Eschatological Crisis

Well I'm having an eschatological crisis.  Rather than an existential one.

All of the talk about Duck Dynasty has once again opened the never-healing gash caused by the rift between the world and Christians.  My eschatological crisis is not directly related to the recent uproars of this Duck escapade.  So rather than the exact cause, it's just a symptom.

The cause of my internal bewilderment is really the whole end-times stuff.  I was going about my usual business last week and the middle of my day, in the middle of an activity, I just stopped.  It was one of those self-aware moments.  So profound was the impression that I felt, that I had to pause.
I began to think:
  "Something isn't right."
  "This world is real... But temporary."
  "Something is just off."

I have to believe that others experience these impressions as well. It's really rare, for me at least.  Our lives are filled with so very many distractions, and even most people in the world would agree that most of our daily concerns aren't very meaningful.  But occasionally, even if I'm busy, sleep-deprived, anxious, or whatever, there appears a sharp pang of clarity.   "I don't belong here."

Of course, not in the sense that I feel not included or left out, but in the sense that I don't want to belong here.  Something innately tugs me to what is truly meaningful.  Something drifts me towards the truth.

Diagnose or explain away as you will.  Is it fabrication or imagination?  Is it the same vibes a psychic gets when "reading the tea leaves."  Is  it just human philosphy?  Is it my ego trying to manufacture supernatural experiences so I can justify my beliefs?

I reject those notions.  But who am I instruct or guide on those uncanny premonitions that appear so scarcely.  I walk by faith, it's my guide.  I agree with what Paul wrote in Romans 1; God makes himself known and left his evidence on our hearts, tangible or intangible.  As seen here:

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

What differentiates this particular "crisis" from an existential one is that it's all tied to eschatological concepts.  In other words, it gives me something concrete to tie in all of these strange, odd feelings.  Rather than asking the existential questions with open-ended & unanswerable thoughts, I rely on the information I have to answer them.

When I have these feelings, I'm reminded of these passages.
  "This world is real... But temporary." Paul says in Romans 8:

¹⁸ I believe that the present suffering is nothing compared to the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ The whole creation waits breathless with anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters. ²⁰ Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice—it was the choice of the one who subjected it—but in the hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children. ²² We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. ²³ And it’s not only the creation. We ourselves who have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest also groan inside as we wait to be adopted and for our bodies to be set free.

  "Something is just off."  From John 18:

³⁶ Jesus replied, “My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn’t have been arrested by the Jewish leaders. My kingdom isn’t from here.”
³⁷ “So you are a king?” Pilate said.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth. Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.”
³⁸ “What is truth?” Pilate asked.

"I don't belong here."  From John 15:

18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

I'm tied to the fact we have an answer to these questions. I read Revelation recently, oops. I left with a boatload of questions. I understand we can't answer every question. I have to remember to "lean not on your own understanding."  Additionally, "no one knows when the time will come."

We can't answer every one, but we are left with a sense of awe and wonder at what truly is to come. Only then will the crisis be resolved.  Of course, it's not a "crisis" as far as world definitions go, I'm not about to go all Harold Camping... or do anything extreme. But it's a calm but pressing sense of urgency to - quite frankly - reject the world and seek the truth.

Romans 8:
²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Chronocentricity

Great title, I know. 

Barring the discovery of some ancient advanced civilization, today in 2013 we most certainly enjoy the status of being the most technologically advanced generation the Earth has known.  That certainly must be a fact. Now, a Revolution-style catastrophe could occur, stifling electricity and throwing us backwards a couple of hundred years.  Or, the global nuclear wars feared in the 1960's could still happen and destroy our technological achievements, again throwing us back several hundred years.  However, that hasn't happened and is fairly unlikely to occur.  So, we should feel pretty confident that our future generations will still be in the vanguard of human achievement.  

It's pretty reasonable then to assume that our generation has something that is slightly better than previous generations.  There has to be some truth to that.  If I contracted strep throat, I'm going to choose a 2013 doctor over a Middle Ages barber-surgeon. If I needed to send a message to a relative in Africa, I'm going to send an immediate email rather than arrange a 1900's steamboat and an ensuing safari team to have someone reach them.  If I have some current need for toothpaste, milk, and a new knife, I can go to Target today, rather than an apothecary, a farm, and a blacksmith in Ancient Rome.  A strange list, I know.

