The blessed hope; what sustains it?

A strong expectation of the end of time can make the continued passage of time an embarrassment. Even worse, it can lead to giving up on the expectation. Embarrassed Adventists and disillusioned Adventists are not an unknown species. How then are we to sustain expectation in the face of apparent delay? This question has pressed itself upon me over the last few years, coming at me in bits and pieces and at the oddest of times--not a sustained reflection, but more an existential reflection that has arisen out of the experiences and questions of daily life. That is how I would characterize my end of the world pondering.

At the same time I must admit that my scattered reflections have been possessed of an undergirding concern. It has seemed to me that just when we should be anticipating more than ever long awaited events, then either distraction or lethargy seizes us. Many times I have said to my wife, and only those who are readers of Lewis' Narnia books will understand this, “It is time for Puddleglum to stick his feet into the fire.” If there were ever a time when we cannot afford to be caught spiritually napping, certainly it is now.

But I must make clear that this is not to give expression to an overweening personal concern. It should not be primarily a self-concern which fuels a desire to stay awake, but rather a concern for the glory and truth of God and for the salvation of those who do not yet know Him. Indeed self-concern is only proper when it is a concern to not fail of engagement with these larger realities, which are the true and proper concerns of humans anyhow.

But back to our question: how do we sustain expectation, when what we have been expecting seems so long in coming? In the light of this question a new thought came to me, out of the blue, as I drove home from the woodshop to eat my lunch. My thought had to do with the way we think about time, especially the time of His coming.

The End of Time or the Time of the End?

We cannot think of the coming of Jesus in terms of a specific point in time. He himself told us this when he said, “No man knows the day, nor the hour.” Jesus’ statement makes this particular waiting unique in the annals of salvation. The faithful in Noah's time knew not only that an end was approaching, but they also knew the time of that end. One hundred and twenty years had been granted and signified in the very year of fulfillment by the death of Methuselah. Abraham was told the year that his descendants would be delivered from bondage. The exiles were told by Jeremiah the number of years their captivity would continue. And finally, Daniel was given insight as to the very year that Messiah would accomplish his greatest work, the work of blood atonement. In all these cases men and women could point to a specific time. Specificity had been given them. The “day and hour” were known.

But the last great prophecy is different. The long stretch of the 2300 days does not bring us to the end of time, but only to the time of the end. And that is why we must think of time differently. But how then are we to think of it? What is involved in knowing that we are in the “time of the end” that makes it different from knowing the “end of time”?

The answer to that question, I have come to believe, is this: Knowing the “end of time” would focus our attention upon a specific point in time and the event which will take place at that point, namely the second coming of our Lord. But not knowing that point and knowing only that we are in the “time of the end” focuses our attention on essential developments which will culminate in that end.

I can still remember Jon Paulien in seminary class emphasizing the apparent oddity of Satan going “off” to make war. The Greek word that we translate “off” literally means “he left,” “he departed” (Revelation 12:17). So we have the idea, “Satan went away—he departed—so as to make war.” What seems to be pictured is a strategic retreat, a retreat for the purpose of re-grouping and re-launching the offensive anew. It has been my growing conviction for some time now that the Enlightenment was the start of this new offensive, Satan's counterattack to the Reformation.

That Satan should be checked and have to begin again along a new line is nothing new. God has checked him before. Only this time God has revealed to us that this will be the last time. This is the last time that Satan will rearm himself. This is the last time he will engage in a new offensive. The deceptions and distortions launched by the thinkers of the Enlightenment will not be replaced by yet another system. They will only come more and more to fruition. And this insight gives focus and shape to our “waiting.” We do not wait blindly for a mere point in time. We wait and watch the development of an identifiable system of thought, which as it grows into full fruition signals the approaching end. Even unbelievers have recognized this truth. The erudite and learned George Steiner, who surveys the philosophical and artistic state of western civilization in his book, Grammars of Creation, makes the startling statement, “There are no new beginnings.”

And so watching the development of the outlook and the way of life rooted in the Enlightenment is somewhat like watching a drop of water on a leaf. Swelling with the falling mist it moves recognizably towards the point when it will burst and break away. You know this will happen, and the more it swells the closer you know that moment to be, even though you do not know the exact moment it will occur. And so we see the fullness accumulating, though we know not the time of its end.

But then again, this waiting period is not one-sided. God has also engaged. In 1844 He initiated the divine movements that would culminate in final victory, sifting, testing, judging, lifting up truths essential for the times, calling people out, calling them to move higher, to find the true foundations, to give witness to the true pattern and to grow in it themselves.

