Of course you’ve heard the story of the prodigal son, and the story of his older brother who was so angry when the father restored him. Less commonly known is the story of the third brother. Gather round, children, and let Uncle Tim spin you a yarn….
After the prodigal son made his scandalous request, took his inheritance, and left for a far country, the third brother went to work. Of course the whole town already knew what his brother had done; dad was rich, and you can’t move that kind of wealth around without everybody finding out about it. But the third brother wasn’t interested in spreading the tale; he was interested in what it meant. Obviously, no true son of his father could ever do such a thing, he would say to anybody that would listen. By the roadside, in the marketplace, down at the corner restaurant, he was spreading the word: his prodigal brother’s conduct just showed that he was never really a son to start with.
Some fools will listen to any salacious gossip, but of course the wiser neighbors just ignored him, because he was obviously an asshole.
What are we to do with an apostate? For 10 years, 20 years, sometimes more, the guy was one of us. Then he kinda disappeared a couple years back, and now he’s popped up again, ardently practicing black magic, of all things! Some people want to dismiss this kind of question as an extreme hypothetical case. Extreme? Yes. Hypothetical? Not so much. I’ve encountered these folks too — several years ago, I found myself working for a business whose owner was a former evangelical worship leader turned full-blown shaman (disciple of Alberto Villoldo, in fact). A Bible college buddy of mine is worshipping Thor these days. A couple other folks are trying to stay connected to Christianity while practicing witchcraft too.
Where do you start?
At square one (which is Creation, not the cross, but that’s another post.) It’s entirely possible that there was some crucial flaw in their grasp of Christianity to start with, so it makes sense to go back over all the basics. It’s not that strange of an idea; Hebrews speaks of people who “need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God,” who “have come to need milk and not solid food.” But we do not believe that understanding is all there is to it: following Jesus takes dedication and sacrifice. If that’s the case, then the problem may not have been with a lack of understanding at all. They may have defected because they were more attracted by something else, or because following Jesus got harder than they were willing to endure.
The point is, we often have no idea what actually went wrong, and such a person is an unreliable narrator of their own experience; everything they tell you will be riddled with blameshifting and lame rationalizations.
“But Tim,” people often ask me, “is this person going to heaven?”
Ya know, my New Birth Detect-o-Matic is on the fritz, so it’s hard to be sure. If I were just meeting the guy today, of course I’d be skeptical. But if I knew the guy back then and was firmly convinced that he was a believer back then, I don’t really see a reason to question it now. I thought he was born again back then because Scripture teaches me to think that way: people who believe in Jesus are born again. There simply is no biblical text that gives me grounds to turn around and doubt him based on his scandalous present behavior. Everywhere you might expect to see that, what you see instead (if you actually read in context) is assurance: a challenge to live up to the new birth you have, not a question about whether you really had it.
But honestly, I think that (like the problem of evil) this is not a hard question logically; it’s a hard question emotionally. We don’t want to believe that a genuine believer can really fall all the way into something as dark as straightforward demon-worship. It troubles us to think that someone found our faith so un-compelling that they left it for something else, and something so wicked. We want to believe that we would never apostatize, and seeing someone do it — someone we thought of as “just like me” — shakes our complacency. That sort of thing. So, to set all our minds at ease, here’s a list of the sins the Bible tells us that no genuine believer could ever fall into:
Yup. That’s it. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
Guard your hearts, folks. It absolutely can happen to you.
Watch the whole interview here. If you’re not familiar with her work, Louise Perry is the author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution and one of the more incisive commentators of our day when it comes to sex and gender issues. In this interview, she talks about her journey and why she intends to raise her children Christian even though she’s not a Christian (yet).
If you read the gospels carefully, you will discover that Jesus goes to the places and the people who are totally respectable, and to the people who are…at the other end of the spectrum, shall we say. (Note Luke 7:36-39, which nicely encapsulates both ends of the respectability spectrum, or compare John 3 to John 4, or Luke 11:37 to Matthew 9:9-11//Mark 2:14-16//Luke 5:27-30, Luke 19:2-7, Matthew 11:19). There was a point in my Christian life where I noticed that fact in a more-than-theoretical way, and it’s had a profound impact on me. For your amusement and edification, Gentle Reader, here are a few of the places I’ve been….
