Pete Rollins' cartoon rapture - advertising Insurrection on the back of a non-biblical parable #pyrotheology #gb11

Just seen the Rapture vid which Pete Rollins has sent out via his Vimeo site. It's a piece of viral advertising, I suppose. But I have to say it is so unbiblical that it took my breath away! An advertising gimick...mmm...well, I suppose it worked if it gets me posting on it and so advertising his book. But I wonder whether a more biblical approach via Isaiah 58 and so on would yield more positive results.

<p>The Rapture from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.</p>

The message is clear. It's the same message Pete has been sharing with us for a while now. Those Christians who think they are under God's wings, who are faithful to him and the Church but who fail to live out their Christian faith will ultimately be abaondoned by their loving God.

For Pete, God is only concerned with the few Christian's who abandon personal salvation and holiness in search of radical engagement with the world and those in need. Indeed, in this cartoon, God calls the faithful to heaven in the rapture, only to abandon them there while he and the angels go and establish themselves on the earth alongside those who rejected God and heaven in favour of the poor.

Now, it's a timeless liberal message that God is concerned for the poor. But I am not so sure that this particular version of it does justice to the Bible, to the Christian Church and most importantly to God.

The Rapture is caricatured in this text. It doesn't follow any of the biblical accounts in any detail at all. If you read any of them (Mark 13, Thessalonians, Revelation), you will see God is pretty much involved from the start. Revelation is a revelation of what God is up to - not some cataclysmic happening which God eventually has to intervene into. This is the wrong rapture taken from the wrong Bible.

The Church is caricatured in this text. Faithful Christians are consigned to hell because they are not socially aware or socially active enough. But I am not so sure that we can read Matthew's Sheep and Goats parable as the only criterion for judgment. It would seem that God has a bit more to say about the need to be born again and to worship the Lord and to serve his ways. How can the God who has established the Ten Commandments side with those who have categorically denied the first two of those commandments in their service of the earth? YES, Christians do need to engage in social action. Isaiah 58, Micah 6 and so on stand in perpetuity as the way to respond to the covenant love of God shown in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. But...you can't consign them to hell just because they don't fit your particular liberal view of social action. Stop judging the Church, Dr Rollins.

God himself is caricatured in this text. God is shown to be a pretty passive, arbitrary, capricious kind of God.  First, he remains aloof from the planet's plight (I am with you always to the end of the age, says Jesus in Matthew 28); then he decides to act by calling on the faithful; but his call is actually a trick to get them out of the way; once they are in heaven, he descends to earth with his angels to spend time with those who orginally turned their back on him. The holy joes get to live in a godless heaven. I am not sure this is really the kind of God who is revealed in the Bible or in Christian tradition. I think Dr Rollins needs to be a bit truer to the tradition in which he stands.

I know its just a parable - but what service does this do to the Church? Not many lessons aren't learnt through negative teaching.

Pete

 

http://pmphillips.posterous.com/pete-rollins-cartoon-rapture-advertising-insu

Comments

[Dlature]

"First, he remains aloof from the planet's plight "

Huh? That's actually the opposite of the purpose and message of the parable. Thbe ones "left behind in heaven" are those who want heaven to be an "escape"...God actually takes the rest BACK TO EARTH. Also, I seem to notice Jesus told MANY parables illustrating examples of NOT being faithful.
And Rollins does not "consign" anybody to hell. The whole "heaven-hell" dichotomy is the problemn being highlighted here, and the idea of "believing the right stuff" and thus getting a "seat" in heaven vs actually ministering to the world where we are....the "heaven" being portrayed is actually a place of setting aside the call to minister to those around us.