of western civilization because that is what they thought scripture called for. Thousands of holy men have announced the end of the world was just around the corner and things kept humming along. To claim to know the mind of God with 100 percent certainty on any subject does nothing but show pride and invite trouble. We so often believe that God is made in our image rather than vice-versa.

This is why Rev. John Hagee and others like him concern me. For those of you who, like John McCain, do not know who he is, he is the pastor of 19,000 members, Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. He believes we are in the end of days. He is one of 50 million Evangelicals who believe that we are living in the end of days and that Israel plays a pivotal role in order to ensure Christ’s return. Often their interpretation is less cut and dried than they like to pretend it is. All fine and good, we are all entitled to believe what we want and interpret God’s will (or even believe that there is not a God or gods). Trouble is, these people have a huge influence over America’s Middle East policies and many, like Hagee, are even encouraging an international holy war.

For many, it is Israel right or wrong, and we must side with that country no matter what, even if it does not seem just or moral. No compromise. In turn, it might be the supreme irony of modern American politics. The people who hate the Jews the most, the religious right, are Israel’s biggest defenders. How can I say that? The Jews are a means to an end. Follow the bouncing ball. The logic goes; the Jews are God’s people. Does that mean they are saved? No. It just means they have to be in place, so that Jesus can come back. Once the Son has come back in His glory, the Jews will be given a second chance to accept or reject Jesus because there is only one path to heaven and that is Jesus. Those who do not bow down before the King of Kings and accept Him as Messiah; they will be like the wrapper of a candy bar, thrown away like so much trash. In other words, those who continue to be Jews and who do not become Christian, are totally screwed. Fire and brimstone time, gnashing of teeth, you know the drill. In other words, the Jews are simply chess pieces on history’s board and once they complete their job, into the box they go, never to be seen again.

Now here is the best part. Do pro-Israelite Jewish leaders understand this? Yes, they do. They not only see these people as wrong, but crazy as well. Yet, it is a crazy they can use. They believe the right’s beliefs are just plain nonsense, but as long as Christians are willing to carry their water, who cares? My older neighbor has a Mormon next door, who mows her yard for free every week. As this good natured middle-aged man slaves away in the desert sun, she loves to state her opinion on what he believes, mostly negative. I often point to him and say, “Why don’t you tell him that?” “Oh, I can’t do that. He might stop mowing my yard.” It is like Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton on a Thelma and Louise road trip. It might look strange, each one is on it for their own reasons, they might even hate each other, but it works for them.

Waiting for Armageddon examines this Christian slice of America, their beliefs and influence over our political leaders, several of whom believe the same things Hagee and other evangelicals do. So what am I saying? I was lucky enough to have taken a class from Dr. John Hayes, a man who has written over forty books on the Old Testament. Dr Hayes had the habit of doing what a lot of older people do, telling the truth. He would often take off his glasses when we came to a particularly troublesome text or verse and say, “We just don’t know.” He would then go on to talk about what scholars think was going on in the text or our best guess. He said it so often, that students had t-shirts printed up with that phrase on it. We are not God, if there is one. It is something John Hagee and others need to remember because sometimes we just don’t know and we need to be a little open to the facts around us.

Verdict: A Great Documentary