Bacon, Beer, and Body Paint
Once upon a time, I had a minor role in launching/promoting an event to benefit an oil field worker named Dan who’d been handicapped in a vehicle rollover. Insurance covered his medical expenses and bought his motorized wheelchair, but didn’t cover the necessary modifications to his house so he could get around in there. Doors needed to be widened, etc. And of course, he also needed a new job, and training for it. Dan’s brother had a few thousand bucks, but that wasn’t nearly enough to fund everything that needed to get done.
But Dan’s brother was also a good salesman and knew a little about event planning. So he piled the money into a fundraiser: a beer-and-bacon festival. He got a local business with a big parking lot to let us use their property for the weekend, and a handful of other businesses to sponsor the event with give-aways, door prizes, etc. They had a couple of breweries, Denver Bacon Company, I think some insurance and real estate brokers, a local pot shop, that sort of thing. They got musicians, face painting for the kids, all kinds of stuff. A good friend of mine worked for one of the businesses, and asked me to help promote the event. I took posters to businesses in high-traffic areas, personally invited everybody I knew, everything I could do to promote it.
Come the day, I showed up and hung out most of the day. I still have a set of 4 tin cups from Sailor Jerry’s rum that I won in the door prize drawing. It was all going swimmingly until the spokesmodel from the pot shop visited the face painters. I recall passing through that area and noticing one of the painters doing a piece on her back, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Half an hour later, I see a huge crowd over by one corner of the building. I wander over to see what’s going on and discover this same model doing an impromptu photo shoot wearing nothing but her Daisy Dukes and expertly applied body paint. So then I get to decide, do I just leave? Do I just avoid her? Something else?
Right on Target
I was down at Centerpoint chatting with one of my regular guests. He was a bit drunk, as is usual for him, and he asked me to pray for him about something. I did so. When I finished, he thanked me, and then he grabbed my shoulder and said “Now I’m gonna pray for you.” I didn’t want to tell him not to, so I let him. In minutes, there were tears in my eyes — without knowing it, this Jesus-loving drunkard was praying for the deepest concerns I had that week. Was he in active sin? Yes. Was he being led by the Spirit despite that? Undoubtedly.
“Tim won’t go!”
Went to a friend’s thirtieth birthday party. She’s one of my favorite felons, and has a friend group to match. We closed the restaurant where we started out, and then tried to go to a pop-up haunted house down by the highway (this was in mid-October). By the time we’d re-convened in the haunted house parking lot, they were closing. So we’re standing in the parking lot as the last carload of our people arrives. Someone catches them up on the situation and explains that we’re trying to decide where to go next. One of the guys says, “Titty bar!” My friend vetoed it immediately: “No, because Tim won’t go.” She wasn’t just assuming (although she was right); she’d been there when I declined an invitation from her boyfriend a few weeks earlier.
If it’s spiritually risky to be like Jesus, it’s spiritual suicide to knowingly refuse to be like Him.
Suicide by Tim
I’m sitting at a kitchen table with a man who’s threatening to kill me. It’s not an idle threat; he’s a combat veteran, a Marine turned cop. I know he’s drunk; I assume he’s armed. If you were watching through the window, the scene would look pretty calm. Samuel (not his real name) is talking; I’m sipping a glass of water. Below the table, I’ve quietly drawn and opened my carry knife. Plan A is talk him down; Plan B is “I go home to my wife, no matter what happens to him.” At the moment, the most likely approach is to send the water glass flying at his face while three inches of very sharp steel comes in low for whatever I can reach, before he can draw whatever he’s carrying.
This was not in my plans for the day. I’d gone down to the Springs to spend an afternoon with my friend Jack on his day off. We’d eaten and talked, and I hung out for a while at his church’s coffee shop while he worked a volunteer shift. (That shop itself is a cool story for another time.) Afterwards, we went back to his house, and a bunch of his friends and coworkers came over to hang out. The beer and whiskey flowed freely, and in due time Samuel took offense at something I said. The initial threat was just a generic “We can take it outside” type of thing — I forget the exact words — but things turned ugly when Jack tried to intervene.
“You don’t want to do that, Samuel. Tim would do you. Just let it go.”
That was like pouring gas on a fire. “I’ll kill him!” Samuel said. “I don’t care!”
