An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXI - Jesus Thought the World Was About To End

In a previous article Part V - The Milieu of the Gospels and Apocalypticism, I touched on what the culture of Judaea was during the time Jesus was supposed to have lived. I also touched on Apocalypticism. 

Eschatology is the genre of theology that deals with a belief that at some point the world will end and attempts to describe what that end will look like. Apocalypticism is a strain of eschatology which maintains the end of the world, or the age is imminent. Jesus, based on what is attributed to him in the Gospels, preached that the end of the world as he knew it was coming to an end, ushering in a new age under the rule of God and his representatives. Everything he did and said was in service of getting people to act right, to get themselves worthy of entering the soon-to-be inaugurated Kingdom of God. He wasn't trying to change society, because he believed that pretty soon there wouldn't be a society. He wasn't thinking long term because he didn't think there'd be a long term. He wasn't fighting the government or the religious establishment (other than pointing out their hypocrisy) because they were irrelevant — they'd soon be gone. But he was wrong — the world didn't end within Jesus' generation.

It could be argued that much about Jesus' message could still be applied by anyone today wanting to live "a good life" despite Jesus being wrong about the end of the world. "Love thy neighbor" sounds good, who could argue with that? The Sermon on the Mount (and the very similar Sermon on the Plain) lay out some pretty good guidelines for living a "Christian" life. Many Christians, attempting to keep their more dominionistic coreligionists at arms length, have taken to styling themselves "Jesus Followers", but is that what they are doing? 

Since Jesus believed that the end of the world was coming soon, the last thing he would have been worried about was improving society. He wasn't even concerned about personal relationships, note how he says how his followers must hate their parents, siblings, and spouses. I'm sure there's Christians who explain all that away, but that's what the man said. What about the part about selling all your possessions and giving it all to the poor? These things make sense in the context of the world as we know it ending just around the corner. If making nice with people who are against what Jesus is preaching is going to get you evicted from the Kingdom of God, is it worth it? Especially since the society in which these relationships function is soon going away for good. And why would you need riches? I submit that very few people are doing those things, even those who have taken vows of poverty aren't living in a van down by the river. So what Jesus are Christians following?

People tend to view Jesus through the lens of their own priorities. He wasn't a socialist, he wasn't an advocate for equal rights, he wasn't a feminist, he wasn't any of the things that the Christian Nationalists emphasize either. He was a guy who was convinced that the world was going to end and that God was taking over. He told people that they all had better get their lives right or they're going to miss the boat. 

Start at The Beginning: Part I