And we as Adventist have been privileged to be a part of this waiting period, to have been at the front of this movement. But I sometimes fear that we have been content with merely mapping events, giving shape to an eschatology identifiably Adventist, and patting ourselves on the back that we have it all figured out. In such a scheme events can only be waited for, engendering a kind of passivity, centered in self-concern, spiced at times with wide-eyed apocalyptic fervor.

With this attitude we should not be satisfied. We must dig deeper. We should go back again and again to the books of Daniel and Revelation, not so much to map out events, as to be made vitally aware of the spiritual issues which are at the root of present conflicts. Satan is working through his agents to redefine the whole playing field of life—spiritually, intellectually, culturally—to bring men and women to the point where biblical faith is no longer accessible to them. And against these movements we can and must engage or be swept away ourselves in the growing flood.

Disappointed with delay? Distracted by the seeming inattention of God—the silence—as the world increasingly slides into a moral pit? We should shift our focus. That which began in the Enlightenment on one side, and in 1844 on the other continues to develop apace and in every new development we may find, not only the confirmation of His soon coming, but also the call to engagement for the sake of a world that is fast losing its grip on the truth. There is no time to think of delay and to collapse into distraction and disappointment. Even now all things move towards the climax.

The community: incubator of wisdom

Last Thursday evening found me at the lathe, wood chips flying, carving out my daughter's future. Well, kind of. It was a baton I was making, the kind that are used in relay races. Our oldest was turning 13 on the morrow and we wanted to set her up well for the next leg of the race. And so, on the very next day we sat in our living room, family and significant friends all around, and we ushered her into young adulthood. The men in the room all spoke briefly of qualities they had seen in Maggie that they especially appreciated, and the women passed on sage bits of advice for her journey into womanhood. All the comments were recorded on paper, rolled up, inserted in the drilled out center of the baton, capped over, and then passed into my daughter's hand. It was the spirit of the genealogy that animated us, family and community together, pointing a life towards the divine intent and encouraging her onwards. But what makes this hand-off successful? In the past two articles I have shown that the Bible genealogy roots us in a history which has at its center the divine intent, that is the vision of God by which He created. Such rooting gives a significance to each individual life that cannot be obtained in any other way. But between the individual and that history lies the connecting link of the community. The question about the success of the hand-off is really a question about the health of the community. And to explore that question we need a vigorous conception of what community health actually looks like. But first we must clear up one little matter.

The Chicken or the Egg Dilemma

Is it the action of the individual that brings health to the community, or the action of the community that brings health to the individual? It is an important question because it helps us come to grips with the ways in which a community moves towards health, and the role of both community and individual in that movement. And yet it may be a misleading question in that the answer is not either-or but both.

One thing should be clear and that is that the individual does not live in isolation, nor as an end unto himself, nor as a primary focus of attention, all of which are temptations especially tempting to the fallen. Nonetheless, there is much that comes to the community through individuals, all the more so when they have recognized and gained victory over the above temptations. Individuals, when standing in their proper God-given role and place, become a power for the good, an elevating influence or leaven to the whole. So much so, that we are inclined to say that the individual comes first, that it is the individual that brings health to the community. And certainly this is a healthy outlook for the individual to adopt, the proper outlook. We are to be for the others, not for ourselves.

Yet at the same time the individual is not first in this order. The community is. The idea of the self-made man is mythological. All that is best in us has been given to us by another, many others in fact, chief among them God himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so an argument can be made, just as vigorous, that it is the community that brings health to the individual. This goal, the community should certainly set as one of its highest priorities. We should aim at becoming a context, better said a place, where the tide of uplift is so strong that an individual would have to fight hard to resist it.

Such an attainment will and does demand our utmost in alertness and diligent effort, both individually and together. The machinations which work against us are legion, both from within and without. But we have been given what we need for the effort in foundation texts, passages on which we can build if we will but give them their due. 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 come to mind, as well as Ephesians chapter 4. In these passages both the individual and the community may find the working material for community of the highest order. But principal perhaps is the book of Proverbs, a book that is of the highest importance for the centering of the community and the individual together in their proper tasks. Proverbs Divine no!