He didn’t, in fact. Samuel’s squad had been on patrol when their humvee got hit by an IED, killing his three buddies. He had a massive case of survivor’s guilt that he medicated with whiskey when he was off-duty. Samuel really didn’t want to be alive; the only reason he hadn’t killed himself was because he was afraid to face God after committing suicide. Jack’s attempt to deter Samuel had the opposite effect: Samuel wanted to die, and Jack had just told him I could get it done for him. He escalated and threatened my life in a roomful of witnesses in order to create a situation where I’d kill him. But that didn’t mean he’d go down easy.
Until He Stood Up
Back when I first started Centerpoint, I would have one of the guests assist me in serving the Lord’s Table. One night a fellow I’ll call John asked me if he could assist me. He had been interacting reasonably well during the service, so I didn’t see any reason why not, so I said yes. He stood up next to me, and it quickly became apparent that he was drunk enough that he wasn’t going to be able to continue standing without help.
By this time, we were serving, and I couldn’t see how to swap him out for someone else without conveying a rejection I didn’t want to convey. So I got my arm under his elbow to give him a little extra stability and soldiered through. Right decision? Probably not, but I couldn’t see my way around it in the moment, so I went with it.
And So On…
Am I telling you that you should be willing to go anywhere, with anybody, anytime? No. Please note, they knew I wouldn’t go to the strip joint. If a particular place or group of people presents you with a temptation you can’t handle, then don’t do it. “Flee youthful lusts,” remember? If you can’t go to the place and be with the people and give God thanks, then turn down the invitation. “Whatever is not of faith is sin.”
But if your misgivings about going to the place or being with the people are founded in some ridiculous notion that Christians are supposed to be country-club respectable, if you’re worried about what other people will think of you, if you think “it’s just a bad testimony,” for vague and unspecifiable reasons…repent. You need to re-read the Gospels and have a hard look at how Jesus ministered, who He was willing to talk to, what He was willing to be accused of. They called Jesus a glutton and a drunk that pals around with traitors and whores. When’s the last time anybody accused you of that? Never? So that would be a way you’re not like Jesus. A servant is not greater than his Master. Repent.
I’ve got more such tales. I wouldn’t handle them all the same way now that I did then. Sometimes that’s a matter of brainstorming after the fact and coming up with a more gracious or wiser approach. Other times, I’ve grown in discernment and interpret things differently than I used to. I didn’t do everything right in the past, and I have no illusions that I’ll do everything right in the future. And you know what? Back when I refused to go to those places and spend time with those people, I never made any of those mistakes.
But avoiding people and places that Jesus wouldn’t avoid was just one more thing I needed to repent of. I did, and I’ve no regrets. If it’s spiritually risky to be like Jesus, it’s spiritual suicide to knowingly refuse to be like Him. Get out there. Whoever those people are for you, Jesus loves them. You should too.
The discussion ranged widely around the central theme of how sanctification works and what changes in you when you come into God’s family. Give it a listen if you care to.
One of my daughters sent me Aaron Renn’s interview with David Murrow a while back. The subject of the interview is “Why Men Hate Going to Church,” which is also Murrow’s book title. There’s a lot to unpack there, and I encourage you to listen to it, but one particular thing jumped out at both of us: safety.
Murrow talks about how virtually every Christian radio station has a tagline that’s something like “listening that’s safe for the whole family,” which is obviously designed to appeal to Christian moms. That makes good business sense for the stations, since mom is the one who decides what to listen to in the car. Murrow points out that at the same time Mom is getting her safe listening option, little Johnny in the back of the minivan is getting catechized that Christianity is the safe option that appeals to his mom. By age 11 or so, testosterone is flooding his body and he’s looking for danger and adventure and the opportunity for hijinks…and we’ve spent his whole life teaching him that Christianity is safe. Then we wonder why he’s turned away!
My daughter is a teacher and youth minister, so kids abandoning the faith is something of a preoccupation for her, as it should be. “You were raised on Christian music,” she said to me. “How did you avoid this trap?”
As it happens, part of the answer is that I wasn’t really raised on Christian music the way she was thinking, not like Murrow is talking about. I grew up on a lot of old music: everything from old cowboy songs to bluegrass to classical to native American chants recorded on the reservations to the soundtracks of Victory at Sea and Hatari! (Yes, on vinyl, but not because it was cool; it was just all we had.) Contemporary Christian music wasn’t really in the mix much at home, although I certainly heard plenty of it at church.
