Lately, within certain Christian circles, there has been a prevailing sense of deep concern, tinged with a hint of resignation regarding the current state of global affairs.

While this attitude can inspire genuine empathy and extravagant support for humanitarian causes, it also inspires apathy and resignation.

If we already know the end of the story, why try to change it? Israel's God is going to do, what Israel's God is going to do and there's nothing we can do about it.

I've been looking into what biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan says in response to the Church's pessimistic view of the world's suffering. When we consider the historical Jesus in his context, the story looks quite different and more akin to this:

The second coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen soon.

The second coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen violently. 

The second coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happen literally. 

The second coming of Christ is what will happen when we Christians finally accept that the first coming was the only [or most important] coming and to start to co-operate with its divine presence.

This isn't to say that there will not be a new creation and final resurrection someday. Rather, when it happens, it will come as a result of the Ecclesia, humbly, and finally, collaborating with the Holy Three as they re-learn what it means to be human.

This is what Crossan refer's to as collaborative eschatology- to which I'll turn to in my next post.

"No doubt a part of me wants to whittle Jesus down to my size so that I can avoid painful, even costly change. But another part of me is exhilerated by the possibility of becoming more human. So I listen in order to be transformed...there are people who want to be involved in inaugurating [Yahweh's] domination-free order, even if it costs their lives. Respondeo etsi mutabor: I respond though I must change. And in my better moments, I respond in order to change." 

Walter Wink- The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of Man 

Resources

Crossan, John Dominic, God and Empire: Jesus against Rome, Then and Now p. 231.    

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