A Liberal’s Belief in the Rapture

I believe in the rapture.

I believe in the rapture as a liberal religionist in general, and a Unitarian Universalist in particular. I don’t claim to know when the rapture will occur, or what it will entail, but I believe in the rapture. I believe in it because of the modern liberal’s unwillingness and inability to employ religious imagination to pragmatic matters of living. I believe in it because it demands that I push the boundaries of what I can conceive and know about the meaning of our life and times.

I have read countless numbers of dismissals of the rapture predicted to occur today. These are smug and snide rebukes of the literalism and hubris of someone claiming to know the will of God in matters pertaining to the fate of space and time. Of course, the claim that any one person makes that he or she can know things beyond what humanity can know, is hubris. But, that it is deemed worthy of the manner of the liberal rebuke begs several questions, not the least of which is why certain modern liberals conceive it necessary to comment in this manner!

I write this because belief in the rapture is a particular form of a general belief concerning the nature of time.

I believe in the rapture because it carries with it a belief in the future. The classic conservative doesn’t believe in the future, but holds an allegiance to a past from which the present has descended and atrophied. The orthodox hold that the spiritually pure grasp and live by a correct adherence to a doctrine declaring that God was revealed in a past act; Moses at Sinai, Mohammed and Mecca, Jesus on the cross. Even the most broadminded of the orthodox look to yesterday in holding that these events form the “center of time,” when the meaning and purpose of existence changed through God’s intervention in this world. But, still, the emphasis is on the past as the bearer of meaning.

My faith is both a protest of that, and a declaration of something different.

I believe in the rapture because I believe in the future. I seek to employ a hermeneutic of suspicion, which demands that I realize I do not and cannot know when, where, or how. But, to “believe in” the rapture in the most basic way possible, is to assert that time will be fulfilled ahead of us, in a future that is “not yet,” as opposed to in a time behind and before. It is to claim that the future means something, though we cannot say with certainty today what that is. The future is yet to be determined. Thus, our activity today gains a heightened significance. To believe in the rapture is to take the stance of hope over lament and despair. And, it is to locate us as agents and participants and co-creators of that hope. What you believe in and work for and towards today, means something, not because of a past blueprint, but a future possibility. Those who seek to employ the hermeneutic of suspicion need to remind those who are certain they know when, where, and how, that doubt outlines the boundaries of our humanity in what we can and cannot know; what can and cannot be understood by us, or say for sure. But to the modern liberal, the threat of employing a hermeneutic of suspicion is to mistake the method for the substance. It is a tool for deepening faith, not faith itself. No one can stand very long on a foundation that is suspect, the object of unrelenting doubt, the shifting sands of uncertainty and mistrust. Anyone who has been in an earthquake knows you cannot stand when everything is constantly shifting, and yet, most of life is composed of moments of stability. Quakes subside and aftershocks disappear. Your allegiance, ultimately, resides in something. And doubt and suspicion - while excellent tools to outline what we can and cannot know, what we are and are not privy to - are poor substitutes for faith.

I believe in the rapture because I believe there is yet more meaning to be revealed tomorrow. I believe in the rapture because I believe time will be redeemed and fulfilled at last. I believe there is more to existence than the material, and that the expanding and expanse of the universe and all that exists far outdistances our capacities to create meaning in time. I don’t know where it will happen, how it will happen, or when; and, those things don’t really matter to me. But belief in tomorrow over yesterday is not unconnected to holding that love conquers fear. And, I do love today, even more than I loved yesterday, and not as much as I will love tomorrow. And I look with hope to what is yet to unfold.