But there’s a much more significant answer: I grew up around people on mission. I never thought Christianity was safe.
My parents weren’t missionaries (although they tried, to the point of attending candidate school once upon a time). My pastor wasn’t a missionary either, but he’d tried, hard. After getting rejected by around 30 mission boards, he concluded that the Lord was telling him to stay stateside, and accepted a pastorate. My pastor’s brother, however, founded a little mission agency called World Evangelical Outreach. WEO (pronounced “wee-oh”) was headquartered in my hometown, first on the church grounds and then in the same little office building as my dentist. I still remember walking into the office and hearing the secretaries answer the phone “Wee-oh, how can I help you?” (Later on they changed their name and moved to a bigger location, then ultimately to a KOA property outside Orlando. You would know them today as Pioneers International. They’re, ah, a little bigger these days.) A lot of their missionaries passed through our church, along with others with New Tribes, Sudan Interior Mission, Arctic Missions, China Inland Mission, Baptist Mid-Missions, Greater Europe Mission, Missionary Aviation Fellowship, and many more.
These people were not safe; they were badasses. Men who smuggled Bibles into Communist countries and evangelized whole villages on their way back out, who made contact with reclusive tribes in deep jungle, seeking to save them from extermination by loggers and oil workers, who spent nights on an Albanian warehouse roof with an AK-47 to protect the winter’s food supply for an orphanage, who flew in and out of tiny jungle airstrips to get someone to life-saving medical care. Women who saved abandoned twins in sub-Saharan Africa, brought girls out of sexual slavery in Saigon, defied apartheid to bring the gospel into villages that would never otherwise hear. Couples who travelled the Sahara together to find nomadic Tuareg camps, built houses in the New Guinea highlands to bring medicine, literacy, and Jesus to remote villages, ate and shared Jesus with Hezbollah fighters, their wives, and their children.
Of course we didn’t stay stuck in our own century either: we read tons of missionary biographies and all kinds of Christian history, too. I learned about Mary Slessor, David Livingston, Amy Carmichael, Corrie Ten Boom, Brother Andrew, John Wyclif, William Tyndale, Polycarp, the Forty Soldiers. So as I write these paragraphs, I have names and grainy photographs and artists’ renditions in my head for some, but I also have memories of men and women around my dinner table. One of them taught me how to play dominos; I showed another how my Transformer worked; a third explained to me how he lost his ring finger. The stories from centuries ago are real to me, part of an unbroken legacy that stretches from the Old Testament prophets through Jesus and the apostles and right on down to the guy sitting next to me at the kitchen table, asking me to pass another of Mom’s sourdough muffins (which are in fact delicious).
Some of them came back every four or five years to tell us how things were going. Some of them came back on medical evac flights. Some of them came back on medical evac flights and then went back again, and again, and again. (Ralph and Maridee Sauers, I’m looking at you.) Some of them didn’t come back at all; we’ll see them again in glory.
Obviously their Christianity wasn’t the safe, Mom-approved path. It was the biggest adventure in the world, far superior even to joining the Peace Corps or the military (which some of them had also done, before). Tourist travel was childish and self-indulgent by comparison — not even in the same league. For the longest time, I thought I was going to join them overseas. I did short-term hitches doing child evangelism in Spain, a building project in Trinidad & Tobago, teaching English and computer skills in central Russia. Closer to home, I served on street evangelism teams in the Atlantic Provinces of Canada, various locations in metro DC, and a series of places in the southeastern US, especially Florida. I knew that God could call me anywhere, and I was ready to go!
Imagine my surprise when He called me to California, of all places. We had a long argument about that, and I lost. After all, I did tell Him I would go anywhere! So I went. After I finished seminary, He took me into the desert for six years, and from there to the heathen wilds of Denver, where I’ve been ever since. I’ve been overseas, training pastors in Australia and such, but it seems likely that the majority of my calling is stateside.
These folks’ legacy of following Jesus anywhere He leads has informed my decisions my whole life, is with me today, and I’m pleased to pass it on in turn to my students, my daughters, my disciples. There’s another little kid I ate with last week, and I’m the guy at his kitchen table, asking him to pass another muffin while he shows me his Lego model. (And because God’s fun like that, his name is Timothy too. Wild.)