You can't deny how the modern era has made us a more efficient, healthy, and safe people.  But does the benefit of being born into this particular era enable us to assume we're also intellectually superior to previous generations? 

In school we do get the opportunity to learn the fruits of years' worth of work left behind to us by the likes of Einstein, Curie, Pasteur, etc.;  we can sit in science class and memorize (and immediately forget) these scientist's formulas in just a handful of classes.  Although we get to use their lifelong scientific conclusions for our immediate benefit, the average student isn't automatically considered a genius just because they got a 92 on a physics test. 

I think it's even more so in the fields of philosophy, and more importantly, theology.  Granted I am probably guilty of this myself at some point, but how can anyone today begin to assume that just because we are living in this modern age, that we can summarily dismiss the past as obsolete and worthless?  

Here's what I'm getting at - a common objection to Christianity and the Bible is simply, it's old.  Antiquated, and uninformed.  It's a product of an age where it did apply but "we've moved on."  Surely we do not need to accept the attitudes expressed in this book because it was written thousands of years ago by ignorant and unenlightened brains. 

Ah, I'm glad you said that. 

Such is the opinion of the "Chronocentric."  I was surprised but someone wrote a wikipedia article about it as well which is accurate enough for me.  Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronocentrism

Chronocentrism is just as much a mistake as ethnocentrism.  Ethnocentrism, if you can recall again from school days, is an unmerited belief that your culture is superior to others.  For a quick and crude example, "Americans are better than any other nation.  Our lives are just better."  Ethnocentrism and racism can also be closely related.  And they are both inherently and absolutely wrong.  So is Chronocentrism - assuming that ourselves in our current time are more enlightened and smarter than previous generations.  This is simply not true. 

Think about the classic writers of the Enlightenment, the Declaration of Independence and early democratic ideals, philosophic works over the ages (Plato, Socrates, Kierkegaard, etc), novels, plays, music, ancient evocative poetry like the Odyssey?  (This list is embarrassingly brief, but you get the point.)

If you were to be transported to a room with one of these people and magically spoke the same language, what would you even talk about besides the weather?  A status update you made yesterday?  How stupid traffic is in Atlanta?

The writers of the Bible are no less significant than their secular historical counterparts listed above.  The mystical and mysterious nature of the poetry of Genesis is straightforward enough to serve as a history for an ethnic group (and everyone), but on the other hand is so full of enigma and questions that we'll never understand the answers in this life.  Proverbs contains timeless, though ancient wisdom.  John is a gospel, but reads more like a captivating novel.  And Paul in Romans and his other letters uses intricate and emotional language to dramatically and desperately convey his urgent message.  And it was all written hundreds of thousands of years ago.  

The argument that the Bible was written so long ago by ancients does not diminish or alter their message.  We must treat them as peers and their writings as legitimate, because humans are equals, despite race, culture, and even time.  

Caveat 1 - Obviously there were schools of thought that were antiquated (I'm thinking scientific ones mostly) like the sun rotating around the earth, the heavens are in the clouds, etc.  Also, things like human sacrifice in order for a good harvest, etc.  Obviously, people in the past are like us; they were misguided and made mistakes.  For the purposes of this post, I'm primarily referring to intangible truths gleaned from the Bible, i.e. the theology behind it. 

     Some parts of the bible are time-bound and culturally specific and should be interpreted as such.

Caveat 2 - Just because you respect the literature as being legitimate doesn't mean you have to agree with it.  Obviously I've written under my conviction the Bible is truth, but in reading this you may not have that conviction, which for the purposes of this article is not required.  The purpose is just to make sure we are aware and not thinking "chronocentrically," intentionally or not.  On the flipside, I need to respect the Quran or Bhagavad Gita as written by capable authors, though I don't agree with those particular movements. 

Note - I was listening to a song on the radio the other day, I think it was some kind of marriage equality song which one of the verses mentioned that the opponents of the marriage equality were using the Bible as their basis, and it was "written three thousand years ago" or something to that effect.  Thus the inspiration for this post.