Check out our new site!

Just a reminder to those of you who follow this blog, that we've established our own domain and moved Nailing it to the Door to http://nailtothedoor.com.  There, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well as just checking out our new posts.

Recent posts include:

•  Life is Not a Game of Chess, by Dan
• Are Theology Debates about Fear or Faith? by Ben
• Why You Should Practice Sabbath, by Ben
• The Church Virtual? by Dan
• The Bible is an Invitation to...  by Ben
• The Ten Commandments - American Style (a graphical essay) by Dan

We look forward to seeing you carry on with us as we continue Nailing it to the Door!

Grace & peace,

Dan

Nailing it to the Door has moved!

As of May 24, 2011 we are moving the content of Nailing it to the Door... to a new location.  Please find us now at http://nailtothedoor.com.  Archived posts and comments have been moved as well; it is our hope that the new configuration will permit us to grow the site!  Please come check us out!

For all of you who've been "Left Behind"

I encourage you to pop over to my friend Kurt Willems' blog and read his post If You're Reading This Post, You've Been "Left Behind."  Kurt does a beautiful job of casting what our role must be in the current "Tribulation" of this world.  Borrowing nearly every catchphrase of an eschatology neither one of us can stand, he's got a masterful call to live as the Kingdom-of-God subversives we must be.

Nailing it to the Door is becoming a joint venture!

I want to take this opportunity to introduce my readers to my dear friend Ben Bajarin.  Ben and I have been spiritual relief valves for each other for the better part of three years now.  Though we attended the same church for over a decade, it took nearly nine years before we met each other and discovered that God had stirred some common--though unusual--thoughts in both of us, and we've found great refreshment in exploring theology together.  More than once, we've also encouraged each other when bashing up against entrenched doctrine and rhetoric that may be familiar to the church, but we believe flies in the face of the Biblical message.

Today Ben joins me as a co-author of this blog, and as you can see from his first post on the Rapture-that-wasn't, his contributions are a valued addition.

Keep an eye out, as you're going to see a few changes in design and presentation soon...and hopefully an increase in the frequency of posts, which has never been my strong suit.  Ben's also going to increase our visibility on Facebook with a fan page and a few other gadgets.

The result, we hope, is not primarily increased readership or statistics...those have never been the point.  But Ben and I share the conviction that the church is in desperate need of a new reformation, and we hope in some small way to ignite those fires in a few of you.  Come along for the ride!

Why The Rapture Didn’t Happen Today and it Probably Never Will

I suppose, because of my post title, the cat is out of the bag on my eschatology. So I’ll start this post right off the bat saying, it’s my conviction that there will be no rapture of the Church. I believe the overwhelming weight of biblical evidence in no way shape or form supports a phased approach of the coming of the Lord. Let me explain why.






Firstly (I love that word) if we study the history of this idea we will find that this whole notion of the rapture is a relatively new idea, this fact alone should cause us to pause.

There is some debate as to who came up with this idea originally but most credit it to John Darby. Darby revealed his eschatological view and outlined his idea on this so called “rapture” at the Powerscourt Conference in 1831.

It is very difficult to find any evidence of ”rapture” eschatology prior to Darby’s teaching it beginning in 1831.

So why has it become mainstream?
Well the answer is simple. The Christian church has lost its foundation and connection to the roots of Judaism. Most of our modern Christianity has taken a direction influenced highly by the enlightenment age. Because of this the Christian story has been disconnected from the Jewish story. Something God never intended.

So the challenge and the question we are faced with is, if for almost a thousand years after Jesus showed up not a single person believed in this “rapture” idea, why do so many believe it today?

Again it goes back to the story. The bible has within its construct a meta-narrative. To highly summarize the meta-narrative within Judaism it’s this:

God created all things Good, Satan and the powers distorted that good, God in His grace and mercy has not abandoned His creation to destruction and chaos but instead put a plan in place that would eventually lead to the reconciliation and redemption of all things. That plan began with Abraham.

In Judaism this is referred to as the "Tikkun Olam" or the repair of the world.

Jesus and the Church flow out of this reality, which will end up with heaven coming to earth, the original place God intended to dwell. This was the goal from the very beginning. That God would dwell with man and the whole of creation would be a holy temple.

So the flaw in Darby’s theology and the one this absurd end of the world talk is wrapped up in, is rooted in a non-biblical belief that all of reality is about somewhere else and not about this place, this earth, and this humanity. The idea that we will all go off to a distant spiritual reality is an idea we get from Plato not from the bible.

We have a guarantee from the creator that he will put it all back together, or as N.T Wright states “put the world to rights.” He doesn’t need to exile his church to do this, in fact that would be counter to the way God has always done things.