I’m not surprised when God calls me somewhere surprising, if I may put it that way. The darker the corner, the more it needs light. Some of the corners have been pretty dark, but that’s another post. The point for today is, your kids don’t need more vapid CCM; they need time with Christians doing dangerous things for Jesus.
“Preaching” doesn’t mean what you think it means. “Pastor” doesn’t mean what you think it means. “Church” doesn’t mean what you think it means. “Household” doesn’t mean what you think it means. “Ministry” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
All of those are perfectly fine biblical words, but in modern English, these words and many others have been radically redefined away from their biblical meaning (“preaching,” “pastor,” and “church”), narrowed to a much smaller scope than their biblical meaning (“ministry”), or very nearly emptied of all meaning whatever (“household”).
So when you say “I’m just reading the verse, man!” — No, you’re not. At least not usually. Usually, you’re imposing the accrued ecclesiastical traditions of the West and the definitions of our post-industrial consumer society on a text that knows absolutely nothing of those things. You’re reading a first-century text with a twenty-first century dictionary, and then pretending that what you hear is what the original authors meant. That’s just not so.
What to do about it? Bridge the contextual gap. Learn what the biblical authors meant by the words that they use, and remember that when you read them. Ask yourself, “What did obedience actually look like for them?” and be sure to flesh that answer out before you start thinking about how to apply the same truths to yourself today.
Much has been said in certain quarters about the sin of empathy. How ought we to think about this?
Back in the seventies and eighties, Francis Schaeffer used to get criticized for oversimplifying the philosophers he spoke about — Hegel, for example. Professional philosophers would complain that Hegel was actually quite a bit more nuanced than Schaeffer was letting on, and not necessarily vulnerable to the criticisms Schaeffer would level against him. I can’t really discuss the validity of the criticism; I’m no expert on Hegel either. But for the sake of discussion, let’s grant that the professionals are right, and Schaeffer really was oversimplifying Hegel.
Where did that oversimplification come from? Was Schaeffer just straw-manning Hegel? No indeed, and here we need to remember Schaeffer’s actual ministry context. He wasn’t ministering to Hegel himself, nor to professional philosophers. Overwhelmingly, he was serving college students. When you’re working with a college sophomore who has misread (and oversimplified) Hegel and thinks he has hold of a profound truth, what’s the task at hand? Do we try to make him a better Hegelian? Or do we just start from where he actually is and minister the gospel to him?
Obviously the latter, which is what Schaeffer did. It might be fair to say that Schaeffer’s treatment isn’t up to dealing with all the nuances of Hegel’s actual views, but it his work deals admirably with Hegel as portrayed in popular culture of the time. He dealt with the actual beliefs of the people in front of him, as well he should.
So when my brothers to the northwest wax eloquent on the sin of empathy, I can see their point. They are not (as we will see) addressing what empathy actually means, but the sin they are expertly skewering is a real sin, it is rampant in our culture, and the people who are committing it often call that sin “empathy.”
Why is it that the popular definition so diverges from the real one? For the same reason that we misuse “depressed,” “triggered,” or “autistic.” Psychotherapy is our culture’s unofficial religion. Religious terms with specific meanings always get debased, usually in a quest to apply a virtuous gloss to whatever the adherent wanted to do anyway. (Hence, for example, one of the most intemperate displays of modern times calling itself the “temperance movement” in the early 20th century. In contemporary usage, someone who’s triggered (the real definition) should be treated with compassion, so people describe themselves as “triggered” when they’re just mad, so as to garner more sympathy than they deserve.) The clergy and theologians — psychotherapists and counselors, in the case before us today — always object: “That’s not what the word means!” But people go on abusing the terms anyway. It’s an unfortunate trend, and clearly psychotherapy is not immune to the term-debasing trend that has long afflicted other religions.
Whether our brothers ought to cede the term “empathy” is a separate question. As it is not a biblical word, they are under no obligation to fight for it if they don’t want to. On the other hand, there’s no sin in fighting for the proper definition, either. Since the actual meaning of empathy is both a biblical concept and a necessary spiritual discipline, that’s what I’m going to do below.
Properly defined, empathy is not a virtue and it is not a vice. It is a tool, like a claw hammer, a chef’s knife, or a handgun. That tool can be used to build or destroy, to nourish or injure, to save life or to kill. So what does the word “empathy” actually mean?
