Rushing God

We don’t like to wait on God. Not one little bit.

We bitch and moan that if God were truly loving (or if He really existed at all), He wouldn’t make us wait for things like prosperity, peace, justice, love or anything else.

I’ve always put it down to a “me first” attitude of hypocrisy. That is, what I want is so clearly more important than what you want (or God wants), so God should be meeting my needs and wants first. It’s all selfishness because, let’s face it, if everyone got what they wanted, you’d have people with competing and frankly incompatible desires both getting what they want. That could be impossible in some cases, and damaging in many others.

But it never worried me much, this attitude of trying to rush God. To browbeat and beg and push for Him to give us what we want faster.

At least not until I started getting a better sense of churches, like one that Sarah Palin either still does, or recently did, attend. No, I’m not out to bash the great moosehunting savior of humanity with the naughty librarian look (Ooops, guess I did bash a little there); it’s just that her associations with such folks have brought up a whole End Times Christian subculture to which I had previously pretty ignorant of.

These are people who seem to consider it their duty to push along events so that the End Times (the Rapture, Apocalypse, Armageddon, the Millennial Kingdom, and all that) will come sooner. They seem to think that whatever they do is OK as long as it makes the End Times come quicker.

This stuns me.

The sheer arrogance that they won’t wait on God’s timetable but instead see themselves as soldiers to move events along, is staggering.

Why would Christians want to have a hand in all the vileness that comes about with the End Times? Why would we want to have any culpability in that? Why would be want to have our hands in affairs that are supposed to be perpetuated by the enemies of God and Christ?

And furthermore, why the hell can’t we just wait?

God clearly has things well in hand. He doesn’t need our help. We have a duty already, and that is to spread the Gospel. Not to accelerate the timetable toward the end of the world. Frankly, to be working to speed up the path toward the End Times is actually counter to the Great Commission. We are supposed to reach as many people as we can with the good news of the Gospel so that more people can come to Jesus.

To make the End Times come faster means you would purposefully be working toward reducing the chances of people to be saved.

This is so against the Word of God that it’s one of the few things I can truly say I think is outright heresy. These people are heretics. In fact, they may even be committing the one unforgivable sin, which is sinning against the Holy Spirit. Because what they are doing is seeking damnation for millions (really, billions)  and they are telling God: “You aren’t moving fast enough.”

This is a kind of hubris I cannot even wrap my brain around.

God help these people. God help us, too, and preserve us from these people.

UPDATE 10/13/2008:

Kellybelle made note of this blog post in one of her own; wanted to provide a link to hers since it expands on my thoughts nicely, as well as giving a nice quick overview of Religulous, which I’ve mentioned a few times recently around here. Click here to get to Kellybelle’s post.

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