Proverbs is the quintessential community text, following the patterns of genealogical continuity and connection. And its focus is wisdom. Wisdom is the biblical word which is expressive of the divine intent in creation, the intent which we have argued is to be the center and focus of all our living, that which the individual bends every effort to attain and the community busies itself to hoard and pass on. Proverbs 8 makes this clear. To pursue wisdom is to measure your stride by creation patterns, God ordained patterns. And it is the pursuit of wisdom which is the proper business of community. So much so that this becomes the true marker of community health, that health which we argued above is so necessary to the successful passing of the baton of faith.

If wisdom is to be gained, however, we must be clear as to what wisdom is and isn't. Apart from such clarity we all too easily settle for something other or less than wisdom. Two alternatives have become especially popular in our day.

One of these is knowledge. Though knowledge plays a part in wisdom, it can be pursued and hoarded and displayed without a hint of wisdom showing up anywhere: knowledge exiled to the theoretical, knowledge that has lost its work gloves. Such knowledge distracts so powerfully from the quest for wisdom because it is easier. Wisdom requires engagement with the messy and difficult realities of human life and community; it necessitates becoming “comfortable” with uncertainty and perplexity and it calls for humble patience, as the honing provided by experience takes time. Knowledge does not cost so much. Pursued in isolation from the rough and tumble it comes free and easy.

Technique, that is method applied to everything, is another revered distraction of our age. Technique when applied provides a map for every eventuality. You know where you are going, even before you get there and outcomes are guaranteed. Technique promises facility in every endeavor, without the hard work of wisdom; nor does the application of technique require understanding. And so in the press for success techniques proliferate wildly. And yet technique has its down sides. With technique at the helm the world becomes man sized and man centered and with technique at the helm people become either problems to be solved or pawns to be moved rather than persons, whom we might come to know and understand and share life's journeys with. Is there a place for techniques? Certainly. But not when dealing with God and Holy Texts and people. A continued reliance upon technique in these realms will eventually bring us to the point where applications of technique are thought to be the only way forward. Wisdom becomes inaccessible.

To these distractions the community of faith must say no, and one of her best allies in articulation that no is the book of Proverbs. Proverbs bolsters our conviction that wisdom is the proper business of the family: father and son, mother and daughter, parents with their children; but not just family, there are also sages from the past, elders at the gate, and friends that give rebukes as sweet as kisses. But it is more than just a no that draws us away from bypaths. It is the compelling vision of what wisdom is all about and Proverbs provides us with this as well.

Proverbs Divine yes!

Wisdom lies at the very root of things. It was wisdom that informed and shaped each act of divine creation. And as foundation it becomes the catch all word for everything that comes from God. A perusal of Proverbs 8 turns up the following as synonymous with wisdom: noble things, right things, true things, righteous things, things untouched by crookedness and perversion, straightforward things. As the synonyms pile up you find yourself longing for insight into the commitments and patterns and responses that make up such a life, that capture the fullness of the divine intent, the divine imagining of what would be and could be in the world that He made. This is at the heart of wisdom, this vision of what God meant and intended when He made and sabbathed the world.

This is the first task of the community, the work of recapturing true patterns, of sorting through murkiness, and wrongheadedness, and confusion, and even downright perversion, so as to find and keep alive the true shape of things—the will of God shape, the image of God shape—in things and especially in people.

But this is not all. As a community regains its vision it must learn how to pursue that vision in all kinds of difficult, contrary, and even contentious settings. Wisdom, remember, wears work gloves. The vision is never detached from daily realities, from the problems and responsibilities of ordinary living. To be able to ask and answer the question, “How do I move in this situation and in this moment so as to serve the higher ends of God” that is wisdom. And it isn't easy. Just as mining isn't easy. Digging deep, blasting through rock, moving mountains, looking for gold.

And it is because it isn't easy that the final element must be set forth; wisdom involves developed capacities. I may see the vision, but not have the strength or capacity to bring it into being. The hardest part of the quest for wisdom is the reshaping, the transformation of myself, each self, into a being that is capable of embodying God's vision, truly a God work, but one that I must stay engaged with.

It is this that our hearts hunger for, this vision being lived together in and with our communities. The community may be far from perfect, indeed she is far from perfect. But if she is applying herself to these wisdom tasks her life and witness will prove compelling, her health and vigor unabated, her sons and daughter's eager to reach out and grasp the baton that is passed to them, so as to run the same compelling race they have seen enacted around them, in shops and marketplaces, factories and fields, courtrooms and hospitals.

May each of us pray to the church that which I whispered to my Maggie as I handed her my baton, hoping she would choose to run the race most worth running. “Run, girl, run!”

