The Beginning and the End

I really don't understand why debates about how the universe/world was created and about the "end times" garner so much media attention, debate, and conflict in our culture and in the church. From my perspective, there really isn't much substance to the debate.

Take the creation, for instance. One side argues that God created the world in seven days, that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and that the theory of evolution is anti-Christian. The other extreme says that things have come to being over millions of years through the process of natural selection and evolution and God had nothing to do with it. It is mere chance. In the middle we find all types of blends between the two poles--allowing for the fact that God may have guided the creation through any number of processes, including evolution.

Likewise, in the church there are two extremes to understanding the end times. One popular view is that the world will come to a violent end, there will be a rapture, a period of hell on earth, a thousand years of peace, and so on and so forth. This point of view is captured in the Left Behind series of books. On this one, there usually is no other side to the debate because Christians who disagree with the Left Behind paradigm really don't know what to do with the end of time and Christ's return.

My take on the whole discussion is that, it can be interesting to speculate on the creation and the end times, but in the end it is a rather pointless and meaningless debate. It doesn't affect our lives as Christians today and is often used to distract us from considering issues of faithfulness that strike closer to home . . . such as the use of our money and faithful stewardship, engaging in an active prayer life to grow closer in our relationship with God, and what it really means to love our neighbor in a violent and divided world.

In the end (no pun intended), the church teaches that God was there in the beginning and will be there in the end. Just as he created all there is out of love, he will be there in the end calling creation back to himself in that same love. As long as we don't remove God from the process in either scenario, how it happened is of little consequence. If we begin to focus on what hits closer to home in our own lives, however, there is opportunity for true growth for us as Christians.

One quick final note: If you would like to study an alternative to the Left Behind model of the book of Revelation, check out Dr. Efird's Bible study on the subject. It can be ordered at: http://efirdbiblestudies.com/. Dr. Efird is a retired professor from the Divinity School at Duke University. His study takes a close look at the Biblical text and he shows where the before mentioned model comes from (a lawyer named John Nelson Darby who lived in the 19th century) and shows that the book of Revelation is really not about Jesus Christ's second coming and the end times, but rather a book of hope to all Christians facing persecution.