Dear Harold,
Thank you for taking us all on this little end-times excursion. By today you will have either been fully vindicated as the greatest prophet of the 21st century or your name will be associated with another sad chapter in the long line of Christian foolishness.
If in fact you were proven wrong, I want you to know that I think you actually meant well. You've never struck me as a guy who was in this for the money or the fame. I imagine you really do care for your followers and I would hope that if in fact Judgment Day has not arrived you will do what you can to care for them.
I would like to say "thank you" for giving us all a lesson in belief. In the comfortable affluence of North America, "belief" has become a weak word about private hobbies and notions. Screwtape's complaint about the quality of the souls the demons get to feed upon has never been more true. You and your followers at least had the guts to follow through on your convictions, no matter how crazy it all looked. There's something to be said for that.
By contrast, what most of us believe in is religious fence-sitting. We say we trust Jesus with our death, but our habits of worry and control demonstrate that we don't even really trust him with our lives. We are a lot like Jesus' first disciples, who where surer about believing on Palm Sunday than they were when he was being arrested, tried and crucified. In the book of Acts the disciples were promised boldness and for their boldness they were rewarded with both cultural traction and ridicule. Your boldness, Harold, has been evident, and by now you are either getting a lot of one or the other.
Your little campaign was also a reminder to us of something we usually don't like to think about: That this world as we know it with everything in it - everything we find lovely, beautiful and good - will end. This is a fact that no one disputes. The nice physicists on PBS all tell us that the sun will burn out, or we'll be struck by a meteor or that in a very long time the universe will grow increasingly distant and cold.
Now, Harold, if in fact the dawning of May 22 has caused you to check your math only to discover that the real date is in October or in 2012 or something like that, I'd like to offer the following suggestion before you arrange for more billboard advertising.
If I were to criticize your campaign, apart from the issue of date picking, I would suggest that it failed to reflect the value that the owner of the cosmos affords his property. I myself don't believe that all the goodness of culture, love, beauty, community and everything in between will be irretrievably lost in this present wave of cosmic decay. Failing to fully appreciate God's love for the world, as attested in arguably the most famous verse of the New Testament, turns the creator into a sort of cosmic garbage man whose only interest is in harvesting souls rather than restoring his creation.
Since I know you know your Bible, I'd like to point you to Isaiah 60, in which the kings of the earth bring their cultural riches to the throne of the Creator. You were right that we can't bribe the Almighty, that all we need is need, but I think you fell short in seeing that he is one who reaps where none of us imagined he was sowing.
So again, Harold, thanks for all your hard work.
Your friend, Paul.
(Photo of Harold Camping courtesy of RNS.)
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Comments (22)
Having read many of your blogs, I thank you for this generous apologetic to Mr. Camping. Your insights into the pursuit of valuelessness in our society and your assertions that the beauty and cultural richness of this world will remain are very helpful. Thanks.
Rev. Henry R(Hank) Post
Grand Rapids, MI
They spent the rest of their lives anticipating the end, and, thus, living fully. They lived with candor, sincerity, and passion.
Though both men died before I was born, their carpe diem legacy survived in the family as a call to action in regard to our convictions and revelry in daily life.
As for me, I've come to feel the END of the WORLD (which is a sad concept, for we live in a miraculous place in the universe) is far less relevant than the INEVITABLE END of ME which could arrive "like a thief in the night," or afternoon, or mid-bagel.
To echo a popular country song: live like you're dying, because we all, quite literally, are.
The apocalypse is just a question of how much company you'll have at the time.
All of us need to realize that we have wild mis-interpretations of Holy Scripture. Most of us are lucky that it doesn't end up with us being made into such public spectacles or ridicule.
I'm reminded of The Secret Policemans Ball when all gather for 'The End of the World', the appointed moment comes and passes. There is a silence and then the sect leader interposes, " er, same time tomorrow then?"
All this prediction does is lump all Christians together in the eyes of people who don't believe. We're all crazy. We're all irrelevant. None of us are practical. Why would I ever trust what these people say?
Yes it's an opportunity to tell people I don't agree with Harold. But why be in that position to start out with?
I do admire people with strong faith. I don't look up to people who manipulate a small piece of scripture to get lots of publicity. My thank you letter will come when we quit giving attention to crazy stuff that represents a small minority of people.