God uses “agents” to accomplish His purposes, to remove His followers and Kingdom agents would fly in the face of how he created things to work in this world. The way He created things to work was that His followers are His hands and feet in the world and the mechanisms by how his will gets done. His will is to reconcile and renew all things, this earth, this humanity not to destroy it. Therefore we have a job to do, participate in new creation, rush the future renewed world into the present anyway we can. Love Wins!

The only thing that gives me concern, that I hope I am wrong about, is that in my thinking it would seem logical that the world is probably going to have to mess itself up quite a bit more. In essence things may have to become much worse before they get better.

To quote Martin Luther “If I knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow I’d go plant a tree.”

So let’s embrace the greater reality to participate in new creation, this Tikkun Olam, right now in this present reality. Let's let God worry about the future and more importantly let's make those people's lives around us better instead of worse.

Food for thought - Greg Boyd on why Determinism must be false

I've said before that Greg Boyd has produced some really good arguments on the Open View of God.  Greg's got a great post on his blog from about a month ago (OK, so I'm a little behind) briefly outlining three really good reasons why determinism (a la Calvinism) is logically untenable.  Go check it out!

Greg is actually responding to a previous New York Times article entitled Do You Have Free Will?  Yes, It's the Only Choice.  This amusingly-titled report looks at some recent psychological experiments that suggest that people seem to believe in a moral responsibility for one's actions that only works if one had, at least at some level, a choice whether to do them or not.  They have shown that people who are convinced they have free will, tend to behave better (that is, more socially-acceptably) than people who are convinced they have no choice.  It's an interesting study.

Of course, my favorite summary of the whole argument is:  "You have chosen to believe in predestination, and I am predestined to believe in free will."  Drives my Calvinist friends nuts!

Does God Change? Part 2 of 2

In my previous post on this subject, I examined a number of Biblical references commonly used to promote the idea that God is unchanging.  We saw in those scriptures, that the issue being addressed centered largely on the premise that God can be depended upon to keep his word...in other words, unlike humans or other gods of legend, he's not capricious or fickle.

On the other hand, however, there are numerous accounts throughout the Old Testament, in which God is clearly stated to have changed his mind.  One of these is the verse that first gave my good Calvinist friends heartburn and ignited this series:  1 Sam. 15:11, in which God states "I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments."  My friend stated that God could not possibly really regret having done something, because it all took place according to his will, and because regret would mean God was changing his mind.  And yet this is what the passage says...God made Saul king, Saul did not live up to God's expectations, and now God is sorry that he chose Saul for a king.

This is not the only place we find this sort of language, either.  In Genesis 6:5-6 we learn that God saw such evil in human behavior that he was "sorry" he'd ever made man.  The clear sense of both texts is that God experiences genuine regret for the outcome of actions that he himself had originally done (these texts have impact on the Open View of God as well as his immutability, but that is another, though related, discussion).  In both texts, God clearly changes his assessment of a man, or a group of people, about whom he previously had a different, more positive, opinion.  And lest we think this is a translation error, the word in Hebrew that is translated "repented" or "was sorry" is the word nacham, which also appears in Job 42:6 when Job states "I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes," and in 1:Sam. 15:29 where it says "God is not a man that he should repent" (we addressed this verse in Part 1).

We find some interesting insights into how God does change his mind, in the story of the exodus and the Israelites' sojourn in the wilderness.  A good example of this is found in Exodus 32, where God is prepared to destroy the Israelites for their idolatry with the golden calf, but Moses intercedes and convinces God to spare them.  Exo. 32:14 says that God "relented" (both KJV and ASV say "repented"--it's nacham again) of the disaster he had said he'd bring on the people.  But what's fascinating here is that God's change of heart or intention comes as a direct result of the intercession of Moses.

We begin to find some clarity in the confusion, however, when we look at Jeremiah 18.  This is the prophecy that Jeremiah tells when God has prompted him to go observe the work of a potter:

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.’

The meaning becomes perfectly clear in this passage.  God's promise of both good and ill is conditional.  When God says he's going to do something in punishment, if the cause of the punishment is remedied, God will relent (nacham again) of the punishment.  Same with blessing.  And why should this surprise us?  God said as much in the blessings and curses that make up Deuteronomy 28-30.  Simply, he said, "if you obey, you will be blessed.  If you disobey, you will be cursed.  If you return to me, you will again be blessed."

So, finally, we come to the summary answer to our question "Does God change?"  Our answer has to be "of course, yes" and "of course, no."  Yes, God changes his opinion of and behavior toward humans as their own behavior toward him changes...and God may further change his intent or behavior in response to his people's intercession.  But God does not change his basic character, and God can certainly and always be counted upon to keep his promises...but don't forget, even those promises often come with conditions, they are seldom unilateral.