For a long time, “the end times” sounded mostly like a threat to me. I love this world as God’s creation, and I did not want to lose this gift. I have also always hated the way people are frightened with apocalyptic language.
But since my husband died, something in me has changed. There is now also a longing for what comes after. And I think of people living in much harsher conditions than mine, people under persecution, war, or constant danger. For them, the end of this world may not sound like terror, but like hope.
That is why I think Christians should stop preaching the end times mainly as fear. For the suffering, the exhausted, and the oppressed, it can also mean that evil does not get the last word forever.
But we should also be careful not to talk ourselves into the position of the persecuted just because our witness is contradicted or no longer socially dominant. That is not the same thing.
What do you think? Do you hear the end times more as threat or as hope?
u/Just_Revolution_1996
I teach economics in Germany, and I’ve had the growing impression that many students struggle more than they used to with abstract structures if I only explain them verbally or symbolically.
So now I’m teaching topics like shares and subscription rights in 12th grade with Lego bricks.
It sounds silly at first, but it actually helps.
Once the capital stock, the old shares, the new shares, and the changed ownership ratios are physically visible, quite a few students suddenly understand what they could not grasp in purely abstract form.
I’m not even sure whether the problem is “less abstract thinking” in a strict sense, or whether many students now simply need a stronger concrete bridge before they can move into abstraction.
I’m curious about the mix of people here, not only in age but also in faith biography. If you’re comfortable sharing: how old are you, and how long have you been a Christian?
Why? Why? Why?
Why can’t we Christians finally pull the plank out of our own eye instead of obsessing over the speck in someone else’s?
If you are not gay, why is this the sin you cannot stop talking about?
Why does it burden your conscience that two people live in a homosexual relationship, but not that single mothers are barely surviving?
Not that people are kept in degrading prison conditions?
Not that wealth and poverty are distributed so grotesquely that in one of the richest countries on earth, many live in conditions no one should accept?
Not that one serious illness can push a family to the edge of ruin?
Why is this the hill so many Christians want to die on?
If God wants to convict a person, God is able to speak to that person’s heart. He does not need your obsession.
But some of you seem far less interested in justice, mercy, greed, exploitation, cruelty, or indifference than in policing the intimate lives of other people.
Many are not tormented by the suffering of the poor nearly as much as by the existence of gay people.
Why?
P.S. I’m speaking here especially about the pseudo-posts that already come with a prefabricated opinion, and about the people who think they need to plant their moral flag under threads started by people in real distress. Sometimes “bearing witness” would look more like keeping quiet.
My daughter is being confirmed next month here in Germany, and that made me wonder: is there anything like confirmation in the U.S., especially in Protestant churches? Or is it mainly a Lutheran / European thing?
A while back, I was teaching a class on death and dying. An atheist student asked me what I thought about death. I did not quote scripture. I did not explain my faith. I told them that before my husband died, I was curious. And I told them what it was like to be there when he died. How quiet it was. The classroom had never been that quiet before.
I did not plan to give witness. But afterwards I realized that I had. Not by arguing for anything. Not by trying to convince anyone. Just by answering honestly, without fear, because faith had carried me through it and I was not afraid to say so.
When has this happened to you? A moment where you said something simple and true, and only later understood that something of your faith had become visible?
As a German Protestant, I keep noticing that in American discussions, “evangelical” and “Protestant” do not seem to mean the same thing at all.
Sometimes “evangelical” sounds more like a spiritual and cultural identity.
“Protestant” sounds broader, older, more historical, or just less specific.
So I’m curious: Do you think of yourself as more evangelical or more Protestant?
And what is the difference for you?