Empathy: n. understanding a person from their frame of reference rather than one’s own, or vicariously experiencing that person’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. Empathy does not, of itself, entail motivation to be of assistance, although it may turn into sympathy or personal distress, which may result in action. In psychotherapy, therapist empathy for the client can be a path to comprehension of the client’s cognitions, affects, motivations, or behaviors.
APA Dictionary of Psychology
A seasoned psychotherapist I know put it this way: empathy and compassion are two fundamentally different things. The best con artists have perfect empathy, but zero compassion. They can see the world through your eyes so well that they can take everything you have. So it’s fair to say that seeing things from another person’s point of view is not inevitably a virtue.
On the other hand, some virtues are impossible without it. Husbands, for example, are commanded to do exactly that for their wives: “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” (1 Pet. 3:7)
The Golden Rule requires similar insight. The proverbial young husband who buys his wife a drill for her birthday because that’s what he would want is obviously not applying the Golden Rule correctly. He would like a birthday present that he wants; therefore he should buy her a birthday present that she wants. But he can’t really do that without seeing the world from her point of view, can he?
Empathy is a component of wise love, a necessary but not a sufficient condition. You can’t love another person well if you refuse to see things from their perspective; that way lies well-intentioned cluelessness. Neither can you love love another person well if you get so pulled into their perspective that you fail to exercise good sense. You should not believe everything you think or feel; you should not use empathy to substitute someone else’s thoughts and feelings for your own. Discernment and emotionally sober judgment is required: love well, and love wisely.
So what are we to say about the “sin of empathy?” Well, our brothers would defend their position by pointing out that the behavior they are criticizing really is a sinful use of empathy. Sure. They would also criticize the sinful use of handguns, but you won’t see anybody from their camp writing a book titled “The Sin of Handguns” anytime soon. So there’s that.
One of the basics of good shepherding is to remember what you don’t know. When they say “We had a fight last night,” you don’t know if it was a minor argument, a shouting match, or a physical brawl. You have to ask more questions if you need to find out. But there’s also another key mistake you can make: missing what they are telling you.
Jack and Jill have been dating for a while, and things are starting to turn a bit more serious. Then one day, Jill breaks it off. “I just don’t think we can have a good relationship if we’re not honest with each other,” she says.
Jack is baffled. Over a beer with his buddy Eli, he vents: “I don’t know what she’s talking about! I’ve worked so hard to communicate clearly and listen well! I’ve been as honest as I know how to be! I just don’t get it!”
Eli nods. “She thinks you’re dishonest with each other, but you’ve been honest with her.”
“Yes!” says Jack.
Eli sips his beer and steeples his fingers. “So what does she know that you don’t?”
Obviously, when Jill tells Jack that they’re not being honest with each other, she’s confessing that she hasn’t been honest with him. She thinks it’s mutual; she may be right or she may be projecting. But she’s wildly unlikely to be wrong about herself.
When people say things like this, don’t get so caught up in defending yourself from the embedded accusation that you miss what they’re telling you about themselves.
Framing eschatology as ‘optimistic’ or ‘pessimistic’ is deliberately tactical; it’s a postmil recruiting tool, and a really useful one, too! (At least for Americans; we are an optimistic people.) As an accurate descriptor of anybody’s Christian eschatology, ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ are lazy oversimplifications. We are surrounded by pagan eschatologies from Ragnarok to heat death; all Christian eschatologies are wildly optimistic.
When we’re talking about prophecy, I often recommend that we go back and look at prophecy that’s already been fulfilled in order to get our bearings. As a test case for the labels ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ within the biblical milieu, let’s consider the first advent. There’s a raft of prophecies that the coming Messiah would conquer and reign; this is what Peter, et al., expected Jesus was going to be about — an optimistic eschatology if ever there was one! There’s also prophecies that the coming Messiah would suffer and die. How pessimistic! But it turns out that both of those things are true, and it didn’t look how anybody expected.
Anyone who thinks that we win in the end, and knowledge of the glory of Yahweh covers the earth like water covers the sea — all those people are expecting victory, and have reason to live like it.
Of course, if you think that victory to be inaccessible now…I wonder. But that’s not a premil/postmil thing; it’s a “Is the Kingdom of God a present reality?” thing.
