Why Should God Care Less? part 1

The following number of posts will be a recorded lecture by a professor of Regent college. This particular professor gave 4 lectures on a study of creation and revelation that profoundly changed my outlook on how it is I read the Bible and my understanding of God's design when it comes to creation and how He views it all. I intend on posting these in segments as they are lengthy but full of excellent stuff worth commenting on. Please do dialogue and let me know what you think of what is said. I have obtained permission to post these lectures. Please note that when the word 'I' is used, it is referring to the lecturer, not myself. So you have a little background, he was speaking to a gathering of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship staff workers from across Canada in Ontario - very thought provoking type people. Also, he makes reference to slides and images on a screen behind him while he speaks at times. There are also obvious humurous tongue-in-cheek moments that are not always noticed in typed words. I hope that you will enjoy the following. Enjoy!

I grew up as a Pentecostal, and this is actually an Australian accent, as you probably realize, I’m not speaking in tongues; though you may doubt that at some point. I don’t know what your experience was, but, my experience was pretty much: what happened on Sunday really had nothing to do with the rest my Christian life in the work place. I was talking to a couple of Regent board members about 6 months ago, maybe a bit longer, 18 months ago, and uh ... you’ve turned that light on me haven’t you? And the Lord said ‘let there be darkness’ and there was. [laughter] Thank you! Good. Ah, this is more important than me, so, I want you to see those images. I asked them, as we were preparing for this meeting, how many of you here on a Sunday morning have anything that has the slightest bit to do with your weekly work life? And one person out of the ten said ‘sometimes’. Now that’s a tragedy. But that was my Christian background. We were waiting for the eschaton; waiting for the rapture. And I remember (some of you have heard this story) when I was about ten or twelve years old, living in Western Australia, the Six Day War was on. Some of you remember the 6 Day War? Israel, Egypt, Armageddon? That kind of stuff? Well, I went to bed one night in the middle of that war and just FULL of eschatological anticipation. I wouldn’t have called it that back then at ten, but that’s what it was. Now I’m old enough to recognize it. Well, in the early hours of the morning, wee hours of the morning, we weren’t that far from a major trucking route, apparently some very large articulated vehicle felt the need to blow their air horn. Bah raaaaah! Well, there I was! I was just ready to go, and [laughter] talk about leaping for the Lord. A very disappointed boy woke up on the wrong side of the ceiling the next morning.

That’s what I grew up with. That being Christian was about eventually leaving this place. Then I went to seminary and began to do some study and discovered some other things were going on. Notably, when I read the book of Revelation, I discovered this: What does the new Jerusalem do? You can read it, right there in front of you. Check your Bibles, I haven’t fiddled with the text. The new Jerusalem does what? Comes down out of heaven. Now this is a bit of a shock. You do understand of course that Pentecostals own the title to the book of Revelation. We let you read it provided you pay a poll tax, eh. Now the same applies to Acts chapter 2, that’s our chapter but the one about sharing things with one another, that can belong to somebody else but we’ve got Acts chapter 2, that’s ours. Now, it’s a funny thing isn’t it, how you can read a text and it can be your text that defines who you are and never really see what it says. So what would have happened was, here I am whizzing up into the air and I would of waved at Jesus as he comes down ... heading in other directions.

Now, I’m convinced folks, our eschatology has a huge amount to say about the way we do evangelism. Because it says a great deal about how we view creation. I was talking to Ray about what it means to him to be a first nations person and worshipping, and there are some people in his tradition that get very nervous about feathers and smoke. And I think that grows out of a very faulty, perhaps even pagan, view of the nature of creation. I think if they had more of a Christian view, they might not get so upset about those things ... though I understand it's a little more complex. People who've grown up with certain associations connected to those objects, well, it'll be unsettling for them. But for a generation whose not grown up with those kind of associations, then there's a sense in which these things are pure. It can be then used in the service of worshipping God.