I'm inclined to think that he really believed what he said.
Now, knowing what you know about Camping and how this has influenced public opinion of Christianity, YOU have the responsibility to influence the opinion's of the people you know - in a more positive direction.
Weighing out the pros-cons of this one for me has been tough. I brought up this issue preaching yesterday in two different churches and it was interesting to hear the variety of reactions. Has Harold Camping done damage to the Christian brand? Its hard to imagine both the assault on the brand that Christian's themselves perpetrate as well as what seems the vigorous nature of the brand itself. The most definitive assault on the brand itself was the eucatastrophe of the crucified Christ.
In my experience with people what they actually do with Christ has little to do with the the facile "thumbs-up, thumb's-down" portrayal of the Christian world in the media. We have deep and mysterious reasons for belief as well as for doubt. People who should believe by virtue of upbringing and ease reject the faith while others who we would imagine should throw it away cling vigorously to a God whose treatment of them we might question.
Harold stirred the pot. What happens in the stew is beyond our capacity to fully appreciate. :) pvk
I agree it's hard for us to know exactly what the long term impacts of the failed rapture prediction will be. There are good things that come out of this. People may have taken a chance to examine their own faith in a way they wouldn't have without the thought of a pending rapture.
But it's still hard for me to handle any outcome, good or bad, when the message is delivered in a way that seems to do more damage than good for the image of Christianity.
Because of the large population of Christians in America that have been deeply impacted by dispensational theology and the subsequent books and movies how this Camping episode has played out in the popular media tended to follow these lines. Before Family Radio took down their countdown website (they took it down today and have one up that imagines that his prophesy was dispensationally raptured, not even leaving the clothing behind) I read some of Camping's stuff for details. Camping asserted a general resurrection for May 21 with an air-rapture of resurrected saints but not a lot of commentary on the resurrected damned and their existence along side the rest of the "left behind" until Oct 21. Some are now asserting that "the Rapture" happened. They aren't holding to the Family Radio script though because we're lacking the empty tombs.
So what we're seeing is a jumble, a mish-mash.
As to my beliefs? I'd best be labeled an a-mil I suppose, but as my New Testament professor Andy Bandstra told us "If Jesus returns and sets up a 1000 year kingdom, don't challenge him, just go along with it." :) pvk
Should the belief of Camping and his followers be commended? It does show us the sort of give-it-all-up, put-our-money-where-our-mouth-is faith that is rare. But it was faith in something NOT true. That faith was in vain. As a believer in the Truth, I am not sure if I should respect that or not. Is it more commendable to devoutly believe in falsehood or not have committed belief at all?
Popular religion in our current cultural context has a hedge-your-bets, keep-your-options-open value. Don't commit too strongly, or too strangely to any particular position, besides this one of course, because it is a position.
I am not to say that extremism is to be commended for its own sake, but rather that a lack of consecration not be endorsed.
In the discussion with respect to Rob Bell it was interesting to me to note that most for whom Bell got traction tended to be suburban people with evangelical experiences. One pastor friend in particular who works in San Francisco noted on his blog that this sort of "failure to commit to a fixed position" attitude tends to be received with less respect in non-suburban environments.
Camping decided to be consequential. Lewis on Screwtape's toast notes that the bold move history and they are usually its greatest saints or monsters, and that with respect this category saints and monsters have something in common that fence sitters will never know.
Some might want a Bible story to go along with this point so I'll offer Ananias and Sapphira. At some point you have to learn that "both ways" usually wins neither. pvk
Popular religion says, effectively, to stand for nothing and hedge your bets. But the response is not to commend someone who stood for something that he "knew" based on a process on par with reading tea leaves or studying Nostradamus. The fact is that standing for something that is demonstrably wrong (hello, Matthew 24:36) is not commendable in any sense. It makes us all look like idiots.
Camping was not bold—only foolish, prideful, and loud. In that, he is no less so than I am from time to time (except maybe for the "loud" bit because I don't have a radio show through which I can lead scads of people astray). But as I have people around me to tell me when I'm being foolish and prideful, lest I drag the name of Christ through the mud, someone—maybe the entire Christian community—has got to do the same for this guy. I just have to wonder where his group of elders that provide oversight and accountability are today... or where they've been for the past month or two.