But that isn’t a package deal with your eschatology. I’m a convinced premil, because as far as I can tell that’s what the Bible says, and I know that the Kingdom is a present reality, because — wait for it — that’s what the Bible says. Jesus wasn’t embarrassed to talk about the Kingdom coming in the present; can’t think why I would be. If the Kingdom came when He cast out a demon, then it’s coming when we cast out a demon. It’s coming when an addiction gets broken. It’s coming every time we face a temptation and say no, and it’s coming every time God gives us an opportunity to serve and we say yes. We pray for it — “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” — and God is pleased to answer our prayers.
Premillennialism’s critics frequently characterize us as thinking that “we lose now, but we win in the end.” Unfortunately, there are actual premillennialists who really think that. But none of them — neither the shallow premil guys nor our critics — have thought about it deeply enough. If Jesus dying on the cross was losing, if Stephen being stoned was losing, then sure, premil means “we lose now.” What nonsense. God never wastes anything; every good deed done here lives forever, one way or another, and God is brilliant at victories that don’t seem like victories as the world reckons things. The final destruction of the world is one more such death, and it will be followed by one more such resurrection! It may be the case that every paper copy and recording of Handel’s Messiah is going to melt with a fervent heat, but do we seriously think we won’t have Handel’s Messiah — with a rousing polyrhythmic djembe section that’s not been written yet — in the Kingdom? And knowing that, is there any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and write that bit today?
People who think the bright lines in eschatology are between amil, postmil, and premil are fundamentally mistaken about the discipline. It’s a common misconception bred by the fact that far too many of our theologians never get out of the classroom. Here’s what matters far more: When we wake up in the morning to a headline that tells us the kings of the earth have taken counsel against the Lord and His Anointed, what do we do? We know what God is doing — He’s laughing. Psalm 2 says so! He thinks it’s hilarious, mock-worthy. The question is whether we laugh with Him, or whether we go out in the yard and do our best Chicken Little imitation. THAT is the bright line in eschatology, and people who think it tracks with a-, post-, or pre-mil need to get out more. I’ve known postmil folk to fall apart at a headline, and my people here are overwhelmingly premil folk who join in the mockery.
Overrealized eschatology is poison. I recently found myself in a couple of conversations about the way in which “pessimistic” premillennial eschatology is said to create people who don’t care about the material conditions in which their neighbors live, because fixing this world is “polishing the brass on a sinking ship.” That kind of premillennialism is trash, and I say that as a premil guy.
I’d love to say that description is a caricature, a straw man. It’s not, quite. Evangelists for other eschatological positions certainly overplay it (and they’ll answer to their Maker for slandering their brethren when the time comes), but these people really do exist. The antidote to that sort of nonsense is simple and biblical. Here are four key pieces:
1) The Dominion Mandate was given to Adam and Eve, repeated to Noah and his descendants, and is still in force for Noah’s descendants today. So live fruitfully in every direction; fill the earth and subdue it. Exercise godly dominion over whatever God has placed within your reach. This is God’s will for your life, and no eschatological position relieves you of your duty.
2) Seek first the kingdom of God, *and His righteousness.* The consummated kingdom may be future, but God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel in this age, and realized every time we obey Him. Premillennialism does not give anyone in government an excuse for promoting policies that Jesus doesn’t like. If you’re a voter, that applies to you. Dealing in reality means making trade-offs, and that’s fine, but you should be aiming for God’s righteousness.
3) Psalm 2. When the headlines tell us that the kings of the earth are taking counsel against the Lord and His Anointed, God thinks it’s hilarious. We can do our best Chicken Little imitation, or we can join Him in laughter. We should, and the psalms give us the vocabulary for that. Sing them, pray them, read them, get them deep into you.
4) Love your neighbor. If you love your neighbor, then you can’t be indifferent about a war that kills a bunch of your neighbors. If you love your neighbor, then you want his sewers to keep working. And so on — yes, the elements will melt with a fervent heat, but until they do, love your neighbor already!
It’s not really that hard. However you think this all ends, you don’t get to ignore how God told you to live today. That’s true for the impatient postmillennials who are smuggling crates of AKs for the theocracy they’re hoping to usher in next Tuesday, and it’s true for impatient premillennials who want to ignore the Dominion Mandate and the Greatest Commandment because God chose to make the world out of flammable ingredients. People like that are idiots, and we shouldn’t pick either our ethics or our eschatology based on idiots.
Posted by Tim Nichols 
Full Contact Christianity 