The genealogical mandate

Few among us would put scripture genealogies at the top of our list of spiritually significant subjects. And yet as I have suggested in my previous article, the scripture genealogy holds within it the very antidote to numerous present day ills. It remains for us to delineate the exact way in which a genealogy meets contemporary needs. Our discussion will focus in this article on the place and role of the self, and in a subsequent article on the place and role of community. A final article will explore some specific implications of the "genealogical framework" for Adventism in particular. The Self

Within the post-modern universe the self is the center; the individual and his preferences and opinions the only sacred entity. Family, community, and the social order must all bow to the individual. It is not that these entities do not exist within society today. They do, and yet they do not hold priority. They either serve the perceived needs of the individual or they are dispensed with or challenged. They are for me, not me for them.

Central to this post-modern argument on the place and role of the self is the issue of authority. If the constraining patterns of a given society exists solely on the basis of tradition and if traditional conceptions represent nothing more than the opinions of other men and women like myself, then why should I allow their opinions to be imposed upon my own life? This is in essence the post-modern question and it undergirds and informs the post-modern condition.

Lippman believed that such a condition of things was caused by "the impact of science upon religious certainty and of technological progress upon the settled order of family, class, and community" (New York Herald Tribune, August 1964). And though there is some truth in this he is only telling part of the story. What lurks in the background as the deeper cause is the failure of Enlightenment rationalism, a failure that Lippman himself was probably unwilling to admit. That rationalism had set out to establish a set of truths arrived at by empirical reason alone which would provide an unbiased and non-arbitrary pattern for human life and experience. When that attempt begin to unravel and prove untenable a thoroughgoing relativism was the inevitable result and the isolation of the self the only possible defense for the protection of the self from conceptions "arbitrarily" imposed by others. What this inevitably means, quoting Lippman again, is that "the meaning of life and the social order," must be "invented and discovered and experimented with, each lonely individual for himself."

As biblically astute Christians, this state of things should bring great sadness to our hearts. For we, above all others, should realize that it is impossible for the self to begin from scratch and successfully write its own story. That capacity and prerogative belong to God alone and make up the essential divide between the creature and the Creator. God begets and only then are we able to beget. Individual selves may of course attempt an independent narrative, discarding the image in which their selves were originally formed. This has been the way of mankind ever since Adam and Eve bit the apple. But the tragedy of this attempt is that the bid for independence will always result in the eventual unraveling of the self. The proclamation of the Preacher echoes and re-echoes over such lives. "All is vanity, vanity of vanities." This tragedy is made all the more profound in postmodernism because of the brazenness of the return to the forbidden tree by which man believes that he can become the creator of his own reality.

That a return to this tree should be the end result of the Enlightenment project is not surprising, for the whole of Enlightenment humanism was based upon the assumption of the moral autonomy of man. In Enlightenment thinking the individual comes first and has priority apart from all considerations of place or role in metaphysical orders or social and political structures. Ironically, giving the individual priority alongside these objective entities did not lead to the elevation of the individual but rather to his increasing dissolution and trivialization.

Take for example, the doctrine of rights. At its inception it was intended to provide a defense for the individual against oppression, but in its present day form it has become a force for dissolution. When first developed it was still linked with a sense of obligation towards God and one's fellow man. In other words, rights were balanced by duties and those rights which were invoked were rooted, just like the duties, in the recognition of the Creator. With the increasing secularization of the West, however, subtle shifts in the use of this doctrine have occurred. It is now used to buttress the primacy of the individual and the sacredness of his or her quest for self-fulfillment. Given such primacy, the ongoing expansion of perceived rights can be expected to continue apace.

Over against these developments, the central conception within the genealogical framework of scripture is that of duty and not of rights. Though there is unarguably a service of the family and the community carried out on behalf of the individual, the purpose of this service is not self-fulfillment as defined by the whims of the self, but rather a subsequent service to the community as defined by the divine intent and purpose within human history. Within such a framework the self has significance in the service of divine ends far beyond what it could ever fabricate for itself and protection of its highest interests, not in the fallible human conception of its rights, but in the person of God himself.

As never before in the history of the human family, it is absolutely imperative that as Christians we follow our Lord in allowing our "selves" to be shaped and our commitments and interests formed, not by self-interest but by the duties and responsibilities involved in living out God's Creation intent. "He who loves his life [insisting on the primacy of the self] shall lose it" (John 12:25). "But whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels shall save it" (Mark 8:35).