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| Harold Egbert Camping |
As many readers know, ultra-conservative Christian radio broadcaster,
Harold Camping predicted some time ago that the Christ's second coming was going to take place at
6:00 p.m. last evening, May 21st. He based his prediction on a complex set of "computations" dervided from various cherry-picked Bible passages. The computations (using the word loosely) are described in a
Time NewsFeed posting entitled, "
By the Numbers: How May 21, 2011, Was Calculated to Be Judgment Day." Camping is so ultra-right wing that other evangelical and conservative groups and scholars—even those who themselves believe that the end times are coming soon—made light of his prediction. (CNN interviewed one conservative Texas pastor who basically said that Camping is wrong, but if he's right I'm ready).
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| Robert Fitzpatrick - believer |
One cannot help but wince at this sort of thing. Camping's predictions (this is his second time, the first being 1994) only serve to make the Christian faith look silly. How can anyone take this kind of religion seriously? We don't, of course, but as people of faith we tend to get lumped in with "people of faith" like him. His use of the Bible, furthermore, only perpetuates the misuses and misunderstandings regarding the nature of scripture that we must already contend with. It is sad to see the Bible used to "prove" outlandish pet theories and narrow ideologies. Finally, we can only shake our heads sadly at those, such as New Yorker Robert Fitzpatrick, who allow themselves to be duped by the likes of Camping and to invest their life savings, as Fitzpatrick did, advertising his message.
A parishioner recently asked me about the description of the last days in
II Timothy 3:1-9. He noted that it sounds a lot like things going on today. It does indeed, but it also sounds like the 1960s, the 1930s, and numerous other periods in human history. Honestly, the first generation of Christians were wrong about the end times, which they believed were coming soon.
Apocalyptic thinking was "in the air" in their times, and they appropriated it for their faith. Their descriptions of the end times in and of themselves provide, however, are still useful to us. They provide excellent portraits of how human brokenness affects us and our world. It serves no purpose, however, to perpetuate this sad, silly game of predicting the second coming will come on this day or that. Enough already.
Oh, and welcome to the Day After. Hope you didn't
give the car away.
